Still Planning

We're 3 days from leaving for our yearly vacation, and I've started my usual spreadsheets of trip stuff. I'm a planning freak, a really big one. First I made a list of every hotel that I would possibly stay in while in Dallas. Then I narrowed that down based on hotel reviews and my brother's advice. Then I took that smaller list and started mapping out the distances from each hotel to the places we plan to go to while staying there. With gas prices the way they are it only makes sense to stay somewhere that's nice and centrally located. So now I'm down to 2 hotels from that original list of 10-15. Once I narrowed down the hotels I started to figure out where we wanted to visit and how far away they are and how can I maximize my gas mileage each day. So far I've picked out 6 places for us to eat because we want to only eat places we can't eat at here. So we're going to have Indian, Chicago style pizza, Italian/Mediterranean and African cuisines. We will go to several museums and the planetarium because we are nerds through and through. So far that's all I've planned since I want us to have some time where we have no plans. It's nice to just mill around somewhere sometimes. Work and life have been so stressful for both of us over the past few months that we desperately need to get away. I can't wait to get on the road.

Yipee!!!

Nope, we didn't get called for a placement, but I'm happy none the less. We finished up Madison's quilt square on Saturday, and I rushed it to the post office that afternoon. So now it's on it's way via Priority Mail to the lady that's constructing the memorial quilt. We're about 3 weeks late getting this to her. This square took us a lot longer than last years square. I think it was partly because we were busy working on getting our classes done and home study visits done that we just kept forgetting about it. I had a general idea of what I wanted the square to be, it was just figuring our how to construct it. I designed it and Rob did all of the sewing. He did a ton of stitching of ribbon and small beads. The butterfly has a whole lot of beads on it. I love my crafty hubby. I haven't sewn anything since I was a child so I was no help in that category. I cut ribbon, put Madison's name on there, and tried to keep the cat out of the way while Rob sewed. I can't wait to see the finished project with all the squares lovingly constructed for our angel babies. I hope that this quilt raises even more than the one last year for Preeclampsia research. We're going to find a cure one day, and it's great knowing that we were a part of the journey.

Layers

I'm so tired of hurting. Everywhere I look there are babies and families. It just wears on your soul after a while. I realized today that I've on my 34 cycle of trying to conceive with nothing to show for it. I try my best to avoid things that I know will make me sad or make me cry, but I still get blindsided every now and again. I stopped watching shows like a Baby Story, and I focus on shows like Adoption Stories now. But since that show comes on while I'm at work I record it on the DVR, but the player starts taping a few seconds before the show starts a lot of the time. And usually there's a mom loving on her newborn baby on the screen when I start the recorded program. In that split second my heart breaks all over again. My hope that, that mom will ever be me is fading away. This isn't supposed to be my life. I spent so many years avoiding pregnancy, and now that I want it I can't have it. Why is it so hard? My one chance at having a baby went away before I was even completely conscious. Was I really meant for this life? Am I doing what I was put on this earth to do or am I still trying to find my way?

Tonight one of my friends who is a farmer gave a good devotion after band practice that hit home with me. He talked about how bad a field of corn looks when it's mature and ready to be harvested. It goes from these tall green stalks and leaves to yellow and brown. It all looks dead. But any farmer knows that the best part, the sweet, golden corn is just under all those layers of dead husks. We're like that corn, if you work to get through the hard parts, you'll find what you've been working for all along. I'm still working on getting through my layers, and I'm not sure when I'll reach the center.

