Category Archives: family

Photo Friday: Unexpected Love(s)

Posted in family, summer fun by

Last Friday, the family made our bimonthly expedition to the holy land, otherwise known as Target.

Let me tell you something about Target, it is pure shopping crack. You go there with a list of 3 items, and you leave with 23 items. I can get lost in the seasonal aisles for hours. I am pretty sure that the employees know me on sight, and FOR SURE the Starbucks guy in Target does. Please tell me your Target stores have Starbucks like mine….? it’s heavenly. One of these days I am going to suggest they put my picture on the wall next to the store manager.   I’m that important to their monthly sales.

You wait and see.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, so we were shopping last Friday, and on a whim S. and I spotted a fire bowl. Truth be told, S. was looking for it. I was like, WHY do we need a freaking fire bowl for the patio? What IS a fire bowl?? Why not a chiminea?

Wait, what the hell is a chiminea?  Nah, we do fire bowls here.

Dude, it was ON SALE for $49, so we bought it! And I laughed thinking it was the most dumb, impulsive purchase ever from Target.

And you know what? It was the BEST money ever spent. We fired that baby up at 9pm Saturday night, and beers in hand (David had root beer) we toasted to our most AWESOME patio purchase.  We relaxed by the fire, sang silly songs, and pretended we were stranded on an island with just us and the mighty fire bowl.

We made wishes as the embers floated up to the heavens.

Most unexpected.

 

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If you would like to join in the fun of Photo Friday, catch the theme post for the week, and then post your own photo on Fridays and link back @ Calliope’s blog.

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Friday Fragmentary Thinking

Posted in celebrities, family, Happy Birthday, Lost, Reflections, TV, Zoo by

So much to say.

I just haven’t been in the mood to write it down. Or have the time, really. It’s been a crazy month, and June looks like it will be equally as crazy.

So this post is just a mish-mash of what’s been going on in my head lately.

Yesterday, we went to the zoo for David’s first grade class trip. It was great. Great weather, great time.

The coolest thing? The prairie dogs, the bears, the otters, the turtles, the cheetahs!… oh heck, just everything!  We’ll be going back soon to see everything we missed.  It’s hard to fit it all in with just a few hour window.

Pictures courtesy of my main man, S. who basically just followed the pack of Moms, Dads, and kids with my new camera.

Last week was David’s 7th birthday party. This was the first party I had at a party “place” instead of at home. He had a great time. We had family and friends from school. I must admit I liked not having to cook or clean up. lol.

Can I express my frustation at that 47 year old “celebrity” who is pregnant? Should I comment that I am a little PO’ed that by not disclosing HOW she got pregnant is merely giving a bad education to women out there that think they can pop out babies into their late 40’s? With their own body parts?  Who freakin’ knows…maybe she is in the lucky .00005%.  I certainly made that percentage on the flip side of unluckiness.

Perhaps I should convert to scien.tology. There’s one thing I haven’t tried yet.

Lastly, but not leastly… who watched Grey’s last night on the edge of their freaking seats?

And who’s with me on Sunday watching THE LAST episode of LOST??? I am beyond sad to see this show end.  Prepare for some live tweeting and lots of tears on Sunday.

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Solitary

Posted in Adoption, dreams, family, Infertility Aftermath, secondary infertility by

solitary: 1sol·i·tary
Pronunciation: \ˈsä-lə-ˌter-ē\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, solitarie, from Anglo-French, from Latin solitarius, from solitas aloneness, from solus alone
Date: 14th century


1 a : being, living, or going alone or without companions b : saddened by isolation

Last night I had a very weird dream. I don’t remember much about it in its entirety, but what I do remember is waking up and feeling like I solved a great mystery of life.

In this dream, somehow I ended up sitting at a round table with about 10 people whose faces I did not recognize. We were talking about fears. I didn’t feel scared, but rather… melancholy. Someone commented from the other side of the table that their worst fear is death.

My response was immediate, almost as if the words were just falling out of my mouth without my lips moving…

“I am less fearful of death, and most fearful of being alone.”

It was nano-seconds later that I woke up, with those words still hovering in my head as if I said them aloud in the waking world.

