My heart

I regurgitated most of yesterday's blog in my therapist's office today.

I think I'm beginning to understand how they work, these head doctors. She validates my feelings, but doesn't necessarily give me any answers. Either because she doesn't have any or because she wants me to come to my own conclusions as part of my healing journey.

I get that. I do. But I wouldn't mind a few concrete yes's and no's every now and then. I'm starting to wonder if anyone actually has any. Or if maybe I already have more answers than she does and just don't know it.

The only thing she'll come right out and give me an answer to is the, "Am I crazy?" query. So far it's always been a resounding NO. That's good. That's what I want to hear.

I suppose the idea is to get me to work through everything, with her as my travel guide. And yeah, I guess it wouldn't do any good to sit there and have someone tell me what to think and how to feel, particularly if I'm not thinking or feeling what that person thinks I should.

As she said, I'm grieving the way that's right for me, so how can that be wrong?

This just feels like such a long, daunting process. And I don't know where it ends.

She seems to want me to consider separating the love I have for my babies with the sorrow I feel at their loss.

It's a fabulous idea, but I might as well sit down and figure out the formula for cold fusion while I'm at it. I haven't got a clue where to begin.

It's easier to separate sorrow from love when you had time with the person you're mourning; when you have memories to comfort you. When all you know of someone is what they looked like on a home pregnancy test and how they felt kicking you from the inside out, it's a little harder to find that blessed comfort.

So much of my babies is sorrow. It just is. And yes, love too. Immeasurable love. But I just don't see how the two can ever be untangled. I don't see them as separate entities.

Therapist lady has her work cut out for her.

She asked me where I hold my sorrow. I said I carry it in my heart and wear it like a cloak. When she asked what would happen if I took it out of my heart, presumably to store it elsewhere, I felt a protective rush of panic and told her no, it had to stay there.

We both looked a little startled.

She asked why it needed to stay there, and I told her it's because it's mine. I held my hands over my actual heart and told her, "It's mine. It needs to stay here."

As though I was protecting my children. As though they physically need me to hold the sorrow of their loss that closely to me. As though their lives somehow depend upon it.

Maybe I'm just hanging on because the truth is they don't need me.

As a mother, there's nothing more heartbreaking than that.

Except knowing it.

Torment

The what ifs, would haves and should haves are relentless in their torment.

It dawned on me Friday that I'd have been 37 weeks pregnant with our twins by that date. I would likely have had a c-section one day this week since the plan is never to let me labor again.

What a different life I'm living than the one I should be.

Some might argue that this IS the life I'm meant to be living because I made my bed, as it were. I chose to try to have children, and try and try again after each loss. But it seems wrong to me. No life should have this much death in it. This much torment and struggle seems cruel and unusual to me, and I can't fathom that this is the way it should be.

I'm also very tormented by the fact that I know that the sorrow is draining me of energy and making it hard to truly see the joy that is in my life at the moment. I live in fear that I'm going to regret my single-minded focus one day, having, in hindsight, recognized what joys and loves I've allowed to let quietly slip away while I was busy grieving.

The thing is I don't know how to not be grieving. I don't know how you shut it off and ignore it. I don't know how to forget it.

I am almost always aware of my sorrow.

I don't enjoy the moments when I realize how pregnant I should be or how old one of my five dead babies would be. But the moments come to me just the same and I don't know how to stop them. I don't dwell on them either, but the fact that they come is torment enough.

My therapist says that all these moments of struggle are an opportunity to process more of my grief. I will be forever grateful to her for giving me permission to feel what I'm feeling and, more importantly, for telling me that it is my mind's way of healing.

Thomas' birthday is three weeks away. The twins should be here by now.

The house is silent.

It's just so much to process.

Sweet!

For those who may be wondering, the cheese factory did get back to me and they're going to put me in touch with the man who makes the Humbugs. He is, apparently, very happy to do business with me, which kind of makes me all cozy inside. It's a small, family owned business (I'm picturing a big farm kitchen with Humbug scented air) and those are my favourite kind. The fact that they make one of my favourite candies is icing on the proverbial cake.

And now, about Valentine's Day...

I want to wish everyone a happy, warm-hearted, love-filled day.

I know it's supposed to be all about lovers, but that makes me uncomfortable. I have two very close friends who have both recently separated from their husbands, a sister that I adore who hasn't found her own beloved yet, and a blog friend who is still searching for her prince.

My Valentine's Day is big enough for all of them. For all of us.

I remember lonely Valentine's Days very well. Until I met My Beloved, I spent all of them alone - every single one. I hated all the gooey sweetness of a day everyone said was meant for people in love. It made me feel like I was somehow unworthy of the love that seemed to magically bloom all around me each February 14th.

I hated it the way I now hate all the things that make me feel like I'm on the outside of a great big nursery looking in at all the babies that don't belong to me.

Mother's Day is the Valentine's Day of the childless and bereaved.

I know feeling excluded is unavoidable and there are times when it's impossible to be included, but not today.

Today I'm wishing everyone who has ever loved anyone (romantically, platonically and everything in between) and everyone I love a very happy Valentine's Day.

No off with you - go eat some chocolate.

Humbugs

I've just e-mailed a tiny little cheese factory in Odessa Ontario (just outside of Kingston) to see if they'll ship me a couple of tubs of Humbugs.

You know it's bad when you're pleading with strangers to send you candy.

When My Beloved and I were coming home from our anniversary getaway in Montreal, we stopped at the Wilton Cheese Factory to browse for cheese (a mutual passion - both the browsing for and eating of). I don't have any idea what Humbugs were doing in a cheese store, but there they were; little amber and cream striped pillows of hard peppermint delight.

I haven't tasted Humbugs like these since I was a kid.

My Grandfather, who passed his frugality and his love of hard candy on to me, always had Humbugs in his pocket. As a kid I remember hugging him and smelling a mixture of wood smoke (from the ever-present fires he liked to burn, regardless of the season), Old Spice (when it was a Sunday, Christmas or Easter), and Humbugs. The three scents combined to form a unique and completely unmistakable "Grandpa Cologne" that, if I concentrate hard enough, I can almost conjure up in my mind's eye. Or my nose's eye, as it were.

Smoke and Old Spice are easy to find, but not so the humble Humbug. Until that day in the cheese factory they were lost to me.

Having found them, I refuse to let them go. I need my Humbugs now. I NEED them.

My Grandfather and I had a difficult relationship. I didn't understand him in many ways, and I struggled with his inability to show true love, affection and kindness to the people I thought he had to have loved the most.

I didn't think I liked him all that much until he died. And now I miss him, and his smokey, Humbug-y, Old Spice scent.

I miss the connection he was to my past. To my childhood. To my Grandmother, who I adored. I miss his stories, most of which I've heard a hundred times and could tell myself. I miss his hands, twisted and gnarled by arthritis but defiantly strong. I miss his whistling, which was the last sound I ever heard him make.

I'm sorry I didn't always feel the love I'm sure he had for me. I'm sorry he never told me. I'm sorry I never told him.

It's a mistake I'm determined I will never repeat.

The Humbugs make me think of him, and the simpler, happy times we spent together when I was a child and didn't know enough to think our relationship was anything other than perfect.

Long walks to the dam, bonfires on the beach, rowboat rides, porridge in the morning, stew at night, and a mayonnaise commercial that made him laugh so hard he'd almost cry.

I hope they'll ship me my Humbugs. It's a long drive to memory lane.

We're not so different

I can't believe Thomas' third birthday is coming up so fast. More than that, I can't believe he'd be three. Three already.

It was so easy to keep track of what exactly I was mourning when he'd just died because I knew what I was missing in a very tangible sense. I'd just seen him. Held him. Kissed him.

But now? Now I'm mourning for a three-year old I've never seen as well as my little baby. And I've already mourned for the one-year old and two-year old he would have been.

I didn't realize, in those dark, early days, how the mourning would change. I was so fixated on losing that beautiful little baby boy with his Daddy's chin that it didn't occur to me, at least right away, that I'd be mourning so much more than that, on and on and on for the rest of my life.

It's a fact I'm now acutely aware of, particularly as each birthday approaches.

I watch other children his age and see what I'm missing. I see the ghost of my child in them.

I sometimes wonder if it's healthy to think this way - to think so much about what Thomas would be like now and to feel the loss of that boy as well as the baby I did know.

But since this is the only way I know how to mourn a dead child (and as far as I know there's no manual for dealing with maternal grief), I'm just going to run with it. To do otherwise feels like I'd somehow be leaving him behind - and denying the mourning process that feels right and natural to me.

I don't dwell on it, the boy he'd be now, but it crosses my mind. How can it not? How can I see a child Thomas' age and not think about what he'd be like? How can it not make me miss him more? Or, at the very least, wonder about what might have been?

