I'll leave you with just this clip for the day, found on the TagWorld website. I thought it was kinda cute.

TagWorld Funny Pictures

my arms ache for hope deferred
my heart weeps for the dream lost on waking
tears burn throat chokes
still there are dishes in the sink
counters to be wiped
floors to be mopped
my daughter, precious gem, stirs
i go to her
i want to snatch her up in my arms
hold her close
whisper to her that one year she will have a sibling
not this year
not next year
someday...
i tuck the blanket around her shoulders
she settles back into sleep
love hurts more than yearning

I have finished the baby blanket of the week. It's for sale. I'm asking $12, free shipping, first come first serve. This is a mix of soft blue and green, acrylic yarn. Machine washable and dryable (Baby-Friendly!) knitted in a plain garter stitch. measures 29 by 31 inches.


The next project is another blanket, double thick and embellished with a chain stitch over the top. Soft blue/white variegated yarn. Stay tuned for the option to purchase!

Gratitude. What a funny word. I can't think of one that's more loaded in terms of guilt and obligation and sincerity. Gratitude is what we're told to have when we feel the least grateful. It's what we honestly feel for the little things that somebody else does for us, the things so litte that they don't give it a first thought. It doesn't mean a thing unless it's sincere. Gratitude is like love in that respect. It cannot be brought out on cue and trotted for the admiration of society.

I'm grateful that I've got a child and a husband. I'm grateful for the roof over our heads, for the situation that lets me stay home with our daughter and raise her myself. Will I be less grateful if it turns out that I'm having another baby? Will I be more grateful if it turns out that I'm not? I've heard that I should stop going on about this. I've heard that I should shut up because it'll hurt the feelings of somebody having infertility troubles, because I had a preemie who lives and thrives, because I don't know how lucky I am and stop rubbing in other's faces.

It's hard to know how to respond to that. Should I stop being grateful for these gifts? No. Is my intent to rub it in the faces of those who do not have these gifts? No. I don't read the blogs of women who seem to have everything I dream of, the ones who have never been raped or abused by people who were supposed to take care of them, and take it as a personal affront. I choose to be genuinely happy for them. Does it hurt? You betcha. It hurts as much as my gratitude hurts others.

I look around at the world and see a lack of gratitude for even the most basic stuff. I see kids taking everything with a sense of entitlement. I see a whole bunch of people who are so self-focused that they have lost all sense of empathy with those who would kill to have one tiny bit. Those are the ones who just don't get it. Then there are the rest of us. The ones who shake our heads when confronted with that kind of self-absorption. We wonder how anyone could think that way. We wonder how they have relationships.

I pray every night that I can raise my daughter to be one of the latter. Not to take anything for granted as an entitlement because she was born white or female or blue-eyed blond. Your parents love you. That's why they are your parents. And the unconditional love of your parents is the only thing that she should be able to take as an unalienable Right just because she's been born.

She'll learn to be grateful. Even if she's not always grateful for the things I would want her to be grateful for, she'll know it.

tomorrow morning I have to go see the shrink and ask him for tests. I need to know one way or another. For whatever reason- I can convince myself that I'm being hysterical, I can get my mind wrapped around this being all in my head, until the next wave of queasiness hits me. Until I try to move and my lower abdominal muscles protest. Until one more little nagging thought dances into my brain and whispers, "Baby."

The Promotion

Since the season of fall cleaning is upon us, and cough and cold season, and the season of sniffly little children, I'm going to expand my previous enrollment offer to all the DotMamas out there who are constantly looking for ways to improve their families' lives. To recap the offer: if you enroll with melaleuca and stick with it two months [I figure that's a good time to give it a good try] I'll refund your enrollment fee. So you're only changing where you buy the products, not the price... it's a good deal. Just PM me your address and I'll send you the forms and some brochures. We'll chat about it.

take care of you, and your little ones. hugs to all.

I wasn't going to go to therapy this morning. I go through this every weekend. On Friday I decide, I'm not going on Monday. Then I dither back and forth- I should go, it's good for me to go, it's an outlet and a two hour block in the week where I can get childcare and a safe place to be me. But then I don't want to go. I don't want to lay myself open in front of strangers to judge me, strangers who can see my eyes when they go far away and who can have me forcibly committed if I go a little too fey. I go back and forth, back and forth, and at last in the ten minutes before I have to get out of the house on Monday morning I say to hell with it. I go. And I sit there wondering how I ever thought I wouldn't go.

