Today is J*’s birthday. She turns the big 2-5.

Here she is with her three boys. She’s one of those people that I’m watching very closely to learn mothering skills. I mean really. Look how how hot she is. And cool. And laid back. And she has THREE kids.
Amazing. Really.

Yesterday, the CPH rescured a bird. The mowing guys showed up at our place with their big lawn mowers and the CPH noticed a bird that was not frantically moving out of their way. So, he cajoles this bird into a box and when I get home this bird is sitting in a big box in the kitchen. In the box is some water, some sunflower seeds and some old clothes to make it comfortable.
The CPH figures that either the bird has a broken wing or it is just learning to fly. He sadly let it back out this morning, because we just have no idea how to nurse a bird back to health. And he very bluntly said that he was sure it would be eaten by one of the numerous cats in our neighborhood and he was nearly alright with that because that’s what cats are meant to do.
Last night as we were pulling in from dinner with the CPH’s parents, a dog ran past our porch. As we got out of the car, he ran straight for us, lovingly begging to be petted. The CPH checked his tag and found a phone number. And there he was, lickety-split, calling the number to tell them we had found their dog. No one answered, so he decided that we should try to take the dog home. He wasn’t far from home, so we started the walk back to his house. Several times, Maddy (the dog’s name was also on the tag) would run far away from us and the CPH would call him back. If Maddy didn’t come back right away, the CPH would go running after him. We finally led him back to his house and as we walked away, Maddy ran beside the fence no doubt thanking us for helping him in his safe return.
This past Sunday night, I layed in bed crying. I was feeling like a failure because none of my ebay items sold. I was feeling like a failure because it seems that, even though I have tons of creative ideas, they just never seem to pan out. I was feeling like a failure because I got to see my little friend M* and I loved playing with him and I was reminded that I just can’t seem to make babies of my own. And the CPH just sat there and held me.
He really is a saint.

So yeah, I’m going home this weekend. I’m actually leaving work early on Friday so my sister and I can go out on the town that night. Saturday is a family reunion (slash fishing competition or something) and then Sunday I’ve got a wedding shower to go to for my cousin.
And then Sunday afternoon I’m going a little ways out of the way to stop in and say hi to a friend from TN who is visiting her mom too.
As I was driving in to work this morning, I said to myself, God I’m glad to be going home. Most of the time when I go back to my mom’s house I like to be selfish. The CPH usually has a lot going on and I am more than happy to leave him at home. Does that sound mean?
It’s just that, when I go home, I want to be able to do what I want to do, which usually involves sitting at a kitchen table and talking about nothing in particular. I don’t want to worry about if he is having fun. I don’t want him to feel bad about wanting to read or surf the net. I just want time with my family.
And I know we’re married and we’re supposed to be one and blah blah blah. But sometimes it’s nice to just have my family to myself.

Friday night after the show, we headed over to the K*’s house to say hello to (half of) our friends who have been gone for nearly a month now. L* is still out galavanting around the east coast, but we did get to spend some time this weekend with M* and his dad. God I missed that kid.

This weekend was the Midwest Music Summit. The CPH and I weren’t that interested in many of the shows but we were estatic about one. Denison Witmer played on Friday night at Indy CD and Vinyl. The show was great. He played all new songs but one. His CD doesn’t actually even come out till next week, but did I say, we’re huge fans of this guy. We downloaded his cd as soon as it was, ahem, available and I knew all the words to nearly all the songs after only the second run through. On the way back from Chicago a few weeks back, we had the CD playing and I was a little embarrased to be riding in the car with a good friend of Denison’s and admitting, as I sang along, that I already knew all the words. At the show on Friday, I had to keep quiet. I could have provided the womanly back up, but I was very good and stifled my voice. I’m not quite sure how he would have responded to someone singing along to his songs that haven’t even been released yet.
So after the show, the brave CPH goes up to Denison and invites him to dinner and an hour later I’m sitting beside, what really is, one of my favorite singer/songwriters. We’re drinking beers together and he’s asking me these “get to know me” questions and it takes nearly everything I have not to stare at him the whole f’ing time.
And there CPH sat being cool as ever. Thank God I have him to keep me cool.

