February 13, 2008

THE OLD AND THE NEW

My friend here has a 19 year old son. I was alone with him for a while at their house yesterday and, not knowing what else to talk about, I asked him about music. We began trading favorite songs and bands. He knows all the new stuff -- he knew of Weezer because of "Beverly Hills" but didn't know the blue album, for heaven's sake -- and none of the old. Shoot, he was born in 1989; I loved hearing the question, "What is Styx?" (In all fairness, my husband reminded me that Styx is even before my time; I have my dad to thank.) He taught me some new bands and I filled him in on some old and some esoteric; he now knows what alt-country is (he liked the Jayhawks and Wilco, but Uncle Tupelo was "too twangy" for him). And I confessed that I had indeed been to a Snoop Dogg concert; I think that solidified my coolness.

You know, my new cell phone is also a music player, but I have no idea how to use it yet. I also don't listen to music like I used to. When I was in France, I practically wore out my cassette walkman. Riding the bus all over that town, I was constantly in my own little world of music. I don't do that anymore, I don't walk through the world with headphones on.

But talking to this kid yesterday, I have taken a second look at my CD collection with fresh eyes. I have pulled out stuff I haven't listened to in years. And it takes me back...

It also makes me want to spend more time with this kid. I could show him Seu Jorge and Jude. And let him listen to "Come Sail Away."

Man, I remember vividly the first time I listened to "Come Sail Away."

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February 03, 2008

NOT SO SUPER BOWL

One year ago today, I assumed I was in the process of getting pregnant. I could barely concentrate on the Super Bowl because I thought there were miraculous changes going on inside my body. If you had told me then that I would be watching the next Super Bowl unpregnant and without a baby, I think you could've knocked me over with a feather. I can't believe we've been running in place for a year.

I know some people think I was incredibly naive when I went into this process. And apparently I was. I did not know that people had to try to get pregnant. Sure, I had friends with actual medical conditions -- endometriosis, polycystic ovarian syndrome -- and I knew some people tried for years to get pregnant and then had to have fertility help, but I thought that if you didn't have Major Medical Problems, you just got pregnant. I know people who got pregnant by forgetting to take one day of their birth control pill. I know a lot of R&R babies, which means people managed a one-shot-one-kill tactic in the random two weeks their husbands were on leave from deployment. And within three months of the husbands' return from Iraq, our entire street in Germany was pregnant. I know of so many people who got accidentally or immediately pregnant that I thought that the female body was dying to procreate the first chance it could get. I honestly thought that all you had to do to get pregnant was not prevent it from happening.

And here we are.

The sad thing for me is that I now feel smothered by a blanket of apathy. Where last year I fretted and fussed over temperatures and charts, now I just don't care anymore. I don't feel excited about getting pregnant, and once I do finally get pregnant again, I know I will feel nervous and detached. I am not going to enjoy it the way I should, which frustrates me beyond belief.

So this Super Bowl is a "grim milestone" of sorts for me. And tomorrow when my husband takes his DLPT, our Safe Year officially ends. And we have absolutely nothing to show for it.

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January 25, 2008

CONGRATS

Pictures of Tucker!

I realized I am freaking out like no one has ever had a baby before, but Erin is honestly my very first close friend to ever have a baby. That seems so funny to say, but it's true. I couldn't be happier if it were my own.

And I realized, as I typed that last sentence, that it is true.

UPDATE:

I realized I ought to clarify this post, lest I hurt the feelings of everyone else in my life who's ever had a baby. Many of my friends already had their kids when we met. Some of them had babies in the meantime, but usually after we'd PCSed away from each other and weren't in constant contact. None of my or my husband's siblings have ever had children, and I don't live near my aunts and cousins.

But Erin called me repeatedly from the hospital, and called me before she even called her dad to tell him the news. I am so honored that she shared her special day with me.

Also, I want to say how strong she's been. Her husband deploys in the next few weeks or so, but I haven't yet heard her complain at all. Heck, he leaves tomorrow for a week of training, and she is taking it in stride.

She has fully grokked how special it is that she now has a little baby to call her own. Nothing else matters, and nothing else is worth complaining about.

I hope someday I can be as mature as she is.