Mandatory Metallica

I've been enjoying this week with my XM radio, and the mandatory Metallica! Metal by the best heavy metal band of all time 24 hours a day from now until September 12 when their 9th album, Death Magnetic, is released. I wish that this would be an all the time station instead of a special for a few weeks. I've loved this group since I started watching MTV back in 1986 or '87. I still remember being transfixed by the guitar and drums of Enter Sandman. And hiding in my room watching that music video that excited and freaked me out at the same time. Metallica was always a guilty pleasure of mine since it was really odd for a southern teenage black girl in the 90's to like heavy metal. Then Rob and I started dating, and I got completely immersed in all things Metallica since he's a huge fan boy of theirs. He took me to one of their concerts back in '04, and it was freaking awesome to see them live! We had only been dating a couple of months at that point, and that trip was a bonding time for us. It was the 1st time a guy had actually taken me on a real trip.We danced to their song, Nothing Else Matters, as our 1st dance at our wedding. And "our song" is Sabbra Cadabra. The name of my blog come from one of their songs. Basically I love, love, love Metallica!

"Sabbra Cadabra"

Feel so good, I feel so fine
Love that little lady always on my mind
She gives me loving every night and day
Never gonna leave her, never going away

Someone to love me
You know she makes me feel all right, yeah (all right)
Someone to need me
Love me every single night, yeah

Feel so happy since I met that girl
When we're making love
It's something out of this world
Feels so good to know that she's all mine
Gonna love that woman 'til the end of time

Someone to live for
Love me 'til the end of time, hey, hey-yeah
She makes me feel happy
It's good to know that she's all mine

I am the world that hides
The universal secret of all time
Destruction of the empty spaces
Is my one and only crime
I've lived a thousand times
I found out what it means to be believed
The thoughts and images
The unborn child that never was conceived

You gotta believe me
Hey, I'm talking to you

Well, I know, it's hard for you
To know the reason why
And I know you'll understand
More when it's time to die
Don't believe the life you have
Will be the only one
You have to let your body sleep
To let your soul live on, haha

Wo-ooh
Feel so happy since I met that girl
When we're making love
It's something out of this world
Feels so good to know that she's all mine
Gonna love that woman 'til the end of time

Someone to live for
Love me 'til the end of time, yeah, ooh, oh
She makes me feel happy
It's good to know that she's all mine
She's all mine, yeah
Yo, ooh, yeah

Relaxed

I've had one of the best weekends I've had in a while. We had some friends over to play D&D on Friday night, and all in all we had a good time. I was still pissed the hell off from work, but after some huge shots of my friend Jose I was good to go. I'm not even going to go into why I was pissed off from work because it's a long story. But it involves a lot of the same old Ashley is the lowly bitch of the department, and should jump through rings of fire to get shit done at the last minute. We had a new person come by the house Friday that wanted to watch us play since they had always wondered about the game. This person is someone that I'm trying to like and treat decently since they are in our church band, and I have to interact with them on a regular basis. But there's a part of me that thinks she's after my husband. I know Rob would never cheat on me. I may just be overreacting, but she's done several things that have rubbed me the wrong way. She has a habit of butting into our disagreements, and always taking Rob's side no matter what's being said. It's not like we're having some real fight, but she always has to jump in. I'm sorry but no one has any right to butt into a personal conversation between a husband and a wife. And now I'm stuck with her ass every other week because the rest of the group invited her to play with us. I will try to give her the benefit of the doubt, and let her play with our group. But don't get me wrong I will be watching her like a hawk because Rob is rather oblivious to things like that. And it's not beyond me to kick a bitch's ass or at the very least cuss her out while I'm kicking her out of my house.

Saturday was great. We slept late, and then had a late lunch at my favorite pizza place, Fox's. We picked up a couple of things we need to put Madison's quilt square from the fabric store. And then we just chilled out for the rest of day watching movies. We watched the 5th Highlander movie that's fairly new on dvd. And it was biggest piece of ass. It had me in pain from laughing because the movie was just that bad. I loved the TV series, but this movie was nothing like what we expected.

Today was also relaxing. We went to church then had lunch with friends. We visited Maddie, and the came home to watch more movies. I cooked a simple supper of turkey and pepperoni penne pasta with green beans. It was nice to have a slow, relaxing weekend with my hubby for once. It's been a long time and we've both enjoyed ourselves a lot.

