14: As far as you can go

Scotto, the majordomo years.

Summer came in with a vengeance. After a spring that was somewhat on the cool side, this week has seen temperatures well into the 30's, and you feel every degree of it. The last few days, we've had to be very careful about when and under what circumstances we would take Hank out. I took him at his regular-ish time on Sunday and he was good for the first half, down Cavendish, but ran out of steam halfway home. As luck would have it, we were on the lawn of the Dog Lady, Kristi or Christy, whom I had recently been introduced to and who helped get Hank revitalized with her fan and was eager to chat about dog care (non-judgmentally.) She fawned over Hank and said she would board him if we ever needed.

The next few days, I tried to walk him as early as I could before the thermometer climbed over 30. Even then it was pretty hot. Then he would go for an evening walk after dark when it had a chance to cool down -- the air was still hot but at least there was usually a cool night breeze. Naturally, the A/C has not been kind to our room (hot air rises, cool air falls, as a very memorable Bill Nye segment taught me) and sleep has been fitful but we do our best.

The weekend before this past weekend was Father's Day. We spent the Saturday at Nonna's with the fam, a very full house with the twins and Hank (only Ryan was absent due to illness, and of course Jake who we would not have in the same place as Hank.) It was a nice but busy day, but in all the chaos it was handy that I had Hank to look after so I had an "out" if I needed to manage my input. We had Jimmy the Greek for dinner, heavy on the tzatziki. We spent some time outside but were mostly in for the kids. It wasn't so hot we needed out and not so chilly we needed to be in. Either way. 

Father's Day itself, Dad and Deb had hoped to get us all there for dinner, but we didn't want to come out of the weekend totally exhausted so we offered either lunch or the following Saturday. They took Saturday, leaving us free on Sunday. We celebrated me -- my first father's day as an official dog dad -- with Williams Coffee, with bagels and a waffle to split (I think in the future it will not feel necessary) and then some running around.

I guess then, this is my opening to explain what's going on, which I've sort of delayed because... it didn't feel real, or I was worried I would jinx it, or I'm just anxious, or I just plain haven't had time to write, but... we have a match. Barring the whole thing falling apart, we have a surrogate, a GC.

It happened frighteningly quickly, but of course this is how these things go. Well you see, to make a short story long, we had actually had a tentative agreement with someone, a woman from Mel's past who lives in Newfoundland, whom we'll call NF. She and Mel had been having conversations about surrogacy and what that means for a little while last winter/spring, until it got to the point we thought our best option was to just ask her to match with us. She said yes, enthusiastically, but had some health issues she needed to wrangle first. Fair enough. Summer turned to fall, fall to winter, and not much progress was being made, nor much communication, but we spoke again in March and she affirmed that yes, she was still excited to be part of this and working toward it. We moved forward, heartened. During this time, Mel would occasionally have episodes of upset when she thought about how far away it all seemed and how nothing was happening, and I had to remind her that something was happening, just very far away, slowly, and out of our sight. My wife has many great qualities but I have always known that patience is not one of them.

Throughout this time, if we happened to see a profile from our agency that looked like a good candidate, we did occasionally reach out. It wasn't often, and we were just testing the waters in case somethin should happen that would leave us with fewer unknowns than with NF. Nothing ever came of it, and in March, when we had the call with NF, we went back to ignoring profiles, confident that, in due time, we would be ready with someone who wanted to do this for us.

Then, in late May, we were contacted by the woman who runs the agency, who said there was an available, experienced GC who wanted to talk to us. We had been sent her profile in March but declined to reach out, figuring it was a good opportunity for someone else. She had matched with someone else and it didn't work out and now, somehow, amidst all the profiles she could be seeing, she had singled us out. We were wanted.

What's more, she lives only twenty-five minutes (or less) down the road, not halfway across the country.

The situation was almost too good to be true, so we had to hear her out. We felt a connection and, after some soul-searching (and one very intense bout of "oh man, is this real"? anxiety from at least one of us) and receiving a blessing from NF, we asked her to match, and she said yes.