I can't help it. Maybe it's a mother thing. Maybe you are always this connected to your children, living or dead.

I find it interesting that no one blinks an eye when mothers of living children are consumed by thoughts of their children - of their daily doings, their accomplishments, their achievements, their triumphs and failures - but people furrow their brows and worry when the mother of a dead baby admits she thinks about her lost child.

I have yet to meet a mother - any mother - who can "let go" of her children.

We're not so different. We're not.

An Ash Wednesday prayer

Dear God,

I wasn't snacking while I was making dinner. I was pre-eating.

Amen

Our song

Soon after My Beloved got his guitar last Christmas, he started teaching himself Wish You Were Here, a Pink Floyd song I'd never heard before.

He played it over and over and over, listening to a recording of it when he wasn't practicing it himself to get all the nuances and timing just right.

Finally I asked, "Why, why, WHY are you playing that so much? I don't like that song!" (Because of course by then I felt I knew it very well).

"I don't know," he said, "but doesn't it kind of remind you of us; two lost souls swimming around and around in endless circles?"

Oh. Oh yeah.

Nice way to finally find "our song".


So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell,
Blue skys from pain.
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

And did they get you to trade
Your heros for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange
A walk on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage?

How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl,
Year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found?
The same old fears.
Wish you were here.

Oh, she's gooooood

Although the inner guilt machine churns out an endless, "you should be ashamed for having to spend your money on this" loop in my head, I have to admit that my therapist is earning her money. Totally.

For the record, I don't think therapy of any kind is a waste of money. It's just that for some reason I have trouble reconciling spending this much money doing something I'm still really pissed I couldn't do on my own, which is sort out the layers of grief in my poor addled brain. I'm angry with myself for needing help when I thought I was doing so well for so long.

But, I'm told, trauma is cumulative. Losing the twins was just enough additional sorrow, confusion and anger to make all the grief of the past 5 years suddenly no longer manageable. At least by me alone, anyway.

Sometimes I find all the blathering I do while I'm sitting on my therpist's cracked blue leather couch (clearly I'm not the only person who sits there on a regular basis) kind of useless, but I think the fact that I'm talking virtually non-stop for 50 minutes every. time. I. go. probably means that it's not as useless as I think it is.

Someone with THIS much to say obviously needs to be heard.

But when she really earns her money is when she takes something I've said, turns is around and shows it to me in a completely different way.

I told her I'm completely overwhelmed by the reality that we might never had a child, biological or adopted. No doors have closed, but the possibility of a childless life for us is certainly increasingly more probable. Or possible, let's say.

I said I'm paralyzed by this. I don't know what to do - don't know who I am if I'm not a mother to a living child. I don't know where to go from that jumping off point.

She looked at me, thought for a second and said, "Well no wonder you're overwhelmed. You've spent the last 5 years with tunnel vision - on a single-minded mission to conceive. You've spent all that time and energy trying to get pregnant, being pregnant or dealing with loss, and now there's a real possibility that that door might close."

"And if it does," she went on, "a whole bunch of new doors will open - ones you've had shut for a long time while you've dealt with the business of trying to have a child, or ones you've never even considered opening. Suddenly there are a myriad choices for you to make, and you're just not used to it, as focused as you've been on that one, single, solitary goal. Of course you're overwhelmed."

Ohhhhhhhhh.

And I think that's exactly what I said, while I was busy sighing one of those blissful sighs of incredible, shoulder tension easing relief.

I know that I'm overwhelmed, but having someone explain why - and validate the way I've been feeling in the process - is invaluable.

So while I still feel guilty for having to fork over our hard earned dough, I know she's earning every single penny for every single knot in my head, heart and shoulders that her words manage to loosen.

Worth every penny indeed.

Stupid cold...

That's my excuse for having been an absent blogger. I swear it has nothing to do with being lazy and opting to lay on the couch reading and napping instead of sorting out the myriad thoughts in my head and getting them down on paper. Or screen, as the case may be.

I had the sniffles. Now I have the sinus congestion. I sound not unlike The Family Guy's Lois.

Peetah.
________________________________

This morning the face of an absolutely gorgeous little girl with chubby cheeks and great big brown eyes greeted me from the front cover of The Toronto Star. About 7 months old, she was found face-down in the freezing cold stairwell of a Toronto strip mall, whimpering. And abandoned.

Abandoned.

They still don't know who she is. No one has identified this precious little soul. No one wants her back enough to claim her.

It makes my heart ache when children are discarded like this. It makes me want to scream until my throat bleeds at the unfairness of a world where some people make babies so easily and so frequently that they just drop off the extras in staircases like unwanted kittens, and other people spend thousands of dollars and years of their lives trying to make just one healthy, take-home baby. And sometimes never succeed.

There is no fair. There is only the lot you're given.
___________________________________

I've been having some wild dreams lately.

The other night, while Britney Spears and I were looking for snacks in my Mom and Dad's basement while we folded laundry, she casually told me that I reeeeeally needed to cover all the gray in my hair.

If anyone can decipher that one, please let me know.
___________________________________

The other day I wrote a scathing post about Bush and his 900+ lies, but My Beloved suggested I not post it.

Party pooper.
___________________________________

We took My Beloved's parent's cat to the vet this week to have an ingrown claw looked at (gross).

She was My Beloved's cat once upon a time (and he still thinks of her as his), but she's lived with my in-laws for 9 years without him, so I kind of think of her as theirs.

However, as I sat in the vet's waiting room with my fingers poking through the carrier bars scratching her worried little head in an attempt to soothe her, she suddenly felt like mine.

And I can't quite get her out of my head.

I'm such a sucker for small things that need me.
____________________________________

I have now let two two-for-one movie coupons expire.

Good GOD, we need to get out more.
____________________________________

I was stuck in traffic for a while tonight, and while I was sitting at a very long light (that I didn't make it through the first time), I noticed I could smell a fire.

Fires are nothing but cozy to me, reminding me of chilly fall days at the cottage; my Grandma lighting her prized pot-bellied stove to keep us warm; and the unmistakable smell of Tasso Lake wood being burned on crisp winter nights at the house my Grandparents used to live in once upon a time, just around the corner from ours.

All kinds of cozy.

So I sat there in the car, breathing the smell in deeply.

Until I realized I was at the intersection by the funeral home...that has a crematorium on the property.

I don't know. I just don't know. But I stopped breathing deeply just in case.

I know it's morbid. Really morbid. And I can't help but wonder if only the perpetually bereaved would even think it...
______________________________________

Tomorrow is February. We'd have been the parents of twins by the end of the month.

But instead, I'm pining over an old cat that doesn't belong to me and going to therapy to sort out 5 years' worth of grief.

'Cause that's fun too.

Wired

Okay, so I'm hooked up to the heart monitor. Have been for 6 hours. Have I had one single little flutter? One trace of a palpitation? One itty, bitty blip? No.

They've plagued me for the better part of two months, tormenting me endlessly, and now when I WANT them to come, they won't.

Doesn't that just figure? Doesn't that just flucking figure??

Because the thing is, I wear this for two weeks OR until I record 14 "episodes". Yes, it's a relatively small device (ipod size vs. the extra-large Walkman size one I wore 17 years ago), but one of the two sticky disks (I'm sure there's an actual name for them) that keeps the electrode next to my skin is ever-so-unflatteringly placed just below my collarbone to the immediate right of the middle of my neck. In plain view unless I'm wearing a turtle neck or a nun's habit.

And I have neither.

And this is annoying.

I scoffed when the nurse, a woman in her 50's wearing braces that seemed about 10 times too big for her mouth, told me the two week or 14 episode rule. I told her I'd likely be back in a few days given the frequency of the flutters.

She didn't seem impressed by this, by the way.

I know I should be happy, not to mention relieved, that the flutters seem to have magically calmed down. And I am. But I'd be much happier if I wasn't connected to a heart monitor by two sticky disks, one very visible and increasingly itchy, for what may now be two full weeks.

The fun never stops.

Commercial break

I'm such a schmuck. Instead saying thank you for all the supportive and wonderfully sweet comments - and for taking the time to let me know that you're our there and that you care - I launched into a heart palpitation festival of woe.

Please ignore me.

Well, after I say a very heartfelt (albeit belated) thank you.

Tick Tock

It's funny when they call your bluff, isn't it? The doctors, I mean.

I went in for a routine blood pressure check this morning, and while I was there I mentioned some annoying heart palpitations I've been having on and off for the last month or so (which have secretly being making me crazy. Crazier).

I've had palpitations for as long as I can remember (usually when I'm overtired or stressed out of my gourd), and was checked out very thoroughly 17 years ago when they seemed particularly frequent to me. Everything was normal. Benign, even.

The thing is, it didn't really stop me from worrying about it. My mind is like that. Impenetrable to anything even remotely resembling relief or reassurance.

