I spent most of Hurricane Irene obsessively watching the power company’s outage map.  I literally was hitting refresh every fifteen minutes (or sometimes it was more like every eight minutes), watching coloured outage spots pop up.  Josh pointed out that I didn’t need to do this because we would obviously know that we were without power by the fact that the lights would no longer be on.  It’s not as if the power company gives out a heads up that you might want to save your work because you’re going to be losing your power in five minutes.

Yet I couldn’t stop doing it.  All the towns around us lost power, leaving us this sole uncoloured square on the map until the middle of the night.

It felt strange just going through our night as if nothing was happening, even though we still had power.  This is perhaps why so many children are born nine months after catastrophic events.  The sex isn’t just the reaffirmation of life or the boredom that comes from sitting in the dark.  It’s this feeling that you should be drinking that bottle of vodka you were saving or chopping off your hair.  Anything but the mundane tasks that make up a normal night.

*******

I woke up at 3:17 am, one child in our bed, the other still unconscious in her room.  I stood by the window and stared at the trees which were being blown so hard that it looked like the tops were trying to kiss the ground.  Just as I couldn’t stop refreshing the outage map, I couldn’t tear myself away from the window.  The wind was so loud that it sounded like an ongoing car alarm.

The machines shut off and the machines came back on several times throughout the night, but in the morning, we had power whereas the two streets on either side of us were out.  The pavement had a carpet of new, green leaves.

Suddenly, it felt like we needed a pet.  Like this task couldn’t wait until it made more sense all things considered.

The twins and I made a list of names over breakfast, and then I called the store, wondering if they also had power.  They were set to open and they didn’t even question the sanity of driving on the branch-littered roads to get a hamster a few minutes after a storm ended.  It’s almost as if this is the status quo — hurricanes end and people show up to bring small rodents back to their houses.

We bought a short-haired teddy bear hamster that the ChickieNob named Cozy Jackson.

The owner of the store was feeding cockatiels as we went to the register to pay for our hamster and all of his accoutrements.  It’s a family-owned store and the woman only works with local breeders for all the animals she sells.  She sold us our guinea pig when I was a child, and now I was at the store with my children, buying them their first pet — closing a circle.  She nodded when I told her this, as if confirming that this was the way it’s supposed to be.  You are supposed to have something to love when you’re a child, and then you’re supposed to grow up and pass along that experience to your children so that they grow up and bring their own children in the future to take home something warm and furry.

Cozy Jackson wasn’t thrilled to be in a cardboard box for the ride home, and he ate through the sides of the case.  I kept my hands over the holes so he couldn’t escape, and as he ran back and forth, thumping against my two hands, I fell in love with him.  I fell into such a deep love that I heard myself announcing it to everyone in the car.

We gave him a few hours to get accustomed to our house and his new cage, watching him from a distance.  By the afternoon, he would sit quietly in my hand, almost purring.

Oh my G-d, I love him so damn much.

*******

We are obviously not going to create a hurricane baby mostly because we are not capable of creating any baby, at least not without a catheter and drugs.  But I will always associate Cozy with the hurricane.  He came at the end of a tumultuous summer.

I am lonely during the day when the twins aren’t here.  I have been known to make up excuses so I can swing by the school to say hello. (“I just remembered that I wanted to go to the book fair for the fourteenth time!”)  I wrote this post sitting next to Cozy, chatting with him as he eats a chunk of carrot and then falls back asleep after cleaning his face.  While I still have the impulse to go by the school and peek into their classroom, it is kept in check slightly by the presence of Cozy.  By this tiny rodent who is willing to curl up in my hand.

I can’t believe I waited so long to get him.

I’ve long suspected that I would do everything differently if there was another child here; if I didn’t go from full house to empty house so quickly that it produces whiplash.  That it would be like the power company giving me a five minute warning before the outage.

Cozy confirms this in a way, and that only makes it more bittersweet.  To know that I was right in my guesswork about that third child.

I promise not to write too often about my enormous love of Cozy Jackson or to brag too much about his brilliance.  But seriously, isn’t he the cutest thing you’ve seen today?

Apologies for the crappy quality of the photos.  It’s difficult to take white-on-white.  And it’s hard to convince him that he wants to hold still for the camera.

Many years ago, Josh was on a work trip to Berlin and I was at home in our old apartment.  For some reason, the government issued an emergency preparedness situation for DC — something tied to chemical warfare or biological warfare — due to intelligence or some pivotal moment in the war.

The news came around noon, and my boss suggested that I head out to the hardware store early to collect supplies since the lines were likely to be long.  So I left the school early and went out to a nearby hardware store where the lines were already long.  I loaded my cart with painter’s plastic, duct tape, and the infamous pee bucket.  I filled an enormous box with all the dictated supplies: manual can opener, food, toilet paper, water.

