cruise!!

We're going on a cruise!! Woo-hoo!!

N and I decided that we need a break. We took that long weekend on the Cape, but if you've ever spent any time with my family, you kow it's not really a vacation. (sorry, guys - I love you all, but there's less drama on some Jerry Springer episodes.) So while it was great to see everyone and have a family weekend, we still need a vacation.

After many weeks of searching for a deal, we finally found it and we are headed to Alaska on June 6th!!! My brain is spinning with all the details - what to pack, doggie care, how to set up at work. I haven't been gone for a full work week since I had this job, and I'm nervous about that. But I know it will be taken care of, and that I have to not care, just for seven days.

We've been wanting to go to Alaska for years, so it's hard to believe we are finally doing it. Our honeymoon cruise, to the western carribean, was the best vacation ever. So I'm fully expecting this one to measure right up there. It's Norwegian again, fo course, but a different ship. I can't wait to explore it! We already booked our shore excursions too. I can't wait!!

faith

Lately, I have had a bit of a religious conversion. Or a reversion, as it were, since I feel like I'm returning to something. As a child and a young adult, I had a fierce faith. Because of circumstances in my college years and beyond, that faith eroded. It was pushed away by many things, but I would say a big player was my study pf philosophy. And to this day, I am in love with everything I learned, and continue to learn, in that study. But in some ways all I was doing was replacing my faith object; instead of faith in God, I put my faith in the cannon. And while I gained a lot from my readings, I could never get a feeling of safety that I missed when I dismissed God from my life. After years of craving it, and then some years of increasing depression over the fertility issue, for which I could find no comfort from my philosophers, I decided to take the leap again. I know more about the alternatives this time, and I admit to having shopped around a bit for the pieces of my new faith, but it real and it is me.

And then I read Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. A lot of people have told me to read it, and I wasn't interested in it. Then I finally got around to it, this week, and I loved it. It was a beautiful book, and I applaud her journey. I read it at the perfect time in my own journey. I could quote the whole book, but I'm going to give a piece of it because it was such an a-ha moment for me. She could have been writing about me.

There's a reason we refer to "leaps of faith" -- because the decision to consent to any notion of divinity is a mighty jump from the rational over to the unknowable, and I don't care how diligently scholars of every religion will try to sit you down with their stacks of books and prove to you through scripture that their faith is indeed rational; it isn't. If faith were rational, it wouldn't be -- by definition -- faith. Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it owuld not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be . . . a prudent insurance policy.

I'm not interested in the insurance industry. I'm tired of being a skeptic, I'm irritated by spiritual prudence and I feel bored and parched by empirical debate. I don't want to hear it anymore. I oculdn't care less about evidence and proof and assurances. I just want God. I want God inside me. I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on water.

love!

Last post, I talked about N making me laugh, and I got a cool response. So, in keeping with my resolve to be positive for a while, I thought I'd do a post dedicated to my amazing husband.

• When we met, I had recently lost A. I was a widow, with not a lot to smile about, and he made me smile again. Not to mention, he immediately wanted to hear all about A, and has never made me feel bad about missing him or talking about him. Actually, there are times that I forget they never met, because he seems to know so much about him.
• He thinks that if his belly button opens, all his innards will come out. Which makes it really fun to poke his belly button. :)
• He plugs my cell phone in for me at night, he kills spiders for me, he never leaves the seat up, and he lets me put my cold feet on him even though I never let him put his cold feet on me.
• Whenever I am feeling bad about myself, which is often, he always disagrees with me and tells me I'm wonderful. Or he'll say, "Hey, that's my wife you're talking about."
• He has the same three best friends he's had since he was six.
• He will spend hours on the internet, searching for a good deal for any trip we go on, any appliance we buy, any random item that I need and don't want to buy at the store. It's fun for him, and I get the best stuff.
• He also makes me a packet every time we go on a trip, which includes our travel info, hotel info, itinerary, maps, anything else he thinks we'll need...and then he puts a cover page on it that says something like, "N and A's European Adventure!" I keep them for our scrapbooks.
• Whenever I call out to him from another room, he always answers with, "Yes, love?"
• He is a really good kisser. I mean, really good. This, of course, often leads to other things, which he also excels at, but the kissing is what really got me.
• He has such a good soul. He is always thinking about other people and putting them before himself. Often that person is me, and I am always trying to deserve it.
• He is completely oblivious to girls hitting on him or having crushes. I always have to point it out.
• He is 6' 10" and completely comfortable with that. After more than seven years, I still laugh when people ask him how tall he is...and he's still calm about it after almost thirty years!
• If he doesn't know the answer to a question, he just makes something up. Most of the time, people believe him. It cracks him up that I'm the oly one who calls him on it, every time. Even if a story is true, he likes to embellish it. He just likes to laugh.

