Not much

I tried to think about talking to my boss about her inappropriate comment, but the meeting I had turned into something bad, so I didn't. Because I misunderstood a procedure, I felt like I was being accused of trying to get out of completing my work or working hard enough or something. Anyway, I just couldn't bring it up, so that's that. Between her comment, some other comments she has made, and this encounter of feeling accused of not working hard, I'm not currently feeling so great about my boss. But it is what it is.

I'm trying to take this as something good so that when we get placed with a baby I won't mind quitting work and staying home. Isn't that funny?

Not too much is going on. We're feeling sad today. A colleague of T's has been ill and passed away at a too young age. T doesn't deal with loss particularly well. It's all very, very sad.

Saturday we are doing the MS Walk if anybody wants to donate.

I'm having second thoughts about our facilitator again. I think I want to work with an agency. We have to make a decision and fill out an application and commit before my pottery class starts. We're currently just wasting time and spinning our wheels. Why can't I move forward with this?

I heard this piece about grief on the radio today. This woman had lost her husband. I just couldn't help but think about myself in this situation, only the person (people) that I lost never actually existed. They were just concepts -- perhaps multiple cells. But the thing that has died is the person that would have been created had my DNA been able to successfully combine with T's DNA, and any of the thousands or millions of possible outcomes of that combination simply never will be. I really think they should have spoken with people who have failed all fertility treatments for that study.

My parents are going to be back from Florida today and I will see them this weekend. And despite all of this shit, I'm happy that baseball season is starting even though my fantasy team kind of sucks.

I'm glad tomorrow's Friday.

Off-hand comments

Today in our weekly staff meeting we were talking about April Fools jokes since the first of April is coming up. My boss said one year for April Fools she sent one of her nieces a letter telling her she had been adopted and that her parents had met in line at the welfare office. The niece believed the letter and my boss had to call her and tell her it wasn't true. She said that her niece will believe absolutely anything. She was laughing.

I was uncomfortable and didn't say anything.

Adoption Conference

Saturday T and I went to the Adoption Conference we went to last year. We were still in an exploratory place last year, and this year were were in waiting mode. We went again to the 'pre-adoptive parents' session, which is split by gender. It is always really nice to share some good discussion with people in a similar place. Most of the women there had been through infertility battles, though I did feel like more of a veteran because several of the women were just starting their adoption journeys.

Again, it's just so cool to be in a place where everybody there has been touched by adoption.

We went to several sessions about openness in adoption and communication in adoptive families. Last year we went to a session for birth parents, but we decided to not go to any birth parent/adoptee groups. We really focused on learning how to educate ourselves and our children about adoption and how to ensure good communication both with our children and our children's birth parents. It is my hope that the more I listen to people's stories and experiences, the easier it will be for us when we have to have the more difficult conversations.

This really is a wonderful conference, and we're so lucky to live close enough to attend it. I think it came at the right time when I was feeling really down. I know this is a difficult road, but when I see all of these people living their lives, it makes me feel like we can do it too.

I do still worry, and I do hear stories that scare the hell out of me. I do see people experiencing my worst fears when it comes to adoption. But despite all of the problems, parents love their children and their children do love their parents. I see plenty of biological families have issues with their family members. There are never any guarantees that things will be 'happily ever after' and I just have to accept it.

So, I'm not happy-go-lucky or feeling excited or anything, but I am trying to let go of my anger and am trying to be a little more rational.

Plus I'm counting days until pottery.

I signed up for a class

So, feeling down about everything and contemplating a different life forced me to do something I've always wanted to do, but never did. The timing was right. I signed up for a pottery class. Beginning Wheelthrowing.

When we went to that art show last weekend, I was talking to one of the pottery artists and mentioning how I'd always wanted to learn to do pottery on the wheel. I live very close to a reasonably well-known pottery school, and he told me I should sign up. I did show off my purse and my sweater to him. He was impressed.

When I got home, I looked on the website of this school. Turns out that registration was today! It was kismet. I had to sign up. So I did.

I am so excited! It has definitely pepped me up. And to celebrate we're getting dumplings from my favorite Chinese place.

So I'm feeling a little better for now. I'm still looking forward to talking to my therapist on Friday morning.

I'm still questioning all of this, but for now I'm excited to start pottery class. It starts at the end of April.

Still down

I've had a sad week. I'm not exactly sure what's going on with me, but I can't seem to get out of this funk. I'm going back to talk to my old therapist on Friday to see if that will help.

I'm in such a funk that I actually looked up jobs in the city in Hawai'i where I fantasize about moving. There is a branch of University of Hawai'i there, so I fantasize about working there. I looked at flights, but I didn't look at housing. Housing in Hawai'i is expensive. I'm not sure why I'm in this 'giving up' mode, but I am.

I haven't been cooking. I let T buy a couple of toys. I have been spending a lot of time playing on our Wii. I haven't been cleaning -- though I did manage to empty and fill the dishwasher today, finally. I just don't have strong opinions about anything. I'm not particularly worried about anything because I just don't care.

Though this brings us to the weird part because I am worried about the fact that I don't care. T thinks it's a good thing. He says I'm letting go and just going with the flow. We are lucky that financially we don't have things to worry about (especially in this economy) but it isn't like me to step back and consider and just worry about how things are going to go. But I don't care.

I am still exercising a little bit. It's only twice a week so far, though I'm trying for three. I should do more, but it's better than nothing. But I just don't care. I haven't been knitting or crocheting or reading. I've just been watching DVDs and playing on the Wii. I don't feel interested in much. I feel like things are not okay.

Though, I am trying to sign up to take a pottery class tomorrow. I've always wanted to make clay things on the wheel, so I'm going to try and sign up and do pottery once or twice a week. Hopefully that will kick me in the butt.

I emailed the agency today and they think that previous situation with Bruce and his daughter is a long shot. They think we should sign on with the facilitator. That is a big chunk of money, but I think we're going to go ahead and do it. That will solidify the fact that we will not give up and move to Hawai'i because once we give her this money, we'd better get an adoption to happen. It's not refundable and it's a lot.

But as I type this, I don't feel much of anything. I really feel like I don't care about anything. I know this cannot wholly be true, but I just can't seem to have an opinion about anything. This is strange as someone who always uses 'opinionated' as the one word to describe herself.

Should I be worried?

Still Sad

When I get sad, I think about abandoning this whole adoption plan and moving away and starting over.

A lovely open adoption blog I read linked to this story. It's the story of one birth mother. It's not a foreign story to me, but as all first parents stories, it moved me deeply. There have been a lot of comments, some reassuring and some not.

Adoption is work. I knew this going into adoption. It's essential to make sure it's done ethically, and maintaining some openness is delicate. It's difficult for all three triad members.

Sometimes I feel like I don't have the emotional energy to cope. Today is one of those days.

I have always known that I wanted to be a parent. I have known this for as long as I can remember. I never remember wanting to be married much. I never dreamed of a big wedding or wanting to be a princess for a day. I don't remember fantasizing about my husband or my wedding or any such thing. But I do remember always thinking about my children. I always thought about what type of parent I would be.

But it has turned out that neither my husband nor I can make a baby. So what are we to do?

-------------------
I stopped writing this and T and I went out to a lovely arts show and bought me a few neat things. We also bought a dresser that was on sale that T wanted. The art show was fabulous and inspiring. I think I'm going to sign up for beginners pottery class. I have always wanted to learn and now is a good time for me to start. Classes start at the end of April.

After the show I had beer and clams, and we had a lovely day. I am much less sad than when I wrote the first half of this post.

I still, however, feel I don't know what to do with my life right now. In some ways I want to move to Hawai'i and abandon all hopes of making a family. This journey has been too difficult and it poses too many risks and has too much pain. I sometimes feel I am too empathetic to be an adoptive parent. I see some adoptees who have such pain in their lives, and I've read and spoke to birth/first parents who are also living with extreme pain. I don't want any more pain. I want happiness.

All this said, I can't ever imagine life without parenting. We will not move to Hawai'i and we will wait and find a good match and find some way to have a relationship with our child's birthparents. We will be as good parents as we can, and life will happen.