It's been another day of uncertainty. Of the heartburn and the Big Queasy. Of the knowing that my HPTs are all coming up that I'm not pregnant, and knowing that there's something happening internally that I can feel, dammit, and that this isn't something I can just order myself to snap out of. I tried that. It didn't work. One more week and I can lay all these feelings in front of a doctor who will tell me one way or another, a doctor who can order the tests to tell me what is what and if I should be knitting a little white layette for my next bundle of joy.

The Toddler didn't want to nap today. She stayed awake for 12 hours, straight, and finally gave it up around quarter to 6 this evening. She's going to be exhausted tomorrow. She's hopefully going to sleep through the night tonight, although I know that I won't. I'll be awake again, several times, with the same medley of symptoms that have me placing one hand on my lower belly where it's now extremely tender and deep-down sore, and wondering,

Is there anyone in there?

say of the quiet night that it wraps loving arms around me
twisting the light shards of a dozen past times
harness the emotions; like a wild horse they run
rioting against the halter ropes
forbid nothing ask me go back to the darkness
Lady Pain holds my allegiance
she asks nothing but faith
the dreams will end
the splinters of my childhood, of a misspent adolescence
melt in the light of the coming sun
all I need to do is endure the night
all I need to do is to keep faith
light a candle against the dark
count the prayers in the stars through my window
in each breath that moves in my heart

Tomorrow morning will be three years. Three years to the day since my Boy and I were married in front of the county clerk and our mothers. I always count the marriage as beginning somewhat before that, all the way back to the moment I accepted a commitment to the relationship- but that's a special point that can't be broken down into any real words.

Tomorrow the Boy can't be here. He's got duty. Again; this makes the second year in a row. But that's cool. I don't mind. Really and truly I don't. Because he's here today. We made dinner special, and we had a special evening together watching Soap and L&O reruns.

I love him more now than ever. These have been the best three years of my life.

The update on Tiffany's foot/leg is that her hip is slightly angled and so is her foot, which in real terms means that two slight angles make a major angle when everything hits the floor running. Her left foot turns out at a duck-like angle, and she's used to balancing like this. Which may be problematic later. We'll see. In the worst case scenario she'll be good at ballet... Best case, she'll be average.

So I'm feeling kinda psyched this morning. The Queasy passed about twenty minutes ago. At the current moment Right Now I can eat anything I want to and move around without worrying that I'm going to puke. After the PT Lady left us we managed to get our butts to the library for story time. Tiff won the Book of the Day! I'm thrilled, more thrilled than she is. She's like, So? I always chew on my books. And I'm like, Yes! You can chew this one without Mommy getting all loud about it. Mommy has enough drama in her life this week.

The Used Book Sale is coming along really well. A bunch of stuff has moved in and out this week. I lucked out this morning at the library sale- four brand new paperbacks! I'm thrilled. They were a real steal for me and I hope that they will find good homes somewhere with some of you. Am I running a book adoption program here? It feels like that some days.

Frugality isn't just a knack for saving money. It's not about how often you can rinse and reuse your plastic baggies. It's not about saving a nickel on gas or buying the super duper discounted canned goods and day old bread. Frugality is a state of mind. One can be frugal and spend $50 a week on groceries while throwing out those baggies after only one use. One can even spend $75 a week. My point that I'm trying to get around to making is that it's really about the quality of your life that matters.

The bottom line is that if you're squeezing every last cent until they beg for mercy, but you and your family are not enjoying yourselves, it doesn't make sense to do that. Unless, of course, circumstances force you to that. Even then you can find a few things to make life better. Pick a wildflower and put it in a vase. Check out a stack of library books with pretty pictures and immerse yourself on a virtual vacation or a Learning Experience to improve your mind.

Right now this minute I'm enjoying an indulgence. I ordered a scented candle in this month's melaleuca package. It smells incredible. There's some scented lotion in the bathroom for later tonight; I'm going to feel like a pampered princess when I go to bed tonight and I DON'T FEEL GUILTY. My check is supposed to get here any day now.

My husband says that I should get some sort of part time work because it would increase my self-esteem and improve my general mood. He doesn't mean that I should go back to work just because of the money, but that's a concern as well. My solution? I'm building my business as a part time job. It's a combination of online survey sites, email clicking programs, blogging, and melaleuca referrals. The melaleuca takes less time and effort to get a check. Yeah, it may only fill the gas tank once a month, but that's something with the price of gas being what it is these days. Not every site on the 'Net that offers those Money-Making programs is a scam. I've got merchandise and actual check stubs to prove it. Be suspicious of the ones that promise you an income that can rival a full time job just by sitting on your ass- those are obviously meant for the desparate housewife. But there are ways to do it if you're flexible and willing to accept the smaller checks right off the bat.

