Old Me vs New Me

Earlier this week on my birthday, my driver's license expired. A few weeks ago I sent off the papers to renew it by mail and the new one arrived today. I have to say that there was something funny about seeing that same old picture of my 24-year-old self. What's funnier is that now I can pass it off as "me" until 2015! (Thank you, Texas, for not requiring a person's weight to be printed on their driver's license! I would have really hated to lie about it.)

It got me to thinking about the old me - the Stacey of that photo. It was taken the year we moved to Texas, 2001. I was 24 years old, 8 years younger than I am now. I had absolutely no gray hair and I have no recollection of mentally reminding myself not to make a double chin for the camera. I recognize the nervous look on my face that says, "I can't believe I'm making this official. I'm now a Texan and I'm going to have to learn to drive here." Besides that look, I see a happy girl who looks too young to have been married for 3 years already. I see the innocent, relatively carefree, optimistic young lady I used to be.

Sometimes I wonder if that girl is still around. If you read this blog with any regularity, you know what happened next. We decided to try to have a baby. Well, we didn't even really decide to TRY. We just decided to have a baby! Simple, right? The next 8 years that followed were the hardest of my life so far, and I know that those years have changed me as a person. Sometimes when I look at pictures of myself today, I don't see any of that old sparkle in my eyes anymore. I don't mean that I'm never happy or that I have no joy at all. I mean that I can see a woman who has known pain, grief, and disappointment. Sometimes when I'm with a friend who really knows me well, I think they might notice that too even though I feel like I'm hiding it well. And sometimes when I'm with a friend who didn't know me before infertility and recurrent miscarriage entered my life, I wonder if they really know me at all. I never used to break down and cry in the middle of a conversation. I loved going to parties and showers and all kinds of get-togethers. I wasn't afraid of any question that might be asked of me or any comment that might be made, and I very rarely left feeling hurt, sad, angry, or completely isolated from the crowd.

Now, that old optimist in me wants to tell you some good things about this new Stacey. Although I've struggled with it in the in-between times, my faith is stronger now. I had faith back then, but it was largely untested. I'd always been grateful for God's hand in my life during a childhood that wasn't easy. I trusted Him, but now I can see how easy it was to trust once I'd reached my early twenties. I was on the other side of that adversity! I'm still in the middle of this one and I'm learning more and more every day what it's like to trust Him when it's hard. I don't succeed at that every day but I think I'm getting better at it.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm still getting to know the new me. I hate the circumstances right now but I'm interested in what kind of person might emerge on the other side of this. That 24-year-old on my driver's license is still part of who I am even though now she's a little rough around the edges.

Birthday Recap

Here's a quick birthday update for those of you who wanted to know how the day went. First I should tell you that my original plan was to spend all day Saturday at the movie theater. Yes, that's my idea of fun! It's been a crazy few weeks (months, really) and I wanted to get lost for a few hours. Well, Saturday wound up being a day that we were stuck at home with work being done on the kitchen. I am grateful for progress, and the good news is that I think this is finally the week! Thursday is hopefully the final scheduled day of construction and we hope to spend the weekend getting settled into the new kitchen. I can't wait to show it to you when it's done. I bet you're sick of hearing me talk about it!

Saturday was a bust, but Sunday turned out to be a very good day. The weather was cloudy and cold but we made the best of it. We went to church that morning and then Chuck and I had lunch at a deli before catching a movie. We saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which we both enjoyed. I love going to the movies and I love movie snacks! I was all set with my popcorn, Junior Mints, and Pibb (Dr Pepper's first cousin). We also did a little bit of shopping at an electronics store (I bought a cd) and Barnes and Noble (of course I bought a couple of books). Before going home we stopped at Chili's for my favorite restaurant dessert - the Molten Chocolate Cake. Yum! Not a nutritious day by any means, but boy was it good!

