Who couldn’t use a little more happiness in their life?

You too can join in . . . Mel’s Happiness Challenge!

I’ve been meaning to get to this . . .

I really got stuck on the defining happiness part. Everything I came up with was so glib, so trite. But those initial ideas have stuck with me. So I am going to explore them, glib or not. My first thought was: Happiness is a day at the beach. It’s true. I feel so much better there. I get to a beach, a few times a year if I am lucky. When said beach is a drivable destination, I swear to you that I start to feel better, I mean really energized, when I get to that part in the trip when I’m not in sight of any beach or water yet, but I can smell it. I usually turn off the AC in the car and open all the windows and let that salt air rush in all around me. I suck that smell in like it’s an exotic scent with magical powers. (maybe it is?)

Part of Mel’s challenge is to choose something that we have easy access to. Well, as much as I’d love to visit the beach daily, I can’t really do that.

Last week, I was at a nearby lake, paddling my kayak and I had a similar feeling of enjoying the moment, feeling alive, feeling a part of something bigger than myself. It wasn’t the beach, there wasn’t salt in the air, but I was able to catch a glimmer of that essential feeling I get at the beach. So, I decided to experiment and see if I could focus in on that feeling in other places. And I find that I can, commune with nature if you will, even in a city park.

If I allow my mind to slow down, if I allow it to filter out the everyday noises, I can start to hear the birds or the crickets or the quiet in back of the traffic or the human chatter.

So that will be my ritual. Once daily, for the month of September, I will spend 20 minutes each day looking for that little bit of peace in the middle of an ordinary day.

(As it happens, I get an easy start, because I am saying goodbye to Summer by spending Labor Day weekend . . . you guessed it . . . at the Beach!) But the goal is to find that peace here at home.

Traveling Book Update

Bea has finished with the traveling book and has written a lovely review here. She has now sent the book along to Thalia. Bea has also expanded our traveling library by generously sharing her copy of So Close which is on it’s way to Vee and Max.

I am doing a piss poor job of keeping up with posting the book’s whereabouts, so I am going to give the Sisterhood of the Traveling Book it’s own blog.

Coming soon to an RSS feed near you . . . details to follow.

Here’s One for Old Time’s Sake

When I started this blog (an eon or so ago) my original premise for a theme was to use fortune cookie fortunes as my post titles and then build the post around them. But that turned out to be very impractical. What was I thinking? So, I posted a fortune now and again when it happened to fit my mood or be noteworthy in some way.

So much has happened since then, much of it squashing my belief in luck and fortunes. So much so in fact, that I started a new blog; a blog with a new theme not to mention a new plan (bye bye ART, hello adoption).

So, today I ordered Chinese take-out for lunch and I snagged a couple of fortune cookies for old time’s sake.

And wouldn’t you know it, they’re kind of fit for blogging.

“The harder the fall, the higher the bounce.”

And my personal favorite:

“You’ll never find a better sparing partner than adversity.”

How do these cookie makers know so much about my life?

I’m planning to take down Fortune Cookie Follies in the next month or so. I will give the Traveling Book it’s own blog so we can keep up with that. And as always, you’re welcome to come visit me at Cats in the Cradle (where the baby should be) anytime! E-mail me for an invite if you don’t have one already.

catsRkids2

Beagle’s House of Cats

The cats wanted their own page. So here it is. This little blog annex will serve to keep me from posting a million cat photos on my adoption blog, because I’ll be posting them here instead!

It’s all about the four-legged kids!

Traveling Book Update

Reader # 5 was Heather at Big P & Me. As fate would have it, it arrived in her mailbox at a time when she really needed the distraction. Please go give her some love. She zipped through the book in one night and now our traveling book is getting ready to take a rather long journey to see Baby Blues over in the Philippines!!

On: Transitioning from Infertile TTC’er to Hopeful Adoptive Parent

I’ve been wanting to say more about the transition. About knowing when you’re ready. About knowing whether adoption is right for you, right for your family, etc.

In trying to get my own grip on the issues, I went blog surfing. I was looking for others who were in the same place of transition or had already passed through it. In doing so, I stumbled across one of those scuffles that occasionally arises in blogland. It really rattled me. I mean really, “I can hardly think straight”, kind of rattled me. It really disappointed me that instead of support, a whole bunch of judgement was being thrown around. Oh, and of course the infamous anon type commenters threw some fuel on the fire as well. Well a couple of days have passed and I still can’t find the right words to express how I feel about it all.

