Knitting for Fear and Anxiety

I've taken a very small step toward affirming Little P today. I went to church this past Sunday after not being able to go for the past few weeks. I love going to church because it totally reaffirms my Faith every Sunday.

Reaffirming Faith is important because Faith and Trust are not easy concepts for me. I battle my anxiety over this pregnancy every day, every hour, every minute. I vacillate between knowing Little P is OK and wondering if Little P is OK. It's maddening. So that's why I need church. It resets my mind and tunes it back toward positive feelings.

I'm one of those naturally suspicious types. The kind of person who meets someone for the first time and is already sizing up their motives for good or ill. I don't really like this about myself. I'm working on it but it's slow-going.

I grew up in a very unorthodox way. I was born three months premature and my mother, as time would show, wasn't really cut out for the whole motherhood thing. When you're a baby, it's hard to understand not seeing your mother for very extended periods of time. All I remember is being cared for by folks that were not my mother, being shuffled from house to house...a few months here...a few months there. These were good folks and I am blessed that I was molded and shaped by various aunts, babysitters and caretakers. One thing all that moving around did, however, was turn me into a pretty untrustworthy, independent child and adult. I learned early on that there was no permanency in life, that things always changed. So, when I came to Faith a few years ago it wasn't through a cool Bible study class or a dear friend who shared the gospel with me.

I came to Faith on my own, alone, in the woods.

It happened about five months into my first and only stint of unemployment. I left a pretty stable job where I was respected and thriving because I thought I needed to make more money. My vagabond spirit was being activated because I thought my good fortune was too good to be true. Anyway, three months into the job, I was fired. To say I wasn't pleased was an understatement and to this day I still don't know why. I may never know why and I'm okay with that now. But at the time it was the worst thing that could have ever happened to me. I dove into my second bout with depression and became a very unlikeable, angry, sad person.

One day I got up the energy to go for a walk. There was a wild forest near my house and I gravitated toward it. Walking through that mess of trees and fallen leaves cleared my head somehow. I leaned against a tree that was twice my size and heard a voice. Yes, I know it sounds nuts but I swear I heard an inner voice. The voice asked me a very simple question: "Do you believe me when I tell you everything is going to be alright?" So, I was like, "Yes, I believe you." Because what else do you say to a voice inside your head...

In that moment, a peace came over me and I knew that everything would be alright even though I couldn't see a way out of the dark.

I was suddenly aware of all my blessings. I wasn't alone. El Hubster and I were about two years into being my boyfriend and he stepped up and took care of me. I was getting an unemployment check every week, for goodness sake! We didn't want for anything. I was being provided for. Someone was looking out for me.

Coming to Faith couldn't have happened any other way for me. I was too skeptical, too pessimistic, too logical for my own good.

The next week I got a call to interview for a job that I applied for months before. I got that job, which was just a few blocks from my house! Nuts, just nuts! I stayed at that job for a year and applied to graduate school at the end of my time there.

Everything happens for a reason and sometimes it takes hardships and trials to reveal the path you should be on. I needed a course correction and God provided one.

Anywho, this post wasn't even supposed to be about me coming to faith! What I really wanted to say is that during that really horrible time in my life, I learned to knit! Knitting is perfect for me because it channels my anxiety. If you suffer from anxiety then you know what I'm talking about. I'm the type of person that benefits from distraction and knitting was perfect for that. It helps me zone out completely.

In an effort to calm my anxiety over Little P, I went to Michael's today, that den of wanton arts and crafts, and bought some yarn to knit a baby blanket. I needed to stop my mind from thinking the worst so I am manifesting a tangible symbol of Little P being here in 9 months---happy and healthy.

This was my inspiration:

Pinterest

But then I realized I wasn't that good! So, I'm going to just do a basic knit stitch the whole way through. It's not like Little P is gonna care that it isn't perfect. He/she won't even be able to see properly for the first week of its life.

I found a yarn that already had a mix of colors...yellow, white, and a minty turquoise. I had no idea that sort of thing existed so color me overjoyed :-) This is the beginning of my masterpiece.

And this is the mess I made of a perfectly good ball of yarn...which could also apply to this post.

Birthday Celebration and LOLs

So, I wasn't even gonna post anything today because I still have a lobster hangover from my birthday dinner. I tore into that lobster so hard that other diners were staring at me with their mouths open. Standing between a pregnant woman with a food craving is like standing between a lion and its prey...NOT A GOOD IDEA!

This is me getting ready for my lobster...notice my bloated face..that is all

El Hubster has this sad look on his face because the food is taking too long! He barely touched his salad!

My Lobster!! I wish I had an after picture of my hands and face...

