Road Trip

Four Hundred

Wow. Another week has gone by with­out more than a weekly update. What can I say? It’s been a pretty busy summer.

I admit that I hate tak­ing more than a few days break from writ­ing, because I find that my cre­ative juices start to slow down. Not that I don’t have a lot to say — G*d knows I always got the “Talks Too Much” com­ment on my grade school report cards — I just find myself strug­gling to write these thoughts down.

Any­way … what have I been up to?

Well, El Hubs & I were “home” in Detroit early last week. In real­ity, it’s because we knew we had to travel to Toronto on Thurs­day for his cousin’s wed­ding on Fri­day. And yeah … we coulda done the 9 hr trip in one shot. But why do that when we can break the car ride up in two days? Besides, we fig­ured we’d do some house-​​cleaning while we were in town for a cou­ple of days.

Thurs­day after­noon, we pulled into the Greater Toronto Area and swiftly met up with my cousins for some seri­ous catch­ing up. One of these cousins was LJC, whom we haven’t prop­erly spent time with since her wed­ding in 2008. Her youngest sis­ter was also there and we had the plea­sure of finally meet­ing her Sig­nif­i­cant Other.

It was an evening full of incred­i­ble fun of just sit­ting and talk­ing … some­thing I sorely miss from the years of spend­ing end­less sum­mers with them chat­ting until late at night.

Fri­day was obvi­ously Hubby’s cousin’s wed­ding. And it was an amaz­ing time … per­haps Hot as Hades in mid-​​July, but so much fun! The best part of the recep­tion … at least in my mind … was get­ting on the dance floor with all of Hubby’s cousins/​significant oth­ers and their chil­dren (our 14 yo nephew included) to start off the night of danc­ing with the Black Eyed Peas’ “Tonight’s Gonna Be A Good Night.”

While the wed­ding recep­tion was an incred­i­ble party, I must say that get­ting together with Hubby’s entire fam­ily (well, most of them any­way) on Sat­ur­day was also won­der­ful. Because even though we spent time together the day before at the wed­ding, Saturday’s get-​​together was more laid-​​back and relaxed. I know Hubby & I had a won­der­ful time … espe­cially teach­ing them Cana­dian cousins how to play the very Michi­gan card game of Euchre. We think we may have cre­ated mon­sters. LOL!

Hubby overlooking Horseshoe Falls

And today? Well … today Hubby & I found our­selves cel­e­brat­ing HIS birth­day in Nia­gara Falls. I must say, I can’t think of any bet­ter way to cel­e­brate Hubby’s birth­day than with an entire gag­gle of fam­ily. Just imag­ine a group of 25 fam­ily mem­bers (includ­ing an Aunt & Uncle who came from the Philip­pines for the wed­ding) doing an entire bus tour of attrac­tions. It was com­pletely chaotic … but I know Hubby has been enjoy­ing him­self today.

Even if I did for­get to wish him a Happy Birth­day until another Aunt had said it to him this morn­ing. Bad bad bad wife!! **

Now, I’m lay­ing here in bed at the hotel, fin­ish­ing up the last min­utes of Hubby’s birth­day by writ­ing noth­ing more than a jour­nal entry for the past week.

Hubby, how­ever, is spend­ing the rest of his birth­day night out with the “boys.” And by “boys” I mean two of his cousins, two of his uncles, and his Dad. I’m glad Hubby’s get­ting a chance to spend time with them … espe­cially since we haven’t had many oppor­tu­ni­ties to get together with fam­ily (from all over the U.S and Canada) over the past few years.

Hubby & Me on Maid of the Mist

So Hubby … before the day’s over, I just want to send an incred­i­bly huge birth­day hug and kiss to you. You are my world; my sun­shine and rain­bow. You are my best friend … and I’m incred­i­bly blessed to have you in my life. I can’t wait to con­tinue our jour­ney in life together.

Oh … and one more thing. Not that this is incred­i­bly excit­ing news (in the grand scheme of this post any­way). But check out the title of this post.

Yep … that’s the num­ber of blog entries I’ve offi­cially writ­ten as of today. Wow!

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

** In my defense, I must add that I did remem­ber it in the shower this morn­ing. But since we were try­ing to pack for an overnight stay in Nia­gara with his fam­ily, it slipped my mind by the time I started pack things away! Bad bad wife!!

Eye-​​Oh-​​Waah!

(Finally! Back online and wired — or “wireless-​​ed” this case — to the out­side world. Hubby & I have been out of town since Fri­day and haven’t had any inter­net or email access all week­end. Can’t believe how much I miss hav­ing no con­nec­tion to any­thing! Okay, so maybe it was a bless­ing after last month’s Nablopomo … )

This week­end Hubby & I spent some time in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Hubby is part of the local Adver­tis­ing Club in the city where he works. Every year, this Ad Club par­takes in the Addy’s which is sort of the Oscar’s for Adver­tis­ing. Any regional Ad Club can hold their own Addy’s, which the win­ners of each local club goes on to dis­tricts and then nation­als. But each level has their own sets of judging.

