Why do I do this to myself?

It's after midnight... I KNOW I have to be up (relatively, for me) early in the morning... I KNOW I'll be going to a retirement thing for that cousin's dad tomorrow... I KNOW I'll be asked baby questions and have her belly in my face... I KNOW I'll just be trying to get through it without crying... So why why WHY do I stay up too late lurking on random blogs?
Another scenario... That I'm too chicken/embarassed/private/whatever to ask my sisters of friends about... Constantly hungry... Just want to sleep... Slightly nauseated at random times... Last AF was a full day shorter than usual and with much much MUCH LESS cramping/migraines than usual... All signs of possible pregnancy, or just some nasty depression kicking in? I'm leaning towards the latter, because I also find myself more often than not, wishing he hot water would last forever, and I could just stay in the shower instead of facing work/church/anything beside sleeping. Sigh... I would just go POAS BUT.... 1) I do NOT want to run into anyone I know @ the store, who would comment on my purchase (and it's a small town, I absolutely would!) .... 2) I am, once again, a chicken... I don't want to face a BFN. Have I ever told you (duh, I'm sure I have) that in 21 months (coming up hard on 22, not that I'm counting), I have not been even a tiny bit late? In 22 months (it's less than a week away), I have not had the "pleasure" of POAS for BFP/BFN purposes... OPK yeah... But anyway... WHY WHY WHY do I keep thinking that maybe it will be different this month?
And another one, just for good measure... I whine/rage about the but-you-look-pregnant-questions, and yet I do little-to-nothing about looking that way. So I make it a point to suck in my stomach before someone does that sweeping "pregnancy-check" glance. (Quit laughing, you know you've done it too!!) But seriously. If I didn't **want** to look that way, you'd think I would put down the soft drinks and chocolate and get out and exercise. But oh, food is just such a comfort. And that whole sticking-my-gut-out-in-the-mirror-when-nobody-is-watching-thing (again, don't laugh, you know you've done that too)... WHY WHY WHY do I do this to myself????
Sigh... Probably because if I get really totally completely honest, there is a small part... okay, maybe medium... Okay, okay, I give... I do indeed sometimes wish I could be pregnant. Barring a huge miracle (which I do still believe **could** happen), I never will be. And so, at least for a couple of weeks, I occassionally pretend. Which leads to a huge crash on CD 1.
March is ***NOT*** the month I need a huge crash. Aforementioned cousin is due I think towards the end of the month. Hubby has already said we can't run away, he wants to be here. They would be here for us, and all that jazz. I'm pretty sure I'm in for the mother of all crashes. Maybe since I'm expecting (how ironic) such a crash, it will be a softer crash?
And... My arms are killing me... Sweet hubby surprised me with that 3-lettered newest gaming system that is way too search enginge friendly.

Thinking of starting a new one....

So... This blog, while public, isn't really very "out there" as far as people I know IRL. And I'd like to keep it that way. Scratch that: I'm GONNA keep it that way! I don't want my coworkers or the lady I teach @ church with or my in-laws or even sisters to read every last word I write here. That's why there are no pictures, no descriptions of where I live, why I have made-up names and non-specific anything. As time draws nigh, however, there are things I would like for friends and family to know, things I would rather not say a million times, and after all, when I am actually trying to WRITE and NOT just go with stream-of-consciousness-writing, I actually write much better than I speak. (Sorry, if you read this blog, you usually just get the stream-of-consciousness...) So instead of having to delete/edit a bunch of posts, I'm thinking of just starting a new blog. Oh, I'll still be here to spew my rambling tirades against the octo-mom (haven't touched that one yet, still trying to form my opinion) or how I did at the next baby shower or why my younger sister doesn't need more than 1 child.... And right now the new one won't be a daily (HA!) or probably even weekly blog yet.... But I feel like we're close enough to start.
I feel like I've reached that stage where any day now I could just start trying to educate the world on IF and adoption... Not so much specific detail about the IF part, but definitely on adoption. Maybe that's a bit exaggerated, but nonetheless, I would like to begin preparing our friends, family, church members, etc for our adoption. We've been married 1Y9M now, which means we have 1Y3M to go before we can start the process. Hubby and I both feel we should begin preparation NOW for that process. You know, cleaning out the spare-for-now bedrooms, getting rid of a lot of clutter, child-proofing somewhat, making repairs, etc. I realize a lot can and will change in the adoption community in more than a year, but I feel like we need to be at least narrowing down some country choices. We need to be talking to people who have adopted from wherever -- China, Ukraine, Russia, America, and however -- foster, private, open, etc... How old are we willing to adopt? Just how "special" could we handle special needs? AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH Choices.
Here's what I am thinking.... A lot of people know that orphans have a special place in my heart, then again, a lot of people don't know that... Out of those who know of my orphan love, not so many know we're definitely going to adopt, and even fewer know that we're solely relying on adoption to build our family. Our church and community have had a few brushes with adoption, and there have been a few couples in our church who have adopted. Two of them were like 30-ish years ago, and one happened last year, but they rarely come to church. I don't want to offend those couples, but I do want people to have a better understanding of where we're coming from and the symbolism of adoption as it pertains to our relationship with God. I also know of several other couples in our church who are interested to different degrees in adopting, and I want to encourage them and help them get started on their journey. I feel that by coming out with our adoption plans, it will put an end to (SOME OF) the nosey questions and comments we are currently always dealing with.... But I also realize that this probably just means that certain people will just be asking different questions. I guess the difference is just personal to me, because I have a much easier time talking about adoption than IF.
Suggestions? Comments? If you're reading this, I want your 2 cents!! :)

