Living with the absolutely idiotic

Or rather, living in the absolutely idiotic. :)

Backing up a little bit... We're allowed to "try" this cycle. All that means is that we're allowed to do what we've already been doing all summer, which is absolutely nothing to prevent pregnancy. Really, we've not been holding our breath. We were instructed that for two cycles we were to be absolutely vigilant about preventing pregnancy. Abstinence at certain times, and protection at all other times. Friends, with our combined fertility, having sex at all is having sex with protection. If 33 months of concentrated effort has yielded us nothing, I'm pretty sure we're good. Haha.

But we're "eligible" for the next IUI now.

But anyhow, we're on cycle 3 since ye olde miscarriage, but because J might (read: he thinks he will, but his wifey is pretty certain it's not going to happen) take a group to Italy next May, and if it worked right away, I'd be due in May, we're waiting one more cycle.

This cycle, if last cycle is any indication, will end in approximately 3 weeks and a day or so.

I'm on CD 18 right now.

Enter the idiotic.

I do not want 41 day cycles and I am irritated at this body of mine.

That's all. :)

Permission to Fail

Granted.

Bits and pieces of this post have been popcorning around in my brain for the past several days. Maybe weeks. I'm wondering if I can make this make as much sense here as it does in my head.

So for a long time, back in the day, in my earlier life, I thought I had to be perfect. I thought it was expected of me, and that was partially true. There were sources of that expection. I was one of them. The pressure from that intense self-scrutiny had me turned so far inward that I imploded on a fairly frequent basis. It also made me fairly self-absorbed. Funny how self-loathing is self-obsession in an ugly dress.

Thankfully, I had a lot of the shell that I had built around myself shattered for me. There's no such thing as a pleasant shattering, but as my good friend Gandalf says, "not all tears are an evil."

But, you know. Old habits die hard. That sort of thing. I still have a very hard time taking criticism. If the bathwater isn't sparkly, perfectly temped and fragrant, I'm strongly tempted to just toss the whole dang tub, baby included. (I'm the bathwater and the baby, you see...?)

There came a point, perhaps as recent as last fall, when I realized that I had to give myself permission to fail. I'd been moving towards that point for quite some time, mind you. There was the day some 5 years ago when I traded in my GPA for an apron and went to work waiting tables. I still occasionally feel from some sources that my only redeeming move was to have married a professor. At least I still have some "status." Whatever to that, I say.

But I think it was last fall that I actually articulated to myself the principle that had already blown the lid off my life: "You are allowed to fail." In keeping a house, raising children, learning how to be a wife, etc, I had to literally give myself permission to fail at one thing per day. Perfection is not a goal I can reach, and insisting on it in myself was going to set me farther back from real virtue than an honest, trip-and-fall, approach to the daily grind of loving ever could.

That doesn't mean that I don't strive to be the very best me I can be. On one hand, I strive. On the other hand, I say, "Relax." Life is a thing that must be carried with both hands.

So what got this whole train of thought out of the station was an invitation that bounced and bounced and bounced around inside my head. "Hey, why don't you run a half marathon with us in November?" November. The month that sends gong-like reverberations of "ow" vibrating through my chest. Not to mention the 13.1 miles that constitutes a half marathon. Surely not. Surely not. I run 3-4 miles three times a week. I do not cover vast distances.

But it's to benefit Connor's House. I believe in this project, and I love and admire the people who started it. And I realized that I can certainly walk 13.1 miles. And I can certainly run 4 miles. So between now and November 21, I can probably work up to, say 10 miles. The fundraising isn't contingent on running the whole way. I can walk any or all of it and they still get whatever funding I raise. I can fail and still achieve my real goal.

*nibbling lip*

And then a funny thing happened. Giving myself permission to fail took the pressure off. I signed up. I have a training plan in place, thanks to my fantastic brother in law (BIL).

And I think I can do it.

