The Daily Chai is Ambivalent

Today's Chai Latte is perfect. I have nothing else to say about it except that my entire day has been made because it started with the perfect drink. Sweet, simple things people, enjoy them all!

Mixed emotions last night as my real estate agent came to take pictures and measure rooms so she can list our matrimonial home. We've been here for six years and I never wanted to move again, but here I am, planning, once again, to move. Balls. God, I hate moving.

We bought this house sight unseen while we still lived in Germany. Lots of people went to look at it for us, but the first time we saw the house was on our final inspection right before we moved in. The bedrooms were a little smaller than I'd imagined, but all in all, I was happy with it. It's an old house in an old town and I loved it. It has some good character, like transom windows above the bedroom doors and some of the original trim has survived. There are windows everywhere and on sunny days it is filled with lovely light in every room. It has a finished attic family room just like the house I grew up in and a creepy old cellar with a working cistern that I have never been fully convinced does not house a crocodile. And I SWEAR I have heard children laughing and running when mine have been fast asleep. Maybe just a trick of the house creaking in its old age, but it doesn't bother me, it just reminds me this hundred year old house has history.

We will leave some of our own history here to carry on. There has been love and laughter in this house and it is the house I brought Anna home to when she was born. It is the house that Kate has grown up in and the only place she remembers as the memories of Germany faded for her. I spent almost two years here as a stay-at-home mom, raising my girls and the happiness of those memories will last me forever.

But it is also a house that has many sad memories for me and my family. By the very virtue of its age and character, it has caused us both stress and in someways, that stress played a part in destroying our marriage. Last spring, I thought if we moved to a new house, a house that we would both love, the stress would melt away, but that is like having a baby to save a marriage. It's a pretty big commitment for a bandaid solution. When I thought about buying something else with my ex and being as house poor as we were planning to be, I backed off the idea. It was yet another indication that my marriage was crumbling. People in a healthy partnership do not worry that buying a house is going to tie them more fully to the other person, they reveal in the happiness of the commitment.

And so, a chapter of my life comes to an end. I am excited about it as well as sad. Last week, I was having a few low moments and I asked a friend to remind why I was doing this again. To remind me the correct path is not always the easiest or the happiest. To remind me that sometimes the things of the greatest worth are the hardest to achieve. He came back with this:

So I, like everyone around me, weathers the storm. I'm even learning to enjoy the storm because I never know where it's going to take me next and I'm always up for an adventure.

The Daily Chai Goes Back in Time

An excerpt from my pregnancy blog 2005-10-21  (17 weeks)

I feel like I've been neglecting my journal since I haven't written in over a week, but nothing much has been happening. I don't think what  I was feeling last week was the baby moving,  because I haven't felt more movement or stronger movements since then. Everyone keeps telling my pregnancy will be really real to me once I start feeling the baby move and that it feels so cool, so I'm getting impatient, waiting for this next step! In true drama queen fashion to which I'm sure you've all become accustomed, I almost started to cry on my way to work today because I started thinking about the birth and how much it's going to hurt and how hard it will be and how I'll never be able to do it. It's so stupid, I know, all women fear labour and almost all women make it through somehow. I know I should be preparing for the birth by educating myself, but I can't bring myself to think about it. I wish I could just go to sleep pregnant and wake up with a baby! Worse yet is when you voice your fears and everyone says, "Oh, it isn't that bad." Uh, yes it will be!!! My most favourite thing in the world to date is when they start ‘entertaining’ me with stories of their labours or their friends’ labours. I should probably say HORROR STORIES. Why do women do that? I mean, this is my first baby. I have no memories or anything personal to go on. I’ve led a fairly charmed life, the last time I broke a bone, I was 11 and it was a minor hair-line fracture of the wrist. But these WOMEN. Oh. My. God. Here’s an example of the scariest-assed thing I have ever heard. My friend, who shall remain nameless, but she knows who she is, said that her niece was in labour for 48 hours. Then she pushed for four hours and when the baby finally started to come the woman had to have an episiotomy to avoid tearing. The doctor made a cut three inches long from which said woman has never really recovered because they didn’t stitch her up right. 48 hour labour? Episiotomy? Stitching? What the fuckity fuck? Why do people even HAVE children? Oh, but they say it’s all worth it when you finally hold that newborn baby in your arms for the first time. Whatever. I’ll believe that when it happens. Oh and here’s another one: This one involves the umbilical cord being tied around the baby’s neck. Mother in extreme pain and baby in mortal danger. Good times, good times. AND THEN, when I say, “Well, I’m really worried about the pain and I’m having a epidural,” I get in TROUBLE because some people think epidurals are bad for the baby. Like, when did my body and my baby become anyone’s business? I’ll handle labour exactly the way I want to, thank you very much. I don’t roll my eyes when people proudly tell me their ridiculous birthing plans to relax with massage during labour pain. Again, I say, WHATEVER. You do it your way, I’m very happy with my way! I have a lot of weird dreams about the baby. Last night I had another dream, but it was more normal. I dreamt that we had a boy and we named him Connor. I woke up feeling that, of course, this was a prophetic dream and that it will come true. That it is fate. I'm starting to wonder if I always have these weird thoughts or if it's because I'm pregnant. I don't remember what it's like not be pregnant. I honestly cannot remember what I felt and what I thought about when I was not incubating a fetus. It’s like going to a party sober and getting so shitfaced drunk that later in the evening, if you can even form coherent thought, you wonder what it’s like to be sober and in fact, even when you think REALLY HARD, you can’t comprehend ever having been sober and you’re pretty sure that you started life drunk as billygoats and have experienced your entire life drunk. Being pregnant is basically the same. Yesterday I went to pick up lunch for everyone at work (my boss paid because it's his birthday) and I saw a teeny-tiny pink baby with her father. I said, "That looks like a very new baby!" and he said she had just been born on Monday! She looked so sweet and small and, unbelievably, I almost started to cry right then and there because I felt so overwhelmed with emotion at the thought of my baby being out and about picking up lunch one day.  My mom is right, pregnant women are crazy!