I'm Curious!

I was doing laundry today and while my mind was wandering it settled upon the question of what rules other people follow for wearing clothes more than once. 

For example, I pretty much draw the line at wearing anything but bottoms (such as jeans/shorts/etc.) and bras more than once. Jeans only get 2 wears and, well, embarrassingly enough, bras get worn somewhere between 5-7 times before washing, depending on how warm and sweaty I've gotten.  Also, nightgowns get changed when I change the sheets on our bed, so that varies.

 When I met DH he was wearing polo shirts more than once, without an undershirt. Let me tell you, even if he hung them up between wearings and hadn't sweated in them, his skin oils still left an odor (or developed an odor between wearings).  Pee-eeew!  That habit got broken as soon as I started doing his laundry, thank goodness!  Now he only wears shirts once, and follows the same rules as I do for jeans and nightwear.

What about you, what are your rules for wearing clothes more than once & do all the adults in your household follow them or do they have their own rules?

Selfish Mindfulness

Is there such a term? Because when I think about my resolutions for 2012 that's what comes to mind. If you are wondering, they are:

• Better meal planning.
• More effort into doing things for me.

They both benefit me, so there's the selfish part, but they both benefit the family in the global sense, so that's some mindfulness. Maybe.

Honestly, the first is really important because if I don't get things going late afternoon, the adults don't eat until 9pm instead of shortly after Little One goes to bed, which stinks when a good bedtime for us is around 10:30 or earlier. And the second is important because I need to remember to take care of myself so I can continue to take care of everyone else.

Doing things for me seems much more manageable as a goal than saying I want to exercise X times per Y ... or anything else.

Top on my list? Arranging an appointment with the best brow people in town for my first ever brow shaping. I figure since it's one of the first things I notice and don't like about myself in pictures and has been for a while, it's time to do something about it!

Also in my list is getting in shape for our island vacation in April. Those cellulite pockets left over from Little One (and thanks to age) aren't going to disappear on their own!

2 Years...

Mel over at Stirrup Queens (if you don't read her already, you should totally check her out!), posted an interesting question today:

How have you changed in the last two years? If you’ve been blogging for at least two years, post a link to your nearest blog post to two years ago today.

This made me take a look back and realize that 2 years ago, this morning, I peed on the HPT that shockingly turned from one line to two, and subsequently into the 17 month old dervish who keeps me hopping.

I had no idea the ride (literally, in fact, on the day of her birth) I was in for, and despite my whining and moaning about certain things, I'm so happy to be aboard (though at times it's just by my finger tips!

The Starred Items

I just dumped over 160? posts that had been languishing in my starred items for weeks, months, years.

And you know what? I feel okay. A little sad that I didn't make the effort to comment in a timely manner as I had intended when I starred those posts to come back to later, but by now many of the situations have resolved. For those which have not, commenting on a earlier post just felt weird.

In those posts there were pregnancy announcements, birth announcements, and other records of the ups and downs of the lives of many people I've never met in person. Some were even the last posts written on what seem to be blogs gone dormant, waiting for the next life-event trigger to be revived.

Anyway. I'm sure that despite my best intentions in the future, those starred posts will again accumulate. So for that, I do apologize in advance for my lack of timeliness and/or the proper words to communicate my thoughts and please be assured that the lack of comments is not due to your content.

You Gotta Take The Bitter With The Sweet

As when Little One's conception date neared, as her first birthday approaches I am once again feeling reflective.

Earlier this week, one evening as I fed Little One her bedtime bottle (it works, don't judge), I realized that that one particular moment was never going to happen again. And it's hit me hard, this realization that pretty soon she'd be walking then running and not looking back even as I cheer her on.

And, you know, I'm excited for that to happen. But at the same time, I'm not ready for her to no longer be my baby in the true sense of the word, even though she'll always be my baby in my heart. Even now I already miss and have started to forget how she was at birth, and every month since then adds more to both remember and forget.

That's the bitter. That I can't turn back time and really appreciate those first months instead of treating them as a fight for survival. Somehow, the times of easy snuggles and special moments got lost in the combined haze of sleep deprivation and the crash course in learning how to do this whole Mom thing.

The sweet is that it doesn't stop, that every day she changes and grows and reflects that I just might be doing something right despite every day continuing to bring new lessons for me as well. I am so excited to find out who she's going to be, what she's going to do, the many facets of this (little) person who arrived after so much frustration and hope.

