ICLW and catch up kind of stuff

ICLW + haven't blogged in forever = catch up post time.

Let's see.  I used to be an infertility blogger discussing IVF protocols along with my malfunctioning lady bits (aka the ovaries of destruction and uterus of doom).  All of that stuff didn't work out so well.  I then mostly blogged about depression, anger, and all the ugliness that infertility bestowed.  It was a hot mess and there was not a lick of grace to be found.  Be grateful if you didn't read my writing in those days.  Next up was wanting to adopt with a hubby who did not.  That lasted a couple years.  I mostly didn't blog about it, but spent my time adventuring and living and coming to terms with not parenting by a whole lot of avoidance and alcohol (good party social kind of alcohol).  Hubby changed his mind about adoption somewhere along the way and I started up this blog to document the process...except I didn't.

Just a couple months after turning in our profiles, we were chosen by our daughter's birth mom to parent and our daughter arrived 2-weeks later.  She is now 16-months old and because I basically suck as a blogger, I haven't even given her a name here yet.  I guess now is as good a time as any.  Her personality is filled with over-the-top-social butterfly tendencies mixed with a need to study and dismantle EVERYTHING.  She has 2 gears which consist of "GO. GO FASTER. WOO HOO!! GO! EXPLORE! GO! GO! GO!" and "Near comatose exhaustion".  She has 1 sound level and on a loudness scale of 1 to 10, I'd rank her as a 14. In a nutshell, she is a little firecracker.  So Firecracker it is.

Our adoption started off closed.  It was not by our choice.  The only part of our profile that was in larger, bold font was a statement about wanting an open adoption.  We understood Firecracker's birth mom's reasoning for not wanting contact and told her in no uncertain terms that we would ALWAYS welcome her into our lives with open arms...2-hours, 2-weeks, or 12 years from now.  When Firecracker was almost 6-months old, her birth mom contacted us.  Our relationship has grown quite a bit over the past (almost) year and while it is not without its bumps and bruises, we are family.  We love her fiercely and unconditionally and over-protectively.  We're still navigating the open adoption waters and trying to figure out how it all works, but we hope whatever we are doing benefits both her and Firecracker in the long run.  We are simply the vessels of contact between the 2 of them for now until they can establish a relationship of their own.  I'm sure I'll have lots more to say about all of this stuff in posts to come.

Hmmm, what else???

I think I used to go somewhere every weekday and do something while I was there.  I might have even been something (not important, mind you, but rather something with a career type title).  I tossed it all to the wayside and joined the ranks of stay-at-home-momdom.  I'm sure I'll discuss some more of this at some juncture, but for now let's just say it is working out for our family and I'm pretty happy to say the least.  MJ changed jobs too, but his still involves a monetary compensation.

Oh, and we still have all 3 of our dogs.  The German Shorthaired Pointer is now over 15.  According to this dog age calculator, she was equivalent to 96 years old when she was 13.  The calculator doesn't work for either 14 or 15 for her breed.  I think they call that dead dog walking syndrome.  She is still just as much a pain in the ass as she was the day we rescued her from the pound.  The mastiffs grew.  A. LOT.  Moose is a 181-lb 3.5 year old.  He is obsessed with balloons and would still crawl inside our skin to get just a little bit closer to us if he could.  Paris is a petite 179-lb almost 3-year old.  She is much shorter than Moose and is on a vet recommended diet.  I'm pretty sure she thinks we are torturing her.  She is in love with Firecracker and is the most gentle of giants with her.  Moose is too, but we think it is the shared social butterfly nature that connects the 2 of them.

Of course, there is more to catch up on, but this is a start.  One of my final big projects at that place I used to go every day consisted of authoring over 700 pages of text and detail documented diagrams and photos on a billion+ dollar piece of equipment.   I've blocked most of it out to ward off the leftover anxiety it left behind, but I think I accomplished it in around a 4-month time frame.  And now 2 posts in the same month makes me feel like an overachiever.  Movin' on up, my friends.  Movin' on up.

alright, let's do this then

Something happens in my day-to-day life and I write a couple of blog-worthy sentences within the confines of my head.  It's generally some pretty funny shit because let's face it, I am hilarious inside my head.

Hilarious, people!  

A few times I have even sat down to type out a couple of my witty-isms only to find myself hesitating to go on with the rest.  Thoughts change as I figure out what to say next and then just behind the funny I find a few of my old friends making their way to the surface...frustration, sadness, bitterness.  They aren't current feelings, but rather flashbacks or reminders of the places I used to be when I sat down to blog.

I started blogging in January 2008 as we entered into the world of IVF.  We were 2.5 years into our baby-making/failing efforts.  What I thought I was doing then was documenting our process to finally get pregnant, complete with pictures of our babies at 8-cells old.  Of course, that space would then be used to showcase my pregnancy and finally turn into a mommy-ish type blog.

Except it didn't.

That IVF failed.  The other IVFs failed.  There were pregnancies ALL. AROUND. ME.  I fell into a deep depression.  MJ didn't want to adopt.  I considered driving under a big rig.  Our marriage was rocky.  Therapy.  Time.  Wandering aimlessly.  A year later M still didn't want to adopt.  Soul searching.  Mountain climbing.  Cave exploring.  Rappelling off shit.  Collecting mastiffs in our much too small for multiple mastiffs house.  Emerging.  Adopting.  A lot of it is documented.  Some of it stayed in draft form.  Even more is just old thoughts or feelings that appear with different triggers.

Our journey isn't anything special.  The names and doctors and lawyers and outcomes and length of time stuck in turmoil may change, but it is still just another infertility story.  Ours happens to end with a child through domestic adoption...a pretty fantabulously amazing and extremely loud child I might add.

When I left my old blog I had high hopes of leaving so much of the hard stuff behind, and really, I did just that.  I started blogging here and everything felt lighter and livelier and just plain happier.  I think somewhere along the way through those harder years I associated blogging with my place to get out all the ugliness that comes with infertility.  When I didn't feel stuck in that hole of darkness anymore, I simply didn't feel like blogging either.  I'd like to say I knew this is why I stopped blogging all along, but really I have only recently been able to put my finger on it.  Just another of my late-bloomer-isms hard at work.

I still have stuff to say.  Just trying to get into the mode where I sit down at the computer and actually type out a full post.  I used to write most of my blog drafts on the clock at my job.  Shhhh*.

*Ahhh, never mind.  They still got WAY more free hours out of me than I got out of them.  Bastards.  Have I mentioned I don't work there anymore anyway?  Hmmm, right, I should probably do a catch up post sometime.