I'm baaaaack

Let me start at the beginning...and when I get to the end...I'll stop.

So, as I have posted before, I went through a miscarriage at the end of Oct. Things are looking up from that. I wasn't particularly far along ( but ask any women, it doesn't matter how far along you are, you still grieve and, to me, still feel like from the time you see that positive test result, you are responsible for that little baby growing inside of you) It hasn't been easy, although, I go around and pretend it is. I think because I was only about 5 weeks along most of the people close to me feel like I should have 'gotten over it' rather quickly. I guess to them it wasn't 'real', it wasn't solid, to them, it wasn't a loss. I've gotten better. I am healing, but I am also trying again! I would have never understood what it takes to TTC after a MC( for those of you unfamiliar with the 'lingo' I'll break down a few simple terms that i may use throughout this particular post  MC= miscarriage, TTC=Trying To Conceive, BD= Baby Dance ( sex to make a baby), AF= Aunt Flo, O=Ovulation.
Whew, it's been too long. So much going on! I've been on a journey lately and it's taking over!I joined a few sites to aid me in taking charge of my fertility( Honestly, I didn't think there was a problem with it, and still don't, but I conceived my first two children with minimal effort) I downloaded apps, I bought sperm-friendly lube, I bought a plethora of home pregnancy tests, OPKs, a basal body thermometer......the list goes on and on. I don't think I'm infertile, or not ovulating or whatever....I just want to feel in control while trying to accomplish something that, ultimately, I have no control over. These sites have actually been a big help to me though. I've never 'planned' to have a baby before. I didn't know what to expect. My favorite site, babycenter.com, has a community of women going through every stage of being a mom, from TTC to dealing with teenagers, from diapers to field trips! Personally, during my journey, I stick with the ones I'll call- The Craies ( still haven't gotten that one key on my keyboard fixed)

These ladies in my group are something else. We look for women on our same cycle "CD 1-anybody with me?" These are our 'cycle buddies'. We chart, we temp, we test. We chart, we temp, we test. When someone gets a BFP (big fat positive) we rejoice. ( but honestly, I think a lot of us grieve and mourn too, we think "Why not me?' Talking to these women, being a part of this group, i sense a camaraderie, we all share one thing in common that has brought us together....wanting a baby. Some are on their first time trying, wishing to be a mother. Others, like myself, have children already and are trying for more. Some are going through a loss, after a loss, after a loss. We are trying IVF, IUI, baking soda, pineapple core, evening primrose oil, Robitussin, the SMEP, laying on our backs 20 mins after sex with our feet in the air like some contorted and amateur acrobats, taking control over our husbands penises like what they carry through them is more important than the man himself. We chart...oh boy do we chart. Honestly, I have looked through so many of those charts I can barely tell a difference anymore. Pregnancy charts look the same and have the same pattern as non pregnancy charts, temps rise and they fall, they rise again and they fall. I hate to admit, I am in a group of 'Chart sharers' We have a hard time discerning our own charts so we post them in hopes that others can tell us what  the hell we are looking at, we comment on charts to try and tell the poster what they are looking at.

I feel insane some days on this journey. I feel like if I come to my hubs with one more 'get pregnant' idea he'll have me committed. I feel ludicrous POAS (peeing on a stick, either OPK or HPT) every day. I have to admit I have become obsessed. I apologize to my husband...not wanting him to REALLY think I'm off my rocker and think 'why do I want to have a baby with this psycho?!" The only time I feel normal, is when I logon to my site and see thousands of women doing the exact same thing as me, with perfectly understanding husbands like mine, who just want to feel like they have some type of control over this part of their lives. I'll say this....I have never been more in tune with my body than I am right now. Honestly, even for non-conceptional purposes, some of the tools I have learned to use should be taught to all young women. Knowing your body is empowering!!! For those of you TTC, I'm with ya, it will happen and we just gotta be patient, get help if it's needed, and listen to our bodies.....For those of you reading just to read...Don't judge us. We know we are insane, at least we are together. 
That's all for today....just had to share. <3

So much for good Fridays

Ya know, I love it...just love it when I start out having an awesome day and just like THAT it changes. It could always get worse, ya know Murphy's Law "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong". Today is also not a good day for reflection, but rather for....oh I don't know, something else!