I thought about it in the shower and and it was perfectly clear that as much as I would not like it to be so, it is my primary motivation in life.

It is the reason for everything.

As independent as I’ve led my life, I’ve let that fear mow me over in recent years. But when I look back to the choices I’ve made thus far, it’s been the driving undercurrent all along…

…how could I have not realized that?

This therapy adventure has certainly opened my mind in ways I had forgotten about, or didn’t have the key.

Specific to infertility, I am realizing that my want to complete my family has a lot to do with this one specific fear. The motivation has little to do with “kicking infertility’s ass” and more to do with surrounding myself with people I can count on. People that my son can count on that will still be here 30-40 years from now. Let’s face it, when I get old and if S. isn’t here, I do not want David to be alone. I don’t want him to have that burden.

I may be projecting my fear needlessly onto him, but it’s something I think about more often than I should. This is probably the only reason I haven’t truly given up. And if I am being honest with myself, I will never be able to move on until I feel comfortable that David has a sibling. Someone who can’t easily walk away, uninvesting themselves when it is convenient.

I envy those that can and have made the active decision to push family-building to the back burner and move on. I’ve wondered if it is possible for me.

My therapist says I can do that if I wish, but it will take time.
I definitely can envision a life without cycling. I am 99% sure that I do not ever want to walk into a fertility clinic again. 

I am 100% sure that there is a child waiting for me, if I put myself out there.

It is very surreal to me, to know that before I had David, I always had this invisible attraction to adoption. I didn’t even know my “fertilty” status at the time, but I had always envisioned something extraordinary for my family. Perhaps I should have listened to my heart many, many years ago.

We are in research mode. No timeline, no stress. We will walk wherever the paths leads.

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Life is a highway

Posted in family, Infertility Aftermath, work/life balance by

I’ve been feeling a little sad this week.

There’s no main cause… perhaps cabin fever had a little to do with it. Each day I wake up and look out of the window to whiteness, I grumble a little under my breath. I’m ready for winter to be over. I’m tired of the snow.

Work has been busy, and I’ve been plotting taking off some time soon. I feel like my work could swallow me whole if I let it. Last week my company forced a download to my laptop with a software update, and it blew my machine. I called the helpdesk, and when I say “help” desk I am exaggerating. They feined ignorance, and then tried to tell me my home wireless network was to blame (which it most certainly is NOT!) Our helplessdesk is a joke, staffed with people who live in almost uninabited areas of the world and make $1/hr. We are a technology company for goodness sake!  If you have a problem that isn’t in their script, forget it.  There is no thinking outside of the box, or the script, as it were…  I wish I was kidding.

I was so mad I was spitting bullets. I worked on the issue into the wee hours of the morning, using Google as my guide. I thought I had fixed it. But unbeknownst to me there was some sort of auto-update that removed my hard work again. grrrrrrr….

On Thursday, I am giving up my car. I love my car (remember when I got it three years ago?).   The lease is up on it, and with recent events (and current events), we simply needed to downsize. As much as I will miss it, I am glad to be breaking free from it.  I spent many days driving it to the fertility clinic and getting my unfair share of bad news.  I cried big tears in that car.  As much as I will miss the luxury, I will not miss the reminder of it.  The funny thing is we’ve been progressively downsizing our cars over the last 7 years.  Since S. is still in the auto business, we are limited in our choice since we must take advantage of his employee discount.  It’s the same make, different car.  Much cheaper.  Better gas mileage. Cheaper payment.  And, as S. proclaimed, thank goodness it’s not black.  He hated waxing my black car.

I’ve also spent some time thinking ahead.  I’ve not done a lot of that lately…   I found that living in the moment was much less stressful.  But once in awhile, the monster greets me in an unlikely place. 

He found me in the car this past weekend.  S., David and I were driving home from having a nice lunch and David was talking up a storm in the back seat.

“Mommy, Daddy… why don’t I have a sister or brother?  Did I do something wrong?”

I just about drove off the highway.  S. held my hand and we pulled into a Starbucks.  It was everything I could do to not start bawling.

I let S. answer because I couldn’t. 

I just couldn’t.

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