Peppermint mocha's and Blink 182 on the 15 Freeway South...

Oh no! I shot my eye out!  A plan, a plan...aha!  Blame an Icecicle!

I had fun playing around with my still-new camera last week when the snow started.  I was particularly pleased with this shot of an icecicle on the porch.

So yesterday I woke up super-early (4:30am) to go down to San Diego for ALA Midwinter (American Library Association).  I was excited because normally Midwinter is held in off-season sorts of places.  The past three years, for example, it was in Philadelphia, Denver and Boston.  In 2006 it was in San Antonio, so that was another warm-spot.  So I guess once every five years they find somewhere warm to bring 12,000 librarians.

Since it was relatively local for me, I balked at staying in a hotel.  I hate hotels.  In 2004 when I was a national sales manager I spent something like 250 nights in hotels, which pretty much put me off of hotels in general.  I don't care of they have pillow-top mattresses.  Give me my own bed with snuggly cats any day of the week.  Hence, the 4:30am wake up call.  I'm going back down tomorrow, but my first appointment isn't until 10, so I get to sleep in until 6:30.

It was a little tough because I saw people that I only see at these things, who knew I was pregnant, but didn't know I lost Baby T.  First thing in the morning I saw a woman who said, "Oh!  I didn't get to see you with a belly!  Did you give birth already!?"  I didn't feel like going into it, so I just said yes, and when she asked if it was a boy or girl, I told her it was a boy.  Not a lie.  It was all true.  I just didn't say that he wasn't with us anymore.  I just kept on walking and avoided any follow-up questions.

So I was kind of sad for the rest of the day.  I had been looking forward to having a triumphant big belly at this ALA - I knew I'd be able to attend because it was local and I wouldn't have to fly, so even though it was only a month from my due date, I'd have been able to make it.  I looked forward to walking through the exhibits proudly showing off my belly, and having people I only see twice a year congratulate me, and tell me how much I was glowing.  As it was this time, it was just more of the same.  Blah blah.  ebooks.  Mobile catalog apps.  blah blah blah.

I was anxious to get out of there and back to the safety of my home.  Along the way I stopped at the Super Target in Temecula - because I can't resist a Super Target - and bought the super-fancy ovulation prediction kits.  I had been buying the cheapies where you had to test at 4pm, and limit your fluids for 4 hours beforehand, and then you had to deduce if your line was as dark or darker than the test line, and it was all getting a little frustrating.  I spent $37 on the Clear Blue Easy ones that are digital.  There's a smiley face if you're ovulating, and no smiley face if you're not.  And you can test any time of the day, so first thing in the morning is ok.

If J and I didn't have a sense of humor, and if we weren't really good friends to begin with, all this timing, charting, temping, peeing on ovulation prediction sticks, etc., would be really stressful.  As it is, we laugh about it, but we generally are able to find the funny in anything, so it's bearable.  Here's hoping it works this month.

Another sunrise

Sandor and Anna Louisa are here from England, and we're hunkered down waiting for the snow, but here's a sunset from yesterday morning, as the storm was just coming in and LA was blanketed (those are clouds up against the mountains).  Took this with a point and shoot camera - wish I would have had my d60 with me - i can't imagine how awesome it would have looked...

The miraculous power of to-do lists

I've always been a fan of to-do lists.  When I was a kid and bored in class, I'd write out my schedule for the night as such:
3:15 get home
3:20 change clothes
3:30 watch Shee-Ra Princess of Power
4pm start math homework
4:30 do history homework
5pm eat dinner
5:30 practice piano
...
and so on it went, the whole night blocked out into neat little 15 or 30 minute segments.  Now it's harder to do that, because in real-life jobs we tend to get interrupted which puts us off track (that's one reason I hate answering the phone so much), so I've turned to basic to-do lists.  I keep my work to-do list on my google calendar, and my personal one is in my journal.  When I'm journaling in the morning, I always take time to write out the things I want to accomplish that day.

To Do Lists have become very important to me lately.  I write everything on them.  Feed the cats, which happens twice a day, goes on the To Do List, twice.  Feed the Cats AM and Feed the Cats PM.  Doing the litter twice also goes on, twice.  So does taking a bath, filling the cats' water bowls, doing the breakfast dishes, cooking dinner, and doing my laundry.

