Since last I blogged I have:

*Continued jogging and working out
*Had an awesome day all to myself to recharge and go to the gun range, lunch, and a movie without having to wrangle a toddler.
*Gone to the zoo, the beach, the Academy of Sciences, the Discovery Museum, and the park with Thomas way more than usual.
*Made the best possible, in fact the perfect, arrangements for Thomas when I go to work/school! Hooray!
*Gone shopping for pants without feeling the urge to burst into tears even once - and actually finding pants!
*Not managed to do a full pull up, but am getting closer.
*Started to feel kind of excited about the actual bathing suit wearing part of our upcoming Caribbean vacation. (Ten more days!)
*Taken the PELLETB and the physical agility tests.
*Bunch of other stuff - I've been a busy girl.

So, the exam was not as hard as I expected. There was no essay section, for one, and it was shorter than I thought it would be. I finished it in less than one of the four hours given. I was actually more worried about that cursed six-foot wall, and with good reason. All of the guys who were called before me just ran up to it, jumped up, grabbed the top, and swung themselves over in three or four seconds. I had to take a few stabs at it and sort of walk up the wall holding on to the top - but I made it, damn it, ant that's what matters. No six-foot wall is going to stop me! Take that wall, I say, take that! And, apparently my month of jogging prior to the test was doing more for me than I honestly thought it could, since I did the 220 in 40.3 seconds, which surprised the hell out of me. So, armed with my T-score and my hard-won physical agility, I'm ready to head to the academy, just as soon as I can do a few more pushups. Ah, pushups, you evil things. The painful realization of how much upper body strength I have lost was inescapable after we got that pull up bar. After a month and a half (though admittedly I've not been as diligent about it as I have been about jogging), I can get my feet off the ground. That's it, though, just off the ground. So, I pull as hard as I can, and when I feel my heels clear I lift my toes up and hang there, resisting the urge to kick my legs, Wile E. Coyote style, in a desperate effort to climb thin air and get my chin just a little closer to that bar. It's not a pretty sight; all that straining and sweating for so little payoff. But someday, pull up bar, someday. You can be all smug and superior now, hanging there in the doorway to the library, all unconquered and complacent, but one day soon, we will meet, face to foam rubber wrapped grips, and I will be victorious...and then I'll probably lose my grip and fall on my ass from sheer surprise, but still!

Other than that, things are going well. I am enjoying having more energy, Thomas is awesome, as usual. He's really enjoying going out more often and having more fun with a mom who's in a better mood in general than I had been. I'll have to put up some pictures soon, since he's growing like crazy, and still just as cute as it's possible for a little boy to be (in my totally biased opinion, of course). But now, my online time is up - got a lot to do before we head to the zoo.

Parts of My Body Not Currently Sore
Eyelids
Ears
Pinky toes

Things I Have Purchased This Week
Workout pants
Pull-up bar with straps for ab workouts
Wine cube

Things I Do at 6 a.m.
Turn off alarm
Curse silently
Question my life goals
Try to remember where I put my sports bra
Go jogging

Things I Want Right Now
Cheeseburger
Chili Fries
One of those little deep fried burritos they used to have in school lunches

Things I am Having Instead
Mint tea
Lactic acid
The hollow comfort of virtue

What I'm Doing on March 5th
Taking the POST entrance assessment which is step one in the application process for becoming a police officer