See? That wasn't so scary, now was it?

No, it was not scary at all... So, hubby and I had been talking about letting more people know about our if and desire to adopt. Tonight, we got together with friends from church again (we really need a name for this -- there have been suggestions, including from our pastor, who suggested {hubby's name} And His C.oncubines, and tonight we came up with {Hubby's name} and The Sirens [pronounced sigh-REENS, as in Oh B.rother Where A.rt Thou] but for real, yo) Okay that train just derailed.... Hard to focus with this darn migraine!
So. Where were we... Oh yes, we were in the home of some friends... Small group tonight, several have sick kids, performances, etc. I took my CD with the song Orphans of God by Avalon, because I was wanting someone -- not me -- to sing it. One of the other ladies really really wants to adopt, but her hubby isn't as "into it" and she has been wanting to sing this song, too, and didn't think anyone would have it. As we were leaving, she and I were talking about the song and how neither of us thought WE could get up and sing it @ church without bawling and not being able to finish... I told her we were just waiting on the powers that be, and when she asked, I explained that all the agencies say we have to be married 3 years first. She asked if we wanted to have any of our own, and I just kind of made a face and shook my head.... And ya know what? She didn't freak out or look at me like I had 2 heads and 8 eyes or whatever hubby was afraid of.... She nodded and said something to the effect of "I know... I understand where you are, but I don't want to cry..." And I didn't either, and we were all tired and ready for SLEEP, so we just left it at that at least for tonight. Granted, she had 2 miscarriages and 2 difficult pregnancies (in her own words), so there IS that connection... But I think that was a good way and good person to start letting in on our plans. So, where do we go from here? Obviously I'm not gonna get up in church this Sunday and just announce it to the world, but hhmmm.... I think for now, we will stick with letting it come up in the conversation and let it happen how it happens. Nice to have somewhere to start, though.

Still here....

Whew. What a week!! Monday night, huby and I went out to celebrate V Day a little late... Tuesday night I was playing with my niece and next-to-youngest nephew until they went to bed, then ended up talking to S-I-L for 2 hours. Wednesday night, church was cancelled because of bad weather, so I went out to eat with my parents, younger sis, and one of the middle nephews. Tonight, I was at my older sister's, taking care of the baby while the rest of them were gone, then playing with the other 2 and getting all 3 of them to their Nana's house to send the night. Tomorrow night, we are eating and singing with some church peeps. Saturday night, we will be attending Niece's dance recital-type-thingy. Sunday afternoon, we will be with 4/6 niece/nephews. I would say that all of my babies have been sufficiently spoiled rotten this week. Aunt NotTheMama is wiped out, man! At least I can wear scru/bs tomorrow... Gotta work @ the m/ental hospital bright and early, then go to MY "real job" before I dash to uh, somewhere, to grab some food and dash to the friends' house.... Aunt NotTheMama is wanting to turn off the ringer on her phone Saturday so she can sleep in!!!!

How to Survuve a Baby Shower 2.0... Or, what worked yesterday...

