Sunday, January 15, 2012
Follow Up
one of the friends i mentioned in my last post reached out to me. in a nutshell, she thought i did not want to hear about her baby; i thought she did not want to tell me. so i think we have cleared the air and can move forward. we are in sort of a transition phase right now, but i am hopeful that, if we both put in some effort, that we can maintain our friendship. so that is good news. also, i need to learn to speak up when things are bothering me instead of assuming it will be a bother to the other person. please forgive the non capitalization and lack of alternate punctuation...i am posting from my phone and apparently blogger has limited functions through this device.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Finally Catching Up
I've been busy at home the last few months, so I've been reading blogs, rarely commenting because I have been reading them a week or more after they were first posted and usually feel like everything has already been said (better) than I would have done, and never posting. Things are slowing down a bit, so here's a list of an update:
1. I had a student teacher first semester which, if he were any good, should have freed up some time for me. He was not good, but not so bad that I could fail him. The challenge came in writing his letter of recommendation, which is a requirement of the cooperating teacher (me). It was a struggle not to make the whole thing sound completely passive aggressive. I focused on the positive things that he had done, but by only talking about those, it was pretty obvious that he wasn't good at everything, but I couldn't do anything else since it's not supposed to be an evaluation letter.
2. Holidays were pretty good. My parents, brother, sister-in-law and nephew came here, along with my local sister and her husband, and my husband's parents. So I was busy cooking for most of the day. Christmas was just us and my sister and her husband, so that was really nice and fun and low-key. New years' eve was the same.
3. Then I went back to school, and baked a lot for a fundraiser for a co-worker of my husband. The co-worker is fighting his third brain tumor. I made about 3 dozen of 8 different desserts. It was exhausting, but totally worth it. My legs were killing me from standing all day teaching, and then standing most of the evening baking. The fundraiser raised more than $40,000!
4. We were planning on going to San Francisco this summer, but now we are going to Las Vegas in May for Punk Rock Bowling with my sister and her husband, and since we are also planning a DC trip in June for my dad's Viet Nam reunion group, San Francisco will most likely be in 2013. I don't think our funds can handle three fairly big trips, unless we get some huge tax refund this year, which I am not expecting since we had to pay the last two years.
5. This is the thought/update I've been thinking about for a couple weeks now. There have been several pregnancy announcements in the last few months, and I think I've handled them pretty well. Nothing more than an eye roll since all of them occurred within a few months of the couple beginning to attempt pregnancy. The issue I have is how I've been cut out of the lives of a couple of the newly pregnant women, and the life of one who gave birth in September. It bothers me that we used to be friends, but once this life-changing even happens for them, they seem to think I can't handle it, so they decide for me. And that is what bothers me the most, they didn't even give me a chance to be happy for them and still be involved in their lives. The recent mother and I used to be very close, emailing very frequently, having lunch when our schedules allowed, but since she has ignored almost every question I've asked about the health of the baby (suffered from colic for a while), I stopped asking, and now the emails have all but stopped. Another that cut me out once she found out she was pregnant used to talk to me about her decision to have kids or not. She used to be firmly in the no kids ever camp, and recently started thinking maybe she wanted them after all. So she had to convince her husband, who also was firmly in the no kids camp. We talked on several occasions about the decision, she asked about our decision not to keep pursuing parenthood, and was a pretty big support during our infertility times. So my guess is that I am only valuable to her as a sounding board for choosing to have kids or not (since I've been there), and if she had had trouble conceiving, maybe I would have been useful in that situation too. But clearly, I have nothing to offer now that she is pregnant.
6. With all of that, I'm really taking stock of my "friends." It seems that infertility isolated us, and now that we've come out the other side, it continues to do so. I think a lot of our friends don't know how to handle our decision to "give up" and not pursue adoption or some other means to a baby, so they avoid us. And then I think do I really want to be friends with these people anyway? I mean, if they can't even attempt to continue a friendship with us when circumstances in life change, why do I want them in my life? So now I am down to just a few people who I consider true friends, and wondering how a person goes about finding more? I've always met my friends through other friends. How do I meet people who are similar to me otherwise? I think it just takes time, and I have lots of things to do to keep myself occupied until then.
1. I had a student teacher first semester which, if he were any good, should have freed up some time for me. He was not good, but not so bad that I could fail him. The challenge came in writing his letter of recommendation, which is a requirement of the cooperating teacher (me). It was a struggle not to make the whole thing sound completely passive aggressive. I focused on the positive things that he had done, but by only talking about those, it was pretty obvious that he wasn't good at everything, but I couldn't do anything else since it's not supposed to be an evaluation letter.
2. Holidays were pretty good. My parents, brother, sister-in-law and nephew came here, along with my local sister and her husband, and my husband's parents. So I was busy cooking for most of the day. Christmas was just us and my sister and her husband, so that was really nice and fun and low-key. New years' eve was the same.
3. Then I went back to school, and baked a lot for a fundraiser for a co-worker of my husband. The co-worker is fighting his third brain tumor. I made about 3 dozen of 8 different desserts. It was exhausting, but totally worth it. My legs were killing me from standing all day teaching, and then standing most of the evening baking. The fundraiser raised more than $40,000!
4. We were planning on going to San Francisco this summer, but now we are going to Las Vegas in May for Punk Rock Bowling with my sister and her husband, and since we are also planning a DC trip in June for my dad's Viet Nam reunion group, San Francisco will most likely be in 2013. I don't think our funds can handle three fairly big trips, unless we get some huge tax refund this year, which I am not expecting since we had to pay the last two years.
5. This is the thought/update I've been thinking about for a couple weeks now. There have been several pregnancy announcements in the last few months, and I think I've handled them pretty well. Nothing more than an eye roll since all of them occurred within a few months of the couple beginning to attempt pregnancy. The issue I have is how I've been cut out of the lives of a couple of the newly pregnant women, and the life of one who gave birth in September. It bothers me that we used to be friends, but once this life-changing even happens for them, they seem to think I can't handle it, so they decide for me. And that is what bothers me the most, they didn't even give me a chance to be happy for them and still be involved in their lives. The recent mother and I used to be very close, emailing very frequently, having lunch when our schedules allowed, but since she has ignored almost every question I've asked about the health of the baby (suffered from colic for a while), I stopped asking, and now the emails have all but stopped. Another that cut me out once she found out she was pregnant used to talk to me about her decision to have kids or not. She used to be firmly in the no kids ever camp, and recently started thinking maybe she wanted them after all. So she had to convince her husband, who also was firmly in the no kids camp. We talked on several occasions about the decision, she asked about our decision not to keep pursuing parenthood, and was a pretty big support during our infertility times. So my guess is that I am only valuable to her as a sounding board for choosing to have kids or not (since I've been there), and if she had had trouble conceiving, maybe I would have been useful in that situation too. But clearly, I have nothing to offer now that she is pregnant.
6. With all of that, I'm really taking stock of my "friends." It seems that infertility isolated us, and now that we've come out the other side, it continues to do so. I think a lot of our friends don't know how to handle our decision to "give up" and not pursue adoption or some other means to a baby, so they avoid us. And then I think do I really want to be friends with these people anyway? I mean, if they can't even attempt to continue a friendship with us when circumstances in life change, why do I want them in my life? So now I am down to just a few people who I consider true friends, and wondering how a person goes about finding more? I've always met my friends through other friends. How do I meet people who are similar to me otherwise? I think it just takes time, and I have lots of things to do to keep myself occupied until then.
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