So, today started out beautiful, sun shining, 50 degrees. Just beautiful in every way. Payday was today (wouldn't ya know) and I had decided earlier in the week that I was going to treat myself (after bills were all said and done) to some winter wardrobe additions. So, I get on Amaon (yes, yes that pesky key is still broken, what really sucks is I can't even tell you what key it is, you just have to figure it out Muahahaha) to place my order. So, I get my additions all totaling 85 dollars (this, mind you, was for two sweaters, two pairs of leg warmers, a dress, a tank top, and two pairs of leggings) I didn't pay over 15 dollars for any one item (ladies, you're with me on this....how easy is it to spend 85 dollars on ONE item?...I think I did pretty well in getting EIGHT items). I text my hubs (cause the account is in his name, and the credit card  used is his, I was going to just give him the money back later in the day) Apparently, he didn't remember the conversation we had had the night before when I told him what I was going to do. I get a text that says "Call me at work please" Oh Lorday- Here we go!! So I call and even though he says he's not mad, I know he is. I tell him I'll change the payment to come directly out of my account if it's the money that's the problem. I tell him I'll cancel the whole order if it's something else. "Oh no" he says, "Don't cancel it, just change the payment options and next time tell me before you order something" :O Are you serious?! I DID tell him, I talked to him about it the night before so that he would be aware and know what to expect when the money came out. It's not my issue that he wasn't paying attention. Plus, I texted him as soon as I ordered so it's not like I waited for him to get the e-mail confirmation, or waited until it showed up on his account. Suffice it to say, I'm a little butthurt. I'm a little butthurt that my husband wasn't paying attention to what I said, I'm a little butthurt that he chose to make a big deal out of something small. It's definitely not the money, we live comfortably, I take it he was upset that he thought I was doing this all out of the blue. I feel kind of embarrassed....is that weird? And I feel awkward, like a child caught doing something bad. I feel kind of how I felt one Christmas. I was 4 years old and I was at my great-grandmothers house. There were piles of presents along the wall, and being 4, I was super excited. I grabbed one up and opened it. I know now that I shouldn't have done that but back then I was 4, I didn't know. I mean I guess I knew not to mess with things that weren't mine, but I didn't think about that, I was too excited! Anyway, when my mother saw me with the present (that was DEFINITELY intended for someone else) She screamed at me. I've always been sensitive in nature and usually take things to heart. I was so mortified, and disconcerted. I didn't mean to do anything wrong, I didn't know I was doing something bad. That's the exact way I feel today. Embarrassed and awkward. So much for my beautiful morning.

BTW:I know I shouldn't feel embarrassed but I do.

Not going back....

Today, I have decided to be random. I don't want to reflect this morning. I don't want to write a story today. I just want to type and see where it takes me.

Getting ready for work this morning (and as you can tell, I don't do much at work) I get a call from the military base (my hubs is military, so ya know how that goes) wanting to congratulate me on my pregnancy and offer classes that I could take and so on and so forth.
  What these people didn't know, mainly because I switched my PCM to a doc out in  town, was that I had suffered a M/C at 4 weeks. I wasn't really upset that I got the call (I mean, how are they to know? I can't expect my doc to have called and told them, when base has  nothing to do with my primary care) It just caught me off guard. I actually almost chuckled. It's been about 3 weeks since the M/C and I like to think that, while I will never forget what happened, I have moved forward from it. So, when the lady on the phone asked me when my due date was, I had to stifle my giggle ( it was more of a, 'haha how ironic' laugh than a ' oh this is hilarious' laugh)  and tell her- There is no due date...I miscarried. Of course, I was flooded with 'I'm sorry'. I've been swimming in 'I'm sorries' for 3 weeks! (Okay, now I seem like a monster, let me explain; I am sad, I am grieving, I never wanted to lose a pregnancy but after the first week, I was ready for it to be over. I was ready to move on. What happened had happened and I wasn't going to dwell on it, and get depressed and blah  blah blah) It just feels like every time I am past the situation, and finally moving on, and trying to conceive again, I get smacked in the face with some subtle reminder of what happened. It's like the universe isn't ready for me to be healed or something. Oh well, like I said no dwelling on it. KEEP MOVING FORWARD! On to a new day, with ripe new possibilities!! One good thing to look forward to? Assassin's Creed 3- after work. Oh, and sex...that's right....sex!

