On Adoption

There are two women at work that I see regularly who are pregnant. I generally do pretty well around pregnant people -- I just have a twinge of jealousy, a small internal eye-roll and a small amount of panic that they're going to talk about it. I cannot really talk about pregnancy.

But the other day I just had this realization that I really will never, ever be pregnant long enough to give birth to a living baby. This thing that women around the world generally do, I will never do. And I will not be excluded from this thing that women do by choice. I was boxed out of it against my will, despite Herculean efforts.

I know when I have my baby (babies) I will love them more than anything. I know I am emotionally ready to be an adoptive parent. I have never been more sure of anything.

But I just can't believe I will never be part of that club. And it really does make me sad sometimes.

Book started

I finally started to work on the book. I feel like I have a completed draft of the Dear Birth Mother letter and I have about 25 or so pictures in somewhat of a layout for a book. I'm feeling pretty proud of myself for getting all of this down. I'm getting much closer, and I'm trying to keep my "glue it down and move on" motto in the back of my head while doing this. We are going to do the booklet in "landscape" format (which hopefully is okay) because the computer program that I am using won't let me switch the pages around. If this isn't okay, all of my work will be for naught, so I suppose I should check on that. Hm.

It's funny how few pictures we have of the two of us. We have some of one and some of the other, but not a lot of both. I'm going to include a montage of my knitting/crocheting and some pictures of the "baby's room." I have pictures of the house and yard. I suppose we should go to some of the nearby parks and include that in there too.

The captions are really difficult. I want to be informative, but I also want to make sure our personality shows through.

I've also noticed there are more pictures with one of my brother's family than the other. This is probably because we spend more time with one than the other, but I wish I had a couple more of that other side. There are only a few pictures of my nephew and they are only in big groups. He and I are pretty close, so I want to get something in there.

This book is so hard. It feels so inadequate. I feel really accomplished with what I have done, but I just am not feeling too good about all of this working out. Sigh.

Tomorrow's Monday and it's off to work again. I wish I could take a couple days off, but alas that is not in the cards for me. Next week is a long weekend, so maybe that will help a little.

But I did start the booklet, and that is a really, really good thing.

Blogging for the sake of blogging

Thanks for the carpool comments. I think I'm going to do the quiet time thingy. I like carpooling because it's good for the environment. I'll try it for a while longer. Neither of the other carpoolers have cars, which is why I drive all the time, and I don't want a later shift and there is no such thing as an earlier shift, so my hours are my hours. We'll see how it goes. I exchanged 3 sentences with the genius today and didn't get annoyed. If I can keep him quiet enough it might be okay.

There's still a lot going on. My friend Jess is coming from overseas on Wednesday and I need to prepare the bed for her. Then my friend J is staying at my house one night over Labor Day because she is moving and has the out by the 31st/in on the 1st problem. Meantime our last Home Study Visit is Tuesday 9/2 and our yard looks like crap. That probably won't make us fail, but I'd like to have pictures of a nice yard for our book. Maybe we should hire someone. We are not do-it-yourselfers at all. I can do a little bit, but my darling T is really no help at all. He's much more of a pay-someone-to-do-it type.

I wrote my paragraph about T. T has started his paragraph about me, but I need him to finish it. I'll make him do it tonight.

We have plans to see E&R and baby S this weekend so we can take pictures of us with little S so that expectant parents can see us with a kid.

Work's feeling a little tedious this week. There is a lot of moving around going on in my department, so I'm hopeful that this will open up a promotion type position for me.

Our poor girl kitty was feeling ill and went to the vet and is now on antibiotics. She is doing much better now, though. So this is good.

I feel so busy. I know busy is good, but I also feel like I want to slow down a little. I want to take a day off work, but I don't have the vacation time and I requested time off for the Jewish high holy days and I need all my hours for that.

I guess that's about it from here. My mind is spinning.

Carpool

About a month after I started my job, a woman sent me an email saying she lived in my neighborhood, and it turns out that we live on the same street. She lives on one end, and I live on the other. I casually mentioned that we could carpool. Turns out that her husband uses the car and she took public transportation to work, which took about an hour and a half and cost over $100 per month. She leaped at the chance to carpool with me.

