Battling the Brush

Over the holiday, we decided to tackle the enormous shrubbery that had eaten our front window.  My parents were out visiting, which meant we had their knowledge/expertise as well as access to their more extensive tool kit.

It turned out to be a lot more work than I had imagined.  While the actual cutting down of the branches was fairly fast, wrestling the roots and stump out was difficult.  When we got it down enough, we actually found the tag with information about the plant tied near the bottom branches.  Turns out that it was a form of viburnum that often grows to be about ten feet.  No wonder it grew so fast!  “Not a plant to put in front of a window,” my mother commented.

My mother took over the careful pruning of the other viburnum that had grown out of control.  It will, most likely, need to be cut down further in the fall once the leaves are off.  However, it needs enough leaves left now to stay alive.

I got to use the electric hedge trimmers (fun) to shape our shaggy boxwood and yew bushes.

We also tackled the overgrown honeysuckle bushes in the back yard enough to free our electric box that was growing into the tangle.  The honeysuckles still need a fair number of dead/old branches cut out and then some height cut down in the fall when the leaves fall off.  We also need to start thinking about what we want in the front bed so we can start planting either in the fall (bulbs) or the spring next year.

Though there’s more work necessary, it’s wonderful to have this much done.  I’m already enjoying more sunlight in our front room!

If you want more Microblog Mondays posts, head over to Stirrup Queens!  Thanks to Mel for originating and hosting.

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Small Steps Forward

I’ve finally gotten back into a routine of going to the gym in the mornings several times a week.  For awhile I was using our small rebounder trampoline at home, but it just didn’t really feel like I was progressing.  I’m starting to realize that leaving the house – whether going to the gym or running outside – seems to be an integral part of what makes it relaxing to me and worth it.

As I’ve been running on the treadmill, I kept noticing a class going on in the adjacent room.  I checked into it a little and it’s a whole-body interval training with many different stations that was listed on the schedule as “advanced”.  Well, I’m not advanced, I thought and shrugged it off.  I kept thinking, however, that it met at such a good time and I really do want something other than just running.

Today I asked one of the gym workers about the class.  She reassured me that they are happy to work with beginners, I’d just modify some exercises or do shorter intervals.  I was excited until, of course, I started thinking about September (or, more probably right now, early October).  It’s just three months or so until I’d probably have to quit.

I’m tired of thinking this way.  Fertility/infertility/subfertility concerns have been a part of my life for around seven years now.  It’s always a matter of what if, the next cycle, yes or no.  It’s exhausting.  Even when I know this is coming toward the end.

I think I’m going to do it.  A few months is a few months and I could use the motivation/change up in my routine.  If things work out with the cycle, I can always modify and scale back.  If they don’t…well, then I have a new routine and hopefully some new muscles.

If you want more Microblog Mondays posts, check out Stirrup Queens!  Thanks to Mel for originating and hosting.

Clear

I went for my saline infusion sonogram (SIS) today.  Walking into the building, I could feel my anxiety almost immediately ratchet up.  I mean, I think my RE’s great, the staff at the office has always been fantastic, but it’s the site of more than a few Really Bad Days so my body/mind seems to have a fairly automatic response to walking through the doors.

I checked in, waited, and was ushered through to the ultrasound room.  Changed.  Dr. E came in and, seeing my reader, asked what I was reading.  “Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owen’s book Medical Bondage, about James Marion Sims, the origins of American gynecology, and the way the use of Black enslaved women and Irish immigrant women as test subjects has influenced pervasive myths about pain tolerance and such that are still coming up today,” I responded*.

Never let it be said that I am not honest (and exceptionally bad at making small talk).

Dr. E thankfully engaged the topic and so that’s a good bit of what we talked about while I had my SIS.

As far as results, things look fine.  My ovaries are mildly polycystic (the usual) and my uterus is clear.  Now I get to wait for September.

*It’s an excellent book so far – if a hard read – that absolutely deserves a serious discussion of its own.  I read about it on NPR’s Code Switch Book Club and picked it up because anything that talks about medical biases regarding race and sex, especially ones that effect perception of pain and treatment, is an extremely relevant read professionally and personally.  

