Seeking God Knows What

• Tomorrow I see Psychiatrist Guy for a med check. I can’t decide if I want to talk about going off Zoloft and trying something else or just keep on keeping on. I’ve just been so tired and sort of “foggy” for the last six weeks since we upped the dose.

• I got into an argument with MK (well, we sniped at each other) at my parents over the fact that I said a mutual friend between M and myself who just adopted a baby from Guatemala might feel more of a connection with me at the moment since we have both been through infertility and adoption process, even though she was initially M’s friend. M is upset that J didn’t get in touch with her but did reply to an e-mail I sent her and apparently told MK so and that I hurt her by saying that as if they couldn’t understand since they didn’t adopt. After MK left, I ended up crying over it while talking about it with my mom.

• T finally applied for another job with one of the public school systems in the area, the same one we went to and where his mom taught for 30 years. I really hope he gets an interview as they have two positions open in the IT area. One he thinks might not be enough money, the other might be a little more senior than he has background for, but at least he took the step to send his resume in. His boss is really ticking both of us off over his inability to confirm whether T has the time he requested off until the last minute, even when T asks well in advance. Plus he has denied T time twice this year for no real good reason. Supposedly their vacation is use it or lose it, but T said that if he doesn’t get the days off at the end of this upcoming week to go with my parents to TN to see K, he is going to push to get compensated for not being allowed to use it. Yes, I know we were just in TN but my parents were going down, offered to drive their van, and we really want to see K since it has been over a year, so we took them up on the offer. I may regret it later but right now I’m looking forward to it.

• I have made no decision about whether I want to switch to full-time. My conversation with #5 about it was, well, I pretty much cried the entire session until the end when I pretty much stopped interacting, enough so he asked me “where I went”. First, he said he would strongly caution me not to do it but then upon discussing our debt situation, he said if I did decide to do it, I should look at it as a short-term thing like 6 months to a year. I’ve had a headache for the last two days because I’m feeling so stressed about it.

• We had a visit with L and her dad, stepmom, stepsister and her stepsister’s 3 month old son on Saturday. It was nice to see them and once she warmed up, Widget really had a good time playing with L. I want her to always feel comfortable with them and I feel badly that 6 months will go by between visits, but I still feel a lot of stress surrounding a visit. Mostly because when they are here, I really struggle with why L chose to place and if L regrets it. I feel like I’m somehow denying them something that is rightfully theirs. Not that I don’t feel like I’m Widget’s mom, I do. Trust me on that one, particularly when dealing with tantrums in Target or being exhausted from her constant activity. It is such a mixed up set of emotions when we see them.

• I’ve been thinking about asking T again about joining our church or, at least, how he has been feeling about Christianity and God. November 6 was my “one year anniversary” of actually making the commitment to God, so I’ve been thinking about it more lately, plus with Christmas coming up and all of its reminders about Jesus’ arrival, I just feel ready but I know I want T to be ready too.

We sang this hymn in church today:

“To God be the glory, great things He has done;
So loved He the world that He gave us His Son,
Who yielded His life an atonement for sin,
And opened the life gate that all may go in.”

I get so lost in depression, my guilt and my grief that I lose sight of the things I am thankful for.

I know they are there, they exist.

Sometimes I just have to dig for them:

• God
• Grace
• Love
• Life
• T
• Widget
• Family
• Friends, especially a certain couple
• Keeping my BIL, K safe in Iraq and bringing him home

Happy Thanksgiving!

Nicole tagged me. I am supposed to write weird stuff about myself. I’m not sure they are very weird but well, here goes:

1. As a kid, I used to read the phone book when I was bored. Even now, if I have the phone book out (which I rarely do cause I use the internet to search for everything), I will look up my listing and then read all the other people with the same last name- the list was much shorter before I was married.

2. I got engaged in our band director’s front yard during a camp out after my senior year (T had graduated the year before but we met because we had mutual friends and we were all in band together). He and his wife were the master/mistress of ceremonies at our wedding. We had an itinerary for the wedding- he timed the rehearsal and then allocated specific times for the wedding itself. I have a copy of the itinerary in our wedding journal.

3. Homemade chocolate chip cookies are one of my favorite things to eat for breakfast. I figure they are no worse than some of the sugar cereal crap out there.

4. I read 5,000 pages in 5th grade for a reading contest (no that didn’t include the phone book). Over 10 times more than any other kid read. The internet has reduced the number of pages I read now. Bad Internet. Bad Blog. Bad Forums. Bad Erin

5. When I was in 7th grade, I was part of a drug awareness play called “Pinocchio, Don’t Smoke that Cigarette”- we went to the elementary schools to “perform”. I played the Spine. My big line was “You’ll never grow big or grow tall. In fact, you may never grow up at all”. Very funny, ha ha, considering that I was about 4′7″ at the time. And quite sad that I remember the line.

6. I can remember phone numbers very easily. I only have to dial them maybe once or twice and I generally don’t need to write them down.

7. When I read books written by the same author, I prefer to read them in publishing order and I have to read them all. I will not skip ahead if they are a series. And generally, a year or more has to go by before I can reread them because I remember the plot too well.

8. I do not like paper to have any wrinkles. If a page wrinkles, I either get a new sheet or I tear the page out of the notebook, even if it means starting over on what I’m writing.

9. At 29, I still cannot cut in a straight line, even with a guide line.

10. Monty Python and the Holy Grail is my absolute favorite movie. Most people do not expect me to say that when I’m asked.

I’m not sure who to tag, so if you want to do it, post a comment to let me know you did.

A very interesting study revealing some truths about adoption and birth/first parents. It is being picked up by the mainstream media which is awesome.  It was also in our local paper.

Way to go Jenna!

Birthday party was a success.  Crazy.  Wild.  Fun.  Widget did extremely well and got a lot of stuff.   I post some pictures once I get them uploaded.

Widget turns 2 next Tuesday. The big party is Sunday afternoon.

I got her 2 year pictures taken at Sears today.

Here are a couple of the online proofs (slightly blurry)!