So why were we in Cedar Rapids? Well, because Hubby was asked to judge that local chapter’s entries. And because this was sort of “last minute,” the flights out there were a bit too expen­sive. So instead, he decided to drive. And well, because it’s a nice 7-​​plus hour drive from where we live, I hated know­ing that he’d be dri­ving that long dis­tance by him­self. Which is why I tagged along.

Wintery Freeway Shot on way to Cedar Rapids

Win­tery Free­way Shot on way to Cedar Rapids

While he and two oth­ers spent the whole day on Sat­ur­day judg­ing, I spent most of the morn­ing and half the after­noon in the hotel room. Except, as I men­tioned above, we weren’t able to get any inter­net access. Instead, I flipped through the lim­ited amount of chan­nels on the telly and watched ran­dom things. Like a His­tory Chan­nel episode on the Clas­sic Seven Won­ders of the World. And High School Musi­cal 1 and 2. And mul­ti­ple episodes of Han.nah Mon.tana. You could say I was just a lit­tle bored.

Mid-​​afternoon, I finally decided to drag my butt out of my jam­mies and show­ered. After­wards, I decided I’d do the half-​​hour drive down to Iowa City and sur­round­ing Coralville just to check it out. Iowa City was a pretty col­lege town. Lots of stu­dents milling about and lots of shops down the lit­tle cen­ter area. But it was too frickin’ cold for me to go walk­ing out there by my lone­some. (Heck … it was bad enough that I had to fill the car with gas in that 20-​​some degree tem­per­a­ture; which doesn’t even include the wind-​​chill fac­tor!) So then I decided to head to Coralville where I saw a Bar.nes & Nob.les off the free­way. And really, I went there strictly so I could pick up Book Three in the Twi.light series.

I mean after all, I fin­ished the 2nd book ear­lier that morn­ing while mind­lessly flip­ping through the TV.

Ugh. I can’t say that this trip was majorly excit­ing. How­ever, know­ing that in June of this year Cedar Rapids was com­pletely dev­as­tated from major flood­ing … well, it kinda puts things into major per­spec­tive. Espe­cially after watch­ing some of the TV spots that were up for judg­ing for Addy Awards. When talk­ing with some of Hubby’s peers (the ones that spon­sored his stay) dur­ing din­ner one night, I asked the obvi­ous ques­tion; which was how bad did it affect the city?

To put it mildly, it dev­as­tated Cedar Rapids. When we drove through the streets of the down­town area, our host would point out exactly how high the water lev­els were. One par­tic­u­lar build­ing, you could tell it reached about a story and a half high. Even the server at the restau­rant talked about how the entire room we were in was com­pletely sub­merged under water. There was one instance, we were told, that res­i­dents saw some CNN news­cast­ers out on boats, fish­ing in the mid­dle of the “street.” Because there was, indeed, fish swim­ming in the streets.

And as we drove along, you couldn’t help but notice how many store­fronts were closed. How the actual restau­rant our host wanted to take us to never reopened after the flood­ing. How there were still houses close to the river that appeared to be aban­doned with no hope of ever being rebuilt. And there were other sto­ries of house boats that were found piled up at one end of a road. While another pile, this one of derailed box­cars from trains, were stacked up at the other end.

The stat we Hubby & I read was that one in four busi­nesses never reopened after a major dis­as­ter. Of all things, we read that bit of info on a bill­board. On the free­way. In the southwestern-​​most end of Michi­gan. On the way to Iowa. (How weird is that?)

To see that real­ity of those num­bers in front of our face five months after the flood­ing was, to put it mildly, was tragic. To know that, indeed, many of these stores would never reopen in the city’s down­town busi­ness dis­trict was heart­break­ing. And to know that it would take years to rebuild what was destroyed was just plain sad.

Sun setting in the college town of Iowa City

Sun set­ting in the col­lege town of Iowa City

Those TV spots that Hubby was given to “judge” told the story of what hap­pened dur­ing the flood­ings. The video shots alone were rem­i­nis­cent of the same video real I remem­ber see­ing after Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina hit New Orleans. And to know that the Iowa flood­ings hap­pened not so far away from my home … it was cer­tainly eye-​​opening. And the sheer enor­mity of this dis­as­ter made me real­ize that nat­ural dis­as­ters can hap­pen any­where. Floods in the mid­west. Hur­ri­canes on the East and Gulf coasts. Earth­quakes on the west coast (and even other mid­west area places you’d never think of). Tor­na­does in the heart­land. Either way, I think this has made me real­ize that all of us could be one step away from catastrophe.