This post is a part of Microblog Mondays – if you want to read more, head on over to Stirrup Queens.  Thanks to Mel for originating and hosting.

The Happy Kind of Boring

We’ve been in that pleasant, uneventful in the large sense, busy in the small sense state for the last few weeks.  I find that I tend to sort of overlook these time periods in life because nothing major is happening, but in a lot of ways, they’re really the ones that make up the bulk and reality of life.  As someone who tends towards impatience, I’ve tried to challenge myself to slow down a little and savor the moments that do come.

• Since we moved, because of various issues, it’s been a bit of a challenge to develop community. At this point, we’ve bought a house and plan to stay for a while, so I’ve been looking for some opportunities to find and hang out with people.  This, as you might imagine, is not the easiest thing – for a world that is hyper-connected by the internet, it’s surprisingly hard to meet people in real life.  Especially since we’re also searching for a new church community.  So I took a cue from Loribeth at The Road Less Travelled and checked into the local library offerings.  Happily, they have an adult book club that meets near my house on a weeknight that I can attend!  First meeting is next week and we’re reading The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah.
• We’ve been watching “Big Dreams, Small Spaces”, a British show about gardening/landscaping. It’s pretty soothing and I like the fact that people are realistic about the labor and financial costs of putting in a dream garden.  Budgets range from “almost nothing” to “over $25K in US dollars”.  What’s most fascinating are the things people find when they start digging – usually some form of concrete or stone, but in the most extreme instance, a live, unexploded WWII hand grenade (the bomb squad and then military ordnance disposal had to be called).
• Having watched too much gardening, we decided, in a rash of wild overconfidence, to dig in a couple of mulched beds around our patio area where the grass looked horrible and patchy. It’s mostly shady, so the lovely garden/wildflower meadow/herb garden I had in mind was quickly shot down by my (botany minor) mother.  Instead, we’ve got a couple of mulched beds with coral bells and hostas (also known as plantain lilies).  It’s not real gardening but I’m happy to report that so far, the plants are alive and thriving and the area looks much better.  In true “Big Dreams, Small Spaces” fashion, we found seven large pavers buried in the area, along with a bunch of gross plastic.  Probably explains why the grass refused to grow there…
• Nice as the back now looks, the front needs work. We have two bushes next to the house that we neglected to prune properly and have metastasized into oversized disasters.  There’s probably no saving them, unfortunately, we’ll probably have to go ahead and take them out.  This gives us through the fall and winter to plan (and save) to replant the bed in the spring.
• As final item in the plant department, I am also happy to report that I bought two hanging baskets for the porch a few weeks ago and both are still alive (no one is more surprised than me). They look lovely and give me a little pop of happiness every time I see them.
• Currently doing swim lessons with the kids, thankfully in an indoor pool. We are not having a warm summer so far – last week we had a day in the 50s-low 60s.  It’s also rained a ton.  I am so ready for nice weather!
• I really can’t believe it, but we’re starting to talk about kindergarten and working on settling a pre-K plan with daycare. E won’t go this fall but the plan is for fall of 2020.  It’s a little wild, mostly because I still have a tendency to think of her as 2lb 8oz (1190 g) baby, but in reality, she’s actually a pretty typical 4-year-old with lots of opinions who loves “Frozen” and “Moana”.  She’s progressing in literal leaps and bounds with riding her balance bike, climbing on stuff, and doing somersaults off the couch.  I’m often torn between pointing out that we don’t do somersaults off the couch and wanting to cheer because it’s obvious how far her stamina, balance, and strength have come.  M loves climbing as well.
• Saline infusion sonogram at the RE’s office on Monday.

“And”

Content note: pregnancy, children, loss – none recent

This weekend, we tore up some of the scrotty grass that’s never grown well next to our patio in the back and put in hostas.  I pulled out the dead hydrangeas from the back bed and planted shade loving coral bells.  We went to visit college friends and as we sat, I had one of those moments that might be called transcendent or even holy, where for just a second, everything was right with the world and good.

The new life, both literal and figurative, was all around us.

