They say money doesn't buy happiness...

I know we should be saving every spare dime we have for the "What if" fund because that's the reality we're coming up on.  Instead, here are some of the things we've done this year (me in particular) when we've come up against the YOLO monster and "screw this shit" moments head-on:

Redecorated the Bathroom

I didn't need to do this.  The bathroom was fine before.  But two days before my surgery I had a "What if this is it" moment and apparently a binge trip to Target was my answer.  I don't particularly like the things I bought and seriously consider putting all of my old things back in the bathroom at least once a week.

Gifts! Gifts! Gifts for Everyone!

My teaching partners.  My students.  DH.  The animals.  Myself x a lot.  Sometimes buying gifts makes me feel better.  Usually I just feel guilty for spending money later though.  

Clothes

Sigh.  I don't need new clothes.  And truthfully, I don't get a lot of satisfaction from them after I buy them.  I have started to realize that shopping for clothes gives me a temporary (albeit very real) high.  After I buy a handful of shirts and dresses I think, "Okay, now this is all I need to feel more confident/prettier/happier/better" but after a few wears it seems that the feeling fades and I'm left wishing I didn't have to go through more piles of clothes to make room for the new ones.

Dog

As Christmas came up on us and yet another BFN loomed on the horizon DH saw an opportunity to get something for me that he had said we would put off getting until we had a bigger house and kids.  And yet the reality is that we can't make ourselves have kids (apparently) and a bigger house is on hold (indefinitely).  So in one of our attempts at "reverse jinxing" we thought, "Hey! Maybe if we do something a little crazy the bad timing of the thing will lend itself to spontaneously getting pregnant".   It didn't work, of course, but I do love this pup.  She is incredibly time-consuming and that's a good thing for a lot of reasons.  On the other hand, she has been very expensive- a lot of bills we didn't foresee when we adopted our "$100 dog". 

Fine Dining---or At Least Eating Out

DH and I don't take pleasure in eating at very expensive restaurants.  As much as we LOVE to eat out  neither of us is willing to spend much more than $25 on a meal and that's pushing it.  So every weekend we find ourselves at Chipotle for burrito bowls or Chic-Fil-A for waffle fries or McD's for frappes.  We have done well to eliminate a lot of the weekday eating out expenses from our budget by making a conscious effort to eat at home but all bets are off on the weekends.  We live in a boring small town and going out to eat is (seriously) one of the only things to do around here in the freezing weather.  I guess it's an expense both of us are happy enough to live with.

Movies

When DH and I want to see a movie at the theater we don't hesitate to spend money on it and yet if we had kids we would have to be so much more conscious about spending money on something so frivolous.  

Entertainment

DH loves video games.  I love books.  We both love music.  We are trying to curb spending in these areas by using the library and buying only one or two of these things a month but sometimes we both fall off the bandwagon.

Vacation

Our vacation is coming up and even though we're going to see family we always blow way too much money when we do.  It's a tropical spot and I am nervous that we will go overboard this year in our attempt to be happy around family with a new baby.  This is one DH and I will have to discuss beforehand.

I guess I regret some of the things we've spent money on this year and other things not at all.  I don't want to look back on my life and say, "Man, wish I would have lived a little instead of worrying about money."  On the other hand, I'd prefer not to be a pauper.  I suppose there's a balance element to all of this.  I heard someone say once that you can have just about anything you want but not everything.  For the most part I tend to agree.

I don't know if I'll ever get over the last year.

This has taken so much from me- things that I had the right to plan for.  

I should have gotten to tell my grandparents good news.

Or felt their hugs when none of it came true this year.

I could have had them another year or another ten and it still wouldn't be enough.

I don't know if I'll ever get over the last year.

And I don't even know if this is the worst of it.

Is EVERYONE in the blogosphere knocked up?!

EVERY blog I have been reading for years has a blogger who is either knocked up or a new mom.



And this would be cool except for the fact that I don't really want to hear about it.  At all.