I am just stuck here waiting and imagining everything going wrong. It's not a nice place to be, but I am trying to do things I enjoy. It's really imperitive that I take that class while I can. And when I think about these classes, I think that maybe I could go away and take classes and be a more involved and active person without children. But then I go out and see a family, and my heart just breaks.

I think this is the problem. I have a heart that has been broken too many times. It hasn't been broken by my family or by my husband, but by hope. I have had so much hope and it has broken me each time -- each pregnancy, each IVF each dIUI, each cycle. I have hoped so many times that I might have a family, and I see what we do not have everywhere around us. I'm not sure I could live this world we live in without having a family. I think it would completely break me.

I so often feel like I don't know what to do. I hate that feeling.

Head: better. Soul: not so much

My new cube was a bit better today. At least, I didn't feel like I was hallucinating. That's a start. I felt a headache coming on a few times, but I ate, drank water or got up and walked away and managed to hold it of. I also wore a hat and despite my hat head it blocked some of the light out and I think it helped a bit.

I am, however, feeling sad. One of the HR women at work is adorably pregnant. The other day she chose to sit next to me out of an entire, huge room of people. Plus, I'm feeling really fat. My pants are all tight, my shirts are all a little bit small. I have been exercising a couple of days a week, but I'm still eating kind of poorly. I don't feel like I have the energy to try to eat healthy, even though it's probably not that difficult.

My new job is weird. The people I work with are a little odd and it's not very social. I tend to eat lunch in my old department because people are rowdy and fun there. Also, two people were just hired in the Training department, which is also rowdy and fun, and I kind of feel bad that I didn't get to apply there. I was a teacher after all. But since I got offered and accepted this job back in November, I didn't even have the choice.

Again, even as I move forward, I feel like I'm not. The whole world moves and I just sit here. At least I sort of feel like if we did get a baby that I wouldn't mind quitting my job to stay home. But that just seems like a far off dream and pretty moot anyway.

If work sucks and family sucks (even though my husband doesn't suck), then what's the point? I just don't get it. Yes, I have a great husband, but I'm just not sure what else I am accomplishing here on earth. No, I'm not suicidal, but I'm sad because I just don't understand the point of life. I used to be this smart, fun person with the whole world in front of her. Now I'm just someone who never had the right job and wasn't able to have children and is just getting old in a job she is too smart for. I just don't get it.

Work Headaches

Today was slightly better. I hid behind a wall I built with cardboard and an old curtain I brought in from home.

It's definitely me. No one else is having this problem.

I did find out that there are different light bulbs in my new area than in the area where I was sitting before, which makes me feel a little less insane.

I am changing seats tomorrow, and they're going to see if it's possible to replace the lights in the one light that is right above my seat. I'm thinking of wearing a baseball hat and sunglasses too.

But I feel better today. At least, I don't think I might have a migraine. I just feel slightly light-headed. No real headache, though.

But I did go out for a couple hours for my 'welcome to the department' lunch. So I had a big break in the middle of the day. And after coming back and working for a while, I was semi-hallucinating. It was like seeing 'trails' or weird light flickering while looking at my computer screen.

I hope moving my seat helps.

My new cube

at work seems to be making me sick. I've had a headache 85% of the time since I moved my cube. I'm trying to make some adjustments -- I think it's the light that is causing this. But it sucks to have a headache all day every day. This is not normal for me.

And I asked about possibly moving or making some more changes around my cube, but like everything else, it's complicated. So I'm going to try to block out the florescent lights that shine right it my eyes and see if it helps.

I've been kind of cranky lately.

Show and Tell

Here's my show and tell for this week:

This is the shrug I made for Lauren's 12th birthday.


I hope she actually wears it. It's very cute, if a little snug. But the lace is stretchy and I think it's adorable. It's so difficult to figure out what teenagers like.

Go see what others are showing.

feelings

I've had a bunch of weird feelings lately. Today, mostly. But I'm PMS/menstrual and my emotions are running high.

My niece is a talented artist. I have one of her oils as the desktop background. Here it is:


The thing is, she painted these while she was 11. If you look at the way she writes her name in the lower right hand corner, you can see that it's not an adult's handwriting.

Here is the first oil paint she ever made. I think she was not even 11 yet, or possible had just turned 11 when she painted it.


She's incredibly talented. So I was showing off her paintings and gloating as a good aunt does, and one of my co-workers asked if there was anyone else in our family that had artistic talent. This is a legitimate question. But then I was faced with a conundrum. I had only a few seconds to decide what to say. There is no one else with artistic talent in the family. Yes, I am good at my knitting and crocheting, but I cannot paint or draw. But the question was out there. I could have just said, "No, no one else in our family has artistic talent," and left it at that. But I didn't. I did say that no one else had any artistic talent, but I prefaced it with the fact that she was adopted.

I felt funny about that later. Was it the right decision? Did I reveal this information when it wasn't necessary? The question implied a genetic reason for this incredible talent that Lauren has, and I decided to address it, but I felt funny about it afterward.

It made me think of my future children. If asked the same question about them, would I reveal that information in that same situation? My gut tells me that I would have, but I'm not sure. I'm not sure where my discomfort comes from. Is it because I feel this is Lauren's information to reveal and I took a liberty? The chances of them ever meeting her is slim to none, but it still made me feel funny, like I did something wrong.

What should I have done?

Nothing doing

I haven't heard anything at all about this situation. The agency is waiting for the expectant mother to contact them. Her father, Bruce, is supposed to show her our photo booklet. He was apparently quite taken by it, but I don't have any idea if this expectant mom has looked at the booklet or is interested or anything. Meantime, I'm just sitting and waiting and trying not to think about it.

Meanwhile I'm trying to settle in to my new job. It's been going well. Today was the first day where I had to start figuring out ways to politic a little and how to handle people and situations and my boss, etc. It was nothing bad, but I did have a few cringe inducing moments.

Wish I had something more interesting to say today. All I can say is that it's been snowing way too much. I'm ready for that to stop.

Freaked out

So yesterday morning I sent an email to the birth mother counselor at our agency, just to find out what the next step might be. I got the following email (changes have been made to protect privacy):

I just left you a voice message. Just to recap, I just put a call into Bruce today, the BM’s father, who said that he was very impressed with your album and the information that I sent about Our Adoption Agency but he has not seen his daughter or been in touch as she is out of state and she is having cell phone problems. He intends to share everything with her when he sees her. He said that “Joanne said that you were open to adopting both boys”. I am assuming that this is something that you have talked about with your contact person -apparently this BM has another toddler who is presently living with his other grandparents.

Let us know what you are thinking about.

I FREAKED OUT!

I have in no way talked to anyone about adopting a sibling or a toddler or ANYTHING. I flipped. And "Joanne" is my cousin's wife's mother, who is someone I met briefly once at their wedding and haven't talked to since. That was five years ago. How could someone who does not know us offer for us to parent a toddler that we didn't know needed a family?

The BM counselor calmed me down. It could be due to some miscommunication. Bruce could have asked if we were interested in the toddler and Joanne could have said, "I don't know, possibly," and he took that as a yes. Plus, we have no information about the BM at all. We only know Bruce is interested in making an adoption plan with us, we have no idea how on board she is with this. We know she's thinking about it, but we don't know what she's thinking about. We don't have any medical information yet -- we don't even know if it's a sitiuation that could possibly work out. If it does look like a good situation, the BM counselor told me that she knows how to approach that situation. There are all sorts of ways to talk to the BM about only being able to parent the one child as our first.

But she did say that I should contact my cousin's wife to make sure that her mother knows she shouldn't be talking to Bruce about the prospects or possibilities of an adoption happening with us. He should only be talking to our agency.

But boy howdy did that freak me out. And I'm still concerned that if she learns we are not prepared to parent her toddler that she won't want to place with us. But I guess if that's the case then it was not meant to be.

I still have to call my cousin's wife. I'm slightly nervous, but now that I've calmed down I feel I can approach it without being accusing. These people did me a great favor by making this connection, even if it ends up not working out.