I was hoping she'd slough off my fears, wave her hand dismissively and tell me it was stress. All in my head. Nothing to worry about.

Instead she said, "Hmmmmmm", looked concerned and listened to my ticker intently.

It seemed normal (kind of like Michigan J. Frog, who'll only sing for the guy who opens up the time capsule), but just to be sure, I'm scheduled for a heart monitor hook up in the next few days.

Two weeks with a portable monitor making me even more aware of my fluttering heart than I already am.

Fanfuckingtastic.

Except that maybe this time if nothing is wrong, I'll believe it.

Shut up. I might.

Wii, Wii, Wii all the way home

I sustained a Wii-related shoulder injury on the weekend.

You know you're either in very bad shape or very old when you hurt yourself playing imaginary bowling.

While explaining the intricacies of the set-up and play of the game, my brother-in-law (a much younger and injury-free man who owns the Wii), told My Beloved and I that you can "make people". By this he meant that you can make little cartoon caricatures of yourself to represent you on screen while you're playing.

But of course I took the opportunity to make a morbid joke of it all.

"You can make people with Wii? So THAT's The problem! We've been going about this all the wrong way. We just needed a Wii!"

There's nothing like a room full of nervous laughter and averted eyes to confirm the bombing of an ill-fated joke.

But I still think it was funny.

My therapist wonders if maybe I use humour to avoid dealing with some of my pain. I like her and all, and so far the sessions have helped quite a bit, but she's going to have to dig a little deeper than this, I think.

Because really, it doesn't get more obvious that that.

Of course I do.

Now getting me stop, there's the challenge.

The flipside

I suppose it'll make me look reallllly needy and selfish if I beg you to stay, huh? If I tell you that your comments mean the world to me and that I read and ponder and re-read every single one, and that even though I've abandoned you I still want you to stay with me and hold my hand, right?

This doesn't make me look good at all...

But since I seem to be into telling the ugly truth these days, there you go.

Don't leave me. Please?

An apology

I've been a terrible blog friend lately. I've been reading sporadically at best and posting comments even less.

I don't know why I feel the need to explain and apologize (my therapist, after just three sessions, feels comfortable enough to make fun of my need to apologize constantly. I don't know if I should be amused or perturbed by this, quite frankly). Nonetheless, explain and apologize I shall do.

In a nutshell, it's safer just to stay here, inside this little box.

When I first stumbled across this community of mourning bloggers a month or so after Thomas died, my experience was very similar to those of the grieving mothers I found here. Not exactly, of course. The circumstances that brought us to a place of such deep grief were different, but we were all more or less in the same place, dealing with the same sorrows and the same struggles. It was a refuge. A home filled with people who understood in a way no one in my "real" world did.

Fast forward nearly three years, and I feel like I'm treading water in a great big ocean all by myself. So many of those mourning mothers that I once felt such a connection to have, thankfully, gone on to bear healthy, living children. Others are pregnant now. Others, having made the leap from mourning mother to mourning mother of a living child, are now considering taking the TTC plunge yet again.

And I haven't moved. I've gone backwards with losses four and five, combined.

I'm not fishing for sympathy here. It is what it is.

I'm glad so many people - so many wonderful friends - have found the peace and joy that a new pregnancy and/or healthy child have brought. I just sometimes can't read about it.

The ugly truth. There it is. I sometimes can't read about it.

I'm tormented by the thought that I may never have that extra dose of healing peace a new, healthy pregnancy reportedly brings mourning mothers. They say it doesn't fill the holes, but they say it helps. More than they ever imagined.

What if I never get that help? Where do I find it then? Where is my help? My peace?

So I slink back to my safe little box where everything stays the same and pretend that it doesn't feel like the world is moving on without me.

For now that's my peace.

And I'm sorry. Just don't tell my therapist I said so.

Retail therapy

So we went out and got a chair for the newly painted office.

It was a little more than the $1.36 we spent on Friday, but it was still a very good deal. And I like it. And it soothes me. And I will buy things, dammit, because there's a hole in my heart and I'm not eating enough to fill it.

And that's the way it goes.

Now as for you, thank you so much for the reassurances - all of you. I can't fathom the guilt ever leaving me. I don't know how it's possible to get rid of something that feels like it runs through every fiber of my being, but it does help to know I'm alone in pointing the big ugly finger of blame my way. At least there's that.

And Amy, yes, I remember you. It's so nice to "see" you - and to know that you don't blame me either. Thank you. Seriously. Thank you.

And Heather, in case you think I wasn't listening, check out www.lightinguniverse.com - floor lamps GALORE. Poke. Poke. Poke.

And My Beloved, thank you. Over and over and over again, thank you.

Identity crisis

I've always had at the very least a vague notion of who I was. Or what I was going to be. Or what I wanted to become.

And I realized today, as I was wandering from the bank to the grocery store to pick up some things I forgot yesterday, that I don't have that clarity anymore.

I have no idea who I am.

I know how this happened. I know very well that the turmoil of trying and losing and trying and losing and trying and burying and healing and trying and losing has done this to me. I'm aware of the path that lead me to this distressing Tuesday afternoon realization.

My problem is, how do I fix it?

I feel like I'm lost inside this person who breeds nothing but pain. I've hurt so many people in the process of trying to bring a child into the world, and it's a terrible, gnawing, awful feeling.

They will say, My Beloved and my therapist, that it's not my fault - that I didn't do anything. That I am not to blame.

But I'm the vessel. I'm the great hope. And I'm nothing but hopeless.

Part of the reason I'm reluctant to talk about the whole baby business here is because I'm terrified of dragging people I love along with me for yet another hellish ride.

There are days, moments really, when I wish that I could just go away. Leave everyone and everything behind and disappear, never to wound again.

I love too much to do this, not to mention the fact that I'm far too needy to wander off and start a new life away from everyone I adore and depend on.

But the fantasy is lovely. Imagine a life where no one expected anything of me. Where no one could be hurt by me. Where no one pitied me, worried about me, or waited, with bated breath, for good news from me. Just imagine that.

I suppose no one has that kind of life. And I know the grass is always greener and I'm lucky as hell to have so many people who do care so much about me when there are people in the world who are desperately lonely - and very much alone.

I just wish I didn't feel like all I've done is let the people I love down and bring them such unbearable sorrow.

It's a pretty shitty feeling.

We're on a roll...

Tonight it was Costco. We came home with Downy, organic cereal, banker's boxes, honey, vanilla, Mr. Clean Magic Erasers, and 32 rolls of toilet paper.

As My Beloved pointed out, this is what happens when we (and by that he means me) go on a diet. Instead of eating, we buy stuff.

So far we've been practical and relatively frugal (I had a coupon for the toilet paper and Downy, and of course Friday's Bulk Barn haul was, you'll recall, just $1.36). But the longer I go without regular servings of chocolate, the more extreme the purchases will become, I suspect.

I'm thinking a club chair for our newly painted office...

If I can't eat, don't have a baby, and can't garden (for another few months, anyway), at least I can still shop. They can't take that away from me.

If you're looking for a personal shopper (and I do more than just purchase cleaning products and high-fiber food items, just so you know), please give me a call. Spending someone else's money is every bit as satisfying as spending my own. It's the thrill I'm after, really.

Although I do want a club chair...

Rock on

Sooooo, it's Friday night. We're grown ups. We have a car. We have an entertainment budget. We have money in the entertainment budget. We don't need to find a babysitter (sigh). We don't have to get up in the morning. We don't have any family obligations - or, really, any obligations at all.

So what, you might be wondering, did we do with ourselves (although clearly not for very long because It's 9:31pm and we're back home already)?

We went to Bulk Barn and spent $1.36 on some wheat bran and brown rice.

We browsed through a couple of other stores first (a Benix outlet and some sort of "urban chic" furniture and accessory store filled with overpriced urban chic crap that 20-something urban chic-sters covet but can't afford), but settled on Bulk Barn as a repository for our Friday night entertainment money.

As we were pulling out of the parking lot, chuckling at our ancient selves, I commented that it may have been the most boring Friday night itinerary ever, but when you're doing it with the right person, it's somehow fun. And undeniably cozy.

The right person makes everything right.

You hear people ask, "how do you know you've found the one?" And now I know the answer. When a Friday night trip to Bulk Barn is fun, that's how you know you have a keeper.

This 'n that. Again.

I promised a raspberry bran muffin recipe.

I lied.

I'll post it (although I don't know who, beside My Beloved and I who share a strange preoccupation with fibre and its myriad sources, will care) but not today. Because the recipe is alllll the way downstairs. And I'm not.
______________________________________

Sometimes my vacuum cleaner sounds like Chewbacca. Usually, for some reason, when I'm doing our bedroom. This amuses me no end.

And I needed to share.

