A (kinda) happy post, B sides and other rarities

It's all been a bit doom and gloom, a bit introspective around here recently, I know. Part of it has to do with a series of momentous anniversaries (of the time lapsed since we began trying for a baby, of our pregnancy with S, not to mention the oft dreaded Mother's Day).

But I've also been thinking a lot about the balance of this blog and the way it represents me, what I choose to write about and not. I almost never come here to share happenings in my life beyond the bedroom stirrups. I'd like to think if any of you were to meet me in 'real life', you'd be pleasantly surprised. I am (or so I believe) a many-faceted person with diverse interests and skills, none of which I ever seem to feel particularly compelled to share with the interwebs. Some of it might have to do with the fact that I find most aspects of my life quite blah right now. I'm not currently doing a job I love. We're not in a place of actively pursuing any interventions fertility-wise, other than being told and following orders to sit-and-wait-now-there's-a-good-patient. Too many things are still up in the air for me to do much of anything other than pour my angst and uncertainty into this space, and hope you keep receiving it as graciously as you have thus far. That results in a lot of pensive posting, I know.

But obviously it's not only the fact that things have been tough around here lately. I've had many adventures in life, moved across the world almost more times than I can count, to immerse myself in strange new cultures and take on causes for which I have a fire in my (otherwise perpetually empty) belly. All of these experiences and issues would, I am sure, make great blogging material. But again, despite occasional encouragement from friends and family 'back home' to do just that, I've never before felt the slightest impulse to record any of it on a blog. I'd like to think it's because I was too busy just doing it at the time.

Infertility and loss have been an altogether different kettle of stinky, despair-inducing, crazy-making fish. The isolation, the lack of understanding and awareness from the world at large can, as you all know too well, be suffocating. So here I came.

Still, as much as you all get it, I can be a bit heavy even for myself some days. It never hurts to pause for a brief interlude in our all ovaries!all semen!all the time! scheduling (with a phrase like that, you'd think it should be pregnancy-a-go-go around here. But alas and alak...). For no good reason other than one of my occasional wildly, irrationally optimistic stints, I'm in a good mood today. I'm playing my happy playlist (yes, I have playlists for many a mood).

This is helped along by a three day weekend of beautiful, sunshiny weather which can't help but to lift my spirits (because even if I have to practice hysterical inward laughter to do it, I deserve to get out and enjoy it too, dammit!).

Without further ado, a playlist of songs all of which - if not forcing me to leap from my seat outright and indulge in a spell of kitchen dancing - encouragingly whisper to me, in their ways: You can do this.   

On the Radio   Regina Spektor
Absolute Beginners   David Bowie
Fight Test   The Flaming Lips
Forever in Blue Jeans   Neil Diamond
Mushaboom   Feist
We Built This City   Jefferson Starship
Here for a Good Time (not a long time)   Trooper
Love is All Around   Joan Jett
Skokiaan   Louis Armstrong
As Is   Ani DiFranco
Here Comes the Sun   George Harrison
Rainbow Connection   Kermit the Frog


Bloggy friends, what prompts you to post? And, because I'm still compiling, what tracks would make it onto your pick-me-up playlist?

Source.