On our drive back from Michigan, I listened to a book on CD and Ryan watched Up; it was sweet to look back and see his lopsided grin, listen to his little snuffling laughs.

Before he went to bed, I asked him how it was.

He looked worried.

"Well," he said quietly. "There's a character."

"Mmm?"

"There'samaincharacterwhocan'thavekids."

"Aw, sweetie. Thank you for looking out for me. I think I can handle it."

I love this instinct he has, this blanket of protection. I wish I could say his instincts were wrong, that I have thick-as-thick skin and can handle the 27th as it passes by with a negative pregnancy test (I had to check) and a second one (because I wanted to make sure).

He knows me well. He knows how easily I throw myself into things--I will knit my fingers raw, I will read for hours at a time, I will obsess and obsess: when we were engaged, I spent a month working my way through The Knot, and then grew bored, was glad I had done all my magazine scrutinizing and flower selecting at once, and when it all escalated into "mattering," the decisions had already been made. It's all ebb and flow, and I've remained steady with the idea of parenting: this weekend, I started Baby Catcher, which is surprisingly well written and the author is hugely charming (I find myself wishing she were an active midwife in my area of the country).

That is, of course, if I can get pregnant.

My glass-is-half-full hope results in a great deal of emotional destruction sometimes. But I can't help but hope.

This week was my blood test to see if the Clomid worked.

I was so convinced I had those cramps, indicating ovulation, that I almost thought the blood test was a silly step in the process: I knew I had ovulated. My cramping, my other evidence, it had to be.

Alas, it was not. The blood test revealed that I did not, in fact, ovulate. The Clomid didn't work on this first round.

And I tried to not be devastated, to not quietly cry at the news.

I have to remind myself: this isn't indicative of it never happening. I just have to be patient, just have to trust in the medical profession, trust that as I work hard at making my own changes in diet and exercise, the medicine will work hard at make its changes too.

But all day yesterday, after I received the news, I was angry at my body; I wanted to pound my fists into the offending organs, embarrassed at my incapabilities, something people do so flippantly, so naturally, how some of my girl friends can just think the word "pregnant," and they are there, and some don't want babies and have to take drastic measures against it.

And this weekend, I go to Michigan for Thanksgiving, to spend some time with my beloved grandmother, and my cousin with his wife and five children will be there, and I'll have to bury myself in recipes and books and hold my head high. (Of course, all this difficulty is a secret from everyone there, save my husband, so I'll be holding my head high ridiculously, but still.)

Direction Darlin
Originally uploaded by Samantha Lamb

Another find on Flickr.

Oh, if only we could speed up time, or rise our hips up at just the right angle, know how the compass points.

I'm feeling the approach of Minka, the namesake of my monthly. I'm trying not to be sad about that, see it as an opportunity--another month we have to learn to knit booties, to read more books, to shuffle bits from the second bedroom to the rest of the house, to work on my thesis.

But still.

I ordered a print of Heather Smith Jones' "hope SEEDS" which arrived this week and seems oh-so-fitting given this stage of our family life. I'm absolutely in love with it and will keep it out, atop my little (growing!) library of pregnancy and parenting books, and when we get some good news, I shall take it into the framing shop in anticipation of the next stage. But I want it out in our living room now, to remind me of the good things to come, to remind me of how hope can carry you.

My body, today and yesterday: the dizziness is resolved by a glass of apple juice, a few spoons of strawberry ice cream, a container of yogurt. My body wants sugar more than it usually does, which is curious to me; some have a sweet tooth, but I claim a salty one. Last night and the night before, as I fell asleep, I could feel that twinge of a cramp, which could be menstruation hinting at its arrival, but Mayo Clinic says perhaps it's an early sign of pregnancy.

This is an excellent test for me, as I'm most likely not, but it's allowing--requiring!--a certain level of patience and balance of optimism and realism that I often don't have to balance.

If I were on a twenty-eight day cycle, which I'm not (I'm on some sort of disaster cycle with medications and whatnot), then I would be able to take a test in five days and find out how this month went. Ryan is across the river to pick up a few New Glarus treats for my book club girls, and he's picking up an extra raspberry tart for me, which I will drink if the test does not go as I hope.

Five days.

My body, now: craving strawberry ice cream and gummy-worms. I feel oddly off-kilter, a ridiculous dizziness. Perhaps the extra sugar in my diet is equaling the fuzzy-headed sense.