So while I was utterly frus­trated by the lack of good TV pro­gram­ming or access to the inter­net … I feel like I can’t really com­plain about it. Because truth­fully … rebuild­ing this city and its com­mu­nity is much much more impor­tant than mak­ing sure I’m up to date with all the lat­est news.

I pray that the com­mu­nity of Cedar Rapids con­tin­ues to plow for­ward and rebuild.

Show and Tell: That “Just Married” Look

showandtellWow. I seri­ously can’t believe I’ve made it through half the month for NaBloPoMo. It seems like a week in, I was already strug­gling to find stuff inter­est­ing stuff to post about. And now … I’ve reached the halfway point.

So today, I decided to share a pic­ture of Hubby and I on our hon­ey­moon. And based on the pic­ture, where do you think we went?

Hmmm .… jack­ets and sweat­shirts, cud­dling close to each other. Prob­a­bly some place pretty cool in cli­mate, eh? Maybe hik­ing in one of the state parks in Wash­ing­ton … or per­haps Alaska even?

Honeymoon

Nope. Hubby and I went to Hawaii. Yep, if you could only pan out a lit­tle fur­ther in this pic­ture, you’d see that we’re both wear­ing our Doc Marten san­dals with no socks … and com­pletely freez­ing our tushies off.

That’s because we made the trek up Mt. Haleakala on the island of Maui, just to watch the sun rise over the sum­mit of this dor­mant vol­cano. To put it in words would be near impos­si­ble. Just know that it was sim­ply gorgeous.

But back to the pic­ture. Can’t you tell how incred­i­bly happy we are? By then we would have been mar­ried 9 days (even though the date dis­played one day ahead .… what can I say? This was pre-​​digital!) and this would have been the sec­ond to the last day of our honeymoon.

To say that we enjoyed our trip would be an under­state­ment. We started out in the island of Kauai, which was absolutely per­fect for us to unwind from all of the wed­ding events. You see, Kauai is more of a quiet island (as com­pared to Oahu or Maui). Not too much going on through­out the island, but lots of beau­ti­ful scenery. We stayed at the Hyatt in Poipu, which is the south­ern­most city of the island. And we were absolutely spoiled rot­ten there. The ocean­front view, the beau­ti­ful gar­dens on the prop­erty, the mul­ti­ple swim­ming pools and lagoons, and the incred­i­ble daily brunch spread that, to this day … can­not com­pare to any other brunch we’ve had. We took a raft up the Na Pali Coast and snorkeled at one of the iso­lated beaches. We drove up to Waimea Canyon and met a orange tabby cat named Simba, who was adopted by the ven­dors in the area. Oh, and we went on a heli­copter ride, where … because of the extreme motion sick­ness I expe­ri­enced … I real­ized it was not my life’s ambi­tion to be a pilot. Although, what I do remem­ber was beau­ti­ful. In all, we spent about 6 days on this island, relax­ing and bask­ing in our new­ly­wed state.

Then it was off to Maui, which after spend­ing almost a week in “seclu­sion,” seemed like a major metrop­o­lis as com­pared to Kauai. It was def­i­nitely an island with many more sites and activ­i­ties. Oh, and lots of shop­ping too! We stayed at the Embassy Suites in Ka’anapali, which is on the north­west­ern­most part of the island. In order to get there, we drove through Lahaina, which was, at one time, the cen­ter of the world’s whal­ing indus­try with ships from around the globe dock­ing at this port. This has cer­tainly made Lahaina the “sea­port” vil­lage that it has become; lots of store­fronts and bou­tique shops line its streets.

Along with the afore­men­tioned 2:00 am drive up to the “House of the Sun” to watch the sun rise, we also made another beau­ti­ful day trip to the east side of the island. Which, if you’ve ever been to Maui … it’s almost like being on a com­pletely dif­fer­ent island. Where the west side is more arid and dry, the east side is more lush and green. The high­way to the east is widely known as the “Road to Hana” and it’s a won­drously windy road with more than 50 bridges, many of which are only one lane. Along the way, we passed by numer­ous water­falls; some of which we were actu­ally able to swim under. And at the end of our jour­ney, we reached the “Seven Sacred Pools,” which are actu­ally a series (of more than seven, may I add) of pools formed by cas­cad­ing water­falls that lit­er­ally tum­ble into the ocean. It was stun­ningly beautiful.

By the end of the 11 days we spent in Hawaii, we were well rested and ready to start our lives as new­ly­weds. What we absolutely loved best about our hon­ey­moon was that we were there together, explor­ing a place where nei­ther of us had ever been before. On our very own. With no timetable or sched­ule to go by. And to this day, this was one of our most favorite (if not the favorite) vaca­tions of all time.

