"I think people get scared with things that look or seem different than them."

Welp, it's been a steamy week in NYC.  I hate heatwaves so much more since I moved to New York from Jersey.  Part of it is because I spend a lot more time outside now - I walk to and from work, the grocery store, basically any errand I have to run involves at least a 10 minute walk.  As I result, I discovered a couple of years ago that I'm quite the face sweater.  It's lovely, having a sweat mustache and goatee.

Jeeves and I went out to visit his parents in the suburbs this weekend.  We both grew up in the 'burbs, and I've only lived in NYC for three and a half years at this point, so I really freaking love being somewhere with a backyard, a Target, and grocery stores with giant carts.  I go out to the old man's house a least every other week, and when I do I get to drive around, cook in a big kitchen, and hang out with Kate's parents on their deck, watching the bats swooping down out of the dark as they snack on mosquitoes.  I. Love. It.  There were no bats to enjoy out in Westchester this weekend, at least in my in-laws' yard, but it was still really nice to admire my mother-in-law's (I call her "Ammie," which is a variant of "mother" in Hindi) tomato and blueberry plants and buy an insane amount of Ziploc bags at Sam's Club.

Ammie asked me at one point if I thought we would ever move out of the City.  Ammie knows about our infertility issues and about my miscarriages.  She's been very kind and never pushes me to talk.  I know I'm very lucky because I've read so many blogs about women whose own parents or in-laws are total pills about the whole shitty situation.  Anyway, I told her that we thought we'd like to move out of the City someday if we have kids.  But if we don't have kids, we'd probably stay, unless a job took us elsewhere.  

And this leads me to my bitch-and-moan fest about yet another crappy thing about infertility - the inability to make any sort of concrete plans for the future.  Jeeves and I really hemmed and hawed about re-signing our lease this year.  We both sort of thought/hoped that by this point we would have a baby, or be close to having a baby.  That obviously didn't happen.  So when our lease came up in May, we had to decide whether we would re-sign for one year or two.  We live in a nice one bedroom, but like all one bedrooms in Manhattan, it is on the smaller side and we definitely would not want to have a baby in here for very long.  We ultimately chose one year, which seemed really smart when I got pregnant this past May, but now seems a little less smart since we will definitely not have a baby before our lease is up next May.  

I'm also sort of ambivalent about the idea of living in New York for the rest of my life if I don't have kids, but I see no point in moving out to the 'burbs and drastically increasing our commutes if it's just us. (I know, I know - we can adopt, and maybe we will, but I'm not ready to make that decision yet).  

And then there's the job situation.  I am a lawyer, unfortunately, who made the excellent decision a couple of years ago to stop being a lawyer and go back to school to get a library science degree.  While I was in school, I got a part-time legal job with the City.  I actually really like my job.  I work with a bunch of retirees for the most part, and they are both funny, nice, and comically grumpy.  The best part is that it is incredibly flexible - I can literally work whatever hours I want, whatever days I want, as long as I am there twice a month for an important meeting.  The job is relatively interesting, not stressful at all, and pays fine considering all the other stuff.  It's pretty much the perfect job to have if you're undergoing treatment for infertility and/or caring for a parent with cancer.  Which is why this job has been impossible to give up.  What I really want to do is work in a library.  I have my M.L.S. degree now, and I'm really excited to be a librarian.  But I just can't undertake a full-time job when I periodically have to disappear for treatment.  I've considered looking into a part-time job that I could do in conjunction with my current PT law job, but I've been lazy about it.  Because what I really want is to be a full-time librarian, but I can't see doing that until we resolve this infertility bullshit.

I don't want this whole post to be whiny doom and gloom.  There's plenty of good stuff to report.  Good old AF showed up this week - huzzah!  Honestly, for the last 14 months, AF's arrival was depressing.... until I had a D&C and feared that I'd never see her again.  So I'm glad that I've got a cycle again.  It makes moving forward more real.  And this week I get my blood drawn for Recurrent Pregnancy Loss (RPL) testing.  That's the last thing I have to get done post-miscarriage.  And it looks like Jeeves and I are going on vacation to Belgium the first week in September.  So that's pretty exciting.

One of my main goals for the year was to read 52 books.  I did great for the first six months of the year, but when we found out about the miscarriage, I started having trouble focusing on novels.  I can start a book, but I can't seem to finish it.  I'm 35 books in, and I know I'll get to 52, but it's been a bit of a struggle lately.  So I was pretty excited when Ammie lent me her copy of Far From the Tree by Andrew Solomon.  I've heard great things about it.  I actually skipped right to the autism chapter, since my middle nephew, Cooper, is autistic.  The title of this post is a quote from Carly Fleischmann, who is autistic and is able to communicate through typing.  I'm looking forward to reading the rest of it.  Non-fiction can be a great palate-cleanser for me.  After that, I can go back to reading too much dystopic sci-fi and epic fantasy.