She told me there was a guy who works in her department that she gave rides to the one day a week she sometimes got the car. She asked if I could bring him along as well. Not knowing who he was, I said sure, as long as I didn't have to go out of my way.

Turns out that guy was the annoying guy I had noticed in the hallway before. Not even knowing him, he rubbed me the wrong way. I heard them talking often, and I had always hoped to stay as far away from both of them as possible.

The woman is a little quirky and talks about her kids too much. But I can live with that. The guy (who I have nicknamed "the genius") drives me bat shit. There are not many people that I really actively do not like, but this guy is one of them. Even him being near me bothers me. He just drives me nuts. He has no social skills, he talks too loud, he thinks he knows a lot when actually he knows nothing (hence his nickname) and he is just a generally annoying person. Other people at work feel the same way about him. He's just one of those people that just doesn't get along well with people in general. He's not mean; he's not malicious; he tries to be friendly; it's just that his social overtures do not work. His mother had to take him out of school to home school him because he got to much crap in middle school. Nobody likes him. Including me. I don't wish any ill will toward him. I just want him to stay away from me.

Now I am in the car with them daily. The genius has been working overtime all month in the hopes of having enough money to move. "Great!" I thought. He'll probably move away so I won't have to drive him anymore.

But remember who I am and what kind of luck I have. He saw an apartment this weekend in my neighborhood and it looks like he may move around the corner. I've been able to drop him off about halfway home so that I could have a bit of a ride without him, but if he moves to this apartment I will spent 1-2 hours per day with him in the car.

I don't know what to do. I don't know how to get out of this situation. I don't mind sharing the ride and the gas money with that woman most of the time, but I really don't want this guy in my car any more. I haven't said anything to him. I don't know what to say. The woman knows that I don't like him.

I feel so caught. I'm not a mean person. I don't really want to hurt his feelings. I just want my peace and quiet during my commute back. (I can't listen to the news in the car anymore because the genius starts conversations about politics and the news that I don't want to have.) I want to tell him I can't give him a ride any more, but what about the woman?

I took this job to reduce my stress. I didn't know that carpooling would cause this type of stress.

I'm trying to just forget it. "Like water off a duck's back," T tells me. Should I just suck it up and drive him and try to listen to something that keeps him quiet? Can I just find a way to tell him he can't drive with me any more?

I have never felt so stuck over something so seemingly silly.

Show and Tell

This is the lunch I had in Murdo, SD. It was home made ham salad using the leftover ham from the dinner special from the day before. The sour cherry pie was some of the best pie I have ever eaten. The diner was small and family run. Eating there felt like going back in time to when things were slower and life was all right there in your small town. It was delicious. These are the things I'm going to remember from our drive across this country of ours.

Busy again

It's a busy week. Tuesday my friend N came over for dinner. I made pesto from the fresh box of veggies we get each week. It was delicious. Last night I went to a concert with my knitting friend J. The traffic was awful and it took us 3 hours to get there and the headlining band (Radio.head) started before we were able to get there. I have never seen such traffic in my life. It is going to be difficult to get me to go to this concert venue again. Today I am working a late shift so I did get to sleep in after getting home after 1 am. So at least that is good. Then it is Friday and this weekend is our annual trip to the fireworks festival we go to. So excited for that one. We go to the Maple Barn and then we go see fireworks. It's a great day and they are the best fireworks ever.

Today before work, since I don't have to be there until the afternoon, I am dropping a large part of our adoption paperwork off with the agency. Our paperwork is nearly complete. We only have to get T's physical paperwork and it will be done.

But we still have three huge things to do. 1) Fill out the form that talks about race, drug and alcohol use in the birthparents, etc. 2) Dear Birth Mother Letter 3) The Book.

So a lot of the nitpicky stuff is all done, but those three things are the most difficult part. I haven't been working on the m at all lately. I have a draft of the letter and a folder with a bunch of pictures in it. We've been thinking about the categories on the form and we're going to sit with our therapist and talk about it. I need to contact a pediatrician in order to get some real information about the effects of drug and alcohol use on a fetus. All of these things take time (and privacy) and I need to find a way to get moving on them.