Unfor­tu­nately, all my hon­ey­moon pho­tos have not caught up with the dig­i­tal age at this time. Per­haps one day, I’ll be able to scan them in. Until then, I’ll just have to enjoy the beau­ti­ful pic­ture of us up in the “House of Sun.”

Now; make sure you go and check out every­one else’s Show and Tell posts!

Recharged

Last week went by in such a blur; not so much because it was a short work week from hav­ing Labor Day off. I think it had more to do with the emo­tional down­fall I seemed to be expe­ri­enc­ing since the days before Kairi’s birth.

Yes, I sucked at try­ing to stay off the not-​​so-​​amusement park ride, oth­er­wise known as the roller coaster of infertility.

But today … this week … I am mak­ing an effort to pick myself up and move right along. As to where I might be mov­ing along to on this IF jour­ney still remains to be seen. I still have a lot of “issues” to work out before I can com­pletely move on.

This rel­a­tively small turn in tides is due to a few things that have hap­pened as of late. First of all, writ­ing this post was cer­tainly cathar­tic, despite the brief bit of guilt I felt for about three days after post­ing it.

Then there were those read­ers … those friends … who actu­ally made the effort to com­ment on both of those posts. Your words do mean a lot to me and I do take what all you say very much to heart. It shows to me that, despite the ram­blings of anger, sad­ness, guilt and con­fu­sion, I’m not alone in feel­ing or express­ing them. To me, that makes me feel less of a silly, pathetic per­son who “obvi­ously can’t let go” and more of a real per­son with jus­ti­fied thoughts for all those emo­tions. I can­not thank each and every one of you enough for all your kind words.

And not that I’m fish­ing for more com­ments about my posts … but for those IRL friends and even those that may just be “lurk­ing” … trust me, a sim­ple acknowl­edge­ment (whether by com­ment or quick email) to those blog­gers that may be call­ing out for some love or sup­port goes a LOOOONG way. And you never know, this may be the only way a blog­ger is able to let you in past the brick wall he or she may have inad­ver­tently built around his– or herself.

The last thing that helped me get through this dif­fi­cult time was a quick trip to Lon­don, Ontario to attend LJC’s bridal shower this past week­end. The two-​​hour drive one-​​way would be the first time I’ve ever made that trip by my lone self. Dur­ing my child­hood, the trip was made with fam­ily. And in the later years, it would always be with Hubby.

Hubby was sup­posed to be with me on this road trip. How­ever, a last minute deci­sion (like less than 2 weeks) on his family’s part to throw a sur­prise birth­day party for his mom on the same day as the shower threw off those plans.

Part of me was hon­estly kinda ticked at that. We had already made plans to make the trip to Lon­don to do a quick get­away from “things.” And when I mean “things,” I mean that we knew that the week­end before would be sur­rounded by “all things baby.” Not that we didn’t want to be there to meet Kairi and con­grat­u­late the proud par­ents, but we knew … at least I knew … that I would need to step back and recharge our emo­tional batteries.

Hubby & I as "Positive & Negative"

Hubby & I as “Pos­i­tive” and “Negative

Because I knew that, even though we made the effort to phys­i­cally visit SIL and Kairi twice while they were in the hos­pi­tal, see­ing that vision of “Mom and Baby” would stick with me (and to some extent, Hubby) emo­tion­ally long after we kissed and said good­bye to them.

But now it was just going to be me going to Lon­don. And poor Hubby was going to stay at home and help out with the sur­prise party. And the intro­duc­tion of Kairi to the rest of the fam­ily. Hubby, unfor­tu­nately, would have to deal with the fam­ily & friends ooh-​​ing and ahh-​​ing over Kairi (rightly so, by the way … did you see how cute she is?!) and then turn­ing to him to say, “Still no kids for you, huh?”

So yeah, that’s what ticked me off. And what also made me feel guilty for leav­ing Hubby there to fend for himself.

I also can’t deny that I was also excited to go to Lon­don by myself, either. This quick overnight jaunt to visit with the cousins I always felt were the “sis­ters I never had” … Well, this would be the first time in a long time that it would be “just the girls.” It would give us the oppor­tu­nity to talk about “girl things” and other things that we haven’t been able to talk about in a very long time.

And although I didn’t get to spend as much time with LJC, as she already had other wedding-​​planning related plans, there was still a good time to be had. Also, the one “sis­ter” from Cal­gary wasn’t able to make the shower either. But despite this, I was still able to spend lots of time with the youngest “sis­ter” and her Mom (my Uncle’s wife) and her Mom’s two sis­ters. And while it may sound strange … for the longest time, I thought that my cousin’s aunts were also my aunts by blood as well.

