7 Quick Takes Friday Vol. 2

1. We're trying to build a patio. So far it's been a complete disaster. We had a poured-concrete patio, but it was sloped towards the house which was allowing rainwater to just pour down into the foundation. Last summer N and a friend (a good friend, obviously) spent eight hours busting the patio up with jackhammers, but then the project stalled. We have had a huge gaping hole in the back yard ever since.

2. Baby Sister is coming to visit tomorrow, and I am freaking out because I just remembered that I promised to teach her to drive a stick shift! Ack!

3. If today wasn't Friday, I would be calling in malingering tomorrow. This week has really whupped me.

4. N is being considered for a job in the DC-Metro area, so I have been amusing myself by looking at apartments. We own our house now, but housing near DC isn't anywhere near as affordable so we probably wouldn't be able to buy right off the bat. I spend a lot of time contemplating what it would be like to rent again. I can't always wrap my head around it!

5. I have it in my head to make home-made laundry soap as detailed in Tall Tales from a Small Town. I really am too cheap to buy laundry detergent.

6. I've been trying to read this one book for about five or six months now, but I'm only 75 pages into it. I think it might be time to call it quits.

7. The community garden that I joined two weeks ago still doesn't have a water source. Apparently the water company was supposed to hook up the water a long time ago, but they have been dragging their feet a bit. As a direct result, I have to haul gallons and gallons of water there every day--I am getting ridiculous biceps!

The Happiest Story Part III - What Just Happened?

B’s wedding was the venue for our first date, but she is more important to this story than that. She was a girl from N’s hometown. They had known each other since middle school and were very good friends. She is the type of woman who doesn’t suffer fools, and she was the one who made N confront his hang-ups regarding long distance dating and convince him to go with his gut.

(It also turns out that N and I did not live quite as far apart as he thought we did. Geography is not his strong suit;)

If not for B, I wouldn’t be married to this wonderful man or have this happy life. And yet, I’ve never thanked her for what she did. What could I say or do that could possibly repay her as she deserves?

I knew early on that N wanted to marry me. He is one of those rare “marrying men”. I had always thought that I didn’t want to get married. It turned out that I just didn’t want to get married to any of the men I had known or dated before N. In those early months of our courtship, when I thought about what it would be like to be N’s wife, I didn’t feel scared or annoyed or doomed. It made me deliriously happy; and that’s how I knew.

We dated for six months. Every other month he would drive up to my hometown, and every other month I would fly to him, as my car wasn't reliable enough to make the 600 mile trip. It wasn't ideal, but we made it work.

N actually asked my dad for permission to marry me. Perhaps an antiquated move, but I thought it was adorable. My stoic dad said, “Just don’t lead her away from the Church”. N didn’t; it was quite the reverse. I didn’t know it at the time but he was already thinking about converting at that point.

N proposed to me six months to the day after our first date on June 17, 2005. That was the first time I can remember crying from joy.

Everyone thought we were crazy. I had just turned 21, N was 22. We were both still in college had no income to speak of. Some of my extended family didn't even know I had been dating N, and when they got the news that I was engaged they were understandably taken aback. (Once more, "You're marrying who?" and "You met him where?")

We lived in different states for another six months, then I graduated from college and got an apartment in the city where he lived so I could get in a semester of my graduate work before the wedding. We got married on June 17, 2006, exactly a year after we were engaged. (If you are sensing the pattern, it's because N is a mathematician. He likes the number 17 because it is a prime number, only divisible by 1 and itself).

When we left our wedding reception, bound for a honeymoon in Querétaro where we first met, I asked N, “How in the world did we get here?” That a chance meeting between two foolish young adults living it up in a foreign country would result in a marriage, a good marriage, seemed improbably to the extreme—and yet it had worked out so perfectly that there must have been a plan for us.

This is my happiest story. It reminds me never to doubt God's love for me, and always open my heart to His plan.

I can't cook

Not the kind of “can’t cook” that involves burning water or being unable to fry an egg. I get the mechanics of it. I can follow a recipe if it isn’t too complicated. So perhaps it would be more accurate if I said “I don’t cook”.