I'm trying to remember to breathe.

Confusing

Sometimes I confuse myself. I feel like I don't communicate enough with other people. I'm a pretty outgoing person and I like to be active in my relationships with people. I like getting email and comments and notes on my wall, etc. But I'm not particularly great at reaching out, which means it's silly for me to expect attention back. Plus, I don't have much to say about anything. I don't want to talk to my long, lost friends because I don't want to talk about our infertility and our waiting for an adoption to happen. But if asked, there's nothing much else going on with me. Sure, I can talk a little bit about my new job (which is going well so far) or I could mention my latest knitting or crochet project, but I'm not sure how interesting it is. And the people I'm friendly with already know about these things. There's only so much to talk about when it comes to cooking or crafting or work. I just feel dead in the water and conflicted. Do I want to talk to people or don't I? The answer is, I'm not sure.

And I haven't heard anything from our agency.

And here are some alligators because someone asked about them.

Back from vacation - with Show and Tell images.

I'm back from Florida. It was a long, relaxing and lovely vacation. I can't believe it's supposed to snow a foot tomorrow.

In other news, while we were down there, my mother told me to call my cousin's wife. While I think she is lovely, she's not someone I talk to very often, aside by commenting on F@ceb00k, etc. Turns out her mother has a friend whose daughter is pregnant and doesn't think she can parent. She was wary of letting us know -- her husband (my cousin) said to mind her own business, but she talked to my aunt and then my mother and was convinced that this is something we should pursue. So the birth mother counselor spoke to the pregnant woman's father, who has been making sure she's been getting to her doctors' appointments and who has been taking care of her, and sent over a brochure and our profile.

The woman had been feeling desperate and called up one of those billboard adoption agencies with the pictures of in-utereo fetuses that are usually funded by churches to make sure women do not choose abortion. They are aggressively pursuing her and calling her often.

Not sure what's going to happen with this, but it makes my tummy tumble in knots. I'll follow up with our agency some tie next week. I'm not feeling very hopeful, but it is our first 'showing.' There is always a chance.

So, I will share a few pictures of the wonderful wildlife we saw while in Florida.

Vacation's all I ever wanted

Tomorrow is my last day at my old job! Yay! I'm so very happy about it.

Saturday we leave for Florida.

Things are hectic but fine. Didn't get the stuff off to the facilitator before we're leaving. I'm a little disappointed in myself for not doing it. I'm just not feeling settled about it, I guess. But we'll do that when we get home, I suppose. Right away. I'll finally have some flexibility to get to the post office anyway.

Have a good week everybody! Wish for good weather down there!

Feeling better

We're all feeling better. I'm still worried about T, but he is feeling fine. He'll see the doctor on Tuesday and I hope that I can convince him to exercise. I think it will help. I truly believe this was all related to stress and anxiety.

Last night we had dinner over with E&R and toddler S. S just loves my husband. S is a man's man and is really only interested in men. When we were walking up the stairs, S stuck his head out and looked at me and said T's name. He climbed all over T and had T read him books and wanted T to go in his room when it was time for bed. He's a good kid - so cute. He's become interested in anatomy and at one point asked T if he had a pen1s. E is trying to explain when it is okay to talk about these things and when it is not, but apparently this is a pretty common question S is asking of people -- making sure men have one and confirming that women don't, mostly. Sometimes he gets it wrong, but not often. It was funny.

I made more marshmallows for dessert. I messed up the first batch, so I had to do it twice. I melted the chocolate in the microwave which worked SO much better for me than doing it in a double boiler. I always seize chocolate, and this melt went perfectly. They were yummy.

Today I'm taking a friend down to the Scandinavian furniture store to get a bookshelf for her new apt. She just moved out from living with her husband. I have my dad's mini van since my car is in the shop.

Less than a week to FL. 4 more days in my old job.

more sick

T came home sick on Tuesday. We went to bed pretty early.

T woke me up at about 4:30. He had been up for 45 minutes and his chest HURT. It wouldn't go away. It seemed to be getting worse. It wasn't burning or radiating, but it was BAD. We had to go to the ER.

Drove him there. It took forever. When we got to the desk, he couldn't even stand up.

He went in for tests. I really didn't think it was his heart because he had had 2 different stress tests not too long ago and some EKGs and they were all normal, but they had to test it. They gave him aspirin and nitroglycerine and then some morphine. The morphine didn't help. They gave him an x-ray and a CT scan. All negative.

They gave him some even stronger drugs and finally, finally he could actually sit still without writhing in pain. It was about 7am at this point.

They released him because they had no idea what was causing it. He has to follow up with is primary care doctor. He got some meds.

Now it's close to 8. I had been home for the past two days, so I had to go to work. I wanted to stay home with him, but I couldn't. So he went back to bed and I showered and went to work.

The meds seemed to help and went down to just ibuprophen by evening. He was even better this morning. But I'm still super worried about him. Then he had a work disaster today and didn't even leave the office until almost 7pm. (It's ten til right now and he may have just left just now.)

He works too hard. I think it was caused by stress. He won't work less hard and I'm worried this will happen again. I need him to exercise and he doesn't.

But he is a bit better. But I remain very worried.

Tomorrow is Friday. No work on Monday. We leave for FL one week from Saturday.

Sick

I left work at about 11:30 yesterday and stayed home today. I was running a fever. Poor T seems to have it now, too. Luckily I seem to be getting better and I should be go to go back to work tomorrow.

Heard back from the friend I emailed about being a waiting family. She was understanding and said she had some friends who dealt with infertility and 'ended up' adopting. She asked if we were going overseas or staying in the US and told me that if I didn't want to talk about it, she'd understand. So that went ok. I guess it went about as I expected it.

All of my relatives have started joining F@ceb00k now, including my dad and my aunt so I'm getting weary of the whole thing. So maybe I'll be less obsessed with it.

I have exactly 7 more working days at my current job. It's longer than a week because there's a long weekend in between, but it's getting there.

Sunday

Still haven't heard from F@ceb00k friend w/kids. Not sure how often she logs in, though. I can't seem to stay away from that stupid site, even though in some ways I want to.

Now my relatives are starting to find me.

Got a spaetzle press for Chanukah and I'm going to try making it with some beef stroganoff tonight. Yum.

Went to the store and bought a box of cake mix and frosting because it was on sale. I can smell the cake as it bakes right now. I really need to lose some weight and did start up exercising again, but I just can't help myself with some sweet snacks. I had been eating well, but on Friday I had a donut and some fried food. I've been eating out all week. Maybe it will be okay because I'm going to exercise tomorrow. I bought some bananas. That's good, right? I need to control my eating.... and help T control his.

It's really warm here today, but I'm not doing anything. Cooking and laundry is about it -- plus I'm working on knitting a gift for one of my nieces. It's coming along, but I think I need an extra needle for it. I'll have to see.

Weekends can be so weird.

Waiting

I sent an email to one of those friends from F@ceb00k. Told her we were waiting. Now I'm waiting for a response.

Waiting is hard.

Have a different friend who had a BFN after her first IUI. My heart breaks. I hate seeing people I care about have this kind of pain. It also makes me re-live mine.

Tomorrow is Friday, so only 2 more weeks until vacation. I'm holding my breath.

Coping strategies

I need to learn how to deal with things.

Like I've seen a lot of other people mention, I have a F@ceb00k profile. On this site I am finding a lot of former classmates and friends I've lost touch with. Inevitably, as I'm in my mid-thirties, I get friended, get the, "Hi Rachel! How are you? We have two kids now! Blah blah blah, we're busy but happy!" Sometimes they want to visit. Sometimes their kids play with someone else I know's kids. Sometimes they're super-important and have had high powered jobs and sometimes they took time off to take care of their multiple children.

How do I respond to all of this? Do I tell them we're waiting to adopt? Do I not? Do I just say where I work and that we have our house?