Okay, I'll stop with a baker's dozen. There is always more I could say, but I have to stop some time. The most important point is that I always love being with him, no matter what we're doing. And when we go through trying times, it's best to remember things like that. No matter what the outcome of all the fertility issues, I am glad to be married to N.

happy entry

Last week I promised myself that I was going to write about something happy. Then the stupid ER thing happened, and I wrote about that instead. Now I have rested all weekend, and I am determined to have a happy entry for once. I am throwing off the cloak of negativity I was wearing last week (and the whole situation that I continued tonguing at, like a wound on the roof of my mouth, long after I should have ignored it) and putting on my happiness shawl. Or whatever.

N and I had a really fun weekend. On Friday we saw the new Star Trek movie, which I loved. I can't believe how good the casting was, I truly forgot about the actors and was completely absorbed in the characters. I didn't want it to end, and I can't wait for the next one. And in the meantime, I may have to dig out the old episodes and watch them again!

On Saturday we had a really interesting conversation, which could easily have been an argument, but then we talked instead, and we learned some new things. I won't go into all the particulars here, but I think it is amazing that after seven years of sharing everything with each other, we can still learn new things.

Last night, at about 10pm, we decided that we needed to go to Perkins. N is always saying that he needs potato pancakes at ridiculous hours of the night. This was early enough that we could do it, so off we went. And then, at the restaurant, he made me laugh so hard I got the hiccups. Thankfully, I was done with french toast before the hiccups started.

We have always had so much fun together. But now, with all that we've got going on, it has felt really good these last few weeks to be just ourselves again. I think we could maybe get out of the stress if we spend a little longer like this.

non-emergency

Yesterday I took a little visit to the ER.

I was at work, about an hour after my lunch break, and I started getting a stomachache. It felt just like indigestion or something. Then a few minutes later the pain traveled all over my abdoment and went crazy. I think I'm pretty good at pain...not stoic, but I can usually handle it. This was 8/10, couldn't stand still, had to work on breathing kind of pain. And once it got up there, it stayed. No throbbing or waves, just steady-on blazing pressure. I told one of my friends, who took a second to realize I was serious, and then started doing vitals and listening to my heart and bowel sounds and everything. It's a perk to be surrounded by other nurses all day. My blood pressure was sky high, so I called my clinic. While I was still in pain, I described what had happened and answered a bunch of questions. She told me to go to the ER. After a while the pain went down to about a 5, and then down and down until it was gone. All in all, it was about 20-25 minutes. My work friend would not let me decide not to go, even though I tried, so off to the ER I went.

In retrospect, I could have gone to urgent care. Why I didn't think of that at the time is probably due to being pretty scared about what might be going on. So now I'll probably have a huge bill. Bler. So yea, they did blood work, and urine tests, a 12-lead EKG, and chest x-ray. The doctor said it all looked good. She also talked to me for almost half-an-hour. A very cool MD. After all this, her diagnosis? Stress.

Ha ha. Seriously?

Although I did tell her all about the infertility mumbo-jumbo, she seemed to think I was stressed even before knowing that. Also, she has a son, by IVF, so that was interesting. And the thing is, I had thought I was really de-stressing in the last few weeks. But when I started telling her about stuff, tears were coming to my eyes. I wasn't exactly crying, just tearing uncontrollably. Which makes me realize things are still a lot closer to the surface than I had thought.

I'm not sure I believe that it's only stress. I know all the tests were good, but I'm still worried it was something that they didn't test for. And I'm really not a hypchondriac. I've been having weird chest pains for long time now, which my NP is aware of, and there seems to be no reason for those. But this was serious pain, like I have never felt before. But even if it is only stress, what the hell am I supposed to do about that? I thought I was doing better, so I'm not sure I have a whole lot of coping mechanisms stored up at this point.

metablog

Blogging is stupid. There, I said it. I am guilty of doing it, but that doesn't stop me from seeing the issues involved. The thing is, if you have a blog, you are probably the kind of person who has had journals...maybe you were good at keeping it up, or maybe you started a new one every year and only wrote three entries before giving it up again. You feel like you want to remember life, to document it. Or you feel like you have something to say. Like you are interesting, or wish to be. But in any case, blogging means taking your journals or essays into the public forum. You want people to read what you have written.