Last weekend we celebrated with my family while we were home in Louisiana, so that softened the blow of not seeing them yesterday. Chuck and I had a great day together. Oh, and he bought me a lovely bottle of perfume as a gift. I'm not big on perfume in general but this one smells great!

I'd be lying if I didn't tell you that birthdays are hard for me. The last two before this one were extremely difficult, one immediately following a miscarriage and one just after a surgery. Yesterday it was sobering when I changed the info here on my blogger profile. Now I'm 32 and this is year 8 of trying to have a baby. It's hard watching that number creep up while your circumstances aren't changing any. It's like a knife in my heart when I hear people say they want to have their children before they turn 30. I understand, because I thought I wanted that too. It didn't happen that way, and you know what? I'll be grateful to have children whenever it happens. Beggars can't be choosers! I don't want to obsess about how old I am. This is the life I've been given and I'm going to live it.

Thanks everybody for the birthday wishes! I say it all the time, but I mean it - you guys are awesome. If I'd had my children before I was 30, I wouldn't have this incredible group of friends and team of supporters in my life right now. To my real-life friends, thanks for the calls, messages, and cards! It truly was a great day.

Happy Birthday!

Hey everybody! It's Stacey's hubby Chuck. I've used my amazing computer skills to hack into Stacey's blog. Ok, so she told me the password. Anyhoo, in case you missed yesterday's post, I just wanted to let you know that today is Stacey's birthday. And I also wanted to thank all of you loyal readers for your support! It really means a lot to Stacey (and me).

Happy birthday, Sweetheart. I love you!
Chuck

Favorite Things

Tomorrow is my birthday. While I'm not thrilled about turning 32 (it's not so much the getting older part as much as the getting older while still childless part - age is so much more than a number when you're in this situation) I decided to do a post today in honor of the occasion. I want to tell you about a few things that I really wouldn't want to live without. Of course my family and friends would top the list, but I'm talking specifically about products here. No, I'm not being paid to promote any of these things, but if you have connections I would consider it. (Ha ha)

And now, a few of my favorite things:

1. Swiffer Products

I love any and all things Swiffer. The dusters, the sweeper, the Sweeper Vac, and the Wet Jet - I own all of them. Honestly, these things make cleaning up so easy. The main living space in my house has laminate wood floors, and we are working on phasing out the carpet in the rest of the house. Only the master bedroom has carpet now and it won't be long before we remove it. I go through the house two or three times a week with the Swiffer sweeper for a quick clean up. I love the Wet Jet for mopping because you don't have to wring out a nasty mop! It's seriously my favorite system for cleaning house. Have I convinced you to use it? I always say I should be on their commercials!

2. The Chi Flat Iron

I can't believe I made it through high school and college without this thing. It's not just a flat iron; it's a flat iron from heaven. My hair is relatively thick and wavy (really more like frizzy) but I always want it to be straight. Every time I wash it I use the blow dryer and then the flat iron to smooth it out. I wish I knew how to work with the wave and let it be natural some days but when I try it I just feel ridiculous! Anyway, this flat iron is pricey but it's worth every penny if you want straight hair. I love it.

3. Amazon dot com

Maybe I told you this around Christmas, but I love this website. The only negative thing is that I'm sure it has played a pretty big part in further enabling me to be a hermit. I do most of my Christmas shopping there and other various shopping throughout the year. I have my own wish list and I have created gift idea lists for my family members. I love it when I can look on the idea list or their own personal wish list (which you can search for by email address) and it makes shopping very easy. I think they have the best prices on books, and you only have to spend $25 to qualify for free shipping on an order. Love it!