At some point in my teens my mother told me that if anything ever happened to me she didn't know what she would do. I didn't fully understand what she meant until Little One arrived. It wasn't the guilt trip to keep me on the straight and narrow that I thought it was (though I'm sure that was a nice side benefit), but a pure expression of the deep deep love that comes from being a parent to a long awaited child. I just hope that I can express it better to Little One when the appropriate time comes than my mother did to me!

To The Mattress! (Now with more info.)

On Wednesday I purchased a new mattress set (which DH and I had agreed on earlier, so it wasn't an impulse buy or anything). It was delivered today and the old mattress set was taken away for disposal.

And you know, I wouldn't have expected it, but letting our old mattress go somehow became a big deal to me. Not because I still loved it, I mean, really, how could I when over the past year I've awoken more mornings than not with my back hurting? But because of the past.

We purchased it sometime in the late-spring of 2003 (we did not get as much life out of it as we should have based on how much we paid) while we were living in the ghetto apartment. It moved with us to the townhouse we were still renovating while living in, and then to our current house.

When we first got it it was so comfortable. At the end of a long day, there was nothing like snuggling down into that cushy pillow-top and relaxing into sleep.

It the mattress upon which we did the deed multiple times while trying to conceive, both on our own, and with help. It is the mattress upon which Little One was conceived, and upon which whose water broke.

I'm not saying it should be plated in gold or anything (what a waste of gold that would be!) but it still feels slightly awful to so callously discard something which has supported us for so long (Sorry for the pun there.) and provided such comfort along the way.

Buying a mattress is a leap of faith. Even when you test them in the store, the 5-10 minutes you spend on them can't compare how they actually treat you for nights on end. I just hope that our new mattress treats us as well as the last (but for longer, of course!).

EDIT to ADD:
The new mattress is, after a week and a half, in one word: awful! We're both waking up every time we turn over and it takes us forever to fall back to sleep. Despite the back pain our old mattress was causing, at least we could sleep on it. I spoke with a company rep. today who wasn't optimistic that we could get any resolution until we'd given it a month to 'break in', but the manager who sold us the mattress is back on the schedule on Saturday, so we'll be going in to see him in person to find out what we can do sooner. Hopefully there is something we can do sooner so we don't go sleepless (in VA) for a month!

I've Given In

(two posts in one day? It's been a long long time since that's happened!)

What I really want is an Alice, Mr. Belvedere, or Rosie (the robot). What I'm going to settle for...

...someone, or a company, who doesn't charge an arm and a leg to clean the house every two weeks.

I am finally willing to admit that I fail as the "perfect" housewife. But I come from a line of imperfect housewives - both my grandmother and mother had housekeepers along the way.

And we are lucky to be able to afford the help.

But I still can't help but wonder what that says about me to others that I am willing to admit that I can't do it all?

IF Ambush?

Mic's post on September 1st over at IF Crossroads was titled "IF where you least expect it." What I thought it was going to be about was not what it was about, but what it was about is not relevant to what I want to write about. (Do you follow?)

What I thought it was going to be about was how infertility references can ambush you in pop culture. For example, there have been a couple movies recently which made noise across the IF blogosphere, to be specific: "UP" and "Julie and Julia."

As I was only on the fringes of the extensive commentary on both of those movies, neither of which I have seen, they seemed to have only a passing, decidedly implied reference to IF. So, after watching it, you could say I was a bit surprised at not remembering reading about the strong IF theme within "Did You Hear About the Morgans?"

I dunno, maybe I was tardy to class or skipped school that day and missed the commotion? Anyone?

So, there DH and I were, prepared to watch a Hugh Grant rom-com and wham! hello! infertility references out the wazoo! DH and I looked at each other as references started hitting closer and closer to home - and the movie got less and less funny and a little too real. Of course, thankfully, with Sarah Jessica Parker having had her own publicly acknowledged fertility and surrogacy issues the approach never seemed to slip into stereotypes, well, at least until the end (which I had some issues with...see below for spoiler details). In my opinion, there was a perfectly reasonable point at which the movie could have ended without veering into stereotypical cliches and fanciful timelines - but it didn't, to my regret.

And because it didn't, instead of leaving me laughing or satisfied with a standard rom-com happy ending, I found myself expressing my frustration to DH who could only agree with me and frankly, left me feeling a bit unsatisfied. Like going to a nice restaurant expecting a regularly sized meal but being served haute cuisine portions so you have to stop at a drive-through on the way home to actually get something to fill you up.

