Y’all have gone over to Infertile Fantasies and seen this post…right?

Because it falls into the category of “freakin’ amazing idea.”

Like the randomness that pervades all aspects of life, there were people who only had two wishes come true all week. And there were others that received eight out of their ten wishes. I’m not sure how the little wish stone chooses which ones to grant. All I know is that all of the wishes are worthy. I wish the stone would pay attention and perform 100% of the time.

I’ve decided to leave the little wish stone up and update this post every time someone takes the wishing stone challenge. Mostly due to the four positive pregnancy tests that happened this week. My heart is breaking for the wishes that didn’t come true. But sometimes we need a little dose of wishful thinking just to get us through an experience and over to the other side.

Right now, the little wish stone is currently batting: 64% (this number is updated any time a person takes the wishing stone challenge and emails me their results at thetowncriers@gmail.com).

Past success counts: 78%, 76%, 73%, 64% (oh no! Is little wish stone losing potency?)

Stories of success from the wish stone:

“The third [wish] was more of a shocker, and you can feel free to post it if you keep me anonymous (I’m not ready topublicize it yet) but I wished for a BFP and got one! I’m 4 weeks an 1 day and scared out of my ever-lovingmind, but also deleriously happy.”

“I tried the wish stone today. I wished that my beta would be positive and a good number. After almost 8 years of ttc I got a positive today with my number at 127 (over 5 times higher then any of my other betas.) I am a believer! Thanks for sharing your stone.”

“The first day’s wish came true… the 2nd day’s wish came true… Today is the 3rd day. I’ll let you know!”

“I made a wish that my cycle not be cancelled/that my E2 would go down…the clinic just called and said I can take the trigger shot tonight! Thanks for letting us make a wish. 🙂 “

“I have made three wishes on the stone so far. Wish #1- boy comes home from his hockey game while I’m reading and wishing here. I wished he had won his game. The score … 9-1 for his team. Wish #2- That my Monday beta results would be over 100. Results for Mondays beta … 353. Wish #3- That this pregnancy would be sucessful. Results … we’ll have to wait and see.”

“We were going over to have dinner for my SIL’s birthday and I just wanted to connect with my nephew. So I wished. And it worked. He came running to me, he copied every move my husband made, he begged me to pick him up, he asked me to help him use his fork, and he even offered me one of his sliced grapes. I needed that.”

“I think the coolest thing about the wishing stone was feeling connected with other people in the blogosphere in a way that was kind of physical, by “touching” the stone. It was good to take stock of how many things went right during those ten days and to celebrate that.”

Keep sending me your stories of success with the little wish stone. And let me know your average if you make 10 wishes over 10 days.

Listen, new is bad. That’s just the way it is. Internet Explorer tricked me into loading an update and now my Web browser is seventeen kinds of messed up. I can’t find and use my favourites folder easily. I can’t even find the “search” feature anymore. My Internet Explorer essentially looks like Mozilla Firefox. And I didn’t use Mozilla Firefox for a reason. That reason being that it’s fucking annoying. And now I’m stuck with this new Web browser.

And it makes me feel completely off-kilter.

Like my whole world is leaning a little bit right now.

Sigh.

There were a slew of pregnancy annoucements these past two weeks: Jessica, Michelle, Inglewood. Congratulations! I’m sorry–I know I read more than just three (including Mary in the wish stone’s comment section who got a positive beta after eight years of IF after wishing on the stone–how freaky is that?) this week. So if you received a positive, this is a huge note of congratulations to you too.

We all know that a good vent feels…well…so good. So I wanted to bring you the best vent I found this week in order to inspire you with your own. Get all those crappy feelings out before the weekend. Square Peg, Round Whole had a vent post called “Crabby.” She begins the list by saying, “Just to give you a sense of what else is running through my head, and perhaps for the sake of catharsis, allow me to make a list of several things that have been bothering me, on more or less a daily basis” and ends the list with the wonderfully cathartic: “OK, that feels a little better. I won’t do the whole “now here is what I’m grateful for” list because I know that things could be SO, SO much worse, and I know that for the most part I should consider myself insanely lucky. Plus I just feel like moping. So there.” And it was just such a good vent. And by now, she’s feeling better. See, isn’t good to get it all off your chest?

