150 Steps...In the Present Moment

"Can you at least tell me what I need to wear? Casual? Dressy? What?" I ask my husband for the fourth time earlier this week. "No. All will be revealed on Friday," he says with a sly grin. "But I might want to go out shopping to get a new outfit if I just knew what I need to wear!" I say getting exasperated. "You don't need to buy a new outfit." Argh! I hate surprises. Really. I do. Hate. Them. With. A. Passion.  Early in our marriage I tell Chris, "If you ever decide to throw me a big surprise birthday party, you might as well just give me the signed divorce papers as my birthday present." That's how much I hate surprises. But a few weeks ago at our 10th wedding anniversary dinner Chris tells me that my anniversary gift isn't quite here yet and that I should take the day off on April 29th. "Why?" "Because it's part of your anniversary present." "Are we going somewhere?...

"Come on. I'll show you the baby's room," I say to my parents during their visit this past weekend. So, I take them into the baby's room with it's newly painted lavender walls, the gifted crib, new super comfy glider with matching ottoman, new changing table, new stroller/car seat combo, and all of the other assorted and sundry baby things that we've either purchased or received as gifts. "You've done a really nice job in here," says my mom. "Do you like the color?" I ask. "It's really pretty," she replies and then after a pause adds, "I guess I just thought you'd have this room closed up." Really? I relate this story to Chris after my folks have gone back to their hotel. He says, "What? Like if we have the room all closed up it'll be like none of this ever happened? Like we'll forget?" In a way, I can kind of understand what my mom means. When the adoption first falls apar...

Night before last...meltdown. Meltdown #32? #33? Who can remember? The night before last Chris comes home after his first long, craptastic day of the week (and, rather inconveniently it's Monday, so there are at least four more long crappy days to come) to find me puttering the kitchen, no dinner yet prepared, looking...pitiful. "What's up?" he asks me. And then, "How'd work go today?" And before I know it I'm absolutely bawling into his shoulder. Bawling and sobbing. Like I haven't sobbed in a long time. And then last night, after another completely craptastic day at his job, Chris says to his still depressed wife, "I guess it's been easier for me. I mean, not easier, but I've been able to just say to myself, 'OK, that didn't work out' and then I let it all go. I've been able to move forward. It seems like you haven't been able to do that yet." Apparently so. My head says to move forward, b...

America's game. Baseball. "I know what I want to do for my birthday," Chris tells me a few weeks ago. "The PawSox have a home game on my birthday. So we'll get a block of seats and invite everyone to the game." Which is exactly what we do yesterday. Nine of us enjoy fifth and sixth row box seats in section fourteen just along the third baseline. The weather is perfect. Sixty degrees, a few clouds in the sky, but mostly sun. It's not too hot or too cold.  Peanuts, hotdogs, chicken sausages, french fries, and hamburgers are enjoyed by all throughout the game  along with beer (for the adults) and cotton candy (for the kids...yech! How can they eat that stuff???) thrown in for good measure. The PawSox and the Buffalo Bisons play some fantastic baseball: homeruns, stolen bases and some absolutely incredible diving catches in the outfield. It's glorious. The PawSox run up the score to 10-2 by the bottom of the sixth inning. Buffalo rallies in t...

The old mom. That's going to be me. I'm at an evening event for work a few weeks ago. There are lots of "young people" in the room - mostly in their early and mid-twenties. One of the servers, offering me a nibble from a tray, points at one of the twenty-somethings and asks me, "Oh, is that your daughter?" I must give him quite a look because he quickly amends his question to an ever-so-awkward, "Orrrr maybe your, um, sister? Um, you look a lot alike." I don't answer him. He quickly scurries off to the other side of the room with his tray of nibbles. Darn you, you young whipper-snapper! You couldn't just leave me my illusions that I still look really young??? I'm going to be one of the oldest, if not  the  oldest, mom on the playground. Until this twenty-something server kid makes the comment about me being the mom of a twenty-something (which I could be had I had a kid at twenty...), I really don't spend a whole lot o...

And the boys understand as much as they can, they really do. But I truly believe that we have these mama buttons inside that once they get flicked on they can be all consuming. A friend of mine wrote the above to me in a Facebook message. While Chris and I are in the waiting/wondering/agonizing/hoping stage of adoption, "A" and her husband are in month 20 of struggling through infertility. It just kills me knowing how much A wants to be a mom and how difficult her journey has been so far. As for me...What's kind of crazy is that I never believed that wanting to be a mom could be so all consuming. For many reasons (which I've discussed at length in earlier posts) I always thought that I didn't have that "mama button." While other women I knew were so excited to become moms, some even obsessed with it, I just never had that feeling. Ever. Until recently. Two years ago when I told Chris that I wanted us to have a family, I was thrilled knowing th...

