What’s Even Harder Then FB Pregnancy Announcements?

Answer:  Watching several of your HS classmates celebrating their child’s HS graduation this weekend.

Talk about a kick in the stomach.  Some of them have already have children going off to college and I haven’t even managed to have 1 child yet.

Clarification

I feel like I need to clarify something from my “Submission” post.  Although it does piss me off that J is saying “no” to the vehicle.  I do understand why he is.  He is not controlling…He’s just way more financially conservative than I am.  Submission is a bible concept, and one that I never thought I’d agree with, but in our house, it really does just go towards big purchase things for us.  He would move South in a heartbeat, but because I don’t want to move away from my family again, we are staying in WI.  We absolutely have a partnership, he does hear me out and I know that he does not want to have to tell me “no”.  He would love to be able to give this to me and for me to be able to be a stay at home wife/Mom, unfortunately, it’s just not happening on a teacher’s salary in WI with the debt that we have.

The funny thing is, except for one 0% interest card, not of our debt is credit card debt.  This would have been a non-issue if I was still doing daycare in Tomah.  I was the breadwinner then and I’m definitely regretting my decision to move the daycare to West Salem.  The commute wasn’t fun, especially in the winter, but I had loyal daycare parents and my Mom right there to help.  I was much happier work wis than I am now.  I have had 3 different calls about daycare in the last week and hopefully, I’ll get all of them and he will change his mind before the car is sold.

Submission

I hate it and frankly, it tends to piss me off!

Listen, I get it.  J’s the head of the household and ultimately, gets to make the final decision on things.  However, I spent 17 years of my adult life (from 18-35) making my own decisions.  Sure, I would seek the counsel of my Mom on anything big (and usually listened to her since she is very rarely wrong) but ultimately, the decision was mine to make.

Fast forward getting married, and all of a sudden, I need to talk purchases over with another person and sometimes, seek permission.  And let me tell you, often times, permission is not granted and it pisses me off.  Sometimes, I can take it with a grain of salt, okay, rarely I can take it like a grain of salt and other times, it breaks my heart (like when he first said no to Bandit…and he was free).  This weekend is one of those times that it’s really pissing me off.

So, back story, last April, we sold my Kia Soul to try and go down to one car for the summer and save some money.  I quickly realized that I hated not having my independence.  By the time we got home from vacation in July, I was ready for my own vehicle again so we went car shopping.  I wanted something practical, like a Toyota prius, and wanted to lease it so it’d be more affordable for us and I work from home and J walks to school so we don’t have commuter miles.  Instead, we came away with this.  Although I look happy in the pic, I actually did not want that car.  J and the salesman had to talk me into it.  Well, I should have stuck with my gut instinct because before the month was over, it was already having problems.  The coolant needs to be refilled every few weeks and it wouldn’t start and kept having to be jumped.  We took it back to where we bought it and they put in a new alternator but the coolant problem never got fixed.  Guess where that car has been for the last  3 weeks?  I’ll give you a hint…not in our garage!

Nope, we decided to take it to a mechanic because we need to sell it.  Neither of our vehicles is conducive to holding a car seat and with going through the adoption process, I want an SUV that will hold us, the dogs and the baby.  Our regular mechanic is out of commission having his knees replaced so we went to a place nearby that had good reviews.  Well, he put dye in it the first week to see if there was any visible leaks and there wasn’t.  So then, he tells us to pick it up and drive it around for a week and if the dye gets in the motor, then we will know for sure it’s the head gasket.  So J picks it up the Friday before Mother’s day, stops at the bakery to pick something up for his Mom, comes out to drive home and the car won’t start.     We borrow my Mom’s triple A card and get it towed back there.  Finally, at the end of last week, they look at it and say it’s the starter, so we give them the go ahead to order the starter and then they call and say they don’t think it’s the starter after all, it’s the flywheel (don’t ask, I have no idea).  So needless to say, car still not in working order and we still don’t really know what’s actually wrong with it.

So Saturday, I said I wanted to go shopping for a car.  I have 3 criteria which J knew before hand and agreed to.

• It needs to be from this decade so a 2010 or newer.
• It needs to have bluetooth.  I’m sure this will be a law before long in WI.
• It needs to have a sun/moon roof.  We both want this.

