Can you hire a housekeeper for your blog?

I need one.  Have I mentioned I’m organizationally challenged?  That’s putting it rather nicely.  I’m the person with mismatched sock pairs (at least they’re all in the same drawer) and notes, numbers and addresses of people scratched on random pieces of torn paper envelopes and restaurant napkins shoved in a box (at least they’re in a box, ok?).

So I need to do a few housekeeping things around Infertility Rocks.

1)  I need to update my blogroll.  I have no idea how ‘blogroll’ etiquette goes, like do you just add someone’s blogroll without asking them?  I’m such a dork!  Anyway, mine needs updating….I want YOUR blogroll on here.  So please leave me a comment with your blog’s name and URL if you want to be added (and by all means add mine to yours, no asking required).  I’m going to try to categorize them when I get  a chance, so don’t worry if it’s IF-related or not .  If you read this blog regularly, then I want to visit you too!

2) I’m SUPER excited to announce that I am going to have my first ‘guest blogger’ on here on Friday!!!!  (I hope, I didn’t chat with her before posting this, eek.)  I really want this blog to speak to all IFers, no matter what their journey….so I’m hoping to get some different perspectives than the same old-same old you hear from me.  Check us out tomorrow!!!!!

3) In prep for my mom’s visit this week, I’m going to try to make my posts shorter (thank goodness, right?)  and leave more opportunities for blog-reader interaction.  I absolutely LOVE reading everyone’s comments and different perspectives on things.  If you’re a lurker of this blog….get out of the closet and start putting your 2 cents in too.  Please?

Don’t miss my ‘real’ post right below this one.  I guess I could’ve combined them, but it’s more fun this way.

‘The Date’ revisited

 

I usually try to do my posts the day before I post them (as organizationally challenged as I am, I at least do this).  So I finished up my ‘The Date’ post late Tuesday evening while waiting for my hubby to come home from work (sigh, he had to work late again).  So he gets home, and we’re chatting about the ins and outs of our day…normal stuff.  And then, in an awkward change in conversation, I ask him to preview my blog before I publish it.  Because I would NEVER want to put out there something that my hubby would find hurtful or mean-spirited against him.  I just wouldn’t.

Now rewind a bit here, we hadn’t really talked about our date since we had it.  Honestly, I just find it difficult to enter into ‘what-if-no-baby’ conjecture with my hubby because my thoughts are so gnarled and unruly and talking about it makes it seem more ‘real’ and all the more painful.  It’s not that we don’t talk about IF, it’s just always more focused on who showed up with a pregnant belly at Mommy Group, or what horrific side effects I’m having from meds, or when my next RE appointment is.  It always decidedly ME-focused.

So he reads the post.  And he smiles and says he’s not offended.  And then he tells me that my hypothetical question (ie:  What should we do if we need to do more expensive treatments?) was so broad-ranged, that what he heard was:  What if we have to spend 100K on fertility treatments to have a baby?  And he says, “If it was something like, say, $10,000 that seems more doable”. 

This I needed to hear.

He also said, “I guess I haven’t really thought that much about adoption or IVF because I just figured we’d eventually get pregnant.”  Wow, that’s intriguing.  In fact that’s the biggest ‘a-ha’ moment I’ve had with my hubby and IF pondering.  Fundamentally, we’re about as far apart as Rush Limbaugh and Rosie O’Donnell.  See, I’m in a constantly tumbling ‘what if?’ downslide that does not often land on a ‘what if’  as simple as just getting pregnant again.  I have lost the ability to ‘just figure’ that things will work out on their own.  I don’t trust that they will.  My hubby lives in ‘hope for the best land’ while I’m camping out in ‘prepare for the worst-ville’.  And I wish that I could be as calm and logical about the whole as he is…but I can’t.

So, then he starts talking about the ‘adoption topic’ portion of our date.  When I asked him on our date how he feels about adoption, he seemed confounded at least, which I interpreted as negative at best.  But he says that maybe God is telling us, “I gave you one already, now I want you to adopt a child in need.”  This, I needed to hear,too.  Not that I have my heart set on adoption or any other mapquested plan, but just to hear my hubby open to possibilities, makes me feel, I don’t know, understood.

So we talked more about how different we are in processing ‘our IF’.  Because it is OURS, in the long run.  I may be the carrier of the plague, but I’ve infected us both.  And knowing that we’re in it together is comforting in a way I can’t really explain.  I guess it’s like coming home, the safe haven of  childhood where you could escape taunting, neighborhood bullies or drink away a bad school day with a cold glass of milk.   It was a good and long-awaited  talk.

I am so incredibly lucky to have my hubby.  He’s funny and smart and tall and handsome.  He puts up with my medication craziness and diffuses my ranting.  He recently recorded his off-key voice singing “Pretty Lady!  You’ve got a phone call!” on my cellphone when it rings.  He’s stuck by me when I haven’t been very stick-by-able.  And he’s never EVER made me feel guilty about bringing IF into our relationship.

He is my best discovered treasure, my biggest fan, and my most honest critic.

I asked him if he would consider being a guest blogger for me, you know to give the ‘male perspective’ on IF.  But really it’s just a self-serving request, I want to know more about his thoughts, he feelings, his worries and regrets. Because, I may love this guy with all my heart, but his inner world continues to remain a mystery to me…even after all these years.

*               *                 *                  *                  *

Thanks so much for all the support and advice you gave me yesterday on getting this type of conversation going.  You guys were right on.  Guys need time to process, they need warning and concrete questions….and even after that, they still don’t always know what they think.  I can’t imagine being a guy, if you’re not thinking about your feelings and future projections all the time, well, what ARE you thinking about?

Oh…