I was proud of myself for being so prepared, and friends came over to marvel at the organizational quality of our supplies (for instance, I had even packed dry showers and pantiliners so we could avoid that not-so-fresh feeling).  We never used the supplies except to dip into the food portion and consume the dry-roasted peanuts when we wanted to make trail mix and didn’t have any nuts in the house.  Over the years, the box has fallen into disrepair and kicked to the corner of the storage room.

All other disasters, we’ve sort of shrugged our shoulders and had a few items in the house, but we’ve never refilled the emergency preparedness box.

Until now.

I spent Friday going around town, collecting things we might need — just the basics this time — for the storm.  Batteries, flashlights, food, water.  I filled the car with gasoline because the Washington Post told me to fill the car with gasoline.  And, of course, I charged the portable Internet.  I mean, Internet access is an emergency supply, right?

*******

Here’s the thing: you can’t really prepare.  I wrote this post before the storm hit and scheduled it to run while we were in the hurricane.  Therefore, I don’t know the outcome; though you do.  Isn’t that strange?  I’m writing about it, knowing the storm is coming, but it’s still two states away.  And you are reading this, with the storm already here, knowing more than I do about its actual destruction.

Like so many places in life, you run around beforehand, trying to prepare yourself, thinking you can prepare yourself, but how can one really prepare themselves?  You know what I need right now more than I knew what I would need when this moment came.  It’s all the curse of retrospect.  I’m sure I’m kicking myself over an item I didn’t think to get or a grill that wasn’t tied down.  But how could I possibly know what would happen even though you can see the situation so clearly from the time period where you stand?

We prepared so long for the twins to separate into two rooms: talked about it, cried about it, shopped for it, cleaned for it.  And then the first night came and it went nothing how we predicted.  Well, yes, it mostly followed one of the scenarios we considered, but since we thought up at least ten different scenarios, that isn’t that extraordinary.  And there was also a curve ball thrown into the night for good measure; something we couldn’t have predicted.  Life only allows you to prepare so far.

We’ve prepared to return to school: bought the binders and scissors, filled out the forms, met the teacher, connected with the other students.  I think that we’ve done our best to set them on a good path.  But I’m sure that no matter how prepared I feel in this moment, I will feel the same amount of surprise at some point in the year as I would if the chair legs gave out on the IKEA kitchen set.  There is simply no way to know, no way to cover all my bases.  I’ll probably kick myself at some point when retrospect kicks in and I say to myself, “I should have known, I should have thought about this.”

Maybe this post is just a reminder that I couldn’t have known.

Even good things; it’s just impossible to know.  Parenting, for example, is both close to what I thought and miles away from what I imagined before the twins arrived.  I think it can be even worse for infertile men and women because we spend so much time focusing on getting pregnant and staying pregnant, or having a safe delivery, or finalizing the adoption that we sometimes forget to look ahead.  And frankly, sometimes it’s just too hard to look ahead.  I couldn’t spend my time visualizing myself as a mother when I was in the throes of treatments.  I had to focus my energy on getting through the next blood draw, the next injection, the next procedure.  It also hurt too much to think too long about myself as a mother when I couldn’t get to motherhood.

And so, when I was finally in a place to parent, it felt a lot like preparing for a hurricane.  You read the books and you buy the supplies and you imagine through 1000 scenarios.  And then parenting actually happens and it rarely goes exactly as planned.  Which is both good and bad.  You kick yourself in retrospect and you congratulate yourself for forethought.  But it’s all just a game of roulette, with the figurative ball bouncing along the wheel.  It could go red or it could go black and there’s just no way to truly know ahead of time.

Even bad things; it’s just impossible to know.  Saying goodbye to someone, for example.  You prepare yourself mentally and you prepare the logistics and you take off from work and choose the outfit for the funeral.  And then the moment is there and retrospect kicks in, remembering the one last thing you wanted to say, the one last question you wanted to ask.  There is simply no way to truly prepare yourself, to do enough that you pass through the grief smoothly.  There are only things you can do so that you don’t have regrets, but that preparatory work doesn’t scoop the sadness out of a person’s heart.

I don’t know if anyone has really discovered a way to do that.

*******

I was as prepared as I could be for this storm, and it may turn out to be nothing: simply bad rain.  Or it could turn out to lead to a loss of power or flooding.  I have the last bag of M&Ms that were at the store.  We have many bottles of water.  We have four different types of granola bars so we can have a granola bar feast if need be.  But you know exactly how I weathered the storm because you’re reading this about 24 hours after it was written.

