New and Improved! Now with Happiness!

For many months now, I've itched to get back to writing this blog. I loved being able to disseminate my life as it happened. I reread this blog and I'm astonished at how angry I was. In some ways I will always be that angry lady, but there are so many reasons now to be exultantly happy.

So for many months I've looked over the blog, but I didn't know where to start. How do I encapsulate those many stressed out months, and the incredible journey it took to get us here?

The answer is, I can't. So I'm just going to go forward. If I need to fill you in on something to make something I write make sense, I will. But otherwise, onward.

Here we go:

We had a baby.  A boy.  He is a delightful, happy little guy, always smiling and talking to us.  He just started eating solid foods and sweet potatoes are his favorite.

Auden is 3 years old.  She is a wonder...smart, happy and creative.   She calls windmills "spinmills," grants wishes with a hearty, "Abra Cadabra Kazam!" and is the light of our lives. 

I'm doing well at work, now a manager of three people.  I have a lot of responsibility, and I'm compensated well for it.  I also absolutely ADORE my co-workers, missed them during my four month maternity leave, and was delighted to see (and be told) how much I was missed during my absence.

I hope to be back here, blogging as regularly as is possible.  I've missed this outlet, and I think now I'm ready to come back. 

A Lift

I know it has been so very long since I last posted.

I believe I've been suffering from Ongoing-Traumatic-Stress Disorder. 

You see, I quit my high paying job in July of last year partly because I was pissed at how they treated me, partly because the high-stress, high-smoking and high-drinking lifestyle wasn't conducive to the tiny pup in my belly and partly because I grew up in a wild and loving huge family and wanted the same for my incoming baby.

So we moved, at GREAT personal cost.  We lost so much money, people.  Hemorrhaged it.  I lost more money that you might actually have at your fingertips, and I don't mean to be condescending, I just need you to know how much money we'd saved, how many stocks we cashed out, and just exactly how hard this move was for us.   And then my husband lost his job. And then my severance ran out.  And then my parents gave us money.  And then we were slowly ticking that away.  

I would lie in bed at night and there would be actual physical pain, a neck ache, muscle pains like I'd been in a car accident.  My heart would race and my chest would constrict.   Maybe this is a panic attack?  I'm not dying.  I'm just losing.  I'm losing and I'm a loser and I forced my husband to move like this and I ruined our lives and we have this beautiful baby and I'm going to ruin her life by my selfish choices and we have lost everything.  We lost everything.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the poorhouse.   I got my husband back.  I got my marriage back.  I was gifted with this incredible daughter,  and I got to spend five months with her, and it wasn't hard to forget about my life stress while she was awake.  Because the joy of this little girl supercedes everything else I've been feeling.  And watching my sensitive, articulate husband giggle and smile and play with this little girl, and father her with such love and joy?  Oh my god.  If I didn't love this man before, I LOVE THIS MAN NOW.  

I'm saying all of this now because I have a job.   I was offered a really high paying job, in San Francisco, where we both want to live, doing something that I'm interested in, without all the high stress of my previous occupation.  And I took it.

I'll be in San Francisco by June 8th.  I hope that my husband and daughter are not far behind.

The thought of being without my daughter for even one night is heartbreaking to me, because I live and breathe to see her happy.  But she's got a dad who knows all the tricks, bells and whistles, and teaches me new things about her each day.  

And I think..... What a lucky little girl, that her dad and mom were there for her every day of her life for the first five months.  What a lucky wife, with a partner like this.  What a lucky, lucky, lucky blessed family we are.  We had a life lesson that didn't break us.  Just taught us something really important that we needed to know.

I hope to write more.  I've been unable to be very cheerful, and unable to be very snarky, lately. I've been in an extraordinary rut, and I've been unable to do anything except stupid my pain away.  And I don't want this to be a blog about motherhood, because there are better ones for you to read than me.  

Besides which, my aunt told me I should write a book about motherhood (I send home pictures of my daughter daily to my Ohio family) and I am.  I am writing the guide to motherhood fueled with margaritas and a really kick-ass husband.  I could do nothing without my husband.  He thinks I could, and I think he's wrong, but for a compromise let's just say I'd rather not do anything without him by my side.  

Wow, It's Uh, Been a While

I wish I were more like Alison, but I'm not.

I'm me, and I'm not writing here.  And I'm not only not writing here, I'm not really writing anywhere.  Actually, that is not true.  I am writing.  I am writing copiously, I am writing fervently, I am inscribing on my mind and heart the first few months of my darling, glorious, awesome, incredible baby girl.