There were two great posts this week that went hand-in-hand. One was on newly-minted mom, Barely Sane’s blog, Infertility Licks (which has moved over to the “parenting after adoption” category on the side bar) and the other was on Cibele’s Hoping For Better Days (now in English so I can stop plugging her entries into Babelfish in order to read along). Cibele writes: “Then I remember we will be the only ones childless out of our group. I was reminded one more time what I failure I feel like sometimes. Than I cried, I cried, I cried… DH cannot understand it. HE said, but I don’t want her baby, I want our baby… He then told me that I use not to be a jealous person. I AM NOT, I AM NOT A JEALOUS PERSON…and that makes me feel even worse to cry over her happy news.” Barely Sane has an equally powerful post called “Mending Fences” that has the same message: “DH wants me to get over it. I do not. Just because we have Ashlyn now does not change some of the things they said and did to us. It does not take away the hurt they caused us… some of which was intentional.”

It took a long time for my husband to understand female relationships and how fertility is processed in that world. Perhaps it’s because pregnancies are so inherently female–it all takes place inside our bodies. Perhaps it’s something biological–a chemical reaction that takes place inside the brain when we’re around fertile women that reminds us of our state. Perhaps it’s just that women are more sensitive and more comparative in nature? I don’t know. But this is a clip from my journal from back in January of 2003:

“I have been sad all morning, crumpled up inside of myself. I can’t get motivated to write or do schoolwork. I don’t want to cry, but I keep bursting into tears…Josh makes me feel guilty for being sad. He was pissed at me today when J called to tell me that she had delivered her baby (she got pregnant on the first try, had an easy pregnancy, had an easy labour, and now has a healthy baby) and I didn’t want to talk. He hissed at me to take the phone. I know what’s best for me. It doesn’t help me to talk to J and hear that ‘childbirth is the most incredible thing in the world.’ I WANT A CHILD.”

As you can see, the Josh of today, who tells me to take care of myself and supports me whenever I remove myself from a situation that is just making me sad, came a long way. And I don’t fault him for his optimism during the early parts of our journey. I mean, it is good form to get on the phone and congratulate a friend. I understand why he nudged me to do things. But once he pulled back and gave me the space to feel sad or frustrated, I stopped feeling quite as sad and frustrated.

I’d be interested to hear more stories like this: do you have the support you need from your partner in order to make decisions that protects your heart without feeling guilty for making those decisions? What was the turning point that brought you onto the same page?

Obviously, wishes have been on my mind as of late.

At the same time, the kids have recently become obsessed with the Shel Silverstein book, The Giving Tree. Reading it reminds me of a tree back at camp called the Wishing Tree. The camp legend went that when lightning struck the tree, it split it down the middle and imbued it with the power to grant each child one wish every summer. You ran down the path, jumped through the tree, and kissed the air while you were traveling over the split trunk. All the while thinking about your wish.

When I was eight-years-old, I fell in love with a boy at camp. He was older–12–and he played trumpet. We were in the camp play together. I was a tree. A non-speaking role. He was the ecologist. He saved my life when the Queen’s men wanted to chop down the trees. We went on a camping trip together. We were an hour late leaving for the trip because the boy had to have his trumpet lesson. My sister told me that this made him a loser. She was pissed that the bus had to wait for him and that we had to wait on the hot steps until he finished his lesson. I used my wish on him anyway.

At the end of the summer, I wished that when I grew up, the boy would kiss me. After I made my wish, my friends and I were hanging out on the steps and someone took a photograph. We were talking about what we wished for that summer. When I told them that I had wished that the boy would kiss me, my friends all told me that I had wasted my wish. He was 12 and I was 8. A 12-year-old would never pay attention to an 8-year old. I still have that photograph of myself with my friends, looking a little sad as I processed that they were probably right. I should have used my wish on something else.

I continued to go to this camp for four more years because you could go to this camp until you were 12. I returned when I was 15 to be a CIT (counselor in training). I was stuck helping out in woodworking. No one wanted to work in woodworking because the counselor was a 50-something year old man who loved carpentry a little too much. And hated kids a little too much. In a strange twist of fate, this man would arrive to teach science at the same school where I taught a few years ago. The woodworking man pops up in my life at the strangest times–all unrelated.

