Ahoy, Hola, and Aloha One Last Time

I always wonder when a blog I've been following doesn't get updated... for weeks... then months... what happened to the person? Why did they stop writing? Are they writing in a new blog somewhere else? What's going on in their life?

Now my own blog is one of those mysteries. Not so mysterious, really. I stopped writing because I didn't think anyone was reading it. I was weird and protective of this blog anyway and didn't tell any of my real-life friends about it. For some reason I only wanted people I didn't know to read about my life - but I wanted a whole lot of them, an outpouring of interest and support from a vast anonymous slice of humanity. I think that was too much to expect when my life is not that fascinating. And when I'm too nervous about privacy issues to post any pictures.

I think I started writing to express some of my sadness and insecurities. At the time they had to do with my relationship and my career, such as it was. Later on I was all mopey about being infertile. A blog is therapeutic in the sense that writing down a problem can often bring the solution into focus. But it's not a good way to get sympathy from the world at large. I only realized that that's what I wanted after I stopped writing.

I'm in a better place now, as maybe my last post indicates. I was grateful at the time I wrote it for more than just the things I mentioned. I was afraid to mention it and jinx myself, but I was incredibly thankful because I was pregnant again. I needed a lot of help to get to that point. Luckily I got that help, and I have a wonderful baby now.

So this is Erin signing off - not exactly 'mission complete,' because relationships and families are works in progress, and let's not even talk about the career right now - but at least 'mission under control.' And 'mission moving to alternate forms of expression for now.'

Thanks for reading. :)

Grateful

Last night we took our daughter to a Christmas party. It was all adults, all couples, so there wasn't really anything for her to do. And dinner wasn't even served until 8:30 pm, about half an hour after she's usually in bed. But she was soooo good.

I had brought a book and a stuffed animal for her, and after I read her the book once, she curled up on the sofa and quietly read it to her cat. Then she toddled around nestling up to various adults, talking to them about her cat, and giving them shy smiles. I was proud of her social skills. She sat next to me at dinner and tried a little bit of everything on her plate. Then she played quietly by herself the rest of the evening. At one point, one of the women at the party, someone she had never met before, was asking her interested questions, and after a short conversation with her my daughter smiled and said, "I love you." I gotta teach her to hold her cards closer to her chest. :)

Honestly, I have nothing to complain about. I have an amazing, dishy, multitalented husband who I was so lucky to meet and marry. I have a beautiful little girl who is just the light of my life. We have a lovely home, and general security, and we're all in good health. I am blessed.

Canine Phobia

I used to think, when I was a kid, that as soon as I was grown up I would fill my house with pets. I'd have dogs, cats, guinea pigs, birds of all descriptions - my house would always be full of activity and interest, and I'd never feel lonely. I guess my experiences with animals up to that point had all been pretty positive. My own pets could make me happy on the worst of days - so I didn't see why you wouldn't want to open your home to as many of them as possible.

Now I understand. It's not just the maintenance and cleaning that, as an adult, I'm now responsible for. It's also the experiences I've had with animals who weren't as friendly and loving as the ones I grew up with.

I have a regular route around my neighborhood that I like to run. On the course of this run, I'm routinely barked at by large dogs who lunge up against their fences aggressively. Even though I've learned where they live and am expecting it, it still scares me when a dog barks at me suddenly. More than once, a dog has jumped a fence or come through an open gate and come after me. I always stop running immediately, so I won't look like prey, and turn to face the dog and try to look alpha. Then I gradually back away until the dog appears to lose interest. I've never been bitten, but that may be just luck so far. I wish the owners would train them not to bark at passersby (our dogs never did that) or would make sure they couldn't get out and chase people. For the first time, since we've lived here, my dominant feelings about dogs have been that they are potentially dangerous.

I definitely don't want my daughter to feel that way or to realize that I do. When I'm pushing her stroller around the neighborhood and a large dog barks at us, I try to make light of it, saying "Hello dog!" So far, I don't think she's scared of dogs, but if one gets out and charges us when she's in her stroller, it will probably be frightening for her.

One of my friends also adopted a dog recently who is pretty much completely untrained and has a lot of energy. When we visit her, the whole time the dog is jumping on us, trying to chew on our feet, or racing around the room. It's difficult to have a meal there because the dog is constantly trying to get the food off the table and doesn't listen when my friend says "no." The dog also has growled at my child. After two visits, I don't feel safe taking my daughter over there any more. My friend doesn't use any discipline, beyond the occasional suggestion "please don't do that," which the dog totally ignores and probably doesn't even realize is directed to him. I feel like I can't visit my friend again until she either gets rid of this dog or it mellows with age.