Ugh. At least that part is over... No more showers (that I know of) for at least 9 months, as she is the only pregnant person I know, who's shower I could NOT avoid. (I feel obligated to attend the showers of family members, regardless of my emotional state at the time... grrrr....)
So back to yesterday.... S-I-L did my shopping, which was nice... About as close to a Personal Shopper as I'll probably ever get... She offered, and I usually make myself go buy gifts for showers, but this time I decided, hey, she's offering, she has good taste and is a mom so knows what to get (or not), and this one time I can avoid it. (Wow. I used to write with awesome grammar. Seriously. I had a teacher once in high school who spent hours trying to find one tiny little something wrong with a paper, because nobody else got a 100... She gave up) Sigh... Moving on...
Anyway, it was hubby's first cousin, so I kind of felt obligated to go. This is like the only extended family hubby's family gets together with. And the first child born to our generation for his cousins' family. And she had at least one m/c that she told us about before this pregnancy. So, like obligated in triplicate or something.
I assumed this would be at her church, and I could get hubby to stick around in the parking lot, so that if things got too hard I could just escape to the bathroom or hall or something and give him a call to crank the truck and get me outta there. Wrong. It was at her aunt's (other side of her family) house. 45 minutes away from home. Not "in town," but in the middle of nowhere. Hubby couldn't exactly sit in there driveway and wait for me, and it would be a lot more noticeable if I slipped out of such an intimate little gathering. And I rode with my m-i-l, s-i-l, and 5-year-old niece. Who had to be there 30 minutes early, because they were bringing part of the food.
Part of the food... Did I mention I had some cookies and a Dr Pepper in Sunday School, and assumed we would at least swing through a drive-thru on the way to the torture, ah, I mean shower? Yeah, no... Shower-food was lunch. Have I mentioned I had a migraine that started Saturday night? Migraine + no real food all day = not good. Migraine without physical activity as a cause at this time of the month = go away AF, I really can't deal with you right now...
The food... I quickly figured out that if I kept my mouth full, I was okay. That's what worked this time. I had some questionable moments, especially when one of her cousins (again, other side of her family) started talking about going out of state in 3 weeks to adopt a newborn and hoping to be there for the birth, etc... But I had food in my mouth, so I was okay. Fastforward to everyone is done eating, I go back for more sausage balls because they take the longest to chew, and she is about to open her gifts. Enter a couple of great-aunts, one of which I give my seat on the couch to... My plate with sausage balls is on the table, there are a couple of people between me and my food, but she's already opening gifts now, and I'm trying to stay out of the way.
I'm getting really extremely MAD at myself at this point, because I'm trying hard NOT to cry -- I am NOT going to screw up someone else's happy time because of my broken heart -- and the harder I try NOT to cry, the more the tears are threatening to fall... Deep breathing isn't really working anymore... Looking up at the ceiling, besides looking ridiculous and like I'm rolling my eyes at her gifts, stopped working when I started getting mad (getting angry also makes me cry dang it), biting my bottom lip, yeah that's not really doing the trick either.... Since I'm standing close to the hall, I finally just go to the bathroom (which thankfully isn't in use!!) when I can't hold it any longer. I really think I'm going in there just to blow my nose, and if I get away for a minute, I'll be fine... Insert pathetic, ineffective laugh here... I get in there and cry, there's no pulling it together for a minute or two... I'm trying to be quiet (HA), and I'm talking to myself (hopefully in my head only, but at this point, who knows), telling myself to get it together, you are NOT going to ruin this party, put your big girl p.anties on and DEAL with it while you have to.... Look in the mirror, it is obvious I have been crying... Grab some tissue, wet it, dab eyes, in a few minutes it's only obvious to those who really KNOW me (most of these people are complete strangers, thank God) that I've been crying. I know at least a couple of people saw me go to the bathroom, I've been in here long enough to be missed, and I have it together enough to make it through... I hope... Long story short, I go back out and make it through without any more tears slipping through, but let's just say I'd rather be at the dentist, and I HATE the dentist...
On the way home, I actually held it together as well... Didn't want to scare Niece, haven't really cried in front of M-I-L, and have managed to only let a few tears slip in front of S-I-L... Let's just say I do most of my crying alone. We talk a little about adoption, and the cousin-of-the-cousin who is not related to us adopting the baby out of state, and blah blah blah as women tend to do... So we drop off Niece and S-I-L, and M-I-L brings me home, we sit in the car for just a few minutes to chat, but we both have to study our lessons we are teaching at church in less than an hour. I go in, hubby is on a fire call (pretty decent foot doctor, needs to stop burning leaves and trees at his house, this is like the 3rd or 4th fire call to his house in the 5-or-less years he's lived there. Brilliant.) After all the punch and water I've drank trying to swallow my tears, you can guess where my first stop is. And you can guess what I find. Ugh. Bring on all those tears I did manage to keep back. But part of my prayer at that moment was thanking God that AF stayed away until after the shower, and I wasn't trying to keep the tears away AND popping the Midol at the same time. So instead of really "planning" a lesson, I red the paper, try to let my face return to normal, and find and open my book at the last minute. I am currently using a book I bought that has a lot of Old Testament stories in it, for pre-schoolers. I almost pulled out my hair when I opened to the next lesson, and it was titled something like "Sarah Has a Special Baby"..... For whatever reason, though, talking with children about pregnant women and babies and such with children, is usually very easy for me, even if we're talking about my lack of children or pregnancy. Hahaha, I had to laugh when I said that Sarah was very old when she had her first baby, and one of the boys looked directly at me, so serious, and said "As old as YOU?!?!?!" Um, actually as old as your great-great-grandma, little dude... "My friend at school's mom is like THIRTY-SOMETHIN' and she's JUST NOW having a BABY!!!!" Sheesh... thanks kid!!!
Sigh... So now cousin's baby is due in March (can't remember the date, I was just trying to pretend I was listening, without really listening, I can find out from S-I-L and prepare myself when the time comes)..... Wondering how exactly I'm going to pull this one off... With my sisters and S-I-L I'm generally okay, because hey, I'm the Fun Aunt, and here's another kid for me to spoil the heck out of, but with other people, it's different. This particular cousin, ugh... It's the one who told us on Friday they couldn't go to 6 F/lags with us, and called on Monday to say "Surprise!! We're pregnant!!!" Surprise, indeed...