So we stop at a dealership Saturday and low and behold, like the 4th car we seen in the used car part has everything I want and is the exact color I prefer.  So, we go in, and ask to test drive it.  It’s great…rides smooth and has everything I want plus way more.  Go back in and figure out what the payments would be, J says he needs to sleep on it and wants us to look at our budget again.  Okay, fine, there going to be closed the next 2 days anyways so it’s not like someone could snatch it out from under me.  Well, Saturday night after working outside all night and a couple of beers, he says I can get it but still wants to do the budget, fine, we have to do it for the adoption paperwork anyways.  Monday morning, we finally do it.  We’re actually in better shape going into the summer than I thought we would be because I thought his last paycheck would be the 15th and it’s not til June 30th.

Well, guess who changed his mind.  Now he doesn’t want to get the car and keeps trying to find me other cheaper cars that don’t fit my criteria and I’m sorry, I may sound like a spoiled brat to some of you, but I’m just having none of it.  My gut told me not to get that stupid convertible and I should have listened to it and I am not backing down on what I want this time.  For me, this is the worst part of marriage, having to seek permission.

New Orleans, Adoption and Daycare. Part 2

The first afternoon I was in New Orleans, I received a call.  We were at Cafe Du Monde getting beignets, so I let it go to voicemail.  As we waited for our server to show up, I listened to the voicemail and it was our social worker.  It turns out that she took a new position supervising the Infant Domestic program at our agency and would no longer be our social worker.  I was upset, to say the least and knew that J would be upset too.  Although we haven’t had a ton of interaction with her yet, we liked her right away when we first met with her and she was the social worker on our friend’s 3 adoptions so we knew she was kind and good at her job.  We also found out that our classes are now being postponed til August when they have a new social worker hired.

I was right, J wasn’t happy and began re-thinking our plan to go with this agency…again.  I called Laura on Monday to speak with her about it and by the end of the conversation, I was totally reassured that we should stay where we’re at right now.  She reassured us that we can move forward and be in the book before we take August’s classes.  We just have to watch modules online and let her know that we watched them.  Our plan is still to have our paperwork done by the time we would’ve had our classes in June and as soon as the new social worker is hired (she’s thinking about a month), we will sit down (the 4 of us and have a meeting about where we’re at).  We will also get our portfolio book at that time to make our scrapbook for birth parents.  I’m hoping by the time we actually take the classes in August, we’ll already be in the book.

I do have concerns about the home study because of something that happened between J and his ex-girlfriend when we first start dating that resulted in him being arrested.  He had to do an aversion agreement and go through an alcohol assessment and go to a group about learning to communicate effectively.  The worst part is, she was totally lying but before J’s Sister could print out the evidence off FB, she blocked her.  J’s lawyer said they could fight it but he would call her children to the stand and J wasn’t willing to put the girls through that.   I am really hoping in doesn’t hinder us in anyway because J would be devastated if it does.

Anyways, I’m hoping to get through a lot of the paperwork this weekend and I’m really hoping this stupid cold I caught goes away!  It’s my own fault for not remembering that I should have brought Inner Defense with me on the trip until I was on the first airplane.  Being on airplanes and a weekend with not much sleep…I knew I wouldn’t get through that without getting sick and I was, unfortunately, right.

Hope all is well with you all!

Love~Dawnie

New Orleans, Adoption and Day Care, Oh My! Part 1

New Orleans was awesome!  It was an amazing, busy, exhausting weekend, but so worth the very expensive plane ticket!  I got to see my kids and some of the Lucas’ extended family that I haven’t seen in forever.  I drove up to Minneapolis after work on Thursday night and stayed in a hotel.  Woke up at 2:20am to pee and my wake up call was for 2:40 (my flight was 5:10am and they said I should get the 3:30am shuttle over to the airport) so I just stayed up.  Got to the airport in plenty of time (so early in fact, that none of the food places were open until a bit before boarding my flight), got my shaving cream thrown out because apparently, they count it as a liquid ( I was irritated, it was new and I had only used it once).  The 2nd half of the flight was pretty bumpy, but otherwise uneventful.  Had a 2 hr delay at the Houston airport and then onto NOLA!  Once we arrived in NOLA, we got stuck on the plane for about 30 min because of a storm moving through.  Finally made it to the taxi line and it was like a mile long…luckily, it went quickly.  I was greeted by 4/5 of the Lucas clan when I walked through the doors of the hotel!  It was so good to see them and get huge hugs.  I gave Hals part of her graduation present (my chocolate chip cookies) and was rewarded by much excitement to have Dawnie’s cookies again.  Daniel requested them for his Birthday in a couple weeks, lol.

My room was the only one ready so we all went up to drop our stuff off and the Jane, Halle, Dan (who is now a head taller than me 😦 ) and I went to do a little exploring.  We went to Cafe Du Monde for beignets.  They were delicious!

