Top of the page

I realized that last week's post (the one before this) was not necessarily the best thing to have at the top of the blog for weeks on end... so am making some time to bump it down a notch by posting this.

Last weekend was very blue, and filled with a lot of self-doubt and fear and loneliness (self-imposed, frankly). I get too far into my own head, sometimes, and last weekend was one of those times.

I've always said that February was the worst month of the (my) year. I had a pretty good February this year, though, so I think last weekend was February getting off one last good shot at me. And now it's March.

I wish I could say I feel 110% better. I don't. I do feel much, much less like I want to crawl into bed until sometime next year; that's something. But some of the blues still linger. That's natural, I think.

Because I project out into the future all the time (one of the reasons my romantic relationships have been doomed to fail!), I'm worried that the lonely part of me-- and it's there, and always will be-- is going to look at this baby as the savior, as the being that's going to save me from being lonely. Not only is that completely not fair to her, it's not the least bit realistic. You have a child to love them, rear them, and let them go-- not put inappropriate responsibilities on their small shoulders. I'm doing this because I want to be a mom, and because I believe I can be a good parent. I can't be doing this because, sometimes, I am lonely.

Children are not born to save us, or save our marriages, or to "fix" something we did wrong in our lives, or to do anything other than be themselves and grow up healthy and strong.

In 20 years, God willing, my daughter will be an independent young woman out on her own. She'll be healthy and smart and caring and self-sufficient, and she'll think I'm crazy but love me anyway, and I will have hopefully reared her so that she goes out and lives her life without worrying much about how her old mom is doing at home. I hope she'll always want to talk to me, and always want to come home and visit, but it will be because she wants to-- not because I've imposed things on her that I shouldn't.

Hopefully, just being aware of this will help make it so.

This is why I don't blog when I've been blue: no one needs to see the insides of my brain.

And now, off to the day. I have laundry, lunch with a friend, the gym, and then to another friend's house for the Osc*ars. I've seen almost nothing that's nominated (I keep watching documentaries and Bollywood with my Net*flix subscription), but there will be people there I don't see often, so that will be fun.

In conclusion, George Cloo*ney should always win everything he's nominated for. The end.

Laaaaazy

When you think "awesome willpower," my name does not come to mind. I am lazy. Laaaaaazy. I'm talking Olympic gold medal-level lazy. I'm a perfectly good cook, yet I eat frozen dinners rather than wait a few more minutes for the pasta to cook or the chicken to broil. I always have clean bathrooms, but dust can be seven layers deep on my tables and I barely raise an eyebrow. Sometimes (more often than I will admit, even here) my outfit for the day is decided not by what I want to wear, but by what requires the least amount of ironing. I can waste hours-- days, even-- on the internet rather than doing anything remotely productive. (How long have I needed to sand/paint my bathroom ceiling? Don't ask.)

Laaaaaazy.

I beat myself up about this, sometimes. One of the ways I've been doing this lately is wondering about just how I'll be as a single mom. Lazy is not an easy thing to overcome. Lazy trumps a lot of things. Will my child get the short end of my lazy stick?

If I think about it, though, maybe it's that I'm lazy about things I have (apparently) decided just don't matter as much. To me, anyway. For instance, despite the amount of work it takes as a single person in the city to have a dog, I had an awesome dog for over 14 years. And while sometimes I grumbled about the time it took to keep her cared for in the style she was happily accustomed to, I never really minded; as lazy as I am, she was worth every second, every dollar, every worried night, every walk in subzero weather. I carried her up and down stairs for the last month of her life, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

I'm lazy, but it didn't matter one bit when it came to her.

Since I found out about IVF going away as of 1/1 (see a couple of posts ago), it's like a switch has gone off. I've given up artificial sweeteners, I'm scheduled for acupuncture, I'm bringing my lunch rather than eating processed foods, I have a yoga DVD arriving in the next few days, I've been to the gym a number of times...

Maybe I'm just someone who needs a really good reason not to be lazy. Maybe my "really good reason" bar is set high.

And maybe, just maybe, that's OK.

I do need to get motivated on the bathroom ceiling, though.

Mini bio, and why I'm here

You've gotta love that I made sure to put up the blog rules before I actually did any kind of substantive posting, hm? You would perhaps assume I have some experience in how messy blog commenting can get. You would perhaps be correct.

At some point, I'll move the guts of this over to my profile, but I figured if I am going to start up a blog, I should let people know who I am and why I'm blogging.

I'm a single woman, over 40, and I'm going to be a mom. I am looking at both adoption and artificial means. I actually prefer adoption (there are so many children who need homes), but am having things checked out (seeing if the plumbing is in working order, so to speak) just to find out if that route is a possibility.

The plumbing's not looking so good at the moment, so I'm glad that adoption has always been a really exciting and positive idea for me.

I'd initially thought a blog would be a good way to keep everyone in my life up-to-date with progress. I've backed off that a bit (knowing myself, the topic drift could get tricky depending on who's reading this!), though I will share this blog with a number of people I trust.

I've really started this for two main reasons:

1. To keep track of things. I am going to be a single parent, one way or another, and children love stories of their origin. Someday, this may serve that purpose. With, probably, some judicial editing. (See above re: "topic drift.")

2. To connect with others in the same or similar situations. There's a huge network out there of people, with their stories and experience and support. Single motherhood is not and will never be easy; I figure the more people I have on my side-- even virtually-- the better!

I look at the points above and laugh, knowing that things will change over time. That's cool.

More to come. With my usual impeccable timing I've started this-- this blog and all the testing that goes with checking out the plumbing-- right when I have very little time. So I'll get things up here in dribs and drabs, as I'm able.