To illustrate the insanity, we currently have 7 – no, wait make that 8 – home improvement projects ongoing. Some of them are out of our hands (we’re waiting on people who know what they are doing), but a lot of them are all ours, baby. We’re trying to get what we can done while we have nice weather. Are we crazy? Yes, yes we are. I don’t really expect we’ll be able to cross everything off the list this year, but I’d really like to make a good effort for it.

I used to hate this house. Hate it. Ask Den, he’ll tell you – I would have huge crying fits over how I was stuck in this old, ugly, wretched house. It needed SO much work it was just overwhelming.

But today I realized I’m really quite grateful for this huge, ongoing project in my life right now. If it was all done what would I do with my time, where would I put all this energy and planning thought? It is so nice to have all these things to work on, and to see real progress. I’m starting to feel some pride in this house, and that is a fantastic distraction from everything else.

::

Today my little girl, Zoe, is 4 years old!! I really can’t believe she is 4 already. She was such an adorable little puppy, and she grew into such a beautiful lady. Still crazy and missing some marbles, but that just means she fits in with this family.

Who knew that this…

… would turn into this?!

I made the mistake just now of flipping through her puppy pictures and I’m getting all teary now. Happy birthday, baby girl.

I am just trying not to think too much about this cycle at all. There is really nothing I can do – no appointments, no numbers, no nothing to analyze. Just counting down time. And every time I do that I start to get a lot of anxiety and my mind kicks into overdrive about all of the things that I have no control over. So I said screw it, I’m going to do the same thing I did last cycle: just ignore it. I’m filling my days with everything and anything else.

Except anything baby-related. I’m avoiding the baby talks. I’m even somewhat avoiding the cycle buddies, because that again just makes me think about my own cycle and starts the anxiety up. I’m not thinking about due dates that may never happen. I’m not thinking about who I may be pregnant with or what the spacing between kids might be or seasons or any kind of plan at all.

To be perfectly honest I’m trying not to think about the future at all. Planning for the future – whether it’s 5 years or 5 months – almost always rests on whether or not I’m pregnant or how far. I can’t make vacation plans, because I might not be able to fly. I can’t plan out my next year without knowing this crucial piece of information. When will we have a newborn? When can Den go to that training class he has to go to? Can we go to my friend’s wedding? Can we plan a trip with relatives to Vegas? When can we go visit my parents again? I can’t answer any of it. I don’t fucking know. And if I’m not pregnant, it means I’m cycling, which means dates become even less dependable.

I can’t even put into words how fucking frustrating this is to me… this not being able to plan anything. I’ve always been a 10-year-plan kind of girl. It’s just what I do. I love to sketch out house plans, and I love to outline life plans. So I just don’t think about it. A wall comes down in my brain every time my thoughts wander in the planning direction and I say to myself, I’ll figure that out later. Later, later, later, always later, never now.

I guess I finally figured out what living in the moment actually means, just out of necessity. I know when my next appointments are. I know where my garden and house is at. I know what I’m doing for the week. Heck, I may even have figured out where we’re going for our anniversary (though I haven’t figured out when).

I’m okay with doing this for now, but only with the requirement that someday soon I do get to figure out the rest of the answers. I can’t live like this forever. I’m not even sure I could live like this for very long. But I can do it for the short-term and just keep my head in the sand for a month.

Once upon a time I really really enjoyed my spare time. I enjoyed it by doing nothing. I slept. I ate. I read and watched TV. Most of the time I really didn’t want to do anything at all.

That has changed. Now when I have days off I start to think what I can do to fill those days. Time to myself is all well and good, but unless I have something active to do I start getting antsy, anxious… I start going over the same things again and again.

This morning I baked a cake, then went to work. I left work mid-day to go to a BBQ (to which Den had brought the cake). We spent several hours there, sitting in the shade in the backyard, eating, talking and relaxing. But after a while I found myself looking around. My brain was just turning over thoughts and ideas. This tree, that plant, the grass. Soon I didn’t really want to sit there any longer, I needed to get my hands into something.

When we got home at 6pm I went out back and started weeding pathways in my garden. I planted flower seeds along my fence, just for fun.