I get frustrated that I don't have many readers. I know it's probably because what I have to say isn't grabbing people, isn't new or intersting enough to stand out. But I hold on to the hope that there are other reasons, so I go out into the blogosphere and try to read others, and maybe connect with them, in the hopes that they will turn and read me too. So far, not so good, but I'll keep plugging. Because even though the part of me with loe self-esteem says that no one cares, the secretly overconfident part of me says that someone will aprreciate me. (Also, I cut myself off at the knees by being afraid that those who are too close to me will find it and know too much, but that's a neurosis for another day).

The point is, people who blog want to be read, plain and simple. But the reason blogging is stupid is that then some people turn around and decide that they don't want to be disagreed with. Yes, please read and appreciate my contribution to the world, but don't let on that I'm not the best thing since sliced bread! Don't say anything unless you have something nice to say!

At this point I'd like to pause to say that it probably looks like I am harping on the issue from yesterday. And I suppose that in a way I am. But after spending some time thinking about why I blew up yesterday, I realized that it wasn't really about that one blogger, or at least not totally. This has happened to me before, with my frenemy, B. Once upon a time, he said horrible things about me and about A in his blog. And I responded vehemently. And then got angry that I had the nerve to respond to what he said in his own private blog. Really?

Like I've said before, I believe that people have the right to an opinion, and to voice that opinion. But I also have the right to express mine, and to tell you why I think yours is wrong. And let's not sugarcoat things. It's okay for me to think you are wrong, and vice versa. Just because I think you have a right to an opinion doesn't mean I have to give your opinion any creedence. I might, if you do a good job of arguing your point, but chances are slim.

So the point is that you have the right to write, and I have the right to respond. Love it or hate it, that's how it is. If you don't want to continue from that point, you have the right of ignoring my response. Or you could delete any comments you don't want to deal with. It is, after all, your blog, and I am fine with you dictating the flow of traffic. But please, don't put yourself out there and ask for attention, and then whine because you don't like the attention that you got. I feel like that is just lying to yourself about your real motivation to blog in the first place.

anger issues

I think I have anger issues.

Last night at Wal-Mart (also known in our household as Satan's World) I had a serious I-am-going-to-kill-someone moment. The night before I had spent almost two hours uploading, reorienting, and resizing a bunch of photos to be printed. This is the only reason I wold go through Wal-Mart, because the whole photo thing is cheap and easy. (Insert joke here). Anyway, I got there yesterday and all the photos were 4X6, with no changes. I seriously freaked out. And I am not good with confrontation, but I did manage to express my pissiness. Of course, it's Wal-Mart, so no one cared. Customer service is about the last thing I'd expect. So after only paying for the ones that were supposed to 4X6 and unchanged, I went home and cried all over N. And he suggested that I order them again, from a different Wal-Mart, so I didn't have to go back to the same people, which I did. He's picking them up today. I was really upset because I am all about this picture project and I am proud of myself for finally starting it, and I want to get it done before my mom gets here in a few weeks. But I think my reaction may have been out of proportion.

Also, there was a traffic incident this morning, in which the horn and both of my middle fingers were used. Let's just say, you can't change lanes whenever you feel like it and expect no reaction. But again, my reaction may have been over done.

And the third time was just now. Catching up on a blog that I recently started following, I realized that a post was directed at me. It made me a little angry, for several reasons. I made the comment a while ago, and I thought it to be calm and reasonable, inviting a friendly debate. Apparently the other blogger didn't feel that way. She felt I "blindsided" her with debate, and that I passed off my opinions as fact. I certainly don't think I expressed my opinions any differently than she did in the post. I stated what I believe. I don't put question marks after solid beliefs, as a rule. And I didn't realize that she wouldn't be up for a debate. When I knew her briefly in college, I remember her being up for things like that. I also noted in the comment that I wasn't trying to start anything, and that I respected her opinions. If I didn't, I wouldn't have bothered to post a comment. Clearly she does not have the same respect for my opinion. That's fine. Then let me know about that. You know where to find my blog, and you know how to respond with another comment, which she did. Don't write a whole post about how you don't want to debate and you resent my comment. And yes, I realize I am being hypocritical about that last point by writing this post. It's part of my charm.

In any case, I'm not catering to any childish wish to hear no feedback. You did have the choice not to publish the comment. Either I read and I respond to it if I feel the urge, or I don't read. I do respect a person't right to her own opinion. But I don't blow smoke up anyone's ass. That's not who I am.

On the other hand, when I stopped following her blog and wrote a curt comment in response, I may have over done it. I know she's going through some stuff, which I could have taken into consideration. And I could have just ignored it and moved on, keeping my decision to comment no longer to myself. Coulda woulda shoulda. What can I say? I have anger issues.