I grew up on a steady diet of of spaghetti, mac and cheese, fish fingers, and leftovers. When N and I got married and began to live together, I made an effort to cook “from scratch”. That’s what wives do, right? We ended up eating a lot of casseroles primarily composed of pasta and cheese. God help me, I tried. And, bless him, N put up with it for about a week.

Then he revealed that he is a seriously talented cook. The kind who takes notes when he watches the Food Network. The kind who can make a marinade without a recipe. You get the idea. Anyway, he thought it would be a better idea if he handled the cooking from then on. I was shocked, but also relieved that what we ate would now be the responsibility of someone who knew the finer points of cooking.

We have a pretty good set up. He cooks, we both eat, and I do the washing up. Except when he has to go out of town, then my good-hearted friends take turns having me over for dinner, because they know that without intervention I would eat nothing but cereal and ramen noodles until N got back.

The only problem is that, with N working so hard to finish his PhD, our diet hasn’t been so healthy recently. To take a little pressure off of him I’m trying to take our diet improvement scheme into my own inexperienced hands.

The first thing I did was make granola using an A.lton Bro.wn recipe (one of N's heroes). It actually didn’t turn out too badly. So for breakfast now we have about a third cup of granola topped with fresh fruit salad and yogurt. It is so delicious that I actually look forward to the morning!

Yesterday I went to the store and bought a lot of fresh fruits, vegetables, and other “real foods”. Now that I have a healthy breakfast covered, I am ready to tackle the other meals. I made a big pot of Greek Orzo Salad to pack for lunches this week. No mishaps. Of course, I haven’t tasted it yet…I guess I’ll wait to pronounce it a success.

It's Not Your Fault

When I was in the ER after my first miscarriage, the resident who was treating me made a big deal of telling me that, "It's not your fault" and "There's nothing you could have done". As if that would fix everything.

She looked confused when that made me cry harder.

I told her that I wished it was my fault. I can control my actions--if one of them caused the miscarriage I would never do that thing again and the problem would be solved. I would conceive again, have a healthy pregnancy and a healthy child to hold at the end of it. I was willing to take the blame if it meant that I would never have to go through something that horrible again.

If it's not my fault, I have no guarantees. It's out of my control--and that is the hardest thing for me to accept. There is nothing I can do that will make it turn out alright. The lives and deaths of my children are governed by Someone Else, and His will must be done, not mine.

Even if I don't understand why he has chosen me for this heartache.

People continue to tell me that it's not my fault in an attempt to make me feel better. It is the worst possible thing they could say, because it forces me admit to myself all over again that I'm powerless.

It hurts, but perhaps it is a good hurt.

Even though I only had them for a few short weeks, the love I have for my unborn children is fierce and boundless. Now that I have known maternal love, I am more in awe of the love that God has for me. My love for them is the biggest love that I have ever felt, and His love for me is countless times bigger than that. My human heart cannot hold a love that immense. My human mind has a hard time even imagining it.

It is because of His infinite love that I am trying to set aside my own will.

7 Quick Takes Friday Vol. 1

1. I've never done this before. I hope I'm doing it right!

2. Sunday is my Godson and his twin brother's baptisms. It has suddenly occurred to me that a) I have nothing to wear and b) I forgot to get them presents. Guess I am going to spend my day off at the shopping center! There are worse things in life, I suppose.

3. I haven't had my mid-morning soda in three mid-mornings. I am not a sleepy or cranky as I thought I would be. But I do miss the bubbly deliciousness.

4. My baby sister (not a baby; 17 years old) is coming for a visit next week. She is the best kind of seventeen year old. If I leave her home with my collection of Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice dvds and make sure the fridge is stocked, she won't move from the couch until I get home from work. I like to think I have something to do with her taste in movies:)

5. Other thing I have to do today is finish writing a cover letter for a potential new job situation. This is something I have very mixed feelings about, but N is encouraging me to apply because it couldn't hurt. I guess he's right, but I would rather be a mom.