From there, we walked around for awhile and then went back to the Hotel to pick up Scott, Scott’s Sister (Karen) and nephew (Blake) and Halle’s older brother’s girlfriend (Phoebe).  We went to the Royal House to grab some apps and to wait for Justin (Halle’s older brother) to arrive.  I had crab claws in this amazing sauce with french bread that Daniel stole half of (as he always does).  Here we are:

From there, we headed to Halle’s house to check it out and then went to visit the Tulane Campus.  After that, we went to dinner (there was a lot of eating going on this past weekend).  I can’t remember the name of the restaurant, but I had 3 small filet mignons covered with different sauces over mashed potatoes and it was so yummy!  After dinner, the older adults (which I really should have been included in, lol) and Daniel went back to the hotel and Blake and I were left to try and keep up with the 20 somethings.  We went to Frenchman St. to a few different bars and had some drinks and listened to music.  We were back at the hotel by Midnight, Thank God, because I’d been up for 22 hrs by then and was exhausted!

Got up at 8am Saturday morning and headed out for Breakfast and some exploring with Justin, Phoebe and Daniel.  Got back to the hotel about 11am and got ready to head to the graduation.  It was about 2 hrs long and pretty boring but we were so proud of Hals!!!

From there, we went to lunch at Jaqimo’s (spelling?) and oh my goodness….sooooo good!  I was pretty worried about the food before I went down because I’m not a big spicy person but I loved everything I ate while I was there and I would totally fly back down there just to go this place again.  It was that yummy!  After lunch, most of us went back to the hotel to rest for about an hour before heading to a house party for Hals and 2 of her best friends.  One of the families had it catered and it was a good time just enjoying everyone’s company, food and drinks.  This is where my favorite part of the weekend happened.  Daniel, who will be 14 in 2 weeks is still such a love (I love that about him).  He was sitting on my lap because there weren’t enough chairs and we ended up having like an hour long discussion about God.  It was awesome!  He was asking great questions and is so interested in reading the Bible.  I’m going to get him a Teen Bible for his Birthday.  He also might come out this summer and stay with us for a week or so.  🙂  After the house party, Blake and I once again headed out with the young’ins to a music venue/bar to hear this great brass band play.  Their name was “Soul Rebels” and they were fantastic.  At about 12:15am, Blake and I got a cab back to the hotel and the early 20 somethings headed for the next bar, lol.  Got up at 5am and headed back to the airport.  After a delay in Houston, I finally arrived in Minneapolis, got back to the hotel to get the truck and arrived home just before 5pm.  It was a long day!!!

This Girl….

These Kids….

This Family (minus the oldest son because he had to go back to CA)….

has my heart!

And I get to see them tomorrow!!!  That girl in the top picture…I have seen her graduate from Kindergarten, Middle School, High School and now College.  I have been with her when she turned 21 and Saturday afternoon, she graduates Magna Cum Laude from Tulane University in New Orleans.  I am excited for various reasons…I get to see this awesome family and some of their extended family, I’ve never been to New Orleans, and I really need this short get away.  The downside, we couldn’t afford to have J come with.  😦  The plane ticket was crazy expensive, IMO.

So tonight when I get off work, I’m heading to Minneapolis to stay at a hotel that has airport shuttle because my plane leaves at 5:10am.  Layover in Houston and then on to NOLA.  I will come back on Sunday exhausted because they do not believe in sleep in that family AND we only have a very short time together, lol.

My 1st Mother’s Day

Although, I didn’t have a baby in my arms and I wasn’t almost 6 months pregnant, like I should be, all in all, my 1st Mother’s Day weekend was pretty darn good.

There were tears, several times actually, but not always tears of sadness.

The first were when my SIL recognized our loss.  The second set was during J’s little cousin’s dance recital.  They did a Daddy/Daughter dance and I just so want that for J someday so I totally bawled during that.  It was just so touching!  The third set was when we went to dinner with my Mom, Sister, nieces and nephew.  My Mom gave my Sister and I each a card with a candle that smells exactly like the lilac bushes outside her house.  Her card was just so sweet and completely touched my heart.  The 4th set was when I read something my Sister posted on FB on Sunday wishing everyone a “Happy Mother’s Day” but asking for her friends to remember those that have lost and those that are waiting and to pray for them.  The fifth set happened last night.  I stopped home while J was waiting for the tow truck to come get my car (a whole other story) and one of our small group leaders stopped by and dropped off a card for us.  They are the ones that have adopted 3 children through our agency and have really been helping us through this process.  His wife had dropped off a card and chocolate for me last year so I wasn’t surprised to see him dropping off a card again this year.  I stuck the card in my purse and headed back out to follow the tow truck to the mechanics.  When we got home, I opened it up and inside was a $500 check to put towards our adoption!  Cue tears!!!!  I still don’t know how we will be able to completely express our Thankfulness and gratitude for their very generous gift.

