Mom Moments

Moms, ever heard of Wittlebee?? It sounds like fun! I am debating about whether or not I am going to order next month... If you're interested, follow the link and we can both get some credits!

Speaking of momming it up, I'm struggling a little bit here. At least in the family planning aspect. I find myself incredibly confused about what I want the "family plan" to be over the next few years, and I feel like that decision needs to be made. And soon.

After E was born, the plan was to wait 2 years, try again, and hope for another Autumn birthday. I was down with that plan up until about, oh... 3, 4 months ago. All of a sudden, I am not feeling the getting pregnant thing. I'm not excited about having another newborn, or losing my body (half-fixed as it is), and going through all of the health issues that followed the last pregnancy. I'm not excited about a million wake-ups and feedings and the whining... Oh dear pepper-poppers, the whining.

And I'm excited about adopting. But I'm not sure if that is because I am excited about adopting, or just not excited about all of that crap I listed above. Against my better judgement, I seem to have gotten hooked by the picture of a little girl orphaned somewhere in Eastern Europe. Unfortunately for me, I followed one too many blog links, saw her picture, and just want to be able to give her a hug. A real hug. I look at her list of issues and find myself saying "I could take that on," when really, a sane person would be talking themselves out getting caring for a small child with those physical needs.

Last night, I may have gone a little insane and asked my husband if we could swing it. Now, normally, I would say he's the more emotional of the two of us. I'm always very methodological about the decisions I make, whereas he's more of a go-with-your-gut sort. However, when it comes to the underdog, I usually fling all of that out the window... which is how I ended up with three dogs and a cat (damn you, animal shelters!). His response, of course, was "we don't have $25,000." Which is true. We don't have a spare $25,000 lying around. And what little money we do have stashed away is earmarked for other things. Well played, reason. Well played.

So, I pouted for awhile, looked at her pictures some more, and dreamed about her half of the night. The other half of the night, I dreamed about E. And when I woke up, I felt a little reluctance at letting someone else--anyone else--take any of my time away from her. Perhaps for selfish reasons--OMG, there could be two of them!--and perhaps for the same unselfish reasons parents the world 'round go through when they begin to plan for another child. I'm not sure what it is or what I want or why everything has changed so suddenly.

Part of me wants to say "to hell with the plan," get on the phone, and contact the adoption agency at the top of the list and get this show on the road. If we were to do that, we could probably get it done before it will interfere with Captain's Career Course (wherever that may be...). I just can't see the Army saying "Yeah, take 3 weeks off of school for personal reasons! We'd love that!", so any adoption plan would have to come after he finished it (right?).... And that could be 2-3 years down the road. Another part of me wants to just say "okay, the plan has been the plan for awhile. You made those decisions for a reason, stick to it." Who knows, maybe I'll get the baby fever, again, and all of this worry will be superfluous. And part of me wants to say "to hell with it all."

It's like I am being pulled by my arms and a leg, and the leg I am left to stand on is getting a cramp. Pretty soon, I'm going to fall on my ass and it isn't going to be pretty.



As an aside, I have been thinking about adding ads to my page to generate a little extra adoption mullah... Thoughts?

To DO

My list of things to do is entirely too long. And it's unlikely that I will get to them all.... So, what should be the focus? Should there be a focus? Is me focusing on there being a focus blurring the focus of my focus?

How many times can I type gocus in one small paragraph?

...

I want to go back to Scotland. I would live there forever, if life allowed for it, but life doesn't allow for it. And, unless some miracle manages to work out, it is probably a chance of zero to none that the Army would EVER send us there. I could do with a trip, but that would be thousands upon thousands of dollars, and only for a vacation.

We want to buy a house at the next duty station. We're saving for that, and putting money away for E and any-additional-siblings-she-may-have's education. Which means the house saving isn't as quick as it could be (I mean, it's good, just not oh-we-could-pay-you-in-cash-for-this-whole-house! Unless I can talk S into buying something in the crumbling category).

We're planning on having one more biological child; the plan is to do that in the next year.