6. For my mom's Christmas present last year I set up a fac.ebook account for her. I think I may have created a monster. She regularly threatens to disinherit me and my sisters if we don't PLAY OUR SCRABBLE MOVES ALREADY, GEEZ! It's one of the best things, ever. She also posts more pictures of my nice/Goddaughter than Older Sister does.

7. N and I are going on vacation to beautiful northern Michigan in two weeks. Half of the week we will spend with my grandma in her little house in the big woods, the other half at a really awesome looking bed and breakfast. I'm really looking forward to it; I'm hoping it will be as relaxing as it looks on paper!

Keeping Busy

After the second miscarriage I was in a state of mind that was beyond depressed. I couldn't stand the thought of lying in bed and thinking about how awful things were. About how my journey into motherhood had gone so tragically wrong. All of my sadness, guilt, disappointment, and anger manifested in this incredible energy. I had to do things.

Running. The first thing I did was start running. It was a week after the miscarriage. I was still bleeding and cramping, but I gritted my teeth and ran a mile on the streets that were still piled high with remnants of the epic snowstorm that had coincided with the death of my child. I have been running three times a week ever since. I didn't intentionally set out to find ways to cope, but running was very beneficial for me in that way. N started running with me; this was one way that the tragedy brought us together. We ran a 5K together on April 8, 2010, after seven weeks of training. We finished in 28:10.

Creating: I started to work with my hands. I have always been a knitter, but the projects I completed in the months following the miscarriage was more than all of the previous year. I began some small sewing projects with varying degrees of success. I also started to make bread. Not by hand, but in a bread machine. A big step for me.

Decluttering. The day after the miscarriage was Ash Wednesday. I was not on good terms with God that day, and I chose a Lenten resolution that served my own purposes. I was tired of living in a messy house, so I decided to give away or throw out one thing every day for the forty days of Lent. After Easter I talked to a priest about what I had been going through. I told him that Lent had not been as spiritually fruitful as it could have been. Father D encouraged me to look closer at my Lenten experience, because the fruits may have been disguised or not what I was expecting. And it was true; I am still angry with God sometimes, but my relationship with Him has developed and matured in surprising ways.

Getting Out of Debt. We don't have that much debt. Both N and my college educations were paid for by our parents, we have one car that my in-laws bought for us outright as a wedding present, and we have managed to avoid the pitfall of credit card and personal debt. We own our house, which isn't a big deal, but in 2008 we bought a second car when I got a raise. I really like having a second car, but I am really not digging the car payment every month so I decided to put all of our extra money into paying off that loan. It's going really well; it should be paid off by the beginning of October. It's a really good feeling. In a side note, I love mint.com. Best thing to happen in my financial life, ever.

Gardening. I have a vegetable garden in my backyard. N built it for my birthday last year. Sadly, the only edibles we have gotten so far this year are green onions. But they are really tasty green onions!















My neighborhood just got its very own Community Garden this month, so I paid my dues and have a whole 'nother box at my disposal. And this one gets a lot more sun. It's too bad that we all got such a late start, but my pole beans are already starting to sprout!

I'm still sad, hurt, disappointed, and angry. But I really believe that keeping busy has held off the worst of it. I am very glad for all the experiences I have had in the past six months.

The Happiest Story Part II: A Kick in the Head

A year passed. I became involved with (although did not technically date) a very confused and troubled young man with whom I thought I was in love. In September 2004, after spending the summer trying to ignore the evidence, it was confirmed that that although this young man claimed to love me he was in fact engaged in a sexual relationship with a mutual male friend. At the time I often gave in to my self-destructive tendencies. Overcome with rage and feelings of worthlessness, I left the gathering where this discovery was made and went home to smoke and drink until I was completely numb.

I sat at my computer and detachedly mused on my situation. For some reason I could not stop thinking about the man I had met in a bar in Mexico. Our encounter at El Columpio had been brief, but even so I knew N was one of the good guys. I had an epiphany that night. I didn’t know his last name, his home state, or where in the world he was, but I did know that N was just what I needed.

