When I did my regular weekend grocery shopping I was going to buy an hpt, bring it home, hide it, wait until Thursday (the day after the day that should be CD1), and if the new cycle hadn't shown up on Wednesday, test Thursday morning. (It will surprise no one to hear that I had already planned the unveiling - I was going to shove the peed-on stick under the nose of my sleeping husband, innocently trying to catch just a few more minutes' rest before getting to work. I had also mentally prepared myself to respond to his inevitable point that the second line was pretty faint - is it possible this is not what you think?)
[Nota bene: All of these dates are still in the future. These events have not occurred and are not expected to occur. I am still not pregnant. ~Management]
We went to bed really late last night, but I dragged myself out of bed around 7:30 this morning to get a temperature around the same time as I take them during the week. I made myself stand up in the bathroom until my eyes focused (since during the week I don't take the temp until after I've hit snooze at least five times, so I'm more awake), and it was still 97.9. The cottonmouth symptoms have faded if not disappeared, and my fairly sincere conviction that it was really possible this time has faded too. I'm calm about it. And I've noticed I already feel weepy - ah, that old familiar PMS.
So I stood in the grocery store, on the point of turning back toward the medical aisle before checking out, and pictured ringing up the hpt, and some high school student drawing the obvious (wrong) conclusions, and me deciding whether to say something reassuringly open-to-life like "Maybe this will be the one!" and I felt ashamed of myself. I don't need one any more than I do every other month. I only need to be patient and the inevitable will happen again. So I rang up and came home.
Spirit
The opening prayer in Mass today (well, I think that's what it is - I'm fuzzier on the correct names for Tridentine Mass parts) was thus:
O almightly and everlasting God, who in the abundance of Thy loving-kindness art wont to go beyond both the merits and prayers of Thy suppliant people, pour down upon us Thy mercy: that Thou mayest forgive us those things whereof our conscience is afraid, and grant us what our prayer does not dare to ask.
I often feel in need of a prayer like that, but I've not heard one in those terms offered on behalf of an entire congregation, let alone (once upon a time) the universal Church. I thought that might resonate with another infertile girl or two.
Mind?
I promised (or threatened, in the legitimate view of some) that I would post more pretty house pictures soon. Most of my pictures are "what I'm going to put in my house" pictures, but right now I'm between notional houses. I'm leaning toward house #5, but I'll get to see the inside for the first time this week if I'm lucky (drama with tracking down the realtor continues), so it's more than usually unrealistic to decorate it that thoroughly in my mind. (I have, however, refocused my decor ideas slightly on French country, which I think was used in the US in the nineteenth century, and would go a little better with an old farmhouse than Victorian, IMO.)
But, in my adventures with houzz.com (highly recomend it as a way to spend enjoyable hours in front of a computer when you've nothing else to do - what? You have other things to do?), I snagged not only pictures that will help with my specific decor plans, but rooms that sang melodiously to me the moment I laid eyes on them.
Which is an interesting phenomenon. It's not the same as "what a pretty table" - it's more like "I'm in love." I think it's something to do with the image making it possible to feel just how it would be to be in that place, and what sort of magnificent associations it would have - of peace, or warmth, or companionship, or beauty, or joy. I've no reason to believe they'll be magical for anybody else, but here are my singing rooms:
I can't imagine not wanting to spend hours here talking with - or as - the cook, over a cutting board or a half-dozen pies, making cookie dough, dressing a turkey...
Tucked under the eaves is here a place of honor.
This room almost seems to generate its own sunlight. It does seem slightly odd that there's no baby in it, though.
What sorrow exists that this bathroom couldn't charm away?
Perfect serenity.
If I saw this in someone else's home, the temptation to climb the magical staircase and see what lay beyond would be more than I could resist.
I am convinced I could have this library for decades and never walk by without finding that top shelf intriguing.
I can almost hear a family's worth of voices, talking over each other at dinner...
I could spend the rest of my life curled up on a corner of that couch with a never-ending stack of Agatha Christie mysteries. And maybe some P.G. Wodehouse.
And finally...I think this doorway might lead to Narnia...