Sometimes I feel like I should just stay away from it, but I can't seem to. But seeing all of these people fruitful and multiplying makes me totally bummed and I don't know how to respond to them. I'm one of the few people that actually enjoyed high school. I mean, I didn't enjoy all of it, but my circle of friends was a good one, and if I ignored a certain section of high school people, it was a pretty good time in my life. One of the best, actually.

I'm terrified of contacting old friends now. I feel like such a constant failure at career and family. I don't like to talk to people because I see how successful they are -- financially, career-wise and with children. I just don't know what to do or say or how to react.

Should I just stop logging in to F@aceb00k? What do I do?

I wish I had more self confidence with these things.

Exhuasted

Work was crazy CRAZY busy this week. Crazy busy. T has to work all weekend. Stress levels are high. I'm exhausted.

Going to watch the Daily Show and play on our Wii.

Filled out some of the facilitator application yesterday. We're slowly going forward with this new step.

So tired.

One email

I emailed the facilitator today.

She said don't bother to work on the Dear Birthmother booklet on my own. She'll guide us some more to make changes the way she wants and editing it further will just frustrate me. So we could just fill out her application, send her a check and then include a book with it.

She said we didn't have too many changes to make -- mostly a few picture changes and integrating the text with the images. Right now the text is completely separate.

So, when T comes home from work we'll talk about this some more. We were going to have a lawyer look a the contract first. I don't know whether we're still planning on it or not.

I was feeling resentful of all of this again this morning. Perusing facebook can be difficult because I see so many people talking about their kids and stuff. I hate feeling sorry for myself, but I do sometimes. I can't imagine this sadness ever ending.

Still just counting days til our vacation and my new job start.

Funny on the inside

I've been feeling kind of funny lately.

The inauguration was great. I still can't believe it's real. It hasn't sunk in yet.

But aside from that, I'm just feeling funny. Things have gotten better since I stopped driving what my friend S labeled as the "think tank."

But then I got hit by that other car. I'm working with insurance to clear this up.

I got a good, new job a while back. But it still doesn't start til March 1. Waiting for it to start is really difficult. I'm not doing as well as I had in my old job. But I do have this new job waiting and they're not going to take it away. And I do have assignments, but my current job is so busy that I can't really work on the new stuff.

And I haven't done any adoption anything lately. We're still thinking of going with that facilitator, but it doesn't make sense to sign up until I change around our Dear Birthmother book, and I just haven't been able to do it. I both don't want to do it and have other projects I'm working on that have very finite deadlines, so I work on those and not the book.

But with all of this going on, I still just sort of feel empty inside. I see people having babies, and I see the babies grow up, and I see the children looking like their parents and I just feel empty.

I drive to work and I feel empty.

I know I should go talk to someone again, but my job has absolutely no flexibility, and I'm just trying to hold out until I have my new job which does have flexibility.

I really, really need a vacation, and we just bought tickets to go to FL on the 21st of Feb.

I just hope I can make it through until then. When I come back my new job will start. Meanwhile, I'm just trying to be patient.

Hormones

It's amazing how much hormones affect me. Yesterday, the day before cd1, I was a mess. Yes, my car got rear-ended and thing generally sucked, but I was so ready to throw in the towel and just take off and go somewhere else and just leave everything behind. I felt like I couldn't take anything any more and I just needed the world to stop.

Today, now that my hormones aren't raging, I'm back to normal. I felt a little crappy this morning, but I took some ibu*prophen and I was fine. I'm not in a horrible mood. I feel like I can conquer my problems, even if they are a pain in the ass.

Sometimes I worry about what will happen when we do finally have a kid and I am in this type of funk. How will I function?

Not a great day

I got rear-ended this morning. I'm fine, but my car is smashed up. T had some work laptops stolen. And AF is about to show up.

Not a great day.

And as I've said, when we don't have properly timed sex, by b00bs don't hurt, but when we do, they do. No timed sex means no sore b00bs this month. What's up with that?

Research

I have now talked to 3 of the references for this facilitator we are thinking of using. I've been trying to come up with a reason not to use her. I didn't really find one.

What T and I are truly worried about is not that this facilitator is good or thorough or ethical. I am certain about all of these things. Our concern surrounds birth parents. I want to be completely 100% sure that the birth parents get all the support and counseling they will need when all of this happens. If you work with a full service agency, the birth parents work with the same people throughout the whole process and things are slightly more stable. There is a specific process that the agency has done time and again.

With a facilitator, the birth parents rely on the facilitator for support. At a certain point, after the match is made the facilitator drops back and transitions us to an agency (or attorney, I suppose). What scares me is this transition. It may take some extra effort on our end do make sure the birth parents have the support they need at this point. I talked to one family that hired a local social worker to work with their birth mom to ensure proper support. This social worker knew the are and knew the hospital, and it really helped things to go smoothly.

The people I spoke to all had multiple children - two had multiple children via adoption. Not all children had been found via this facilitator. And every child's story is so different. There were complications even when they used a full service agency.

I've determined from talking to these people that no matter what, adoption is a crap shoot. You just never know how the situation is going to play out. You cannot predict. If I have an idea of how I think this is going to go, I have to get that out of my mind. And if a facilitator makes the match happen slightly more quickly, but forces us to do a little more work, the first time is the time to do it.

So, the conclusion that we have come to is that we are probably going to use this facilitator. It is a big commitment of money, but we're not sure what else to do. It has been three years since my first pregnancy. People are starting to have their second child since we have been battling infertility. It is time for this to end for us. I do think using this facilitator is a bit of a risk. But I have not been convinced that this is a risk we should not take.

Does anyone want to try to convince me not to do it?

Ouch

My neck hurts.

I have a huge knot in my upper shoulder and my movements are restricted and I am in pain. I can't find the heating pad.

Tomorrow my department is having it's Xmas party. It's a casino night. I'm going without T.

T is going away on Sunday for work. He'll be gone until Wednesday. My friend S is going to stay with me. I'm hoping it's fun to have a few days with just girls, but I usually don't like it very much when T goes away. I like it when he's here.

I got an email from the facilitator. I totally haven't been thinking about any of it. I didn't feel like re-doing the booklet. That's what I told her. I also need to talk to people who've had a placement with her.

Oy.

All this thinking is making my neck hurt more.
------------------------------------------------------
Just called a bunch of numbers on the reference page. Left one message. Talked to one person. They have 2 kids at this point, so we're going to have our real talk on Saturday.

That's something.

Bored.

I'm filled with ennui. I'm just bored of everything.

Yet, my motivation sucks.

Any suggestions?

Starting 2009

I didn't have to drive the crazies today. That part of my life is over, and it's sweet.

I'm starting to do some work for my new job, and I should be having a discussion to talk about the new job in more detail soon. It should start happening, which I am really looking forward to.

I'm trying to believe that 2009 is a new year and anything is possible. I'm trying to feel positive about it.

I guess I'm more ambivalent. I don't know how things will be. Things probably won't be worse and they could possibly better, but though I do still get sad, I think I'm mostly numb.

My mother asked about the facilitator the other day. I haven't done anything about it lately. I'm having second thoughts about her and think I may want to go with an out of state full service agency instead. But I'm not sure, and I need to talk about people who have completed adoptions using her. And I'm not sure my mother really understands how difficult all this stuff it. It made me sad that I haven't done anything else. I haven't felt motivated to change the book around, and I'm nervous about the way birth moms are given support when they have to leave the hospital without their baby. It made me really sad when she asked me about it. Now that we're waiting with our agency, I haven't felt motivated to do more. But if we do not want to wait two more years before bringing our baby home, so we need to do some additional searching.

Just like my desire to start exercising and losing weight (I am the heaviest I've been in years), I've been putting it off until after the holidays. And now it's after the holidays, but I can't seem to motivate.

Here's to motivation?

Good bye and good riddance

I didn't much like 2008. I was unemployed, I had a miscarriage with donor sperm, my insurance company stopped covering my infertility treatment, I came to the full realization that my husband and I will never create a child together, and I truly began to believe that I will never be pregnant long enough to bear a live child.

I am glad to see 2008 go.