Have you seen the movie? What was your impression?







~~~Spoiler Alert: Don't read the following paragraph unless you have (a) already seen the movie, or (b) don't mind knowing the ending before you watch a movie~~~

During the movie it is disclosed that SJP's character had contacted an adoption agency two months before the events of the movie transpired. At the end of the movie, there's a screen flash indicating 6 months have passed. And then you see semi-closeups of SJP's character and Hugh Grant's characters leaving a plane arriving from an another country (Asian?) carrying an adopted infant. It's my impression based on what I have read online and elsewhere that 8 months from application to being able to bring a child home is an exceedingly unrealistic time frame for an international adoption. Then, just to hammer it home, you finally see a full length shot of SJP and whoops! she's pregnant thanks to a bout of make-up sex earlier in the movie.

Bad taste, meet mouth.

An Open Letter to Pat Robertson

Dear Mr. Robertson,

You are an idiot. If you are going to blame current events on history, get your history right.

Sincerely,
One Who Hopes You Get What is Coming To You

Happy New Year!

I hope 2010 brings all that you are hoping for and nothing negative to your lives.

We're spending the evening at home - DH is working on framing in the TV niche over our fireplace so we can move from the 36" 300-pound old-fashioned TV* we bought before we moved into the house 5 years ago to one of those new-fangled 54" 100-pound plasma TV's. Currently he is hung up on how to extend the wiring for the electrical outlet already in the box and to make sure we have all the connections we need in place to make sure all the other components will connect to the TV properly.

Other than supporting DH with his project, I'm not doing much of anything myself. The day after Christmas I wrote a list of everything I hoped to get accomplished this week. As you might guess, so far the list is woefully uncompleted. The important things (except for cleaning the bathroom - I MUST do that tomorrow, energy or no) have gotten done. And I can't think of anything much more important than doing those things which correspond with hopefully growing a healthy baby for 2010. Despite that, about 30 minutes ago I found the energy to put together the pudding part of DH's favorite chocolate meringue pie. The meringue part will come about in an hour or so when the pudding has chilled.

I'm guessing that I'll be ready for bed by 11pm, so that's when we'll drink our respective sparkling wine and sparkling peach cider (that's non-alcoholic for you UK types), toast the new year and crash. There may be some card games played as well, a tradition we've followed for the past few years.

What a difference from New Years Eve 2000. That evening I was stressing out about my dress not being hemmed properly and missing our dinner reservations and DH was stressing out about how and when during the evening he was going to propose.

Hope your evening is more exciting than ours, but only in the best of ways!







*It still works great - any takers? But I don't exaggerate on the weight. That mo-fo is one heavy SOB.

If you correct yourself, do you still stand corrected?

Last week I wrote a post about respect, and the lack thereof in current society.

Upon further reflection, the word I should have used is civility.

You don't have to respect someone to be civil.

civil(ity) - polite or courteous, esp. in a merely formal way

respect - (1a) to feel or show honor or esteem for; hold in high regard; (1b) to consider or treat with deference or dutiful regard; (2) to show consideration for; avoid intruding upon or interfering with

(per Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language Second College Edition, 1972)

Either way, we need to get back to treating each other the way we would like to be treated ourselves.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Aretha had it right. We all need respect - for each other, our surroundings, and of course, most importantly: ourselves.

(This brilliant deduction came to me in the shower, the birthplace of all great deductions, starting with Archimedes. While my words in the shower were much more eloquent, they slipped from my brain like the drips of water falling from my body as I exited.)

The Reader's Digest version of what I wanted to say is that it seems for the most part respect has disappeared from our society. It doesn't take a Representative from South Carolina yelling out at the President during a televised speech to make it obvious.

Living in one of the birthplaces of the American Revolution, I was recently reminded that our fore-fathers may not have always agreed or even liked each other outside of the rooms in which heated discussions were held, but they most often interacted respectfully towards each other and the common goal they were gathered to discuss. This respect was a huge part in allowing them to come to a consensus which finally led to our Declaration of Independence from England. Had they been unable to come to a cordial agreement, I might be typing this in German or French, or as a subject of the Queen.

It seems to me that if you don't have respect for yourself you have no way to find or understand the need for respect for others (positions, lives, property, etc.).

The more I ponder the question of how and why respect has disappeared from our society, the more certain I am that there is no simple answer, no easy way to return from this trend.