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January 21, 2008

HELLO, SPIDER

We had one day to spend in the nation's capital. We went out to a celebratory breakfast for AirForceSon's birthday and then took him to the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum. We got to see the Enola Gay, which is much bigger than I imagined, for some reason. I guess it makes sense -- Little Boy was pretty darned big -- but for some dumb reason, I always imagined the Enola Gay to be the size of the Spirit of St. Louis!

Afterwards, my husband and I made the two hour trip (ugh) into downtown. We went to see the WWII memorial (which hadn't been built the last time we were in town, for our honeymoon), took those ridiculous pictures, and then hoofed it to the opposite end of the mall to go to the, um, Air and Space Museum. AirForceGuy looked at us incredulously when we returned, saying, "You mean you didn't get enough Air and Space this morning?"

There is no such thing as too much Air and Space.

What we didn't know was that the Smithsonians close at 1730, and we arrived brokenhearted at 1710. There was only enough time to run and see the one thing that made it all worthwhile.

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And then we turned around and returned to AirForceHouse for pizza and birthday cupcakes.

One day in DC is highly inadequate, but at least I got to see some of the coolest stuff, like the lunar module and Jay Irwin's spacesuit covered in moon dust. I didn't make it to Arlington to pay respects to Grissom and Chaffee, but I guess that just means I'll have to go back.

Now, if I could just go to the moon itself...

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January 20, 2008

A REAL CONVERSATION THAT TOOK PLACE ON THE MALL

Husband, let's try to take a picture of ourselves with the Washington Monument in the background.

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Oh, hmm, I have really bad hat hair and you are not smiling at all. OK, um, let's try another one.

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Well, that's better, but can we try to take one where the Washington Monument isn't sticking out of the top of my head?

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Eh, still sticking out of my head.

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Um, no, honey...like can you angle it so that the monument is over to the side of us?

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Can't you just be satisfied with that one, Sarah?

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No, honey, now you're angling the camera the wrong direction.
Woman, I am going to choke you.

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That's perfect! That's exactly what I want. But, um, you look like you'd rather be single. Can we do that exact same thing again, but this time with you smiling?

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Derp!

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DERP!

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OK, I am going to pee my pants! Just do it right!
Woman, I am going to kill you.

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HAHAHAHA! No, that's totally wrong! Now it's coming out of your head! And I have a flag coming out of mine!

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You are the worst picture taker ever!
Well, why don't you do it, woman?
My arm isn't long enough to hold the camera. Come on, do it again.
Grrrrrrr.....

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Yeah, yeah, yeah! Great angle, except, um, you chopped the top of the...
Aw, screw it.

This is so going on the blog.

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OUR TRIP TO SEE AIRFORCEFAMILY

If you were placing money on who'd be the biggest troublemaker of the weekend, who would you choose: the pit bull who got rescued from a life of dogfighting or the fluffy, angelic Tibetan terrier?

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I mean really. I felt sorry for AirForceDog; Charlie was egging him on the entire time. Poor AirForceDog kept looking up at his owners all weekend with a look on his face like "I promise I am trying to be good!"

Charlie also went after AirForceKid like she was made of ham.

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The dogs got along great, the kids were really good, and we adults had a blast. Oh, and AirForceWife can knit socks now.

Good weekend.

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January 16, 2008

TOP BREED, FOR SURE

Seriously, how could Charlie not make the list of top dog breeds? How can you deny this face?

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We are heading on a roadtrip this weekend to visit AirForceFamily, where Charlie will meet his first pit bull. We keep telling him he'd better behave, because a pit bull ain't nothin' to mess around with. I wanna see AirForceDog lay a smackdown on Charlie. Heh.

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January 14, 2008

DONE

Erin's baby present is now in the mail.

A couple of people have acted a little shocked that I would wrap yarn around needles for 36 hours when there's a chance that the adoption could still fall through. But Erin and I discussed this a long time ago, right when they found out that getting this baby would be a possibility. I told her that I wasn't going to treat her any differently than if the baby were in her tummy, because nobody looks you in the face when you're pregnant and says, "I'm not going to invest my time or money until the baby pops out and is real." I said I'd treat her the same way I would be treated as a pregnant lady, which in hindsight seems ironic, since her baby is more real than mine was. But I never wanted her to feel different about being an adoptive mommy.