In that once upon a time past the thought of doing all that in one day would have exhausted me. Now that’s the norm.

Part of it is that I have a lot more energy than I used to have. Better sleeping and eating habits, more vitamins, and being up and moving really helps me not settle into the fatigue that I used to have (and still sometimes do). But some of it, I know, is that I don’t want quiet time to think. I’ll think about my house, my pets, my work… but I do not want to think about my cycle or my baby or how quiet it is in our lives and our hearts. I prefer to be busy, with my hands in the dirt or the laundry or the clutter.

I prefer to keep moving forward, because I stop I don’t know if I’ll ever start moving again.

I am tired, sore, pleased. It has been a productive weekend, and I need some sleep to recover.

And I want to let you know that I hate being dirty. My gardening gloves are some of the best things ever, and pretty much the only way I can work in the garden for any length of time. As it is I still run in to wash my hands frequently, I spent several hours today almost physically itching with the need to take a shower – but couldn’t, because we had more dirty work to be done. I do always feel happy with what we have accomplished, but boy do I hate that feeling of being sweaty and dusty with dirt under your fingernails. Oh it just makes me shudder.

Thankfully my garden has pretty much been set. The seeds are all planted, the fence installed… now I just have to make sure I keep the weeds out and keep it watered – which the new soaker hose should easily help me accomplish. Den keeps coming up with new projects outside and I’m all like, dude, I have some ceilings and trim inside that need to get painted… then I tip-toe off really quietly.

You might not expect it, a month out from my most recent loss – I certainly didn’t – but while driving home from work yesterday I realized that I am… content. My sunroof was open on my car, which always makes me happy because I have a car – after years of having to share a vehicle I still get excited every morning I go out and hop into my own car. The sun was out, it was warm enough for me not to have to wear a sweater or jacket. And the trees are green.

Driving through this area almost always makes me smile because of the trees. (Not the traffic I assure you – there are as many assholes on the road here as anywhere else.) The cities around here have made a very obvious effort to plant trees lining the streets, and as they grow bigger they start to overhang the streets a little, creating a beautiful green canopy. There are parks with trees and yards with trees, and everywhere is this bursting of color right now. Where I grew up there was so much new development, and they would inevitably bulldoze a huge section of the landscape to build their packed-in-tight half a million dollar townhouses. It was so freaking depressing. But this area, it doesn’t have that population explosion… it has been here for hundreds of years and will be here for hundreds more, growing only slowly.

I get a lot of people asking me if I miss home. And I do, in some ways. I miss the familiarity. I miss the house I grew up in. But what I miss most is the family I left behind, not the place. Frequently people will suggest to me in a supposed-to-be-comforting manner that maybe in the future the opportunity will present itself for me and my family to move back to Canada. The thing is, I don’t think I would, even if we got the chance.

When I first moved here I really didn’t feel like this house was my home. I lived here, but it was someone else’s home… not even my husband’s, he had just moved in a year and a half before and hadn’t been able to do much to it since. It was so overwhelming to even really picture this place feeling like my home. It was dark and depressing, broken and outdated. It didn’t need a makeover, it needed some severe reconstructive surgery.

I’ve been here for four years now. We have painted and re-done the living room, bathroom, kitchen, bedroom. We built an entertainment room in the unfinished basement. We’ve torn out overgrown bushes of all sorts, cut down trees, planted new ones. It’s been a lot of hard work. It’s cost money. And it has been very, very slow. Many things need finishing trim, painted ceilings and new furniture still. But slowly I can see the change. I walk into the living room and it is my living room. I lay down in my bedroom. I can see what this house will become, and I am excited. I am motivated.

This year we are able to do a lot of the things to the house that we always wanted to, but couldn’t afford – I am working full-time, we have a lot more income than we used to. It definitely holds a shadow over it. When I mention to people what we are working on, the new door, the new fence, refinishing the floor, rebuilding the stairs… I know they are probably thinking that I am lucky to be able to do all those things. And we are. But I didn’t want to be working full-time right now. I was supposed to be staying home with our baby, keeping an eye on the budget and putting off house projects until later. Now we are able to do all these things we wanted to do, and I know it will be really nice to have them done before raising a child in this house…. but we would have been fine without them. Once in a while I will catch what could be an imagined look of jealousy on someone’s face, and I almost want to laugh sadly and say, you have no idea, I would trade you in an instant.

