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.