Above is a picture of me waiting for our departure train to Chicago on Saturday morning. I feel like I’ve been doing a lot of waiting lately. I waited for nearly a month to be, what I have hoped, done with the miscarriage. Before that, the CPH and I were waiting on word from schools for him to begin work on his PHD. Now, I’m waiting for my female system to get back on track. It’s been up and done here lately.
Tuesday night, I lay in bed waiting to fall asleep and I was thinking about adoption. And how scared I am at even attempting to produce my own biological child. I mean I know plenty of women who have succeeded after their first failed attempt, but I still sit here waiting and worrying.
On the upside, I’ve been waiting for a while now for this little guy to come back in town. Rumor has it that he and his dad are coming back tonight. The rumor also has it that I might get to spend a little extra time with him because his dad may need a little break.

I really shouldn’t be complaining about the heat. I know there are others far worse off than I am. But still….
The CPH and I were walking over to the weekly market yesterday and I asked him if he could even imagine in ten years what it would be like if it was exponentially hotter than it is now. I really can’t. I just don’t think I’d be able to bear it.
The CPH’s answer was that he imagined a lot more people would be moving to Canada to which I said, we’ll have to move to Canada if it gets much hotter. His answer was that many people would be doing it and my response: Yeah, but we have a right to move there!!
We went last night to the first meeting of The Writers’ Center of Indiana’s reading/music/cocktail series. It was nice to see such a great turnout. The readers were good, for the most part, but Steve Almond was most entrancing. We had actually gone just to see him after the CPH had read his book during our cabin weekend with his parents. And this guy was funny. At one point when he had the audience laughing at his obsession of a particular candy bar, he looks up from his book and says, quite stoically, “i don’t understand why you guys are laughing, this is some serious shit”. After he read from his, fairly safe, book about his lust for chocolate, he opened another book, looked up and said, “in a church, no less. someone please forgive me.”.
The next ten minutes he read some of his newer writings, which were highly enjoyable yet very s*xually explicit. Did I say highly enjoyable? I wanted to make that clear. Highly.enjoyable.
But I digress.
The candy freak book, seems like a fun and easy read. I think I’ll be picking up his other book though.

Ahem.

The CPH wrote something good over here. Hopefully, you’ll read the post, but if not, I’ll tell you. He was relaying his thoughts after reading two very diverse, while at the same time, very similar reviews of Sufjan’s new album. He found one of the guys whose review he is talking about over here. Apparently this guy got a little upset at CPH’s opinions and warned him of an impending rebuttal (that would happen after he had had a few days to think it over). I read his rebuttal yesterday and I must say that I find his anger kinda amusing. And yet familiar at the same time. This guy is a non-christian. He believes Christianity is a hoax. He’s not always felt that way. He says this (in his amazon review titled Understand what you are listening to):
“It took me a long time to come to grips with fact that organized religion was a scam-and even longer to admit it.”
I have to admit that my scope of christians turned non-christian is very thin. But my experience is that these new non-christians are as fervent, if not even more fervent, about sharing, nay I say, preaching, their non-faith as new christians are about their newly found faith. And that, i find fascinating.

Just so everyone’s shaking their knees up and down in suspense, here is what I read on the train and in the park and on the intercity trains. I can’t say that it was a riveting read, but it was, to say the least, captivating. A co-learner of mine recommended this book about 4 years ago and I grabbed it in haste, having a hard time making a decision on a weekend read. Contrary to the title, it has nothing to do with stars, tennis or balls, but if you’re bored and you want an easy read, consider picking it up.
The weekend was a smashing hit. Pictures are still being downloded, but see what we have so far, here. We arrived to Union Park just in time to see AC Newman, which didn’t sound quite as good as he does in the recording studio. Because we had been up since 4 in the morning and waited in the train station for an extra two hours and was freezing to the point of non-sleep on the train, I was exhausted by mid afternoon. After the AC Newman show, I fell asleep under a tree and awoke only when the CPH asked if I was ready to head to the hotel. We left by 4:30. Exhaustion is no fun!
The hotel was amazing. At least for the price we paid. I mean, it was super far away from downtown. It took us about an hour to get there by train, but it was a suite with a huge king sized bed that was so much more comfortable than any bed I’ve ever slept on. I kept waking up and thinking the CPH was so far away, like he was in another bed across the room. King beds are such a wonder to me.
Sunday was a good day. We spent the whole day at the park. We drank lots of water and I wore a funny (looking) hat to protect me from heat exhaustion and the concerts were great fun. I got to see The Decemberists again. It wasn’t as good as the Bloomington show, but the Chicago wind and the cool night air added a specialness to the show. We also saw Andrew Bird and I won’t talk much about him because if I do, my husband might get jealous. And not in the way you would think. He loves Andrew so much more than I do.
Monday was a free day and we just tramped around the city. We went up into the Sears Tower Skydeck and saw these bugs on the window and I was completely amazed at their gumption. I mean, really. Can you imagine how long it must have taken a bug to get to the 103rd floor? F’ing amazing, really.
We got home at about one in the morning this morning and I’m surprisingly refreshed. Work is crazy busy (more about that later), but I finally wanted to share (about which i said more would be said later) the things my friend and I are selling on ebay.

