A third of a way through the hiatus: some peace and gratitude.

I record the hard times here, but I rarely bother to record the good times.

Today I'm feeling very peaceful and very grateful. I am a human being and humans look for patterns, no matter how spurious. For a while I, mired in self-pity, imagined my theme as I don't get to have what most people have, what I always thought I'd have.

I always thought I'd have a big wedding, with an enormous white dress and dancing till dawn. But when real life hit, we didn't have the money for a huge wedding, and getting married quickly seemed more important than getting married in the way I'd fondly thought we would. So this is what we had: a tiny, beautiful wedding, with our very dearest close to us.

So I'm trying this on as my new theme: Small things, done with great love (HT Mother Theresa).

Small things, done with great love, are not a bad way to make a life.


My beatific mood is helped by the fact that we've gotten some very good news. Small Boy was offered a place at a private school that we love but could never afford, with enough financial aid that we will be able to pay for it and eat food.

So yeah, feelin' lucky. Feeling peaceable with my uterus. I'll see where I am in a few months, but right now, the where-is-my-infant pain seems to be fading, not increasing.

It gets better.

Things are better. I'd have to look at a calendar to figure out where I'd be right now; it's fading, gently, covered with snow. Maybe not coincidentally, my hCG is falling, too. Two weeks ago it was 21. I have a recheck on Monday and expect it to be zero.

There have been a lot of babies around me lately. The lady in line in front of me at the thrift store had two huge baskets full of stuff. Checking her out took a while, so we had time to chat.

"How old are your kids?" I asked.
"One month, three, four, and five." She laughed and rolled her eyes. "How old are yours?"
"Three and a half."

I don't know. People don't get to choose the thing that's hard for them. This lady was, judging from her clothing and heavily accented English, a recent African immigrant. I'm willing to bet that the journey and adjustment hasn't been easy, even if she has had the best of circumstances. I don't know where I'm going with this. People don't get to choose the thing that's hard for them. A friend of mine, the thing that's hard for her is breathing. How is that fair?  I don't know.

But never mind, on to happier subjects. Her Indoors and I had been waffling about getting married until we knew the likely outcome of the pregnancy. I definitely wanted to be hitched before the baby was born, for the legal protection it'd give our family. That meant probably a small courthouse-type thing. But now that that is no longer an issue, the calendar opened wide up, and we could schedule it far enough in the future to give us time to plan the wedding we really want. So: next December! I am insanely excited.  I've been madly pinterest-ing and browsing for silk velvet and roses and sari fragments. I want this, and I can have this. I'm burying myself in wedding prep and it's really comforting.

I'm going to cycle again once I'm able, and maybe I will get pregnant and stay pregnant, and maybe I will be enormous and pregnant at our wedding. But you know what? I can't plan around it any more. I have to go ahead and live. If I get pregnant, we'll adapt.