Candy is Evil

It's Trick or Treat time and that means bags and bags of "fun size" candy bars are EVERYWHERE! But what is really so "fun"about this size? It's smaller than normal and that should mean that you eat a little bit of candy...not that you eat 5 of them because it's just a little piece after all, right?

Perhaps instead of buying candy I should just buy a tub of lard and liberally apply it directly to my abs, buns, and thighs because that's where it's going to end up! It might not be as much fun for the kids who show up at my door hoping for actual goodies though.

Here's something that is fun and calorie free...my puppy dressed for Halloween! She only had this on for about 5 minutes but it was the highlight of my weekend!

Nothing new

God, my life is boring! I was so excited to watch Lost tonight only to find it's a rerun and it screwed up my whole night! And no Ghost Hunters either! What the heck is a childless woman supposed to do on a Wednesday night while her hubby is at bowling, anyway? Cleaning? Laundry?!? Oh Hell no! I have vowed that I won't do housework on his bowling night, it's just a thing with me. You might suggest that I work on the quilt I spoke of in my last posting but I'm not in the mood and you just have to be in the mood for stuff like that. I did work on it Saturday and Sunday though, and that's something.

So I thought in lieu of being a couch potato staring at the boob tube I could write a lovely update on our adoption process in my blog tonight instead. Problem is there's nothing to update! I have all the paperwork done that I can do myself and now I'm just waiting for my husband's physical next week and for him to finish his autobiography, which he obviously isn't working on tonight since he's bowling. He has actually started it now and is very proud of the 2 paragraphs he typed all on his own (never mind the fact that I had to go back and fix all of the spelling and grammatical errors...he tried) but he has a lot more to do. I set a deadline of Tuesday for him though since his Dr. appointment is Tuesday and I want to send everything off on Wednesday and be done with it! So that's where we're at with that.

Otherwise, my life is pretty boring right now. Well, at least that's what I let people believe in order to keep the questions at bay. I have only told a select few people that we are adopting and I probably won't tell anyone else until we are further along in the process but it's hard not to spill! It's difficult because people keep asking us "what's new?" and as much as I want to burst out and tell them "WE'RE ADOPTING!" it just seems too early to talk about so I give my usual response of "Oh, nothing much".

It's weird because when someone gets pregnant there is an acceptable point where they tell people and everyone is happy for them and excited (except for the IF types who are bitter and jealous like me), and more importantly everyone understands the process. There is a due date and a pretty well known chain of events leading up to the birth of a bouncing baby boy or girl. People can relate. But with adoption the average Joe has no clue what's involved or how long it takes or even how to react to the news. It's not their fault, I didn't know a thing about adoption before a couple years ago when I started researching it, and even now I couldn't tell you what the "acceptable" response would be to the news. Let's face it, we're in the midst of the process and I still don't know exactly what to expect next or how long it will take before we bring our child home. It's frustrating to say the least. That's actually how I came up with the name of my blog, I feel like the road to adoption is like an unmarked path and you just have to sort of stumble along and try not to get lost! Thank goodness we have people to help along the way but I know it's going to be a bumpy road ahead! So in the mean time I'm keeping the news mostly to myself and when the time is right I'll spring it on people and just brace myself for all the questions! Hopefully I'll have some answers by then, for my own sanity's sake! And if not maybe I'll just start making stuff up. Who's gonna know? ;)

Lazy Saturday

It's 7:30 am on a Saturday morning...do you know where your dogs are? Mine are generally jumping on the bed, attempting to give me doggy kisses (otherwise known to the non-dog-loving community as licking and slobbering on my face) and overall just irritating the crap out of me until I get up to let them outside and feed them. I suppose if my life consisted of sleeping, eating, and going outside, then I would probably behave in this manner too with a blatant disregard for the fact that it's Saturday and my mommy and daddy are trying to sleep in! So as usual, after several minutes of this I get up and hobble downstairs (my broken/sprained toe still bothers me after 3 weeks by the way) and they get to go pee and eat some chow, then my husband continues to sleep while I am now wide awake with hyper dogs. This happens pretty much every Saturday and Sunday of every weekend...with me being the one to get up with them 90% of the time...which makes me wonder if this trend will continue when it's a child waking us up instead. I expect so, and I guess I'm all right with that. That's what mommies are for, and it's starting to sink in that I'm going to be one soon! Huh.