So after all the guests had left and the dishes cleaned, it was no sur­prise that we all sat down in the kitchen to relax. After all, that’s where I can remem­ber many long con­ver­sa­tions and dis­cus­sions tak­ing place in my youth. Except this time I’m much older, as is my youngest “sis­ter.” And we’re talk­ing about Amer­i­can and Cana­dian pol­i­tics. And infer­til­ity. And all of my “aunts” and my “sis­ter” are ask­ing me honest-​​to-​​God actual ques­tions and actu­ally look­ing at me and respond­ing to me at the appro­pri­ate times.

Yup, that’s right. These fam­ily mem­bers that I haven’t had much con­tact out­side of wed­dings (and more wed­dings) over the past ten years were gen­uinely inter­ested to know how I was doing, and how I was deal­ing with things. Real peo­ple. Right in front of me. Show­ing empa­thy and com­pas­sion for me. What. A Breath. Of. Fresh. Air.

And at exactly the right time that I needed it, too.

It was pre­cisely what I needed to ener­gize my bat­ter­ies so I could still keep going (and going and going) …

A “Hula”-va Birthday

Happy Birth­day, dear Hubby of mine! I know I’m a day late in post­ing my birth­day wishes to you on my blog, but as you already know … we had one busy weekend!

First there was head­ing out to the movies on Fri­day night to watch “The D.ark Kn.ight” which you and I agreed was awe­some. Too bad He.ath Ledg​.er won’t be around to reprise his role as the Jok​.er … :-(

And then Sat­ur­day … on your actual birth­day … we spent the day in Ann Arbor, our stomp­ing grounds dur­ing the fall foot­ball sea­sons for the Wolver­ines. Wasn’t it fun check­ing out the Ann Arbor Art Fair? I love going to there every year because it always reminds me of the sum­mers when we were still dat­ing and the fun and inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tions we’d always have on the way to and from the Art Fair. I just find it humor­ous that we always come back from the Art Fair with more books from Shaman Drum Book­shop and cloth­ing on sale from the var­i­ous bou­tiques than we do actual art work! It’s just so sad that very few indie record stores (that actu­ally sell vinyl) exist in the area anymore …

Ann Arbor will always bring back such fond mem­o­ries of us and our col­lege years … when we would spend count­less hours dri­ving back and forth from Oak­land Uni­ver­sity and the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan, just so we’d be able to spend time together. Remem­ber the times we’d risk life and limb in the dead of win­ter just to make it to each other’s place? Appar­ently not much has change in the eigh­teen years since we’ve been together (not to men­tion the twenty LONG years that we’ve been friends).

Okay, so that’s not exactly true. I mean, geez … we did age twenty years since then. We fin­ished col­lege and we’ve man­aged to have pretty suc­cess­ful careers. We got mar­ried and we bought our house. We’ve man­aged, between the two of us, to fill our house with books. And movies. And music. Not to men­tion photo albums. And cool elec­tronic gad­gets. And com­put­ers (many of which have been rel­e­gated to the com­puter “grave­yard”). And pets, which have become our lit­tle mutt of a family.

But let’s not for­get the one thing that has always filled our home and our hearts since that incred­i­ble day almost 12 years ago. And that’s the love that we have for one another. The one thing in my life that I am most grate­ful for. I thank my luck stars every day that we share the same love for one another, the same heart.

So today … err, or rather yes­ter­day … I want to wish you a won­der­ful birth­day. May the fun and hap­pi­ness we’ve had in Ann Arbor and in every moment of our lives … con­tinue for years and years (and years) to come.

Dawn of Summer

It’s Sun­day Morn­ing around 7:30 am. Except with the time dif­fer­ence, it feels like an hour later.

Yes­ter­day, Hubby & I made an impromptu trip to Chicago. Ini­tially we were sup­posed to go with my par­ents to visit Dr. Bro & Dr. SIL, but instead we went alone. Last minute, we were book­ing a hotel room so that we wouldn’t have to bother the busy docs so much.

Imag­ine our suprise when we got into our hotel room and saw a view of Lake Michi­gan. It. Was. Spec­tac­u­lar. And to top it off, we scored a cor­ner room which just hap­pened to be the best view of Buck­ing­ham Foun­tain in Grant Park. I’ve been to Chi-​​town many times in my life, but have never had the oppor­tu­nity to have such an incred­i­ble view of Lake Michigan.

You see, at the last minute the cheap­est room we could find within the down­town area was at the Con­gress Plaza Hotel. And even then, it was a lit­tle on the pricier side than what we would have like to spend. But, oh was the view def­i­nitely worth it. Espe­cially at around 4:30-ish when I specif­i­cally set the alarm to watch the sun rise.

It was a thrilling moment this morn­ing, look­ing over Lake Michigan’s hori­zon and antic­i­pat­ing the sun­rise. Watch­ing the sky turn dif­fer­ent shades of a pastel-​​like rain­bow as I waited patiently for the sun to make his (her?) appear­ance seemed to be very sym­bolic of my life at this exact moment. At least I hope it is.

