Texas Vaca

So we had a great week in Houston with our good friends S and S!  We ate a ton of awesome (and cheap!) food and visited the zoo, science museum, Battleship Texas, and the San Jacinto monument.  Best deal of the week?  St. Arnold's Brewery.  It's the oldest craft brewery in Texas and they do tastings and tours every day at 3:00.  For just $7, they pour you 4 beers and you can bring your own food into the beer hall - good times!  Here are some of my favorite photos from the trip.

 Me and IB after visiting the Houston Natural Sciences Museum.

 IB, me, S, and S at the Houston Zoo.

 IB and me at St. Arnold's Brewery.

 The tap wall!

 San Jacinto monument.

S, S, and me posing as sailors in front of Battleship Texas.

Thanks to our friends for being awesome hosts, and to their dog Pepper for not biting me (too much!).  :)

Everything's bigger...

...in Texas!  Heading there tomorrow to visit our good friends S & S who moved to Houston last summer.  Texas is probably one of the states I could have gone my whole life without visiting, but IB and I love our friends so off we will go! 

We don't have a detailed agenda, but I do know we wil be visiting the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences - I like to compare!  ;)  Looking at their website, I'm surprised to see you have to pay extra to view their special exhibitions.  Boo to that!  I also know we're going out for steaks one night and Mexican food another...mmmm.  And we're going to visit the Houston Zoo which should be fun.  Most importantly though, we're going to go tour two local breweries - yay!  Can't go wrong with a day full of beer tastings.

I'll write a full report when we return.  Yee-haw, peeps!

Shamrock and Junebug

A lovely lady I know from TTCAL made these for me.  Love.

A TTCAL analogy

A lot of people don't understand what it's like to try to conceive again after losing a baby.  Those lucky people who get pregnant so easily and get take-home babies after 9 months can never really know what it feels like to a woman who tried so hard to get pregnant, lost that little bean that she worked so hard for, and is struggling again to get her rainbow baby.  These lucky women can empathize, yes, but can never really know the pain of TTCAL.  A friend of mine shared this analogy with me, and it brought tears to my eyes.

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Let's say human beings didn't walk until the age of 20. Let's say everyone was in a wheelchair till the age of 20, at which point their musculoskeletal system become mature, and everyone's 20th birthday was the magical, overnight turning point.

You're so excited for your 20th birthday. You can't believe it's almost here! A couple of your friends are already 20, and you've seen them walking around. It looks like fun. It's the next progression. You turn 20. You stand up and take a step. Then another. Then another. Then you fall down, and the doctor tells you you're not ready yet, it's back to the wheelchair for you. But your best friend turned 20 the same day. And she can walk wherever she wants, whenever she wants. It's ok, you'll wait. A month later, you try again. This time, you're walking for a week! It's glorious! It's marvelous! But then you fall down and can't get back up, and it's back to the wheelchair for you. Meanwhile, your friends who turned 20 last year, they're not just walking. They're running. They're playing sports. They're jumping and swimming. And there you sit in your wheelchair, watching them. The doctors don't know if you'll ever get out of your wheelchair, the way that ALL humans are supposed to at age 20. They don't know why. They have no clue why when every time your 20-year-old self stands up, she falls and can't get back up. No one can offer you an explanation, nor a reason why it might happen for you in the future. You don't know if you want to try to walk again. What if you fall and break your nose again? What if you can't even stand up next time you try? What if, after weeks of walking, you forget how and no one can teach it to you?

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It's not a perfect analogy, but it's the best one I've seen. It's something so primitive--you don't even know how hard it is to fail until you fail.  It's something so taken for granted that it never occurs to you how that other girl feels.  And it's something so integral but effortless to your own world, that you really can't understand the other side of the coin.

Big, squishy {{hugs}} to all the friends I've met on my TTCAL journey.  You are all amazing!

Don't call it a comeback!

WOW it's been a long fucking time since I've blogged.  I'm a loser!  I vow to try to do better from now on.  In fact, today I shall post twice...how's that for dedication?

Here are the highlights from my life over the last 2 months...

• I turned 32.
• We spent a weekend in Boston.
• We bought a new house.
• I survived the Shamrock's EDD (barely).
• IB turned 31

Those are some pretty good milestones I think.  I will say that the reason for my extended absence was the EDD.  I had a really, really, really hard time dealing with it.  I just felt like it was all I could do to get through my day and simply didn't have the energy to dedicate to much else.  On March 19, IB and I spent the day out furniture shopping for the new house and watching Pitt lose in the NCAA tourney.  Nothing too exciting but it did help keep my mind off the fact that what I should have been doing was delivering a baby.  I'm feeling a little less depressed since I made it through that day.  That's a good thing I suppose!  It is surreal sometimes though when that little thought sneaks up on me that I should have an infant at home right now.  I so wish that were true.  We love you Shamrock!