______________________________________

I know I haven't talked about our baby and/or adoption plans here for quite some time. To be honest I really haven't talked about them anywhere for quite some time. Except, of course, with My Beloved.

I know it's odd, given how much information I've divulged in the past, but for some reason I just want to hold it all close to me right now. It feels like all I've done for nearly five years now is raise hopes and dash them. Over and over and over again.

We do have a plan. More or less. As much of a plan as it's possible to have under the circumstances (we've learned the hard way how laughable it is to make "firm" plans), but for now they belong to us.

We've trod some very difficult ground together with our whole worlds watching, and we just need to go it alone for a while.

With, please, no questions asked.

I'm not being cryptic here. I'm not pregnant. I'm just saying the silence is on purpose. We need the space. I need the space.

____________________________________

Want to know something un-fucking-believable? I would have been having the twins next month. NEXT. MONTH.

I was due right around Thomas' birthday (the 9th of March), but I would have been induced at 37 or 38 weeks if I hadn't already had them.

So it would have been February.

Again with the "would haves".

I'm so done with the would haves...

____________________________________

I haven't had chocolate in days.

This would probably account for yesterday's fantasy about diving naked into a gigantic caramel-filled chocolate so I could swim around in it, taking in great gulps of caramel and nibbling at the sides of the chocolate.

It's possible that I may love chocolate just a little too much.

If you're in the greater Toronto area...

From The Toronto Star
January 3, 2008

Lieutenant-governors usually bring their own priorities and causes to the largely ceremonial position.

But in a welcome move, David Onley, who was sworn in as Ontario's 28th lieutenant-governor in September, is carrying on a campaign for native literacy that his predecessor, James Bartleman, championed throughout his five-year term in office.

Onley launched a book drive this week that will collect books for native youth in isolated fly-in communities in Northern Ontario. New children's books can be donated until Jan. 18 at Ontario Provincial Police detachments across the province, and at Toronto police stations.

The drive builds on previous efforts by Bartleman, who headed two campaigns that collected some 2 million books for remote communities in Ontario, Nunavut and Quebec. He also set up summer reading camps and a reading club for native children in Northern Ontario.

Boosting literacy, and opportunities, among native youth is a crucial antidote to the dire poverty, appalling living conditions and high suicide rates that plague many remote reserves. Onley deserves high praise for taking up this worthy cause.

If this has tickled your philanthropic fancy, here is a fantastic place to get books at incredible prices - sometimes up to 80% off. And there's still lots of time to order and have the books delivered to your home before the January 18th drop-off date.

Just a thought...

(I bet you're surprised this post has nothing to do with food, eh? Don't worry - tomorrow I'm posting an amazing raspberry bran muffin recipe! Mmmmm. Muffins.)

Free to good home!

In the spirit of de-cluttering and in keeping with the theme of food, I have available to the first commenter who wants it a FREE (albeit used) copy of Paula Deen's memoir, "It Ain't All About the Cookin.'"

A very sweet friend sent it to me as a surprise treat one day when I really needed a surprise treat. After I read it I lent it to my Mom, so it's made its rounds in my circle and I think I should release it to the wider world now.

A literary pay-it-forward, if you will.

So if you want it (and you're quick enough) it's yours. Leave me your e-mail address in your comment and we'll work out the logistics that way.

Ah, food.

This 'n that. Mostly food.

I made really yummy raspberry bran muffins after dinner tonight. I started Weight Watchers (again) today, and bran muffins seemed like a healthy alternative to the chocolate orgy I've been unashamedly engaged in for the better part of the last month.

I ate two. With margarine. But since they're 100% chocolate-free, I think I'm golden.

_______________________________________________

I'm hungry.

_______________________________________________

As much as I want to lose more weight (read: re-lose what I lost and gained back), I think a lot of my desire to jump back on the the Weight Watchers bandwagon hinges on my need for control.

When I first started seeing some success on WW back in '06, I was as thrilled by my need for smaller pants as I was of my ability to control the body that had failed me and Thomas so horrendously.

I still want smaller pants. But yeah, I think this is still as much about control as anything else.

I don't really care, it's just interesting to note.

________________________________________________

I forgot how all consuming food and weight loss and hunger is during the first week of Weight Watchers.

You might want to skip the next week of posts. I'm just saying.

________________________________________________

I had lunch with an elementary school friend I hadn't seen in 23 years last week. We found each other via Facebook (good GOD I love that thing) and after several Scrabulous games and messages back and forth we decided to host our own two-person reunion.

I know I shouldn't, but it's so very hard not to judge people by the way they react to Thomas - his life and death. His story.

We all know someone who has disappointed us - who has retreated in fear, never to be seen again. We all know people who prefer not to talk about it for reasons we just have to hope have more to do with them wanting to protect us than themselves. We all know people who just can't handle it.

Sadly, we just do.

But Stacy wasn't one of those people. She cried great big tears all over the table, oblivious to everyone else in the restaurant, after gently asking me to tell his story. She cried like it happened to her. She told me that she wished we'd gotten back in touch a long time ago so that she'd have been able to be there for me when he died.

She did everything right. Somehow she just knew how.

Amazing.
________________________________________________

We didn't win the $36 million dollar 6/49 jackpot tonight.

I guess I'll continue to make my own muffins in the future. No Alice for me.

________________________________________________

Really, I'm huuuuungry.

2008

I've never really liked New Year's Eve. I'm so gushingly sentimental about everything that even the turning of a new year easily makes me misty eyed and melancholic.

The past two New Year's Eves - when I've been more than happy to leave the old years behind because they held broken dreams, grief and hopelessness in their clutches - I still felt twinges of sorrow as the ball dropped. I didn't want the dying years back, but the passing of time and the changing of the calendar made me feel so much farther away from Thomas.

Everything seemed so connected to him.

So I fully expected this year to be the same. But, like Christmas, it tricked me.

This year was easy. I've never in my life been so happy to bid an old year farewell. I felt no sorrow as the countdown began. Not even the tiniest bit. I just clutched my glass of sparkling Shiraz and waited for the relief of a fresh start.

I know today really isn't any different than yesterday. Not really. Yesterday was last year, but it was also just Monday.

However, as I lay in bed with my tiny Shiraz buzz on and my body unclenching just a little bit, all I could see stretched out in front of me was a brand new, sparkling white year.

As unblemished as they come.

I have no idea what the year holds for us - and I'm loathe to hazard a guess because life has this funny way of doing the unexpected and unthinkable - but right now, at 10:20pm on the first day of this impossibly young year, I feel good. Not necessarily hopeful, but not drained of hope either.

This year holds no evil for me. It's pristine. Sorrow hasn't wiped its bloody paws all over it yet, and there's every chance it won't.

Yes, yes, there's every chance it will. It is me we're talking about. But still, right now it's good. It's all good.

Minute to minute. That's the way to go.

Happy New Year!

Abide with me

I'm not a bible thumper, I swear. I don't think there's anything wrong with being one, I just happen to keep my thoughts about God mostly to myself and quietly do my own thing. Unless I'm complaining about Him here, of course...

But because I found myself ridiculously early for New Year's Eve Mass tonight (I thought it would be crowded. It wasn't.) I decided to kill some time by flipping through my missal. I usually forget to bring it with me but for some reason I remembered tonight. It's all new and red and pretty and it caught my eye as I rushed out the door.

It shouldn't look quite as new as it does, actually. I forget it a lot.

Anyway, the back is filled with hymns and prayers and sundry, which is what I was perusing while I waited. Nothing like boredom to force you into prayer mode.

So when I read this little prayer, which I recognize as an old hymn that I think was one of my Grandfather's favourites, a chill tickled its way up my spine. Twice. My body payed attention to the magic in the words. The divinity, I suppose.

I don't know why, but I think a good spine-tingling prayer is worth repeating, especially in the dying hours of an old year that, for the most part, I'm very happy to see come to a close. Once and for all, and all that.

If it doesn't make you tingle, that's okay. If nothing else, maybe the archaic language will give you the cozies.

Either way, I hope you enjoy. And I hope the close of the year brings you some much needed peace, no matter who you are or what you've struggled with these last 12 long months.

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day;
Earth's joys grow dim; its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see;
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.

I need Thy presence every passing hour.
What but Thy grace can foil the tempter's power?
Who, like Thyself, my guide and stay can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me.

I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless;
Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.
Where is death's sting? Where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still, if Thou abide with me.

Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes;
Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.
Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows flee;
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

A prayer

If you're the praying kind - or the throwing good thoughts out into the universe kind or the sending positive thoughts someone's way kind or the crossing your fingers and wishing on a star kind - could you please do any and all of the above for a friend whose one-month old baby was just diagnosed with juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia?

We don't need any more sorrow in this already overcrowded blogosphere of grief. We don't need another mother in mourning.