I remember feeling total love for the dog I had when we were growing up - she was my best friend. But my daughter doesn't love dogs like that, and no wonder. I feel disinclined to get a dog as a pet in our family (even though I would train it, and wouldn't tolerate bad behavior), just because being around unpleasant dogs has soured me on the whole idea.

Another childhood dream, up in smoke?!

The Circle

Today I had the day off from work so I joined my mom at her weekly sewing circle - a morning in a comfortable room flooded with sunlight, chit-chat, and animated discussion of projects, grand-children, holiday plans, and other pleasures. We drank tea and ate cookies. We admired one another's quilts. I sewed a potholder. It was so pleasant and peaceful and full of good female energy. At one point, as the group discussed all the things they want to do and see, my mother said, "How could anyone ever be bored?!" and many of the others laughed in agreement. I can't wait until I retire so my life can be filled with mornings like that.

What's Gonna Work, Part II

I had a thought. I was reading about Sarah Michelle Gellar, who was married for eight years before having her first baby. She talked about how being with her husband for that period gave them time to grow and change together, so that they were a team when they finally had to deal with the stress and excitement of caring for a newborn. It sounds so sensible.

When I was younger, I always thought I would like to live with my husband-to-be for about five years before we actually got married, just to get used to being a team together. In the end, that schedule got compressed a bit. We weren't lucky enough to find each other until we were in our late twenties. I started to get scared that marriage would never happen, so I pushed for it to happen sooner, and then as soon as we were hitched I started pushing for a kid because I was so afraid I wouldn't be able to conceive.

Maybe some of the challenges that my husband and I have faced - the frustrations of not working together, not agreeing on priorities, not agreeing on whether to have a second baby - are due to us having a baby so soon after we got married. We didn't have a lot of time to just play around together - go on trips, learn about each other.

It was a relief to me when I got pregnant so quickly the first time - whew, met the age 30 deadline - and I have loved raising our daughter. But perhaps there would have been less stress and more teamwork if we'd waited. I often felt when our daughter was brand new that I had to shield him from the inconvenience or difficulty of the baby by handling what I could by myself. I did all the feedings, most of the diaper changes, all the laundry and planning and doctor's check-ups and scheduling and packing. He never had to get up in the night with her when she was little.

It wasn't until recently that I felt at all resentful of that - when I heard a friend who's expecting a child of his own soon mention confidently that he expected to take the late shift and feed the baby before going to bed, so his wife could go to bed early and catch up on her sleep. I felt sad that I didn't get help like that. (Realistically, I don't know how he could have helped, since I was nursing and didn't want to skip a feeding for fear of having my milk production drop. But I would have liked him to offer. Why couldn't he have magically read my mind and known to make such an offer so I could have refused it?)

Anyway. The thought was about how our lives might be different if we'd waited. Or if we didn't have children. Maybe we'd have more time for each other. Maybe we'd see each other more as partners in this whole endeavor. Maybe I'd feel more united with him and more trusting of his decisions. Sometimes I have the sense that everything (the joined lives, the house, the child) are my ideas that I've talked him into, and whenever it's not super-fun I feel apologetic. I promised it would all be great and I feel that it's my fault when it's not.

Is it too late for this to change, I wonder? Are my choices just to accept that he's the way he is, and not try to make him different, or to have serious conversations where I try to bully him into being different - is there no organic way for us to get there together?

Or are we just "in the belly of the beast" raising a small child, and things will all get easier as she grows older and more self-sufficient? Perhaps child-rearing is a challenge to the best of marriages, and there are better days ahead. Not that I think our marriage is strained. Just not as perfect as some other people's seem to be.

Priorities

There's some old poem about how your kids will never remember that your doilies were starched, but they'll remember the trip to the park one summer day, or some such thing. It always makes me feel obscurely guilty to read it. I do take my daughter to the park, and we bake cookies together and do fun stuff like that. Every Wednesday we go to storytime at the local library. Every Saturday we do arts and crafts at the local nature center. Pretty much my whole emotional being revolves around her and being her mother.

But I also spend a lot of time cleaning, and occasionally ignore her in favor of cleaning. There are days when she's whining for attention, dragging on my arm or whatever as I'm trying to dust, and I go on with what I'm doing or tell her "Play by yourself." At those times, I know I'm putting the cleanliness of the bookshelves over her immediate happiness.