And I'm pretty sure I'm going to run across that finish line.

And I'm pretty excited about it.

BIL and I talked a lot about running in the past 2 weeks. Enough that other members of the family learned to roll their eyes and wander off the moment we got started. But we view running in much the same way. It's almost sacramental. The more you use your body, learn it, get to know it, and use it in an amazing way, the more it gives back. It shouldn't be a surprise. We kneel to pray. We fast to prepare. Our bodies teach our minds and souls things all the time. This is yet another activity has become a grace-bearer in my life. Perhaps I'll write another entry about it sometime.

But I guess what I'm trying to say is that by granting myself permission to fail, I've given myself the freedom to not lose sight of my actual goals.

This is carrying over into my parenting too. We spent the last 2 weeks on vacation in NJ, and my stepson was a major challenge. He was negative, mouthy, mean, contrary, hyperactive. Ugh. This child is a good child. He's a sweet boy. He's always had traces of what we saw while away, but never so much. The actual details of how he was/is is subject for another post. It's too much for here. But both of my sisters in law, who were enormously helpful in their observations and suggestions, were also so encouraging. At the same time that I felt like I was falling on my face, over and over, when it came to dealing with him, they kept telling me how good a job I do with him. "What?" "But you don't know," I kept wanting to say, "You must not have seen when I failed here and here and here." But they saw something else. I'm still not sure what, but I do know one thing.

I know that before he left our home last night to go back to his mother, he came over to give me a hug. He usually bounces over, gives my knees the obligatory squeeze, and trots excitedly out the door to go see her. It's fine - he's supposed to be happy to see his mother. I don't mind that. But it always stings a little too. But yesterday, he wrapped his arms around my neck and didn't let go. Even he seemed surprised at his own reaction. He just held on. And we chatted a little bit about what he was feeling. "Are you excited to see mommy?" Shrug. Nod. "And you seem a little sad. Are you sad to leave too?" Nod. "You know what? I think that's OK. It's exciting to see Mommy after so long. But it's OK to be a little sad to leave too. You'll have a great time with Mommy and we'll see you in a couple days. I love you always." Nod, "I wuv you too." And then he went happily trotting out the door.

What if life turns out to be like that? What if it's just fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, until you find that, somehow, unbelievably, all the grace-bearers that seemed to hint at another interpretation of all those failures were right? What if all the fairy-tales and folk lore are right? What if there really are pots of gold at the end of the rainbow? What if they're in the puddles along the way?

(This can't be completely right. But I think there's something worth hanging on to here.)

Heaven and hell

Heaven.
My brother is getting married on Saturday.

Hell.
I will be wearing a strapless teal dress in front of 250 people. I was so white as to be blue a week ago. So, I purchase a 6-session tanning package. I burn the first day. Can't go back the next. Then, I run outside twice, read outside in the sun, and then stand around outside at a picnic. All in different shirts. I have 5000 tan lines and look a little like Neapolitan ice cream. Not the plan. Sigh.

Hell.
I ran my second 5K this past Saturday. My time? 32:14. That's a steady 10:20 mile. I actually ran a steady 10:20 mile. No speedy gonzales presto-chango-ing into the tortoise. No walking. Solid running. Two thirds of the course was up"hill" (not uphill in a car, but DEFINITELY uphill running). It was over 75 degrees out by the time we finished. This little sissy indoor air conditioning treadmill with the TV on runner had shin splints from hell for 2 days after. They're gone now.
Did I say hell? I mean heaven. Planning my next one for September. I'm gonna do it in under 30 minutes next time.

Hell.
The thing my husband used to be married to has been stealing money from us via the kids school tuition for the last several years.
Heaven.
She committed fraud (and possibly tax fraud) to do it. :) The smile? Finally, someone is going to tell her "No. You can't act like this." And it might even be a judge.

Heaven.
The people in my life.