Oh please God, not that...

Balance

My Beloved, I think, was a little stung when I made an offhanded comment about the ugliness of 2007.

And, to give him credit, he's correct in saying that it wasn't all bad. Some of it was good. Some of it was very, very good. I just have a very bad habit of dwelling on the things that wore me down and wounded me rather than focusing on the things that lifted me up and healed me.

So, in an effort to achieve some year-end balance, a list of good things that 2007 brought our way...

First, answers. As terrified as I was of the laparoscopy and all that surgery entailed, it did achieve the end we were hoping for. It gave us answers. It told us that the reason we'd been trying and failing for almost two years was the fine weave of scar tissue I'd quietly grown after the C-section and subsequent blood infection. Armed with this information I felt less broken. Less useless. More hopeful.

2007 also brought us our Goddaughter. She was born in 2006, but we were given the honour of becoming her Godparents in July of 2007. I had just found out I was pregnant with the twins, just stepping onto the roller coaster that would chew me up and spit me out a month and a half later. Having that blessing - knowing that we were that loved and trusted and forever bonded to a sweet little girl we both already adored - helped me cope with the uncertainty and sorrow of the weeks that followed.

We are still together. We are still in love. We are still committed to finding the path that will lead us to the happiness we want so badly. We are also still crazy (perhaps increasingly so in my case), but we're crazy together. Always.

Our families are whole and healthy. Mostly. Our parents are getting older, and aches, pains and chronic illness continue to batter them, but they're here. They're still here. Thank God.

The incredible near-toothless beast is still here too. Still warming us up with purrs and headbutts and furry cuddles on cold winter nights. And on hot summer days. And, really, whenever the hell she wants them.

I found two new freelance clients that arrived, as if on angel's wings, a few weeks after the D&C, giving me the much needed distraction of busyness. And it happens to be work that I'm loving so much it almost feels wrong to call it work. But don't tell them lest they decide the joy of doing the job is payment enough.

We have a house. We have food. We have a car. We have enough money to support my crochet habit.

We had a very good year.

We had a spectacularly bad year.

And yet we are still here. Sometimes I wonder how the hell that's possible, but it is. Somehow, it just is.

Decompression

I suppose I'm slow. I kept wondering why I was having such a hard time with Christmas this year. Last year, after all, was so much better than the year before - the first year without Thomas.

I enjoyed virtually everything about Christmas 2006. I missed the boy, yes, but I truly enjoyed all of the festivities in a way I had been completely incapable of the year before, lost in deep haze of grief.

So I stupidly assumed, without giving it much thought really, that this Christmas would be even better. Even easier. Two Christmases under my belt had to make this one even easier.

Except that it wasn't.

This was a hellish year in many slow, quiet ways. It started in January with the suggestion that we entertain the notion of exploratory surgery because all else had failed. Spectacularly so. Surgery was in March, a few weeks after Thomas' second birthday. It nearly broke me, if you'll recall - the lead up, pure terror. Then a third failed IUI. Then twins. Then a month and a half of torment and uncertainty while we waited for confirmation that the twins would never come. Then a D&C, hemorrhaging and an overnight hospital stay.

And, at long last, the onset of the Christmas season followed almost immediately by the onset of therapy.

Why I thought a year like that would gently wind its way down to a sweet and peaceful Christmas season is beyond me. Maybe I just hoped it would.

But I know better now.

Gotta love the usefulness of hindsight.

Counting down

Christmas used to be merrier once upon a time, but I'm doing my best. I am. I swear I am.

But if I'm being honest (and it seems like I should, just in case Santa's paying attention), I'm kind of looking forward to boxing day more than anything else at the moment.

I can't help it. It's been one hell of a year and I'm just missing too many little people.

Sometimes peace doesn't come when you want it to or when you think it should. In fact that's when it can be particularly elusive. Just because Hallmark says I should feel merry doesn't mean merry is necessarily going to find me.

It might. There's still time.

But if all else fails, there's always boxing day.

I should have figured this out long ago...

You know what's interesting? After four years, five losses and secondary infertility thrown in for good measure, I needed a therapist to help me realize that not only is it okay for me to be uncomfortable doing baby-related things sometimes, it's okay for me to remove myself from whatever uncomfortable situation I'm in to preserve my sanity.

Holy crap. Why did it take so long? Why did it take this long for me to figure out that it's okay not to be comfortable all the time and it's okay to protect myself when I'm not - that I don't always have to protect everyone else's feelings at the expense of my own?

This woman is definitely earning her money. Definitely.

Ah, the Christmas letter

Here's the thing. I've always maintained that I absolutely do not want to be treated differently by the successfully child-bearing among us. And I still maintain this to be true.

However, I do kind of think people should use a modicum of tact and sensitivity when dealing with the bereaved, especially around this time of year. Especially with a still-fresh loss compounding the sorrow of the three behind it.

Which is why I nearly burst a vein last night when I got a Christmas letter tucked into a Christmas card from friends of our. It was a sweet letter, but it was 98% kid-oriented.

I can't necessarily cope with hearing about all the milestones your 9-month old son has reached, especially when that son was born on the day Thomas was due nearly three years ago. I don't want to hear about how his big sister (born four months after my first miscarriage) dotes on that tiny boy.

This probably sounds cold. Mean, even. I love children. I love all my friends' children. I love holding them and making them laugh and cooing at them.

But I do it when I can. When I choose to. When I'm capable.

When a letter barges its way into my quiet, empty house and regales me with tales of life in a happy, child-filled home it makes me ache with emptiness and longing. It makes my house deafeningly silent. It makes the tree lights burn my eyes. It makes me cry quietly while I'm watching The Grinch with My Beloved.

I know my sorrow and its magnification at this time of year isn't top of mind for most people, particularly those we don't see often, but my God, how does it not occur to people (who, by the way, know about the twins when many people don't) that we might not want to read a "look what my kid can do now" letter?

How does it not occur to them that it might hurt us? How is it possible not to realize that a letter like that shouldn't be sent to people like us?

Just, how??

It's about time this got some REAL coverage

From The Toronto Star, December 18/07...

Compassion lacking for women who miscarry

Lack of empathy for those who lose a fetus prompts woman to speak out

Helen Henderson
Living Reporter

Kelly Bodanis knows way too much about losing babies.

After three miscarriages in the last 15 months, she's also too familiar with the insensitive way society, and the health care system, often treat women going through such loss.

While she would rather keep her sorrow private, she bares her own hurt and anger in the hopes her story will inspire other women to join her call for change.

"Women don't come forward because they're embarrassed and in pain," she says. "I want to say to them: `Don't hide and stay home.'"

Ten weeks into her pregnancy, Bodanis had her most recent miscarriage last October in the washroom outside the labour unit at North York General Hospital.

"I felt like I had the plague. Nobody wanted to deal with me," she says of that afternoon spent in the emergency room.

"No woman who comes to the hospital with symptoms of a miscarriage should be left waiting for care in a public waiting room," says sociologist Deborah Davidson, who has had two miscarriages herself and volunteers with Bereaved Families of Ontario.

"A system to assess and improve compassionate care for miscarriage should be implemented," says Davidson, who teaches at York University and has completed a PhD dissertation on the subject of miscarriage.

North York General's chief of emergency medicine says his hospital's policy stipulates that the emotional aspect of miscarriage "should never be underestimated.

"Routine practice is to refer the woman to our counselling and bereavement program," says Dr. Tim Rutledge. That includes the services of a non-denominational chaplain, burial arrangements and the guidance of a social worker, Rutledge says.

"I don't know why that offer was not made in this case," he adds.

Instead, after waiting for hours, Bodanis was informed that her blood tested normal, that she had simply had a miscarriage and should visit her family doctor the next day.

"I wanted to say: `How do you know I don't need any medical intervention now? You haven't even examined me.'"

She had a similar experience 15 months before during her first miscarriage, which involved 12 hours spent waiting and being examined in ER at Credit Valley Hospital.

Heather McGillis, director of nursing at Credit Valley, and the hospital's ER manager Janet Cadigan, both say Credit Valley is among hospitals trying to improve emergency services for early miscarriages. That includes co-ordinating with other hospital services and workshops on perinatal bereavement counselling for staff.

And emergency rooms also should be ready to help, Cadigan says.

"We do our best to help with the emotional loss, too, but that can be a challenge on days when we are crowded," she adds.

Too often "the emotional aspect of miscarriage is swept under the rug. It's left to the woman to deal with it," says Dr. Bev Young, a psychiatrist with the perinatal mental health unit at Mount Sinai Hospital.

That depth of hurt resonates at the British-based Miscarriage Association, which offers information and support.

Every time the subject of miscarriage gets media attention, they receive calls from women in their 70s and 80s who want to talk about their own experiences.

