scary stories aren't just for halloween!

First of all-- thank you so much for your love and support on Wednesday's post. You guys make pouring my soul out so dang easy, and I haven't always had an outlet for that...so thanks. Now...on to much scarier-but-less-serious matters!

I told you I had two scorpion stories, and since I'm not a tease...prepare yourself. Things're 'bout to get REAL, yall. But first- a visual:

Source: niknak79.tumblr.com via Erika on Pinterest

I love this meme. I do not, however, condone the poor grammar it contains. Please know that if I were to make this meme, I would have included an apostrophe in "natures" and a comma after "wasps." [Yes, I'm a huge proponent of the serial comma. Anyone care to engage in nerdy dialogue about that issue?]

So back in 2006 I was living with my friend Lacie. 

We lived in this little duplex in a little neighborhood in the woods in Athens. Athens, it should be noted, is a college town. As such, the landlords are notoriously crappy and don't maintain properties, since all of the tenants are college kids who apparently either don't care about having maintained property or are too drunk to notice. One of those. Anyway. So our little duplex was functional and cute enough, but slightly lacking in the well-maintained department. Like the carpet was disgusting. There was little-to-zero insulation around the doors (you could see the daylight shining/feel the cold air blowing through all four sides of the doors). The roaches...oh dear God, the roaches. They were a problem. Ick. Anyways. We more or less made do, which was greatly helped by Matt's frequent trips over (we were engaged at this point) to clean up the bugs we'd trapped under glasses and saved for him to deal with.

So it was late one night, and Matt had just left to go back to his own house. Lacie was hanging out in her room, and I headed to take a shower in my bathroom. As I was finishing my shower and getting ready for bed, I suddenly heard Lacie freaking out. I mean...losing her mind. Screaming. "ERIKA!!!!! ERIKA!!!! OHMYGOD ERIKA!!!!!!!!" I sprinted into her room to find her folding back the comforter on her bed, as she did every night. Nothing appeared to be amiss, except for Lacie shrieking as she pointed at her bed.

Upon closer inspection, I saw it. Yup. A scorpion. Right underneath the comforter she was removing, on top of the sheets she was about to be laying in. Right about where her foot would have been resting. A big ol' freakin' scorpion. In her bed.

I immediately joined Lacie in losing her mind. I don't know what we thought we were accomplishing by standing there screaming-- it certainly wasn't scaring the scorpion into going anywhere. He seemed pretty content to just...linger. To tell you the truth- I'd never seen a scorpion before. Not in real life. I honestly had no idea they even existed in Georgia...if you'd asked me where scorpions lived, I probably would have guessed Egypt, because that's where that mummy movie took place and weren't there scorpions in that movie? I think I would have been equally shocked to find a mummy in Lacie's bed. Or a dragon. Because seriously. A scorpion? What the heck, dude? Sick.

As you can imagine, we spent the rest of the night/early morning frantically Googling ("can you die from a scorpion touching your bed?"), cleaning every single linen in Lacie's room, and generally being freaked out at the thought that there could be/probably were more of them somewhere. I don't actually remember exactly how we killed the one in her bed, but I think it involved scooting it off the bed by tapping it with magazines, then Raid-ing him to death once he hit the floor, then stomping his corpse with our boots and flushing it down the toilet for good measure. Sorry, animal rights activists, if that saddens your heart. It saddens my heart to think of my friend dying by scorpion bite (sting?) in the supposed safety of her own bed. 

Months went by. I married Matt, Lacie moved out, and Matt moved in. I know, right? Why would I ever want to leave a house with such amazing wildlife experiences? Figured I'd stick around a bit longer. The duplex continued to wow us with its apparent red carpet for icky creatures. Mice. Roaches. Those centipede things with billions of legs that sting. Yeah, it was awesome. Not. At least Matt was there full-time to deal with them, though.

One night Matt and I had just crawled in bed (which was now located in the room that Lacie used to live in). The lights were off and we were laying quietly, almost asleep. Suddenly Matt speaks, rousing me from my almost-asleep-ness. "I hear a scorpion," he says.