There were other tears this weekend (I know, y’all probably think I spent the whole weekend crying), but those were the ones that had to do with Mother’s Day.  Unfortunately, the other tears were very much sad tears.  My Aunt called my Mom Saturday morning to let her know that they are only giving my Uncle 2 weeks – 2 months left to live.  He’s going downhill rapidly.  J and I went to see him yesterday because I’m in New Orleans next weekend for a graduation and I wanted to make sure I saw him at least one more time.  When we got there, he had just gotten up and my cousin said it was the 1st time he had really been out of bed since Wednesday.  We spent a couple hours there talking and reminiscing.  My Mom, other Aunt, and Sister were supposed to go this afternoon to see him, but my cousin called and said they were having a hard time getting his breathing under control (his brain is no longer telling his diaphragm to breathe) so they were pretty sure he was going to be moved to an in-patient facility down by Madison.  Now they’re just waiting for the call to see where he’s at so they can get down there one more time at least to see him.

Although, my Uncle and I aren’t super close, he is the last male in my family that I’m at all close with.  He is also my GodFather.   I have an Uncle left on my Dad’s side, but I only see them once every couple years usually.  There’s one more Uncle on my Mom’s side too, but he’s an alcoholic and nobody ever sees him because he spends his life at the bar.  How he’s not the one to die first, I don’t know.  I guess they’re not kidding when they say only the good die young.  I’m hurting for my Aunt who just lost her Mom a couple weeks ago, my cousins because I’ve been there and know what they’re going through, and my Mom and Aunt who have to say goodbye to their brother.  Even though none of us want him to continue to have to suffer, saying goodbye is so hard.  He is going to be greeted by a lot of people when he gets to Heaven’s gates though.

I hope you all were able to get though yesterday without too much trouble.  I had quite a few people acknowledge the day for me either in person or via fb message and it definitely made it a little easier.

Lots of Love~Dawn

I Am A Mom

Last night, we went to dinner with my In-Laws to celebrate Mother’s Day.  Now, we all know I don’t always get along with them and I didn’t expect to be recognized as a Mom last night.  However, when the bill came and J paid for it, my SIL and BIL were offering him money and I just said, totally out of habit, “No, this is your day, we’re treating.”  And my SIL actually looked at me and her eyes welled up with tears and I knew at that moment, she was actually recognizing me, maybe not necessarily as a Mom, but she was recognizing our loss.  And of course, I just said, “Don’t, I’m fine”, because I knew I would start bawling if she said anything.

It was already an emotional night because the restaurant we went to was one of my Dad’s favorites and when we went to sit down, some friends my Dad was really close with were there eating.

In other news, sometimes, being self-employed totally sucks!  We get penalized over and over for creating our own job.  I don’t know if I told you yet, but neither of our cars will hold us and a car seat.  The convertible is way too hard to get a seat in and out of and I’m not even sure we could fit a seat in there safely with the way the seats are bucketed.  The truck, we can turn the airbag off to put the seat in front, but then there’s no place for the other adult.  So, I’ve been pouring over craigslist like it’s my job to find something else.  We do have the convertible listed on there, but no bites yet and at the moment, it doesn’t even work (we think it’s the head gasket) so we can’t sell it at the moment anyways.  What I truly want to do is lease a new vehicle, because neither of us have to drive to work and I’m the kind of person that likes change…I hate having the same car for a long time so lease makes sense for me.  Unfortunately, we just don’t have the extra $2500 sitting around that we would have to have up front to do a lease, especially not knowing what’s happening with daycare kids.  Well, I found a Mazda 5 on craigslist for $5950 (we got them down to $5200).  We went to look at it and although it totally needs to be detailed, they couldn’t get the remote start to work, and there were a few dings on the outside, I really liked it.  The 2 things I really want in a car is bluetooth so I can have my phone hands free and a sunroof.  This had both along with a DVD player and the remote start that’s not working at the moment.  It has plenty of room inside because it’s like a miniature mini van.  It has 2 seats in the way back that fold down for more storage and 2 captain chairs in the middle which can actually fold down also.  Plenty of room for J, the pups and I, plus any kiddos we adopt.  Okay, back to the reason being self-employed sucks.  The credit union says our debt to income ratio is too high and won’t give us the loan.  I think it completely sucks that they’ll look at J’s gross income, but they won’t look at mine.  For me, they only look at what I made after expenses!  Hello….I take every single deduction I possibly can because otherwise, we totally would be screwed on taxes!  This means things that come out of both our checks (like utilities, toilet paper, food, etc.) get deducted (at least partially) for daycare.  I already get charged an enormous self employment tax and now I get screwed because of deductions too.  So pissed!!!!