I came home, checked my calendar, and realized that it’s not all that much longer until my saline infusion sonogram for this final transfer.  And before I knew it, this morning I was ugly crying, the one that isn’t a couple of crystal tears decorously sliding down the cheeks, but the red-faced, sobbing, snotty Kleenex filled kind.

That’s life, though, isn’t it?  At least after a certain point?  Where the most extraordinary exists among the prosaic of every day and the deepest, darkest muck that can be dragged up?

I am so incredibly, amazingly thankful for my girls.  And I am so terribly sad that I never got to meet the three that died and were miscarried early, long before they truly lived.

I honor the truly ordinary, uneventful pregnancy I got the immense privilege of experiencing.  And I grieve the long weeks of waiting, of fertility treatments and IVF, of hope mingled with sadness, of ultimately having three others over far too early.

I get the loveliness of watching my older daughter survive and now thrive.  And I mourn that she lost the last weeks in pregnancy that she should have had, that she went through so many painful procedures, that we were separated by plexiglass walls and nights apart at the beginning of her life.

I can’t even express how much gratitude I have to see the girls treasuring each other and also fighting – as siblings do.  And I can feel my heart breaking again and again and again that my sibling is gone, that a person I held as he came into the world left it long before me in such a terrible, senseless way.

I hold my dear ones close, their precious selves tangible and messy and wonderful and alive.  And I cry remembering the unnatural coldness of my brother’s still face, the benediction of viewing him in death, the slight smear of blood that transferred to my hand when I put it on his cheek.

I am fiercely glad for my marriage and the love my husband and I get to share every day.  And I mourn the things we have both broken over the years, some of which are still being repaired.

I am grateful for the chance to complete this final cycle, to close out this particular road, to know that no matter the outcome, I am truly fortunate and ready to live this good life I have.  And I am anxious, struggling with the months of waiting in the lead-up, dreading some painful procedures, and worried about the potential for more hurt.

For the last several months, I’ve been veering back and forth between the extremes, saying how I’m fine (true) and FINE – F*cked Up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Egotistical * – (also true).   It doesn’t sum up neatly, the pros and cons on the paper don’t cancel each other out.  They’re all true, all a part of what poet Mary Oliver termed “your one wild and precious life”.

I am, without a doubt, in today’s parlance, a hot mess these days.

And…it’s an absolutely beautiful mess as well.

*credit to Louise Penny

This post is a part of Microblog Monday.  If you want to read more or add your own, please head over to Stirrup Queens’ blog.  Thanks to Mel for originating and hosting.  

A Bit of Earth

I love flowers and plants, but alas, lack a green thumb.  Growing up, my mother always had plants in the house including the orchids she had owned since college and carried the flowers as her wedding bouquet.  I always figured that plants were pretty easy until I tried my own hand at them after I moved into my first apartment.

The first plants to fall to my attempts were a couple of cyclamens.  “Just water them, but not too much,” people told me.  “They’re easy.”  These lasted a couple of weeks.

Then there was the container garden I attempted on the porch, which had the unauspicious beginning of a severe allergy attack in the garden center as we were picking plants.  I was sneezing, my eyes were swelling, and we wrapped it up about the time the hives started breaking out on my chest.  The tomato plant produced three miniature tomatoes, which I still dub the most expensive produce I’ve ever bought at $1.25 apiece.  The pepper plant shriveled and died.  The basil was the most successful of the bunch but still had a tendency to develop an unhealthy shade of yellow-brown on and off.

When we moved into the house, I realized I was going to have to figure out the care of the landscaping or risk being the house that had the dead/messy plants.  This has been a bit of a mixed bag.  The day lilies in our front bed around the light post are overrun by grass that I haven’t managed to successfully weed out.  My mother took a look at the various plants and explained that a few of them had most likely been put in during the selling process to make the house look nice and weren’t in optimal spots for that kind of plant.  She was right, during the first spring/summer, most of those weren’t healthy and didn’t make it to the fall.

We did, however, have some volunteer tulips and grape hyacinths that came up last year, didn’t flower, and I decided that I’d dig them up in the fall and plant something that would flower and look nice.  Well, I forgot, and sure enough, this spring, the plants came up.