"You hear a scorpion?" 

"Yeah. I hear one."

Okay, weird boy. Who are you, the Scorpion Whisperer? Who hears scorpions? I mean...I'm pretty sure they don't make any sounds. It's probably a roach. Or a mouse. Both of which will require investigation and killing, obviously, so I didn't let him waste any time turning on the bedside lamp.

He looks down on the floor next to his nightstand.

"Yep. It's a scorpion."

HOLY MOTHER OF WHAT THE CRAP??!! Sure enough, a scorpion is just taking a sweet and slow little cruise across a piece of paper on the floor...the sound of which was distinct enough that Matt could discern the very genus and species of the creature that made it. Weird skill, Matt. But handy! That skill probably just saved my life! Swoon!

Matt, being much braver and less prone to shrieking than Lacie and I, quickly dispatched of the horrid beast, but I'm fairly certain I didn't sleep any that night anyway. And I don't remember the exact day and month of that occurrence, but I'm pretty sure that shortly thereafter we found ourselves doing some serious house hunting. And getting the heck out of Athens and away from its creepy wildlife.

For the record, we may live in the sticks now, but we have never ever seen a roach, scorpion, or mouse in our house. EVER. In almost four years. And that, my friends, is priceless.

We did have a rat in the garage once. But that's another story.

the burden of hope

So it' s 4:38 in the morning, which is not normally a time I would choose to be awake and blogging, but it is what it is. Once you've been laying in bed for two and a half hours unable to sleep, things that otherwise wouldn't seem wise start sounding pretty good. Not to mention, when you've been filling the sleepless hours (not just tonight, but many nights recently) with Deep Thinking, at some point you think maybe if I just write it all down, get it all out, maybe my brain can rest. 

So in recent weeks I've heard comments (or been asked questions outright) to the effect of "you are dealing with infertility so well lately...how do you do it? How do you stop letting your life be consumed with infertility, or are you just really not talking about it anymore?" And it got me to thinking...oftentimes in the middle of the night, obviously...and here's what I've come up with.

It's been a long time since I've posted a link to this article, but it's been one of my favorites for quite a few years now. It does an excellent job of describing the cycle of hope and despair, which to me is the essence of infertility. A constant, endless cycle of hoping and despairing. An exhausting, draining cycle of hoping and despairing. As a Christian, I feel like there's even MORE pressure to do the "hoping" part really well-- because our hope is in Christ, right? And so tack on an extra fifty layers of expectation onto your 'hope' end of the cycle-- because maintaining hope is practically tantamount to your salvation, right?, and to indicate a lack of hope would seem to indicate that you don't believe in God or something. So the cycle goes on and on....HOPING!!!!! and EXPECTING!!!!! and sure, despairing a little when you once again discover that all that faith-filled hoping didn't amount to anything. Again. And again. And again, times four years and countless hopes and even more countless hours of despairing.

And one day you wake up and realize that you cannot handle this cycle anymore and so you stop hoping, because if you can stop hoping, you can stop despairing. Or at least despair less. And even though it sounds terrible to 'stop hoping,' when it feels like your current Life Trajectory is pointing you toward either clinical depression or alcoholism and you'd rather skip out on both of those...jumping off the hope/despair cycle seems like the best option out there.

Now here's the thing. I haven't given up hope in general. I still have the hope and dream and goal of being a mother someday. Somehow. When I think about 70-year-old Erika, she absolutely has kids and grandkids surrounding her. So I haven't given up the hope of children in general.

