Decision

Yesterday was a lousy day. Seriously rotten. It started with me waking to find one of the dogs had an accident overnight and ended with me crying myself to sleep.

Actually, aside from the poop, the morning was fine. Work was good, I had a good lunch (well, I had a root beer float for lunch and it tasted good), and getting Milo to school was all fine. Then it went downhill.

As you may have deduced, we are trying to conceive our third child. Yesterday, it was obvious that I am, again, not pregnant. Per my doctor's orders, I called her office, chatted with the nurse for a little while, then was transferred to scheduling to make an appointment. The scheduler said, Thursday, April first and I blinked. I said, "The first is on a Monday." And it is -- in February and March. But it is on a Thursday in APRIL. Two months from now. I stammered, "B-b-b-but I'm an established patient..."

I can't recall much of the rest of the conversation as my calendar started swimming before my eyes and my heart started pounding so loud that I couldn't hear. "Nine or two thirty?" Nine or two thirty for what? I answer, "Nine." My desk seems far away, like my arms are telescoping. All I can see on my Outlook calendar is April first and the nine o'clock appointment I scheduled for that day, two months from now. I am crying on the phone to a scheduler and I feel like I'm about four inches tall. When I hang up, I cry hard for about twenty minutes before dragging myself to a meeting across campus. I am actually thankful that the wind is gusting so hard because it hides from my co-workers the fact that I have been sobbing.

The meeting is a blur. I race back across campus to pick up the kids, who protest leaving. Milo, in particular, doesn't want to stop playing with his best friend. I can't blame him -- anyone was more fun than me yesterday. We get loaded into the car and start for home and I drive into a blizzard. Three times the driving snow completely obscures the road and I held the car steady, hoping that we weren't on ice. Three times we emerge from the squall still squarely on the road and I thank my instincts.

We get home and, though only about an inch of snow has fallen, there is a three-foot drift between the garage and the house. I guided my car gently into the garage and told the kids that I would be taking them, one at a time, to the house because the wind and snow were so bad. Milo was too heavy to carry, but he gripped my hand tightly as we started out toward the house. The wind was at our backs and it actually blew him a few feet on the icy driveway, which he thought was fun. We navigated through the drift and to the house. As I let him in, the door flew inside so hard that it nearly took my arm with it. I realized that the garbage cans were tipped and blown across the front yard. Thankfully, they were empty, so garbage wasn't scattered, too.

As I made my way into the wind and back to the garage for Violet, I understood instantly how early prairie settlers could wander into a storm and become lost forever. I couldn't see, the wind was blowing so hard that I could barely breathe, and the only thing guiding me across the drive was the light from the garage door opener. I unbuckled Violet, bundled her and told her to bury her head in my neck as I carried her across the driveway. After setting her safely in the house, I made my last trip back to the car for all of the incidentals -- backpacks, snow pants, purse, shoes, etc. I locked the car and made my last return trip back to the house for the night, thankful that I didn't need to be out any more.

I was greeted by chaos when I get inside -- both kids wanted their winter gear off, the dogs, who had been home alone since morning, wanted out. I was trying to figure out what time it was, concerned that Scott was driving his little yellow car because it doesn't handle well in the snow. As I opened the door to let the dogs out, I see broken glass everywhere. Our recycling bins had been tipped, emptied, and bandied about by the wind. The back yard was glinting with glass, the plastic and cardboard were long gone, swept away by the harsh wind. How ironic that the tubs we were using to keep the environment clean had vomited their contents all over that same environment. Aluminum cans rolled by like sagebrush. I knew that this clean-up would take much time and I wasn't comfortable leaving the kids alone in the house long enough to do it myself, so I apologized to the yard and told the mess it would have to wait until Scott got home.

By the time I got the dogs out and back in, both kids had gotten their winter gear off and Milo came running to tell me that the dogs had gotten into my bathroom garbage again. And they had. There were used tissues and used ovulation predictor kit strips strewn over the floor. I didn't leave this mess to Scott, who was finally pulling into the driveway safely. I'm not sure I've ever been so happy to see him! He bundled up and attempted to track down the garbage cans and as much recycling as he could gather. We had a casualty in that two of our bins were nowhere to be found, we're assuming that they have gone to live the rest of their lives in a cornfield. It took him about an hour to collect as much as he could.

I was pretty teary most of the night, but my children were extra loving and kind, so I am grateful for that. Both took time to snuggle me, both listened well and were on their best behavior. I couldn't be happier about that.

I did come to a decision about my blog, though. In between my phone call with the scheduling nurse and the meeting across campus, I received an email from an Iowa blogger to whom I had sent a few questions about taking a blog public. She responded with a few tips and suggestions, for which I am grateful. Unfortunately, one of her suggestions didn't land well with me in the emotional state that I was in after talking to my doctor's office. The suggestion was to tone down the site so that it would be more family-friendly because most advertisers wouldn't feel comfortable with mt content. In retrospect, it wasn't a bad suggestion, but at the time that I was reading it, I was so vulnerable and hurting so much already that I felt rejected with a capital R. I fixated on this comment for hours. I heard myself thinking, "If only she'd said 'I read your posts and enjoyed them, but...' before she decided I was foul..." In my mind, I worked up a scenario where the Iowa mom blog fairies were all sitting back, laughing at me because the people reading my blog were deranged, immoral criminals or something. That what I write isn't user-approved or recommended by nine out of ten dentists. That, once again, I didn't fit in. It was crushing.

I cried over that almost as much as I cried over not being about to see my doctor for two months. I cried a lot yesterday. A lot. And this morning, in the shower -- that place where all Good Ideas visit -- I decided that if I wasn't able to take a bit of free constructive criticism, I wasn't going to be able to take reader comments on my very real thoughts and feelings. So I am not going to take this blog public to anyone who doesn't already know and love me. I don't want people who don't get my humor to read this and be repulsed. I don't write for them, I write for me. I know that I am a good person, I know that I am kind to those around me and tolerant of all people. I don't need to fit in anywhere but my own life, and, at 36.5 years of age, I'm so OK with that.

So, if you're reading and love me, great! If you're reading and don't love me, great!