This post pretty much takes on a life of its own about halfway through.

I'm having a really hard time getting going this week. I don't know whether this is an ADD thing or what, but if my Monday is off, then my whole week tends to be off, and yesterday's doggie drama disruption seems to have thrown me for a loop. I can't get focused or get my head in the game.

It doesn't help that, despite the fact that the high today is supposed to be 103, my brain has checked out of summer and decided that it's fall now, thank you very much, and no matter how many times I go outside and expose myself to the stifling heat, as soon as I come back inside all I can think about is sitting on a pleasant patio somewhere, working with yarn and sipping pumpkin spice lattes (or pumpkin ale -- something pumpkiny, at any rate) while I watch the leaves fall. And what's not helping that is that yesterday afternoon I went to Hobby Lobby to stock up on yarn for a baby blanket for my niece's upcoming baby shower. It's a super soft, heathery alpaca blend, and it's so pretty, and I just want to work with it all day long, never mind that my wrist starts hurting after about twenty minutes.

On the plus side, I think it's a really good sign that crocheting this blanket for someone else's baby is making me so happy. I put it off so long because I feared it would depress me, but so far I'm feeling totally okay with it, which is helping to lessen my dread about attending the baby shower. Really, these past few weeks I've been feeling a lot of peace about the whole baby thing. Still some pangs of grief here and there for my past losses, but mostly hopeful about the future, and full of conviction that, whatever happens, it will be okay. That things will happen according to God's plan and purpose, and if that doesn't happen to coincide with my plans, I'll be able to put my trust in Him and get through it with my faith and sanity intact. It's about trusting that Romans 8:28 is true, even when I can't see any evidence in my own life that any good is coming out of the stuff I go through.

Although, if I think about it, there is evidence. While I would happily suffer diabetes if it meant I could have my babies alive, the fact is that the miscarriages woke me up to where I was headed, health-wise, and forced me to start taking better care of myself. I also feel like my experience has equipped me for, and made me more open to, ministering to other hurting, grieving women. I think it's definitely made me more empathetic and compassionate in general.

Of course, none of this in any way makes me glad to have been through two MCs and an uphill battle against PCOS. But I can see evidence that God is using my experiences to help me grow, both as a person and in my faith.

Well, THAT went to a far more spiritual place than I expected. I thought this post was going to be about fall fever and yarn craft when I started. But maybe now all that's off my chest I'll be able to get some work done.

A Non-Taxing Potpourri of Updates and Such

I keep wanting to turn this into more of an essay blog, with posts that are more carefully thought out and crafted, albeit less frequent. But I rarely have the time for that sort of post, and when I do, I don't have the energy to put that much thought into it. So instead here's a random list of what I've been up to lately:

• Writing. Business has slowed down over at The Web Wrangler, so in addition to working on my novel I've also been busting my hinder cranking out articles for Demand Studios. Specifically, I've been writing for their new property White Fence, a consumer info & comparison site for utilities. So I've been comparing a lot of phone companies and satellite TV providers and Internet providers and whatnot, and if I never have to try to find pricing info on a service that doesn't let you see their pricing unless you live in their service area again, it will be too soon. But I'll probably have to do it again starting Monday, which is too soonest.
  
  I might be a little burned out on article writing right now. Can you tell?
  
  
• Learning crochet. I made an attempt at this last fall, but I absolutely couldn't understand the diagrams I found online, and watching how-to videos didn't do anything to clear things up for me. But since "Learn a new yarn craft" is on my list of goals for 2011, and since I didn't get the yarn spinning kit I wanted either for Christmas OR my birthday (clearly, I need to be less subtle about dropping gift hints), I decided to give it another go.
  
  As luck would have it, last weekend we made a trek to the used book store, where I picked this up:
  
  
  
  
  The book, that is, not the granny squares. Those, I made, thanks to the VERY clear and easy to understand diagrams in the book. The top square was my first, and I had to unravel and start over three times before I got it right, but I don't think it turned out too badly for my first time crocheting EVER*. The bottom one was my second attempt, and it turned out even better.
  
  I still need a lot of practice before this comes easily for me. For one thing, it's really hard to get used to holding the yarn in my left hand -- I keep automatically picking it up and holding it in my right hand as if to knit. And I don't think crochet is going to supplant knitting any time soon as my favorite yarn-related pastime. But I've always wanted to be able to make granny squares, and now I can. Now if I can just figure out amigurumi, I'll be happy with the extent of my crochet skills.
  
  Oh, and now I can make this! Isn't that awesome? That whole blanket is just one giant granny square. I think I know a certain grand-niece or -nephew-to-be who might be destined to get one of these after they join us out here in the world.
  
  *My big sister taught me how to chain stitch when I was a little kid, and she might have even taught me single crochet stitch, but I never actually made anything, and I didn't retain any of it. So I might as well have been a crochet virgin.
  
  
• Watching Doctor Who and crushing hard on Rory. And fearing for him. And being totally won over by River, and by Matt Smith's Doctor, and ready to jump on board that ship. I think this latest season just might be my favorite season ever.
  
  
•  Not losing weight. It seems I've gotten stuck on that dreaded plateau I was worried about. It's frustrating, because I've been doing great on my diet and working out almost religiously. But for the last month or so the scales have been stuck bouncing around between 175 and 173, and won't budge a single pound lower. It's possible that I've still been experiencing "hidden weight loss", building muscle faster than I'm losing fat, since I've been doing a lot of toning exercises.
  
  Even so, today I adjusted my diet according to advice on the Zone web site for getting off of a plateau--namely, reducing my carbs by one block at each meal and adding an extra block of monounsaturated fat. It seems counter-intuitive, but apparently eating healthy fats helps regulate insulin, which in turn causes you to burn fat. So here's hoping this un-sticks me, and I can get back to making progress toward getting ready to TTC.

And that's pretty much been my life lately. How's things at your end?