I've given up the burden of expectantly hoping in each week, each cycle, each year. I've given up drumming up enthusiasm and optimism that this could be my month!!! This is my year!!! because years and years of experience have taught me that no, it probably isn't...and it will be a lot easier to deal with that disappointment if you haven't gotten yourself all worked up about the possibility that maybe it is. Do I still hope and pray that I will have children? Yes. Do I expect that it will be now, or soon, or by such and such a date/event? No. Because you try telling yourself year after year that "NEXT year on Mother's Day/Christmas/our TTC anniversary/summer vacation it will be different! We will be pregnant or have a baby FOR SURE!!!" and have your friends agree with you and hope with you as well and then hear a song on the radio and think it is a sign, and someone tearfully whispers something in your ear at church and it's a sign, and then the squash that were dead start growing again in your garden and it's a sign, and then you watch those days- Christmas, Father's Day, and the rest- roll by and by and by and have to remember that hope and confidence you once had...and tell me that anything isn't better than that.  

I had to get off the cycle of hope and despair because the burden of hope was too much. I am not strong enough to despair like that any longer.

And so here I am in a cautiously neutral-ish-optimistic emotional place. I desperately want children, more than anything, more than you can imagine. I am actively working toward that goal in as many ways as I know how and can afford. I believe and trust in a God that will use everything-- all of my life, including these four 'wasted' years of pain and infertility, including the four that could be to come, or the ten, or the lifetime...He can use it ALL to His glory. I do not doubt that at all. But that doesn't mean that every month (or three weeks, as my cycles tend towards now-- FUN TIDBIT!!) I have to start over with drumming up fake enthusiasm and hope that this will be my month. It's easier to expect nothing, because then when you get it...well, you were expecting it anyway. Sound depressing? Not compared to the alternative.

So there's my insider tip, friends. Tired of hoping and despairing? Then get off the crazy train (or Ferris wheel, as the case may be). Only it isn't that easy and I know it. I had to ride that train for years and years. I couldn't just stop hoping because some random girl on the internet said so, because a) that sounds sacrilegious and b) how can you stop hoping? I guess it's one of those things- like so many other aspects of infertility- that you just have to live through to understand. And maybe your experience with infertility will lead you in a different direction. But it's what's working for me, for now. I'm not at all sure I'll stay here forever...because obviously, if you're in the midst of fertility treatments or an adoption, YOUR HOPE IS GONNA SKYROCKET. And that's good. I think that needs to happen. But not for this month after month after year after blasted year of whatever it is I'm doing. A heart can only bear so much. And for me, the burden of constantly drumming up expectant hope was too much. 

So now that I've had the most productive middle-of-the-night hour of my life, I'm gonna try to rest my eyes before my alarm goes off. Thanks for listening, for supporting and encouraging me, and for holding out hope for me when I cannot do it on my own. 

accomplished

Things I Accomplished on MLK Day, 2013:

1. Slept in til 9:30.

2. Attended a yoga class with Mattie. It should be noted that I did not even ask him to go to this class-- upon hearing me declare "I think I'll try a yoga class today," he said "sounds cool, I'll try it too," and then he did. It was pretty fun!

3. Before beginning said yoga class, was approached by a woman who asked me if I was the yoga instructor. After I told her no, that actually this would be my first class ever, she said "oh! Well, you look like you could be a yoga instructor." At this point in time, my day was officially made. In case you were wondering what a yoga instructor apparently looks like, here's what I was wearing/looking like:

I'm sure you see it too, right? And yes, I am considering "getting mistaken for a yoga instructor" to be an accomplishment. Wouldn't you?

4. Grocery shopped at both Aldi and Publix.

5. Majorly reorganized all cabinets (we don't have a pantry) and the freezer. 

This included throwing out a crapload of expired (and mostly unopened...UGH) food and moving all of the "non-Bird Food Diet food" to a separate cabinet/part of the freezer. Which leads us to our current conundrum: what to do with all of that food? We have a whole bunch of frozen meat and dry goods (pastas, cream of ___ soups, snack food, brownie mixes) that we won't be eating in the foreseeable future. Should we a) hang on to them in case we give up the BFD soon and/or take a night/weekend off, b) give them away to friends/family who might have use for them, or c) donate to a food pantry. Of course, only the dry goods can be given to a food pantry...what about frozen meat? Need to figure this out. I will die if I look down there in 6 months and have 50 more pounds of now-expired unopened food to throw out.