   Have a good day fellow bloggers and readers!

The Men

       Determinatly looking into your past doesn't always have to be a bad thing. Living in the past is never good, but it IS good to ruminate about the things that have happened in your life and apply them to the present. Learning from your mistakes, gaining experience; it's all about reminding yourself of who you are and how you got there.

      Living in the country as a little girl, I remember being so free. Maybe, it was the fact that I lived with three men (my uncle, grandfather, and dad) and could choose when to brush my hair or when not to.Or perhaps it was  never being told to go and take a bath. I just kind of did it...when I wanted. Don't misunderstand me, I was well cared for at this point in my life. These men had never had a little girl around, they hadn't the slightest indicative idea on how to raise one. Call it neglect, or bad parenting, or what-have-you. I know, these were some of the best days of my life.

      Never being a 'miss-priss', I regaled in being raised by these three men. They were all highly intelligent; scholars, dexterous learners, men of science and history! Boheimeians!
      Teaching me everything they new about Art, Literature, and Science was second nature.
My first bedtime stories were 'The Raven', and 'The Tell-Tale Heart'.  Twain, Dickens, Kipling, Burton, Shakespeare-these were the writers that filled my playroom library. What I learned gave me the foundation I have to be a free-thinker, to be a dreamer and, to sometimes, be a realist as well. I fell in love with the Arts. One by one these men changed my way of thinking and I've always been grateful.

      Uncle Tracy was very young when I lived with him in that house in the country, with the two mile drive way, the deep green grass, the acres and acres of land. Not being long out of college, there was a sort of immaturity about him that I related to. I would knock on his door when he got home and he'd answer, knees on the floor, shoes on his  knees, and I would swear he was a midget. I'd swear he had some sort of shrinking machine locked away in his closet. He'd let me in and we would idle away  playing nintendo, listening to classical music. He'd teach me Italian, how to play piano  and how to shuffle cards. In that room, I learned who painted 'Waterlilies', who sang 'InchWorm', who played  Mitridate, re di Ponto. I learned a love of Art.

     With PawPaw, the lessons were somewhat more domestic in nature. I have never in my life tasted such a dish as his beef pot roast or his spaghetti. I would get a kitchen chair, pull it up to the stove, and sneak sips of that wonderful sauce. Days when we had crab legs were my favorite. It'd be dim in the kitchen and we'd have newpaper covering the table. There were bowls of sweet, salty butter and tangy cocktail sauce lining the table. I felt like a fisherman ( weird, I know) out to sea, wind-burned and salt-scrubbed, going  to the galley to have dinner after a long day. Dehydrating meat was another little 'take-away' for domestic life I acquired from my PawPaw. After buying a select cut of meat, he'd marinade it in a special, secret marinade. I would help him to put it in the dehydrator only because I wanted to be a part of this magical (or what I thought of as 'magical') process. I'd wait for hours and hours for it to come out. To this day, as bad as it may seem, I love beef jerky but it doesn't hold a candle to my PawPaws'! PawPaw was also an 'artist'. The garage was filled with canvas and oil paints, model planes and paint brushes. I'd sit and watch him apply the paint to the canvas and wish I could be as effortlessly talented as he. Mountains, trees, ducks, everything he painted came to life on that canvas. He'd let me sit back and watch, explaining to me the different mediums, different brush strokes to use. From that period on, I wanted to be a real artist. One who took a blank canvas and created something astonishing out of it. My grandfather was, among other things, a master story teller as well. My first sleepover, I called him at two o'clock in the morning. I was scared to death to be sleeping in this unfamiliar house. He talked to me, told me stories rather, until the daylight broke through the windows and I felt it safe enough in the world to sleep. Some of those stories were unimaginable! The day he fell into the lake for instance, I thought he was making it up!! Ice skating on a froen ( yeah, yeah, one of the keys on my keyboard doesn't work, can you guess which one??) lake, miles from home and he falls in!! Or the more believable, like the first time he chewed tobacco and vomited everywhere.All in all, he taught me to be a chef, an artist, and a storyteller.
  