Holding Patterns and Crap

moar funny pictures

We had our 2nd and last home study visit on Monday. It went pretty well, I think. I was pissed off at first because I got off work at 3 thinking that the visit was at 5, but the case worker showed up at 3:30! Rob made the appointment with her, but he told me that it was going to be at the same time as the 1st visit. She shows up while I'm still trying to finish up stuff around the house. I hadn't even had a chance to clean the nasty, stinky, full of crap in 1 day cat box! I had to sneak around the house while she interviewed Rob and scoop the cat poop because I knew she was going to inspect all of the rooms on this visit. It just drove me nuts to not have the house up to my standards when she got here. I guess I'm anal about stuff like that. I know that normal people don't have a spotless house, but I would at least like the kitchen counters to be clutter free. Ughhhh!

And then there was Rob and his interview. For some reason he felt the need to volunteer information about his family that was better left unsaid. I know we had the conversation about not giving any extra information that's not necessary. But at some points I felt like Rob was on a psychiatrist's couch telling his life story and his whole family's life story. God I hope that she doesn't think bad about us because of the crap that Rob's family has done over the years.

The case worker looked around the house and went through this long list of safety questions with us. She measured all of the bedrooms and checked out where we have the guns locked up. Now we're just waiting for the home study to be completed. She has all of our stuff and our references so now she has to type it all up. Her goal is to have it done by the end of the month. I was so hoping that we would have this done before then, but I'm not holding my breath. So know we're just waiting...

I've been researching and planning our anniversary trip to Dallas for the past few days. I'm trying to actually budget this trip, and find ways to stay within our budget like buying a discount book. This book has half off coupons for tons of the stuff we want to do while we're in Dallas visiting my bro, and it only cost me $2! I've found a nice hotel to stay in for our actual anniversary that's close to the Indian restaurant that we want to go to for a special dinner and the outlet malls. We'll leave here on Saturday and spend a couple of days either with my brother or with his girlfriend at her house. We haven't decided yet, but I'm leaning towards his girlfriend because she's got a better guest room and her family loves to cook and cook and cook! I'm looking forward to just getting away for a few days with nothing to do, but have fun.

Almost Ready

Our 2nd home study visit is tomorrow evening around 5, and I'm so ready to get this one over with. I've been looking forward to this visit for weeks. I hope it will be our last visit, and we can get our home study approved soon. Rob and I have been cleaning and rearranging the house all weekend. I filled up 2 huge plastic bags with clothes and shoes out of my spare closet in the 2nd bedroom that Rob will drop off at Goodwill tomorrow. And we've thrown away tons and tons of junk. I hate that we don't have any type of recycling for paper here in our area because I go through tons of paper a year with all the catalogs, flyers, and order forms that Avon sends me on a regular basis. I've almost gotten my office moved over to the computer room so that the 2nd bedroom can be a bedroom again. Now we just have to get the cat moved out of there too. We should have that room done in the next month or two at the latest. We just have a few things left to do tomorrow to get the house back the way I want it before the case worker gets here, so since Rob's off on Mondays he should be able to get it done. I'll take off early tomorrow just to do a once over of the house and finish up anything that's left. Well, my pressure cooker is beeping gotta check on it and get back to work.