*Flex*
*Flex flex*
*Wheeze*
*Gasp*
*Faint*
"Well crap, I seem to be out of shape," I says to myself a while back. What to do, what to do? Drinking wine and eating cheese until I was too tipsy to give a damn how I looked didn't work. Cross that one off the list. Perhaps, just maybe, it was time to start thinking about possibly considering the idea of working out. But I didn't want to rush into anything, okay, in my state of fitness, any sort of rushing could have killed me.
I was in a bad way, I confess. I was (well, still am) a stay at home mom, somewhat socially withdrawn, maybe a little depressed at times, too fond of eating and mostly sedentary, and it was showing. The less I did, the more inertia would keep me doing nothing, and worse, every time I realized how flabby and lumpy I was getting, I would get more and more down and less and less likely to get off my expanding ass and go do something about it. Finally I shook myself up enough to start going for walks with Thomas every day and taking him out for more physical outings, like going to the zoo where we both could run around rather than just taking him to the park where I could sit and watch him play. It started to work. I got pregnant! Kept walking, wanting to be a fit mama of two! Things were going well. We lost the baby. I gained a shitload of weight from self-medicating with wine and beer every night as soon as Thomas fell asleep and just wallowing around in my own misery. I gained more weight in the month after we lost Alexander than I had the four months I'd been pregnant with him. I felt, and looked, awful. I made a decision, though, that I needed to figure out what I really wanted to be doing with myself, my life, my future. I kept coming back to one thing: I want to be a cop.
So, now I'd made a decision and it was time to do something about it. The first test I have to pass in the hiring process is the physical ability exam. I started exercising again! Yay! I started feeling better, looking a little better, bit by bit. Then I went to visit my sister in Colorado for two weeks. I didn't work out at all while I was there, but I still lost weight from swimming with the kids, walking around, and sweating like mad in the sweltering heat. Hooray! I started exercising a little as soon as I got home, but then we were moving. I used my work out time to pack boxes. Then we moved in and I used that time to unpack boxes. We were mostly moved in when I discovered that our caving in and getting cable had a side benefit - exercise TV! I was doing a 20 minute, ass-kicking workout every day! I started losing weight again! I felt great! Then Rob brought home The Plague. I was too sick to work out for three days. The day I started feeling better, I had three wisdom teeth pulled. I pussed out for another week. Then a few more days from sheer inertia again. I am, at heart, a deeply lazy person.
Today I got back on it. I did the 20 minute workout. I may die.

You know what sucks? It sucks when you're going along with your life, thinking that you're totally dealing with your recent tragedy, that you're sort of okay, getting over it even, then suddenly you have a meltdown and realize that you've been wound so tightly just trying to function that you're about to lose your fucking mind. You realize that you haven't been dealing, you've been avoiding, that you're so angry, so volatile, so brittle, and so depressed that you're acting like a crazy person. That you've used up all this time you could have been healing convincing yourself that you're fine and not really healing at all.

Yeah, that sucks.

Luckily, realizing how fucked up I am has actually helped. Letting myself not be okay has made me a little more okay than I was. I certainly have more patience with Thomas (poor kid has been dealing with a psychotic mom for a while) since I realized how bad I really was feeling. That, in turn, makes me feel less guilty, since every time I lost my patience with him I felt like a monster.

I have sent an email to my midwife to see if she can recommend a good Psychologist. That might help as well. Also, I'm going to get back off my ass and work out every day. On top of the depression and mourning, my disgust at myself for being so out of shape is just making things worse. I figure that every little thing I can do will help. Keeping the house clean was helping, but I've been gone for the last two weeks. Working out was helping, but it was so unbearably HOT in Denver while I was there that the thought of breaking an additional sweat (when I was already nauseated from the 100+ degree weather and altitude) was repellant enough to give me a good excuse to sit around on my kiester. Today, though, today Thomas and I are going for a walk, to the park, and while he naps I'm going to work out. I need the feeling of doing something and the endorphins.

I'm also going to send off an email to a counselor at Berkeley and see about planning out my schedule for going back. I only have two semesters' worth of credits to go and I'd like to get on it. That will also give me time to get in shape. With a Bachelor's in Psych and being fit I should be ready to tackle the Police Department exams. I should also get in contact with a training officer at Daly City PD and maybe at SFPD as well and just have a talk with them about my options and chances for passing the exams and getting hired. This all means putting off having another baby, but I think that's for the best right now. I don't want another baby, I want Alexander. I can't have him, though, and I need to deal with that loss before I will be ready to deal with another pregnancy and child. I need to work through this and concentrate on being a good mother to Thomas for now before I am going to be able to have another baby. And, I think that having a good reason to go back to school and going for a career that I feel passionately drawn to will be good for me.

I was doing pretty good yesterday and this morning, but this afternoon sucks. I'm tired. I'm depressed. I'm still bleeding. That's the worst part, I think, the constant reminder every time I go to the bathroom.

You know who's awesome? Seriously awesome? My husband is awesome. I am feeling down and tired and out of sorts so what is he doing? He's coming home early just to be with me. Because he's awesome and it's always worse when he's not here. He makes me feel safe.