I sent him a message, and he replied.

That first hesitant hello was followed by three solid months of nearly constant online communication. Daily emails, six-hour marathon IM sessions--he became the one I wanted to tell first when anything heartbreaking, difficult, lovely, or hilarious befell me. Once, as I attempted to make cauliflower soup, I had somehow put the blender together wrong and when I turned it on I was instantly covered in hot vegetable ooze. I immediately went to the computer (still covered in ooze) so we could laugh about it together. I was driving in the car one day when I realized with the suddenness and clarity of a lightning strike that N was my best friend. He was the most important person in the world to me.

N had been thinking similar things, but he felt compelled to tell me that as much as he liked me, we could not date. We lived a few states apart, and he knew from previous experience that he didn't care for long-distance relationships. For the third time since I met him, I thought that would be that.

A few days later, at the end of November, N and I were chatting online when out of the blue he asked for my phone number. There was no weaseling out of it this time. My heart was pounding, but I typed in the numbers, telling myself that he wouldn’t call for days if ever. My phone was lying on the desk next to my keyboard at the time, and when it rang no more than three seconds later I nearly jumped out of my skin.

He asked me to accompany him to his friend’s wedding.

I had never been so confused in my entire life. Hadn’t he just told me we couldn’t date? Doesn’t going to a wedding together qualify as a date? But I didn’t bring these things up at the time. I was just trying not to sound like too much of a dork on the phone (I hate talking on the phone almost as much as I hate dancing).

I could have said no. I still can’t imagine what made me say yes—it was so out of character for me. For the first time in my life I put my worries and insecurities aside and jumped.

Despite my family’s very strong objections (“Who is this guy?” “You met him where?”), I got on a plane on December 17, 2004. I still have the ticket stub. After I landed I made my way through the airport to the baggage claim where N was going to meet me, hardly able to walk because I was shaking so badly with nerves. What if I didn’t recognize him? Or even worse, what if he didn’t come at all?

I shouldn’t have worried. I saw his smile and I knew him immediately.

To be continued...

I'm Cold

I'm always cold. It's something of a running joke with my family, with my husband, and even at work. I run space heaters sometimes in the middle of summer. When the AC broke during a heat wave, I was the most comfortable I had ever been.

My basal body temps have been consistently low, something I noticed when we started practicing NFP two and a half years ago. My pre-ovulation temps are typically between 96.3 and 96.8, while my post ovulation temps hover around 97.5.

Since doctors never ask for NFP data, it wasn't until I started reading "Fertility, Cycles, and Nutrition" that I realized my coldness might be a symptom of low thyroid function, which could have something to do with my difficulty getting and staying pregnant. My thyroid levels always come back normal in blood work, so I ignored the fact that I have almost every other symptom of subclinical hypothyroidism. Until I read the book.

Fatigue: I've been tired my whole life. I've had hideous dark circles under my eyes since I was ten years old. Typically I need 9-10 hours of sleep a night to feel functional.

Joint Pain: About two years back I complained to my doctor about joint pain, particularly in my lower back, pelvis, and elbows. This spurred an investigation into the possibility of having an autoimmune disorder. Although I tested ANA positive, I was never diagnosed with anything. My back still hurts. Thanks, doctor.

Increased Sensitivity to Cold: Brrrrrrr.

Pale Skin: I have an olive complexion, but I tend to be very pale. My mom used to make me go to tanning salons so I "wouldn't look like I had cancer". True story.

Brittle Nails: Boy, do I have ugly nails.

Depression: On and off since I was a teen, but much better since I have been married.

Anyway, Marilyn Shannon's book recommends to take a prenatal (which I have been taking for over a year) and a flax seed oil supplement to help raise basal body temps. I was skeptical, but you know what?