Shop Til U Drop

I've been shopping and cleaning up a storm this weekend. Friday started with me finally remembering the whole problem with BPA and bottles. I can't believe that I forgot all about it when I was buying bottles. I heard all about it a while back on the Today show, but at that point we didn't have any plans of having a baby anytime soon so it slipped my mind. Until I was reading an article in Parents magazine Friday morning before work that was talking about what new BPA free bottles were on the market now. I went and checked my Soothie and Playtex Ventaire bottles for the recycle symbol or the numbers on the bottom of the bottle that the article said to look for, but they didn't have any numbers or symbols on the bottom except for a patent number. I researched online for a while and couldn't find anything concrete to tell me if these bottles had BPA or not, so I just emailed the company directly. A couple of hours later I got a response I didn't want. Yep, the bottles I had stalked online in several auctions were bottles that shouldn't even be on the market. WTF? So it was back to the drawing board to find some affordable and good bottles that are free of BPA. The good thing was that I was able to return a lot of my bottles to Wal-M*art since they were brand new in the package even though I only bought 2 of them from there. I replaced all of my larger 9 ounce bottles with Parent's Choice BPA free bottles from Wallieworld for only $2.96 for each set of 3. I still need to replace my smaller 4 ounce bottles which will probably be Evenflo tinted BPA free bottles from BRU. So now I just need to put the remaining Soothie bottles up for auction to hopefully make back what I spent on them. If someone else is willing to use them then that's their choice, but as for me I will not. I will try to avoid any additional dangers for my future babies :)

Today, I met up with my friend, Tina and her son, Wes to shop at an upscale consignment shop that's done every few months for the upcoming season. It's been going on for a couple of days, and today was the last day, but it was also 1/2 price day! I racked up and saved a bunch! I got Rob a like new Eddie Bower backpack baby bag for $5. I tried to stick to 12 months and up clothes since I've got a pretty good supply of 0-9 month clothes right now. The boy clothes were a much better bargain than the girls. Most of the girl clothes that I liked were still $10 and up at half price or a lot of them weren't even half price. So I only got 6 girl outfits, but I got 10 boy pants/overalls and 4 shirts. But I got all of that plus a diaper bag, pacifier pod, hat for only $46! Woohoo! I love a good sale.

But even in all that shopping I couldn't help but notice all the hugely pregnant chicks shopping the consignment sale. I thought to myself that they were there shopping for their reality while I was only shopping for a dream. I wonder when my dreams will become a reality.

Idle Hands

I have nothing to do, and it's driving me nuts. I've spent so long focusing on getting the nursery together and trying to get good deals on a lot of different baby items that now that we're at a standstill I'm going crazy. Rob wants to work on the 2nd bedroom slowly, and I understand why he doesn't want to jump head first into another big project so soon. But I need something to occupy my time. I have several hobbies I could work on, but they're not interesting me right now. We will work on the quilt square for Maddie this weekend, and hopefully get it in the mail on Monday. But I need more than that to focus on. One of my online buddies blogged about all the different activities and hobbies she's doing to pass the time while she waits for a placement. I'm trying to use that as a kick in the ass for me to do something besides bitch, moan, watch the clock, sleep, and shop. I'm going to start working with my beginner's knitting set that's been sitting in my office for months. I got interested in knitting while I was in the hospital pregnant with Madison, and my mother-in-law would sit with me and work on knitting a baby blanket. She showed me a couple of things, but I was only kind of interested at the time. So it's about time I got focused on something cheaper than eBay.

Sleepy so very sleepy

I didn't sleep well last night at all. I kept waking up every hour or so all night long until 4 AM. When I woke up at 4, I couldn't get back to sleep until 5:30. Well, my alarm is set for 6:30. I didn't feel too bad once I got up and going, but once I ate lunch I was so sluggish. It took all I had to stay awake and focused until the end of the day. Which is pretty hard when you're reading something as dull and boring as a tariff. I'm hoping to get to bed earlier tonight and hopefully stay asleep. I plan on giving myself a perm tonight because my hair needs straightening so bad! And I don't want to spend the extra money to go to my salon or wait another 2 weeks for my stylist to get me in there. I used to do my own perms a lot several years ago so hopefully since my hair is cut short I'll be able to do a good job on my own tonight. Well the episode of Dragnet that I'm watching is almost over so it's time for me to get up and get to work.

Oh yeah I almost forgot to mention that this cycle we trying out the Conception Kit. It's similar to a home insemination kit that's supposed to help increase your chances of pregnancy, and help overcome things like low sperm count/motility, hostile vaginal environment, cervical position, and several other issues. We know there's not a problem on Rob's end, but we've yet to figure out my issue so hopefully this will be the key. I've looked at the kit for several months once someone on my trying to conceive board mentioned it. But since it's $300 we weren't running to spend that much all at once any time soon. I had been stalking kits on eBay, and had been outbid a couple of times. But finally I lucked out and snagged one for only $92 bucks. I love me some eBay! I'll be sure to post a review whether it's good or bad.