"Society views this as not a real baby," Young says. "So people say the most stupid things and physicians are no different. For a woman, the lost potential has to be grieved.

"Most obstetricians won't even book an appointment before the 12th week (of pregnancy) because losses are so prevalent during that period."

Indeed, miscarriages, technically defined as pregnancy losses under 20 weeks, are essentially nonentities – even when it comes to record-keeping.

Statistics Canada places them in a category called "fetal loss," which also includes stillbirths and abortions.

In 2004, the latest year for which figures are available, StatsCan says 2,551 or 0.8 per cent of pregnancies in Ontario ended in fetal loss. That's down from 5,703 (1.9 per cent) in 1995.

Bodanis, an actor and dancer, and her husband Dan, who has his own jazz band, have a healthy 2-year-old son, Sabian. The toddler was born with the help of the high-risk maternity unit at North York General Hospital, the same unit she went to when she realized she was having her second miscarriage last December.

"That time, I was dealing with an obstetrician, a woman who was so considerate, it was as if she knew exactly what I was going through," she says. Bodanis was given an emergency dilatation and curettage (D&C) procedure to clear her uterus.

"The way we were treated there is the way every woman should be treated," says Dan. So in October, when Kelly miscarried for the third time, they headed back to that unit – only to find it closed.

"You can't have a system where miscarriages are treated seriously only if they happen between certain hours," says Dan.

Health Canada guidelines for hospitals say it is "crucial" that women who experience perinatal losses be "treated with sensitivity and that the emotional aspects of their loss, as well as their physical symptoms, be dealt with," says Davidson.

She notes that, in some ways, hospitals have improved their attitudes toward miscarriage more quickly than society at large.

While the care associated with stillbirths and the death of newborns has improved over the last two decades, "compassionate care for women who experience earlier miscarriage is still wanting," says Davidson.

Nursing students are being taught how to support women but "education for physicians is still inadequate," she says, adding she believes bereavement education should be made an important part of medical education.

"Physicians' reactions to a miscarriage range from a somewhat cavalier attitude to an intense level of empathy," says Neal Rote, a Cleveland immunologist who specializes in the field.

"I suspect the breadth of responses does not reflect medical school training as much as the physician's experiences and, regrettably, gender."

When he counsels people, Rote says "I tell them all the things they're going through – the fear about getting pregnant again, the hate and jealousy you feel toward other people's babies, even your best friend – that's universal."

You can find help online

Well-meaning but misguided sentiments from family and friends – "It was for the best," and "You can still have another one" – add to the anguish of miscarriage, says York University sociologist Deborah Davidson.

"To the woman who grieves the loss of her fetus or her baby, these are not comforting words," Davidson says.

Consequently, many women seek solace from websites. Among those offering support:

Perinatal Bereavement Services Ontario, pbso.ca.

Bereaved Families of Ontario, bereavedfamilies.net.

The Miscarriage Association, miscarriageassociation.org.uk.

Miscarriage Support Auckland, miscarriagesupport.org.nz.

pregnancyloss.info, a site created by Deanna Roy, who lost her first baby at 20 weeks and a twin at 10 weeks.

Musings

I've started carrying a chocolate bar in my purse. Just in case. I'm not entirely sure what sudden roadside emergency I can solve with a chocolate bar, but it just seems important to have one with me.

__________________________

I decided to start seeing a therapist. Four years of trying, failing, loss and infertility have, I have had to admit, finally taken their toll on what's left of my mind. I'm fine - I'm not a knife wielding psycho or anything and I'd prefer you not tiptoe around me as though I am - I just decided I need someone outside my sad little world to listen to me with fresh ears and a heart I can't wound.

I didn't realize how nice it could be to talk to someone who is completely emotionally detached - completely outside my circle. She didn't lose anything when Thomas died. I can't make her sad. I can't slow her healing process. I don't have to reassure her at my own expense.

Nice. So nice. Who knew?

_________________________

I have tiny little zits all over the end of my nose. Someone needs to tell the gods that I'm not 16. Either that or tell them to return my 16-year old body to me along with the zits. Not that it was necessarily all that fabulous, my 16-year old body, but at least everything was firm and in the right place. Plus there wasn't any scar tissue inside it, no one had yet died in it, and nothing on it hurt by the end of the day.

God, I had no idea just how good I had it.

_________________________

Britney Spears' 16-year old sister is pregnant.

Don't even get me started.

_________________________

I'm bound and determined not to go to any more stores, grocery or otherwise, until after Christmas. The holidays bring out the inner maniac in people and I find myself decidedly not filled with the spirit of Jesus when I have to deal with them.

You know, because I'm so perfect and all.

_________________________

I should, by all rights, be nearly 7 months pregnant with twins right now.

Ain't that a fucking kick in the head.

_________________________

I'm going to make my therapist a very rich woman.

The bow eating cat

For now, this is all I've got.

I'm fine, just busy and distracted by all the pretty lights and shiny things. Kind of like a crow.

So until I can wrap my head around a proper post, here's Lucy pretending she wasn't just mangling that silver bow...

It's been that kind of a week

A broken head, a flu shot, hours of baking, 20 guests, too much sugar, tree decorating, a slightly less broken head, a deluge of freelance work, and now a cold that is slowly sneaking its way down into my chest.

I'm spent.

And how are you?

A public service announcement

I simply cannot deny cookie lovers who beg for recipes. It's too cruel. And besides, I know how important a cookie is when you're dealing with things that are occasionally too big for your head to contain.

So here's my Mom's famous, 1970s era peanut butter chocolate chip cookie recipe:

GREAT COOKIES
(seriously, that's what they're called!)

1 cup butter or margarine
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar, packed
2 eggs
2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 6oz package of chocolate chips

Heat over to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl, with mixer at medium speed, beat butter and peanut butter until blended. Gradually add both sugars and beat until fluffy.

Add eggs, one at a time, and beat until smooth. Beat flour and baking soda (sifted together) into butter sugar mixtures at low speed. Stir in chocolate chips.

Drop batter from tablespoon onto ungreased cookie sheets, then slightly flatten each with back of spoon.

Bake 12 - 15 minutes.

Makes approximately 4 dozen large cookies.

Enjoy!

Monday Musings

The other night, while adjusting myself mid sleep, I plopped my face down into a puddle of drool. And I don't know if it was mine or the cat's. So I folded that part of the pillow under, gave her a scratch and went back to sleep. Somewhere in my addled brain I'm sure I thought, "EWWW!", but the need for sleep was greater than my need for a clean pillow case. And reasonable hygiene standards.

Sometimes I think we're a little too close, the cat and I.
______________________

I can't deal with people getting old. Specifically, I can't deal with my parents getting old. The mental and physical decline that's happening right before my eyes to the two people I've always known as the strongest people alive is weighting heavily on my mind these days.

And my mind just doesn't have enough space for it.

Seriously, I just need five minutes. Can everything just stop spinning for FIVE minutes????
______________________

Once I had to crazy glue myself into a skirt. The zipper broke in the middle of the day. Irreparably so. I truly had no choice - a quick assessment of the situation in the bathroom revealed that it wasn't a quick safety pin fix. And, of course, I was going to the Cirque Du Soleil that night - a work function.

Lithe, lean acrobats performed fantastical body-bending feats. While I sat there glued into my skirt.
______________________

I made some additions to my links. It's something I put off for ages - until blogs and other sites I want to add here become so numerous (stored in a messy bookmark folder) that I start feeling panicky.

Anyway, they're added and I feel calm again.

Well, about this anyway.
______________________

Shouldn't "numerous" be spelled "numberous"? I totally think so.
______________________

The other day somebody commented on how wonderful it is that I can feel happiness for others. She said she still has trouble - can't let it go and often avoids situations where she knows she'll be confronted by people who have what she cannot.

You know what? I can't let it go either. I am happy for those whose dreams have come true. But it doesn't change the fact that I'm sad for me. For My Beloved. For my parents still waiting to cradle a living grandchild. For my sister still waiting to spoil a living niece or nephew. For my in-laws who want to erase the sorrow in their son's heart. For my friends who just want my dream to finally come true.

No amount of happiness for someone else will ever erase my sadness. It's always there. Always.

In short, I ain't no saint.
_______________________

I've been baking up a storm lately in preparation for company on Saturday. Seriously. If you'd walked into my kitchen at any point during the last three days it would have looked like a sugar, flour and butter hurricane had blown through the room leaving crumbs, batter and 49,000 dirty dishes in its wake.

It was peanut butter chocolate chip cookies this evening, and I was happily working away when that familiar uselessness washed over me.

My Mom made these particular cookies all the time when I was little. The smell of them baking, all peanut buttery and delicious, made me feel cozy - brought back so many sweet memories of childhood and of her.

