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.
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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.