Last Mon­day, I had a follow-​​up appoint­ment with my GYN to go over the cur­rent treat­ment I’ve been receiv­ing for endometrio­sis. Yes, I’m talk­ing about that God-​​awful drug called Lupron. After review­ing the ultra­sound results from my last date with the US tech, my GYN gave me the option of con­tin­u­ing on Lupron for one more month (to make it a total of 6 months) or stop it after receiv­ing the Month Five dose on that visit. Guess which one I chose?! Uh-​​huhn … one last shot in the rear, and I was skip­ping out of that office know­ing that I no longer had to endure the side effects after this month.

And after this month, I’m look­ing at the end of yet another dark period in my life. Hope­fully this means no more awful headaches. Or no more of those d*mn hot flashes. But most of all? Hope­fully no more of that rain­bow of emo­tions from extreme hap­pi­ness to anger in a flash of a sec­ond. And hope­fully no more tears brought on sud­denly by a tidal wave of sad­ness or of feel­ing com­pletely over­whelmed by some­thing as sim­ple as get­ting up for the day.

I’m lit­er­ally hop­ing it’s the dawn of a new day in this period in my life. And see­ing as yes­ter­day was the Sum­mer Soltice, oth­er­wise known as the first full day of sum­mer, I’m hope­ful that I will find the inner strength in me … the power of the sun, if you will … to climb out of the hori­zon of dark­ness of and into the light of a new day.

How appro­pri­ate, because two weeks from today, I will be cel­e­brat­ing yet another year of life that I’ve got­ten through. And this birth­day, I want to cel­e­brate the fact that I was born and not focus on the fact that I will still be child­less at the age of 36.

*******************************

And now pics from our impromptu Chi-​​town Trip

Nieces and Nephews

Hubby & I are back from Chicago and from vis­it­ing with my brother and SIL. Dr. Brother is fin­ish­ing his last year of res­i­dency at one of the major hos­pi­tals in the Chi-​​town area while Dr. SIL works in the ER at another area hos­pi­tal. But despite their hec­tic sched­ules, they took the time out to spend Sat­ur­day after­noon and most of Sun­day enter­tain­ing us.


And it’s Slytherin Green to boot!

Not that they hon­estly had to do too much to enter­tain Hubby & me. Really, all we wanted to do was spend time and hang out with them. We spent some of our time walk­ing around the Buck­town /​ Wicker Park area, think­ing that per­haps we could afford things from some of their upscale resale shops … uh, yeah. Guess I’m a lit­tle to used to find­ing great deals at the local Sal.vatio.n A.rmy. But I did man­age to find this really cool shirt. Okay, so I didn’t so much “find” it … rather I copy off my SIL’s idea, as I just loved the whole “snark­i­ness” of it all.

The other part of our time was spent doing our favorite pas­time when we’re together … and that’s eat. If there’s one thing that I wish we had around where Hubby & I live is rows and rows of restau­rants and bars with vary­ing tastes. There’s only so many times you can eat at a chain restau­rant. Don’t get me wrong, I love my A.bee’s Triple Choco Melt­down, but per­haps I’d like to try some­thing … I don’t know … a lit­tle less man­u­fac­tured? So yes. We ate … and we stuffed our­selves with some great food. Tummy was def­i­nitely satisfied!

But the real rea­son for our visit? Yes … it was to see my “nieces” and “nephews.” The four-​​legged vari­ety, that is. Oh boy, did we ever have fun with the boys. They are way too love­able! But rather than tell you about them … here’s some pics of them along with their “sis­ters,” Mocha & Sophia, who have ruled (and con­tinue to rule) the household.

The sad thing? Come this sum­mer, my brother and SIL are mov­ing to the Pacific North­west. Dr. Brother man­aged to secure a one-​​year fel­low­ship out there and Dr. SIL has also man­aged to obtain a few job offers. This means that in order to visit them and the “nieces” and “nephews,” we’d either have fly out to the coast OR take an extremely loooong road trip.

On the Road

This is what you get for
mak­ing faces at the camera!

Hubby & I have been get­ting a lit­tle antsy lately. We’ve both been crazy busy at work lately and were look­ing for a lit­tle adven­ture. So we decided to take a lit­tle road trip this weekend.

The cat­a­lyst for our trip was to head back to the west side of the state to attend a sur­prise birth­day cel­e­bra­tion for one of our friends. The look on his face when he saw that we drove such a dis­tance today just to cel­e­brate with him was priceless.

