Stuck. Unstuck.

I have not been good at this blogging thing. It was feeling like too much of a highs (yay! good news!) and lows (boo! bad news!) place. But mostly I've been stuck somewhere in the middle. S.T.U.C.K. We've been on this roller coaster for about 3 years now (how did that happen?). And we've put so much of our life on hold. S considered going back to school or getting a different job a million times, but always backed off because, "what if peanut gets here". We thought about moving, but didn't want to make the financial (or even geographical) commitment because we didn't know what was going to happen with adoption or IVF. I never wanted to plan things more than a month or two in advance, even taking long-term work projects would make me nervous..."what if peanut gets here." And honestly, that was kind of a sucky way to spend the last 3 years. So we stopped. Being stuck. And here's what our life looks like now:

Work. S found some amazing opportunities in our city. She applied. She passed the phone interview. She has an on-campus interview next week. I am SO PROUD of her. And we are both so excited for the opportunities that might be headed her way. I know she's going to rock that interview. She's one of those fun, interesting, witty people that other people love to be around (she's the tigger - while I'm one of those people who should live their whole life on the internet - moody, snarky - the eeyore of the relationship). AND, her potential new job believes in domestic partnership (bring on the health insurance!). They don't cover IVF, but they do cover maternity, so we could potentially try to knock me up again. As far as my work, I'm still waiting on the July 17 deadline to find out if I'm going to be offered a new job (with IFV!) or not. It's not looking promising. And I'm feeling rather disgruntled about working with that client in general. However, I'm glad that the offer is still on the table.

Kids. Have I told you how much I CAN'T STAND our adoption agency? I am SO FRUSTRATED with them. The amount of craziness that has gone on is ridiculous. But I feel like our hands our tied (clearly, they ask for their $ upfront for good reason). We have been pushing back and speaking up when we feel like we can. And just taking deep breaths through the rest. I did talk to the birth mother who wants to place her toddler (I called her! On the phone! All scared and introverted like!). I'll admit, I had made some pretty serious judgements about her in my own mind. And I was WRONG. She loves her kids. She's involved in their lives. She's trying really hard to do the right thing. And honestly, I don't know what the right thing is. She doesn't feel capable of parenting and she doesn't have the support to get through this and she wants to give her baby a life she feels she can't provide, so she's decided the best way to deal with all of that is to find a situation with adoptive parents who can provide what she feels she can't (time, patience, experiences, encouragement, etc). I don't know that there's a "good" answer to this situation. If she chooses to continue parenting, I hope she is able to find access to the resources that could help her be the parent she wants to be, and if she chooses to place her child, I hope she picks us, as I think we'd do a pretty amazing job at raising that little boy and honoring his birth mama and what she wants for his life. I don't know where things go from here. At this point we're just going to step back and be available if she reaches out to us again.

Life. We took a vacation! S and I have been working hard. And we were both close to burn out. So we escaped to our own little magical bubble in mexico for a few days and it was absolutely perfect. Did you know Puerto Vallarta was SO GAY? We thought it might be itsy bitsy gay, but no, that town is OUT. When we checked in at our hotel (that pic is not actually where we stayed, just some fancypants photo I found online) they gave us a map of the city and circled the "gay part". They actually wrote "gay part" on our map so we'd be sure to know :) They even asked how long we'd been together and if we were celebrating an anniversary or anything. Sometimes I forget I'm a regular person with a regular wife who lives a regular life. It's nice to be reminded sometimes that being gay isn't so damn weird.