Neutral

I painted the nursery today.

Some of you long-term readers may recall that I painted that room just last summer, in an attempt to reclaim the space as my own.  And while I had the most grandiose ideas of actually using it, the room in fact became a dump-all for all the crap I just didn't know what else to do with.

Around Christmas, I began storing clothes and getting dressed in there in the mornings in an effort to avoid waking Mo (I leave much earlier than he does during the school year).  So, in addition to being crammed full of papers and books and non-working computer parts, I now added big piles of shoes and sweaters and dress pants to the mix.

Beyond that, the door remained closed.  Those baby-blue walls were just too painful a reminder of what I had hoped the room would become.

Today I gave both the room and myself a fresh start. I've now got nice, bright neutral walls that lend themselves to whatever use I may find for that room in the future.  Whether that's as a nursery, a guest room, or just a continued catch-all remains to be seen -- and I'm okay with that.

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I'm kind of hanging in neutral in regards to this cycle as well.  I'm excited to be moving through the process, and I hope that it turns out the way we want it to in the end.  At the same time, I'm a little bit cautious, too.  I KNOW, all too well, the many things that could still go wrong.  I KNOW that there are no guarantees.

What's different this time is that I have no back-up plan.  Before, I always knew exactly what I would do if we had a negative beta.  I knew what the next step was.  I knew where we were headed.

Now I have no clue what I will do if this doesn't work.  Or, for that matter, if it does.  I really AM just taking everything one step at a time, trying not to allow myself to slip too far into either despair or elation.  Staying in neutral, if you will.

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Mo has been talking constantly of this next year, saying "we're going to have a child" and "when we have a child."   I appreciate his positivity, and I know that he believes that speaking it will somehow help make it true.    And I'm trying not to rain on his parade with too many realistic reminders of what might happen.  But I just can't make myself say, even jokingly, "WHEN I get pregnant," or even "when we have a baby."  Everything is prefaced with an "if" or a "maybe" -- perhaps my effort to show the universe how truly neutral I am, in hopes that she doesn't feel like pulling the rug out from under me this time.

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So that's where I am today.  Neither here, nor there.  Not up, not down.  Just in the moment, waiting to figure out which direction this is going to take.  Hoping for the upswing, but prepared to downshift just the same.  (Okay, have I totally overdone the metaphor now?)  And totally wishing I could fast-forward two and half weeks from now, to that place where answers lie.