Then we fig­ured since we were already out that far, we’d keep head­ing west and visit my brother and his wife in Chi-​​town. Well really … I wanted to visit my two “nieces” (the kit­ties Mocha and Sophia) and “nephew” (the adorable Wrigley). That and meet the newest mem­ber of their fam­ily “Ryan,” who is another res­cue grey­hound and actual lit­ter mate of Wrigley. This should be fun … let’s see how four adults, two cats and two big dogs can all com­fort­ably move around in a not-​​so-​​big condo.

We have no idea what else we’re going to do dur­ing our trip to the Windy City. We’ve been there so many times that we’ve pretty much exhausted all the “tourist-​​y” attrac­tions. Except maybe go up the top of the Sear.s tower, which I’ve never had any incli­na­tion to do any­way. I think we just wanted to take some time to get away from the every day grind. We all need those mini-vaca’s every once in awhile …

In the mean time, here’s a photo that my SIL sent to me of Ryan. Appar­ently he has quite the same demeanor as his brother Wrigley … so I’m sure that I’ll be falling in love with him as well. Too bad they couldn’t keep the whole base­ball field theme with the names and call him “Ben­nett” (as in one of the orig­i­nal names for Tiger’s Sta­dium) or “Trum­bull” (as in “The Cor­ner” of Michi­gan Ave and Trum­bull, where the old sta­dium used to be). But the names Wrigley and Ryan do sound pretty darn cool together … so I’ll let them keep it. :-P

I’m sure I’ll have more pics of the “nieces and nephews” when we get back … so be pre­pared for an onslaught of pet pics in a later post. But for now … we’re off to Chicago!

Me, Bartleby and Ta.rzan

Hubby & I spent the night on the west side of the state Sat­ur­day night. We were out that way specif­i­cally to catch the the­ater debut of one of our friends. (I’d tell you more about the play, but “I’d pre­fer not to.” But I do have to say, I do think our friend did a won­der­ful job.)

We’ve been to this town before (the most recent to see the Cow­boy Junkies about five years ago), but never got a chance to really check the place out. But since our friend lives out there, we man­aged to get the “grand tour” of the area which included a trip to a local brew­ery that pro­duces the only beer my alcohol-​​allergic /​ beer-​​loathing Hubby will drink. Seri­ously didn’t know that this brew was locally-​​produced.

Any­way, we ended up stay­ing the night because the play didn’t even start until 11:00 pm. And then after­wards, well … of course we ended up going out and grab­bing a drink after­wards. So we booked a room at one of the local hotels just to rest our heads for the night. After all, it’s a decent 3-​​hour ride back to Detroit and we weren’t about to make that drive after being out until 2 am. (Okay, maybe we would … if we were still college-​​age!)

The next morn­ing, I turned on the TV in the room (while Hubby started to get ready) and started flip­ping through the chan­nels. As I flipped, I stum­bled onto the Dis.ney chan­nel that hap­pened to be show­ing the ani­mated film, “Ta.rzan.” I don’t know what pos­sessed me to keep the TV on that chan­nel, but I sud­denly found myself sucked into the movie.

There’s some­thing about Dis.ney ani­mated movies that I really enjoy. Espe­cially the ones that were pro­duced from “The Lit­tle Mer­maid” onward. OK, so there were a few that I could care less about (hmmm … “Emperor’s New Groove”?), but over­all I’ve liked their films.

In fact when plan­ning our wed­ding, Hubby & I cre­ated a “Three Wishes” theme, includ­ing design­ing our own invi­ta­tions (which, back in 1996, was def­i­nitely not a com­mon thing to do) based on the movie “Aladdin.” It started with a porce­lain fig­ure of Jas­mine & Aladdin that Hubby gave me when we were still dat­ing which we thought would make a great cake top­per. Then we chose “A Whole New World” from “Aladdin” as our first dance and then gave lit­tle ceramic genie lamps as our favors. Yes, I guess you can say we had our own ver­sion of our “Dis.ney Fairy Tale” wedding.

But I digress … What struck me about watch­ing “Ta.rzan” was the whole “Boy being raised by a gorilla” thing. Specif­i­cally the part where Ta.rzan found out how he came to live with and grow up with a pack of goril­las. Now, I’m assum­ing that most peo­ple have seen this movie or are famil­iar with the story. How­ever, if you haven’t and you have the urge to read the book /​ watch the movie … then I sug­gest you skip the next two paragraphs.

*
If you recall that in the movie (because the movie actu­ally does vary a bit from the book by Edward Bur­roughs), Ta.rzan was brought up by a pack of goril­las and was always regarded by the other goril­las as dif­fer­ent. This, how­ever, didn’t mat­ter to his “Mom,” Kala, who brought him up as her own, after los­ing her own baby gorilla by the same leop­ard who killed Ta.rzan’s par­ents. When Ta.rzan stum­bles upon Jane and is sur­prised that there is a per­son who looks sim­i­lar to him, he tries to learn from Jane (and her father) as much as he can about his “kind.” Ulti­mately, Jane is sup­posed to be leav­ing back for “merry olde Eng­land.” As Ta.rzan had ulti­mately fallen in love with her, he has to make the deci­sion to either remain behind or go with Jane.