I have volumes to tell you.  I have full novels sprung from a moment, from a single laugh of Auden's.  I have learned more than anyone ever tried to teach me.  I've laughed more and had my heart soar more in these last three months than ever in my entire life.

I always knew I wanted to be a parent.  I grew up an Irish Catholic kid in Toledo, OH.  My mom is one of eight.  I am one of 38 granchildren  (for those of you keeping score at home, that means I have 37 first cousins), and now there are 11 great-grandchildren.  There are a lot of us, and not one of us in the family is uncomfortable around kids.  In fact, you could say that a predilection towards children is in our very DNA.  

But I had no idea how much FUN this would be.  I love my daughter, you guys.  I ADORE her.  There isn't a single part of this that isn't pretty spectacularly awesome.  I'm having the time of my life.

Yesterday I was rocking her, she was tired and fussy and doing her fitful "about-to-sleep" thing, and so I bundled her close to me and started rocking her and she calmed down and I looked at her and she was just staring at me intently.  She was looking at me like she was memorizing my face, like I was a map she could imprint on her brain and follow somewhere incredible.  She stared at me and stared at me and then all of a sudden, completely without warning, she reached up and touched my face.  It was the first time she did that.  It was the first time I knew she had purposefully reached for something.  I was floored, thrilled, bowled over, delighted and shocked, all in an instant.  And isn't that parenting?

That's parenting.  The awe and wonder.  

This is a wondrous endeavor.  

I've never felt anything like it.  Watching this tiny life flourish and flower in front of me. Despite all of my particulars, this girl is a darling, she is a beauty, she is a joy and she is a PERSON.

I'm awed.  I'm humbled.  I'm buoyed by my daughter.  She is perfect and I'm the creator of something perfect.  And if you've never believed in God, she will make you do so.  Because there is no way that something this perfect and precious comes to the world without God.

Now, check in with me in 15 years, and I might sing a different tune, but for now:

Isn't she fabulous?

Correspondence File: 2/15/09

Dear Large Companies Posting Jobs on Monster:

Thank you for your time and consideration. I am overjoyed in this terrible recession economy that you have so much as POSTED a job. These are troubled times. I am troubled. You are troubled and the news tells us that everything is going to hell faster than we can imagine and our representatives in Capitol Hill don't have a clue and are losing their grip on the handbasket. But let's look past that, shall we?

I have a favor to ask: Please don't make me submit my resume and cover letter through your bullshit, bug-ridden employment software. I upload and it auto-fills everything wrong. I cut and paste and painstakingly reformat, and then the goddamn site crashes and I lose everything. Even in these troubled times, if your posting says apply only using our online system, I say Go Fuck Yourself.

I've been sitting here for three days doing this and your site has crashed 17 times. You may attract patient candidates that way, but none of them will have the wherewithal to open a can of corporate whup ass (when necessary, or slightly indicated) the way I do.

I Need to Have Standards, But Don't Hold Me To It,
Salome

I've applied for a few more jobs, and today was a good searching day, in that the available jobs looked interesting. I read the job postings and I thought, Yeah I'd LIKE to do that! Of course, I would have to give up my current job of being suckled on and barfed on and peed on, which would strip me of the benefits of baby smiles, baby laughter and that feeling of a sleeping baby in your arms, but still, some of this stuff I can not only do, but I actually kind of want to.

I am debating on whether or not to post an honest birth story post. I've invited a few more people to read this heretofore anonymous blog (which was being furiously ignored by everyone except four of my friends) and it is making me think twice about writing what I feel like writing. Like gross analogies and swear words.

But do you think Pat Conroy ever dithered about and didn't write something? I think not. He published Beach Music, did he not? I'll give it a shot. I could always remember that there is a save as draft button, so I don't need to vomit words and immediately share them with the internet. Probably won't but could happen.

Resuming

I have sent out six resumes in the last few days.  I am starting to really worry here about how we will provide for our daughter.  There is nothing, and I mean, NOTHING out there for my husband at the moment.  

There are a ton of property management jobs, but I read the job descriptions and it makes me want to reach for the bourbon.  Commercial property management can be so incredibly high stress, and I become such a crappy person, all jangled nerves and irritation.  And believe me, added stress to my already irritable nature does horrific things.  I don't have much patience anyway, but under duress I actually have negative patience, sucking the calm out of those around me.  I even can stress the Pope out, and he's well, pretty mellow, all things considered.  

