Weekend Stuff & Things

Here are some of the things we've been doing this weekend.

1. I have been having the most vivid dreams EVER you guys.  I haven't been able to figure out what exactly is causing them; the only thing that's different is this cream I'm putting on my face for the treatment of milia (gross) and I can't imagine something I'd put on my skin could actually affect how I dream.  All of the dreams I've had have involved very strong, negative emotions--in my dreams over the course of the last few nights I was threatened with broken bones and sexual abuse by the evil guy in "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", I had a really horrible miscarriage while fighting with my husband in Iraq and woke up sobbing, and last night I had to sneak into Cypress's daycare to get a picture of her teeth and was caught.  That last one doesn't seem as intense but I promise you, it was pretty stressful.  Anyway though you might think that this would make me not want to go to bed, I'm actually interested each night to see what my brain will come up with.  Is that weird?

2. Rob and I saw a hockey game with his brother and his brother's wife last night.  As I've told you guys before, hockey is literally the only sport I can tolerate and actually enjoy watching.  It's fast-paced, very high-tension, and the periods are the perfect length of time (and the sport doesn't require you to stop every 5 seconds like football).  Plus our team won and we got to see some blood from one of the fights, and who doesn't love a good old-fashioned brawl?

3. I finally sent my Nikon away to get repaired so you guys won't have to deal with randomly-sized iPhone images for too much longer.

4. I'm getting very close to my trip to Santa Fe and I've narrowed down the places that I most want to see. I can't really make appointments until next week, so I have all my fingers and toes crossed that the ones I want to see are still available at that time.  I don't want to jinx any of the good ones so I won't share any here...but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

5. I just finished this book about poison in Jazz Age New York and I loved it.  Maybe it's because I'm a huge crime nerd but I found it absolutely fascinating, and written in a way that was extremely approachable and intriguing.  Every time I'd read it I would excitedly tell Rob some fact or another that I had learned about Prohibition, murder, or poison.  I'm pretty sure he loved it judging by his half-hearted "mm" and "huh"s.  Also, this was one of the only times I've been genuinely disappointed that a book ended.

6. On a somewhat related note to the previous bullet point, in the book the author explains that the body of a person who was poisoned with arsenic decays at a much slower rate; she even cites one case in which a body was exhumed over a year after death that, aside from some "patches of mold" on the face,  was in near-perfect condition.  I decided to learn more about that, because I find things like putrefaction interesting.  So I started Googling, and fell down ye olde Internet Rabbit Hole and long story short, ended up on an article explaining why the Holocaust never happened.  A quick aside: this is not in line in any way, shape or form with my beliefs; the article was also about carbon monoxide detection in corpses, which probably doesn't assure you any further of my stability but there it is.  Anyway, a bit shocked to say the least I scrolled to the top of the screen and realized I was on the forum of a White Supremacist website. And interestingly, they had a whole forum dedicated to White Supremacist recipes you could make for your family. So if this blog gets shut down it might be because I'm being investigated by the FBI for racist cooking.

What scary and possibly damning websites have you visited this weekend?

A Day Alone

So my darling husband left this morning for the weekend, as his little sister is graduating from high school on Monday. 

(I'm still really bummed that I can't make it; Rob and I have been together for 8 1/2 years so I've basically watched Molly grow up.  I feel like she's MY sister.  And because my high school is stupid they have graduation on a Monday, which I have ranted about several times here but COME ON, MONDAY?!)

As I mentioned yesterday, Rob leaving me (as opposed to me leaving him) is always really hard on me.  I revert back to my Army-self, frantically anticipating phone calls or emails like he's been gone for months.  And because he's at his parents' and doesn't get any cell reception I feel suffocated, like he's millions of miles away in a war zone again.  When I finally do talk to him I feel this huge relief and talk a mile a minute trying to tell him every aspect,every second of my day.

I know, I know, get a grip right? We'll be apart for like a week and a half and aside from the occasional moose, I'm pretty sure my husband is safe.

Only slightly less frightening than guerrilla fighters.

I'm watching the Bruins game right now, which is hilarious to me as I have never liked sports.  I still don't like sports, actually. I only like hockey because I think that hockey is the most honest sport in the world.  We all watch and enjoy sports because they provide a sort of safe, simulated warfare.  We can all cheer for our team/country, express undying hatred for the other team/country, and go home feeling like we participated.

Plus, I'm from New England, which means you have to cheer vociferously for all of our regional teams if you give a rat's ass.

Confession time: I'm totally one of those people that says things like "Get the puck in the net!" and "Keep the puck out of their net!" and "Skate! Skate faster!" and other obvious things that make me sound like I understand sports. I have no idea what's going on about 1/2 the time.

Touchdown!

Now I want to talk about the childrens.

Rob and I have been talking a lot about children lately.  There was a time (in other words, my entire adolescence and young adulthood) that I worried excessively about my own fertility.  I don't have much of a reason to fear this other than my need to stress about everything I can't control, but the fear has always been there regardless, at least until I had a revelation last year.

Generally my way of dealing with anxiety is to consider the absolute worst case scenario - usually this makes me feel better because the worst case scenario (typically) isn't that bad.  One day last May I finally applied this to my fear of infertility and imagined the worst case scenario:

We can't have children. 

But we still have each other, and I know we can live a long, full life together.

I'm going to go ahead and apply a disclaimer here and say that this is my thought process, no one else's, and this isn't meant to challenge, criticize or debate anyone else's ideas, actions, motives or thoughts.  Okay? So no fighting down there in the comments.

Rob and I talked and talked and eventually agreed that if we cannot have children on our own through the good old-fashioned and fun method, we will give up control of our fertility and let what happens, happen...and maybe consider adoption if we decide to go that route later. 

This translates into no medical intervention, no stressing, just letting the chips fall where they may. I'm doing this in part to protect myself emotionally - I know that if it comes down to it, I will stress myself into infertility. I will feel a sense of obligation to Rob and to our families, inevitably developing feelings of inadequacy should we encounter an issue.  It is my belief that by completely ceding control to the fates, by making children an option rather than a requirement, we will (hopefully) remove the stress from the equation and make it into an experience that we enjoy.

If we can't have kids, we'll buy a big farmhouse on a shit-ton of land and have 5 dogs. We'll travel, we'll work, we'll live life.  And if we can have kids, we'll just do all of those things with little Caitlin-Rob clones at our feet.

Of course, like anything else, this is subject to change with the winds, with time, with maturity, and with change.  But for now it suits me just fine until the time comes to start trying.

And with those thoughts, I bid you all good night and adieu.  Thanks for your input on the giveaway, by the way!

Six-Word Memoir Saturday

This is an idea I got from Tracy over at Scribble Smudge - six words to memoralize this lovely Saturday.

My six words:  

Apocalypse averted and good times had.

And for your enjoyment, I will provide six-word captions for these pictures from today:

Nemo has a fortress of shoes.

My husband is eagerly watching hockey.

Can you tell they are brothers?

"Why are you photographing me, wife?"

Strawberries and chocolate - yummy AND healthy?

My SIL is lovely and awesome.

These men always need a fan.

I sure do love caprese, dude.

Trying to escape the picture, Jessi?

Margaritas with salt are the best.

These are my favorite ballet flats.

The result of tequila and hockey.

What did you do today, friends?