  My father, on the other hand, was not around as much as the other two important men in my life. He worked non-stop and was also trying to finish college. When he got a spare moment though , he would take us on  adventures. We'd go down to Mrs. Deal's where we could get penny bags of candy and 'blue' Doritos. Taking our sought after treats, we'd go fishing on the river.  Dad always brought enough  stuff to make us think we were camping. He made the best baked beans you ever put in your mouth! I mean, smack  your granny good! He'd pull out the little can of gas, the portable stove-top burner and a camping pot and create magic! I don't know what he put in those beans but I cannot for the life of me recreate them. Dad also liked to take us on random adventures, when we had no idea where we were going and he wouldn't tell us. We'd drive for hours and end up in the most arbitrary places...The peanut fest, the secret beach, an art show, a concert, cook-outs. These are memories I cherish and will never get back. Writing them down, or typing them out, helps to remind me how I felt back then, and how much I miss that life.

Okay, looking back on what I have written.....Haha! I see a lot of things that maybe a child shouldn't have been doing....Like not taking baths, listening to Edgar Allen Poe before bed, putting a chair next to the stove- My Oh My....It may not have been safe, or sanitary, or butterflies and rainbows, but I adored it., every minute and I wouldn't trade those few, simple  years for anything. It helped to mold the person I am today.

Memories

    Getting older, you start to reflect more and more on your life. The things you could have been, the good times you had that you can't get back, the people you've met. Some should go fuck themselves and others, you wish were still around.
     I remember......


    It's November. I'm stuck at the house 'cause my momma is havin' a baby. Don't know why we need some ol' baby anyway. Aren't I enough? I think I'm going to take Margie (that's my great grandma, but she won't let me call her grandma or granny so I call her Margie and she's okay with that) to the dog pen. I don't have a clue why I love it there so much (maybe 'cause I want a doggie and not some do-nothin' brother...yelch) So we trek it out there. All I can really do is point and tell Margie "Doggie"? "Doggie"?. "Yes Mandy, that's a doggie". But, I love it. Seein' those dogs  is my absolute favorite thing in the world. And Margie? She's my absolute favorite person to do it with. She walks a few feet behind me so I can skip if I wanna, or I can pick up a rock if I wanna. With my Momma it's all "Amanda, don't get too far ahead" "Amanda, don't pick up that nasty thing" "Amanda, don't you skip too fast or you'll fall down".  Not with Margie, my Margie loves me.
      After going to see the dogs Margie gets a call from the hospital. It's my Daddy. Momma had the baby and we need to come up there to see the ol' fart. Margie gets me ready but we can't leave just yet. We haveta wait for PawPaw. (Margie can drive, she only got her license when she was 21 but I don't think she likes it much). I don't like the hospital. It smells like dirty socks and old people. I'm so tired from my walkin' to the dog pen and back, I don't wanna go and see my brother. I wanna go home, I wanna go home with Momma. I start to pitch a fit but Margie bends down, looks me in the eye and says "Mandy, you stop that bein' ugly, Jesus is watchin' you and he doesn't want to see you being ugly, you hear?" I do anything my Margie asks me, I put on my big girl face and walk with her to my Mommas room. Soon as I walk in my Daddy grabs me up ('cause I'm his favorite, ain't no little baby gonna change that). He tells me how much he misses me and that he'll be coming home soon with Momma and the baby (Avery is his name). I kiss my Daddy and then look down at my Momma. She is holdin' this little tiny bundle with a squished pink face. Looks like they been tryin' to get him to eat that ol' nasty squash too (I make that same squished face when they try to make me eat it) I don't say nothin' for a minute and my Momma gets a worried look on her face. "What do you think Mandypoo"?, my Momma says. I still don't say nothin', everyone can tell I'm thinkin' real hard about it. Finally, I look right at my little brother, tiny like my baby dolls at home, squash eatin' pink face and I say "It's a dog!"


One of my very first memories. Of course I elaborated the dialogue and all. I think this will be the basis of my blog. To recollect the important memories in my life and try to tell a story with them. Much more to come.