Since then it's been a flurry of legal and medical paperwork, and other comms, and it doesn't seem to be slowing down yet, although we won't be able to commence until at least September, which is annoying, but all things in due time. In the meantime, we spent some time putting together a thank you gift basket, which was part of our errand on Sunday. We also did some planting, after spending the 7th -- Hank's Gotcha Day -- at the garden center. We still have one more planter to put together, which took a backseat during the heatwave.

Despite having nothing to do, my days have been relatively full. I have some writing to do, some of which I'm obligated because I've been paid (!! don't get excited, it's a one-off commission for fiction) some of which is just my brain bugging out in various directions. There hasn't been much cleaning but I have still managed to fill every day with something, much of which involves the surrogacy process, taking point on comms and stuff. We're back in the world of Mel thinking about everything all at once -- ah, it was a good year -- and me trying to keep up. Walking Hank first thing helps me structure my day, because if I feed him then sit around waiting until he wants to walk, it's an hour or more during which I feel like I can't do anything.

This past weekend we tried to relax as much as possible, and also had that dinner with Dad and Deb, during which we made them the first family members to hear about our GC progress. We also spent some time in our backyard, but I leaned awkwardly on the patio chair and my ass tore through it -- that's right, little 165 lb me. Those things are cooked, time to get one ones.

We're trying Goodfood boxes, but we've been underwhelmed with the results, and this week we think we got the wrong meal (according to the site we got what we ordered but we didn't remember selecting something so boring with no protein as "orzotto" -- we could have made it ourselves.) We're going to pivot to HelloFresh because Mel's parents have been so endeared to it but I don't think we're expecting much. We just want to take advantage of the good deal on the first box or whatever.

Today the heat broke and it was a reasonable temperature to walk Hank, albeit a bit rainy -- I'll take it. He ended up pulling me too far down the street, all the way down Upper Middle like he likes to do, but he always forgets how long it is back. I wish my dog had a better long-term memory.

I've been applying for jobs, and actually had a phone interview this morning for one that would seem to be a natural fit. It's a little scary, the idea of taking a job at this point, and I might pass on general principle, because it would be a lot like the situation I just left. Part of me is very "You Must Have Income, Money Is Everything," and part of me is like, "You're safe, your needs are met, you can afford to wait." That just brings the question of... wait for what? I'm not exactly pursuing freelancing to the degree I told everyone I would, and I'm not sure I'm mentally tough enough or resourceful enough to do it. I know what Mel's going to say when I discuss it with her, and frankly I hope I get rejected so that I don't have to worry about it, but it wouldn't make any sense for them not to offer me a second interview based on today's. I'm amazing.

Sigh, what a dilemma.

Well, that's gotten me some clarity. Thanks for letting me talk through it.

There could be more, but I think I've poured myself out enough. 

Keep on rockin'

-Scotto

13: Incomplete in contemplation

Let's take 15, 20, 30 minutes for ourselves here.

It's been a weird few weeks since I finished at Indigo. I think the weirdest part is that days seem to be rocketing by. All of a sudden it's 2 PM and I have barely had a chance to get into gear.

Last week, Mel had off, meaning there was an off-brandedness to it, as I was not able to find anything resembling rhythm for my post-employment life. Not that I probably would have, but there was now a knowing difference. It was my birthday week of course. We were hoping to take our mystery trip, but the dossier told us that it should be Wed-Sunday, meaning we found something else to do on Monday, going by the lake with some iced coffees and Hank, and sitting in the sun. On Wednesday we had lunch with Mel's parents at North Coal, and it was rainy, and then there were other things going on for the rest of the week including a day-long trip to the mall (nails, haircut, lunch, Bay liquidation sale, Homesense) and a workout on Friday afternoon. By the time Saturday rolled around, the weather was too chilly and gray for me to think we'd enjoy our mystery trip. And Sunday, though a nice day, Mel didn't want to do a big day trip that would get her all keyed up before returning to work the next day, which I respect. Also on that frigid Saturday, it was planned as the date for the annual garage sale, for which we only had a week's notice. Mel was annoyed at that since there had been multiple newsletters with no mention of it, so when we finally got word, we were already set not to participate. Having nothing else to do, I browsed the few houses that were game enough to go through with it, and picked up a copy of Network on DVD for 50 cents. 