But I am proud of what we do have and try to enjoy it. I gave up putting my life on hold to wait. We will do as much as we can until the next baby comes along, and then we will continue the original plan. This helps pass the time, and helps give something positive about every month spent waiting – it’s another month worth of income and time to throw at our projects. Another month to make this our own.

Okay, you asked… here it is, the door we ordered! I hope hope hope it looks this pretty in real life. I am so excited! This is the first major thing we’ve done to the exterior of the house itself, other than re-roofing.

I had it all planned. Last BCP would be friday, which would mean period on tuesday, which would mean ovulation on a wednesday, transfer on a tuesday, and a due date of February 24. Sunday I spotted. Monday I spotted. And then finally on Tuesday I… spotted. Ummmm.

I felt like I should jump up and down and do some squats or something to get things moving, as if there was some magical button to press. It felt kinda like it was going to start, but it wasn’t freaking starting. One of the few times I actually wanted my period to come, and she was being a bitch. I was getting really pissy, because the whole point of being on the pill was to make sure I got my period when I wanted it. I have control over so little, so when something feels like it is in my control well it had better damnwell work when I tell it to.

Not that it would be a huge problem if it came a day later, not like the cycle would be cancelled or anything. But if it did it would mean transfer on a wednesday, so I’d have to miss another day of work, and the “new week” day of pregnancy to be thursday. Kel and I both said, “I don’t like that.” Thursday is the day that Devin was pronounced dead. Thursday is a Bad Day. Definitely something to avoid.

By some blessing the spotting turned heavier as it reached into late afternoon, enough that I could call it cycle day one and slap a patch on my ass to start protocol. I heaved a huge sigh of relief… and then held my breath again. One funny little side-effect of cycles going wrong, multiple negatives, a dead baby and pregnancy-in-a-tube: you don’t really trust anything anymore. I called the nurses this morning to let them know about the start of protocol, then waited uneasily for them to confirm the dates that it should all fall on.

And she did! Ultrasound and bloodwork on June 3 before starting progesterone, and transfer on the 9th. I am good to go.

First hurdle down. Many, many more to go.

::

Today was another momentous day for our household, another investment into our home-sweet-home: we ordered a new front door.

I have spent months researching doors. Not actively, but every couple of weeks I would check out the catalogs again and refine my preferences. Then it got to the point where every couple of weeks I would open up the page just to nod to myself that yep, that was definitely the one. Definitely. Oh so gorgeous.

Only then did I finally go to the store to get a quote. And then I went home and wailed. It’s HOW MUCH?!? For a DOOR?!

But the husband, after recovering from the price, told me that it is a worthy investment into our house, and it’s something I should be happy with for the next 20 years. We should get what I really want. (Note I said what I really want. He had input, but he knows it’s me that’s going to be either very happy or very unhappy and he really doesn’t want me very unhappy every day I come home and see our door. I think to him the price of emotional sanity is worth it.)

It was the right one. I looked at a bunch of other catalogs yesterday to make sure. It’s perfect. Den likes it. So today we walked into Home Depot, sat down, took a deep breath and plunked down a whole lot of plastic for a fancy new door-and-sidelites.

The act of making a large purchase inevitably has one major side-effect: I go home and proceed to freak out that we just made a Huge Fucking Mistake. I wanted zinc. But the door I wanted, the style I wanted, only came in patina. Was it too black? I think it was too black. OMFG it’s too black. It’s going to look nothing like what I pictured it! I went online searching for pictures… nothing, just the manufacturers very photoshopped photo-slash-graphic-design. Hyperventillating now. We have 72 hours to change our minds. That’s all. No returns after it’s been custom ordered.

