Three stories

It was all perfectly logical

When we started on the journey seven years ago, I wanted two kids close together in age. Of course, I thought it would be easy. We would conceive the first in August or so (I wanted a May birthday) and the second would be conceived very close to two years from that. Voila! Two kids and two Spring birthdays.

Of course, the hope for a certain season for a baby was one of the first ideas to go when things got tough. Having two kids and close together has stuck around. Not that I expect it to work as planned, but I still want to try.

Since my clinic only has 6 times a year when you can cycle (approximately every two months), I have a 'choice' of cycling in June if I want a Spring-ish baby. My best chance at that would be to do the fresh cycle in June since we only have one frozen embryo with about a 10% chance of making a live baby. But that FET might work, so best to do it first and that would mean trying for a baby in April.

I stuck to the plan and had my first blood draw which helped trigger a mini-meltdown (although the next day I was much better). Not more than a week later, I spoke to a nurse to schedule my hysteroscope. All was going according to plan until that night. I lay in bed not thinking of anything in particular when it hit me that it made perfect sense to wait until June to do the FET and push the fresh cycle off until September. For the life of me, I can't remember what logical reason I had, but it was so important I got out of bed to tell Brad.

Logical or not, we are both relieved not to be doing a cycle next month.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Count your blessings

We spent last Sunday at my sister's house - her custom house in the county she recently moved in to. I am happy for my sister, but I am envious. I never thought I would turn 40 without having a place in the country. I grew up in the country and I long for the space, the dark nights, large windows with views, the sound of the wind through pine trees. It was very nice to hang out in a house where you can feel space around you. We even napped a bit in my sister's bed and when I couldn't sleep I watched the trees blowing in the wind. It was just wonderful.

Then we drove home to our little house in the city. The view from my bedroom is a garage that should be torn down and replaced. Our living room is the size of the typical master bedroom. Our basement is a better home for spiders and mice than people (It is half cement and half crawl space over dirt). We have been here over twice as long as we imagined, going on 10 years now. We made the decision to pursue a baby instead of that place in the country and we have no regrets. We have also fixed it up quite a bit over those 10 years by redoing the bathroom and kitchen and replacing the windows and it is definitely comfortable. So far we have kept the bullet holes from when the Sargent of Arms of the Gypsy Joker's lived here, but that is another story.

As we drove home, I tried not to get too depressed nor complain too much. Brad was not to be fooled. He told me it is ok to want something different, but I shouldn't let it color my view of our house. We have a nice place that is only about a mile from a descent bakery, a farmer's market and grocery story and a few hundred yards from a nice walk along the river. We live in a very interesting mixed-income neighborhood that includes million dollar homes along the river to homes that look like they are about 500 square feet.

Not to be cheered up, I lamented my age and that we were running out of time to ever have that place in the county. Then he reminded me of when our 70 year old neighbor came over last summer. She has lived in this neighborhood for 40 years and been in our house a few times, but not since we moved in and fixed it up. She looked around and seemed to be fighting back tears as she said, "I have never lived in such a nice house."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Judge not

Another neighbor had her son move in with her. He was putting his life back together after some missteps. Soon, he married and she moved in too. Then the mother went south for the winter as she has been doing for the past few years.

For awhile it was just the two of them living there - our neighbor's son and his wife. They were both very nice people. There was a time recently when the wife, who had had a stroke, was talking to LB and every time she said anything LB would burst out laughing because she talked funny (due the stroke). She took it all in fun. The husband, our neighbor's son, helped us dig out our Land Cruiser when the snow got too deep for our Prius and even helped us get it running. We chatted here and there when getting the mail or when taking LB out for a walk.

Then we learned that the husband lost his job. Soon other, less savory looking characters started showing up at the house. Then we learned that his wife had a gambling problem. Next we heard that he might be doing meth and counterfeiting. We started to notice cop cars driving slowing down our street. Soon the mother called and asked us to feed their pets. Then the older brother called and said his brother (our neighbor) had been arrested. The next morning the wife was frantically loading up her things and we haven't seen either since.

I am not sorry to see them leave. It was scary seeing some of their visitors and hearing cars screeching away from the house at 4:00 in the morning, but I can't help but feel sorry for them either. Perhaps if they had more resources - access to mental help to get over the gambling addiction or a little more money to get through the rough times this wouldn't have happened. Perhaps they just didn't have the awareness or creativity to find a better way.

It strikes me how easily I would have labeled them as bad people or deserving of everything they got had I not known them. Instead I think about how lonely each one is or what it would be like to spend the night in jail knowing there are likely years of jail time ahead.