06 January 2012

decisions

not so long ago, the gravity of my decisions amounted to red vs. white, taxi or metro, bourbon or irish, drive or walk, spain or the czech republic. not so long ago that i can count the months backwards on a hand, or maybe two.

hubby and i've been talking about life insurance since well before we got married. we have a mortgage, expectations about a life with both our salaries, travel plans. and now, we have another life to pay for. so the time came to really pull the trigger on upping our life insurance to appropriate amounts.

and as unexpected as it shouldn't have been, there came a question i'm still not prepared to answer. secondary beneficiary. this time it's not just about who gets the money if hubby and i tragically die together. it's about who we trust to raise our child. how are we supposed to answer that? how am i supposed to answer that?

i mean, shit, there've been plenty of times i genuinely struggled deciding between red and white, resorting to the flip of a coin to adjudicate for me. and now i have to choose another flawed human being, probably paired up with an even more flawed human being, to raise my child as i would have. or at the very least as well as i would have liked.

and until i can even wrap my mind around the gravity of that decision, i don't think i can actually make one...

~k

02 January 2012

another year gone

hubby and i broke in the new car on a road trip to the windy city for the holiday weekend. we spent new year's eve day hanging with friends while our teams (ucla and u of i) played each other in a most uncelebrated toilet bowl game, and then he went out with our friends that evening while i opted for a cozy night in bed cuddling with miss scarlet.

it's not that i planned all along to bow out of spirited celebrations or that i wanted to be anywhere but in the arms of my love when the bells towed away another year, but i just couldn't do it. i couldn't go "out".

twas probably because i spent the entirety of the afternoon at a football-watch party around merry people drinking and laughing and having a good time, and whilst i wasn't not having a good time, i really felt out of place. i can't drink. i'm in a time and place in my life with nary a space for frivolous thoughts. and frankly, as much as i love being pregnant (another blog post), i don't love having the same fucking conversation over and over and over again with every single person who sits down beside me.

it goes like this, "so, when are you due?" [i answer]. "do you know if it's a boy or girl?" [i answer]. "oh that's so exciting!" [i agree]. the end.

maybe it's my fault. i mean, i am pretty much consumed by baby thoughts and i am carrying around a soccer ball sized belly. maybe it's their fault. they don't have kids. they've never been pregnant. they don't know that i'm still a real person underneath that big belly and behind that wine glass of sparkling juice. or maybe it's just that we're all in an in-between phase of life, some of us coming, some of us going, all of us moving around in different shades of gray, not remembering what it was like to be in their shoes or knowing what it's like to be in mine.

or maybe it's no one's fault. it's just life. and with life comes change. and isn't change all about figuring out how to maneuver through the unknown? i think that sentiment pretty much sums up my 2011... and the start to my 2012...

~k