We want to adopt. And don't want to wait too long. Problem? See savings.

I want to get one of these stupid novels published.

I want to lose the remaining weight I have hanging around from pregnancy number one before starting on pregnancy number two. I have like... 4 months. Hands? Meet hair. Yank.

And that's just the DOMESTIC stuff. I don't even want to think about the rest. I really wish/wonder if there is an alternate universe in which I am managing to live all of the dreams, wishes, etc. I have. Anyone seen Sliding Doors with Gwenyth Paltrow? It's kind of old, and I can't tell you who all was in it, but it was definitely an interesting concept--one small event causes one woman's life to split, and she (unknowingly) lives two different lives. Eventually, they merge, but I often think of that movie when I am agonizing over life and choices and... stuff. It seems like the only logical way to live all the lives I want to live.

And by logical, I mean completely illogical.

...

Where do I come up with this stuff?!

Giving Up and Moving On... If Only in Dreams

I'm just going to pout for a few minutes.

As I mentioned before, S has a busy schedule this summer. He gets to sort of make the schedule since he's "in charge" of this aspect of the mission, but he's still on-call all of the time. They need someone "on" 24/7, so to compensate for that, he has all of his soldiers working on a stagger, himself included. So, for the past 2 weeks (and the next 6), he is working 6 days on and 2 days off. This really isn't a big deal, except I am pretty sure he has ended up having to go in (albeit briefly) during his down time.

I thought it would be a great idea to try to get away for a day, and we have yet to go out to the Washington coast. We have done some travel around Puget Sound, which is nice enough, but nothing along the Pacific Ocean. I love beach combing and exploring, and I think it could be fun for E. I want to pack up the camera and take some pictures. We really only have a few weeks of true summer in Washington, so we have to get all of our outdoor living packed into the latter half of July and August.

Well, I had grand plans--I picked out the days I thought would work best, and asked if that would do (we'd only be a couple hours away, so he could go so long as he had his phone on)... And was essentially shot down. I'm not going to mention what it was, but I'm feeling pretty bummed. I'm really trying to put forth an effort and find some things I actually like/don't mind about Washington, but when those attempts get trumped by something else, I just want to give up and go back to being thoroughly miserable. Which I will be, anyway.

But, on the bright side, that is gas money that won't be spent and can go into my adoption jar and/or house fund.


Maybe I'll use that time to take up painting...

What Would You Do With Your Imaginary $500 Million?

With the lottery winnings half a billion dollars, I am pretty sure every American who is semi-conscious and owns a television/internet access is fantasizing about what they will do with the winnings.

I'm not optimistic enough to think there is even a chance in hell that I will get a piece of that (though, you better believe we are buying a ticket), but that doesn't stop me from imaging what I would do with that much money. The hubby and I have already had extensive conversations about how best to go about making use of such a large sum, and we have decided that the most logical course of action would be:

1. Take the annuity option.
2. Invest the money.
3. Buy this house in Scotland:
4. Pay off my parents' house, debt, have them retire and move with us into this house in Scotland:

Yes. It's for sale. You can read more about it here on Zoopla.co.uk.

It's been on my list of "I MUST HAVE THIS, NOW!" for at least a year. It's gorgeous--really, you should go see the pictures. I wouldn't share my dream house for the whole world to see, but I have a pretty good feeling that it will never be mine. This breaks my heart, obviously, but what else is a girl to do? I can only ask that no one else buy it on the off chance that I will, in fact, at some later date, have a few million dollars to spend on something so magnificent.

I COULD FINALLY HAVE HIGHLAND COWS!

I'm not entirely sure what I would do with it. I mean, other than have all of my friends and family come visit me so we could put on full, fancy dress parties with highland dancing and bagpipes. I could waltz around the place while wearing panniers and a wig, pretending I am Flora McDonald. Or start my own distillery (after all, I will have millions of dollars, duh!).

Yeah. I'd be excellent at being Nouveau Riche.

What would you do if you won half a billion dollars?

P.S. #5: Friendship rings!