150 Steps...In the Present Moment

Day two of my forty-third year on the planet.  Still in my jammies and bathrobe. Have not - as I promised my husband yesterday - gone to gym. Instead, got up while he was at spin, had my breakfast and went back to bed for several hours. Thinking that perhaps I'm not exactly out of my funk just yet. "You OK?" says wonderful husband popping his head into the darkened bedroom. "Meh." He looks worried. He probably should be. Still kind of funk-y. It's a gorgeous day today. Another of those not-a-cloud-in-the-sky kind of days. Chris says it's cold out, but I don't care. Time to put on some outdoor-cool-weather-exercise-clothing. Go for a walk. Get some air in my lungs and a bit of Vitamin D. Time to de-funk-ify.

Welcome to forty-three. "You have a birthday coming up this week, don't you?" asks my mom the other night while we're on the phone. "Yep." "How old are you going to be again?" "Forty-three," I drawl. "I can't possibly have a daughter who is forty-three," my mother groans. "That would make me old." Sorry, Mom, but there you have it. It's true. Forty-three.  And here I am...said birthday has arrived today without much fanfare (and, thankfully without any snow, as had been predicted.) Cecil is sitting next to me sulking because I remove her from my lap a few minutes ago so I can write this blog post. Chris is off sweating at spin class. I should be at the gym with him. But here's the thing. I'm in a funk. (For those of you who have been reading for the last few weeks...I'm sure this doesn't exactly come as a shock.) I keep trying to sort of pick up the pieces of myself and mov

"Your subconscious is apparently not so happy about the disruption," Chris says to me this morning. This is his assessment of the nightmares that have been plaguing me for the last two weeks. Ya think? While I don't remember last night's latest round of nightmarish dreams, I do remember quite clearly waking up drenched in sweat, practically hyperventilating. So fun in the middle of the night! For many years I suffered from insomnia - both kinds - the "I can't fall asleep" kind as well as the "I can't stay asleep" kind (very often suffering both types in the course of the same night.) During those years I came to dread bedtime and night in general. I lived on anywhere from one to four hours of sleep a night. It wasn't much of a way to live. Once I married Chris the insomnia waned and over the years just about subsided altogether. I still struggle with it from time to time, but these days thankfully I mostly enjoy the normal eig

Sixteen days since we received The News. It's been sixteen days since we received the news that we would not yet, as we had hoped and planned for, become adoptive parents. That we would not be getting on a plane to head to AZ. That we would not be meeting our daughter for the first time. That we would not be bringing home that little girl. That we would instead have to continue waiting and waiting and waiting as we have done for the last two years. Two weeks and two days since we received The News. I don't feel quite so raw two weeks and two days later. Yesterday is the first day I make it through a full day of work without feeling the need to go to my car for a private place to sob or to run away from my office to someplace where I can read my book and eat fattening food. I actually feel some modicum of focus and normalcy as I do my job. But then last night I walk by the baby's room all kitted out with crib, changing table, glider, kids' books, stroller, car

Ugly confession time. I can sometimes be pretty judgmental. OK, very judgmental.  This judgmental-ness is not a quality of which I am particularly proud. In fact, it's something about myself that I don't like  at all  and I try desperately to squash when I become aware that I'm doing it (sadly, not always with much success and sadly I'm not always aware that I'm being judgmental.) I swear to God that it's genetic...the wonderful quality that I inherited from my maternal grandmother - the Queen of Judgmental... And before all of this adoption stuff. Long before I ever even knew that I could and would someday want to become a parent, I am afraid that I was very judgmental of couples desperately trying to become parents. Couples who spend thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars on unsuccessful infertility treatment after unsuccessful fertility treatment. Women who endure injections and hormones and all kinds of invasive tests and procedures over an

"You know that's twice that you've mentioned on your blog that you were ironing my shirt," says Chris last evening. "People out there are going to think that I'm some kind of Neanderthal. 'Woman! Go iron my shirt!!'" We laugh. "I'm sorry. I'll make sure to clarify on the blog about the ironing." "No, no. That's OK." So, even though my Neanderthal husband says I don't have to...I'm clarifying about the ironing. I  like  to iron. And this is pretty much the only household/domestic chore that I enjoy. Really. So, while Chris (who, I might add is pretty much the farthest thing  ever  from Neanderthal...) makes our lunches, I iron his shirts and pants. Actually, I'm pretty sure that I come out with the better end of the deal. "'Woman! Iron my shirt!' kind of reminds me," I continue, "of that Bloom County strip from a million years ago. The old guy guy who's the le

Well, the ides of March have come... Not so great for Caesar, but good for me because they have actually brought with them a not-a-cloud-in-the-sky-walking-on-sunshine sunny gorgeous day. Somehow it's just so much easier to feel like moving forward and moving on when it's sunny outside.  I'm walking on sunshine, wooah I'm walking on sunshine, woooah I'm walking on sunshine, woooah and don't it feel good!! Hey, alright now and dont it feel good!! hey yeh   OK, so I'm not  exactly  in a "Walking on Sunshine" place right now, but I will admit that there is something hopeful about a sunny day. And I just hope that I can carry this sunny-day-Katrina-and-the-Waves-Walking-on-Sunshine-type-hopefulness with me today instead of descending once again into the depths of despond.  Off to iron the husband's shirt and then get myself ready for the day.