The weather has been hot and cold, quite literally, going from 30 degrees to 12 depending on the day. After peaking again this week, it rained and settled in the high teens low twenties the last couple of days, which is ideal to me. We need more of this sort of thing, less wild swings. 

So yeah, there's been a weird vibe and an impossible task of getting into any kind of flow. Admittedly, I slept late today. Mel and I both, individually and collectively, had rough nights last night, due to issues we are facing (as a couple against other things, not against each other) and a car alarm that went off around 2 or 3 AM (way too common of an occurrence for a quiet suburban complex.) I ended up having to get up and move to the other room to read for a bit and settle my mind. Something has happened recently that has given us a lot to think about... something sudden, not totally unexpected but abrupt and seemingly daunting anyway. Scary and anxiety-making.

For me, it's a total matter of "What the hell am I doing now?" I quit, and I know why I quit, and I know what I was expecting to do when I quit... spend long days at the computer, sometimes writing and sometimes job searching. And there would be time to, you know, make lunch and run errands, human things I never seemed to be able to do while I was commuting. Finally wipe down the kitchen, and aspire to perhaps even clean the floors. And maybe the basement. See, I've already put too much on my plate.

In practice, I seem to be running around a lot. "Oh, I've got all afternoon, I can go here there and everywhere." And before I know it it's 5:00 and the day is done. Mel wanted an easel for work -- she has this idea that she'll be able to focus her ideas better if she writes them on huge chart paper. Okay. So I went to Staples to pick that up for her. Oh, damn, that's expensive. Cheaper on Amazon. Okay, I'll go back to Staples and return this after we finish the order. 

Then there's Hank. Oh, I love Hank. Hank is precious and perfect, but he's also a prima donna when it comes to walks, always wanting to walk as far as he can get from home and tire himself out before coming back. This results in long walks compounded by rest periods. I'm not a fan of the way this impacts the flow of my mornings and one of these days I'm going to restructure things so that we get the walk done first and come home and settle in, instead of getting up, doing a coffee thing, and then interrupting the morning for a 30-45 minute walk. That's the sensible thing but when I wake up craving coffee it's hard to focus, and in the abstract it feels a bit too much like what I was doing when I was at the office.

Well, that's my own hangup.

Amidst all this, I got the bright idea to try to expand Uncanny X-Cerpts and do Patreon again. I felt so angsty about not working, and so optimistic about how much time I'd have to write, it felt like a win-win. In practice, I realized before my set launch date even came that there was no way to make that work. I can barely find time for the writing I want to do. Why obligate myself to more? The driving force was that I had this idea to do a Newsletter where I review whatever's on the racks, the catch being that I would pick up whatever seemed most interesting to me based on the cover or whatever and cold-read it. I still think that's a good idea, but it's not the right time for it; the right time might never exist. For what it's worth, that's sort of the comics version of Sound of the Week, going back more than ten years when I did that. It's simply not the time to try such things, even though on the face of it it seems like it is. Plus, comics are expensive yo.

So that's where I'm at. Scatterbrained, spread thing, anxiety-riddled. I've done a bit of job-searching stuff including tentative networking with people at companies I would enjoy working at. But I'm still very unfocussed. I'm obligated to write some stuff, actually, that I've already been paid for, but the deadline is way in the future, and in fact, does not strictly exist. Then there are things I want to write, and want to do, and other things I have to do... 

Life was certainly, on some level, easier, when I had no say in the matter. But every time I have doubts about what I've done, I think about why I did it and what not doing it would have looked like.

The unknown is a very fearsome foe. It's so easy to play it safe, but where does that get you really?

The task before me is not to fill my days -- to the degree I have days -- with meaningless distractions and passing fancies, but to do something meaningful for myself, for my life and for the people in it. I can boo-hoo about how hard it is, or I can knuckle down and be about it.

That's my time, and then some as it's now 2:40 and I need to feed both myself and Hank and Mel if she's willing.

Keep on rockin'

Scotto