One of my mom friends is kind of the opposite of me. I think this particular friend is awesome. I have so much respect and admiration for her, and also just think she's a really nice person. She has been so supportive of me during my hard times. She's different from me in that she has a hotshot career she's not putting on hold to do child-rearing; she basically single-parents her son most of the time while her husband is on frequent business trips, but she's also working full-time and a rising star in her field. She's also different in that she does not spend time cleaning. Their house is always kind of chaotic and filled with a million half-finished projects, lonely socks, dog toys, etc. - the kind of house where the clutter alone tells the story of artistic, energetic people who have better things to do than dust.

Sometimes I wish I was more like her. I'd like to send the message to my daughter (and anyone who might visit our home) that what matters most to me is the time we spend together.

Other times I think of justifications for my cleaning obsessions, like:
Keeping the house relatively clean helps justify my working only part-time. I'd feel bad if my husband came home after a long day and found the house a disaster zone.
This way, I can always find stuff - I don't have to hunt through clutter looking for those missing jigsaw pieces or my green earrings. Everything is pretty much back where it belongs, at the end of each day.
If visitors are coming over, I don't have to make a special effort to clean up.
I like doing it. When I'm in the midst of a routine yet satisfying cleaning job, I feel like I'm achieving "flow" - that state of total absorption where you don't really notice the time passing, that comes as near to a definition of happiness as anything.

I'm not sure I can turn it off anyway. Last time we visited my friend, I had to fight the impulse to start cleaning her house, even as we sat around and talked. If she went out of town for a weekend, I would love to go over there and just wash dishes, do laundry, glue broken toys back together, and sweep until the house was clean. It's sick, right?

Flakes

Why in the world are some people so flaky? I have a few old friends I'm trying to keep in touch with, who just aren't returning the effort. I email them from time to time, call and leave messages, but no response. One of my friends, an old college roommate who I haven't seen in a few years, actually stood me up at a restaurant where we planned to meet to have lunch. I was looking forward to catching up with her, but she never showed. I called her and got her voicemail as always. Later, when I emailed her to ask what had happened, she wrote back that she decided to take a nap instead. She didn't even apologize.

I tried to toss it off like it was no big deal. But I was so hurt. When I think about it now, I'm still hurt, even though this was some time ago. I don't think I've ever done anything to offend her or been anything but a loyal, fun friend to her. I guess she just has bigger fish to fry.

I have enough friends who do seem to care about me and whose company I really enjoy. For some reason I feel compelled to try to keep up the friendship with these few, however, who don't seem to be giving anything back. I wish I could just let it go. I'm like an ex who can't come to terms with the fact that I've been dumped.

What's Gonna Work? Teamwork!

I love the WonderPets. (My daughter's summary: "A piggie, a turtle, and a duck... go in a boat... and get lots of animals!" That's about as accurate a description as I could come up with.)

The first time I saw the series, the cutesy voices made me squeamish. The voices are done by little kids who lisp and say things like "We'we a gweat team!" But I've gotten past that and learned to appreciate the finer aspects of the show. Here's what I like about it:

1. The pacing. Each episode opens with a crisis - an animal's in trouble! - and the WonderPets have to go to the rescue. There should be an underlying sense of fear and urgency, what with the need to build the flyboat anew (from the pieces scattered around the classroom in unpredictable places), get to an unknown destination, and solve some puzzle to save an animal that's in danger. Each of those tasks seems difficult. But the WonderPets don't hurry, and they don't worry. They take their time discussing the situation ("A baby seal... stuck on a rock... this is sewious... we have to help her..."). Then they mess around in the costume chest looking for their capes, and slowly put the boat together. They don't worry about how to get there because the boat just finds its way magically right to the animal. They don't feel trepidation about solving the puzzle because they just know that they'll find the tools they need. They trust each other completely and know that they'll win. I wish I could approach unknown tasks with the same calm faith in my own success.

2. The solutions. The tools to solve each puzzle are always right there, often in the early experience of assembling the flyboat (if they have to use a flashlight to retrieve a piece from the closet, then it's a sure thing they'll need a flashlight later to rescue the animal). Other times there's a pile of bricks or a rowboat right next to the homeless animal or the river. There is always one right way to do it, and they always find it.

3. The simplicity of their enjoyment. They take time out from their rescue missions to giggle and try on other costumes, slide around on the ice, or dance their way through the forest. They don't fight or whine that they're tired, like real preschoolers, or argue about the best way to go, or complain that they're bored. They just seem to find pleasure in everything that happens.

4. The clues. The decorations in the classroom are always relevant to the later adventure - if they're going to be rescuing a frog, there will be pictures of frogs, a diorama of a pond, and stuffed frogs displayed around the room. It's fun to notice these things and predict the storyline.