And I had a couple of people sock me in the gut with an I-told-you-so attitude, like I was some halfwit who had never considered a miscarriage but somehow they had glorious wisdom all along that it could happen to me. Those people are lucky we weren't in the same room when they mouthed off. If anything bad happens to Erin and something falls through, anyone who says anything even remotely condescending is going to have to answer to me. I will straight up punch them in the larynx.

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January 10, 2008

HEY, GREEN, LOOK WHAT I DID!

I took some before and after pictures, but Charlie was definitely not cooperating. And let's face it, I'm just not so good at taking a picture of myself and the dog with the tripod and timer.

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And afterwards, well, I just smelled like eyebrow wax. Which to a dog is quite a curious thing.

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I was able to donate 13 1/2 inches, and since the hair salon I went to was a partnered up with Locks of Love, the haircut was free!

And the husband approves. He says it makes me look 30, which I will take as a compliment.

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January 08, 2008

I'M A FUNNY GIRL

Earlier tonight, I mentioned to my husband how lucky we are that we have nearly the same taste in movies, music, and TV. I asked him, "When's the last time I dragged you to a chick movie?" He couldn't think of anything, until I laughed and said that, ironically, I'm usually the one saying, "Can we please see Die Hard/Terminator/Rambo?" and he's the one who reluctantly agrees. I like westerns, kung fu, and action movies probably a little more than he does.

I got my husband Street Fighter and Return of Street Fighter for Christmas, mostly so I could watch them. I'm a funny girl.

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January 06, 2008

IT GOES THE OTHER WAY TOO

Kayt sent me a very touching article today: The Blank Space in our Family Album

We just finished watching True Romance, one of my favorite movies of all time. And one of the beginning lines held new meaning for me during this viewing:

I kept asking Clarence why our world seemed to be collapsing and everything seemed so shitty. And he'd say, "That's the way it goes, but don't forget, it goes the other way too."

Here's to hope that it goes the other way too...

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January 03, 2008

CRUEL

I'm sure you've heard the joke that there's no such thing as being "a little bit pregnant," but it's not true. I have been returning weekly to the hospital to get my hormone levels checked, and my body is taking its sweet time. Despite the fact that it's been a month since the D&C, my body still recognizes itself as being "a little bit pregnant." And until it stops, there's nothing we can do to try to get a whole lot pregnant.

I find it a cruel trick of nature that, by the time I went to the health clinic to prove I was pregnant and get an appointment, our baby was already dead. The baby that only lived three weeks has taken an additional 12 weeks to finally let go.

And the sad thing is that we thought my husband was deploying this year; his orders not to go didn't get amended until the day we PCSed. We thought he'd be gone for a year and then come home and we'd start a family. Instead he went into Civil Affairs training and we decided to make good use of his time at home. And now here we are, just shy of one year from the day we decided to start a family, with nothing to show for it. According to the original plan, he'd be returning from deployment right now and we'd be starting the journey towards having a baby...just like we're doing right now anyway. Only if he had just come home, he'd've lined his pockets with deployment money, and we'd just be beginning our safe year, not ending it.

Cruel. It just feels so cruel. And we don't even have real infertility problems. It could be so much worse.

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January 02, 2008

MY JEOPARDY STORY

Carren Z wrote that she hit a deer yesterday. Luckily no one was hurt, and she didn't mention massive damage to her car, so that is good news too. I started writing in the comments section about my experience with hitting a deer, but the story is just too much for a comments section.

Last night the husband and I were trying to decide what cheesy little story we'd tell Alex Trebek if we were on Jeopardy. My husband wants to use the time they found the dead insurgent's body they were looking for when his cell phone went off. We laughed that he'd freak the bejesus out of the Canadian ponce. But today, after I read Carren's post, I told my husband that my Jeopardy story would have to involve the deer.

It's Halloween 1997, and I call my boyfriend at his college in Iowa to break up with him. He is stunned that I would break up with him over the phone and insists that I drive up to see him and talk it out in person. Nevermind that it's 11 PM; apparently I feel guilty enough about breaking up to think this is a rational idea. And it's Friday, so I suppose I could go.

