Hiatus shmiatus

Not a hiatus. Just a lack of anything to say. The week has been pretty boring. The kids were here, they were pretty good, no major squabbles or headaches. I worked a bit. Worked on Christmas present quilts a bit. Read a bit of my Dracula book. Started cleaning the house. You know. Exciting week. I do have a couple things to say...

Dear sir at table 83,
It is not... how you say?... couth to eat a 14 oz strip steak with your hands. It is not corn on the cob. It is not a boneless buffalo wing. It is steak. Do not gnaw into it. Cut it up into bits. And please please please dear God do not dip it into ketchup before you do so. On second thought, never mind. Scratch all that. You brightened the evening of many a server. Do that every time you come in. :)

Dear party of 5 at table 101,
I should apologize to you. As a server, I base a great deal of my interactions with my tables on how they respond to me in the first 30 seconds. I'm right 90% of the time. People who do not look up from their menus, do not respond to my greeting and stare at me blankly when I ask them if they'd like drinks do not typically turn out to be as friendly, outgoing and enjoyable as you did. Plus, every last one of you was overweight and had bad teeth. My initial judgment of you was both inaccurate and unjust. I hope you didn't realize what I initially thought of you. I don't think you did. But either way, please do accept my apologies. I'd very much like to see you at my table again.
PS. Ma'am, I know having your 18 year old son sign up for the service doesn't thrill you. I'd like to thank you ahead of time for the sacrifice you are about to make when you send him off to war. I don't agree with these wars in particular, but I do deeply appreciate those who will stand up and love their country anyway.

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I've also been doing some thinking and I think I'm starting to unravel my emotions around this whole TTC thing. I've really been struggling. C.S. Lewis once said in A Grief Observed, "no one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear." I think the same holds true the other way around. Fear feels a lot like grief. I'm not grieving. I can be patient and wait for good things. I've not lost anything. But the weight in my chest that seems so much like grief is more in the vicinity of fear I think. Because what is fear but the anticipation of grief? Watching a wave rise up before you would not frighten you if it could not harm you.

I know that the doctors are not concerned yet, and rationally, I'm not either. But I feel it. I don't know that I will be able to have a baby. I don't know that it's just a matter of time. I hope so. I still believe so. But the "certainty" that a young woman starts out her life with is just not there any more.

Part of my fear is not just of not being able to have a baby, but how I would cope with that. I see now the force of will that's required to not foster vices while I stew in my own impatience. It takes a great deal of fortitude to be kind, good, patient and loving when your circumstances are not what you want them to be. Honestly, I'm becoming better in many ways, but not really all ways. I'm still impatient as all hell. And my circumstances really aren't that bad now! In fact, they're downright idyllic with the one exception. (Side note, how did my sister in law do it?)

So anyhow. I'm afraid. And impatient. But wouldn't patience be easier if we could see the end?

I've been debating talking to my priest about this. Two things I would ask for: first, that I would have patience and stop fussing about this, and second, that I might have a baby. I'm still not sure what we're really allowed to pray for. I think it's good to pray for help in the area of virtue, but to ask for things is not something I'm settled on. We should not try to lead Almighty God around by the nose. He is not a God of burnt offerings, sacrifices and deals. Priests are not magicians. Sacraments are not sorcery. So all we can do is ask, I suppose.

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In other news, our oven finally arrived. We bought a new oven at the beginning of September. It showed up 2 weeks later with a fatal flaw. When the oven was on, it blew out the back two burners of the range. The replacement they brought in several weeks later did the same thing. General design flaw. So, we decided to go with a totally new make and model. It arrived on Friday. And it works! We can now bake and use all 4 burners at the same time! Yay!!!

The fun came when it was being installed on Friday. Apparently, there was a piece of cardboard packed up under the heating element of the oven. Without knowing this, my husband decided to fire it up and make sure it worked before the installation guys left. You can see where this is going. My stepson comes into the room where I'm working and says, "Um, why is there smoke pouring out of the oven?"

Everything did turn out OK.