5. Old-fashioned charm. The classroom is a one-room schoolhouse of the most comforting, archetypal kind - cupola with bell, flag, peaked roof, maple trees planted all around. Very New England. Each episode opens with the children's voices saying goodbye to the pets, cheerful and friendly. Compared to the way my daughter is often crying and fighting as I try to transition her from one activity to another, the simple good naturedness of the children as they leave seems idyllic.

6. The supportiveness. The WonderPets really seem to like each other. They're always saying appreciative things - "Great job Tuck! You're really good at swimming!" "And you really helped when you found the wheel!" They don't take opportunities to cut each other down like real people do when they're working on a team project. They are just constantly pumping up each other's self-esteem. I wish people were like that.

Breaking the Taboo

I'm in my first cycle of fertility treatment. I feel like trumpeting the news to everyone. For some reason, it seems to be kind of a taboo topic - other people who are having fertility problems don't seem to talk about it, and people who are not having problems don't seem to want to know. I have the impression that if I do talk about it, I will just make them uncomfortable. One person I told (over email) responded to every other part of my email except for that bit of news, and another person I told (at a group dinner; we were sitting side by side) immediately turned away and began a conversation with the person on the other side, as though I hadn't spoken. I have to just assume that the topic made them uneasy and they didn't know how to respond.

I think when I mention to people that I'm doing fertility treatment, it's akin to saying, "I'm in pain. I have this great sadness in my life, and I'm trying to get help to fix it." I think the ideal response would be to recognize that pain and to express some kind of support. I guess what I'd like to hear is something like "I'm sorry you have to go through that. And I wish you luck." That would be nice.

Of course some of my friends have been wonderfully supportive. They do me the favor of asking periodically how it's going. I feel sometimes that I'm desperate to talk about it, because it's a big absorbing thing in my life. It's affecting a lot of facets of my daily existence, what with the pills and the injections and the waiting and hoping, so it's such a relief to be given permission to talk about it. One friend even confided that he and his wife are having similar problems but didn't know where to go, and I was able to recommend the fertility clinic I've been visiting.

My strongest support and ally through this whole process has been my best friend, the one who went to the same clinic and is now pregnant. We're easily capable of talking about this stuff for an hour at a time. It's amazing how much we have to say to each other about it. I still wish we were pregnant together, but I'm hoping we'll still have young babies around the same time.

Halloween Finery

Last week I took my daughter to the Halloween parade at her daycare. It's one of those iconic traditions, like the first day of school or the first loose tooth. Just like when I was a kid, all the kids marched around the playground in their costumes, occasionally peeling off to grab their parents from the sidelines or chasing each other across the hopscotch markings. There was much carousing and fun.

Oddly, I didn't notice a single homemade costume. Some of them were dimestore-type Superman capes and plastic masks, while others were beautifully stitched Renaissance tunics with velvet boots, but they were all new looking and from a store. When I was a kid, I made my own costume every year. In fact, I had been thinking about sending my daughter in a cat costume. I made the ears using a black headband and pipecleaner wires, with black tights stretched over them. In the end, she went as a dragon instead, because I happened to have an old purple dragon costume someone had given us.

2) In my daughter's class of 15 kids, every other little girl was a princess. They were all wearing really pretty costumes, too - sparkly tops, tulle skirts, tiaras, magic wands, sashes. A couple of them had glittery fairy wings too. I watched her marching around rather grimly in her potbellied dragon suit - and then I saw the other little girls skipping and laughing together in their beautiful costumes, tossing their hair - and I felt such a pang for her.

She's only 3, but already I worry that she's going to be sidelined, ignored, or bullied by the popular girls in the years to come. There are a million reasons they might find for ostracizing her. She doesn't talk enough. She doesn't have "pretty" hair. All her clothes are hand-me-downs or from the thrift store. A fair number of them are actually things that I or my husband wore when we were little. She doesn't watch TV, so she doesn't have that pop culture connection. I keep the radio tuned to classical, so she doesn't know about Hannah Montana or popular music. She doesn't have a Barbie.

Most of the time I send her off to school wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, sometimes overalls, and sneakers. The sweatshirt is often something that a boy might wear. It seems like a practical, simple outfit, exactly what I would pick for myself. When I see the other girls at her daycare, though (on a regular day, not Halloween), that's not what they're wearing. They're all dressed in little skirts with tights, sparkly ballet-flat shoes, and Gap shirts. They all seem to have long hair that their mothers put up in bows or ponytails that cascade over their shoulders. My daughter's hair is a basic bowl cut, too short to put up.