Besides which, if I go to work, I will miss the opportunity to throw this on the kid and take pictures:  

Ooh, that reminds me:  I have moved the computer.  After nearly 5 months of cramming my brain into a too small space, next to the refrigerator and sharing space with the home phone, I have spread out on my old desk, which has been in our bedroom holding cat fur and dirty clothes for the above referenced 5 months.  

This is a look at what you'll see in the background from now on.  In various states of cleanliness and general upkeep:

Ps, I wore that shirt two days in a row and she threw up on me each day.  I forgot from one day to the next.  Tonight, when I realized it, I changed into clean pajamas.  We've done the cry it out method and she is actually going to sleep in her crib and staying there, asleep!  

I miss her.

You know, I really need to get more interesting.  I have just sufficiently bored myself.  I'm going to go wander the house while I wait for my baby to wake up so I can hold her.

New Parent Smackdown

While things are getting clearer, and we're both getting more comfortable in our abilities with the baby, I still find that the clocks in the house blitz through the hours, and each night I'm stunned to realize it is night, and the world is again asleep.

I am suffering from some insomnia, made all the more harsh for the early hours my daughter wakes up.  Luckily my husband will take her at any hour, even very very early hours.  He does so with no protest, and talks to her so lovingly that it melts my heart.  

Breastfeeding has not gone well.  We supplement with formula and even though I am thankful for some extra hours of sleep or freedom that this affords, I just opened a box and found breastmilk bags in the bottom, items I will never need, because I do not make enough breastmilk to have any extra to store.  My throat closed up and the tears started.  I can't control the surge of shame and disappointment I feel when my failure as a functioning woman is revealed to me in tiny ways throughout the day.  

I will be sending resumes out tomorrow, and I am devastated.  What if I get a job, and have to take it??? Because I would have to take it.  I didn't want to return to work this early, not when she is learning something new every day, and not when I still have a glimmer of being able to give her some benefit of breastmilk, however little I can.  Once I go back to work, there is just no way.  She is two months old next week, which seems so old but is really so little.  In that odd paradoxical way that babies get so big and yet remain so tiny and unbelievable.

I just remembered that a urine soaked diaper fell facedown on the floor by her changing table, so I'll go clean that up.  

Then I'll go to bed so I can lie there, unable to sleep, wired by the joy and the hurt and the worry and the love that shakes my mind awake.

Phoning It In

I am phoning it in today, because I have spent a great day napping with the baby and now I'm playing Rock Band with my husband.  He is playing Medium, I am playing Easy and spending more time updating my hair and outfit than I am playing songs.  Every dollar I get, I immediately go and change my hairstyle.

So instead, here are some recent pictures of the baby:

Hello, my name is McScreamy.  I don't like that toy, no, not at all.

Top Chef is so prosaic, you know?

Random Thing I Thought Today

You have to stop crying before you walk into WalMart.  

That's TACKY.

Correspondence File: 1/13/09

Dear Lady at Target with the Open-Mouth-Coughing Kid:

Give me a break, lady! I've got a three week old here! One of the reasons we are at Target right now instead of Walmart is that I can't expose her to that level of degradation yet. And here you are with your kid that is coughing continually, open mouth and all. Just spewing all kinds of illness around everything, like a firehose of germs.

And you're following me!!

Like a homing missile petri dish, just everywhere I go I hear that KOFF KOFF KOFF and see your kid hacking all over everything. We are trying to keep out of your way, but the goddamn stroller turns like a palsied flamenco dancer* and this is our first trip to a store with the baby and we're one big cluster-you-know-what.

But seriously, get out of my baby's airspace or I'm going to full-body tackle you and your typhoid family and slather you with Purell.

In Good Health,
Salome

* turns out the stroller's front wheel was locked and I didn't know. I discovered this halfway through my first walk around our street with Auden. I reached down, fully prepared to bust the wheel in order to make it turn, and realized it had the lock set. Hee.

Musings

I am hopelessly in love with my daughter.

Every expression on her face.  

The way she jerks her head randomly.  

The way she does this huge squeak inhale.  

The way, when she's getting mad, she pumps one leg rapidly, like trying to start a tiny baby motorcycle.  The mad look she gets when we delay getting her food to her.  The blinking awake of this tiny life.  

I don't know how much of the behavior we're seeing now is an indication of her personality, but this newborn is goofy.  She's smart.  She's generally good-natured, but possesses a fiery temper. When she gets really furious she cries in a way that sounds like an angry duck.  WAH WAH WAH.  