I won't read into it at all, won't scrutinize every whimper within, and I promise myself I won't pregnancy-test myself again at least until, um, a week from now, which is technically still too early, but I know fifty-some percent might be accurate. I bought another trio at the corner market, so I'm stocked for all my panicky, knee-jerk secret bathroom-testing.

Clearly, patience is not my strong suit, and it's only the first round of trying. My dear friend pointed out so kindly that it takes a normal couple an average of 3-4 months before "getting preggers" (I don't think I really like that cutesy phrase) and she reminded me one of her other dear friends took three years to get pregnant and the doctors could find nothing "wrong" with them. Little words of hope.

This afternoon I stopped by our local framing shop to bring in three prints by this extraordinarily talented artist for framing. I bought originals of this print, this print, and then had a commission done to celebrate Ryan and my two-year wedding anniversary this past August. The first two are going in the second bedroom, a place I'll eventually call "the nursery," so we planned it with a soft mat, soft colors. They're going to be really beautiful.

Last night I dreamed I was to go help watch my nephew Christian. I was in his room, changing his diaper, but all the accouterments were spread around the room, so I had to call my husband up to help. Christian's diaper slid right off; whoever had put it on before hadn't fastened it tightly enough. And C was somehow old enough to chatter; now he says single words and makes squishy noises but not full sentences. He was aware enough to frustrate the strange adult--he would take a specimen from his diaper in his little chubby fist and toss it and then he stood up on what was to be his new "big boy bed" (just a frame and mattress at this point) and peed. Fortunately, Ryan was right there, so we were able to tag team through the little monkey's diabolism. I remember the feeling of how do I do this by myself? Yesterday I had been talking to my internship boss about stay-at-home mothering and how that's what I'd like the most, even though I knew some daycare would have to come into play if I have a child in the midst of graduate school.

In my dream, Kelly, the mother of Christian, came up to me and said, "Richard and I are going to start trying for baby number two on December 8th." (That, by the way, is more or less the starting day of our second month of trying, if this month does not work out.) I put on my happy face for her: Oh, how exciting! But then I had to slip into the bathroom and cry a little, because I figured I would take much longer to get pregnant and there she would be, pregnant again, because she's wonderfully fertile and they barely had to contemplate trying when she got pregnant, and I'd have to face another of her easy pregnancies while I kept trying and trying without success.

Oh, dreams.

I did something stupid this morning, too: I woke up convinced a pregnancy test might work and tell me something, help ease my suffering in this I-can't-wait game, and I took one this morning and it was negative, which is what it will be no matter what, since we still have another evening of trying anyway. I hate this pit-in-my-stomach feeling. I don't think it worked and I spent so much of this month being hopeful. Next month is so very far away.

Oh, realm of too-much-information, let me introduce a little more to your scintillating sphere: I'm fairly certain I'm ovulating just now. That special combination of extra-acne-and-cramping-and-that-special-change. (So much hope and curses spent gazing at the underwear, the underside of a tissue.)

I read this cramping comes on the right side and is called Mittelschmertz, which, according to some websites, is only experienced in a fifth of women. I may actually have a trade-off from my PCOS. I might not need that blood test a week from tomorrow to tell me what my body is probably telling me.

These past few weeks, I've hit a wall scholastically, have been too spent by critiquing students' and peers' drafts, too irritated at the duties of a poetry editor in a small literary magazine, too frustrated at the requests of others when working at my internship (side note: love the boss though--it's the other people who ask of me that don't always hit the mark). I think I'm on the up-swing though, gratefully, and ready to immerse myself in my studies for another month before winter break.

Generally speaking, my literary self and my homesteading self often are at odds with one another. Theoretically, my life would be easier if they were in cahoots, happily balanced, but instead, when I'm steaming, only one can exist properly and the other gets sorely neglected. In the past few weeks, I've been trying new recipes, reading plenty of non-fiction books on greening up my household, and knitting for the holidays. I'm a very, very, very early-stage beginner in knitting, even though I've been doing it for years now; I haven't moved much beyond the scarf and the washcloth with a few experiments in coin purses and hair wraps.

I picked up two books at the bookstore this weekend--three, actually, including Accidental Vegetarian cookbook--Itty Bitty Toys, which has some really sweet animal knitting projects, and Vintage Knits for Modern Babies, which has very simple projects ideal for my aesthetic and my talent level. Perhaps I'll have a little something from that book to show you before the holidays.