Same Feeling x 15,000

I wrote this in July.  Same feeling,




I used to be afraid of having kids.  Like I might lose and forever mourn the self I used to be.  "What would happen," I wondered, "if I lost my ability to take a nap at two, to settle into a book at four or go to a movie at ten?"  We aren't accountable to anyone except each other.  We can go out to eat every night of the week and not worry about paying for it or even if it's really all that healthy.  When I'm bored I can shop at Target and redo every room in our house every time I find a new color scheme I like better than the ones I have now.  I never carry cash; we charge everything and we pay the bill off before it's due because we don't really have many financial obligations.  We sleep in, stay up late and make and cancel plans like a couple of teenagers.  "Why would I give that up?" I thought.  "Why would we want to?"  And so we were careful every month not to have a baby.  We would worry if my period was late.  We would breathe a sigh of relief when it showed up.  We went on living for ourselves.

And that was okay until one day this winter it wasn't. I realized that myself isn't enough.

I could have all of the things I need and do all of the things I want, but it started to feel so empty.  People-watching became a much better way to spend a Saturday afternoon than shopping.  I'd see young women with babies and wonder if they were younger than me.  I'd see their husbands balance bags and strollers and feel smitten by the chaos of it.  And when I did go into a Target I couldn't quite explain the hollowness in my stomach when I'd walk by the kids' clothes- the way my heart sank a little with the weight of such a life experience that I couldn't simply buy and have.

Sitting on the beach today I realized that I am having less fun on this gorgeous vacation than I can ever remember having.  Before this trip I used to wonder how I would know that I was ready to be a mom.  Even after we started trying to get pregnant, I had never felt the feeling I've experienced this week.  It's strange and selfish sort of, but there isn't anything I want more than to be a mom.

Coming and Going

No one tells you when you're little that bad things will happen to you- frequently- and it won't matter if you're just getting over the last bad thing that happened or the ten bad things that happened before that.

So I hug Lucy's neck and tell her I'm glad she came back.  And then I close my eyes and wish Grandma love wherever she's going.

She's Gone.

My light is gone.  She got loose from her collar at my in-laws on Christmas day and she is now lost on hundreds of acres of hilly wooded land.

We are fighting to get her back.  Doing EVERYTHING we can possibly do to get her back.  500 mailbox fliers, 250 houses called in the area, her face on two local news stations, emails to 25 animal shelters and countless Facebook posts in less than 24 hours.

The response has been amazing.  The neighbors are fighting with us to find her. A person who specializes in search and rescue called after he got our message from the call center. He scoured the woods with us for hours today.  A neighbor tipped us off and we spotted Lucy once, but she slipped away again before DH could grab her.

I have hope that she is not suffering from being out overnight because DH said when they saw her she was wagging her tail as she sniffed trees and didn't seem upset at all---other than when they tried to grab her.  But she's out in the woods alone and I don't know how to get her back.  I have walked for ten hours until I can't feel my face from the cold wind or my ankles from walking up wooded hills.  But I would do it ten times again to get her back.

I can't put it in words.  To love a dog so much and then to wonder if you've lost that love for good.  There's so much guilt.  So much worry.  She's not a dog- she's my sign that I can be happy.  If she's already gone what does that mean?

I don't know if there's a God.  In fact, as I drove around looking for Lucy this morning I told the empty space next to me in the car that I am pretty sure there isn't.  But I also said that if I was wrong bringing Lucy back to me would be such a simple thing- a tiny thing in the scheme of its grand existence. And yet for me it would be my fishes and loaves and walking on water and every other story I was told when I was little. My miracle.  If there's something out there in the universe couldn't it love me enough to do this simple thing for us?

I don't think DH and I will find Lucy.  I believe that her best shot is stumbling across a kind neighbor who will lure her with treats.  And so I have to put my faith in the kindness of strangers to love my girl as much as I do because DH and I live an hour away.

