AROUND. HERE. LATELY.

You guys. Mercury isn't in retrograde. I am in retrograde.

as is huck's latest hair cut. again.

The week before Christmas vacation, my laptop took a Sprite Zero swim.

That horrible feeling of second-hand angst right there? That is a sign you are human! Congratulations! Seven hundred dollars, it cost me! But let's not dwell on that! 

And then my grandma died.

And then, after my Instagram just stopped working for a week, a pregnancy test two-pack told me I was pregnant! Before very quickly changing its mind the following day and being like, Nah, just kidding. 

(Thanks for nothing, Clomid.) 

AND THEN MY TOILET WENT OUT OF COMMISSION.

Wait! This part is good. (Debatable.)

Apparently when our bathroom floor was built, like, in the dark ages, soooooomeone wasn't paying attention, because it has been leaking raw sewage since, well, maybe since forever? Since 1890 when the house was built? Generations of sewage. Up into our floors. And then under our feet. Errbody's poop. It's pretty well and disgusting. We noticed it just before Christmas, and by New Years when we were back from Portland the vinyl had bubbled up and the Odd Jobs handyman dude finally came by (in his multicolored, handprint-covered jalopy that I'm pretty sure might be a retrofitted ice cream truck, I sort of want to steal it) to rip up our floor and promptly lose the flange to our toilet, which apparently nobody sells here in Moscow? Because he was just like, "Oh well, I'll just come back tomorrow."

How hard is it really to find a decent flange around these parts? And I would like to spell it "phlange," please.  (Ph f sounds are where its AT!)

Brandon Holbrook was all like, "Hey! Maybe she'll get us a hotel room for the night where there's an indoor pool! Silver lining!"

Brandon Holbrook is a super optimist like that.

But no, we got a bucket. Yes, my story ends with a hole in the floor where the toilet used to be, and the clanging sound of a bucket banging to the floor in the middle of our living room while the landlady stood there, looking at me expectantly as though she had just brought me the kindest of gifts out of the goodness of her heart.

It was camouflaged, so that was cool. "HUNTER'S LOO," it read on the top. 

"What am I supposed to be doing with THAT!?" I asked as the reverberations of the handle clanged around in the empty toilet bucket.

"Well, in case you have to poop." Something like that.

(Huck used it. He reported it a pleasurable experience.)

The next morning, my iPhone woke up broken. Broke! Broke as a joke! Screen, completely glitched out! Some long-term water damage apparently decided to kick in and bust stuff randomly during the dumbest week ever, which was almost the cherry on the cake. Until! The bleeding started. That was the peak of it.

Oh I knew it was coming, and it wasn't all that terrible. But it was sad. In that dull way this time, where your wrinkled balloon is finally declared certifiably deflated in all the possible ways, but the worst of it is over and most of what you feel is relief. 

I cried until my face was wet while Brandon held my hand, and then I sat very still in my bed and I made my final What Comes Next decision. Thanks for nothing, Clomid. 

But I was ready for it. 

The night before, knowing what was coming, I had laid in my bed with my eyes shut tight, the poop bucket empty in the living room, and I had let myself hope. Big hope. I had let myself hope like crazy that my next test would come out positive. I mean, know what a positive result followed by a negative means, but I still went all the way with it. It was my last cycle on the Clomid. I was going to commit the cardinal sin and just get my hopes UP. You never know! Right? 

So it was going to be twins, I just knew it. I had ultrasounds and I picked out their names. I went maternity clothes shopping and I wondered which carseats to buy. I went on bedrest. They were born three weeks early. They got matching haircuts for their first day of school and they got really into horses and friendship bracelets in the middle of their fifth grade year. Lots of freckles, tea parties, and high school dances, all in my imagination, all by myself, between the hours of midnight and 1AM.

It was magical. 

And then I went through an entire box of extra super tampons in under two days. IMPRESSIVE! But like I said, I was ready for it.

Though for a minute there I was 26 again and working at the Schweitzer on the hill and wondering "what if this really doesn't happen for me?" until I snapped out of it and remembered, yeah, no. It did happen for me. And it was everything. I did it and I loved it and I don't need anything more. My job now is to move past the part where I need it to happen again and to exist instead in the place where I am grateful and I love it, I love everything about my life, just as though I had chose it for myself to begin with.

And oh, I can do that! I do that aaaaaall the time. Mercury ain't got nothing on me. I might be small. But I am scrappy.

In other news: Gra. Nny. Squares.

And trench coats! See? It's not been all bad, check out this London Fog I scored secondhand for fifteen dollars! 

But the point of this is here: When in doubt, try it with your bag on. Trrrrrust me. It clears up, like, EVERYTHING. All of life's problems can be solved with purses on in dressing rooms. 

(It also helps with making clothing purchasing decisions.)

I've also been so grateful this week for my girlfriends, who got appropriately excited for me when my pregnancy test was being nice and then appropriately ticked off for me when it turned out it to be an asshole instead. Thanks, sisters.

Oh ya gotta have friieeeeeeeeeends!

(Especially friends with daughters who'll sit on your lap after brunch and play with your hair and tell you it's soooooo puffy (highest of compliments for this perfect specimen of a 2-year-old).)

Well! That's all she wrote. And now I got the extreme pleasure of sitting on the floor with Huck while he transforms Chase from a police car into an autobot over. and over. and over. 

Counting myself pretty lucky for that one. :)