Nothing so exciting as the great 2010 snow fall has occurred in the last week. Although, a couple days of sunny weather might come pretty close!
Unfortunately, the cloud cover and cold temperatures have returned here, as well as in Wichita, Kansas.
I left the partly sunny skies and warmer temperatures Friday for a weekend trip to Wichita to visit my husband. I had great expectations (or at least pretty good expectations) of a fabulous, fun weekend. The dreary February weather and my own physical health may have contributed to my less than positive perspective of the city...and Kansas in general.
In Kansas' defense, I probably picked the worst time to visit. Also, I came down with a cold Sunday evening, so I'm not in the best of moods. Also, apparently the stress of reuniting with my husband only once a week for the last many, many months is taking a physical toll on me. (And since I am obviously a skilled doctor...or at least an intelligent woman who can use the internet adeptly and confer with multiple friends and coworkers...I think I have diagnosed myself.) I seem to be developing horrendous reflux that sends my stomach into spasms of burning pain and causes me to feel there is a rock sitting in my stomach at all times. I will get hungry, but can only eat a tiny bit before the fire starts again and I feel like I'm going to explode.
Oddly, the reflux only happens on the weekends. During the week I'm fine. Thus, I have also diagnosed that this is most likely stress-related. I hate that reuniting with my husband is so stressful, but there you have it. In actuality, it's our entire living situation at present that is the root of all the stress.
(Just to be perfectly clear, I love my husband more than anything forever and always. I just wish he didn't make my stomach hurt. Things look to be better in a couple months.)
OK, so, besides the physical agony, Wichita greeted me with temperatures hovering in the 20s, gusty north winds, and dark gray skies as far as the eye can see. And the eye can see a long way in the vast flatness of Kansas.
The snow was not big and pretty, but small, wet, and blowing sideways. Rather than sticking around and making the world white, it either melted or was just plain ice/sleet instead of snow. The vast landscape in Kansas right now is a scene of gray and brown. It really is The Wizard of Oz...before everything turns to color in Munchkinland.
(I would have taken a picture of the landscape for this post, but why?)
Out of all the places I've ever visited, this is absolutely my least favorite.
And, I know, you can spend all day telling me how gorgeous it is when the trees are blooming in the spring or when the leaves change colors in the fall and how there are all kinds of cool activities to be experienced, as my husband has already tried to do. I will have a hard time being convinced to go visit again.
Although, just before my stomach revolted on Friday night, I enjoyed one of the best meals I've eaten in a long time at Sabor in Wichita (thank you, John!), so I can highly recommend that restaurant.
They'll most likely have to express mail the food to me if I'm ever to enjoy it again, though.
(This post will be sadly ironic if we we actually end up having to ever move to Wichita. Chances are slim to none at this point, but it would be an irony.)
Thank goodness my next trip promises to be 180% better: San Francisco and the Wine Country in California. I love me some California!
Monday, February 22, 2010
Friday, February 12, 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Winter Weather Update
It NEVER snows this much in our part of Texas. Never.
It has snowed for at least 14 hours straight. And it's still going. So, this is what the house looked like after work:
Back yard:
Front yard:
And I decided to make a snowman real quick before it got too dark:
And yes, that snowman is standing in an unknown corner of our yard because a.) I made the huge snowball on the bottom figuring I'd start with the snow in that back part of the yard and then discovered it quickly got too heavy for me to move anymore by myself and that's where it had to stop and b.) did I mention earlier how I love a pristine snow-covered yard to look at? I really didn't want footprints and missing trails of snow to mar the beauty.
P.S. Some radio stations have been playing Christmas music today - "Let It Snow" "Frosty the Snowman" and "Winter Wonderland" among others.
It has snowed for at least 14 hours straight. And it's still going. So, this is what the house looked like after work:
Back yard:
Front yard:
And I decided to make a snowman real quick before it got too dark:
And yes, that snowman is standing in an unknown corner of our yard because a.) I made the huge snowball on the bottom figuring I'd start with the snow in that back part of the yard and then discovered it quickly got too heavy for me to move anymore by myself and that's where it had to stop and b.) did I mention earlier how I love a pristine snow-covered yard to look at? I really didn't want footprints and missing trails of snow to mar the beauty.
P.S. Some radio stations have been playing Christmas music today - "Let It Snow" "Frosty the Snowman" and "Winter Wonderland" among others.
It's not Washington DC...
I realize that, compared to New York, Washington DC, and New Jersey, this is nothing. But for Texas, it is an unusual surprise when the weathermen predict snow and we do actually get some!
That's a picture of our newspaper this morning. I'm not one to run out and play in the snow usually. Mostly because I like to sit in the warm house and look out at the untainted, perfect blanket of white covering the expanse of our yard. Freshly fallen snow is just beautiful!