4. Picasa

What if I told you that there was a fantastic and incredibly user-friendly method for organizing and editing your digital pictures on your computer? (Do you feel like you're watching an infomercial? I swear if this thing could be used as a juicer we'd really have something magical.) Seriously, my husband introduced me to the software application Picasa several years ago after we first got a digital camera. I thought I could never learn how to work with such a thing, but I am in love with it. Better yet, brace yourselves people, it's FREE. When it first came out we actually purchased it, but now it's owned by the nice people at Google and you can download it for free. No joke. It has the best features - you can correct red-eye, do all of your cropping, change to black and white or sepia, and so many other things. It's simple to email photos or add them to your Facebook or blog. In my opinion, the best things about it are first that it's easy to use and it is a great tool for organization. I never have to search long for a photo. When you empty your memory card you simply give the album a title and date and everything is right where you need it. Second, I absolutely love the Web Album feature. You can upload groups of photos into a web album and share the entire album with friends by email. The album is saved so that if I'm away from home and want to show an album I've uploaded to friends, I just sign in to my account from their computer and there is my album. Ok, one more thing that is awesome about it. Let's say I'm at my sister's house for a birthday party and we forgot our camera at home. She takes a whole bunch of great pics and uploads them to a Picasa Web Album to email to me. I can get home, open her email, and download that same album straight into my Picasa. There are the photos all stored neatly into my own computer, just as if I'd taken them myself. Picasa, will you marry me? Ok, even though Picasa is my fiance, he has lots of brothers who are still available. You can get your own here.

5. DVR
I won't spend a lot of time on this one except to tell you how happy I am that we finally got on board with digitally recording our favorite TV shows. We don't have the actual Ti.vo brand, but we have the DVR that comes through our cable company and we are thrilled with it. Maybe this sounds goofy but I think it has saved me so much time. Watching my shows when it's convenient for me (often late at night when I can't sleep) and being able to skip through the commercials is great, not to mention that I don't have to worry about looking for a blank tape or recording over something I want to keep. Anything that makes my life more organized and clutter-free is likely to be on my list of favorite things! This is not a photo of a DVR, but if Simon Baker doesn't motivate you to start recording or watching The Mentalist I don't know what will!


I'm sure I could go on but I think 5 is plenty for today. Market research shows that if you start using these 5 things, your happiness will increase by 30%. Ok, that's not true but it's worth a shot. These are definitely at the top of my list. Now it's your turn. What things have you discovered that make your life so much easier? Tell me all about it and I'll add it to my Amazon wish list.

Facebook: A Love/Hate Relationship

Anyone who knows me in real life will wonder about the title of this post. That's because they know that I love Facebook! For a couple of years now I've been Facebook's biggest fan. I've tried to recruit my friends and family (yes, I'm one of "those people") because I think it's a great tool for keeping in touch with people. Don't worry, I haven't given up on all other conventional forms of keeping in touch. I still call people. I still write letters and send birthday cards. I occasionally even meet people for lunch! (That's saying a lot for the hermit side of me.)

Let me tell you why I love Facebook. I absolutely love that it has gotten me back in touch with dozens and dozens of college friends, many that I thought I may never find again. It's pretty effortless, it's free, and it's easy to get caught up on the past decade or so. Even with friends that I have kept in regular touch with, it's so simple to share photos and day-to-day stuff on Facebook. Really, there's a lot to love about it.

You may think I'm crazy when I tell you that I actually have two Facebook accounts. I have my regular one with all of my friends, family, classmates, and recently even my adviser from college! Several months ago I created a new account to use specifically for connecting with IF friends that I've "met" through this blog. I still don't share all of my personal information there, but it's a place slightly more private than Blogger for sharing photos and just connecting more personally with some of my blog friends. Really, it has been great. I'd love it if even more of you would find me there! (If you want to create a new account just for that like I did, or connect using your regular account you can find my profile at this link. I can't promise that anything there is super exciting, but if you're experiencing infertility and/or miscarriage and would like to have a group of friends to connect with on Facebook, come find me! One word of warning: if you already have an account and want to make a new separate one, be sure and use a different email address or you'll erase your other account, ok?!)

Alright, so here's what I don't like about Facebook. I see things there sometimes that make it hard for me to just enjoy the perks. Ultimately I guess they are just minor annoyances, but they sure do seem to bother me.