But I do hold out a little hope that 2009 might be better. We have a new administration coming in, and I hope to be able to be proud of my country again. And there is a very small possibility that there might be a chance that the opportunity to become parents could present itself to us at some point in the coming year.

But we all know that hope is a bitch.

All that being said, I'm sure I'll be asleep at midnight.

Swirling thoughts

My thoughts have been all over the place lately. The holidays always make me feel weird. I'm Jewish, and I have a strong ethnic identity with being an Ashkenazi Jew. I'm not very observant (or observant at all, really), but there was a time in college that I actually thought about going to rabbinical school. I really enjoy the study of religion and comparative religion. In the end, I couldn't picture myself actually being a rabbi, even if I would enjoy rabbinical school, so I decided it wasn't the correct educational path for me.

T is not Jewish. He went to church a little bit when he was younger, but he is very disillusioned with organized religion and he vehemently does not believe in god. I sort of believe in god, but not really in the traditional Judeo-Christian way of believing in god. When T and I talk about these types of things, even though we put different words to the way we believe the world works, our differences are essentially semantic. It's pretty striking, however, how important semantics is under these circumstances.

Before we got married, I told T that I wanted to raise our children Jewish. Because I have such a strong cultural identification with Judaism, it has always been important to me to have children that identify as Jewish. I also sort of feel like the world has tried to eliminate the Jewish people so many times, and by abandoning the Jewish tradition, I'd be abandoning the strong history of the Jewish people. I don't know, it was kind of like if I didn't raise my children as Jews that Hitler would win somehow. I know that sounds crazy, and I didn't even have any immediate family still in Europe during WWII -- 3 out of 4 grandparents were born in this country. But I still believe that I owe it to my 'people' to continue at least some of my traditions, even if they are Americanized and not followed particularly strongly.

Unlike most western religions or ethnicities, Judiasm passes from mother to child. A child born of a Jewish mother is Jewish. It doesn't matter if the father is not -- Judaism is matralinial. When we were trying to have a child, I felt like my child would be Jewish because genetically he or she would come from me.

Now that we are adopting, I feel really differently about all of this. When you educate yourself about adoption, you learn that it is really important to acknowledge the genetic history of your child. People who adopt from other countries often try to learn as much as possible about the child's home country and often try to education them about what life is like back there so that they can have some connection to their roots.

As I heard a conversation about klezmer and other Jewish music on the radio yesterday, it really got me to thinking about all of this stuff. I guess I'm not sure how to reconcile all of this mixed culture stuff. I'm not sure how to handle it. Sometimes I feel like abandoning my attempts at trying to stay a little Jewish. I mean, I know I'll always be a little Jewish, but at some point it seems like trying to pass that on it's no longer worth it. But then I think I'm being defeatist. My brothers' families are mixed marriages and the children, to varying extents, are Jewish. One of my SILs is about to convert after being married to my brother for 15 years. One of their kids was adopted, and she is 'vehemently' Jewish -- meaning she notices how Christian-centric everything in the US is. So even though all of my nieces and nephews are technically not Jewish (none of their birth mothers were Jewish at the time of their birth) they all still identify at least somewhat as Jewish.

I'm just not sure how to reconcile all of these things. Being Jewish is a kind of unique thing -- there are certain experiences that come from being brought up Jewish in the US and dealing with Christmas that somehow makes you different. Being out of school for the high holidays and teaching people about matzoh when you bring it to school for lunch adds to this experience. And even after my SIL converts, she doesn't quite understand that part. And that's the ethnic, cultural part of being and American Ashkenazi Jew that I'm talking about. Even after she converts, she'll still 'miss' Christmas -- which I know she does. (Understandibly -- Christmas can be such a lovely thing for some families. And then there's the smell of pine and the decorations and the significance of ornaments, etc. Though it hasn't been my experience, I listen when people talk about such things and have been at friends' houses while they decorated the tree.)

I guess what I'm saying is that I just don't know what our family traditions are going to become as we form our family, and I know it's going to be a bunch of traditions mixed together. And I guess my real question is that how much watering down turns a tradition into nothing?

This time of year often brings these questions up for me. And it's always weird to think about because I know my behavior would change if I was with someone who was Jewish. The questions I would be posing would be different ones.

I suppose I should find someone to talk to about all of these issues. I think I'd like to, but my work situation makes it not so easy. Maybe I can in a couple of months after things have settled down.

Marshmallows

I made marshmallows.


Then I dipped them in dark chocolate.

This is what I made for dessert today.

Snowy Morning

It's a snowy morning in New England. We've cleaned it up, but there is more coming tomorrow. Our family Chanukah party that was planned for tomorrow may be postponed. I blew off my plans from last night because I didn't want to trek through the snowstorm.

The coffee is good this morning. I find sitting at home with the snow outside to be relaxing.

Rainy days and Mondays

Today was better than last week. Nobody really yelled at me on the phone.

This weekend was pretty good in terms of the things we did. We went out for some nice Ethiopian food and had a cupcake from one of those trendy cupcake places that keep cropping up. We also went to one of our niece's 11th birthday party. I made a hat and mittens for her, and she was pleased with them.

I got some bad news from some friends, too. I found out one friend has separated from her husband, and another got some bad infertility news. The one who is separated is sad, but seems to be doing okay. The fellow infertile isn't doing so well as she got the diagnosis that the chance of spontaneous conception was very, very low. Because it is secondary infertility, I think she feels like her sadness doesn't appreciate her kid enough or something. I don't know much about secondary infertility, but I do know it sucks. All infertility sucks.

It's so weird when these types of issues come into real life. I feel like I don't know how to comfort my friends. I send them emails or call them on the phone, but there is really nothing to do or say. It's all about listening and agreeing that it all sucks. But somehow that doesn't make anybody feel any better.

I don't know if I liked people talking to me when I got bad news or if I preferred to be left alone. I think I generally liked to be left alone, but I'm not really sure.

I just wish I could do more for them.

End of a bad week

This week sucked. I am so glad it is over. Work was bad, life was bad, but mostly work was bad. These are two of the busiest weeks of the year, and I have been yelled at more than I can remember ever being yelled at -- and definitely the worst at this job. People are just very, very unhappy.

Today was slightly better, but it was just a crapfest of a week.

And now I'm really, really busy for the next week. We have something to do throughout this weekend through next weekend. I think our only empty days after today are Monday and Tuesday until next Monday the 22nd. And the 23rd is T's birthday, and he is not happy about it. Milestones suck.

The one good thing was today was slightly better, and I went to a meeting with my new department and got some assignments! So, I get to take some time to do some non-phone work in the upcoming weeks, which I'm really excited about. That and my taxi service ends in a few weeks.

The future is very, very slowly becoming the present. S l o w l y.

------------------------------

Just got the mail and we got the letter.

We are officially a waiting family with our adoption agency.

Bye bye vials

I just filled out the form to sell back our two remaining vials of donor sperm. I'm not sure I mentioned this, but we got a call from the cryobank saying that at new genetic test had become reliable and they've started testing all the vials. Of course, our donor was one of the few that tested positive. I'm not exactly sure what the test is for, but it's a recessive gene that, if both biological parents carry it (like Cystic Fibrosis) and the kid gets it, it's a horrible muscle wasting disease like Muscular Dystrophy and it can lead to death in children at around 2 years of age.

Why do I feel like it figures that the donor we chose would have this? This is the donor I had the miscarriage with. I don't know if I carry that gene -- most likely I don't -- but still. Weird.

Anyway, the cryobank offered to exchange the vials for a new donor, but we really are never doing to do more inseminations, so we're hoping to just sell it back. At a loss. A 50% loss. They only pay you 50% of what you paid for it. Of course. It's a freaking racket. But any way.

Bye bye vials.

Cranky

I need some food and we're not doing anything tonight, so I'm feeling particularly cranky right now. T ordered a pizza, so I will be getting some food soon. Hopefully that will help.

I also have to work on my niece's birthday present, but I'm too cranky to knit. I've been too cranky to knit quite often lately. But her party is in a week and I have to get it done.