So, I took a picture of the paper from the front porch because I was seriously considering not scampering out there to pick it up. It's freezing! (Since J travels so much, on a regular basis I think what a waste it is to subscribe to this newspaper. Honestly, even when it's not snowing I'm too tired in the morning or too busy getting ready to get to work on time to stop and get the paper, much less read it. Usually, I end up picking it up when I get home at night and dumping it straight in the recycling bin without glancing at it. Because by the end of the day I've already heard all the news via internet and radio.)
But then after I took the picture I decided to go ahead and run out there. The weathermen are now saying later this afternoon and evening it might be icy, so I figured it's safer to go get the paper now than it will be tonight. I now what you're thinking. "Enough! Enough with the newspaper!" I just can't stop the rambling.
Oh, and here's my garden, by the way.
Surely there's no way the broccoli's going to make it after this! Ah well. The pretty snow is worth it!
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Journey into (an overly active) Imagination
Well, here we are in February already without one single blog post. Maybe if it hadn't been gray, constantly rainy and cold for the past week I would have found something fascinating to blog about. As it is, when I'm not working I've generally been wearing thick socks, drinking hot tea and enjoying the comfort of being inside with the heater cranked up.
And just to let you in on the paranoid person I can be: the perfection of a toasty warm house is tainted a little by a nagging fear that rats will discover our attic or (oh, the horror!) our house as a heated refuge from the freezing, damp outdoors.
And that's what living in a large, generally cold and rainy European city (called Amsterdam) filled to the brim with apartment complexes will do to you.
(Not that we ever had rats, just mice. But rats are well within the realm of possibility.)
While spending so much time surrounded the damp, cold, gray of February, here's what I've been pondering. (Because no matter how I try, I just can't help but think about the pregnancy issue at least once a day.) I hear so many infertility stories. So many of them end with miraculous, unexpected pregnancies or four beautiful children.
Maybe we hear the stories with those endings because no one wants to tell the story where being barren is a life-long fact, where a pregnancy never happens, where one day down the road a couple realizes they never had children and now they never will.
But my first thought when I hear the "miraculous pregnancy" stories is sadness. (Unless the stories belong to people I know well and love. I can genuinely be happy for my loved ones while sadness only hovers somewhere in the background.) Well-meaning people tell me the stories to give me hope, without realizing it is sometimes quite the opposite. It makes me hurt wondering if my story will one day be like that....or if mine will be the story no one ever tells.
I hope I can walk through this life with its unexpected problems and always have a story to tell. Stories, after all, don't always have to end happily ever after in order to learn a lesson or grow as a person. That's real life, and I have no problem sharing my real life with people.
I may be thinking more lately about all the infertility because we have been going back and forth with the insurance company to even get them to process some claims we've made from the last couple IUIs. And now, I have to make yet another call to the billing company to persuade them to please, please, please just get me some copies of bills. I will be grateful when this is all over...I give it about six more months.
And just to let you in on the paranoid person I can be: the perfection of a toasty warm house is tainted a little by a nagging fear that rats will discover our attic or (oh, the horror!) our house as a heated refuge from the freezing, damp outdoors.
And that's what living in a large, generally cold and rainy European city (called Amsterdam) filled to the brim with apartment complexes will do to you.
(Not that we ever had rats, just mice. But rats are well within the realm of possibility.)
While spending so much time surrounded the damp, cold, gray of February, here's what I've been pondering. (Because no matter how I try, I just can't help but think about the pregnancy issue at least once a day.) I hear so many infertility stories. So many of them end with miraculous, unexpected pregnancies or four beautiful children.
Maybe we hear the stories with those endings because no one wants to tell the story where being barren is a life-long fact, where a pregnancy never happens, where one day down the road a couple realizes they never had children and now they never will.
But my first thought when I hear the "miraculous pregnancy" stories is sadness. (Unless the stories belong to people I know well and love. I can genuinely be happy for my loved ones while sadness only hovers somewhere in the background.) Well-meaning people tell me the stories to give me hope, without realizing it is sometimes quite the opposite. It makes me hurt wondering if my story will one day be like that....or if mine will be the story no one ever tells.
I hope I can walk through this life with its unexpected problems and always have a story to tell. Stories, after all, don't always have to end happily ever after in order to learn a lesson or grow as a person. That's real life, and I have no problem sharing my real life with people.
I may be thinking more lately about all the infertility because we have been going back and forth with the insurance company to even get them to process some claims we've made from the last couple IUIs. And now, I have to make yet another call to the billing company to persuade them to please, please, please just get me some copies of bills. I will be grateful when this is all over...I give it about six more months.
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