My husband brought me a wee giftie from the store today.
Cue the collective, “Awwwwwwww!”
Hoo, boy! I am in a humdinger of a mood this evening. I’ve decided this piss-poor mood is vry srs bsns, so I’m attacking with the big dogs: beer and Friends.
The beer: Highland Brewing Company‘s Black Mocha Stout. It’s brewed in North Carolina, and going local is always cool. It’s doubly cool because of the Scottish heritage, which I am obsessed with thanks to the Outlander series.
This beer makes me happy for two reasons:
- It’s delicious. Highland’s site describes it as such: Highland’s most robust beer, having a very malty body with a large, roasted chocolate flavor. It is black in color with a very clean finish and a moderate hop flavor. Seriously, does that not sound DIVINE?
- It gives me an excuse to flex my (horrible) Scots dialect muscles – “When in Rome,” and all that jazz.
Someone needs to teach me how to pour beer, though, because the head on mine is pitiful.
All I need is a toy boat.
I apologize to all the women I unfairly judged in the past, most notably the ones who suffered an early pregnancy loss before my pea brain’s cutoff date deemed it worthy of their ongoing pain.
I’d be lying if I painted myself in a picture of utter despair and sadness. Mostly, I’m OK.
It’s weird. The sadness I feel is pretty selfish. I’m not really sad about the embryo that didn’t get a chance to graduate to fetus status. That embryo was probably doomed from the start, and there was something obviously not right with the pregnancy.
I’m sad for myself, my husband and our loved ones.
I don’t mourn the loss of a baby. I mourn the chance we lost at becoming parents. I mourn the fact that I’m not currently teetering between the first and second trimester of my first pregnancy. Sometimes it’s a passing case of the blues. Sometimes the sadness chokes me and forces tears from my eyes.
I know, it’s selfish. It’s horrible that it’s taken this to give me the compassion others truly deserve. I’m sure it’s infinitely more difficult to lose a baby the longer you get to know him or her, with countless dreams and expectations.
But early loss sucks in its own right, and I was wrong in the past to question how these hurt women could actually mourn something that hardly ever was.
For that, I am truly sorry.
I thought I had already learned that it’s impossible to judge another person’s pain based on my own expectations and experiences.
I was wrong.
Unfortunately, I’m sure I’ll learn this lesson again, in some different way, in the future. Life’s most important lessons seem to have graduating levels like university courses.
I’ll consider this Compassion 385.
We ate dinner (Mexican chicken – burritos for Rob; naked burrito(s?) for me) on the coffee table tonight because our kitchen table currently hosts the discarded Christmas Village That Was Invaded By Evil Christmas Bugs.
Yes, it’s on my kitchen table, and yes, I still need to put it away. No worries, folks. It’s clean. It just needs to be boxed. Need we revisit my issue with procrastination, especially when it involves packing?
I digress.
Lucky decided this was rather awesome and parked herself between us, a good 4-5 feet closer to our dinner plates than she normally gets. Fortunately, our dog only begs through telepathy and sighs and sits patiently until we eventually give in.
Yes, she eats people food. You try breaking a dog of this habit when all she survived from approximately age 5 months until 1 year by eating scraps and garbage she finds in the neighborhood.
She loves it. She’s healthy. She’s polite.
We’re total suckers.