6. Sliced up tons of fruit to dehydrate. We've been dehydrating fruit like crazy for the last week-- so fun and easy and makes for tasty snacks!

7. Chuckled at someone's FB comment that said something about how having inauguration events for a second term president is kind of like having a baby shower for a second baby. And then decided that I'm much more on board with repeat baby showers than repeat inaugural bashes because a) baby showers serve a purpose of giving a new baby things they actually need (diapers, monogrammed burpcloths, etc.), and b) baby showers are funded by people who WANT TO AND WILLINGLY CHOOSE TO FUND THEM and will also be attending/enjoying said party. And I can't say the same about inaugural events. So...ultimately I decided that second baby showers are way better and more necessary than second inaugural balls. 

8. Braved the 800 miles per hour winds and went on a long walk with Matt and Lola.

9. Knocked out a few chapters of test-reading for my friend Colleen's newest novel. Wondering what test-reading involves? Here's Colleen's vision for it. I'm really enjoying it!...both the story, and the part where I get to be really critical. Ha.

10. Silently (or out-loud to Matt, as the case may be) cursed the Postal Service/UPS for not running today. I'm expecting TWO packages from Amazon and ONE from Sephora-- how dare you take the day off?

11. Cooked a sweet potato and black bean chili and took this completely unappetizing photo right during the beginning of its "simmer for 30 minutes" phase.

Luckily, it tasted way better than it looks. And there are leftovers for tomorrow's lunch- woo!

12. Painted my nails.

13. Watched a few episodes of Duck Dynasty

and then The Bachelor.

Somehow I feel like these two shows cancel each other out and make me a well-rounded person.

And now that Bachelor is on, I feel confident that I will not accomplish anything else today. G'night!

dinner winners

Yall. It has been a weekend of good eatin' in these parts-- and the best part is, it's (almost) all been Bird Food Diet-approved! A few of you asked for recipes/reviews on my blogs/Instagram pics last week, so since it's a lazy Sunday afternoon and we have nothing but hours of football ahead of us...seemed like a good thing to get around to today. At first I was just gonna be like "I have a whole Pinterest board for this, go look there yourself." But then I realized...well, first of all, that's a jerky thing to say. But mainly- looking at someone's Pinterest board doesn't necessarily help me know whether that recipe was actually good...or easy...or anything. Who knows who actually wrote the "OMG easiest and tastiest thing ever!!!" blurb under the photo? It could actually be nasty and hard. So with today's links I will give you the lowdown on how the dish ACTUALLY went. Don't worry, though-- I don't fancy myself a food blogger or anything, so I'll keep it short and sweet. (Unrelatedly: I just used the word "actually" four times in as many sentences. Apparently I like that word?)

To start with, let's review The Rules: No meat, dairy, eggs, gluten, caffeine, soy, or added sweeteners. (Also, EVERY SINGLE TIME I type "sweeteners" I spell it "sweetners" first. Weird. I guess that's how I pronounce it.)

So let me start by confessing that phasing out the caffeine in my morning coffee (one cup only, but ALWAYS EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR THE LAST DECADE AT LEAST I NEVER MISS IT) is going poorly. One day Matt cold-turkey-switched me to decaf, which of course I did not notice until I had a horrible headache for the final 15 hours of the day. Which was awesome. I begged him to please never do such a horrible thing to me again. So now we're trying to mix a little decaf in with our full-caf, and maybe after a few weeks of incrementally upping the decaf/cutting the full-caf, I will be weaned off? All that to say-- I'm still drinking coffee. But for the last few months (we started phasing out dairy awhile back, maybe in October) the coffee has been less-than-thrilling because the half-and-half (and flavored creamers) had to go. So we've just been using unsweetened almond milk...which is fine, albeit boring. So when I saw this recipe, I had to at least try.