Back to Home Depot. I ran over to the floor models, to the one that had the “patina” style. Oh, it doesn’t look as bad as I thought. I stood back. Actually… that looks quite nice. Sets off the design. Not too dark, really. I mean, the lighting makes it hard to see, but… I leaned in close to inspect it… okay, it’s not really black. I mean, it’s darker than silver. But not black. It’s more… pewter. Yeah, that’s it. Pewter. I like pewter. That’s kind of pretty.

So I jogged out front to where Den was standing to tell him, Yep it’s the right door, we can go home now… it’s pretty, I think I’ll like it.

Den rolled his eyes. He’s used to this routine.

On the way home, his new grill (our other purchase of the day) in the back of his brother’s truck ahead of us, he turned to me and said, “I’m not sure I like the grill.” I turned to him with wide eyes. He grinned and said, “Just kidding.” A few seconds later he added with a laugh, “A little taste of what I go through.”

Evil bastard.

But man, I put him through hell, don’t I.

I had my chiropractic appointment this afternoon and it was the most lovely 15 minutes of my day. I am obviously carrying a lot of stress. I think I almost fell asleep on the table while the little tingly things loosened up my back.

I want a new laptop – and am pretty sure soon I will need a new laptop – but I need to wait until July to buy one. July is when Microsoft will start including a free Windows 7 upgrade to purchases. But it is so hard to wait! I am drooling over laptops. Why do I torture myself?? (Oh yes… it’s more pleasant than thinking about the lack of babies.)

::

Today I caught sight of someone’s sig on a forum, someone who I remembered had been pregnant within a day or two of myself. I was stunned to see that she was 10 weeks already. 10 weeks? That would mean it’s been almost a month since my loss. But that is right, seeing how I’m starting my next cycle already.

It hurt. I don’t want to see. I don’t want to think about it. It is gone… that chance, that calendar, is no longer mine.

I have a feeling this is going to haunt me for some time. Hopefully it will ease up when I am pregnant again. While I am not new to loss, I am somewhat new to this aspect of it… loss after a late stillbirth like I had doesn’t leave much room for shadowing others’ pregnancies. Kel, my first and closest pregnancy buddy, gave birth a mere week after I did. And that first month was such a haze to begin with, nothing much penetrated until later, after my due date had passed.

::

I am extremely anxious for my period to start so I can get started on the protocol and get some dates written in. I’ve started spotting so it should be sometime tonight or tomorrow morning. I’m just impatient. Just get started already, so I can move on to waiting for the next thing.

For the past several years I’d tossed around the thought that I should take some more suppliments, like Fish Oil, but the thought of adding yet more pills to my daily regimen held me back. Did I really need those extra pills? I always felt like I ought to try to take as little as possible.

Well I’m at the point now where I say “screw that!” If I need it, if it could possibly in some way help, I’ll take it. Today I bought some more vitamins in that “should probably take” category, like extra B-6 (which I had been taking, a million years ago, for morning sickness with Devin), Fish Oil, and a high dose of Vitamin C (because studies are showing that it might help with allergies). I had already started taking Calcium suppliments last month, to make up for the fact that I had to cut milk out of my diet because of the allergies. Plus my iron pills, because I’m anemic. And of course my prenatal with the very required Folic Acid. (And don’t worry, I did thorough research beforehand, figuring out what I need, what is too much, and what the prenatal already has in it.)

My nightstand is its own little pharmacy.

::

Today we cleaned out the future-baby’s-room. Since Devin died we had just used it as a storage room, and at some point it reached critical mass. This past week I was trying to find something, knew it was probably in that room somewhere, but I could barely make it through the deep pile of stuff to look. I got so frustrated I decided that was it, time to clean the room. So we did. It looks… empty.

I have no deep emotional feelings to that room, since we had only begun clearing it out for Devin and hadn’t gotten anywhere close to making it “his room” – there is still dark panelling on the walls instead of paint, there is no baby furniture set up, nothing. Just a futon and some book shelves. It still sits empty. That’s what gets to me. It’s a room with no purpose… an entire room in our house that sits vacant, door closed at all times. We don’t set it up to be a library, because we know one day – hopefully soon – it will be for someone. Like our lives, like my body, the room waits.