It's been hard to go to work these days. Especially on Mondays. While I am most certainly on the upswing from the lows of the last few weeks, I must admit that I've been finding myself on Monday mornings thinking, "I shouldn't be going into work. I should be at home on maternity leave." And it's pretty much sucked.  However, this is the first Monday since everything fell apart that I'm not feeling incredibly blue. It's a Monday. I'm going to work. Just like I've done a million times before.  Work isn't where I thought or hoped or dreamed that I would be these days, but it's where I'm at so I'm going to be in the present moment and focus my attention on my job. Not on what "should be" or what "could have been" or "what will be." Take a breath. Be in the present moment... Monday Monday... La la la la la la la...

Yesterday...my niece's 6th birthday party. We travel three hours on Friday for an overnight stay with my sister-in-law "C", her husband "G" and their girls "L" and "A" so we can celebrate "L"'s 6th birthday. We arrive at 9:00 p.m. to find my SIL baking three cakes, my BIL plunked on the couch recovering from a 22-hour work gig, the girls sound asleep in bed (not surprising) and that my husband's little brother "P" is also in town for the celebration. Surprise! "P is here," C tells us as she separates eggs over the garbage can. "Like here here?" we ask. "Yup, here here, but not here at the moment because he's in The City visiting with a friend. I told him that he has to be back no later than midnight so I can pick him up at the train station." "What's he doing here?" "He got a call from [super extremely famous high-end modeling agency] to have his phot...

Today...a good day. So far. Husband wakes me up and off we go to the gym - he to a personal training session and me to my beloved treadmill (2nd one in from the left in the set of treadmills that do not have television screens attached to them. I come to the gym to get away from watching tv!) While Chris gets put through the ringer by his devilish little trainer (she's tiny, petite, adorable and smiles very prettily while she tortures him), I pound out two and a half uphill treadmill miles. It feels good to sweat. And now we're back home getting ready for the rest of our day. I'm clackering away here. Chris is making himself some breakfast. The grumpiest cat in the world, our Cecil, has a little pep in her step and is busy doing kitty acrobatics with her favorite toy in the middle of the living room. Not bad for a cat who is turning 18 in just a few weeks. "Who put a quarter in you this morning?" I ask her. (And she has now stopped her play to crawl into...

Yesterday...bad day. I keep saying that I'm going to move on...move forward...move wherever. I'm going to be in the present moment. Live life. Focus on the good stuff and all of that other jazz. And then sadness, headache, tummy ache and just plain lowness hits me like a ton of bricks. That would describe my yesterday. All ready to head off to work when the nausea kicks in. And my head starts pounding. And the tears start flowing. Damn it. "Have you talked to N [my therapist] recently?" Chris asks me last night. He's been watching me as I, with a definite lack of enthusiasm, fold my laundry  (oh, and he comes home last night to find me huddled up on the couch once again drowning my misery in Animal Planet, the Food Network and movies about which I usually could care less. Did I really need to watch the moderately awful "Valentine's Day" for a third time?) "No," I reply, "I haven't been to see N in a while." Chris r...

I don't want to disappear again from posting here. Like I disappeared for a few months earlier this year...until we got The News that it had all fallen apart for us. However, now I'm not sure about what I should be writing anymore. Writing about the monotony of the waiting seems...ummm...rather monotonous. For you. And for me. And exploring all of the reasons why we're adopting...well, been there and done that. If you've been following along for a while you'll know that I've covered a lot of that ground. From time to time I still visit a few blogs of folks who are either violently opposed to adoption or have reasons to dislike it just to keep myself informed, but I don't feel the need anymore to write lengthy posts about them. Again - kinda been there and done that. My worries about becoming a mom and taking care of a child...over the last two years I've worked through a lot of that, although I'm sure that it will all come up again when we ...

In Jennifer's  touching post today  about moving forward, I was struck by this observation: It's easier to wait now that just about everyone in our lives knows that our adoption placement fell through at the last minute. No more having to explain. No more saying "Chris and I will just move forward" or "I'm doing OK"  or "well, obviously the Universe has other plans for us" or "It is what it is" or any other hope-filled re-frame that I can think of to make others feel better about my pain. So many people have expressed their sympathy and asked their questions (for which I am really, truly, deeply grateful - even if I didn't sounds terribly grateful in that last sentence...) and heard the explanations. So, now it's a relief that I don't have to keep talking about it. It struck me, as I read it, that there's an opportunity for us to find some small bit of humor and a bit of adoption education amidst our disappointme...

So, I think that I'm pretty well de-funked. Thank goodness.  Been going to the gym this week. Eating well. And generally settling back into life. And, of course, I've settled back into the waiting groove. It's easier to wait now that just about everyone in our lives knows that our adoption placement fell through at the last minute. No more having to explain. No more saying "Chris and I will just move forward" or "I'm doing OK"  or "well, obviously the Universe has other plans for us" or "It is what it is" or any other hope-filled re-frame that I can think of to make others feel better about my pain. So many people have expressed their sympathy and asked their questions (for which I am really, truly, deeply grateful - even if I didn't sounds terribly grateful in that last sentence...) and heard the explanations. So, now it's a relief that I don't have to keep talking about it. It's a relief to once again b...