My second summer, the headmistress of the camp decided I paid my dues in woodworking and moved me to the music and drama unit–which was considered the best unit. There was a new counselor there named Eric. He was very cute and he went to Oberlin, which was where I wanted to go to college. We hung out the first two days of camp getting the room ready for the campers and attending meetings. On the third day, he asked me if I wanted to go for a walk. We went down to the stream and jumped stones across until we were sitting in the center of the stream with the water passing around us.

When we were walking down to the stream, he referred to a patch of land as the alligator swamp. It was a nickname only campers around my age knew. When we sat down on the rock, I asked him how he knew it. He told me that he had been a camper at the camp. We played a long game of “oh…do you remember…” and he asked me if I remembered this camp play that Dan, the counselor, had written. I told him I had been in the play and I asked him which part he played. He told me he was the ecologist. I told him I had been one of the trees that he saved. He leaned over at that moment and kissed me.

Up until that moment, I didn’t know that he was the same little boy who had played the trumpet and made us late for the camping trip.

My wish came true albeit eight years later. We dated that summer and through the fall. After we broke up, we remained friends for years and worked together for many more summers. We still keep in touch from time to time. He lives in California and he composes music and teaches music lessons. But that’s not really the point of the story.

It doesn’t matter that many of my other wishes didn’t come true. The way I reason away some of those wishes is that fate KNEW that those wishes sucked. The tree knew that if I got what I wanted, I would actually be miserable. I just didn’t know it at the time. So the tree didn’t grant those wishes. He just let out a tree-like sigh and thought, “better luck with your wish next year, sweetie.” And I walked out of the woods none-the-wiser, thinking my wish may come true just like it did with Eric.

But you get the freakin’ power of this tree: eight years and the tree brought me together with this fantastic person that I still believe I was meant to know at that time in order to bring me to my current life. And it stands to reason that if it granted me one of my many wishes, it may grant me another.

Which means it’s time for a little trespassing.

I mean, if you lived only ten miles or so from this tree, wouldn’t you sneak onto the campus one weekend and go running through the split tree and kiss the air? Wouldn’t you go and wish for the ultimate wish–the one you know the tree would grant you because it’s a damn good wish? Would you risk having to explain to a security guard why you’re running around on a private campus and tell them the story about the wishing tree? Knowing, full well, that only a cruel security guard would hear this tale about delayed love (in so many forms. Truly. So. Many. Forms. Of. Delayed. Love) and not tell you to run, jump into the air, blow a kiss. And wish.

I’m being optimistic and calling this tour one…

Book: The Ultimate Insider’s Guide to Adoption
Author: Elizabeth Swire Falker
Post Date: January 10th
End Date: January 15th

The Barren Bitches Book Brigade List
(click on any of the links below on January 10th to take you to a stop on this book tour. Jump from post to post to read a plethora of opinions and thoughts on Falker’s new book. I will keep adding to this list until 11 p.m. on January 9th. The list is currently open)

Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters (Mel)
Serenity Now! (Serenity)
Are We There Yet? (TeamWinks)
Waiting for a Miracle (GLouise)
Baggage That Goes With Mine (Baggage)
Sticky Feet (Jamie)
Round is Funny (M)
My Reality (My Reality)
Still Passing Open Windows (Carlynn)

Not on the list and want to join? Drop me an email at thetowncriers@gmail.com. You can add yourself up until 11 p.m. on January 9th.

How the book tour works:

(1) let me know you want to participate by emailing me at thetowncriers@gmail.com. I will add your blog to this list so other people know to head over there on January 10th.

(2) read Falker’s Ultimate Insider’s Guide to Adoption.

(3) write a review for the book–your reactions, your feelings, what you learned, etc.

(4) post it on your blog on January 10th (that gives you 6 weeks to read and write over the holidays). People can find your review via a link from this list.

(5) read everyone else’s post on their blog (oh–and this is why you can’t post before the 10th. I don’t want people influenced by what other people write. It should be your own reaction).

(6) Falker will read the reviews and answer comments and questions in an additional post that I’ll put up on my blog on January 15th. I’ll go all Barbara Walters and interview her, but without the crying. Since, you know, making people cry isn’t really my thing.

What? You’re reading this after January 15th and you missed the book tour? Weigh in with ideas for the next big book tour. If this one goes well, we’ll start another one soon.