Stuff like this:


And this:


And this:


Why, people? I know these are just supposed to be cute or funny or whatever. But really they're pretty insensitive when you think about it. I know that perhaps I'm just a little sensitive to stuff like this, but these have been displayed on the profiles of my friends! I know that 90% of them are aware of my plight.

There's so much I could say about each one, but I think it's obvious why I think they're pretty hurtful. First of all, I don't know what my "super power" is but evidently it's NOT "growing people." And I don't know how "crafty" anyone thinks I am, but so far I'm not quite crafty enough to "make people." Oh, and I have no idea what I've been doing all these years that I thought I was working full time! No, I don't clock in anymore at a job, but somehow the house is getting cleaned and our clothes are washed.

I know these aren't meant to be taken literally. As a very dear friend said to me recently, though, I wish people would realize that they're not talking to a world full of fertile people only. There's a whole other topic here that could be explored about insensitive status updates on Facebook, but I'm definitely not going to tackle that one right now. I guess today my status message might read: "Stacey is really annoyed by ridiculous pieces of flair."

Shifting

Lately I've been noticing a change in the direction of my life. I guess it is only slight, since my ultimate goal remains the same. Ultimately I still want to be a mother. I want to raise children, whether biological or adopted. Even that last sentence is a shift in thinking for me. You see, I really didn't give much thought to adoption 10 years ago. I innocently thought that things would go pretty much as I imagined in my mind. I got married, finished college, worked for a couple of years, and was ready to start a family.

In fact, let's back up a bit. When I started college I majored in journalism. As far as career choices went, I knew that I liked to write. I wasn't sure whether that was the right path but I figured it was a safe place to start. Even then I knew that what I wanted out of life was marriage and children, but I have always been a very practical person. I didn't know how long that might take, so I wanted to pursue something I would enjoy. The fact was that I doubted I would find a spouse immediately.

Then came the first major shift.

It became increasingly harder for me to work on a deadline. I was pretty stressed out, and suddenly being a freshman in college, working my minimum wage, on-campus job, and writing for my school's newspaper were stretching me too thin. I know people who have conquered much more difficult things than that, but at the time it was pretty overwhelming for this small-town girl! To top it all off, I was trying to get through without school loans (by God's grace) and without a car. It was certainly a challenge!

By my second year of college I decided to change my major. My relationship with Chuck had grown more serious and I began to consider a more family-oriented major. I didn't regret what studying journalism had taught me so far, so I decided to continue with it as my minor. The best thing is that I hadn't lost any time. I still graduated in 4 years, with only one extra summer of classes in the middle. Don't get me wrong, college had not become just something I thought I should do. As someone who didn't come from a long (or even short) line of college graduates, I felt honored to be there. I worked at it with all of my might, even after getting married between my junior and senior years. My graduation day finally came in May of 1999 (yikes, almost 10 years ago!). I earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Family, Infancy, and Early Childhood Education with a double minor in Child Development and (that's right) Journalism. I graduated summa cum laude, and I praised the Lord for seeing me through with my goal intact: finishing college debt free.

That brings me back to the shifting. I felt like my life up until that point had been geared toward having a family. Certainly I consider my husband and myself a family, but I always wanted children too. Although I never wanted to be a teacher, I saw myself having my own children and somehow working with other children. My life has taken quite a different path and I now don't know in what direction it is heading. For example, I used to volunteer at church in the nursery department, mainly to fill a gap that needed extra help. I've come to realize, though, that it isn't my place to do that. That isn't where I need to be right now, and I'm done feeling guilty about it. I would much rather serve where my heart is truly in it. I still love children and want to be a mother more than ever. But how can I serve? Where is my place?