Hell.
My cats are fighting like raccoons. They are where I go when I get stressed. I am experiencing way too much anxiety about this.

Hell.
Peeling wallpaper off the bathroom walls. UGH. I'm ready to never do that project again in my whole life.

Heaven.
The way the finished bathroom will look. :)

And there it is. Life as it currently stands.

Back to the CDs

And here I am on CD2.

It's hard to ignore that I would have been 19weeks yesterday.

But oh well. Water over the dam, under the bridge, spilled milk and all that, right?

So we've got one of the two mandatory cycles down.

But the good news is that my body did it all on its own. That, I suppose, is something deserving a small smile.

Things that I can (and cannot) fathom

I may have mentioned that we had our priest over for dinner last night. While he was here, I was able to ask him about a question my brother and I have been chatting back and forth about. It's something I have some experience in and have dealt with before, but experience makes it no less hard. Namely, forgiveness. It's easy to forgive someone who asks us to. Or it ought to be. Love always hopes for restoration. But how do we actually, actively, deliberately forgive someone who does not ask for it, and who continues to harm?

In my life presently, I'm talking about the Ex, the "Un" I mentioned a few days ago. The harms just keep coming and I walk a very fine line between anger and hatred. I don't want to fall from one, which is just, into another, which is never, at present, just.

He used an interesting image. He said, "Imagine that every wrong she does you is like a flaming arrow. It's going to hurt. It's going to burn. Of course it is. And of course you're going to be angry, and of course you might rant to J. But you have to let those little fires go out." Don't keep fanning the flame. In one sense, we have to keep a record of wrongs. We have to keep track of the relationship, especially when it comes to the kids. But in our internal life, we have to leave each rock thrown wherever it lands. We can't pick it up and carry it with us. We certainly cannot throw it back. And we must actively hope, not only for our sakes, but hers, that the arrows and rocks stop coming.

I can fathom that. I can learn to do that.

I have a harder time with the dictates of biology. My stepdaughter started her period this week. She is nine. Nine. She still believes in the tooth fairy. She is in every way a child and yet nature already makes it possible for her to bear one. WHAT? Does that sounds incredibly young to anyone else? I mean, I'm no yardstick of normalcy. I was sixteen. But nine?

I feel like a baseball bat just collided with my head. Not in a painful way, but in a sit-down-on-a-step-and-let-my-head-spin-for-a-sec way.

Now really, where in my mind do I put that?

Oh. I ovulated 12 days ago. Right smack in the middle of a 3-day "stint" (if you catch my drift). My doc would throttle me if she knew. I was told in no uncertain terms that we were to avoid such a thing. In my defense, virtually none of my typical preovulation symptoms showed up. Aside, ahem, from the "drive" that brought about the "stint". :-D So I didn't know it was coming and didn't know it had until a couple days later when my temperatures started to rise. Eight days later, I registered a significant temperature dip. It's risen every day since then. I've been tracking my temperatures for a year and it's only done that twice. Once led to nothing. The other was on February 28th. I'm only barely hoping and not really expecting anything. But, well. you know how it goes.

Sigh.

It feels like second best. But hey. :)

Hey M! GUESS WHAT?! No, not that. Not this time.

But we had Fr. Nicholas over for dinner tonight. About 15 minutes before he gets here, J casually says, "So, we'll tell him we're ready to be chrismated?"

I was chopping things. I am glad I only froze, and didn't start jumping up and down.

:-D

We're going to be Orthodox. For real.

Oh yeah, and M, there's a something I want to talk to you about. I was trying to wait until you were huge and pregnant before requiring you to play another major role in my life, but J went and mucked the timing all up. You're partially off the hook.

What a funny blog. It's more of a letter, isn't it?

I don't know when. We don't have a date. But I've been ready for this for at least 3 years.

Oh, and B. Wanna drive up for it? Just for fun?

Just wanted to put these somewhere...

"Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself." - CSL

"A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is... A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in." - CSL