Tomorrow E and little S are stopping over for a visit. He's 2 1/2 now. It's amazing how much time has passed. All of the pregnancies that happened while we were having our miscarriages are now toddlers turning 2. I think about how they'll probably be nearly 4 when we finally become parents.

I'm not sure what's going on with me right now. I'm not in a sane place. I don't really feel like myself. We spent hours waiting for a new tire today. We went shopping and we each bought a new pair of shoes. T also got a new travel mug which he is very excited about. I tried to take the mildew stains out of our canvas shower curtain by soaking in in Oxy*Cle@n for several hours, but the mildew stains are still there.

We need to do some cleaning, but I'm just in no state of mind to do that. I get frustrated with my job, but I definitely like being busy. I look forward to the weekend so much, and then I tend to get cranky when the weekend comes if we don't have enough things to do. I just feel so unsatisfied by everything all of the time. I think we're pretty busy for the next two weekends, so that is a good thing. Then it's Xmas with my parents and my brother, but I'm not sure we have plans for that weekend.

Pizza has arrived.

One holiday down...

Got through the holiday okay. Nothing too bad. My extended family has become slightly difficult to deal with, but in general it was fine. I did get to do that paint your own clay thing with my nieces. One of them, H (age 9), saw how excited I was to be there and do the painting and she said to me, "If you adopt a girl you'll take her to places like this all the time." I thought that was cute and very interesting -- the kids definitely think about us and kids and the adoption. I was a little surprised, but it was a nice thing to hear.

T and I also drove up to Portland, ME to see a college friend of mine. The weather was nice and it was great to see her and she and T get along really well as they are both political junkies. We got to walk around and have some great beer and coffee. It was nice.

Now it's back to work and it should be a pretty busy month for me. Tonight we are meeting someone who is also a waiting parent -- she is doing international adoption as a SMC and is just looking for some compatriots. We'll have a meal and share angst.

Got a hard copy of our home study today. There were some tiny changes to make, but overall it was a really nice document. It made us sound like a good couple and good potential parents. It also made me feel like we are the way we think we are. I guess that's good, right?

So, we have a few more weeks of Xmas crap. (Sorry to those of you who love the holiday season. I've never been much for the whole Xmas/Holiday thing.) Then it will be a new year and we'll have a new president and I won't be a taxi driver any more and I will start a new position in my company.

I am looking forward to the change toward the new year.

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers out there.

Had some seafood with the family last night. Never sure what time with my extended family might be like, but it wasn't too bad. Did come to the realization that my Uncle is really an 'old boys club' kind of guy when he asked where I was working these days and I told him, and then told him that my cousins use the product that my company produces. He thought that product might be good for him, and instead of asking me about how he would go about using it (since, you know, I support people who have technical questions about said product) he started asking my cousin. My cousin is a man. He only asks other men business related questions. He asked T and my brother an opinion about some business venture he has going on. He would never ask me that same question. None of this is much of a surprise, really, but I just had never thought about it that concretely. He really dismisses the opinions of women. He's on his third marriage, and I think this one will last because she's a helpless princess and he can take care of her. That makes him happy.

We meet at my parents at 3 today. I made the applesauce a few days ago and I just finished making some deviled eggs. Next I'm going to make our family's delicious carrot souffle recipe. Yum!

Hope everybody has a good day.

Wonderful.

Wonderful cheese,
wonderful apps,
wonderful wine,
wonderful meal,
wonderful dessert,
wonderful husband.

A little better for now

The fourth grade in my brother and sister-in-law's town has a 'wax museum' night every year where the fourth graders read a biography and then they write about them, memorize their spiel and sit or stand in a dark gym. Parents and family come to the gym and wave a flashlight at the fourth graders and they recite their spiel.

We went to Wax Museum night tonight. Our nice H did a wonderful job as Mia Hamm. It's such a great idea, and the kids made some interesting choices in their biographies.

After the performance we want to brother and SIL's for dinner. Yummy beef stew. Nephew is reading a book we gave him for his birthday and enjoying it. We gossiped about Thanksgiving occurrences and laughed a lot.

Two of the young children will not be coming for Thanksgiving due to a full-on family illness. Of course that's the one young family that knows about our situation and would be appropriately understanding, I think. My extended family is insane.

I'm feeling a little better after the family time. My SIL hadn't been acting like herself and we had been worried, but she has been getting and better and tonight it was just like having the old SIL back. And it was so nice. And the niece and nephew are great. And my family is funny, and we had fun.

And I told my taxi-riders that after January 1st I will be a taxi no more.

Tomorrow is our anniversary. We will go out for a nice dinner, and then we will have one more day of work before the family chaos starts.

An old college friend sent an email and T and I will go visit her and I am excited to see her and catch up.

I'm hopeful that in the morning my spirits will be a little lifted for our anniversary, which is still the best thing that has happened to me. Despite everything I am so lucky to have my wonderful T in my life and I am just so thankful for him.

Down

Feeling down.

Felt down all weekend. Saturday I could barely get off the couch. Sunday was better, but it's Monday morning, and I'm still feeling bad.

Tomorrow is our anniversary. We made reservations at someplace nice. It's supposed to rain hard all day.

There are going to be lots of little kids around for Thanksgiving. I think 5 under 5. Maybe that's why I'm feeling so down. If one of my pregnancies had worked out, we'd have a 1 or 2 year old at this point.

I don't want to skip Thanksgiving because I think that will be worse, but I'm not in a very good place right now.

PMS

I'm a little pre-menstrual. That may have been a part of my rant yesterday about my carpool. That being said, I have still decided to end it.

And I also have to remind myself that it is not a carpool because we do not share driving responsibility. It is more like a taxi service.

But anyway, I remembered that I wanted to write down this story for posterity. The woman who sits in the cube next to me asked me if I was interested in adopting a dog. I love dogs, and I kind of want a dog, but we are not planning on getting a dog right now. So I asked why. Apparently a friend of hers has a dog that attacked their child. And this couple has another child on the way, and they need to get rid of the dog because it attacks children. So apparently I'm a prime candidate for the baby-attacking dog. I might want it. You see, because we don't have any children, we might be interested in taking in a dog that attacks babies. Make sense? It does to her!

Oh! And another story for posterity. One of the recipients of my friendly daily taxi service has two kids. She constantly reads Parents magazine and talks about her kids every morning -- she usually complains about how terrible and difficult her children are, but then will say it's mostly worth it, she guesses. I think I've mentioned that her MIL does most of the parenting for her children, but that's a little beside the point.

Anyway, we were listening to Johnny Cash and there's this song about a dog and Johnny Cash sings about this "dirty old egg-sucking dog." B goes on to tell us (me and the other taxi-er) that sometimes she tells her 2-year-old that he's lucky he's so cute because his behavior is so terrible that otherwise she would give him away. Yes, she tells her two year old son that she wants to give him away because he's bad. But she doesn't because he's cute. Isn't that a great message? She says it to him in front of her other son who is 5. Yay! I usually don't say anything to B about her horrible parenting, but I couldn't stop myself with that one. I told her that saying such a thing was horrible. She said she wouldn't say it to him if he understood what she meant! I informed her that kids understand a lot more than she thinks. The 2-year-old J is definitely not an easy kid. I would guess this is true not only because of his parents' poor parenting skills, but because that is just how this kid is. I believe that. But to think that telling a 2-year-old he better behave or else you will give him away might improve his behavior is insane! Why would you not understand that this would probably create more behavior problems, I do not know. After I expressed my horror, she said she guesses she had better stop saying that to J.

Oh. My. God.

Yes, I have PMS, but these are the types of things that drive me crazy. I'm not in the best place right now.

Carpool

I just don't think I can take it any more. I hate my carpool.

They give me $60 per month for gas money. I get way more than $60 worth of grief from this.

I think starting January 1st, this carpool is over.

I'm so bad at telling people stuff like this, though. What do I say? I can't tell them I hate them and they bother me so I don't want to drive them any more. I can't tell them that their annoying behavior isn't worth the money they pay me every month. I'm not like that.