I'm beginning to think that my place, for right now anyway, is a "caring ministry." It turns out that life hasn't given me tons of experience with raising kids even though I thought I had set it up that way. No, I now have more experience with loss, trials, and grief. But I'm not falling apart (again, by God's grace). I hope I'm being made stronger. I've learned over the years that you never know what someone else is facing in life. I've learned to be sensitive to other people's struggles. I've learned to listen and not give empty advice or words of false hope. I hope I've learned to be a better friend and a praying friend.

I trust in God's plan for my life and I'm willing to go where He leads. In this life I've surely learned how to be flexible. Hopefully from here on out, the stretching and the shifting won't be too difficult.

In Other News

The last two posts have been particularly emotional for me to write. I thought today we could have a break from the heavy stuff and only talk about some lighter things, shall we? I need to update you on a couple of random things anyway, so this will be a catch-all kind of a post.


First, if you've been reading for a while then you know that my kitchen is being remodeled. I am so happy to report that this week we had the tile backsplash installed and grouted. The grout just got done today, so it isn't even dry yet. We still need the cabinet guys to come out one more time to install the one unit that was the wrong size and complete all of the trim. We are finally getting closer and I couldn't be more ready. I'm hoping that we will be moving in appliances as early as next week! We actually can't wait to get in there and cook some meals again. I promise to post some before and after pics once the whole thing is done.


I've been slowly working on my reading list for the year. I wish I already had a few crossed off of the list, but having Brisingr as my first book has slowed me down. My brother loves the Eragon series. I borrow his when he is done with them and he has been dying for me to finish this one. Normally it wouldn't take me a very long time to read a book (even one that has 748 pages like this one does). I'm about half way through it right now and not moving very quickly. I think that's mostly due to the amount of time I've spent blogging lately. As with any hobbies, spending a lot of time on one takes time away from the others! I'm very sad that I haven't worked on my scrapbooks for months. Unfortunately, my workspace is currently crammed with all of the stuff that belongs in our kitchen cabinets. I'm telling you, I can't wait to get that project finished!


Lately I'm excited about having my DVR filled with the return of some of my favorite TV shows. I haven't yet watched the premiere of 24 but I'm eager to get to it. (Emily, I've been avoiding your blog after I saw the title of your last post! Hope I can get caught up soon.) I did start watching American Idol auditions last night, with a mixture of curiosity and embarrassment as always. Pretty soon it will be time for a new season of Lost as well. Oh boy!


Finally, remember the post about my January Girl figurine? I'd found December and August on the internet and they were delivered this week. Aren't they cute all together?

I'm not a huge collector of nicknacks, in fact the only other collections I have besides DVDs and books are postcards, which I keep filed away in albums. I don't like having a lot of miscellaneous stuff around to dust, and besides, my shelves are already full of photographs. Searching for the other figurines in this set, though, has become a fun little challenge for me. I hope I'll be able to find the other nine someday.

Ok, one last thing. Shoot, I wasn't going to mention infertility this time but it always seems to come up these days. Oh well. After Christmas, Chuck and I were talking about saving up our money to buy the camera he's been talking about for years. We had a pretty nice start with some Christmas money we'd received and we were ready to start putting some more into savings for the camera. I swear this never happens to us, but last week he decided to check in our hiding place where we keep important documents and such things and occasionally some extra cash. Much to his surprise, he discovered that we had more cash in there than we realized! Holy cow, it was just enough to cover the new camera! What's that got to do with IF? Well, some of that money I remember us putting away two Christmases ago (when we were pregnant) for a baby bed. You know, I'm not giving up hope on a pregnancy ever happening, but we both just felt good about taking that money out and using it on something we can enjoy today! The UPS guy just delivered the new camera a few hours ago and I know Chuck can't wait to get home from work and play with it. He loves taking pics and I love to scrapbook them, so we are both thrilled with the new purchase. We'll be trying it out this weekend when we go to Louisiana for our nephew's birthday party.

So, how about you? What are your hobbies? Are you reading a good book right now? Do you have any unique collections? What are you watching on TV these days? Let's chat.