AWOL

NOTE:  Here's a weird thing about where I am at six months and one week:  I am alternately astonished by how much or how little I am crying, depending on the day.

So here I am, posting again. 

I feel like I've been gone a million years.

It's been like five days.

But my blog-reader-list thing!  It was FULL of new posts to read.  And I read them all!  And I was trying to comment but there were so MANY and it's after 8pm and I had to teach today and I feel TIRED and I have to finish reading and prepping for teaching and remembering how to turn Word files in PDFs (OMG I remembered.  And it's so embarrassingly easy that I can't believe I actually forgot and had to try to remember.).  So then instead of commenting I just started sending mental good-vibes to people.  I'm sure you felt those, right?  Great.

Anyway, you may be wondering what I've been doing.  Oh, not much.  Just, you know, flying through trees with the greatest of ease.

Yes, we went ziplining.  Yes, I was sort of nervous.  I hated the rope bridge more than any other part of it.  Once we did the first round, I loved it.  I could have zipped around all day.

David rocks the zipline.  He was fearless.

I am a tool.

I feel compelled to explain that the reason I am perching on my harness as though I am primly sitting on a chair is because the zip-lining guide, Kristy, told me to "cannonball" my legs up as I left the zipline platform and at this point I was starting to put my legs down for the landing but also trying to pose for a picture that would show that I was brave enough not to hold on with both hands and also I was trying to look cool for the other zipline guide, Corey, who was a cute boy with tattooed biceps. 

Clearly my efforts to look cool for Corey = FAIL.  Instead I look like some bizarre form of Mary Poppins or something.

BUT ziplining was fun.  It was one of those moments of feeling like a somewhat normal person in between many moments of feeling like a sad mess of a person.

The weekend was rough, honestly.  We were back at the lake with David's family and it was nice to see them and we did all kinds of fun things.  His nephew and niece are six and a half and three years old, respectively, and they are cute and fun to play with.  There was all the usual entertainment--swim in the pool!  paddleboat in the lake!  walk the dogs!  go out for fried fish!  read in the porch swing!  drink a beer while sitting on the patio!--but, you guys, all I could think about was that Eliza was supposed to be there.  Her cousins were supposed to be interested in (and then bored by) looking at the baby.  David was supposed to have her loaded up in the bjorn for our walks.  She was supposed to be rolling around on the carpet, gnawing on jenga pieces that the kids were playing with.  We were supposed to be making her laugh and arguing about who changed the last diaper.  David's grandma was supposed to be fussing over her and people were supposed to be asking me questions about how she was sleeping and whether she was teething and I was supposed to be comparing notes with David's aunt about when her kids started rolling over / crawling / walking / teething. 

Instead, Eliza was not mentioned.  I could have brought her up, but I didn't.  The truth is, if anyone had said her name, I would have burst into tears.  She was constantly at the forefront of my thoughts and I missed her SO much I couldn't even begin to talk about it. 

It was hard to see David's niece with her dad.  It was hard to see David playing with the kids.  I braided his niece's hair into two adorable French braids and she looked so cute and it broke my heart into a million pieces.  I held it together, but all I could think about was my baby girl and that I will never get to French braid her hair and, as you might expect, if I don't immediately redirect my thoughts from there, I could spiral out into a whole avalanche of things we're missing out on and I could cry about it for a million years.

The last day we were there, David's mom came down with his nephew who just turned one in April.  I was nervous about seeing him because he's such a "baby," and I thought that might be hard, but it was okay in the sense that he was a goofy, cute, drooling little bug of a dude and he staggers around like a drunken sailor when he walks.  He took to me right away, even though I'd only seen him once before, when he was five months old.  He wanted me to hold him and he hooked his little arm around my neck and David's grandma kept commenting on how much he was taking to his "Auntie Brooke." 

And I held him and tickled him and played with him and all I wanted was MY baby.

It was like this crazy kind of reverse torture.  The more FUN we had, the WORSE it felt.  Every fun activity was just a reminder of everything we are missing out on.  It was a FUN weekend.  We had a GOOD time.  And it was SO impossibly hard.

So I cried off and on for two days.  Not in front of everybody.  I cried in the bathroom or at bedtime or once while walking Cooper by myself because I just had to get away from all of the SUPER FUN FAMILY time because sometimes I HATE fun because I have to have it without Eliza.  I mean, I like fun.  But I also hate it at the same time.  We got in the car to go home and at the end of David's grandparents' road, I just burst into tears.  Because we weren't going home with our baby and our pack n play and our car loaded up with baby paraphernalia.  We were just going home.  Alone.

Well, the dogs were with us.

Cooper posing with his "serious" look. Serious look is complicated by fact that his head is abnormally small given the size of his body.  But he's just a baby.  He don't know.

Little Mac returns home only to pull the cushion out of her bed and wear it as a turtle shell.  Desire to be a turtle is the least of her issues, folks.

Anyway, it's back to real life now.  Summer class has started.  Teaching is good for me, honestly, because I am more productive when I am busy and it makes me feel like I am somewhat competent at doing something besides moping and crying.  Moping and crying, however, do remain my two greatest areas of expertise. 

I should keep working on my ziplining skillz, though.  Still hoping to impress Corey.