There's so much more I want to say, and so much I've deleted as being too finger-pointy without following my own argument to respect others or because I've realized I don't know enough about the subject to present a fair argument. I'm certain that there are enough threads to follow that it would be easy to turn this thought into a seriously in-depth research project before I knew where I was. (Gee, why couldn't I have had this brilliant thought back in high school or college when I struggled to come up with research paper topics?)

What do you think? Have we as a nation lost respect for each other for the most part, or are we mostly doing okay and I'm just a negative Nellie seeing only the bad parts?

The Colors of My World

This weekend my mother, aunt, grandmother and I had our "colors done".

We met with a woman who has been trained to help you determine which clothing colors are best for you, along with makeup, hair, and clothing styles. She's not a "color nazi" insisting that you can only wear certain colors and should never wear others, but someone who helps guide you to colors that bring out your best looks, and makes suggestions on how you can wear other colors without having to totally trash your wardrobe and start over.

Have you ever worn an outfit that was guaranteed to bring complements on how you look, not the outfit? Then most likely that outfit was in a color that brought out the best in your skin - leading the eye away from the clothing and to your beauty. What about an outfit where you got complements on the clothing? Sure the clothes looked great, but that's all other people saw, not your beauty. Or what about when you wore a color because it was expected (as part of a uniform or dress code, or even because it was the "hot" color of the moment perhaps) but felt horrible every time you put it on? That color was most likely not one for you.

Anyway, it was finally determined that I am a Summer (along with everyone else who was there, including my aunt who married into the family). I say finally because I probably made things more difficult. I HATE looking at my face in a mirror. All I see are the imperfections and none of the beauty, so when the consultant was holding up different colors, all I saw was the ugly plus color, and none of the subtle changes that everyone else could see.

I'm not sure when this loathing started. I know it's been going on for a while, and that there are times when I catch a flash of my reflection in an unexpected place, wonder who that pretty woman is, and then am surprised to realize that it's me. When I have to look at my head in a mirror for things like make-up application, hair styling or the like, I don't really see my face, I glaze over it like some internal computer pixilates the image. So anyway, I found it very difficult to determine which colors were good on me thanks to my reaction to the color vs. the effect and had to rely on the others to react on my behalf.

Since the consultant was only anticipating a max of two Summers, my mother and aunt who both live out of town took the last two color books the consultant had, and my grandmother and I will get more books once they arrive with her next order. I'm a little disappointed at having to wait, as it means I don't get to spend the time DH is away this week going through my closet with the swatches and without interruption (except from the dog), but it also gives me some time to think about what my realization about not liking to see my face really means, and what provoked it.

In the end, I'm not sure I'm a true convert to the system, as I still plan to wear colors like army green and orange as they make me happy but are supposedly not colors summers should wear, but I can also see the benefits of wearing colors that help you look your best. Perhaps if I was in a corporate track having to wear suits and other dressy clothing on a regular basis I would be more of a believer; but for the casual t-shirts and sweaters which are both my work and play wardrobe, eh. Big deal.

For now I think I'll just try to see myself as the beautiful person others say they see but I haven't believed.

#300?

Blogger tells me this is post #300*. I really wish I had something deep and heartfelt and inspirational to say. But I really don't.

When I wrote the first few posts I had no idea that this journey would drag on and on, and that my life would start to revolve around things over which I have very little control. If I could go back and tell that younger me what she would be facing, I don't think she would have listened. She wasn't ready to know the future.

There may have been some delusions of grandeur - the next Amalah, or Dooce. Someone who others wanted to be, loved to read, and whose posts overflowed with comments. Yeah. Not so much anymore. I think I can at least claim some maturation here and say that I'm grateful to not be such a public presence and that even though my comment numbers may be low, I am also very grateful to those who comment as those comments are much more meaningful than the majority I read on those other sites**. Hugs and kisses to you my faithful readers and sometimes commentators.

Will there be 300 more? I hope so, but don't know for certain. Prognosticating and mind-reading are outside of my abilities. Some of you may argue that writing isn't one of my abilities either. Believe me, I am well aware of that along with the awareness that life is uncertain, that it can change without warning and that that only thing you can do sometimes is keep on going. So keep on going I shall. I hope you stay with me for the journey.