Yay weekend

I am so happy that it is the weekend. This weekend our nieces L&E are coming to stay for Saturday night. They're 10 and 11 and we'll take them into the city, probably to Fanueil Hall to go shopping and maybe out to dinner. We just bought a Wii so we hope to set that up for them. They are so excited to come, and we're happy to have them. It should be fun.

I think I've finished a first draft of my Dear Birth Mother letter. We are missing a bit and I'm sure it needs a large amount of tweaking, but it's something. I also have 22 photos for the book. We're supposed to have more like 40, so we have a lot of work to do. We're both pretty camera shy, so we have to break out the camera and start taking pictures of everything.

I have a couple of busy weeks coming up. I'm supposed to set up our appointment for Home Study Visit #3, which should be the final visit. I haven't done that yet. I just sent some emails.

I have to go clean the house a little to get ready for the girls.

I'm just so happy it's the weekend!

The support group

Well, I go to make my post today and there on my Dashboard are pictures of three newborn babies, the newest part of the blogger family and all the "buzz" at Blogger. Yay.

It used to be that pictures of newborns made me want to cry. Now seeing pictures like that just makes me roll my eyes. Is that progress? I'm not so sure.

There was only one other couple at the support group plus a social worker / adoptive mom. I guess I really need to bitch about all of this stuff because I definitely felt a little better afterward. We will definitely drag our butts all the way out there again for another one of those. We just discussed all of the issues and got to complain about how much everything sucks and we asked questions of the adoptive mom/social worker.

My new mantra from the support group meeting? "Glue it down and move on."

This is what the woman in the couple told herself after freaking out about which pictures to put in the picture book thingy. I have to take this attitude. I have to have this attitude for both the birthmother letter and the book. I just need to be truthful and choose what I choose and put it down and move on. Glue it down and move on.

I still haven't written any more. But I'm going to. And I think I can look at this with fresh eyes, so the support group was good.

In other news AF is here again. I think about going on the pill again just so I don't have false hope any more. My hope is much smaller than it used to be, and it's not like we're really trying or anything. But I can't help but hope a little. I wonder if that's bad. I wonder if I should just go on the pill so I have no hope at all. Any thoughts on this?

How to motivate

I'm sitting here at he computer knowing I need to get my ass in gear and work on the dear birth mother letter and our profile book, but I just don't know how to do it. I was thinking about it in the shower and now I'm feeling pretty sad. Since our social worker suggested that I think of it as a way to tell 'our child' his or her birth story I've been trying to determine how to think of that way.

But 'our child' is what's stopping me. How can I possibly imagine actually having an actual child? I cannot. I cannot think that way. So what am I supposed to do? How can I motivate. I am really struggling here.

All I can think of is all of our failure. How can I possibly imagine 'our child' when all we've had is loss? I just didn't think that suggestion was particularly helpful and I need something else to help myself motivate.

I just keep going over and over our story and it makes me so sad. It's amazing how many things we've tried and in how many ways things have gone wrong. I know I'm not supposed to think about it, but I do. Or I did. I was in the shower thinking about it and I went over our whole story again in my head thinking how the social worker would think it might be possible for us to have failure after failure and loss after loss but think about the book as something to share with our child. Clearly she hasn't had the same experiences as us. I believe she has two biological sons and a daughter from China, but I'm not positive.

And the other think I hate about it is that what these things are are marketing tools for T and me as a couple. I hate marketing. I think marketing is the cause of everything that is wrong with this country and I don't like anything that has to do with it. So I'm not very happy to have to market myself to someone -- especially someone who has to do something as difficult as create an adoption plan for her child.

I'm feeling so negative about this right now. How is this not awful?

Anyway, I guess I'll stop complaining and try writing. I think just getting all of this negativity out here might help me be able to work on the other things. So the blog might be even more negative than usual (if you can imagine such a thing) so I can vent and let all of the negativity out in order to enable me to work on these documents.

Home Study Visit #2

The second visit was better. I didn't cry afterward.