I'm just going to have to say that I need a break and I'm going to be starting a new job pretty soon and it's just not going to work for me any more.

I'll tell them after Thanksgiving.

God, I hate them. I HATE THEM!

Making plans

Our 3rd wedding anniversary is one week from today. We are trying to make plans to do something nice. We want to go out to a nice dinner on the actual day of our anniversary -- but not too nice -- because we are hoping to get a weekend away on the first weekend in December. As a gift to ourselves. We don't go away much and we think it will be good for us to go away. We need to pamper ourselves.

I don't want to use any vacation time because we're hoping to visit my parents in Florida in February or March, but leaving Saturday morning, staying in a hotel, going out to a nice dinner all seems like a good get-away.

We just have to make the damn reservations.

Otherwise, everything is the same. Sometimes I feel like life is just passing us by and I am just standing on the side of the road watching it pass.

Trying to keep on keeping on

While we haven't decided exactly what to do regarding our book, things are slightly better today. I suspect that we'll change it around a bunch, but we most likely will leave in at least one picture of the cats. But this decision is ongoing.

T has been having trouble at work, but after a long week of fretting and freaking out, things have settled down a little in that area. Things were talked out, tentative agreements were made and it seems like his work is going to be moving forward in a reasonable way, at least for now. So that is a good thing.

I'm still totally sick of my current job, but I am living with it. My carpoolies still suck, but I am riding with them. My job is just stuck until after the new year.

I also found, on one of the many social networking sites I use, a birth mother that I was able to have a conversation with. I cannot tell you how much it means to me to be able to talk to birth moms. I feel I approach adoption with concerns, and I like to see the concerns from the 'other side' too. And it makes me feel so good when we view things similar, even while on opposite ends.

What really helped me was having both sides agree that the emptiness that comes from infertility can give us insight into the emptiness that comes from deciding to have your child brought up by another set of parents. I know that the situations are completely different, but it is the shared experience of emptiness that allows T and me to have such empathy for birth moms. And that, in turn, should help us understand how to navigate our adoption and our openness.

This has been such a long week, and I'm just so glad it is over. I hope I can find a little rest and relaxation during the weekend.

Redo

The potential facilitator pretty much wants us to redo our book. Sigh.

I found a lot of her suggestions to be fine. I can rework it much in the way she wants.

But she wants us to take out the pictures of the cats. She says a lot of birth mothers skip over books because of cats. There apparently is some old wives tale about cats sitting on a baby's face and suffocating it.

This bothers me on so many levels. One, I sort of feel like it makes it seem like she sees birth mothers as ignorant and superstitious, which is kind of an insult to them. And I also feel like it will misrepresent us to take them out. They are part of our family.

She told us all her suggestions were optional and we didn't have to take them.

But talking to her about it made me, for the first time, feel pressure. I felt like I was talking to a high pressure marketing person. I didn't like it.

Part of me thinks we should just do what she says, for the most part. Looking for another outreach person -- an agency or attorney or another facilitator -- just seems like too much at this point. I enjoyed talking to her.

I just don't like high pressure and I felt a little pressure.

I'm not sure what to do. Sleeping on things is always good, so that is what I'm going to do.

Photo Book

We sent the photo book with dear birth mother letter to our potential facilitator. She has some suggestions.

Sigh.

I hope they're minor.

Moving along

Nothing new here.

Talked to the facilitator again last night. I like her. We're continuing to move forward with her. She said that due to the tough economic times, the domestic adoption arena has changed a little. It has really ramped up lately, but with these times a slightly higher number of women are looking to make adoption plans, and a slightly lower number of potential adoptive parents are able to afford all of the fees, so there is a slight increase in placements for her lately.

Which makes me a little nervous. But in a good way.

We still want an attorney to review her contract before we send it in, but once that is reviewed, I think we'll be moving forward.

It's just so difficult for me to accept that this may happen. I can't explain it, but my nervousness comes from being in a place where I was convinced that we just couldn't be parents. Maybe that's not the right way to explain it.

While we were going through fertility treatments, I had a lot of hope at the beginning. Hoping to be pregnant was easy for me, I guess. Once I was pregnant for a while, I might be able to start planning a little. Yes, of course I know that terrible things happen with some pregnancies and sometimes, and nothing is a guarantee. That being said, barring horrible and unforeseen circumstances, you do have a time line. I like time lines. I like to plan.

But you just never know when a match will happen. You never know how far along the expectant mother will be. Sometimes they're a week from their due date. Sometimes they're more like 20 weeks. I'm not sure which scenario would be easier, though. Knowing about a match for 20 weeks before the baby arrives seems nice in some ways -- it can give me that 'planning time' I seem to be longing for. But it also seems to me that the earlier the match, the higher of the likeliness that a match will fall through. Maybe I'm making that up in my head and what will really happen is I will just have more time to image how things might not work out. As a worrier, that's a distinct possibility as well.

Anyway, I guess I'm in another transition period. I have to bring myself into a place that can accept that at any time we might be matched and we might bring home a baby.

I find it difficult to even type that.

Maybe I need to start therapy again.

Voted already

The polls open at 7am in Massachusetts and T and I decided to get there right when they open to avoid long lines. The line was long-ish, but the poll workers were efficient and we were out of there by 7:15. I voted already! Yay for me!

Now we just have to watch election coverage tonight with election night pizza. This is our tradition.

I just have to say, I am so glad for this campaign to be over. I was so sick of all the talk and the TV ads and everything. I am so happy I don't have to watch any of this crap any more. I am ready to just move on. And hopefully things will move on in the way I hope they will. It's going to be a long night.

Not much new here. We have the Expand Your Search meeting tomorrow night, and hopefully we will begin to truly move forward with our facilitator. I have looked at her forms many time, but have yet to fill them out. I finished putting our photo booklets together and will drop them off at the agency tomorrow evening, since we're going to be there anyway.

Every week I'm going to the meeting in my new department. It really makes me salivate about starting my new job. I really can't wait. Time seems to be creeping, though, and it's unclear when I will actually start. It makes my current job really painful. I'm not enjoying it any more, and my carpoolers make it even worse. In just a few months a lot of these problems will be behind me, but I'm not good at being patient.

Plus, now that so much stuff is kind of 'settled' I have found my new ridiculous worry. I worry that (ok, don't laugh) we will get a placement somewhat quickly and I won't have time to settle in my new job. More realistically, I have been hoping to stay home with our kids for a while, but if I really like my new job and that career path (which it truly could be) I'm not sure I'm really going to want to stay home full time. I need time to become 'essential' in my position so that I could possibly switch to part time, which I think would be fine with me. But I am worrying about these issues. And I know it's stupid because it is so far away and I can't possibly predict what is going to happen, but this is how I function. I have to have something to worry about.

But, at least at this time this is worrying about positive things?

Anyway, I'm going to relax now until it is time to leave for work.

Blah

Feeling slightly better today. I still have major inferiority complexes when it comes to my work, and I don't enjoy seeing people I knew when I was actually successful at things (yes, that was high school - how depressing) and letting them see me now. I'm embarrassed about what I do, to be honest. It might be a little better when I am actually doing my new job, but that is still not going to be for a while now.

I'm really not liking my job these days and I can't wait to start the new one. This was just not what I needed right now.

T stayed home from work today because they had a children's Halloween parade with all of the 30 kids under 5 in his office that he's had to watch people have over the last few years while we were left behind. He's not going in tomorrow either, to avoid the aftermath. And pictures. And while he was home he tried to fix something but ended up breaking it more. This has really bummed him out.

And it sucks when we're both bummed out.

But I carved a pumpkin and baked some pumpkin seeds, so that was a little good. And my jack-o-lantern looks good. We have lots of candy for lots of kids tomorrow. And I'm sure we'll eat tons of candy. Too much. I'm going to be gaining weight, I'm sure. Ugh.