*Debatable, but close enough since Blogger counts drafts as posts.

**Not intended as a hint for more comments. I fully recognize that not all of my posts require comment or response. Unless you want to leave me a raspberry for poor writing, in which case, I probably deserve it!

Swimming Along

For those who may be wondering...

We are moving on with life. What happened sucks, blows, stinks to hog heaven, isn't fair, [insert your own adjective with negative connotations], etc. Yes, we were disappointed and hurt by the failure of my girls and DH's boys to party like it's 1999.

But it is not the end of the world. There are much worse ways for this cycle to have ended. And I don't want to detract from those people whose expectations have risen higher and fallen further than mine.

Yesterday I got back on the elliptical but didn't push it (how *did* I manage to gain a pound while barely eating for a couple of days?) and resumed other activities. Ahem. Activities that we maybe, probably, should have waited a few more days to resume.

DH and I are doing our best to look forward. Thus the discussion we held last night, addressed in the prior post. We no longer want to dwell on the why nots, we want to "keep on swimming," try again and see if we can get it right the next time.

Now if I can just convince our parents that we're as okay as we're going to be and that their offerings of sympathy do not equal support.

Curiouser and curiouser (or an interlude of environmentally friendly propaganda)

Has anyone else seen the commercials put out by the corn producers association (I think that's the name, I'm not gonna look it up) promoting the use of High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) as a natural sweetener?

To be honest, they're actually pretty funny. But not funny enough to convince me that other forms of natural sweeteners (real sugar, honey, molasses, maple syrup, turbanado sugar) aren't intrinsically better.

Apart from HFCS's being targeted as a contributor to ADD/ADHD type behaviors, corn production takes such a toll on the land (corn strips nutrients from the soil requiring heavy applications of chemical fertilizers), and requires so much energy to produce, that it can't possibly make sense to not use other products which require less resources to produce.

I'm not one who totally avoids them, but I try to be more aware of how prevelant they are in supermarket shelves. I figure it's just one more thing I can do to help keep the environment in better shape for our futures.

In related news, there is a local-ish project going on to explore the use of algae to produce biodiesel on more than a limited basis. How cool is that!

I think I need to find a therapist.

I started a post about me being spoiled. It degenerated into a soliloquy on introversion and infertility and ended with my realization that I've got a whole bunch of things still worming around inside my brain that need to be put to rest.

Excuse me while I go check my insurance provider's website for coverage and local options.

2 Weeks Today

To pee or not to pee, that is the question.

They are waiting patiently in the bathroom drawer to be of use.

But do I really want to face their answers?

Do I really want to face my fears?

7 Years Ago

Last year I wrote about my memories of the day.

This year I'd like to remember someone who succumbed to collateral damage.

Sometime after 9/11, the empty lot next to my in-laws beach house was cleared and a house was built. The family was from New York/Long Island with three kids in school, and two parents who evaluated their lives post-9/11 and decided it was time for a change.

As time passed, my in-laws grew pretty close with the couple. Always drinks and/or dinner together when they were down, support of the kids, that sort of thing. In return the couple kept an eye on my in-laws place.

At first they had bought an established deli up the road a bit. But they sold that when they were offered a huge amount more than they had paid. After that, the wife stayed at home, and the husband tried a number of things, never finding the perfect fit. To my knowledge he went through real estate, volunteer firefighter, even starting a trash hauling business.

Eventually the husband's mental health started to go. He threatened his wife and his kids. One morning his wife came downstairs to find him. Suicide.

I don't pretend to understand or know everything that tied into his making the decision to end his life instead of seeking help. It didn't help that his father also committed suicide, but I'm pretty sure that the events of 9/11 started the final downward spiral.

I hope negative thinking doesn't have the same power as positive thinking...

I think I've managed to convince myself that the IUI didn't work. I've got nothing to base this on, but I just don't feel very hopeful.

I'm not sure if it's because I don't feel like I deserve to have hope, or because I'm trying to keep myself from heartbreak should this not be successful.

At the same time, I still have enough hope to think about the things that need to be done if this does work. Things like cleaning out and decorating the room we will use as a nursery, finding cute maternity clothes, even who I can get to clean the house if I have to go on extended bed rest.

Like many things this is a cycle. Up and down, up and down. I want to be up, but feel that down is safer so I try to prolong my stay.

It's much easier to think that it didn't work than to have hope.