Functioning

Yesterday we squished approximately 75 crickets and dropped, maybe, 200 slugs in soapy water.  For some reason all my (too small) bathing suits are in the babies' room and, in preparation for our vacation, I had to retrieve them to try bottoms on, so in addition to mass murder, I went into the almost nursery.*  We did not fill out the adoption agency's application form.  We did not buy groceries for the week.  We did not go to bed at a normal hour.  I then had dreams about finding insect infestations on our plants until I gave up and got out of bed at 5:15 this morning.  I still didn't make it to work until 8:30.  This is what functioning looks like.

*Tops are another story, although I did not get to nurse our babies I did lactate, my breasts are now about 3X their pre-lactation size.

From infertility treatments to cervical insufficiency

For years we tried to get pregnant via ICI at home.  LOTS of people we know were successful at this, using known or unknown donor sperm resulting in beautiful babies, toddlers, children and young adults all over the place.  Our schedules are tricky, my cycles are trickier, after years of trying we decided to see a reproductive endocrinologist.

Time of Day

My mother is a cartographer by training.  [I am not, so this is not an inexact description.]  It is possible to look through a lens down at a photograph of a landscape and the shadows of the clouds on the mountains will reveal the time of day that the picture was taken.  Capturing a still image of a transient shadow of something almost insubstantial creates a permanent time stamp.

The babies nursery has one wall painted purple, the others still cream. One giant giraffe. Two dressers. One baby bath. Drawers full of baby clothes. A gift bag full of sympathy cards.  A permanent time stamp.

I struggle with the urge to finish the nursery. To hang their names on the wall, to reorder the returned cribs. To unfold the handmade blankets. To have a room finished and permanent.  To further encrypt the message currently stamped on the room, to make the message unavailable to anyone without the appropriate lens, without the key.  And then to loose the key, to hold the nursery as a marker for them, of them. To deny the message entirely.