The social worker told T that I was "cute and endearing." I guess that's a good thing.

She asked about the neighborhood. There are pit bulls across the street which made her seem a bit skeptical, which freaked me out a little. (We had the meeting at our house for convenience sake.) But the pit bulls are generally under control and always behind a fence, so I guess that was okay.

She asked about my childhood. I had a ridiculously happy, suburban childhood so I didn't feel like there was much to talk about. I was a good kid. I didn't get into much trouble. I did well in school. Of course I rebelled against my parents, but I was and still am generally a goody-goody and I said so. I didn't get punished much because I was good. My punishments when I was a kid taught me to be a good teenager and adult. My parents instilled strong values in me and I think I am a good person because of how they raised me. I just feel like there's not much to say there.

We talked about the letter and the book some more. I told her that doing these things made me sad. She told me to try to get a new point of view with it -- that this would be a book we could show our child to help tell his/her birth story. But the fact that we will get an actual child out of this is not something I can even begin to fathom, so it's difficult for me to think about it that way. But I'm going to try.

She's going to try to hook me up with other waiting families. I am also having T come with me to a waiting families support group after work next week (even though it's kind of far) because I just need to find some other people doing this adoption thing.

I got a survey from the cryobank asking why we haven't ordered a vial in a while. I told them we were on hold due to pursuing adoption. I guess we're not the only ones who are doing that, even though it seems like it sometimes.

Status Quo

Things are generally the same. I spent time with my friend E and her son S on Sunday. E and I were pregnant at the same time way back in the day and now she has S. He is two. She also recently had a third miscarriage trying for a second child. We talked about that a little bit -- how much it just sucks, but how having S helps her so much.

S is a delight. He's a wonderful kid and was so happy to see me and spend time together. We ran through the sprinkler and kicked the ball and splashed in the bucket. He's really talking well now and can communicate what he wants and doesn't want quite well. I was struck with how tall he has gotten since I've seen him last. He's also the spitting image of his father, which is a slight kick in the gut for me.

It made me much less sad than I thought I would be to hang out. It does hurt a little to see what we're missing -- toddlers can be so great. But I really did okay with the visit, and that made me pretty proud of myself.

We told my brother and SIL (and their kids) that we have submitted an adoption application. They weren't surprised at all. The kids were a little excited. It seems weird that they weren't surprised, but I guess that is to be expected. They knew we had trouble. They knew we wanted kids. They knew about the DIs. Since none of it worked, it is the logical next step.

Tomorrow we are having our individual visits with the social worker for our home study. We haven't done any work at all on our Dear Birth Parent letter or our book that we have to make. I am trying to collect pictures for the book so that I can be choosy about which ones I put in there, so I suppose that's something. We really need to sit and work on it, but doing so is incredibly depressing and I don't know how we can motivate ourselves to work on this very important but very difficult thing. Getting T to write his autobiography was like pulling teeth. I suppose I can do most of the meaty work for this stuff and have him approve and proof read and edit. So I need to get off my ass.

I've been so busy trying not to be sad, and doing a reasonably good job of it, that I find it really difficult to take care of this stuff. But I guess I just need to get a draft out of me and give it to someone who can help us tweak it.

Things are as they are. Work is fine. T's work is busy and a bit difficult. People are pregnant and having babies all over the place. We are still here.

Whisper

One of the cats T grew up with who was living with T's mom died today. Goodbye Whisper. Whisper was always a sickly cat, but he kept MIL company. Since T's dad died, MIL has lived alone on the other side of the country and at least we knew that Whisper kept her company. Now Whisper is gone and T feels like she has no connections left in Oregon. He is worried that with his dad gone and Whisper gone that MIL will not have the will to live much longer.

MIL is in reasonably good health and is a stubborn farm girl, and I don't think this is the case. That being said, I do worry a lot about her living alone on the other side of the country with only a few friends.

But out here she would have no friends at all. And we don't know how she could afford to live if we moved her out here.

But these are worries for a different day. Today we mourn Whisper who died on his own at the Vet's while waiting to be put down. He always did want to do things his own way, that Whisper. And he did it to the last. He lived a long life and was a good cat. He didn't suffer and he spent his last days at home with MIL in comfort.