There was no embarrasing episode yesterday and for that I am thankful. I felt queasy until around 2 pm. I was feeling so much better after work that I drove way up north to meet J* to watch her try on several bridal gowns (she’s narrowed it down to two!! – good job, J*). This morning, I was feeling even better so I hopped out of bed and went to the gym for a while. Tons of people have commented on how my color is better today. Tons of people had come up to me yesterday telling me I looked deathly pale.
I’ve only got two more days in the workweek. The whole office is taking off on Friday for our annual fun day. This year we’re going here. Then Saturday, the CPH and I are taking a train to this (thanks to the SMWB and I don’t just call him that because he gets me awesome gifts…). We’ll be there until Monday and I’m extremely excited to be alone in this big city with my cutie pie husband.
The CPH told me yesterday that he’s going to read the new HP on the train to Chicago. Any suggestions on what I should read?

Warning, this is of graphic nature.

Still reading? Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

So on Sunday while I’m taking my pictures for my soon to be ebay business (again, more on that later), I notice that I start my period. I run to the bathroom and put a pad on (don’t ask me why I chose that over a tampon, I can’t really explain it. I hated wearing a pad during my miscarriage and I had all but written them off). The next morning I popped in a tampon and went to work.

Around 12:30, I was sitting at my desk at work and I could feel blood flowing. I mean I could actually feel the blood being expelled from my (hoohah). It was all over my chair and had fallen to the carpeted floor as well. Talk about embarrasment!

So a friend says I need to go the hospital and I call the CPH and he meets me downstairs. We call my doctor’s office as soon as I get to the hospital and they suggest I go home and rest, they think it’s just a heavy period. They warn me to come back if this happens again. I go home and after placing a sheet on top of several garbage bags, i sit on the couch to rest. About 2 hours after the first episode, it happens again. And it’s worse. So I call the nurse and I go into to see one of my doctor’s peers. My doctor is out for the day. I don’t really like this guy and I think I remember Nathalie warning me about how much of an ass this guy is (I had asked her opinion on the ob/gyn doctors at the IU hospital – since she had worked with a few of them while in med school). So anyway this guy very callously writes all of this off as a heavy flow, has me pee in a cup (after 5 or 6 glasses of water), and then hands me a pack of birth control pills which I’m supposed to finish in roughly two weeks (to control the bleeding).
So I woke up this morning, nauseated and afraid to move. I didn’t bleed anymore yesterday so I was brave enough to move to the bed. And now, here I sit at work waiting for my flow once more but praying that it doesn’t happen again. I remember reading in all those junior high magazines about the horror stories that some girls had to endure. Bleeding through their pants while standing in the lunch line and so forth. And I never really understood their embarrasment.

Ok, I get it now.

