It is your birthday, and

so I baked you a cake. Here you go:

Love you bunches. I hope you have a good birthday!

Love,

Kate

I’m doing all right, though. More or less. Body is healing. Strength and stamina are returning. Slowly.

When I don’t want to write about what I ought to write about, I tend to think about books – which is probably the most boring and neutral thing out there that I could be writing about. Now that I’ve gone back in and added the pregnancy books that I hadn’t inputted (since we weren’t telling anyone yet, and Goodreads would have spilled the beans) I’ve officially read 110 books in 2011… more to come, obviously. I wonder what the final count will look like?

I’m gearing up for my winter rush, having started two series. One, the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs, isn’t likely to last me very long; there are only 6 of them so far, and I tend to tear through paranormal novels like they’re made of tissue. The other is the Kinsey Milhone series (you know… A is for Alibi, etc.) which has novels all the way through V at this point. They take me a little longer to get through, so I should be in good shape for reading this break.

I also need to read/re-read two books for my classes, so that I can put together their respective units… pretty excited for that, actually, although I’m having a hard time concentrating on anything very intellectually “tough” (including lesson planning). The books are For the Win and Little Brother, both by Cory Doctorow, and they’re for my ITE classes.

I’m putting together a Goodreads account for my classroom library… going to be a lot of work, and who knows, maybe I’ll scrap the project halfway through… but I’d like to have it. I think it’d be nice. Helpful for my students, if I could get them to actually use it. Maybe I could assign reviews…

My head hurts.

Oh – did I mention that I stayed up until midnight catching up on two weeks of grading… and the electronic gradebook has been out of commission since yesterday and probably won’t get fixed tomorrow, so I can’t update any of the grades regardless? AWESOME.

Instead, I’ve spent the last several days “losing the baby,” which is about the most awful euphemism I’ve ever heard.

Yesterday, in particular, was truly brutal – I guess I can be thankful that it was yesterday and not today. The worst of it is over, physically, but there’s still a lot of heartache, disappointment, and a nagging sense of surreality that I’m sure will linger for some time.

This was a very dearly desired baby – we’d even been trying fertility treatments – and I can’t really begin to express how badly this loss hurts, but I have Hope in a death-grip and can only pray that by my next birthday there will a different story to tell, instead of “I am 31 years old, and childless”. It has been a long bad spell for my family and myself, and it sometimes becomes difficult to have faith that things will get better… I guess I thought we were due for some good news, but apparently it just doesn’t work that way. Which, of course, I know.

The good news, of course, is that it is statistically unlikely that we’ll have a repeat episode (knock on wood) and that we now know that we can do this, so it’s just a matter of doing it again. I know that I did nothing wrong, that there was no stopping this from happening. We’ll have our babies. Just not this July.

BTW – I’m sorry, Becky, for prevaricating when you asked how the fertility treatments were going… and Kirsti and Gina, I think you must have suspected when you kept asking how I was feeling… the true answer was, “I’m happier than I have been in several years,” and I wish now that I had just gone ahead and told you why instead of holding out for an arbitrary deadline.

Anyway, I’m still not 100% certain I want to send this out into the online universe – aren’t miscarriages supposed to be one of those things you don’t talk about? – but something inside me seems to think that I’d like y’all to know… so I guess I’ll chance it. I can always delete the post, right?

Love y’all. Take care of each other.

* * *

It’s funny how invisible stress can be until the point when the stressor is gone, and then you realize how much lighter you’ve suddenly become… I guess it’s kind of like that “how to boil a frog” story. You get used to the stress levels rising to the point where you don’t even notice that you’re stressed out, until either you’re boiled up or someone scoops you out of the pot…

* * *

Guess I needn’t have worried about making it to a 100-book goal this year – I’m only 5 books shy, it’s the beginning of November, and I’m currently reading (and will finish shortly) two books. Since I tend to have a big surge of reading in December/January, I think it’s possible I may overshoot my new goal considerably…

* * *

I am not at all “feeling” NaNoWriMo this year. I have a story that I badly want written, but I don’t really feel much impetus to be the one to write it! Plus, these past couple of days, I just haven’t felt like writing fiction at ALL. Worse, I’m really having a hard time caring about (or doing a decent job running) the Young Writers’ Program. I just can’t seem to get myself on the ball.

* * *

I have decided that I am a fan of hope.

I love John Green! And I love this graphicky thingy.

Ha ha, bet my post title made you think it was going to be all emo, huh.