Isn’t that strange — you know more than I do about my own life.

Taking a break from Hurricane Irene prep…

*******

I’m still pouring drinks over at the bar.  Thank you to all who have taken pity on me declaring Google bankruptcy and told me what I missed this past month.  I’m set to keep up now.

*******

I would like to add that the port-a-potty story is only amusing because it didn’t tip.  If it had and we had been covered in… well, do I really need to spell out for you what we’d be covered in?  If it had tipped over, I wouldn’t have told the story at all.  I would have been too busy bleaching myself.

Even more amusing, the next day, we went to the beach again and the port-a-potties were being trucked away due to impending hurricane.  We took photos of the port-a-potties’ departure.

The ocean was incredibly strange on Wednesday morning.  As east coasters know, the Atlantic beaches generally have big waves that crash right at the shore.  But on Wednesday morning, the big waves were much farther back in the ocean, leaving yards and yards of calm, clear water.  You could see tiny fish and we collected buckets of enormous sea shells.

Weird (and wonderful) trip to the beach.

*******

So to recap my week: went to the beach, experienced an earthquake while in a port-a-potty, comforted my son when Steve Jobs announced his retirement, the twins split into separate rooms (more on that in the future), did back-to-school stuff, and we’re now preparing for a hurricane to hit the coast.

*******

And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week as well as the week before.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Are You Infertile? The New York Times Thinks You are Rich and Whimsical” (Too Many Fish to Fry)
• “Confessions of an Infertile Imposter” (Stumbling Gracefully)
• “The Butterfly” (Team Baby)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Team Baby has a post called “Depth Perception” about a questionnaire that she filled out for her therapist and the feelings it brought to the surface.  I love the way she describes the advice from her therapist: “We then talked about grieving some more; I feel like she keeps hammering home the same points: this is hard; this is unfair; you need to grieve, but not too much; focus on the present, don’t imagine the future, don’t dwell on the past. It reminds me kind of like when I took belly-dancing classes; you’re instructed to do 27 things at once, most of which are in total contradiction of each other, and you feel like a complete buffoon.”  I hope it was as helpful for her to write the post as it was for others to read it.

Endo&Beyond is trying to find an outlet for her grief.  She writes, “When I have finally worked up the courage to tell people in my awkward way they have all faded away …  I guess I don’t have anything to offer them now.  I guess I am one of those poor friends who isn’t there for them either.  Maybe they’ve got their own blogs wondering why no one hears them.”  It’s a sad post but also a beautiful one.

Lastly, The Cornfed Feminist implores you (and herself) not to judge double strollers.  She writes about the walks she is taking in the evening: “I’ve seen deer running around out there, herons, geese, ducks with ducklings, and jumping fish, plus some really cool birds. Unfortunately I don’t stare at any of that as intently as I watch the strollers.”  I especially love the dinner party idea at the end of the post, and I wonder why more people don’t do this — connect all the individual people they know who are experiencing infertility (or name-that-problem).  After all, she points out that “the online fertility support groups are helpful, but there’s no food. ”

The roundup to the Roundup: Thank you for taking pity on my Google bankruptcy.  My trip to the beach and all the crazy things that have happened this week.  And, of course, lots of great blog posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between August 19th and August 26th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

Last night after Steve Jobs announced his retirement, I found myself in the rocking chair at 10:30 pm holding a sobbing boy.  The Wolvog cried when I told him the news earlier in the evening, but he had bounced back nicely as small children often do since they have minds like squirrels and was soon distracted by the next metaphorical acorn.  But after a bath and tuck-in, his twin sister informed us that her brother was making it very difficult to sleep because he was keeping her awake, worried about something.

I asked him what was wrong and he first gave me this long story about an invention that went wrong at his fictional computer company (many children have imaginary friends; my child not only has an imaginary friend, but he has an imaginary company, imaginary planet divided into imaginary countries, and two imaginary baseball teams — a minor and major league alternative).  He cried hard over the imaginary botched invention and wasn’t placated when I offered to raise some imaginary capital so his imaginary employees could work on the imaginary invention again.

Finally, I asked him if this was about something else; a stand-in issue holding the spot of something truly upsetting him, and the tears started choking all the oxygen out of his throat and he sobbed until he couldn’t breathe over the idea that Steve Jobs would no longer be the CEO.  I think it was partly about Steve himself — a fear of how Apple will change — and it was partly about the Wolvog as the CEO of an imaginary company.