Take care, Whisper.

friends

Last night my friend came to talk to me. She had been acting a little funny and had said via email that she wanted to talk to me about something. I didn't have any idea what it was. I was a little nervous.

She told me that she was disappointed with me and that she feels like I haven't been a good friend lately. Right before I left on my vacation a friend of hers died, and she has been feeling down and I haven't asked about how she was doing.

I can't say she's wrong. Between the application and the vacation and getting the car fixed and coming back and starting the homestudy, I have been neglecting her. I hadn't thought about it much which is probably pretty selfish.

But I have communicated with her via email and I have asked if everything is okay. She didn't mention one word about being upset with me or needing some support or saying she was having a difficult time because of her friend's death. I am the type of person who believes in just telling people what I need. She is the type of person who wants other people to anticipate her needs.

This really frustrates me. How can you expect people to know what you need without telling them? I know this about her, but in my own madness and chaos I kind of forgot about her. I admit that. It's pretty crappy. But a small email saying that she was having a difficult time would have snapped me out of it. I just don't think that's too much to ask.

And the part that really bugs me is she started out talking about the 'pain olympics' and how my pain wins. To me, this situation has nothing to do with that. Yes, I am protective of myself and I fear pregnancy announcements. Yes, I am busy with all of this emotional crap and paperwork and I've been tending to keep to myself. But if she had told me she was hurting and sad over her friend's death, I wouldn't have said, "Oh yeah? I'm too busy being in pain myself that I can't comfort you right now." This pain olympics statement makes me feel like that is what she thinks. It's so not true.

Does this mean that is how she thinks? I'm not sure.

I'm going to try to be a better friend and remember to ask how she's doing. I'm going to try to remember that she's sensitive about how she is being asked how she's doing.

But I just can't seem to let this 'pain olympics' thing go. I think it's a bad idea to bring it up with her. I'm trying to make some plans to hang out with her, so we'll see how it goes and whether it comes up. I'm going to try like hell to not talk about it, but as I said, I'm definitely a 'put it all out there' kind of person.

Slow Weekend

It's funny how staying at home makes both T and I sad and depressed a lot of the time. We're not sure what it is about being home that makes us sad, but we both do decidedly better if we're out and about rather than relaxing at home.

T and I were watching the baseball game and while I was doing some laundry the play by play people mentioned that the wife of one of the players on the opposing team had just had a baby the night before. They both went on to talk about fatherhood and how great it was and what a miracle it is and how special it is for people who are lucky enough to be fathers to have that incredible experience.

Poor T. It just put him in a really deep funk and he couldn't pull out of it. I don't blame him. It seems that no matter what we do to try to get away from our situation, there is always something there to remind us.

Hell.Boy kind of sucked. It had some potential, but it didn't go deeply enough into the story and it lacked a lot of nuance. We were disappointed because we loved the first one and we had enjoyed another movie by the director of the second one. And, of course, one of the characters found out she was pregnant. Hurray! We can't even go see some comic book fantasy or watch our local baseball team without having pregnancy and parenthood shoved down our throats.

He dreamed last night that the wife of one of his colleagues had her baby (she is due any day now) and it had a heart defect and it had to have an operation and it died.

This morning I decided we should get out of the house. We decided to go to a coffee house near us and drink coffee and read (and knit). We both love to do this. So, as T got into the shower I hear another piece on the radio about how this guy was a total fuck-up until he had a son and the responsibility of fatherhood was so life changing and profound that he fixed his life up and he got his GED and now is in college and has turned his life around. I was so glad T was in the shower and didn't hear that because it would have sent him back into his funk.

We try to keep ourselves busy. We try to do things like watch sports and go to the movies and listen to the radio to keep ourselves distracted. But because family and having children is such a natural part of life, it is pervasive. We see it everywhere. We can't escape it.

How can we relax, enjoy and just let ourselves try to forget our situation while it is always being brought up everywhere?

I know all people who suffer from IF feel this way on a regular basis. The fertile world is just constantly smacking you across the face.