Let me take a minute to share with you the best part I've found about our use of these products: all I had to do was switch who I paid for the stuff. I'm buying a safer product that costs less and I can get money back on it. Isn't that a good deal? And the out of pocket was what I would have let us spend for a dinner for two and a half at Denny's.

Besides, it's my blog. Nobody's forcing you to read this. Although I value the time you spend dropping in to browse... hint, hint, hint.

In this month's box: the candle (home-baked, english pound cake flavored). No Work Daily Shower Cleaner. Sun Valley hydrating body lotion (ginger citrus). Antibacterial soap (mint flavored, smells like a candy cane, good for guys and gals). Ibuprofen. Prespot Laundry Treatment (I've raved about this one several times in the past). MelaBrite laundry detergent. All this fulfills my monthly commitment to buy, I got it for less than what I would have spent at Target. The laundry detergent is the concentrated form that means a smaller bottle =less bulk and weight to haul back and forth from the laundromat. It's safer. It's smells fabulous. It raises my quality of life because I feel like I can indulge just like everybody living off of credit card debt.

So my goal for next month is to enroll four people. Just four people. If you're one of the four I'll personally refund your enrollment fee if you stay with it two months. That's an easier money-back deal than you'd get as a dissatisfied customer! All you have to do is try and like it!

All right, all right. I'll get off the soapbox now. My spiel for the day is done. I've got a baby sweater to knit.

Something I really have come to like about using the melaleuca products is that I can get so much more done. One of the unexpected benefits is that it reacts to my El-Cheapo nailpolish by -get this- removing it while I'm cleaning.

The kicker here is that it only comes off when I immerse my hands in the stuff. My preferred method of scrubbing is to mix it up at twice the strength they recommend. More is better, right? So after five or ten minutes of scrubbing and rinsing and wringing out a damp cloth my nails are back to their virgin state, my hands feel like they've just been moisturized, and my floor is clean.

There are certain things that will not be explained. Certain questions that I've learned not to ask. One of these is the above-mentioned hand transformation. Another one of these is why legos sprout legs and skitter across the floor to land under my bare feet every time I walk from the living room to the kitchen.

Today Our Heroines went to the Pediatrician's office. We had a danish when we got there. I let her free-range around the waiting room. She had a LOT of fun with their toys. I'm expecting her to demand a caterpillar tunnel any day now. She's almost twenty pounds now. I'm so thrilled with that. My daughter almost weighs as much as a sack of dog food.

Granted, she's more wiggly and a hell of a lot better smelling than most brands of dog food, but still.

This morning I stopped rummaging around for a sweater that might fit her and it occurred to me that hey, I can knit, I knit all the time. Wouldn't it be better/easier/saner of me to dig out my sweater patterns and just make her one? I can make it a little bigger in the shoulders. She'll grow into it. I can't believe I'm turning into every other mother on the face of the earth. And that somehow I've picked up the notion that I've turned into Frump Woman just because I'm a SAHM.

Lately I've been wondering if Tiffany will ever start to a) talk and b) stand up on her own and start walking. She's got the cruising down yet oddly she doesn't want to put any weight on her own two feet while either walking or holding our hands. I've tried to make it fun. I've really tried. I've tried bribing. I've tried playing silly games and singing songs. So far there has been zilch interest.

I tell myself to be patient. Just because other babies her age do this ALL THE TIME is no reason for her to need to do it yet. Even adjusting for gestational age. I think that the reason for parents to get so crazy over competing is due to the Experts. There's a whole range of sites that will provide an expert opinion on everything going from permissive to discipline-centric. Stay at home moms are ripe for their traps because our children are the only things that we're being graded /judged on by our peers that really deeply matter to us. We want to point at our kids and their trophies. We want to show off their talents and how wonderfully intelligent they are. We want to parade them through the streets so people will tell us what good mothers we are. That just because we don't earn a paycheck we're contributing to society.

I'm not being graded on my child. If I were, I'd get a solid B, because of where she started and how far she's come in 16 months. But I'm running out of time because that stops counting when she turns two years old. That's when she's supposed to be all caught up, and there are hundreds of small children out there waiting to show us up on the big stage of Life.

It's a new game show: The Stage of Life! Come on down! You could win this fabulous washer dryer combo or a full academic scholarship for your kids to the Ivy League School of Their Choice!

We'll get June Cleaver to show the prizes. And Marge Simpson to award the "Best Effort" certificate. I can do a clean house or a happy child or a tidy mind. Well, I can manage two of the three. Pick two. Because if you left the choice up to me I'd say let the housework go to hell and be happy. This explains why I haven't scrubbed the kitchen floor in three whole days. Obviously the Cleaning Police will show up at 2300 tonight in order to arrest me and throw me into Messy Housewives Anonymous.

agh. The hell with it. Tonight I'm slipping into bed in my new flannel jammies and I'm going to knit until my eyes close.