Can I just be DONE now????

I SO want to be DONE.... I want to throw in the towel, and just be content for a while. I want to come to terms with IF, have a definitive answer of whether or not it will ever happen, and freakin' move on, already. I want the energy and motivation to cleam my house, not lurk on all the IF and/or adoption blogs I happen across. Why do I hardly ever comment? When someone drops by my house, I want to NOT have to clean off a place for them to sit, because I've been on the computer instead of cleaning. I want to be able to walk around my bed in our bedroom again, and stop breaking a million plastic hangers, because I step on a pile of clothes to get to my closet. I want every single last dish to be clean, all at the same time. All of the laundry not only washed and dried and waiting in the basket, but folded and put away -- put UP, not just thrown in my bedroom. We really need to go saw up that tree that fell on our house this past week... Okay, not really "on" on our house, really just the top of the tree is brushed up against the siding and a window, with no damage we can see as of yet. Those leaves I was suppsoed to rake in the Fall? Still there, blowing onto my porch and eventually being tracked in the house. That extra bedroom I wanted to clean out and get rid of a bunch of Christmas decorations I no longer want? Still can't get to the part of the room they are in. Time to clean the bathroom again, and I never did get around to mopping the floor when I cleaned it last week (or was it the week before???) AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!! If I could have one good entire day, I would have such a better handle on my house. Hello? What could I be doing TODAY, RIGHT NOW???? Sigh.... I don't like to admit it when I am depressed, but here I am. I feel like before we adopt, I need to be at peace with IF. We've been married 1 year and 9 months (how ironic, 9 months), and have 1 year and 3 months to go before we can start the process. I would like to have theat extra room cleaned out and decorated by then. (Lofty goals when I can't even get my laundry done) Where's the money coming from for adoption? My car is sick... Wasn't really sure I would make it to work yesterday morning, so my parents met me, my dad rode home with me, and of course, my car was fine. Transmission is probably about to go on it, though. Hubby says no to a new car right now. We kinda like not having a car payment right now, but where is that extra money going? Not savings, for sure.
On a better note... Happy Valentine's Day!! Hubby had roses delivered to me @ work yesterday. This morning he had fire dept stuff to do, but he woke me up to tell me that he brought me the paper, and went to town to buy me breakfast, and here it is beside me in bed. Ahhhh.... Nice to be married to such a sweetie!! Went to dinner last night, going to the church tonight, probably going out Monday night for our actual V.Day celebration???
Gonna try to go get some housework done now......

Gotcha Day for some friends!!

I just spent over an hour waiting for 3 of the most precious minutes of video known to man to download!!! Gotta love dial-up, but when you live in the sticks....
Some friends are in China finishing up the process to bring home their little girl. Go see them at http://www.tochinaforlily.blogspot.com and keep the tissues handy!!!
I've seen pictures countless times of other families seeing their child for the first time, and read their accounts of how it went down, but this was my first time to watch actual video footage of a precious child meeting her "forever mama and daddy" and I am SO incredibly happy for Carlton and Aimee!!! This is their moment, so go check it out!!