I want to pray, but I genuinely believe that if I do I will have my heart and spirit crushed again with bad news.  So I am pleading for people who can to do it to pray for Lucy.  She is a wonderful girl and she doesn't deserve anything but good things.

Light

I wear my sadness badly.  It's a lipstick stain on my teeth.  A run in the back leg of my pantyhose.  A shirt that's a little too snug when I'm standing to the side.  It's awkward for everyone who has to look at me.  Should they comment on it, they must wonder. And if they do what will I say?

There are so many women who don't talk about what they're going through, women who wash it down with a bag of Hershey Kisses.  Maybe it's because I'm an only child who tends to lean a little left of center when it comes to attention. Or maybe it's because I'm losing my shit and need to know that someone else has too and has lived to tell about it.  Either way, I've been talking about this trying to get pregnant BS with anyone who will listen.  And yet until this weekend I didn't realize that night after night I've been sitting alone in a dark room, unaware that the lights have been turned off for months.

Every-single-night I have been coming home from work, heading straight to bed for an hour and then waking up to pee on sticks or research fertility treatments or checking out books on adoption.  This -thing- has so completely consumed me that I've literally lost track of time only to glance at the clock and realize I've spent four hours reading about it.  Most of all I realize I have been mourning the loss of an experience that was supposed to be happy.

I have been driving DH batshit crazy.  He has no idea what to do with me.  I know he doesn't mean to be unsympathetic but he's sick of hearing about it.  In the end there's nothing he can say that will fix what's happening in my mind.  All of the worst case scenarios will play out whether he's there for them or not.

The only time I escape is at school.  Kids have a way of keeping you busy--- and yes, that's ironic.  On Friday night several teachers and I hosted a movie night for the kids.  DH came along like a champ and entertained himself by texting a guy from work.  At some point the conversation turned to the guy mentioning that he'd just gotten a  Golden Retriever from a farm for one hundred bucks.  DH and I have always wanted a Golden, but we'd always had this unspoken thing about not getting one until we had kids.  The guy sent DH three pictures of the two boys and girl that were still left and gave him the number to call the lady who owned them.  While I was busy with the kids I noticed several of the adults looking at DH's phone.  When I went over to look I couldn't believe how excited he seemed about them. In the past I have always been the instigator of big life decisions.  Still, DH's excitement seemed to waver as the night went on and I didn't say a lot about it that night.

On Saturday the guy DH had been talking to sent him several pictures of the girl he'd taken.  Of course they were adorable and his description of how she was the " best dog he'd ever had" got DH and I talking again.  Our biggest hesitation is the traveling we do once a month to see family that's an hour away.  Still, I told DH that if we never looked into it we might regret it later. After some prodding, he called the lady and set up a time to check out the dogs on Sunday.

When we pulled up in the driveway we saw the girl from the photo we'd been sent running in the driveway.  And when she came up to our car I knew we'd be taking her home.

We are three days in and I am smitten with her. No, that's an understatement.  When we took her home Sunday night we found a lump on her shoulder and for a terrible day I wondered if she had cancer and how we'd afford to treat it and then decided we'd do whatever we had to do to get her better. (Fortunately it turned out to be from an old injury and shrunk as soon as the vet drained it.). I love this girl.   I named her Lucy, which means "light".  She's given me something to look forward to when I come home at night.  And keeping the cat from attacking her has given me something to stay busy.

My period started the day after we got Lucy.  I knew it was coming on Friday, but when it happened it wasn't the crushing blow to my psyche that it has been for the last several months.  It sucked.  A lot.  But between a vet appointment, christmas shopping and dinner, I didn't have time to dwell on it. And that was okay.

I haven't been on my iPad in a week, but when I opened Safari tonight I had ten windows open to fertility and adoption sites. Without thinking I closed them all and began writing this post.  I don't want anything to steal what I've had this week.  I feel lighter.  I've been smiling.  It feels good.