And there were buds.

To my absolute surprise, the flowers all opened.

It’s been quite pleasant to see them on a daily basis.  As someone who can get rather cynical at times, I think it’s probably a good reminder for me as a more overarching lesson about life: sometimes it surprises in beautiful ways.

The Space

If you have ever spent time in a hospital, you will detect a rhythm.  Under all the bustling of the doctors, the nurses, the respiratory therapists, the entire infrastructure of acronyms that keep the thing running, there is a quality of silence, stopped time as people wait.  Even in the direst moments when everything is moving at full speed, there are pauses – waiting for lab results, specialists, OR rooms to become available, 30 seconds here, a breath there.

I didn’t really understand that rhythm until I became a patient myself, an object of all the bustling as opposed to performing it.  Sitting in the space, waiting, is hard, especially when you know that the result, the consult, the surgery, could change everything.  I often filled the spaces with books and blog posts and articles.  It’s strange how book or words can become a sort of friend in those places, buoying my spirits or just holding the space with me and affirming the mixed emotions in those moments.

Waiting was what I was doing in spring of 2014 after an unexpected result from my FET.  Pregnant but with far too many worrisome signs for confidence, Arthur and I had to decide whether or not to go ahead with a long-planned trip to attend a writer’s festival at our alma mater.  Several authors I admired were on the schedule to speak, we’d shelled out the money for tickets, hotel, and time off.  My RE gave his blessing to go ahead since we’d only be a few hours away and I knew where to go if the symptoms became more concerning.  So we went, hoping for a distraction from the seemingly interminable wait.

It was definitely the right decision, as hard as it was to make at the time.  I listened to lectures by James McBride, Ann Lamott, and so many others.  I went to the English department reception where I smiled, listened, reconnected with people, and shared stories.  All while simultaneously gritting my teeth as I’d feel the blood seeping out and the panic rising, then be blessedly inspired and challenged by new words, new books to read.

That’s how I wound up in a session with an author named Rachel Held Evans, who wrote a blog (and books) on faith, Christianity, and wrestling with (and eventually leaving) evangelicalism – a process both Arthur and I were going through, though in different stages -as well as a heartfelt and surprisingly funny second book on the meaning of “biblical” womanhood.  Arthur and I had read the book and had some good discussions.  After the session, there was a meet and greet and I told her how much I had enjoyed the book and admired her openness writing about faith, life, and menstruation.  I came closer than I want to admit to bursting into tears and confessing that I was really excited to be here but also probably going through a miscarriage and that I was really grateful for some of her writing, that the presence of her and these other authors had made this waiting just a little better.  Thankfully, my sense of manners and decorum kicked in to save me from serious awkwardness and oversharing, but I also suspect she would have been very kind.  The moment ended, we moved on.

One of her books kept me company a year or so later in the NICU as I waited beside my daughter’s incubator.  Arthur and I read it aloud as we put our tiny baby on our chests, sleep deprived, and needing healing words.  Her words kept me company in the empty space when my brother died.  Her words again encouraged us when we walked away recently from the denomination that married us and baptized both our children and were there for us during infertility and the NICU after a decision made at the denominational level to further exclude our LGBTQIA+ brothers, sisters, and non-binary in faith that Arthur and I found cruel and wrong.

Rachel Held Evans died on Saturday, May 4 after a sudden illness that led to complications at the age of 37.  It is for the people who actually knew her in her real life to mourn her in that intimate, deep way that comes with relationship and they are the ones that are truly bereft in this moment.  My heart aches for them as they move forward without her daily presence and grieve her great loss.

As simply a reader of her books and not someone who knew her personally, I’m just grateful for her words and quite sad that the lovely and luminous person behind them is gone from this world.  Those words held my hands and abided with me in some awful spaces.  They are and were a source of presence and balm.

While the many articles and obituaries have quoted Rachel’s final blog post on Ash Wednesday that is unexpectedly apt and poignant in the wake of her passing, the words from her book Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again are ones I remember now and as a fellow reader they resonate deeply: “I know I can’t read my way out of this dilemma, but that won’t keep me from trying.”

#BecauseofRHE