I hate

Do you know what I hate? I hate when people I went to high school with show up unexpectedly in my life. Then I see how successful they are and how they have kids and have accomplished things in their life when I, who usually was better than them in school, have no career, a crappy job and no kids. I sit there, seeing them in all of their adult success while I have to sit there and feel embarrassed that I do fucking tech support in some crappy half job that someone without even a college degree can complete. I have failed at every job I have had and at trying to have kids and I have had to resort to some dumb job where I don't even have to really think in order to get by because I have had all of my pregnancies and IVFs fail and I can't even use my degree, which was a ridiculous degree to begin with, and I have absolutely nothing to show for my education and my intelligence.

I have a good husband, and I love him so much. We have a wonderful marriage. I really am grateful for that.

But aside from that, my life sucks.

Sick

I'm sick today.

I was feeling crappy yesterday. I almost went home early, but I felt a little better in the afternoon. But I didn't feel up to pretending to not feel like crap today, so here I am. I took a couple of naps and now I am warming up some soup.

Yesterday I got to go to a meeting in my new department. It was awesome! It's full of people like me who care whether or not there is a hyphen in drop-down and whether or not website is one word or two. I can't believe it's going to be so long until I can start! But I felt comfortable there and I was chomping at the bit to start working there. But I have to be patient.

There's nothing much else going on. Next week we have the 'expanding our search' meeting and we will soon be hooking up with that facilitator I've been talking to (unless something new and unexpected comes up.)

Soup's ready.

Toward the weekend

A few good things:

1)I got one of the jobs I applied for.

It doesn't start for another 3-5 months, but I am told that when the position opens up officially and there's some work to do on the specific project, I will have a job. I do not need to interview again. They really liked me and think I'm a good fit. So I got the job. At some point.

Hmmm... something about that scenario seems familiar....

2)I get to work from home tomorrow!

We're testing out some software and I get to work from home all day tomorrow which is a rare treat. I do not have a flexible job and things like this rarely come up. So working from home on a Friday seems super excellent.

3) We printed out 5 full copies of our profile. It looks really good. I've decided to crochet the pages together instead of using a ribbon because we're more crafty people than ribbon-y people. So I'm figuring out how that works. But it looks really good. Somehow, though, picking it up made me a little sad. But it's okay.

Today is my nephew's birthday. He's 12. I can't believe it. Just shocking. Wow. He's such a good kid. Time is weird.

I think that's all that's going on right now. I guess things are kind of okay. Looking forward to the weekend.

All's Quiet

I finished my three adoption books. I think I learned a lot from them. I gave Secret Thoughts to my mother to read because I thought it would help her understand better. My brother and SIL never said much about L's adoption and how she or they would approach the issues that might come up. They didn't educate us much about adoption. It was never a secret or something shameful. It just was.

Now that we're approaching becoming adoptive parents, we're taking a very different stance. We want to tell everybody all about it. Once an actual baby comes home things will shift, but we want to educate first. I think some of the differences between our situations is that they choose adoption after they had been matched -- it was a parent initiated adoption. They never went into a waiting pool so the situation was very different.

Anyway, if you haven't read The Kid by Dan Savage, I can't recommend it enough. Though there are some differences in the situation as they are a gay couple and didn't deal with infertility in the same way most of us have, he is sensitive to the concept of infertility, and he really speaks to openness in adoption and the implications of raising a child genetically related to someone else.

The most insightful part to me is when they take The Kid home and how it affects his birth mother as well as how it affects Dan and Terry. It is incredibly moving, and it really encapsulates all of the difficulties that are part of the adoptive process. To enter into adoption with eyes wide open is incredibly important, and it helped me to share their story and do just that. Along with the birth mothers I heard from a couple weeks ago at our Adoption Agency meeting and this book, I feel like I am preparing myself for what adoption will truly be like.

So, I'm still feeling contemplative about all of this. Doing a lot of thinking and not a lot of doing. Not much else is going on. The weather is getting cold, the leaves are turning, and I'm thinking about life.

Oh, and I think T and I have decided to sell our two vials of donor sperm back to the cryobank. I don't think we're going to do any more dIUIs.

And if the Routan commercials with Brooke Shields piss you off as much as they piss me off, complain to them by clicking on Contact Us at the bottom of this page. I told them that I now hate the Volkswagen brand since they started these commercials -- and I used to own one.

Show and Tell

I just finished myself a purse! I absolutely love it. And I did the zipper so well! Yay me!

Alright

Have you seen those horrible Routan commercials? They're making me want to put a hatchet in the TV. Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!

Books

So, in my sadness I bought some books. I bought the Dan Savage The Kid book, Secret Thoughts of an Adoptive Mother and Making Room In Our Hearts. I'm almost done with Secret Thoughts. It makes a lot of sense to me. It is good to be reading these things and putting myself in someone else's head, I think. She has gone through this and is just writing what she feels. It's almost like reading someone's blog, I think.

In Making Room, it is really interesting to read the birth parents' point of view and the adoptees' point of view of how all of this open adoption stuff works. What I especially like is it's the perspective of older children or adoptees that are now adults and have grown up with open adoption. This is the part that I feel the least comfortable with. It's not the part while we're raising our children that freaks me out as much as what happens after our children are adults. So, this book is helping me get a peek of what it will be like.

I spoke again with our facilitator last night. I still like her. I think I may even start filling out her application. I really think we will be going in that direction, but I don't want to commit until we have our agency meeting that discusses search expansion. I told this to her and she understood. She thinks it's good that we are doing all of this research before making a commitment. She understands that this is an important decision and it has to be the right fit. This is why I like her.

T has to work today, so I am home by myself. I think I may go to a craft store that is closing and see what is left and on sale. I am also going to work more on the book. It is done, but we decided to double side it so I need to move things around so that the holes we punch in it don't pierce any words or pictures.

Hanging in....

Having troubles

Last night we went to a meeting with the agency that is required before our adoption can become complete. We talked a lot about birth parents. Two birth moms came in and spoke to us. It was amazing. It was moving. These women are amazing. It's incredible what they have done.

It was also heart breaking.

Sometimes I question my ability to do this. Then I look at my niece L. And my cousin's wife. And my former co-worker. And some of my delightful fellow bloggers. They're all doing fine. I can do this.

But still, it's difficult to feel anything but that adoption is making the best of a bad situation. As heartbroken as these birth moms were, nothing could convince them that they made the wrong decision. They love their children fiercely. Reading letters and seeing pictures of their children thriving is bittersweet, but it definitely helps to reinforce their own ideas that they made the proper decision.

I'm just feeling loss on so many levels right now. I feel the losses of birth parents, of adoptees and of adoptive parents. Right now I am thinking the most about the losses of the birth parents. I really identified with the story of one of the birth moms there. I was listening and crying, and I am just feeling empty about this.

At least I got some good questions to ask the facilitator about birth mother counseling and such. We have two more meetings to go to. I think our agency does a really good job with all of this stuff, which is comforting.

But I'm just in a weird place right now. I guess I am grieving again. I'm sure I'm grieving for myself, but I also feel like I'm grieving for the birth mothers too. I don't know what's going on. All I know is I feel sad.

I'm going to temple tomorrow and I'm supposed to atone. I'm sure atoning would probably be good for me right now, but I just can't bring myself to do it too much right now. But I will sit with my family and I will think about all of these things.

And I hope that I can be forgiven by anybody to whom I have done wrong.

Howdy

I'm still here. Things are okay. Thank you for all of your kind words. It definitely lifted my spirits.

Incidentally I immediately applied for another job and had another interview today. This one went better than the other one, so it's time for me to wait again. I'll be less devastated if I don't get this one as I'm already prepared for what that feels like. But I'm feeling reasonably good about it. I dunno.

Rosh Hashanah was okay. I went to temple with my parents and my brother. There were all these discussions about the barren women in the bible. Sarah was barren until god gave her Isaac. And the Haftorah talks about Hannah and how she weeps and won't eat because she is barren. It made me sad. And there were some babies there, too. Dinner was good. My chicken soup with matzoh balls came out super yummy.

I'm glad tomorrow is Friday. We don't have much in the way of plans. We're going to watch the debate and stay up late tomorrow watching the Red Sox. Have a good weekend!