Anyway, this was supposed to be a super busy weekend for me but things didn't turn out as planned. A group of my friends from work were going to make a trip to Six Flags Great America theme park for their Halloween Fright Fest. I haven't been to this for years but I remember it being really fun, not just because the rides kick ass, but also because they have the place all decked out with Halloween decorations and then they have random people dressed like characters from scary movies all over and just other fun stuff. Anyway, I really was looking forward to this weekend but the weather report for Saturday has been saying "rainy and cold" all week and those weather people picked today to be right! Rats! So now I find myself with a free day! Not that I don't have anything to do...I have tons of things I could be doing, several things I should be doing, but only and handful of things I want to be doing.

So I have decided that since fairly soon I won't be having much free time anymore on account of that whole mommyhood business, I am going to pull out a quilt project I started for myself a couple years ago but never finished and I'm going to put that sucker together! (Kerri and AJ if you are lurking out there, remember that flag print fabric I was talking about on the TTC boards a LONG time ago? It's that project...I never finished it.) I'm feeling very excited about this since I never seem to finish anything that I make for myself. I always start the thing, then put it away because I decide I need to make a baby quilt for a shower gift or a wedding or Christmas gift instead...things where there is a drop dead date that this item has to be complete or else I'm off to Target to buy something off the registry! When it's a project I'm making for myself there's no deadline, and I am the queen of procrastination! So I am officially taking today for myself and I hope that by the time I get around to posting here again I can show a picture of the finished quilt top! I'm sure I won't get around to quilting it just yet...baby steps!

Oh, there is one catch...I haven't quite finished my autobiography yet and I need to get that done quick so I can stop thinking about it! I'm stuck on the last question, "Why do you want to adopt a child?". It seems like such a simple question but the answer is kind of complex and I haven't quite ironed out what I want to say. The simple answer would be because we couldn't get pregnant, but obviously there is much more to it than that! I've been stewing on that one for a while... hopefully I can come up with the right words and can put this sucker to rest! Then it's up to my husband to get his work done so we can mail these in! I don't quite know how he's going to do this, he doesn't type and his handwriting is terrible and I can hardly read it, so I think I might have to be his secretary for a night and take dictation! It's a good thing we have a deadline on this one (supposedly 30 days from the date we received the 2nd packet) or we might never get it done!

Well...the dogs are napping and my husband is still sleeping...time to go dig out that fabric and get started!

This is harder than I thought

I'm working on my autobiography for our homestudy application and it's taking me forever! Questions like "Describe your parents' personalities." and "Describe your marital strengths and limitations." should not be that hard but how do you put something like that into a concise little statement? It's very difficult and thought provoking and I feel like I'm back in school working on some annoying homework assignment. I have been procrastinating too, I'm good for that, but decided that I better get my part done so then I can move on to nagging my husband until he finally decides to look at the thing. He's very excited about adopting but getting him to sit down and look at the paperwork has been a challenge. Pretty soon I'm going to have to revoke his TV viewing priveledges until he gets his homework done! See, I'm working on my parenting skills already! Next I'll be grounding my dogs for getting into the garbage and putting the cat in time out for chewing on the plants! Furry kids need discipline too! ;)


Here are two of my naughty furbabies now, Molly and Patches...could you punish these cuties?!?

I'm just not ready yet!

I'm not ready for the stinking Christmas season! I don't know if anyone else noticed, but the holiday ads have started all over the place...on tv, in newspapers, catalogs, etc. Can't we just get through Halloween before they start ramming Christmas down my throat?!? My husband works retail and they are opening their big toyland tomorrow and you know there will be some crazies out there lined up waiting for the store to open so they can get the best deal of the season on whatever their little darling wants this year. I personally consider it WAY too early to be thinking about that stuff but maybe I'll feel different one day when I have a child.

Now please don't think I'm a total scrooge, I do enjoy the holiday season to some extent. It's just that every holiday season for the past 4 years has been progressively more depressing as we spent yet another Christmas and New Year as a childless couple. Somehow all those ads and "Toyland" openings just made the hurt of infertility so much worse. And I remember every year thinking that next year we for sure would either be pg or have a child, that next year just HAD to be our year. I guess that this Christmas I can say that with some degree of likelihood that it will actually come true, but I don't want to jinx it! And that still doesn't mean I want to see Christmas ads in the middle of October! Thank goodness I get to sleep late tomorrow and leave the early bird shopping to someone else...