I started taking the flax seed oil on Day 1. The first four days of my cycle so far, my temps have been 97.2, 96.8, 97.3, and 97.4--well above what I would expect. I can hardly believe it! My low temps have been stressing me out for years, and it turns out there is a very simple solution. It's a small battle, but it looks like I may win this one and I am very thankful for that!

The Happiest Story Part I: An Uncertain Beginning

In the summer of 2003, when I was nineteen years old, I went to Querétaro, Mexico for seven weeks to study Spanish. I met my husband while I was there, but I wouldn’t know it for quite some time.

One evening in July I went with a group of my classmates to a cantina called “El Columpio”, a word that means “swing” but is also a slang term for “a drunken stagger”. When I first arrived in Mexico I was delirious with independence and eager for new experiences. As a direct result there was an unfortunate incident involving nine shots of tequila with Sangrita chasers (a mixture of tomato juice and hot sauce) which ended. . . messily. Said incident cured me of any urge to drink to excess for the rest of my stay in Mexico. Since I was not drinking that night I had a clear head--thank God! I remember everything that happened, even though I didn't know how important it would be at the time.

El Columpio had a very friendly atmosphere, and I spent the first part of - the evening listening to music and chatting with friends as they imbibed. At some point I had gone up to the second level, and when I was coming back down the narrow stairs a Mexican man approached me and asked me if I spoke English. Though I am of nondescript European lineage, my appearance is somewhat ethnically ambiguous and most Mexicans thought I was a local.

I was a little wary of the stranger, but I also curious so answered that I did. Then the man, who I later learned was named Jesús, asked me if I would speak with his American friend. It sounded a little bit like a set up. I looked skeptically over Jesús’ shoulder at the tall, smiling young man across the room.

When I began the trip I had invented a fiancé to mention whenever I wanted to fend off any unwelcome advances. I even wore a ring on my third finger to back up my story. I didn’t mention “Bruce” then—for the longest time I didn’t understand why not, but now I see that the hand of God pushed me from my usual course. I went over and introduced myself to Jesús’ American friend.

He was just as friendly as his smile suggested. He asked me to dance, but I was (and still am) terrified of dancing. I internally sighed with relief, because the week before I had stepped on a thorn while camping. The spike had gone all the way through my shoe and deep into my foot, which provided me with a legitimate excuse to say no—my foot hurt. I thought that would be that, but then he asked me to sit and talk with him.

For lack of a better word, I was gobsmacked into compliance. Coming from a world of frat parties and hookups, sitting and talking was an irresistible novelty. We talked for a long time about all sorts of things. We got through the basics. His name was N. He was in Querétaro working as an intern for an Engineering company, but didn’t speak a word of Spanish. I was Catholic, he was not. We both enjoyed running but found it difficult in Querétaro because of the high altitude. We liked the same music and had seen some of the same movies. Then we move on to less mundane topics, covering things like time travel and Superstring Theory.

It should be mentioned that it wasn’t completely cerebral on N's side. He leaned forward earnestly as he spoke, and rested his hand on my knee—it was an understated gesture, but eloquent enough. He liked me. I had had all of one boyfriend in my life, and that had been something of a disaster. I wasn’t ready for anyone to like me like that so I had already made up my mind to brush N off at the earliest possible moment. When the night was through he asked for my phone number but I wouldn’t give it to him. I said that I couldn’t remember the number for the house where I was staying, but I compromised and wrote my screen name on a scrap of paper using a pen that he produced from his pocket. After a very nice hug we parted ways.

He was only going to be in Querétaro for two more weeks, and several times during the interim he tried to meet up with me for lunch or to go running. Too awkward and nervous to attempt anything like a date, I weaseled out of it every time. Eventually we both left Mexico, and once again I thought that would be that.


To be continued...

Why

In the last twelve months I have lost two children to early miscarriages. For reasons I hope to explain later, I did not share the extent of the tragedy with my family or friends. Not even my mom knows about the second miscarriage. My friends don't know about either one.

I now regret what I kept secret and am waiting for the opportunity to tell the truth. But until then I need to tell my story to I can work through it and find a way to be joyful in spite of my trials.