Then today, on a blog I recently found, by a woman who’s views I respect, was a post that said it better than I could anyway. So go read her post. Because the best I can come up with on the topic right now is “yeah . . . what she said.”

Thanks Omegamom.

Garage Sale

The above books are available for sale by me, gently used, at amazon marketplace. Just click on the book’s cover photo for a link to the amazon sale listing.

Bye Bye Bio Baby

This post was originally puplished on Cats in the Cradle. It’s being republished here at the request of the Town Criers. If you would like to read along as the rest of my story unfolds, just send me an e-mail so I can invite you to the new private blog.****
Well, it is official, our last IUI (how many was that anyway??**) is over and AF is here yet again. We are done with the biological route to parenthood.

Are we sad?
Yes.
Are we relieved?
Yes, in a way that is also true.
Are we glad we already started the homestudy for domestic adoption?
HELL YES!
(I would truly be drowning in panic and pain right now if I did not already have the next step well underway. )

It’s hard to really express all I feel right now. I am truly happy to be moving forward with adoption. I am truly ready to embrace all it’s ups and downs. And I also mourn the idea of creating a life, creating a family, in the usual way. I used to think I would give anything to make sweet love with my husband and create a baby together. But it’s not true. I wouldn’t give anything. I would not give my soul, my sanity, my joy for living. There has to be a limit to what we endure. The things I feel saddest about are things like letting go of the idea of seeing my husband’s eye’s or smile in my child’s sweet face. I don’t mourn so much the pregnancy or the childbirth but I do mourn those lost months of connection to our child. I mourn the fact that I will not be able to make sure that every day of the child’s first nine months will be healthy, safe, smoke and drug free, etc. But most of all I mourn the autonomy of having a biological child. I am coming to grips with the fact that I will forever share our child with another set of parents. I will be my child’s second mom. I will also be the child’s real mom, but I will always need to explain that to the ignorant and reassure myself of it when the insecurity creeps in. I’ve always been a fairly generous person. I don’t mind sharing as a basic concept in life. But when it comes to MY child, our child, I’m not so crazy about the sharing part. But, I am willing to stretch and grow until that feels OK too.

So, I’ll end this post saying that I want to share something with those of you who are near the same place I am. If you’re wondering whether to do more ART or give up or adopt or whatever. I know I was not ready to adopt until I was ready. Friends and family may have thought we should give up already some time ago, but it’s a very personal thing and you have to get there in your own time and in your own way. So, I’m not here to say, adoption is better or right for everyone. I am not here to urge you to stop torturing your body and soul. You will know when enough is enough. And you will also find peace in whatever route you take after that (adoption, childfree, all those other choices that don’t feel like choices in times of despair). I wish I had gotten pregnant. I really do. Even this last cycle, I was surprised and disappointed by the BFN. You think I’d be immune, but I’m not. I really thought maybe I could fall into that group that “gets pregnant as soon as they give up.” But I am not crushed like I have been some of those earlier times. I also feel very excited about the prospects of adopting. There is a great relief for me in having a cycle day one when I don’t have to call the doctor and start scrambling around to order meds and rearrange my schedule etc. The biggest “plus” about adoption is that you know it WILL work. It may take longer than you like but it will end in parenthood. So, there is also a real relief in that. There is also a real joy in being able to knit a baby blanket without feeling “jinxed” and there is a real joy in looking at cribs and bedding and clothes and knowing you will actually need these items one way or another. I can look at babies and not want to cry (pregnant bellies not so much).

So, I am sad that we did not win the ART lottery but I really am OK with closing that chapter. I am looking forward to being an adoptive mom because the important part is the mom part!

**I did not blog much about this last cycle. Losing Oscar threw me, getting Jack preoccupied me and really I was way past blogging about follie counts and hormone levels. I did count and here’s the grand tally for those who like numbers:

Clomid+IUI=3
FSH inj + IUI=4
IVF/ICSI=2
FET=1
more FSH + IUI=6

GRAND TOTAL: 16 ART cycles in 3 years.

I was 35 when we started with RE in April 2004 (we tried on our own for 6 months previous to that) and I will soon be 39 in May 2007. Fuck, it has been a long haul.

Enough is enough. This was our limit. Yours may be different.

To an eggcellent bunch of bloggy women:

Happy Easter!

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