What day is it anyway?

Do you ever have those weeks where you are so busy that you don't even know what day it is? On more than one occasion today I had to stop and think about it, like seriously ponder how many days I had gotten up to go to work this week...ok 3 so it's Wednesday! Or else I have to think about what I watched on tv last night or what is on tonight in order to figure it out. Like I know Lost and Ghosthunters is on tonight and those shows are on Wednesday...voila! Thank goodness I am able to get home in time to watch my shows or I might just keep working right on through Saturday and Sunday too! What a loser workaholic I am. I hope things slow down at work pretty soon or I'm going to lose it! Aaagh!

How pathetic is this?

Let me just preface this story by saying that health insurance sucks. I cannot understand how we can spend so much money a year on something that totally blows so badly. And then just when you think you have your policy limitations figured out and you have a dr. that you like...WHAMO your employer changes insurance carriers and you have to start all over! Now granted, if the premiums are going to be lower and the coverage better than I guess I can live with the change but it's just really damn annoying is all.

So anyway, as you may have figured out from that statement, our insurance company changed and now my old dr. is not covered by new insurance. I haven't actually been to my OB/GYN for a while now because we gave up on TTC and any kind of fertility treatments in general, but I had grown fond of her in our time together. That and she is the dr. who FINALLY diagnosed my endo and gave us the reason we weren't getting pregnant which was like winning the lottery in some ways...or losing it...depends on how you look at it. Sort of a glass half full or half empty kind of a thing I guess. Anyway, she had fixed me up as best she could and even though my entire reproductive system had been a horrible mess, she was always positive about our chances of getting pg someday. Unfortunately that never happened, but she always sent me home with a glimmer of hope and I appreciated that.

But today I had to go to the office and fill out a release form to have my records transferred to yet another new dr., one that my new crappy insurance will support. And as I left the office, knowing that I would probably never be in there again, I felt really sad! I was almost tearing up in the parking lot!! Is that the most messed up thing EVER? And the thing is, I was emotional upon leaving not just because I did like this dr. and was cranky that I had to switch again, but even more I just felt really strongly that this was some sort of closure to all the infertility garbage that we had been through in the past 4 years. Like I was saying goodbye to the past and moving on to the future, a graduation of sorts. Is that totally insane? I guess that's the kind of twisted shit we go through with we deal with IF, you spend so much time with your legs up in stirrups, counting cycle days and analyzing imaginary pg syptoms and then you finally go just a little bit crazy. So anyway, that was a long story to a short point...I wish I didn't have to switch dr's but I'm ready to move on.

And on the adoption front, we got our second packet of info and it's off to another round of lovely paperwork! This month's installment includes some employment verification, everything you wanted to know about our financial status in this world, and the straight to paperback autobiography of us! Want to know about my parents? My childhood? How I met my wonderful husband? Hmmm...do I leave out the part that we met in a bar when we were both tanked up? I don't think that lends itself to a responsible parent. Oh God, what have we gotten ourselves into?!?

I hate that I am such a klutz!!

On Thursday night I was doing laundry and I had all these piles of clothes and various other crap laying all over. Anyway, I got up and went to step over a bag that was sitting there and I didn’t quite clear it, got my foot caught in the handle and went down, jamming/spraining, or possibly breaking my big toe in the process. I didn’t think it was that bad a first…I mean it hurt like crazy but I thought I just stubbed it or something…until it started swelling and was bleeding under the nail and was turning all sorts of fun colors. I thought perhaps I should have gone to the dr., but what can they do about your big toe? Nothing is what I’m hearing from all my friends and co-workers who all seem to have a story of when they broke their toe or someone they know did it, apparently there ain’t much they can do about it. I thought after hobbling around all day Friday and then again on Saturday it would start to get better but here it is Sunday morning and I’m still limping around and in pain!! It just ticks me off. If only that stupid bag didn’t have a handle…oh well. So I guess I’ll just sit here and whine about it and use it as an excuse to not do much today. Sounds like a good plan.