Moving forward. What does this even mean? I keep saying to people and writing on this blog and in messages to well-wishers, "Chris and I will just move forward." And I guess that's the case. Except perhaps for the one ginormous ridiculous glaring fact that we've taken a huge step backwards. Back to waiting and wondering and uncertainty. Here we thought that today we'd be on maternity/paternity leave. Starting a new and exciting chapter in our lives. The chapter when we become parents. And instead today is back to work as usual. Will anything ever feel "as usual" again? "We'll just move forward." At the moment I don't even know what that looks like. I keep moving from being sad to being numb to moments when I feel OK to trying to distract myself from the sadness and the numbness to extend those moments when I feel OK. And now we're supposed to just go back to work as usual. How do my husband and I do that? How do we

It wasn't until late tonight, as I was making a salad to bring for lunch tomorrow, that either of us said it. "How are you doing?" Jennifer asks me. "Fine, I guess," I reply in a subdued tone. "Just trying not to think about what we were supposed to be doing today." "Yeah," my wife replies. "Me too." March 13th. The due date. I hope L had her baby today and that mother, daughter, siblings, and family are all happy. I wish them well and am keeping my fingers crossed that L made the right decision for all of them. I'm just tremendously sorry that we weren't in a hospital in Glendale, AZ, today experiencing that same joy. It will happen. I do believe that. But until it does, I won't look at March 13th the same way for a long time.

Chris was supposed to wake me this morning to head to the gym with him, but he let me sleep instead. And sleep I did. Totally exhausted from yesterday's complete emotional/physical meltdown. Wow. I didn't even hear him head out for his Saturday spin class. I was  out . Completely and totally  out . And apparently a really good night's sleep and waking to a gorgeous, beautiful, not-a-cloud-in-the-sky sunny day seem to be helping immensely...my spirits seem to be lifting. My tremendous sadness of yesterday, while not quite completely evaporated, is such that I don't think that today will require once again being crumpled in on myself on the couch watching bad television. And weeping. That old phrase, "What a difference a day makes"... hmmm, apparently true.  Today - miraculously and thank goodness - I don't feel like my world is ending. Life is sometimes not fair. The adoption that we've waited for and worked for and hoped for and dreamed abo

I kind of crumple today. It's a work day, but I use some of my sick time to crumple in on myself at home on the couch in front of the television. To withdraw from the world and into myself. Into this wreck that is me today. Cecil doesn't care. She curls up in the crook of my arm and snoozes all day. And when she isn't snoozing she stretches her front paw way out to tap me gently on my neck - her signal that she is awake and wishes to be adored. "Are you the grumpiest kitty ever?" I ask her in my sweetest baby talk voice. "Are you? Nooooo. You're the most beeeeauuutiful kitty ever." I tell her while using both of my hands to rub her face and ears back. When I stop petting her she reaches out once again to tap me on the neck. So we repeat our little love fest. Satisfied after a few more minutes of being the center of my universe she sighs, puts her head back down and quickly falls away into deep kitty sleep. Much of my day is spent absently f

Our profiles are posted again on the adoption agency's websites. When our profiles  originally went live , I remember a sense of anticipation, of imminent success, and the excitement that came with taking such a big step. Today, seeing them posted again makes me feel tired and worn out. It feels like we're back to Square One. When we first decided to adopt, we spent lots of time answering questions, explaining the process to friends and family. Now, we're explaining what happened and where we go from here. Returning from the gym this morning, I was standing outside and our neighbor across the street stepped outside and called over, "Hi Chris! You guys must be getting so excited!" I expect that this will continue to happen as we see friends and colleagues over the coming weeks who might not have heard the news. They ask because they care and they're excited for us and I have to answer them because they're grieving a bit for us now, too. We are part o

She was never ours. Never. The child who is likely going to be born to L this very weekend was never ours. Ever. The truth is that we had only the most tenuous connection to this little baby.  Just the very barest hint of the tiniest thread of a connection. But we allowed ourselves to get attached anyway. We allowed ourselves to get attached. To this little person who we'd never even met. Who we never knew about until two months ago. Who is growing inside of someone else. Who has older brothers and an extended family who it seems fought for her tooth and nail and with whom she will now grow up. We allowed ourselves to get attached. We chose names. Our guest room became a baby's room. People gave us baby stuff. We started to say things like "When she comes home..." and "I hope she's a good sleeper..." and "I hope she's a good eater" and we talked about how our elderly cat Cecil would react to the presence of a screaming, squall

Can a person go through the 5 stages of grief in 2.5 days? Seriously, because I'm pretty sure that I've hit 4 of the Big 5 today: denial, anger, depression and acceptance. Not really sure that I'll ever get to bargaining since the only time that I ever really look to a higher power is when I get on airplane (a terrifying experience for me every single time.) At all other times of crisis in my life I figure that the Divine Mystery has more important things (like, for example, the revolutions currently going on in Egypt and Libya) to worry about. So, the stages of grief...I actually feel like today I've gone through most of them: denial (when I wake up this morning, just for a minute I forget that we're not getting on a plane this weekend and I try to hold onto that for a few minutes longer), anger (see earlier blog post), depression (sitting at my desk a feeling of utter desolation comes over me and I have to tell myself over and over to just focus on work and