I started writing again yesterday, though, and that felt good. I dug out the tiny bit of the NaNoWriMo project I started a couple of years ago. I can't find all of it, but the excerpt I posted here was a good seed for something. I didn't get a lot added to it, but it was fun to just be writing and I think I can go in an entertaining direction with the story. It will, if nothing else, get my mother off my back. She's been nagging me to write more and, as you can probably tell by the frequency with which I update this thing, I just haven't been up to it much in the last year or more.

Thank you for all the comments and sympathy. I really appreciate knowing that so many people were thinking of us as we've been going through this.

It's been a week and a day now. We had the D&C on Friday, so I've been not pregnant for 6 days. I hate it. I sort of hate everything right now. I'm not angry in any focused way, like angry at the world for my baby being dead and gone, instead I'm just generally angry. I want to hit something, start a bar fight, pull some jackass out of his car on the freeway and slam his head in the door. All this rage is built up and I have nothing to do with it. The only things that don't make me angry are my son, my husband, and my mother. And Mom has to leave today and go back home. It's going to suck without her. Thomas is very attached to his "Gamma!" and he's going to be distraught when she goes, as will I. She's been such a help and such a source of strength. Rob went back to work today, and while I am so thankful that he was able to take this time off, I miss him terribly. Tomorrow is going to be rough with just Thomas and me knocking around the house. I may take him to the zoo or something just to get out and keep my mind off of things. Hopefully it won't be as bad as I'm afraid it will be. I know I have plenty of friends I could call to distract myself or talk or whatever, but I can't seem to bear the phone right now. I can't even talk to my sister (who's going through her own mess right now). I want to call people; I pick up the phone intending to call people, but then I just can't do it. I have so many voice mail messages just sitting there waiting for me to address them and I just can't do it. I don't have the energy. I can make it through the day and play with Thomas, cook and eat, function and keep from falling apart, and that's it. I don't have anything left at the end of each day, and yet I can't rest, either. I lay awake frantically thinking about anything else, reading or doing stupid crossword puzzles, exhausted but wide awake. I'm so tired.

Frankly, I'm a mess and I'm sick of it. My own inability to concentrate is as infuriating as everything else. I'm tired of getting in the car to drive to a particular store and find myself heading for the freeway or downtown instead of where I needed to go, tired of forgetting the thing I was on my way to pick up, tired of being in the middle of doing some task around the house and suddenly realizing that I have no clue what I was up to just seconds ago.

I don't really know how to say this, and I am having a lot of trouble talking about it out loud, so I'm turning to this neglected blog to get it out. For those few of you who may read this who don't already know, I got pregnant a few months ago. I am 17 weeks and 4 days along right now, and my baby would have been due October 27th. But it's dead. Since my last appointment at 13 weeks, just after we saw that amazing first ultrasound of his or her little arms and legs wiggling and squirming, that tiny heart beating, the baby just stopped growing, stopped living. We don't know why yet. Hopefully we'll have some sort of answer soon. We don't even know if it was a boy or a girl. We'd planned on naming a boy Alexander and a girl Eve, but we'd started considering Alexandra, so we're just calling the baby Little Alex. We are going in tomorrow morning to have the D&E and I will never even see Alex. We had a barrage of ultrasounds yesterday but I never got to get a good look at my baby's face. Alex was just so small. So still.

To those of you who have sent me such kind messages, good thoughts, and prayers, I want to say thank you. It has meant more to me than I thought possible just to know that there are people out there, many who barely know me, who were thinking of us. It may be a while before I can bring myself to get back to you directly, but please know how much I appreciate your kindness.

I never, in my whole life, thought that I would ever become a decent housekeeper, but apparently I have and that's unfortunate. Right now I just really need to clean things. I have already scrubbed the bathroom, but the kitchen is already pretty squeaky clean, and there just isn't much else to be done. Maybe I'll clean the windows. Or maybe I'll just sit here for a while.

Thomas has been so amazing. He was such a good boy all day yesterday, even though he spent most of the day trapped with us in various waiting rooms, exam rooms, and triage rooms, mostly waiting for doctors and nurses. So much waiting. He was an angel and a welcome and beautiful distraction from why we were there. Rob and I are so lucky to have him.

I have so much I want to say, to get out, but I can't right now. I just need to get up, move, clean something, fold something, wait for Thomas to wake up from his nap. Rob is napping with him; we were up pretty late last night, drinking wine and watching stupid movies. I can't nap, though, I can't lay down.