Sorry if I’ve worried some of you. I was in a funk pretty much all last week (thanks mostly to a cold which is now presiding in the CPH). Friday, i was feeling pretty good and I went bridal gown shopping with J*. I had a blast looking at all the dresses and I was amazed how the styles have changed just from the time that S* and I were out dress shopping for her wedding just two and some years ago.
Saturday night we went over to J* and Ricky’s.* We ate shiskabobs and chocolate creme pie and played Settlers. It was a fun night, but I was a bit off the whole time. I didn’t feel much like talking. We left kind of early that night. Sunday, we woke up for church and I really didn’t want to go. I was feeling extremely fat (i think only girls will understand that). On the way to church, I asked the CPH if I could just drop him off and he said (something to the effect of), “just because you feel fat? No.” I was disappointed at the time, but I think he shows me he loves me when he doesn’t let me wallow if self-pity. So we’re sitting at church and the only thing that I can guess that triggered what happened next is this adorable toddler sitting with his parents in the pew in front of us (sometimes I get sad when I see babies, go figure). And I started crying. My eyes were blurring again before I had a chance to wipe the tears from my cheeks. The CPH noticed that I was sad and he put his arm around me. We were standing up singing and i turned to him and (I think quite loudly) told him that I just couldn’t stop crying. Strange thing – after the ushering for the tithe, I came back to my seat and was perfectly fine. And the whole rest of the night, I was perfectly happy. It was almost as if my body needed to expel the tears and afterwards it was perfectly content to go back to its normal state.
Spent most of Sunday after noon taking photos of me in some duds. My friend and I are gonna start selling some clothes on ebay (more to come on that later).
Went over the A*’s house for game night. We sat around and talked most of the night. The CPH and I had some extra beers from Saturday night so I took those over. The night was cool. Sitting on the porch drinking a cider and smoking has got to be one of my favorite things to do. And playing board games. That’s fun too. Unfortunately, we didn’t start the board game until after 10pm and I was getting up early this morning to go the gym, so I had to leave before the game was over.
So yeah, I joined a gym. J* and I had talked, while dress shopping, about how we should go together (misery loves company?). I was up at 5:30 this morning and I have to say I’m feeling pretty refreshed. Work week, come and get me!

*If you have a blog I know about or I can recognize you on the first page of google, you will see your full name on here from now on….except for the CPH because I like his nickname.

**(i know it’s doesn’t correspond with anything up top, I just needed to add another note). The SMWB emailed me worried that he might lose his nickname. I told him that he wouldn’t because he doesn’t have a blog or a googleable (whazzah!) name. He reminded me that Beelerspace (cph’s blog) is actually a consortium for all of our dear friends (who have writing privileges – if you want writing priveleges and you know my husband email him and ask him). So, from now on, anyone who has authored on Beelerspace will henceforth be recognized by their full name. Here ye! Here ye!....except for the SMWB because, well, that’s what he is. Even when I see him, I call him that….really.

I haven’t felt much like writing these days. My cold is almost gone. All that remains is a deep cough that makes almost everyone grimace as I walk by them. This coming weekend is the only one of the whole month that we will be in town and I’m hoping for a low key one. Maybe I’ll be more chatty next week.

Sunday, during our third of July cookout, I was so tired, I could barely keep my eyes open. And I felt bad because I wasn’t hanging out nearly as much as I wanted to, but laying on the couch reading my book seemed so much more tempting than sitting in a shadeless back yard.
Yesterday, I woke up with such a sore throat, I went through a whole pack of Hall’s cough drops in about 5 hours. I managed to go to Half Price Margarita night but gracefully declined more drinks at the Chatterbox. I slept for 10 hours last night.
Today, my sore throat is gone, but the deep congested cough and the sniffly nose is enough for people to stand at least 5 feet away from me whenever they talk.
You know that feeling when your clothes don’t fit right and no matter how many times you move in 1 minute, you still can’t find a way to be comfortable? I think that’s where I am now.

Saturday night after much drinking and right before my friend S* pulled out her “shut the hell up sword” and cut some girl’s head off for being loud and obnoxious, I followed some of my friends into the bedroom and we put on some clothes to model for ebay. The first thing that this (what I had been told) expert at ebay selling told me to put on was a muu muu. i kid you not, it was an f’ing muu muu. And this chick was saying things to me like “work that muu muu” and “yeah, it’s a muu muu, but you know you’re hot”.
It was absolutely ridiculous and had I not been so toasted on margaritas, I would have pulled that sword out myself.

Earlier this week, J* and I decided to meet up before work for a game of tennis. She suggested we meet at 6am and I laughed. My alarm doesn’t even go off until 7:30. I couldn’t imagine giving up an hour and a half of my sleep. But I did and we met and it was fun. Neither one of us are very good at the sport, but I think with practice we can become tennis pros.

Or something.