Lessons

I was feeling down today, and basically in a horrible mood. I was snapping at everyone which was just Rob and the animals. I get like this from time to time. I know a lot of it is letting little things pile up and weigh me down. Several times I was in tears about one thing or another. Rob basically got tired of hearing me complain about how everyone else that simply has sex manages to get pregnant and deliver a healthy baby as easy as I gain weight. So he left me sitting in bed crying, but I could care less if he was there then or not. So I started looking for something to watch on TV instead of the Engaged and Underage special on MTV I was watching earlier. I ran across Meet the Robinsons on TV, and decided to watch it. I've seen it before, but it's been a while. The main character said something that just hit me hard. He said "Let go of the past, and keep moving forward." How could a simple children's movie be so profound? It was like it was meant to be that I was still in bed today at 4 in the afternoon to see that movie again. I needed to see that movie again. One of the other things from the movie is that it shows how much better the kids' lives turned out just because they were adopted. The main character and his roommate at the orphanage were both at a harder to place age since they were no where near cute and cuddly babies anymore, but they both found forever homes.

This made me re-think our adoption plans. We're going to try to get our 2nd bedroom turned back into a bedroom so that we can hopefully foster to adopt an older child in addition to the infant that we've been hoping for also. So it's back to work because I think this 2nd bedroom is going to be quite a bit harder than the nursery. That bedroom serves as my home office, exercise room, and cat hideout right now. So I will need to move a lot of stuff to other parts of the house and possibly get rid of some things, but I know it will all be worth it in the end. Wish me luck!

Just Thinking

I wonder why my life has gone the way that it has. I know that looking at someone else's life doesn't give you a real picture of it, but just looking from the outside in makes me think. I wonder why there's a girl that I work with that smoked all through one pregnancy and is probably going to do the same thing with her newest pregnancy yet she's got a healthy baby at home. This isn't the 60's when we didn't know the dangers of smoking. We all know the risks and harm that it can do. I wonder why some people can ignore doctor's orders and they will be just fine. I guess it really is true that God takes care of fools. The other day I sat in a meeting, and had to do all I could not to cry. I looked around the room and realized that I'm the only woman in the room that doesn't have a living child. I've got smokie the bitch announcing to the world that she's due in April, and everyone is gushing all over her. She's what maybe 4 weeks along, and announcing it to everyone. Then I think of everything that we've done to have a chance at having a child. I've seen so many doctors that I've lost count. I've read so many articles and medical studies that I should have a 2nd degree by now. I've taken so many medications that I feel like an old lady when I pull out my stack of pill bottles. We've gone to weeks of classes, filled out tons of paperwork, and had people going through our home and lives like the paparazzi. But all I have to show for it are memories of an angel, a headstone, a depleted savings account, an empty nursery and a broken heart.

So what do I have that others don't. I have a wonderful, supportive husband that's still there despite all I've put him through. I have the perfect daughter. What's more perfect than an angel? And I got to carry and care for an angel for 6 months. I've got a house full of furry little creatures that love me. I've got my health even though I'm no where near as healthy as I used to be. But I'm not disabled or disfigured, and after having blood pressure readings of 280/240 I very well should be brain damaged or worse. But my God kept me safe. I've got a deeper relationship with God now than I've ever had before. I've got so many friends that love me. I've got the best church family I could ask for. I've still got both of my parents, and I will hopefully be an aunt next year. I'm on my way to becoming a foster mom. I've known sorrow, disillusionment, and loneliness, but I've prevailed. I don't run from or avoid other people's pain. I've learned the power of reaching out to a total stranger in their time of hurt. I am stronger because I have known pain.