The Wolvog was standing right at the mental edge, thinking about himself one day leaving his post as CEO of the imaginary company and it was terrifying to think of himself floating jobless without his company to anchor him.  The Wolvog couldn’t imagine himself without his imaginary company, and he transferred that to Steve leaving his real company.  I think most of us both covet and fear retirement simultaneously.  We want to think that we are vital, that the world will stop spinning without us.  But I think even the Wolvog sensed in that moment that he could stop thinking about his imaginary company, let it float into the ether like an unmoored balloon until it was no longer visible, and the world would still continue.  And that is a terrifying thought: that the world can give or take on your creation; on your position.  It makes one feel wholly insignificant; a hard thought to swallow.

I took him into the rocking chair and explained how boards worked, and how Steve Jobs would still be involved with the board.  We talked about reasons why people would want to retire and how a company is more than just one person.  That Apple would still continue and if he feared that, I would happily take him to the store tomorrow where employees will inform him that they will still eagerly take our money for years to come.  I will still go forward with the plan to upgrade my iPod and pass along my old one to him.

The reality is that Steve Jobs is his idol.  The email he sent him earlier this year means the world to him, and it is currently being framed to go in his new room this week (along with a letter he received from his other idol, President Obama.  Seriously, the kid is in first grade and he has had more cool things happen to him than I have at 37).

Steve Jobs is a magician to the Wolvog; he’s his Albus Dumbledore.  And just as Hogwarts students couldn’t imagine the world without Dumbledore, the Wolvog is incapable of imagining Apple without Steve.

And yet, as adults, we know that while the world was different, magic still continued after Dumbledore.  Dumbledore’s parting didn’t suck all the magic out of the world.  Magic will still continue after Harry Potter too.   It will exist after JK Rowling stops writing about Harry Potter.  Those people are just the receptacles of something amazing.  But that wonder still exists even without a receptacle to make it feel tangible.

Retirements are bittersweet and change is always difficult.  I am sure Steve Jobs feels similarly — that mixture of fear and sadness that is coursing through the Wolvog’s body at this moment.  But Steve is also privy to a whole host of other emotions: perhaps relief, excitement, peace, frustration, anger.  I can’t imagine what it would be like to build something that touches so many people and then come to the point where you need to step away from it.  I don’t know how you ever say goodbye.

And, of course, he won’t truly say goodbye.  He will remain chairman of the board.  The seeds of ideas he planted in the company will continue to grow.  His mere presence on earth will continue to inspire a little boy in Maryland to grow up and make his imaginary company a reality.

And in the meantime, will I please just update my iPod already so he can have my old one?

I finally told the Wolvog that he had to go to sleep after a long cuddle in the rocking chair, and I walked him back to bed.  I can’t really explain how his tiny face looked against his sleeping bag (we still haven’t gotten his new bed).  I hope I get to think about that expression on his face twenty years from now as I sit and listen to him hold a press conference about his own computer company.  I will still be thanking Steve Jobs when that happens.  Because without dreamers like him today, there would be no inspiration for the dreamers of tomorrow.

Since mid-July, I have spent 12 days at home.  During those 12 days, we have had guests. We’ve gutted the house of unused items, trying to get rid of clutter.  We’ve dismantled the twins’ room and prepared their new rooms (okay, so this last one is still in-process).

I haven’t practiced guitar.  I haven’t written.  I did my normal amount of work in an abnormally small amount of time.

And I had to declare Google bankruptcy.  I’ve had to do this maybe two or three times in the last five years — mark all posts in my Reader as read and start from scratch.  I caught posts here and there: at least six a day during IComLeavWe and scattered ones throughout the month.  But I’ve missed the vast majority of what has happened in the past month.

So take pity on me (and whoever else has been off-schedule this summer) and fill us in on what has happened in your life this past month.

As always, it has been about a month since we met, bitched, cried, comforted, and caught up each other on our cycles and lives. Pull up a seat and I’ll pour you a drink. Let everyone know what is happening in your life. The good, the bad, the ugly. My only request is that if a story catches your eye, you follow it back to the person’s blog and start reading their posts. Give some love, give some support, or laugh with someone until your drink comes out of your nose.

I have a ton of assvice in my back pocket and as a virtual bartender, I will give it to you unless you specifically tell me that this is simply a vent and you do not want to receive anything more than a hug.

So if you have been a lurker for a while (or if this is your first open bar), sit down and tell us about yourself. Remember to provide a link or a way for people to continue reading your story (or if you don’t have a blog — gasp! — you can always leave an email address if you’re looking for advice or support. If not, people can leave messages for that person here in the comments section too). If you’re a regular at the bar, I’ll get out your engraved martini glass while you make yourself comfortable. And anyone new, welcome. I’m glad you found this virtual bar.

For those who have no clue what I’m talking about when I say that the bar is open, click here to catch up and then jump into the conversation back on this current post.

So have an imaginary cocktail and tell us what is up with your life.