All in all my birthday celebration was pretty low key. El Hubster got me a beautiful card and we got to spend some quality time together without being on our phones the entire time.

But seriously though, this is what I actually wanted to post about....

Source: Good Morning America

You can read the article that goes along with this photo here: http://gothamist.com/2013/06/12/it_turns_out_that_getting_married_a.php

But the crux of this is that these folks got married at IKEA!!! Now before we discuss the sheer ratchetness of this, you should know that they met at Ikea so I guess their affinity for the store is warranted. I just would never do something like this!! Maybe I'm boring and I don't think outside the box but I think it was lame, lame, lame. Two positive things came out of this for me (1) Black folk got married....which is rare and (2) they got tons of free stuff from Ikea!! SIGH.....

I should've got married at Pottery Barn.

Reflections on 32

I'm having an Adele moment today. I loved that she named her albums after her age at the time of their conception. What a way to document the moments, triumphs and tragedies of a year.

It has me thinking about the images that have made up my year:

1. Becoming a Board Member for a non-profit, finding my voice and realizing that I was totally ok with making hard decisions.

2. My excitement at finding out we were pregnant for the second time.

3. The image of an empty womb at our 9 week ultrasound and how broken I felt.

4. Feeling literally like the walking dead for about three months afterward.

5. Meeting our RE and getting on the treatment horse....again.

6. Sitting and staring into space for hours at a time.

7. Getting off my ass and becoming interested in life again.

8. Running, running, running...sometimes running while crying.

9. Making the scary decision to leave the church we had gotten married in.

10. Waking up next to El Hubster every morning,  being both grateful for him and resentful because I felt he wasn't hurting enough.

11. Sharing margaritas and laughs with my best girlfriend.

12. Missing my mom, wishing she were capable of missing me.

13. Rekindling a relationship with my now adult "little brother."

14. Dancing like crazy in the kitchen to 80s music.

15. Finding the courage to go back to therapy.

16. Finding the courage to quit therapy when it wasn't working.

17. Sitting in the auditorium at the review for my licensing exam and feeling like a professional.

18. Dancing bachata with El Hubster in my in-laws' living room.

19. Sitting in our RE's office as she told me I would have to have surgery.

20. Staring out the window of the train on the way to the hospital thinking about my mortality.

21. Waking up groggy, relieved and happy 3 hours later.

22. Impatience during my recovery.

23. Starting a blog!

24. Discovering an artistic side I never knew existed.

25. Pills, pills pills!

26. Frustration and anger during TTC.

27. Hiking 10 miles and feeling triumphant afterward.

28. Blurry eyed, 5AM positive pregnancy test.

29. El Hubster trying to brush his teeth with the test because he thought it was a toothbrush.

30. Walking the cobblestone streets of Old Montreal on what seemed like a perfect night.

31. The first ride we took in our Ford Crown Victoria.

32. Hearing the beautiful lub dub of a heartbeat and seeing Little P for the first time.

32

What's Cooking!

There's a new section on the blog called, "What's Cooking". Why, you ask? Because I need to keep myself accountable to cooking meals for my family instead of eating out. It's basically a way to encourage and pat myself on the back so that I'll feel good about cooking. Yay!

I had a sort of epiphany last night...I realized that I was making dinners based on whether or not El Hubster would eat it. Which led to lots of things covered with cheese, lots of meat, very little fish, very little vegetables.

This was wrong thinking!! Wrong, wrong, wrong!!

The only way we're gonna survive, and spend less money, is if I make healthy meals. El Hubster doesn't find his way in the kitchen to cook anything. So away with what El Hubster likes. I'm running things up in here! :-)

Anyway, check out the tab from time to time for my attempts at making real food. I'm hoping this will inspire
,ahem, a blogger that shall remain nameless to give me some recipes!

Ob/Gyn Inc.

El Hubster and I have graduated from the RE's office and had our first visit at our new Ob/Gyn office last week. It was quite an experience....a very, very long experience. I wanna say we were there for like three and a half hours!!

First of all, El Hubster wasn't feeling the office. He thought it was very 1984....bright lights, LCD tv's with soothing images...no windows in the waiting area. I, on the other hand, loved it! And whether or not I like it is the most important thing, which I promptly told him. We've been so spoiled by the small, homey RE's office that he got his mind blown by such a big operation.

We started off with an ultrasound where we got to see our Little P again...I think I can see a little face at the top...maybe.