I thought I had a few years before I needed to worry about her peer group, but perhaps at age 3 they're already noticing that she's different. I don't know how to equip her to deal with it. My own strategy was basically retreating into my own mental world, which was dominated with ancient Celtic mythology (Rosemary Sutcliff novels), horses, and fantasies where I had telekinesis. Whenever anything bad was happening to me, I just shrank away inside so it was almost like it was happening to someone else. Bullies eventually gave up on me because there was so little reaction. And the popular kids didn't notice me. That's not what I want for her, though. I want her to be happy in her own identity, and to choose her own friends - not just be stuck with whoever she can get.

Patchwork Quilt

My favorite part of the day is walking home from the train station. It's about a half-hour walk, through residential streets and across a park. This time of year, the whole way is carpeted with scarlet and orange maple leaves, and the trees lining the street are flaming, almost shimmering with color - gold and yellow and crimson and violet. It's gorgeous. It always makes me think of the Babes in the Wood fairytale where the forest birds cover up the lost children with a patchwork quilt of autumn leaves to keep them warm.

In a week, when the time changes, it will be too dark to walk home and I'll have to start taking the bus home (in the dark), which is kind of gloomy. And I'll miss the fresh air and exercise. The knowledge that my walks are almost over for the year makes them especially bittersweet.

But I can't complain... this has been the most lovely autumn in recent memory. We've had day after day of warm, 70-degree weather with blue skies and golden trees. Wearing short sleeves and racing through crunching autumn leaves is wonderful fun. When February is getting me down, I'll just have to remember how lucky we were to have this time.

Brought To You By Glycine Max

Tonight we had a really great dinner. Stir-fried vegetable dumplings, with just a drizzle of soy sauce, steamed edamame, and brown rice. Man, it was good. As I was eating it and enjoying it, it occurred to me how much of it was soy based. The dumpling shell, probably, and the contents, more or less, the sauce, and the edamame of course. And my daughter had fake chicken nuggets, which are also probably entirely made of soy. It's so versatile. It's amazing that you can get bread, meat, vegetable, and milk (not to mention ink, fiber, and probably other things) out of this one plant.

What is wrong with me that as I sat there thinking about soy, I realized I knew the scientific name of the plant?

How To Have a Great Funeral

I started thinking about this because we had a going-away party for a colleague at work, who was fired - or "let go" is the polite word for it. Her job position was eliminated. Anyway, she had worked for the organization for 10 years and was well liked, so a lot of people were at the party. We went around the table and shared our well wishes and our memories of working with her. One person spoke about her successes in her job, another about her warm and convivial presence in the office, someone else about her artistic talents (she does crafts, needlework, photography), someone else about her great sense of humor, someone else about how she'd learned a lot of botany from her, and so on. There was a great diversity in the comments and they seemed to build up a really nice well-rounded picture of a life.

It occurred to me that if I leave or am fired, I won't have a goodbye party like that because people at work don't really know me that well. I have lots of interests that are separate from my work life, but I don't really bring them up at work. No one there knows about my poetry or how I like to run or my interest in young-adult fiction or my loud bird or my projects around the house and garden. No one knows I used to be a competitive ballroom dancer or that I have tree-frog reveries. For a long time I kept my personal life so separate that no one there even knew I was in a relationship until I asked for time off for my honeymoon.

That's OK; I don't care about having a great going-away party. But it did get me thinking about how if you want to have a really good farewell - or, for the ultimate in farewell parties, funeral - , you have to have a life that's full of variety and interest. You have to connect with people on lots of levels. Otherwise no one will have much to say, and it will be kind of a dull occasion, the equivalent of a yearbook full of messages like "I didn't really know you that well, but you seemed nice. Have a great summer!"

So here are my suggestions for having a good funeral:
1. Be a pillar of the community. Have a career like pediatrician that touches lots of people, or even better orthopedic surgeon to an athletic team, so you get to meet lots of famous people. This will generate a lot of memorable encounters that friends can recall at your funeral.
2. Be talented at stuff. Sing, paint, weave, whatever - create things that are beautiful.
3. Be funny. Not in a weird quirky way like me, but in a way that will allow other people to share jokes that you made later, and that will get a whole room laughing.
4. Travel a lot and have a bunch of amazing life experiences like parasailing, skiing in the Alps, participating in a marathon or cross-country bike tour, etc.
5. Get married and have kids and grandkids so you will have a lot of family memories. It's ideal to have at least one child of each gender so no one will think you "missed out" on raising one type. Don't get divorced.
6. Write a book that touches a lot of people.
7. Have the kind of joie-de-vivre that makes people see you as an inspiration.
8. Stay in touch with childhood friends but make new friends wherever you go, so there will be people who knew you from all the different times of your life.
9. Be a joiner in the community - church, civic association, Girl Scout leader, etc. so all your neighbors know you.
10. Bake really great cookies that people will remember decades later.
11. Be musical. For some reason this really goes down well - and gets people smiling when they remember it.