I set out for the three-hour drive to his school. I am exhausted already when I start driving in the rain, so I stop and buy a soda and a bag of Sun Chips. There is no one on the road so late at night, so I'm cruising along. And this was before I became a fuddy-duddy who never speeds; I was flying.

All of a sudden out of the corner of my left eye, I see a unicorn. No, for real, that's what it looked like. The lights of my car reflecting off the deer made him look white. And the split second I see him, I crush into him. I didn't even have time to react: all of a sudden the car comes to a nasty halt, and Sun Chips go flying everywhere.

I get out and look around, but it's so dark that I can't even see the deer. I start screaming incoherently at the deer, something about how he better be dead because if I find him, I'll kill him. The car looks like hell, but it still works and I pull in to a gas station at the next exit. I asked some rednecks in the store, with hope in my voice, if I can still drive the car. They look at me like I'm insane and say that it will blow up if I keep going. And then they take off to go find the deer carcass.

I have to call the police, who show up and yell at me for leaving the scene of the accident. I explained to them that the deer was already gone and that -- this being the era before cell phones -- how on earth was I supposed to call in the accident if I was still sitting back at the side of the road?

And then I had to call my parents.
Oh lord.

This was also the era before Mr. T pitied the fool who didn't use 1-800-COLLECT. I just made a regular old collect call to wake my parents up and tell them that I was stuck somewhere in podunk Iowa with the totalled car that they'd paid for. Then I called the ex-boyfriend and told him, through my teeth, that now he had to find a way to come get me.

You know how girls love that Alanis Morissette song, how they get righteously angry over break-ups because of "You Oughta Know"? Yeah, well, that song came on the radio as I was riding in the car in silence, in the middle of the night, through Iowa with the boyfriend I had just dumped over the phone. That's his break up song for me.

And then I spent my weekend imitating Huis Clos: I was stuck in a dorm room with no car with the boyfriend I had just dumped.

It was agony.

I also was a moron and didn't know anyone's phone number from my college. I remembered one person's number who lived down the hall from me, and called him. He wasn't home, and in tears I begged his roommate to go find one of my friends to call me back, someone who would come save me from the weekend from hell.

Incidentally, that is why I immediately bought a Casio Databank Watch, so I would always have people's phone numbers handy the next time I am trapped in a dorm room in Iowa with an angry ex.

There are no buses out of this town in Iowa. There are no trains. There was no way to get home except to bribe someone to drive up and get me.

Meanwhile, I'm still breaking up with the boyfriend, who does not at all want to be broken up with and sees this weekend as his chance to talk me out of it.

Yeah, Huis Clos.

Damage to the car: $4500
That five minute collect call to my parents: $80

And the priceless part about the story is that, a week before the deer incident, I got my fishing license violation. My friends all decided that I was a menace to the environment. I would come home every other day to find cartoon drawings of dead deer and articles about the mating season taped to my dorm door. And of course when a Pennsylvania man made the news a month or two later for beating a deer to death with his bare hands...well, I never lived that down.

Having a story to tell Alex Trebek: priceless

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December 31, 2007

UPDATE

The more I look at that other post, the more whiny it seems.

We have many things to be thankful for this year: the husband being home and with a regular work schedule, lots of fun trips with my blog friends, and, as Butterfly Wife said, a knit octopus...and rhinoceros, lion, and wombat.

Life could be a lot worse.

Here's a good New Year's resolution: a sunnier outlook.

My other resolution is to buy less stationery. I'm not sure which one will be harder for me!

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IS IT 2010 YET?

Well, it's the end of what feels like the most emotionally draining year of my life. Way harder than deployment. Way harder.

And hey, in 2008 we have both conception and deployment to look forward to. Whoopity doo. Should be an especially fun year.

Who me, grumpy?

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December 25, 2007

SELFLESS

Erin was the first person to call me this Christmas morning.
She is still making my Christmases special.