I'm broken up that I have to wait until 12 weeks to see another picture of our little angel. Is this legal?! I am shocked that I can't see he/she every month :-( LOL

Then we met with the practice's midwife for an exam and a convo about how the practice works. Really, it was all a blur to me. I already know I'm having a scheduled c-section so I only paid attention for those parts of the convo. Can you tell I'm still a little sore about my mandatory c-section?? I'm really trying to get over it. So then we get to the nutrition part of the convo and midwife tells me, "You're already a little overweight so we don't want you to gain too much weight.." I really have mixed thoughts about this advice. I feel like pregnant women who are curvy to begin with are totally discriminated against. I mean it does take something away from an otherwise beautiful experience to have to worry about your weight on top of it.

Yes, I'm a curvy girl. Yes, I got me some thick thighs. Yes, my ass is big. Yes, my chest is ample. Yes, I got a little pot in my belly. But I am not inherently unhealthy. Like any other woman, I exercise...when I remember.

So basically I was advised to only gain 15-20 lbs for my entire pregnancy. My breasts and butt are like already 10 of those lbs and the baby will take up the rest. Pray for me ya'll cause it looks like I won't be having anything but water and air for the duration. Since the appointment I've been walking 30 minutes a day to try and keep my weight steady and I must admit I've been scrutinizing everything that I put in my mouth. I hope this doesn't turn into an issue.

After that, we scheduled my first trimester screen appointment where we find out if Little P has any genetic abnormalities. I'm not looking forward to that. My girlfriend recently had one and the results were way, way off and she lived in a state of fear for like a week until they figured it out. Then we scheduled our first appointment with the actual Ob/Gyn. Then we went downstairs for a marathon lab appointment where I gave like six gallons of blood!

I've gotten significantly more tired and am finding it really hard to sleep at night due to my crazy bladder. No lie...I get up like six times a night to pee. I'm grateful though. Truly, truly grateful that I get to get up and pee six times a night.

Money, Money, Money, Money....MUHNAY!!!

 
I feel like I should be doing the wop or the cabbage patch or something....

Anyway....this post is about something very near and dear to my heart.

salon.com

Money....or maybe I should say lack of money.

A couple of years ago as I was entering my last year of graduate school. I realized that there was NO WAY I could do my mandatory internship AND work full time as a case manager. So, I quit my job (very happily). I would be able to completely devote myself to my degree and my internship would morph into my job. It worked out very well during that last year because I was busy, busy, busy...overworked and underpaid and
I'll admit it was a great distraction until our world fell in with our first miscarriage. Then the internship became my own personal hell. Getting up at 5AM three times a week, traveling on the 6 train...my least favorite train and heading into NYPres to work under a supervisor that could have been the devil himself. Needless to say, when that year ended I was beyond joy.

We have been blessed for many years now that El Hubster has a job that can support us pretty well. And thanks to his awesome grant writing skills, his salary has only increased over the years which means more money but much longer hours at the office.

After graduation, we agreed that I should focus on starting our family. At least for a little while. A little while turned into two years!! Fertility quests are expensive. I estimate that we've spent about $500 just in co-pays (which is probably a drop in the bucket). Paying for and refilling fertility meds...this Crinone is running us $35 every two weeks. Thank God I don't have to take it for much longer.

Me not having a job is expensive. Here are some secrets I'm willing to share....I'm not very good at being a stay-at-home wife. I just can't seem to get my head around it. I've pictured myself as a stay-at-home mom but not so much a stay-at-home wife. I have a tremendous amount of guilt about not contributing money to the household. I want to do more. I want to be able to use my paycheck to pay my own bills. I miss having my own paycheck. I hate asking my husband for money. So much so that I have learned to go without something I might really want or need just to avoid it.

We can't get the quality of food we need by shopping at our local supermarket so we food shop online. Let's not even go there...we do live in the Bronx. Organic is a foreign word in the neighborhood I live in and my myriad medical issues require that I not put extra chemicals into my body. No matter how much I buy I never seem to buy enough food to feed us for a whole two weeks. I need to get better at this.

We live in the cheapest borough so that keeps our rent expenses pretty low. I'm proud to say we only pay about $975 a month in rent...which is unheard of in other parts of  NYC.

But our debts....are killing us!!