That's all for now. Looking over this list, I can see that I'm really falling short so far. I bake so-so cookies, write short stories that I never let anyone else read, make friends easily but don't quite have the knack of holding onto them, and make a living by cobbling together office work and largely solitary freelance work - nothing spectacular. I don't have a very loud voice and people often don't hear the things I say. Sometimes I'm even being quite funny and no one hears me. Maybe that's why I prefer writing.

Perhaps it doesn't really matter, because after all I won't be at my own funeral. And the people who really know me will still miss me, so why try to impress those who knew me only peripherally? Still, it is something to think about.

Whimsy

I love my dad. I think we have a lot in common as far as personality - both of us a little high strung, a little prone to depression and social neediness, both introspective but thriving on friendships and being around other people. I think a few years ago he went through a low point of sorts when he was struggling to figure out what to do with his time - unable to find meaningful work or social contacts. Things seem to be looking up for him now.

The other night at dinner, he was being so funny - he had stuck a couple of little white dots on the side of his index finger and made a closed fist and then wiggled his thumb up and down so it looked like a little misshapen face was talking. He was using a funny voice for it too. My daughter was laughing like mad. One of the little dots kept falling off, so he stopped. Later in the meal, someone noted that it was International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and he said, "Arr, well in that case, ay'll just stick my one eye back on and..." and at that point I was laughing so hard I missed the rest of what he said.

To really get why this was funny, maybe you had to have known him a long time and known how he used to be (from my perspective, anyway) sadder and more emotionally fragile. I remember years when he was so miserable at his job, and other years when he was so miserable trying to find a job and not succeeding. To see him so relaxed and whimsical and able to be silly like that was wonderful.

Then later in the evening he was setting up my daughter's travel crib for her to sleep in, which is the kind that folds up into a bag, and my mom made some comment about how it was like setting up the Big Top, and he started singing this tweedling ridiculous falsetto circus music as he jiggled the legs into place. Which was hilarious to me all over again. I am so glad to see him happy like that.

Special-Needs Girl

I'm editing a book about special-needs kids and educational strategies. The whole process is presented as being very encouraging and caring - if Tier 1 strategies like working in small groups don't help a kid who's having trouble learning to read, then the team meets to develop plans for more intensive interventions, like working one-on-one with a teacher to practice reading skills. There's never a word about blaming the child. It's all very positive and geared toward just helping him or her get up to speed. The underlying theme is that if a child is trying and not succeeding academically, it's not a personal failing, it just indicates that the child would benefit from a little extra help.

I like this philosophy so much - it's really refreshing and I almost feel like I'm getting a bit of therapy on the side, just from reading it. Because I am so angry at myself and ashamed of being infertile. I keep blaming myself for it, half-hoping someone will say "It's not your fault," but no one ever does, so I go right back to mentally bashing myself. There are these messages floating around and getting into my head that if I just relaxed, or tried harder (whatever that means), or ate better, I would get pregnant like all my friends who get pregnant without even trying. Which boils down to my infertility indeed being my fault.

Anyway, as I'm reading this book I have such sympathy with the kids who are struggling to learn to read, a basic skill that everyone around them seems to be picking up with no problem, and I can imagine how frustrated and sad they feel, and how painful it is for them to judged "stupid" by their peers. And what a breath of fresh air, like a guardian angel, a reading therapist might be, someone nonjudgmental who knows that they're doing their best and can sweep in to help them before they really sink into the mire of self-hatred. That's what I need. An infertility therapist to come save me.

What Am I Doing with My Life?

I just spent an entire day indoors, working on my computer. A glorious late-summer day it was, too, in the 70s with warm sunshine and low humidity and brilliant blue skies. All day, as the time was passing, I was longing to be outside, and conscious that this day would never come again. And now it's gone.

