In Lowe's of All Places

Heyas,

So, the red haze of utter fury that had enveloped me last week has lifted somewhat. I'm still pretty convinced that NW is incompetent at best and underhandedly spiteful at worst...Marina emails me with a thoroughly polite message that basically boils down to they have no idea how someone could've been looking right at my file and not told me that it had been declared closed. And also that they HADN'T filed a police report on me because the dewar arrived the day after they had called about it and so they didn't pursue it. Also didn't have any idea how someone could've told me that it HAD been filed. Also, best of luck, don't contact us again.

Call me picky, but I fail to see how a company that appears to have ONE customer service rep answering the phone (at least, I talked to the same person every time I called) could have absoutely no idea about what the guy was saying.

Whatever.

I'm still angry, but there's nothing I can do now. I'll look into Midwest, but there still remains the fact that I made a very strict pact with myself that if I wasn't pregnant by September, I'd put it off another year. Stupidly, I didn't realize how hard that would really be.

Unfortunately, it hit me in a very public place today.

I'd said that a part of me always suspected that something was wrong with the South Africa BFP (hereafter called BFD...Big Fucking Disappointment), but well, Imp...the rest of Mommy had gotten pretty used to the idea that she was going to be a Mommy. And I was out with Auntie D today, and we stopped in Lowe's...and they already have their Christmas stuff up. And Mommy had to laugh, because it's not even Halloween, yet...but then she started roaming the Christmas aisles because she loves all things Christmas. The ornaments, the lights, those little Christmas Villages you can build out of models that light up and move...she can spend hours just looking at them. She even found some adorable ornaments based on the claymation "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" movie, which she loves.

And standing there in that aisle with a plastic Rudolph in one hand and a plastic Clarice in the other it suddenly hits me that I would've been picking out the Imp's stocking this year, and everyone would've given me baby stuff for Christmas and we would've been so excited that the Imp would be here next Christmas. This would've been the last Christmas before I went from "I" to "We." And the one failed try is nothing next to what some of the women I've come to know have been through...I'm not even sure if it was an actual miscarriage or a chemical pregnancy. I know that I don't have much room to complain...but it still hurts. And it hurt even more to think that because of someone else's "I just don't know what happened" I wouldn't be able to try again until next year.

So there I am, Rudolph in one hand, Clarice in the other, crying my eyes out in Lowe's.

I don't want to wait for a whole year. It surprises me how much I don't want to wait...now that I've actually made an attempt, the desire to be a mother is like a living, breathing thing inside of me. I have good, solid reasons for insisting on a summer birth, but it's hard to remember them right now. My sister, C, says I shouldn't wait, that I should just go on trying until I get the Imp...after all, other people don't plan their baby's due date and they're not dropping dead in the streets. Other teachers have done the single mom route and not bothered with timing it for a summer birth.

But I want to get back to Ohio, Imp, so that you can be close to grandparents, cousins, and aunts from the very first. I don't know if it's the brightest thing in the world for me to go into a new job and then go out on maternity leave in my first year. I don't know that I want to put you into daycare or leave you with relatives that young. I just know I want you here, with me.

What should I do?