But there's no child here. No one to absorb the sounds of baking clatter, the scents of freshly baked cookies, the warmth of a winter kitchen.

I'm not making memories for anyone except me. I'm just a woman alone in a kitchen.

Que sera, sera? Geez, someone needs to smack that Doris Day.
_______________________

Oh well. At least I have cookies.

Three of us, three of them

I can't remember a time when I didn't know that my Mom lost her first baby. It feels like I've always known, which is probably partly because I'm so old. I can't remember the beginning of a lot of things things. Hell, my head is so full I often can't remember much of yesterday.

But I digress...

I've thought so much about my lost brother or sister over the years. There was a time when I was a child that it preoccupied me endlessly. I decided that the baby was a boy and prayed for him at church and before bed, all the while wondering what life would have been like if there were three children instead of two. Me and two siblings instead of just one. Me with a big sister and a big brother.

Of course I never bothered to try to figure out the logistics of this feat. My Mom became pregnant with my sister just a few months after losing the baby, so clearly Kathy wouldn't be here if that first child was.

But details like that aren't important when you're a kid all caught up in the romance of having a mysterious lost brother. A secret sibling.

I remember being so affected by the tears in my Mother's eyes when she would talk about that long lost child. I was in awe of the strange bond that she shared with him and, truthfully, probably a little jealous. Which is, of course, totally ridiculous. But having never seen my mother cry over me it was jarring to see her express such sorrow and love for a child I'd never known. And would never know.

Her eyes still fill with tears when she talks about him. He would be 42 in May. Forty-two, and yet the pain is still so acute that it brings tears to her eyes.

This is endlessly comforting, even though there is certainly guilt in taking comfort from someone else's pain.

But the thing is, knowing that she still misses her child this deeply makes me think that it's okay that I still cry. That I still mourn. That I still think about my lost babies too. I came to the conclusion that this is the way it's always going to be a long time ago, but my Mother's tears validate it in a way that nothing else can.

And so my brother means that much more to me. Is that much more a part of the fabric of our family in an awful, but also loving and healing way.

He matters. Just like all the little ones do.

In the days and weeks following her miscarriage, my Mom worked on an art project to occupy her mind and soothe her spirit. I didn't know this until that art project found its way into my front garden last week after I coyly finagled its liberation from the back of their garage. Just in time for Christmas.

Knowing its history, particularly with the history of sorrow I now carry in my own heart, makes it even more special to me.

It reminds me of love and family and loss and bonds that are never, ever broken. Not even after 42 years.

For Christy

This morning I found out that one of my "virtual" friends died last night, just two and a half weeks after having her second baby. A little boy.

She never suffered the loss of a child, but she certainly went out of her way to reach out to those who had. She held my Thomas in her heart and made sure I knew it. She and her first child, a little girl born two weeks after Thomas, celebrated his birthday every year by making donations in his name and sending me beautiful and thoughtful gifts that showed me must how much they cared - how much his life impacted theirs.

Last night an unknown infection took her life, taking her from her husband and her family, and the two beautiful children she loved so much.

I could rant about the unfairness of it - about the seemingly random nature of fate that wreaks havoc on the people who least deserve it - but I'm just too tired. Too sad. Too heartbroken for Christy's sweet little babies and her husband who is now all alone.

Instead, I'm going to do what Christy did, and ask you if you'll consider doing the same. This Christmas season try to find someone who is suffering in some way and reach out to them - even if it's someone you don't know all that well. Find a way to show them that you care - that you're not afraid of the sorrow that might be eating them alive or the circumstances that have brought them to a place of loneliness and despair.

Christy did this for me. She was never afraid of my sorrow. She was never afraid of my pain. She was never afraid to reach out to me. Ever. She just quietly went about the business of trying to ease my pain by showing me how much she cared, and by remembering my little boy with so much love.

And for that I will be eternally grateful.

Godspeed Christy, and thank you, my sweet friend, from the bottom of my heart.

No man's land

Sometimes I wonder who's still reading. I write for me. I write because at least for now, this form of therapy keeps me on the friendly side of sanity.

But I wonder, after all this time, who is still out there. I'm not fishing for reassurances or asking people to reveal themselves. If you're here, I'm glad. If you're not, that's okay too. Truly.

But sometimes I wonder. So many people have moved past the spot where I'm still standing. And I just wonder what possible relevance anything I have to say has for the lucky ones who are no longer walking this road with me.

While I know this is not true, I sometimes feel like I'm the only person in this sad little blogging community who is always standing still. Never moving anywhere. I've worn down a neat little trench from all the pacing, and spend all my time waving goodbye to people who were once in the trench with me. They've either gone on to birth or adopt a living child, or have made peace with the reality of never adding another child to their family. Either way, they've moved on.

And I'm still here. I know it's not a race or a competition or anything else equally distasteful. It's just life, and I'm ecstatic when it lurches forward positively for someone else - particularly after struggles and losses and ungodly sorrow.

But I wonder why I always seem to be standing in the same spot day after week after month after year. Just losing and grieving and not moving anywhere.

Don't get me wrong, seeing other people move on is healing. Seeing the dreams of shattered people finally realized and watching those people glue a tiny piece of their hearts back together in the process is wonderful. It makes me see that there is hope and justice and peace. Eventually.

Sometimes.

It's just that I'm still here in the trench. In no man's land. And it's lonely sometimes.

I need to make it very, very clear that I do not begrudge anyone this happiness. This is what I WANT for all the incredible friends I've made since my world shattered and I discovered this community of similarly wounded souls. I want it so much for each of them.

I just happen to want it for me too. One way or another.

And I'm tired of standing here by myself waiting.


I'm sick today, and feeling extremely sorry for myself (just in case you hadn't noticed).

Musings

We caught a little bit of the Santa Claus parade while we were in Montreal. We didn't stay for the whole thing because it was very cold out. And we were hungry. And we're pussies, evidently. But we watched a bit of it and enjoyed soaking up the Christmas atmosphere.

It's funny just how barren you can feel when the crowd you're in has a median age of four. And you're easily outnumbered by them 5 to 1.

We eventually gave up the excellent curb-side spot we'd secured to a family with a toddler in a stroller and another one very obviously on the way.

And I felt somehow small and ashamed by my childlessness.

______________________________________

Four days in a hotel is the precise amount of time it takes for you to become completely used to someone else making your bed, cleaning your bathroom, vacuuming your floors and making every single meal for you.

Coming home to a house with no staff sucks ass.

______________________________________


I'm procrastinating at the moment. My plan is to take Thomas' Christmas wreaths to the cemetery today, and it always requires a little mental preparation before I make the trip.

Fortunately it's a lovely, sunny day.

But, well, my boy is still dead.

______________________________________

I got a hair cut yesterday afternoon.

My stylist is a bit of a wing nut, but I forgive her because she has been kind and tactful enough not to ask me any prying questions about children or my uterus since she heard the whole story during my inaugural visit. I love her for this.

I did catch her taking what she believed was a furtive glance at my tummy, but I can overlook this indiscretion. I should have told her that any bump she may have seen was just one too many croissants.

Lord, those Montreal croissants are good...

Anyway, I love my stylist and the cut is excellent, but I don't for the life of me know why she insists on blowing my hair dry into a ridiculous bouffant.

I know now to make my appointments late in the day when the only place I need to go afterwards is home.

______________________________________

I shouldn't have mentioned croissants. My tummy heard me.

______________________________________

I think they should start building space shuttles out of whatever my purse is made from. I bought this thing at least four years ago (as a reward for making through a particularly annoying Monday at work) and with the exception of some very minor wear (that's virtually invisible unless you're inspecting it closely) it looks brand new.

I don't know how this can possibly be since I use it year round, but I'm increasingly curious to see exactly how long it's going to last. At this rate it's conceivable that it might outlast ME.

The best thing? It was dirt cheap - something like $35, as I recall.

But it's cute. I swear it is. Shut up, it is.

_______________________________________

I'm out of material. It's time to head off to the cemetery.

This is NOT the life I ordered. Why does it feel like the longevity of cheap purses is the only thing I can rely on?

Well that and, thank God, My Beloved.

More evidence...

Why I feel the need to incriminate myself, I don't know. But I'm too tired to think straight (post vacation letdown/fatigue) and this picture sums up the great Montreal gorge-fest of '07 perfectly...

Our 5th anniversary getaway, or, How I used my anniversary as an excuse to eat my way through Montreal

In case you think I'm kidding, I give you exhibit A:



These are the remains of our last dinner in Old Montreal (I packed away one more pierogi and scarfed down most of the sauerkraut after I took this shot).

The restaurant was Polish. We were hungry. Kismet.

And yes, as a matter of fact those are three plates you see there on the table. As yes, there were only two of us on this trip. We ordered three dinners that night, just 'cause we could. It was that kind of a trip.