The reason I was chained to my desk was that I stupidly said yes to a bunch of different freelance projects at different times, and they all arrived on top of one another and are due soon, so I'm pretty much working all weekend. Sometimes the freelance life really gets me down. It has allowed me to maintain a decent income after I cut my hours back to half-time at my regular job, and I get to spend a lot more time with my daughter this way, and we save money on childcare. But it often means that I don't get any time off. In the evenings when other people are relaxing in front of the TV with their feet up, that's when I have to go to work - even though I spent the day taking care of my daughter and cleaning the house and running errands and cooking, and I'd like to rest too. Sometimes I find myself really looking forward to the weekend just because the freelance work is piling up and it will be my chance to crank through some of it while my husband babysits.

I weigh this lifestyle against the alternative all the time. If I was a normal person, with a full-time job, I'd be enjoying a three-day weekend. I'd have gone out to spend the day with my husband and daughter - they rode the train, went to the playground, had lunch downtown. We'd have had fun together. Then we'd have come home and the two of us could chat, or read, or whatever while she napped. Then we could have a family dinner and go watch our Netflix after she was in bed. A great day.

Instead, I just worked on the computer for 12 hours more or less straight, with breaks to get a cup of tea or eat junk food. Once I went out on our deck and breathed in the sunlight and fresh air for a few minutes, leaning on the railing with my face raised, and tried to just absorb some of the day through my pores. Then I went back inside.

And for what? I don't earn very much freelancing, no more than I do at my jobby job. But once I've agreed to do an assignment, I have to follow through with it. And when I'm offered one, I'm always scared that if I turn it down, they'll never call me again. So I get myself into these fixes. Yesterday was like today, and tomorrow will be the same. All for a little bit of money, when I would rather have had the day.

Fongo Fever

I have discovered a new dish that I love. Last week, we took a quick vacation to Puerto Rico, and I ordered this every single night. It is

MOFONGO!

It's basically mashed, fried plantains stuffed with fried meat or vegetables. It's often served in a big wooden mug, like the kind of thing a pirate would sip grog from. It's kind of like baked potato, or yucca, or taro (all of which I love), but even better. Each night, I had a stomachache from eating too much mofongo, but it was totally worth it.

Yesterday I bought plantains and tried cooking them myself. My husband laughed at me as soon as he came in the door and saw me frying them: "Someone's got the fever for the fongo!... Haven't you learned your lesson?" But it would take more than a stomachache to deter me from eating this stuff.

As it happened, I bought the wrong kind - ripe ones; they turned out good, but they're sweet like baked banana. The starchy flavor and texture I liked was from green ones. So I'll pick up some more and continue my experiments in the kitchen soon. Wish me luck!

Happy Fifth!

Wow, I've been keeping this blog for five years now! I am amazed. I didn't think I'd stay interested in it that long. I figured either I would get sad that no one reads my posts, and give up, or I'd get nervous that too many people read my posts, and go silent. Well, I am a little sad that no one reads my posts (snif!). Except for my one loyal and awesome reader who knows who she is.

I wonder what the secret is for getting lots of readers. Maybe having a wild and interesting life? But some people just write about their kids and post pictures of the new lamp that they ordered from a catalog and get 1000 comments a day. Being terribly funny? That's beyond me, although I can be wry or funny in an unintentional, tripping over my own feet way. Emailing real-life contacts and asking them to read the blog? But then I wouldn't be able to write about them behind their backs.

Perhaps the secret is reading other people's blogs and posting comments on them. But I do that sometimes, and never get a return visit. Realistically, I will have to just keep deriving satisfaction from writing this blog and not from hopes of being "heard."

I read my first entry and had to laugh. I was being so coy. I don't have a sister! And my middle name is not even Phoenix, though it would be great if it was. Anyway, I look back on the person I was five years ago and I've definitely changed. As I read those early entries, I see how desperate I was to be liked. I was nervous that no one - my boyfriend, my coworkers, my friends - liked me enough and I was going around trying to be really sweet and appealing so that they would. I'm not so much like that any more. I feel stronger inside and more capable of shrugging things off.

There was also an element of hopelessness and fear in some of the early entries, because I wanted things (marriage, a house, kids) that seemed unattainable. And now I have them. I am just rolling around in those riches every day. Really, I am much happier for having them, just as I knew I would be, and the fact that I got the things I wanted so much makes me feel a bit more secure. Plus, motherhood has given me a self-esteem boost because I've learned how to do all these things I never had experience with before, and I'm endlessly capable and magic in my child's eyes. Even though I'm ranting and raving these days about being infertile, secretly it's not throwing me too badly. I feel confident that I'm going to overcome it and either manage to conceive or manage to be OK with a one-child family.