We do have one option left, but someone else was going to look at the car last night, so now I don’t even know if it’ll still be available if we get this figured out.  J’s ex-wife is the loan officer at the bank that we have our other car loan through.  We didn’t go there first because the interest rate was better at the credit union.  She was out of the office on Friday so we couldn’t find out if she’ll be able to help us out.  Hopefully she can!

Come to think of it, I don’t even know if you guys know that J has an ex-wife!  He does and let me just say, she’s amazing!!!  Like, I truly think we could have been great friends if we didn’t share a husband, lol.  We are fb friends, but we don’t hang out or anything, I think that’d weird J out a bit too much.  But seriously, the night before we had to go get our marriage license, J realized he didn’t have his divorce decree or whatever it’s called so he called her at 9:30 at night and she was like no problem, just come pick it up at the bank tomorrow….if she would’ve been like the girlfriend he had before me…we would’ve been so screwed.  She also found a bunch of old pics of J’s family and when he stopped down at the bank to get them, she gave him a card with $50 in it to go towards our adoption…see, she’s amazing, right?!  And through all of that, she and her new husband have gone through multiple miscarriages.  He has children from his first marriage, but they’ve given up on children together because she said she just couldn’t deal with it anymore.  So yep, I’m extremely Blessed that my Husband’s ex is completely wonderful!

I want to end with just wishing you all a Happy Mother’s Day tomorrow.  I know it will be difficult for most of us.  Whether you have Angel babies or have only had the chance to have the heart of a Mom for now.  You all deserve to be celebrated!  Not everyone can be the warriors that you are.  Not everyone would do everything in their power to bring their baby (however, it may come to you) into this world.

Lots of Love, my Friends ~ Dawn

Where Do I Begin?

That’s what I’ve been asking myself and it’s why I haven’t really written much of anything lately.

Infertility is hard.  Miscarriage is hard.  Except for maybe the first couple weeks after finding out I was going to miscarry, and then dealing with the actual symptoms for over a week, I really haven’t cried much about it or even probably thought about it a lot, until lately.  I think I just internalized it all.

After losing 4 people that I was extremely close to (my boss from the cafe I worked at all though hs and college in Jan 2007, then my Grandma in Nov. 2007, my Uncle in 2009 and my Dad less than a year later in 2010), I’ve kind of become numb to death.  How sad is that?  And it’s not that I’m not sad…I am and I cry when it happens, but then for at least the first year, especially with my Dad…I just kind of pretended that I was still in CT and just couldn’t see him much.  It’s probably totally unhealthy, but it’s worked for me up until now.

We’ve all seen infertility wreck marriages and we’ve seen them grow stronger because of it.  J and I were always in the later category until this year.  It’s been a rough year.  We’ve grown apart.  We’ve been busy with separate things and not making a point to concentrate on each other.  We haven’t been doing our devotions, we haven’t been good about going to Church (we do watch it live from our living room sometimes, but not always), and we haven’t been good about praying together or separately.  Once he was done coaching, I got busy with Young Living, Thirty One and Family Promise and now that it’s nice out, he’s been taking on lawn mowing and tree trimming jobs.

What’s good is that we recognize that this is happening and had a long talk this weekend.  It’s time to re-connect.  Time to turn back to God and to each other.  Time to enjoy what’s happening now and make sure the time we do spend together is quality time.  I waited almost 34 years for that man, so this marriage failing is just not an option…ever.  And I don’t think we’re headed that way, but the talk was needed.  Some changes in our lives and relationship need to happen and I seriously need to find away to be happy with my work again and also to find some motivation and determination to be healthy and lose weight because I think it’s seriously effecting my demeanor at this point.  You think that would be enough motivation, but it doesn’t seem to be.

This 3 week vacation cannot come soon enough for me!

In other news:  I have started a Thirty One adoption fundraiser for us.

If there is something you need/want or have a gift you need to buy for someone, here is the link:

http://www.mythirtyone.com/647800/shop/Party/EventDetail/8258586

I will close it out May 18th.  Please do not feel obligated in anyway to purchase…your friendship and prayers are plenty.  I am giving away any free product that results though so for every $50 in orders, you get your name in a drawing for the free product.

I hope you are all well!

Lots of Love~Dawn