So next weekend I have to remember that going to the coffee shop and drinking a coffee and reading and knitting is the best thing to do for us. Seeing the children there doesn't feel too bad. Finding distraction elsewhere seems like it can just be too dangerous.

But we must distract ourselves, mustn't we?

Lonely again

I'm feeling lonely. I'm feeling a little less sad, but I'm feeling very lonely.

I want to find a support group. An online one would be fine. An in person one would be any better. I want to find other people like me. I'm feeling like I can't.

I used to take such comfort in the online infertility world. There were so many people going through similar things as me and I found solace in the shared experience.

But I'm finding more and more that I can't identify with anybody's blogs. Most of the adoption blogs I have found either have a baby already or already have a child or are concurrently doing IF stuff. Usually it seems to be IUIs with clomid or perhaps injectibles. They certainly haven't have multiple losses and multiple failed IVFs and multiple failed donor IUIs and a miscarriage using donor gametes.

And that's the thing. I just feel like we've failed so spectacularly. We've failed so many different things. I want to meet other people who have failed at so many different things like we have, but frankly it's difficult. I can find other people who have suffered great IF losses. I see people with late term losses and still births. I see people with multiple failed IVFs. I see people needing multiple types of treatment and using donor gametes. What I don't see is people failing at things across the board. I guess I think that people's failures tend to be more concentrated, I guess.

I don't know. Maybe it's selfish that I feel lonely. Maybe I'm just too busy feeling sorry for myself to accept that suffering is suffering and that all these women share my pain. And I know that these people share my pain. I really do. But I just want to find some other spectacular failures. I don't know why I feel like I need this solace, but I feel like I do.

I wrote this yesterday when I was feeling more lonely. I'm not feeling this down right now. T and I are going to see Hell.Boy and eat some food. I'm decidedly looking forward to the A/C and the entertainment. It's hot here again.

Home Study Visit #1

I cried. During and after.

I feel so empty and alone. And I don't feel one bit of hope at this point. Even though intellectually I know it will work out in the end, I cannot bring myself to truly believe that will happen. And we have been warned and know that it will take a long time, so I have to steel myself for that wait. It will most likely take more than a year. Probably closer to a year and a half. A year and a half ago I thought that IVF with PGD would work for us. A year and a half is a damn long time.

The interview was informal and went generally well. She could see my sadness and I couldn't keep it in. She said that she could tell we weren't feeling hopeful. I hope that's not bad.

I know we are moving forward. I know that we will write a dear birthparent letter and make a book and it will be shown to people and some day, someone will choose us to parent the child that they created.

But it doesn't feel real. The concept that this possibility exists doesn't make me feel any better. It doesn't make me feel like I might be a mom someday.

I only feel pain and failure and misery. I just feel like I've missed out on what so many people take for granted. I see only empty time left where we wait and wait and wait some more.

Haven't we already done this? Yes, there were differences. I do not have to inject myself with hormones or spread my legs for some doctor or midwife. But it's still all of this fake "trying" while nothing happens and we just get disappointed.

Why, why, why do we have to do it again?

The wedding

The wedding wasn't bad. The bride's brother officiated (in MA you can appoint a wedding officiator for a day and it can be anybody) and the ceremony was nice and short. It was outside. T and I managed to grab some shade, but for the poor people who couldn't sit in the shade it was mighty warm, especially for those who were wearing suits. We ended up sitting in back of a former co-worker of T's and his wife and their two-month old infant. At first I thought, "Oh shit." but it turned out to not bother us too much. I found that to be impressive. The one thing I didn't like during the ceremony is that the couple passed a small bag with their wedding rings around to all of the guests to "bless" the rings and their marriage. While a nice idea, it took FOREVER and there was no music or anything to pass the time. T had to hush me as I furrowed my brow and complained.