In the cleaning up I finally let Devin’s box be put away in that spare bedroom, safe on top of the bookshelves. It’s been 14 months now, and I am just now okay with it being in a back room rather than out in the living room – last time we did a major clean I insisted it stay out in the open. It’s just a blue box with all his things in it, and some white envelopes with all the important papers in them. They’re not pretty, they’re not decorative, but I just needed to have them there, where I could touch them as I walked by, where I could see them. I guess now I’m finally at a point in my grief, in my life, where I’m okay with them being out of sight.

We also found some stickers that I had bought for Devin: numbered jumping sheep, 1 – 10. I had intended to put them up in his room above his crib. After he died I didn’t want to throw them away, so I just stashed it in the back bedroom. Today we pulled it out and stared at it. I thought for a moment, then scurried off with them while Den looked puzzled. They are now stuck on the wall above our bed, around the quilt my friends made for Devin. This is going to be the spot the co-sleeper is going to go, where our next baby will sleep. It seems like a fitting place for them.

::

I am focussing a lot on the dates of the pregnancy that would occur from this coming transfer – more than I usually do during a cycle. I realized today why I’m doing it: to try to push out of my mind the dates of the pregnancy-turned-ectopic. I have enough loss dates to think about with regards to my pregnancy with Devin, and I really just want to not think about what could have been last time. I do not want to forget what happened – I will be making a small memory box for my little trinkets from that pregnancy – but I just can’t spend my time thinking about what never was. Instead I choose to focus on what still could be. Hopefully.

No more birth control pills!! I am very excited about that, and really hoping that my moods will get back to normal. If they don’t, well, either me or Den is going to snap soon, and I have no idea who it will be. I don’t even know why I’m so cranky, I just am. Oh it’s aweful.

Also I’m getting sick. It’s that crappy feeling that something is coming, but it’s just not there yet. It started Wednesday with a throat “thing” in the morning, and it’s just hanging around. It hasn’t exploded into anything yet, but I can just feel something off in my sinuses and throat. So now it’s just a matter of waiting to see what it does… I’m hoping my immune system kicks it out. Hoping.

But no, tonight the sinuses are not behaving at all. Allergies + virus? Looks like I’m in for a rough night.

::

Today we were at a large family party. It was fun because I had forgotten that most of the extended family out here had not seen me with my shorter hair, and they were all doing double-takes when they saw me. Plus I’ve lost some weight and am fitting into a smaller size, so I’m feeling very pleased with myself. (Not so pleased after the pigging out I did tonight, though. That isn’t going to help keep me in smaller pants!) I guess I kind of have the feeling of, I’m not pregnant, I don’t have a cute baby in my arms (like many others there tonight), so at least I can have a good looking body, goddamnit. It’s not much of a recompense – I’d trade in a second, but it’s something to hold tight to, that all is not lost.

I noticed that I don’t really react to the babies like I used to. They are less elephants in the room as… raccoons. Kind of unusual, and you do want to go and look, but it’s not this big huge thing anymore.

My chiropractor was there, though – she is friends of friends. Very nice lady, I like her a lot as a person and as a doctor… but she’s also one of the few who knew I was pregnant. Whom I haven’t seen yet. So she comes up to me and says I look fantastic, asks how I am with a big smile. I shake my head and say, “Actually… not so good, no.” She knew what I meant immediately and blurted out, “Oh no! That’s just shitty!” Then she paused and said, “That’s not very professional.” I told her she wasn’t acting in a professional capacity today, so it was perfectly acceptable, lol. She gave me a hug and asked me how I was doing at work with all of this. And she said we’d talk at my appointment next week.

Just such a nice person. Going to the chiropractor isn’t just about my back. She’s a very earthy person, their office always has some soft meditation music playing and every appointment she comes in and we chat… it’s like a little time-out for the week. While she’s working I have to really focus on relaxing my muscles and letting stress go, and honestly if there was nothing more done than just that it would be worth it. And I noticed my back doesn’t hurt half as much as it used to, which is extremely exciting for me.

She’s such a motherly personality… you can tell she was meant for that profession. Not a doctor in a white coat, but a slightly alternative path, but helping others, nurturing others. Not only does she help my spine back into place, but in a little way she helps my soul, too.