I wrote a lot more about what I was reading, back in the early days. I still find time to read nowadays, mostly on the train to work. I should write more about that. Right now I'm rereading Heart's Blood by Jane Yolen. I feel like she is really writing about a real place, the details are so well worked out. I can feel the hot shimmery desert sun, and see the fields of burnwort, and hear the dragons houghing and smell the heaps of fewmets the bondboys are shoveling. I wonder how much time she put into imagining all that stuff, before she even started writing the story.

I also used to write a lot about cleaning, and how guilty I felt for doing that instead of going out and being an interesting person. As though some invisible outside presence was going to judge me for not being well rounded enough. I don't worry about that any more. I still like cleaning, and I still spend way more time at home than I do expanding my horizons, but it's all right with me.

All in all, it's been a good five years.

Vicarious Happiness

My friend is pregnant! The one who has been going to the same fertility clinic as me. Back when I found out she was receiving fertility treatment too, I wrote that if only one of us could succeed, it should be her. And she's done it. She actually got pregnant just a couple of days after our heart-to-heart. When she told me today, I was so happy and excited I was jumping up and down. She's like a sister to me, and there's no one I know who's more deserving of the chance to be a mom. She's very worried that she'll miscarry and hasn't told anyone yet, besides her husband and mother. But I have this joyful, calm certainty that it will all be just fine.

I wish I was pregnant too. (Duh. That's like the duh statement of the year.) The day that I ovulated all on my own, back at the beginning of July, was the same day that I knew she was having her IUI, and I had this wild hope that we would both get pregnant on that same day and go through the whole experience side by side. I imagined raising our babies together and having them be like siblings, or at least cousins.

Now that she's succeeded, and I haven't, I feel like I'm watching her run away down a racetrack while I got left at the starting gate. I should be running down that track too. It feels wrong that I'm still stuck here and can't, due to various factors, even start my own treatment for two more months.

I was genuinely, thoroughly happy for her for about three hours, with not even a flicker of anything else - and the joy of her pregnancy was on my mind continuously during that time. But then around midafternoon I started to feel a sadness creeping up on me. I ought to just be simply happy for her. It's stupid to feel that twinge of sadness and envy. It'll be my turn eventually, I hope. But I want it now.

It's almost as though the universe was listening when I made my bargain that if only one of us could get pregnant, it should be her. Well? the universe is saying. You got your wish. And I feel greedy and selfish all over again because even though she did get pregnant, I want to be too.

Cutting Some Slack

Today I was thinking about that standard list of things that people say to women who are dealing with infertility, that are intended to be nice but are actually hurtful - you know, "maybe it's for the best," and so on. And the general gushing that people do who aren't infertile, basking in babylove, talking about how many children they will have, etc. It's hurtful because it's little nagging reminders of that thing that seemingly everyone around you can have, merely by deciding they want it, whereas for you it's out of reach and only obtainable (sometimes) if you spend a lot of money and time, and sometimes not even then. So fundamentally unfair.

But. Something it's important to remember is that the things people say are intended to be nice. People whose lives aren't consumed by infertility don't always realize what the emotional landscape looks like. I've been guilty of that myself.

Years ago, before I was even married, I was talking to a coworker who was trying to get pregnant and had so far been unsuccessful. "Maybe you're working too hard. You should just take some time off," I said. I was repeating something I'd often heard about infertility. Another friend who was with us said, "Have you considered adoption?" Our coworker said, "Maybe. And yeah, I've thought about it." Looking back on that conversation, I realize how stupid our comments were. Her infertility probably had nothing to do with working too hard. And yes, she had probably considered adoption. She didn't need us to suggest it. But the two of us, unthinking 20-year-olds that we were, thought we were providing support and suggesting helpful things she might not have thought of before.

Another time, a friend confided to me, soon after the birth of my daughter, that he and his wife had been trying to have kids as well, but she had had a miscarriage. I said, "Oh dear. I hope you'll have better luck next time." That comment haunts me - what a flip thing to say to someone who had been through the deep misery of a miscarriage. I'd probably be inconsolable if I actually got pregnant and then miscarried. And that I said it to him with my healthy newborn in my arms was probably the salt in the wound.

I want to cry out in protest whenever people say things that hurt me. Just today a friend sent me a video of her kids playing together (her daughter is exactly my daughter's age, and her young son was conceived right around when I wanted to get pregnant again and realized I couldn't). She commented, "They're going to be best friends for life!" That's what I want for my daughter too, and I can't have it. I felt so frustrated and upset as I watched the video. But true courage, I think, is cutting people some slack and just clamping down on that internal dialogue of pain - smiling and replying as though they said the right thing. Because they probably meant to.