Why have I started listing nearly everything but breathing in my To Do List?  Because of the satisfaction I get when I cross it off.  I've been feeling so useless lately, so guilty and completely dysfunctional, that the rush I get from crossing something off a list makes me feel human again.  It makes me feel like I can do this.  I can get through life.  I can function like a normal adult.  I can remember to feed the cats, ergo I can remember to do my job.  I can clean the litter box, ergo I can get pregnant and carry a baby to term.

It makes me feel like I'm doing something, and not just withering away into a shell of misery and hopelessness.  I am taking a bath and reading a book, dammit!  I went out to get coffee this morning!  And remembered my ATM code when I got cash back.  I can handle this living thing.  Hey!  I did my laundry!  I must be useful!  There must be a purpose to this whole living-with-ridiculous-pain stuff.

In other news, tonight is the first night of my support group for parents who lost babies.  And, I guess, that would be us.  I now fit into a new demographic.

No pictures from me today, but I am a huge fan of Joe Cornish, who photographs landscapes in northeastern England. I bought a bunch of his cards and prints in a shop in Scarborough and still have them up everywhere.  This one's my favorite.  Enjoy the peacefulness.

The theory of relativity in being ok

Before getting into anything deep, here's another sunrise picture.  I've got to photoshop that little green blurb out of it - this is untouched.  But when I do that, I think it'll look super-pretty.  I like the tips of the grasses having the light shine behind them.

And also, the composer of the day is John Rutter.  I've been listening to his Requiem for much of the day, but most of that is pretty depressing.  True story: once I spent All Soul's Day in Cambridge and was at King's College listening to the choir perform the Rutter Requiem.  It was getting dark at 4pm, and was a cold and dreary day anyway, and there we were, Sandor and I, in this cold, damp, 800 year old building with bad lighting, listening to this moving requiem by candlelight, and smack dab in the middle of the Agnus Dei some old man sitting in the choir stalls passes out.  There was much huffing and puffing and asking if a doctor was in the house, and carrying of the man through the center of the chapel out the back door.  All the while, the choir kept singing as if nothing was happening.  It was so surreal.

But like I said, the requiem is pretty depressing.  It's beautifully depressing, but still, I'm trying not to be a complete downer all the time.  So, here is a Gaelic Blessing... deep peace of the gentle night to you, moon and stars pour their healing light on you...



So a lot of people are asking me if I'm ok these days.  What does that mean?  What is ok, anyway?  Because with the world turning upside down on me, I've got a whole new sliding scale of what being ok actually means.  According to Webster's it means "not excellent, and not poor.  Mediocre."  But that still isn't saying much because it's all relative.

A month ago, a day was ok if I got a reasonable amount of work done, didn't eat every piece of chocolate in the house, got to spend some time reading, maybe wrote in my journal and listened to some of my favorite music.  If I worked out, got to spend some time outside, or if Project Runway was on, it was slightly above ok.

These days, I'm doing ok if I only cry three times in a 24 hour period.  I'm doing ok if I can fall asleep on my own without the help of drugs (though with my back issues, I've been getting a lot of help from drugs the past couple of days).  If I don't wake up when it's still dark (I dread the dark.  It's not a good time of year for me to lose a child, what with the way I hate the darkness so much.  Then again, is there ever a good time to lose a child?).

When I stopped bleeding, it was a great day.  It meant that I could start putting this mess behind me, physically at least.  And then I got the back issues, which have put me several steps behind where I've been.

The funeral home called and my son's ashes and death certificate are ready to be picked up.  When we get the strength to go get them, it will not be an ok day.  Picking up the ashes of a baby that you never got to hold, whose tiny fingers you never got to coo over, but whom you loved just the same - that is not the activity of an ok day.

That said, today I didn't feel like cooking, so we ordered pizza.  Pizza is pretty much ok. It's hard to argue with the ok-ness of pizza.  We got a lot of chores done around the house, so that's ok, too.  Wrigley the Cat is being sociable and cuddling with me, which is slightly above ok on the scale.  She's not the most social cat, and when I get attention from her, it makes me feel loved.

I just finished the first book I've read since the Horrible Day, Russell Wiley Is Out to Lunch and it made me laugh.  Now I'm midway through Nick Hornby's Juliet, Naked.  These books make me happy because they're the kind of books I loved before I lost my baby, when stupid things were important, and everything didn't have to be dark and heavy for me to think it worthwhile.  Spending a day reading, and catching up on my NaNoWriMo word count is a step above ok because it lets me tap into my creativity, and I can be quiet without feeling tortured.