I wonder if she'll ever know, 15, 20 or 30 years from now, how I held her in my arms and tried to keep my heart inside my body, tried to keep my emotions from pouring out of my skin and flooding the city I live in.  I so incredibly love this little girl, I am so completely and utterly charmed by this person, I almost can't stand it.  I look at her sometimes and I'm surprised my husband doesn't hear the pop of my heart as it swells beyond its borders. 

And she's not even smiling at us yet!  

Her tiny smiles, right now attributed to gas, or urination or the contentment of falling asleep, are enough to achieve world peace, they are enough to quiet my screaming heart.  They are enough for me, forever.  

They melt me, utterly.

For so long I have examined my life and my decisions with a critical air of disenchantment.  

I now look down at my sleeping daughter's face and I feel I've accomplished greatness.

She's Not Sleeping

She's not sleeping, and it has been five hours.

The Pope isn't feeling well, he retreated to his quiet guest room hours ago.

HOURS AGO and still, she does not sleep.

She is now fed twice, rocked three times, and jiggled in the way she likes many times, too many to count.  Diaper changes:   two.  She's been swaddled, she's been unswaddled, and the whole time she will not stop fussing.  She will doze, she will catnap, but she will not sleep.  

I am losing it, folks.  She needs to sleep, goddamn it.  

I will lose my fucking mind in a second.

In all of this, every time my patience just wears out and snaps, I look at my baby girl and love her more than I could possibly express.  I roll my eyes, I curse out loud and then I reach down and see her alert eyes, and I kiss her cheek, I kiss the soles of her feet, I whisper to her that I love her so much.  

What she does to me!

This kid is killing all the toughness inside of me.

Lucy picked tonight to need me again, after three weeks of being the most perfectly behaved cat I've ever seen.  Tonight, she is trailing beside my feet, winding her way in my walking path and yowling at me.   I love her dearly, so will not kick her, although the temptation is great.  She finally climbed up on the baby blanket and slept beside me.  

I can wash the blanket.  

I love the cat.

So, how are you doing?

17 days old

We're hanging in. I haven't worn clothes other than pajamas in three days and I'm not sure when I last showered. The days blur into the nights, and it seems like I have nothing to show for my hours awake. I'm sleeping fine, but today started crying about a $60 heating bill on our empty house in Seattle. Seems like someone set the thermostat up and left it like that, in our vacant house, with us having no jobs. $60 seemed to unwind me. I am now having a wee glass of white wine, to bolster my Irish heart.

Our daughter is LOVELY. The hugest joy of joys. My darling girl. If you've called, thanks for calling. I'm nowhere near wanting to be talking on the phone right now. It would be awesome if you want to reach me, to email me. The phone ringing right when I'm going down for a nap, or getting her down for her nap, really bothers me. I won't answer if I'm feeding her, and the answer to your question is I'm ALWAYS feeding her.

And now for the photos!!!

Welcome to the World, Pup

The Pope and I welcomed a baby daughter on Friday, December 19th.

Her real name is Auden.  

She was born at 1:13pm.  She weighed 7 pounds, 13 ounces and was 20.5 inches long.

She is without a doubt the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.  

I can't stop staring at her and telling her I love her.  

I have never done anything in my life that made me so instantly and completely happy.  

Birthday

Posting very quickly to say that in four hours we will check into the hospital to have the Pup.

They will be inducing me at 7:00am tomorrow morning.  

The next time you hear from me, I will be a mom.  

How exciting!!!!!

Love,

Sal, Pope and Pup

Goodbye Seattle

Our house sold today at 10:45am.

For real, and true this time, we are free of that burden.

I wish I could tell you that I'm whooping and hollering with joy, and dancing around the house like a maniac, but in reality it was pretty anti-climatic.  The Pope says it is because the house just pales in comparison with the impending birth of the Pup.

I would like to believe that the birth of the Pup is impending, but I'm actually getting fairly discouraged that it will never happen.

And please don't comment and suggest I have sex because honestly, NO.  

I would rather have a root canal than get funky with it at the moment.  

I have never been so lumbering and huge.  

I know exactly what sex does to the cervix, and all of that, and still, there's absolutely no way unless I was drugged into a coma that anyone will be getting their freak on with me.

And so, having used the last of my hip hop analogies for sex, I will go read my book.   

Three Days to Go

Until I'm officially pissed off that this baby isn't born yet.