Naptime started easily enough. She got sleepy, I put her in the crib, shut the door, and she immediately sat up and started playing. It was quiet playing. That's fine by me. After a while she stopped... fell asleep. When I went in at the end of naptime I saw the brownish fluff stuffed in the corner between the rails and the mattress.

Being of an inquiring mind I asked her, "What's this?"

Then I saw the remains of the pillow.

She had ripped open the corner and pulled out all the stuffing. Love-ly. What a mess. At least she didn't consume any of it- that would have been an even larger mess to clean up. And so we come to the philosophical question of the day:

Did I really birth a puppy?

The link to my amazon book sale is here.
Stop by, check it out, you know the drill. New stuff has been added this week; a couple from Jennifer Roberson's Cheysuli saga, and I scored four Elminster books (Forgotten Realms) which will be posted for sale as soon as I re-read them. Cause, you know, I need something to do in the middle of the night when I can't sleep.

Still achey, still hormonally challenged, still not popping positive on the pregnancy test. However. I'm still dealing with all the stuff I had in the beginning of the last pregnancy. ALL of it. We'll give it another week and then retest.

Right.

The Toddler is asleep, finally, having lost the daily battle of Night-Night. I've eaten massive amounts of dark chocolate. I'm about to settle in for a nice, relaxing, evening with knitting and lots of reading.

This has been a truly odd couple of days. I've been emotionally all across the field. Large parts of me have wanted to scream and rant and rave, and other equally large parts have wanted to crawl into a closet and hide from the world. I don't know what the hell is wrong with me this week. Maybe I'm pregnant. Who knows. I certainly won't for another couple of weeks.

And next week brings with it another underway period. A whole week of solo-wrangling. Then the Boy comes home. We'll have an anniversary- three years we'll have been married. Three whole years. That's pretty impressive for someone who never sustained a relationship longer than 3 months before I met him.

Another night in which I couldn't settle my mind to sleep. Am I becoming of one Those People? The wives that cannot sleep if their husband is away? I used to be one of Those People, but then the Boy enlisted and I got over it.

Lack of sleep means that I'm cranky this morning. Extra cranky, and a bit of a headache (still) and I want to go back to bed and sleep. So I'm drinking water and eating a piece of whole wheat bread instead. The Toddler is set up in front of PBS kids, and I don't feel bad about it enough to take her away from the tv. Sure, it's an electronic babysitter. I need one of those myself, so why not her on occassion?

My insides are still churning. Twisting, turning, and if I wasn't completely confident in the effectiveness of my Pill I'd think I might be pregnant again. Wouldn't that be crazy? I'd want a second opinion on that. And the verdict in writing. And I'd insist that somebody else be the one to tell the Boy.

It turned into a spontaneous party around here last night. For reasons known only to the PTB, our lives were "invaded" (in that nice way) but a young family who needed some help settling in out here. They had moved with just the stuff in their car, and that's it- and their son is the same age as my daughter. So it's no biggie, we helped run them around to a decent housing complex, and bought them lunch. Things will go well for them.

Then simi and her husband came over for dinner in the evening. I made ziti, and bruschetta, and we had fudge. It was so absolutely lovely. Simi gave me her fudge recipe and I may just be forced to make a big tray of it this weekend. My chocolate/sugar fixation continues this week. I guess all that ice cream last weekend only eased the thoughts a little.

And here we sit. I'm awake at an early god-forsaken hour of the morning because I can't sleep. But I can knit, and I can enjoy the Boy's company on the other side of this big dark living room, and I can go back to the blankies and cuddle when I'm done checking my mail.

Soon, right? Soon we'll have a walking, talking toddler running around here making all our lives chaotic. In the meantime, she's all mine.

Orders at last. His NTL date is Feb 14, 2007. I'm going to be moving again. But we've had nearly two years at this address. I'm definately spoiled.

hormones or phased by the moon?

The past week has been -interesting. Either my Pill is jumping up and down on my remaining ovary, or it's shacked up in my glands and sending out for margaritas. Either way, I'm not complaining at the moment.

The Boy is not complaining either, in case you were wondering. /smugness/

But there's been all this other wierdness. Breakthrough bleeding. Unexplained bloating. Strange dreams. And then the thing with the yarn. A sign? Is my biochemical self trying to communicate? I don't care particularly one way or the other just now.

Damn, but it was a fun week.