So who knows what ok means anymore.  If someone asks me whether I'm doing ok, I don't know how to answer that, because I don't know what their frame of reference is.  What is ok to them?  Am I doing ok by their standards?

I think I'm probably just barely holding it together by many people's standards, but for me, every day that I get through is becoming a victory.  Like an addict who is proud of getting through a day without using, I'm proud of getting through a day without collapsing into a lump of moaning sobs in the grocery store.

It's all relative.

Here comes the sun...

Our mountains, this morning, sunrise.

And, the Beatles.  Because everything is slightly better with the Beatles.

It's a good day so far.

evening at the lake

Went to the lake to watch the sunset and take some pictures of the ducks.  It was a cool night and the high school football team was practicing in the park.  I know I said it before, but I'm so very happy that fall is hinting at making its first appearance.

Had more sauerkaut for dinner tonight.  Man, I just can't get enough of that yummy cabbage!  I'm so addicted to sauerkraut right now.  And then I had strawberries and angel food cake for dessert.  Kind of well balanced, thought admittedly slightly weird.

Tori Amos

I fell in love with Tori Amos in 1994 when my friend Nikki had Little Earthquakes in her college dorm room.  I wanted to be cool and hip like her, so I bought it, and it's still on a regular rotation.  I love how it lets me be angsty, but in a productive sort of way. 

Went for a walk at the lake today and took some awesome pictures, and then accidentally reformatted the memory card and erased them all.  Man, I was mad about that.  I was stressing about it, and then realized that I was missing even more beautiful moments, so I should stop stressing and enjoy the moments I could still capture.

And I'm craving sauerkraut. 

Weird.

More cool stuff (and I really need to schedule time to write)

So this was my second day on my own with Hubby gone and I made good use of it. Woke up early with a bed full of snuggling cats who missed their human-papa. Went out early and took pictures with my schnazzy new camera. That was super-fun. I took a lot of pictures of sunflowers (notice the bee in this one??). Then, because there was more fun to be had, I went to the lake and paddled around in the water, which was much warmer than it was last week, thank goodness. Read my book, listened to some podcasts, and ate a hot dog. Yay for hot dogs.

This afternoon I worked on my Renaissance English History podcast and put out a new episode of that on the Pilgrimage of Grace. Those silly northerners - thinking they could follow their own conscience and defy Henry.

I've been thinking a lot about my productivity lately - there are so many things I'm into, and I just don't seem to have enough time to do them all, and yet I know that's not exactly true because I seem to have time for facebook. If you have time for facebook, you have time to follow your passions. So I've been poking around discovering online productivity sites like inboxzero, which is rocking my world, and then yesterday I found 43folders, which is also filled with tips, inspiration, and ideas on how to make time for what's really important.

So this week I'm going to actually schedule time to write, and not just take it when it comes, so to speak. And I'm going to work when I'm at work and make sure my evenings are free of work. Gotta figure this stuff out now because when a little one comes, whenever a little one decides to come, it won't be any easier...

Alone Time

I'm being a Single Girl this weekend because hubby is away till tomorrow night. I'm having fun watching Girly Movies and catching up on work.

A couple of highlights:

First, I got my new camera in the mail yesterday. A Nikon D60, which isn't the newest model, but will serve me well for my photography class, which is starting in a couple of weeks. I really needed something besides a point-and-shoot if I'm going to take this whole photography thing seriously. I'm such a beginner with it all, I really don't know what kind of camera to get. So I got this good deal on t he D60 on ebay and will use it to get myself started. I'm sure in my classes I'll learn a lot, and will find out what I like to use and be able to make a more informed choice in a year or two. But for now, this will serve me nicely. I even have hubby's good lenses from a couple of years ago when he went through a photography phase. I spent time poking around out in the yard just to get used to holding it, and liked this picture the best. I like how the leaves have a silvery lining of light around them. Makes me smile.

Second, we had another Meetup today at the Science Center. Very cool people, but I wound up getting separated from everybody, which was a bummer. Need to figure out how to avoid that in the future. Very cool people, though. I like all these folks I'm meeting at the Meetups.

It's hot - summer is officially here, and that's really odd considering it snowed two weeks ago. But I'm not complaining. I'm going to the lake tomorrow. Hopefully the water will be warmer than it was last week, when I felt like a polar bear, only without the fur.