Dairy Free, Paleo, Sugar Free Homemade Coffee Creamer

Source: deliciouslyorganic.net via Erika on Pinterest

 

Like me, you are probably wondering "well if there's no dairy or sugar...what the heck is it made out of?" I'll tell you. It's a very non-scary, non-chemistry-experiment-ingredient-filled concoction of coconut milk and date paste as a sweetener, then things like vanilla/almond extract, cinnamon, or whatever else depending on which flavor you make. I did the french vanilla and I must say- it's good! I won't lie-- it's not as good as your favorite chemistry-experiment Coffeemate. But it's a vast improvement over plain almond milk. It wasn't hard to make. And it wasn't expensive. Therefore, I'm chalking this one up as a win...and next time I'm gonna try the Cinnamon Streusel kind, because that sounds way yummy.

Alright, next up was a HUGE WINNER in the lunch/light dinner category:

Chickpea Salad Wraps

Source: ohsheglows.com via Erika on Pinterest

Maybe it helps that I'm a huge fan of 'salad' type dishes (ya know, tuna salad, chicken salad, egg salad) to start with, but I loooooved this. I would eat this every day. I might eat this every day. Now I did have a problem with finding something to 'wrap' the salad in and ended up just tossing up my hands and using whole wheat (GLUTEN FILLED) tortillas. BUT. Since then I have discovered GF rice cakes which I think would be really good with the salad on top, AND I have purchased GF sandwich bread (which is a story all unto itself). So those would both be better 'carriers' for the salad. But trust me, this salad is awesome and you should make it whether you're on a Bird Food Diet or not. You should make it because it's delicious, filling, healthy, and cheap.

Alright. This next one was a semi-winner.

Creamy Polenta with Balsamic Roasted Brussels Sprouts

Source: veggiebelly.com via Erika on Pinterest

I liked it. Matt didn't. And he TOLD me! I can probably count the number of things Matt has actually admitted to not-liking on...one finger. So that must mean he really didn't care for this. I mean, he ate it. It wasn't inedible for him. But he didn't like it. Me, on the other hand...I enjoyed it. Matt's complaints were that the polenta didn't taste like anything (which, it kind of doesn't...that's just how polenta is...I told him to put some salt on it and then it would taste like salt. Duh?) and that the brussels were bitter and had crispy burned pieces...so all his mouth could taste was burned bitter things. That's a fair enough assessment. Brussels are kind of bitter. And they were roasted for 30 min, so there were definitely burned outer layers...but whereas I like the flavor of blackened/burned crispy pieces, Matt doesn't. I will say that I could barely taste the balsamic-- if I made this again, I'd triple the amount. So, this recipe might be good for ya if you know you like brussels and/or crispy black burned brussels. If not...maybe skip it.

Sticking with the 'balsamic-flavored' theme, let's go back to another hands-down winner...this one with no picture to go with it. Fish Fillets and Baby Spinach with Balsamic Vinaigrette is a recipe I found in that red-and-white giant Better Homes and Gardens cookbook you probably got for your wedding-- you know what I'm talking about? I know, right-- we actually busted that thing out and cooked out of it! And it was GOOOOOOD. We used cod, and this recipe was easy and YUM. That balsamic-honey sauce? I could eat it off a spoon. We will definitely be making this one again.

We made this one just this afternoon for lunch:

Zesty Quinoa Salad

Source: allrecipes.com via Erika on Pinterest

...and dayum was it good!! Not to mention WE HAD EVERYTHING ON HAND for the recipe and didn't have to go to the store. WINNING. Seriously people. This was fabulous. And easy. And healthy. And made a crap-ton, so we'll be eating on it for days (a good thing in my book).  Between this and the chickpea salad, I think I have my Lunch Plan for life. The 'dressing' you put on this (EVOO, lime juice, cumin, red pepper flakes, salt)...I kind of want to put it on everything I ever eat. It was awesome.

Alright. So I think that's enough recipes to tide you over for a little while. In summary, I would die (or rather, have given up attempting this Bird Food Diet the day after I started) without Pinterest and GF bloggers, so for that...I am very thankful. If you have any fab tried-and-true recipes that follow The Rules that you think I need to know about, send 'em my way!! Have a happy Sunday!