I am hurting, y'all.  The latest discovery is a shooting pain in my left wrist.  Like a sciatic spasm of my carpal tunnel.  It has been happening all night.  

This is in addition to the true sciatica pain that shoots down my left leg upon occasion, those occasions growing ever frequent these last few days.  The pain is so sharp, so intense, it causes me to do a silly John Cleese walk when it happens.  

I guess that's all.  The baby pains are either not bad, not present or so familiar that they now go unnoticed.  

A couple of things I've been thinking about lately:

Memo to everyone:  Starbucks is NOT good coffee.  I'm coming from Seattle, where they first brewed their burnt version of coffee beans and made the word "latte" common in our vernacular.  But they are the WORST coffee roaster in Seattle.  They were ubiquitous, on every streetcorner, muscling out the independent roasters and building a huge administrative complex near the sports arenas (football and baseball) with their signature mermaid looking over the city.  But the smaller roasting shops were where the truly great coffee was.  Where the baristas took the time to talk to you about their life, their dreams, all while making a latte that made your toes curl, with taste and strength.  They would draw flowers in the foam on top, and the foam was something you could eat like custard, not the fluffy nothing taste of Starbucks' foam.  Once you went indie, you never went back.  For me to stop at a Starbucks, I am slumming it.  McDonald's has better tasting lattes than Starbucks.  It is true!  Do a taste test.  

At least in Seattle the Starbucks baristas were consistent in their drinks.  Down here in Sacramento, you've got essentially teenagers trying to make coffee, and the drinks are all over the place.  Some have 1/3 cup of foam on top, some have too much milk, others are lukewarm, others that I've ordered with some seasonal spicing (which is rare for me) have the spicing all down at the bottom, not having been stirred.  That's a gross discovery.  I got a hot chocolate the other day at a Starbucks inside Safeway, which is still the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of, like who needs a huge ass latte while you're grocery shopping?   Or who is going to sit at a grocery store and tap away on their laptop?  The ambiance is horrendous.  Anyway, this hot chocolate was so chocolately that it made my eyes cross.  Almost undrinkable.  Don't they have standards of how a drink should be prepared and taste?   At those indie shops in Seattle you may have waited an extra 3 minutes while someone took care to prepare your drink, but in the end you got something worth waiting for!   Down here you get rude service and a poor quality drink.  It is disgusting.

Conspicuous Consumption:  I will admit to being as bad as everyone else when it comes to shopping.  For the last several years, at least 5, I've been in a financial position to buy almost anything I wanted.  I've never been wealthy, and my tastes are pretty simple, but I rarely worried about money, never really went without something I wanted, and generally bought something every time I went to a store.  Well.  That has, shall we say, changed.   Now I am shocked at the consumption everywhere.  In this time of a serious recession, a man was killed at WalMart so that people could get in to get deals on 50" television sets.  This on Black Friday, the biggest Christmas shopping day of the year.  But who buys 50" television sets as gifts?  These were people buying things for themselves, killing someone to do it.  It was shocking.  

A side note, about the shooting of the two men at a Toys R' Us in California.  The shooting occurred as a result of a fight between the dates of the two men.  The women got in a verbal argument, then there was a shoving match, and then both of the men pulled out guns and shot each other dead.  I was telling the Pope about this one morning and he said, succinctly, "glad they're out of the gene pool, I suppose."  

This is the wild world we bring our baby into, with every intention of raising it to be a good human being.  Not many visible examples in the world today.  

I was going to rant more, I've had a few things that have been bothering me lately, but my wrists are hurting, and the three nuts I just ate have given me raging heartburn.  You'll excuse me while I go sit my lard ass on the couch and cry.  

Wish me labor,

Salome

Great Joke Courtesy of Devi

Why does the shark like to swim in salt water?

Because she's allergic to PEPPER!!!!!

Not Having Baby, Just Lazy

You know what's good?

Nilla wafers dipped in Nutella.    I have eaten almost half a box of Nilla wafers this way.

Except they're not Nilla Wafers TM, they are Safeway (tm) brand Vanilla Wafers.

Real Nutella, though, I found it one day at the Grocery Outlet.  I'm sure it was confirmed dosed with botulism in order for me to get it at $1.99, but it is Nutella, so suck it up intestines, here we go.

Well!  We are dilated 1 centimeter, which doesn't seem like much since it has taken approximately 3 days of intermittent cramping to get there,  our pelvic station is -1, which is good, and we are effaced 50%.  Which is unchanged from last week.  They tell me not to obsess about that effacement (to which I laugh, because they CLEARLY don't know my OCD with Google) because apparently you can efface to 100% overnight.