I am trying to motivate myself… trying to get myself excited… and mostly, I am just EXHAUSTED. I feel extremely worn out, especially when I think about adding 1,667 words of fiction to my daily checklist.

I’ve got a story. Not only do I have a story, but I have an INTENDED AUDIENCE (always important for me), a general sense of plot, some characters, and a goal. Now I just need to fall in love with it.

These past few days I’ve been doodling thoughts and snatches of conversation in a little notebook, in the hopes of fanning a flame. Not much luck so far. I’m thinking that what I really need is just to start writing, that once I begin it’ll take care of itself.

I do NOT intend to blog my novel this year, at least not until it is finished (which ties into that “goal” thing – namely, “I want to write this as a gift for someone, and if I post it online it will be spoilt” (and yes, I said “spoilt” instead of “spoiled,” because that’s just how I roll, IN DOUBLE PARENTHESES)) so… yeah. Tough luck for the two and a half of you who care.

I am not entirely sure that I have the emotional/mental fortitude to meet my goal this year. There’s a lot weighing on me, and while I’d like to believe (as is oft recommended in NaNoLand) that I could channel all of that stuff into my writing, I doubt it’s going to work that way. The opposite danger, of course, is that I find in my story such excellent escapism that I drop some of these other brittle globes that I’m juggling…

…I look at you remorselessly,
the way I hope that someday I am seen,
the way each one deserves to be imagined,
and wonder at your astonishing beauty.

Probably shouldn’t make me think of Scrubs, but it does. Not the silly moments – the moments where it all gets serious.

 ”What’s your favorite foreign language?” asks the cabbie,
                                 and when I ask why, he says he knows “butterfly”
            in 241 of them, so I say, “Okay, French!” and he says,

“Papillon!” and I say, “German!” and he says, “Schmetterling!“
                                 and I’m running out of languages I know…

 

If I rage like a circus elephant uprooting
turnips, trample pole beans at every turn,
then I must rage. Fuel for the fury
to try and stop me…

from Angie Hogan’s “Apologia at Clinchfield Yards”

Anyway, I recently put together a couple of things and thought I’d show them off. These pics are lousy because I took them at 9:30 at night, and the lighting was atrocious, but there you have it.

Below is the “sitting nook” in the master bedroom. You already know the story of the blue armchairs; the little glass sculptures (actually candleholders!) were a thrift store find, and Mom found the lamp on clearance at Target. The marble side table was made by Ryan’s grandfather.

The painting on the wall is “Master Bedroom” by Andrew Wyeth. In 2006 I went to Atlanta alone to present a paper at the annual international convention for the Society for Ethnomusicology. I spent a free afternoon at the High Museum of Art and stumbled upon the brand new Andrew Wyeth: Memory and Magic exhibit, where – perhaps feeling a bit lonely and homesick – I found and fell in love with “Master Bedroom.” Five years later, I found a print at Hobby Lobby 50% off and brought it home with me.

Last weekend, I went to IKEA for the first time, and we bought some lamps for the bedroom. (I am officially entirely in love with their lighting section!) We wanted something tall to add some height to the bed, which has a very low headboard, and we wanted something with nice clear light for reading. These HOLMÖ lamps are technically floor lamps, but we put them on our nightstands (which are technically dorm room ottomans from Target, but who’s counting?) to add height.

Both of the blankets at the foot of the bed are from IKEA. We got the pictures from TJ Maxx on our anniversary; I should probably get a close-up of those. They’re super cute.

One of my first goals with my new sewing machine (wait! I haven’t told you about my sewing machine!) is to make some non-white pillow shams, and maybe eventually graduate to some curtains… although with the cost of fabric, it’d probably be cheaper just to buy a couple of panels… It’s tough, because I don’t want to do a lot of messing with the walls (i.e., installing curtain rods) in a rental. Then again, we’re hoping to be here for several years, so maybe it’s okay.

Not sure whether to be amused or annoyed… take a look at that second picture. Right before I took it, Paisley had stampeded across the bed and jumped off. I’d re-posed her, taken the picture, uploaded it, and shared on Facebook before I noticed the trail of indented footprints across the bedspread. STOP MESSING UP MY BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS PHOTO SHOOTS, PAISLEY. Also, this picture was supposed to have both critters in it, but d’Artagnan decided that the camera strap was his mortal enemy and hid under the bed. So I guess, in a manner of speaking, he’s kind of in the picture…