C'mon, it's very, very hard to choose between peirogi and potato pancakes.

We loved Montreal. It tastes really, really good.

How many people does it take to make a family anyway?

I just got a courtesy call from what appears to be a bulk grocery delivery company (although their website doesn't specifically claim to be a Costco-style organization).

The very cheerful and friendly sales rep said we could save money on our grocery bill, and I'm all over saving money, so my ears perked right up.

CHEERFUL SALES GUY: "Do you have a family of three or more people in your house that you're shopping for?"

Oh shit. Yeah, I know where this is going. I got a call from you people a few months ago. The lady hung up when I answered "no", without so much as a thank you or a goodbye.

ME: "No, we don't."

CHEERFUL SALES GUY: "Oh, well you won't be needing us then."

Nope. Not until we can manage to bring a live child home. Until then there's just the two of us and our sneezy cat. Evidently we aren't enough of a "family" to warrant discount grocery offers.

Fuck you very much.

My favourite MOO

I loved this outfit. I remember the day My Beloved and I bought it.

I was physically incapable of avoiding the baby section of any store while I was pregnant with Thomas. I can't even fathom the number of hours I spent wandering through racks of impossibly tiny clothes, touching their softness, holding them up, choosing between them. Smiling.

We bought the MOO outfit at Old Navy. I fell in love with it instantly and knew it absolutely had to be Thomas'.

I'm sure I'm not the only pregnant woman to stand in front of her unborn child's closet staring at all the little sleepers, sweaters and leggings, dreaming of the day her baby would wear them.

The MOO outfit was, for some reason, one of the ones I just couldn't wait to put on Thomas. I could so vividly imagine how cuddly he'd feel in the little velour pants and how cute the funny little cow top would make him.

We all know how the story ends. Another little boy wore the MOO outfit instead.

But you know what? I still love it. And I'm eternally grateful that I've finally been able to see a cuddly baby boy wearing it.

Crib recall

ASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bassett Furniture Industries Inc is recalling about 8,900 Chinese-made baby cribs because the bolts can loosen, posing an entrapment and strangulation hazard, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said on Thursday.

The company has received 85 reports of bolts connecting the top corners of its "Wendy Bellissimo Collection Convertible Cribs" loosening. In one case, a 13-month-old child's hand became trapped between the railings, the agency said.

The cribs have been sold at Babies "R" Us stores in the United States since July 2005 for about $500 each, it said.

The recalled cribs are model numbers 5945-0521 and 5545-0521, sold in honey and cherry finishes. Other Wendy Bellissimo Collection cribs are not involved in the recall, the agency said.


My first thought? "Whew, it's not our crib. These cribs were made in July 2005." I was four months into the grieving process by then.

Yeah, how marvelous that I don't have to worry about having a defective crib because they were made after our child had already died.

Marvelous. Simply marvelous.

But you, you should check your crib just in case, okay? Do if for the crazy lady who can't rest until she knows you have...

NOW can I have a cookie?

I feel like I owe the world an apology for the way I sometimes see things. For my occasional inability to find joy where everyone else does. For my penchant for feeling gut twisting jealousy when I have no business doing so. For my angry thoughts. For my twisted sense of logic. For my inability to pray. For my lost patience. For my tempers and moods and self pity.

Or maybe I do have the right to see life through these jaded eyes but just have trouble making the justifiable fit into the nice, pretty, organized world around me. The world that doesn't like to think that people feel the way I do sometimes, justified or not.

You know, I worry incessantly that I'm turning into someone ugly and bitter that people are eventually going to opt not to be around.

Which then makes me want to fall to my knees in a tear and snot filled frenzy and beg for forgiveness.

When I try not to be the ugly person I am inside during these moments of torment, I end up feeling like a fraud. And a confused one. Is trying to be a better person actually not being true to yourself? Is trying to change the way you feel about something lying or healing? Can you re-train your brain after something so earth shatteringly tragic has altered it?

I never used to be like this. I swear I didn't.

I'm at war with my head today. Can you tell?

I don't fault other people who are grieving and recovering for the feelings they have or their reactions to the ordinary that is suddenly anything but. I never have. But for some reason I have a hard time cutting myself the same slack.

Ugh.

I think I need a cookie. That's the only answer. Clearly.

So, you know, if you have a really good recipe that you're willing to share and you feel so inclined, I'm all ears.

I could use the distraction...

(You can't see it, but I'm furiously batting my eyelashes here - and I'm not too proud to pout...)

Musings

Last year around this time I was able to soothe away the rising infertility-induced panic by repeatedly telling myself that by this Christmas I would either be pregnant or we'd be well on our way to adopting a child.

What a silly, stupid girl I was.

_________________________________

I've been awakened on and off during the last few nights by a sneezing cat and a snoring husband. Fall allergies are making them both very noisy in the night.

They're lucky they're so cute.

_________________________________

Yesterday I bought a personalized memorial Christmas wreath for Thomas to go on his grave. It really bothers me that when snow covers his marker no one knows he's there. This will remedy that little problem.

I told My Beloved it made me happy because there's nothing else I can do for him at Christmas but buy stuff like this.

"Well maybe if you took him more places..." was his reply.

The morbid jokes never get old. We're sick bastards, the two of us.

_________________________________

The other day My Beloved and I spent two hours wandering up and down the main street of our town window shopping. It was the perfect way to spend a sunny, Fall afternoon.

It would have been even more perfect if we hadn't kept alternately passing and trailing a pregnant woman and her husband. The last straw was when she came out of the chocolate shop and stuffed her face full of it as I passed by.

Come on, not chocolate AND a baby!!

Harrumph.

_________________________________

I'm not bitter. I'm just drawn that way.

_________________________________

On Sunday I wrote down the names of my angels and my grandparents in the Book of Remembrance after Mass, as I do on the first Sunday in November every year.

I don't think people who haven't had losses like this realize how gratifyingly soul soothing it is to have the opportunity to say "I had children and these are their names."

They lived. That's all I want people to know. They lived.

__________________________________

The Lotto 6/49 jackpot is 35 million tomorrow.

Wouldn't that be a humdinger? I know money can't buy happiness, but it would still be very nice not to have a mortgage. I think the universe owes us that at least.

__________________________________

We're going away for a few days in a few weeks and I'm terrified that something is going to happen to my sneezing, sleep-disrupting cat.

We certainly don't think of her as a surrogate child, but we're both very attached to the hairy little beast just the same.

I'm sure she'll be just fine - we have a plan in place for feeding and watering and attention-getting - but I worry just the same. I think I'll spend the rest of my life fixated on some sort of irrational worry.

It's what I do.
__________________________________

I have no upper body strength. It's a fact.

When I told someone recently that My Beloved says I have "decorative arms" she awwwwed and isn't-he-sweeted like crazy. That is, until I clarified that it isn't that he thinks my arms are pretty, it's that he thinks they're functionally useless.

Oh how we laughed, me and my decorative arms.
__________________________________

I'm addicted to 90210 reruns.

Why is it that getting lost in the 80s and early 90s is so soothing?

If it wasn't for pornaments and 90210...

Time

Time does not heal all wounds. I probably believed that it did once upon a time, but now I'm only willing to say that it merely dulls a wound's pain. Some wounds don't ever fully heal.

But a dull pain is still a nice alternative to writhing in agony, if I do say so myself.

The first Halloween without Thomas was agony. The little Old Navy Halloween sleeper we'd picked out for him would have fit him that year, and it's all I could think about all day long. Last year was a little easier. There were no Thomas-sized clothes in the house by then. He would have outgrown all the things stored in the basement by October 2006.

This year, although I admit there were quiet tears midway through the day, was the easiest yet. I missed my boy like always, but the pain wasn't as acute. I didn't dwell quite as much on what we don't have that all the other parents coming to our door did. It just didn't occur to me the way it did last year.

And this, while it's a good thing really, makes me uncomfortable. It's not that I want to stay mired in unshakable grief, but not feeling it the same way I used to is somehow disturbing.

Is it numbness? Resignation? Healing? Denial? Or is it just habit? I'm so used to grief that I sometimes don't notice it anymore.

My body has been a giant, clenched knot since I lost the twins. I can feel the grief. I wear it like a coat right now, this newer grief I haven't been able to shed or fully absorb yet.

But the Thomas grief is changing over time. I notice it in my reactions to annual events like Thanksgiving and Halloween, and the different ways I react to his absence each year.

It's good. I think I'm doing good. But it's still a little unsettling for each day to feel so "new". Grief is a journey in so many ways and I'm always moving through it, around it, past it. I'm always moving. Always adjusting to the new way I feel.

I move and ache all at the same time and I don't have time to rest.

Going forward is the right thing to do and I'm glad that for some reason that's the direction in which I'm headed. But what I wouldn't give for a just one minute of stillness and silence and rest.