Before Ta.rzan’s deci­sion is made, Kala tells him the truth about his par­ents and how, after her own son died, she raised him as if he was her own child. After he makes his deci­sion to fol­low Jane, he turns to Kala and tells her that she will always be his mom.
*

Uh, yeah … and that’s where the tears started flow­ing. (Thank God Hubby was in the shower at that point!) I kept think­ing that if I was Kala, I would would be absolutely heart­bro­ken. Proud of him, but utterly heart­bro­ken for myself.

First of all, it’s the whole “mother who loses her own bio­log­i­cal child” thing. How can that not relate to how I’m feel­ing? Okay, so I never was able to get preg­nant on my own and have never phys­i­cally lost a preg­nancy. Or worse, a baby. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t have the right to grieve about not being able to have my own bio­log­i­cal baby. And how about those that have expe­ri­enced failed IVF’s along­side with me? Or those that have expe­ri­enced ectopic preg­nan­cies or mis­car­riages? Those are all losses.

And then there’s the whole “being raised by some­one that didn’t give birth to you” issue. Uh … that would totally relate to adop­tion. I know that my jour­ney through infer­til­ity has taken me down the adop­tion path. And I know that every day I am one step closer to becom­ing just as strong as Kala want­ing to raise a child that isn’t bio­log­i­cally part of me.

I know that adop­tion is my fate and once I have my child, I will be so totally, utterly and uncon­di­tion­ally in love with him/​her. BUT … I can’t help but think that some­how, some­where down the adop­tion path I will truly start to freak out about the pos­si­bil­ity that this child might not love me or feel that the love he/​she has for me is not as strong as it would be if I were his/​her bio­log­i­cal mother.

Huhm … I just real­ized that per­haps my child would prob­a­bly think the same of the love that I would have for him/​her. He/​She could be think­ing … “Does she love me as if I were born from her womb?” Well, the answer to that is yes. As I’ve never been able to expe­ri­ence preg­nancy, I guess I wouldn’t know the dif­fer­ence between lov­ing a child that is bio­log­i­cally mine or lov­ing one that was brought into our fam­ily through adop­tion. So my future son or daugh­ter … I want to let you know this right now: I will love you, because … to me, you are my own child.

Damn Dis.ney … why must you always pro­duce movies about orphaned heroes or hero­ines that over­come adver­sity. Do you pur­posely peer into my heart and see which one of those heart-​​strings (or bet­ter yet, my apron strings) to pull?!

Dropping the Ball

NYC Times Square on New Years Eve

So I’m sit­ting in the base­ment of my in-​​laws house cer­e­mo­ni­ously wait­ing for the Times Square Water­ford Crys­tal Ball to drop. This has become an annual event for me, espe­cially after hav­ing mar­ried into this fam­ily. Typ­i­cally, it’s a house full of aunts and uncles and cousins run­ning around doing any­thing and every­thing. I do recall many-​​a-​​New Year’s karaōke-​​ing and/​or play­ing the lat­est PS2 games we got for Christ­mas. (This year, it’s the new Gui­tar Heroes III for the Wii … woo-​​hoo!)

How­ever, this year is a lit­tle more sub­dued. First of all, many fam­ily mem­bers are now located in other parts of the US. Sec­ond of all, many of the cousins are a bit older in age which means that many of us have made other plans or have other oblig­a­tions. But the main rea­son this year is pretty quiet is because this past Christ­mas, my husband’s grand­mother was admit­ted to the ICU in Vir­ginia. She’s been in and out of the hos­pi­tal since Thanks­giv­ing, but this lat­est episode has been the most severe. In fact, Hubby & I were pretty wor­ried about her that we made the 12-​​hour trip to visit her and spend time with Hubby’s aunt to hope­fully give her a lit­tle moral sup­port. We were told she was pretty alert even after her emer­gency surgery, but by the time we vis­ited her she was already heav­ily sedated. We spent this past week­end there and unfor­tu­nately there wasn’t much change in her con­di­tion by the time we left yes­ter­day morning.

The New Water­ford Crys­tal New Years Eve Ball

As of this evening, we are told she is more awake and is doing well. She’s still in crit­i­cal con­di­tion, but it appears she has taken a step for­ward towards get­ting bet­ter. We are all hop­ing and pray­ing that she keeps mov­ing for­ward. And we’re also hop­ing and pray­ing that all her doc­tors, nurses and care­givers stay sharp … because the only ball we want to see drop­ping is that Times Square Ball.

Let’s hear it for 2008 … may we be stronger, health­ier and hap­pier than we were in 2007.

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