The Merlot at the wedding was divine and I ended up drinking a lot of it. We sat at a table with the couple with the two-month old, another couple who have a nearly 9-month old (who stayed at home) and another couple where the wife was 29 weeks pregnant. That was harder, I have to say. T worked with (or used to work with) all of the men at the table, so often times no baby talk came up, but there were a few moments where I almost lost it because it was baby talk and baby talk only at the table. Strollers and onsies and pregnancy and this and that. I got up to get myself another glass of wine during one of the discussions. I was on the verge of tears for about 5 minutes during dinner because of these conversations, but I got through it. What bums me out most is that the pregnant couple got married about a year after us. And all the people at the table were at least a few years younger than us. It just freaking sucks. None of them has any idea.

But happily that conversation dropped off and I had even more wine and then the dancing happened. T doesn't dance, but I was able to dance with random people from T's work or their girlfriends, and that was a whole lot of fun. T works with both the bride and groom and both of their parents were so happy to meet T and thanked him several times for creating such a great place to work and for treating their children so well. That was really nice for T to feel so appreciated.

So except for a few bumps, the wedding wasn't too bad. The food was good, the wine was excellent and generally a good time was had by all.

Vacation != miracle

So, having the good vacation s.ex didn't make us a baby. AF is here and how.

Not that I expected it to. I didn't. I'm still not tracking my cycles, though the EWCM is always obvious. And I know that the right things happened at around the right time. But apparently being in a good mood and feeling relaxed doesn't actually help. People just say it does.

And despite my past few PMS-y and sad posts, I've been doing quite well. Turns out that caffeine agrees with me. (Yay coffee!) And generally speaking I've been in a pretty good mood.

But despite the old bitch's arrival, I'm still feeling pretty okay. We've decided (well, mostly I've decided and T has agreed) that we're not going to be doing a dIUI next cycle either. I've been too happy to put myself through another cycle. I need to just let go and relax as I've been. We still have the 2 more vials, but we still have another year of storage. We have a year to make a full decision.

Our S.ex Offender Registry info came back to us. Happily, neither of us is a s.ex offender. Yay!

Have a wedding to go to tomorrow. I'm not a big fan of weddings, but it is what it is. I'll know a bunch of people there, so it shouldn't be too bad. The weather is okay today and I think T and I are going to go eat tips and drink beer and watch the Sox game.

Things are okay.

working the week away

Work really helps me. Even if it's frustrating or annoying, it's so much better than me sitting at home being depressed. So I'm doing better now. Things are going pretty well there, so going to work is a good thing for me.

We have our first home study meeting next Tuesday. It's supposed to take about 2 hours. I'm not feeling nervous about it. I think we'll get through most of the home study stuff pretty quickly. I think the thing that will take us the longest is the Dear Birthmother letter and the booklet thingy we have to make. I know I'll be mostly responsible for doing it, so I have pretty much myself to rely on. T will have to hook up the photo printer so we can print out pictures, though. And he'll give me input and look things over. I'm just the motivator in the family.

It's really freaking hot in these parts right now. So I'm just sitting here sweating waiting for T to come home. We're going to eat some leftovers for dinner. I haven't been cooking much at all lately. It makes me feel lazy, but I just have no motivation sometimes.

I think that's it for now. Just a regular work week this week and it seems to be helping. I have to get a gift for a wedding this weekend, but I don't know when I'm going to make it to the store. I have half of the gift, but I need the rest. T works with these people, so I guess I can just have him bring it to when they come home from their honeymoon. I'm just waiting for them to announce their pregnancy. I thought I would die if they got pregnant before me, but now that I know it will happen I've found a little bit of peace with it. I'm not freaking out about it when I think of it. When it actually happens, we'll see how I react though.

Still the blues

Going to the party definitely helped. I thought it might and that's why I forced myself to go. Getting out of the house and talking to other people helps me keep my mind off of things and stops me from falling into the depths of despair.

Last night I dreamed I was pregnant and there was a heartbeat on the ultrasound. Somehow people found out and were getting all excited around me. I was freaking out that people were excited. "Stop it!" I told them. "We don't know anything yet." I wasn't excited. I was just nervous.

Then I woke up.

Needless to say, I'm not feeling particularly happy again. Down in the dumps again this morning. But I'm going to meet a fellow blogger for lunch, so hopefully that will draw me out a little.

And then it's back to life and the real world and a full week of work tomorrow.