Let's list them:

• El Hubster and I both have 4 credit cards between us...all of which have been paid off at some point but always seem to creep back up to maxed!! He's paying ALL the credit card bills.
• Student loan payments totaling about $90,000 each!! And we're about to add more school debt as El Hubster begins his doctorate next month. I don't even want to think about how that's gonna get paid for. He is solely responsible for paying ALL the student loan bills.
• We've added life insurance and car insurance to our monthly debt. Who knew a car would be so expensive!!?? Yep, he's paying for ALL that too.
• Internet, cell phones (Virgin prepaid), Direct TV, Netflix . This TOO
• We've got unpaid hospital bills from one malaise or another...$150 worth from the hospital and $400 in fertility related expenses. I realize that it's not that much, especially compared to how expensive fertility treatments can be, but it feels like a boulder when you've got other expenses.
• Our Electricity bill is through the roof because we NEVER get our meter read and the amount of money we've spent heating and cooling our apartment because it's just inadequate. We have no intercom system in our building. So, Con Ed takes it upon themselves to charge us whatever the hell they want. All the more reason why we have to move.
• Speaking of moving...we have no idea how we're going to come up with the money to do that...if it happens at all it will be by God's grace.
• We eat out and go to the movies ENTIRELY too much. It was cool in the past because we felt like we deserved it...We've been through so much this week...we're not pregnant again this month....I've got to have surgery...let's go out to eat and see a movie!!

We are feeling crushed and under the gun...and this requires drastic measures..

• My husband won't admit that handling the finances can be overwhelming. He likes to believe that he can handle it all. He doesn't need any help because he's the MAN. But, he's not as on top of the bills as I would like so every pay period we've started to sit down together and go through the bills one by one. I think it makes him feel less alone (which he'll never admit), makes me feel more involved and gives me some peace of mind. I may not have a job but I can be CFO of this family.

• We're putting a stop to our relentless eating out/movie cycle and shaved it down to once a month, or not at all, depending on what's due.

• I've got to be smarter with shopping for food. I've started investing in buying family packs of meat/chicken/fish so that our food can last a little longer and cooking in bulk as much as I can. This is very difficult because I can eat the same thing for dinner all week...El Hubster cannot and sometimes will not...I blame his mother for this because she loves, loves, loves, to make whatever you want for dinner...a different dinner...every night!

I wish there was more we could do...I wish we could win the lottery (even though we don't play)...I wish money would fall from the sky like manna from heaven....but it's unlikely. I recently started making my list of things for baby on Amazon and I am blown away at how much Little P is gonna cost us just to get the basics.

So like much of Europe....we're adopting austerity measures and hoping we come out debt free (and able to move) on the other side...and I really wanna have my STUFF together before Little P gets here.

Why It's Fun to Watch the Bachelorette with Your Husband

Last week, El Hubster and I sat down to have what I thought was gonna be a fairly boring night. All of our good shows are on hiatus so we've been pretty bored. I flipped through the channels for a while and then finally settled on watching the Bachelorette....I know, I know...why? I have very mixed feelings about this show. 

1. There has never been a Black or Latino Bachelor or Bachelorette despite the fact that, well...we exist in the world, are successful and want to find love (or fleeting fame) too.

2. Whenever there's a Black or Latino dating candidate they get eliminated in short order...but definitely NOT on the first night because who wants to be accused of being racist. Eventually they get around to it.

3. The sheer desperation of these dating candidates is astounding and hilarious. They will do/say ANYTHING to get that rose!

4. I think it minimizes/trivializes the very real problem of not being able to find a good man/woman to settle down with...but maybe that's the point. To take a very real fear, exaggerate it and render it innocuous.We live in such an antisocial social networking society (me included) that it's difficult to find love offline like folks used to do.

But all of my qualms about this show were set aside temporarily due to El Hubster's hilarious commentary while watching this show. I mean seriously, I should tape him and put it up as a post but unfortunately you can take the boy out of Washington Heights but you can't take Washington Heights out of the boy so I'm afraid that tape would be rated NC-17.

Anywho, here are some choice cuts I gathered while we watched the premiere episode:

"Is that her?  For real?"

"Look at that dude, tell me that dude ain't lame!"

"Why she wearing that dress? That's the wrong dress. She gon' fall and bust her ass."

"Awww..this dude is already asking to sleep with this chick...what a dirty ass *****"

"Look at that dude, he tried to dip her and she fell over the dress. That's a burger move. He out!"

"Oh, here come the Black dude....he gon' be out soon."

"This dude done brought his kid to meet this chick...that's a low blow."

"Look at this Army dude...she ain't gon pick you in the end. That dude is owned by the U S of A for the next few years. They gon get together and that dude gon get shipped to Libya."

"Oh look, she finally put that nasty dude out...shoulda done that from jump."

"Don't that dude look strange to you? His eyes are too close together. That facial hair ain't working fo ya pawtna."

While watching the recap for the upcoming season....

"Why they crying so much? That's not normal. Ain't no real man be crying all the time like that."

"I wonder what episode they kick off the Black guy."

"They really crying over THIS chick?? She ain't even all that! She ain't even got no ASS!"

"So, she be kissing ALL these dudes....that's nasty.."

P.S. Coming up this week a fun post about how much debt we're in!!

P.P.S. Are you SEEING all these tornadoes in OK!!?? Crazy