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HOPE

I was able to find joy in the smallest things on Christmases past, be it not having a tree (2006), having a husband in the same room (2005), hitting a milestone during the deployment (2004), or not being able to even write because we had no computer access (2003). So let's see if I can muster that joy this year.

Admittedly, it's been a pretty crappy month in our household. On the day I planned to put up the tree, we instead went to the emergency room and had our hopes and dreams crash down on our heads. Not a great way to start the season.

But we have hope.

Shoot, we don't have anything else to show for the past year. Except a sliver of hope that by next Christmas we will have the prospect of spending future Christmases surrounded by children and grandchildren.

But we have that hope to hang on to, and that's what keeps us smiling through the Christmas season this year.

Maybe we just need to move to Utah.

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December 18, 2007

IT'S GOOFY, BUT IT'S OURS

An ode to my Christmas tree at SpouseBUZZ...

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INANE CHIT-CHAT

At night in bed when I'm trying to fall asleep, I think about knitting. It's a soothing exercise for an insomniac; it keeps me from obsessing about what some jerk said at work and other things that my womanly mind fixates on when silence abounds. Knitting keeps my mind from wandering and focuses my brain on something peaceful. I think about finishing the projects I have started, starting the exciting new ones, or designing the next preemie hat.

And I swear, for a moment last night, my brain started mapping out that intarsia Abraham Lincoln. Bad, bad Sarah. A google search this morning turns up evidence of a pattern for a knitted Lincoln doll. No photo, but you can see the knitted Borat and Amy Winehouse. Heh.

Scolded away from intarsia Lincoln, my thoughts turned to my hair. To quote the Mad Hatter, my hair wants cutting. Last time I had to go quite short in order to donate the full 18 inches to Locks of Love, but this time I have grown weary of my hair faster. In fact, I never really planned on donating again; it just happened. It's because I have no idea how to maintain a haircut. I've never done it before. My life has been a series of chopping it to my chin and then letting it grow for years. I don't have any idea how to pick a hairstyle and stay at it. I haven't been to a barber in at least two years, not even for a trim. (Man, that sounds bad when I actually type it; I promise I don't have four inches of split ends.) But I think I might be ready to try an actual hairstyle. Maybe. I do know for sure that I can't wait to get rid of 10 inches.

OK, enough of my inane chit-chat nonsense. Please switch your brains back on and go read this monster tome: Mormons, Muslims, and Multiculturalism

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December 06, 2007

HALF AN INCH OF WATER

Life is conspiring to make me a stronger person today.

We got to the hospital this morning and had to wait in the waiting room for a while. At one point, a nurse came in and decided to turn on the TV. After the commerical break, we returned to Dr. Phil, who said -- I am not kidding -- "Today we're talking with women who are desperate to get pregnant."

Of all the things to watch on TV when you're waiting for a D&C. My husband and I just burst out laughing.

Then I got into the pre-operating room, and the assisting doctor came to get me settled. The very pregnant assisting doctor.

I mean, at this point it's like someone is just trying to make things awkward, right?

But everything went well, and, um, now we don't have a baby anymore.

I've been thinking a lot about the John Prine lyrics I posted the other day. In the grand scheme of things, this really is only half an inch of water. And I did feel like I was going to drown earlier this week, but unfortunately I've gotten way too good at The Perspective Game for my own good.

The women on Dr. Phil had major problems. They only ovulated three times a year. They had tried numerous in-vitros. My husband and I look lucky in comparison to that.

The friend I wrote about a while back who had the miscarriage, her baby was further along than ours was. Hers looked like a real baby instead of the tadpole striking a Rosie the Riveter pose like ours was. It would've been a lot harder for me if our baby had looked more like a baby.

When I woke up from the surgery, I hurt. I am a big wimp, and I was in pain. And I lay there thinking about GBear's son, a 13-year-old boy whose body was ravaged by cancer and who has to repeatedly endure painful limb lengthening surgeries. If he can deal with massive metal pins pulling his femur apart, I can surely deal with some cramping.

I've taken a deep breath this week and realized that things could be a lot worse than they really are. This half an inch of water will not drown me; it will make me a better swimmer.

So this chapter of my life is over, and now we're on to the next.

And I now return this blog to the regularly scheduled programming of attempts at grokking.

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