The baby is a huge monster, normal for tall people, and totally making me feel better about the whole problem quitting smoking thing I was having there for, oh, 8 months.  

Rest assured, guys, I have not had a cigarette in over a month.  I've been done.  My mom read somewhere that breastmilk of smokers tastes like smoke and when she told me that, I was done.  Well, not really.  I was done after the Pope was let go and I smoked four packs in seven days.  After that powersmoking binge, my vigorous and vibrantly moving baby stilled for two days.  I went to the doctor's office in a panic and spent 20 minutes hooked up to fetal monitoring to make sure that the baby was still happy and healthy and thank god it was.  THEN I was done.  Then I was so, so soooooooo way done. 

You know, things got so bad there, so many punches thrown, that by the end we weren't even ducking them.  We'd just look down, take the hit and then keep slowly moving, lost in our daze of what else could happen.  

Except that I've become a kind of ostrich hydra.  Every time some worry rears its head, I say to myself, can't fall apart over that, bury it.  Then the next thing, then the next thing.  Maybe one day all of these heads are going to look up from the sand and blink at me expectant-like, and I'll have to reckon with them.  Or maybe, the mountains I saw will just stay molehills in the dirt behind me, and I'll keep slowly moving.  

Speaking of my mom, she predicted the following on 10/14/08 (which oddly would have been my 8th anniversary, had I stayed married to my first husband).

Girl

Born December 6th

8 pounds, 3 ounces

21 inches long

Any predictions from the Carcharodonna readers?   

Too Much Information in 3...2...1...

So, today I received an unpleasant surprise.

It seems that checking your cervix to see how far effaced you are is NOT comfortable.  

And when I say it is not comfortable, I mean that I almost slapped my doctor.  

Eeyagh.

The baby dropped two days ago.  It felt like someone was pushing down on my stomach, these brief but strong feelings, three times in quick succession, and then all of a sudden I could take deep breaths.  My heartburn also pretty much stopped.

Let me pause and reflect, "thankyougodthankyougodthankyougodthankyougodthankyougod."

Heartburn sucked.   Heartburn sucked in WAVES of suck.  Roiling, burning, gigantic waves of suck.  I fell asleep one night last week with a Tums in my mouth, and woke up with a trail of pink dried across my cheek.

The trade-off is that I have to pee CONSTANTLY.   Two nights ago, I peed five times in 30 minutes.  The urge was URGENT.  I would hoist my body up, disentangle myself from Lucy, pad over to the restroom and tinkle out about three teaspoons.  I do all my tricks, I lean very far forward, I wait a few seconds, I sneeze (this one is a sure-fire squeezer).  When I am sure I am done, I stand up and immediately feel the urge to pee again.  At one point, in extreme frustration, I mentally decided that I would pee the bed.  I would just do it.  My husband loves me, and he feels so sorry for me, he won't mind.  Well, he will mind, but I will act horrified and disgusted, and I will try to cry and he'll forgive me.  

The belly is huge.  It has its own zip code.  It has its own laws of gravity.  Walking around trying to support it and keep my balance now requires the waddle.  The other day I was sure I'd flattened the arch in my foot, just by wandering around the house.

We signed another offer on our house today.  This is the third.

We are happy, but it is hard to let go of our doubt and frustration.  We've been happy and excited two times now.  Two times now the deals have fallen through.  This deal represents the absolute bottom of our finances.  We don't make any money.  Before we countered the absolutely absurd* offer we received, we figured out how much we owe on the mortgages, how much the interest will be, how much the commissions will take, closing costs, etc....and countered with a number that allows us to clear all this.  That's it. 

*Absurd = Offering $300,000 for a house currently listed at $334,950.  

I am resurfacing from a couple weeks now of worry, doubt and fear.  I will say that the Pope and I are having fun together, and that is so incredibly rewarding.  If I have nothing but him, and our baby, and our kitties, then I am still very rich.  

We went over to my sister-in-law's house (the Pope's sister) last night for dinner, and we just had a blast.  I sat there, surrounded by my husband and his wonderful family, and we were all laughing and laughing, and talking, and marveling at the nieces, who are spectacularly interesting, and I couldn't help but think about how lucky I am.  How blessed we are, and how important it is to realize that.  

I hope I keep realizing that.  

Aaack

Sometimes I just think things that are so mean.  So uncharitable.

I just want to crack my chest open, take out my heart and stomp on it a couple of times.