Yeah, I'm going to just hide a wee bit longer, thanks.

I'm completely buried under work and doing things like trying to tease out a thread in the cobwebby-back-door of a FileMaker database and figure out how the HELL anyone could work in that mess and where the internal logic is and why the FUCK I can't do data entry in that relational table when I have admin access and that is where the look-up is directed and OMFG I will be bald from ripping my hair out before this is said and done.

Right.

How YOU doin'?

Anyway, this is just a pop in to say that given the above, when I received a request via FB to join some old college pals at the game this weekend, I seriously considered it for a bit. I knew it would mean seeing the newest baby, but I feel ready for that.

The other stuff I saw from the invitation list and ensuing discussion have effectively insured that I will be staying far, far away.

Of the 6 couples invited:

- two have infants under a year old.
- one has an infant under 3 months old.
- two are currently quite heavily pregnant
- one is us.

We were the first ones married, the first to start trying to conceive and the only one with any difficulties.

I'm not terribly close with most of this group - obviously, or it wouldn't have been a shock to see all the pregnant women and babies - but this is the time of year we generally get together and catch up. Last year, I missed the gathering at a baseball game because of the bleeding and bedrest and skipped the football games because of a burning desire to hide in bed.

I think I'll skip again. That is too many children, and too much pain. Whether it really is this way for others, I feel like an outsider, like a bad omen, like a reminder of all the bad things that can happen. I feel like I make others uncomfortable - probably because I feel so. I mean. . . can I talk about when I was pregnant (uh, any of the times?) or how my son looked, or about a registry I started and baby products I never used and am a full year behind the times in researching?

It is perhaps cowardly to hide. And no doubt, someone will say it's ridiculous to hide from pregnant women and babies a year after losing Gabriel.

Meh.

I've learned self-preservation, if done nicely and neatly, is not a bad thing. I just wish I had a way to see into the future. I begin to believe that I could live a generally decent life without children, but I would have to resign myself to that. And the thought of a painful struggle to resignation over the course of, say, a decade is just so depressing. It would be easier to bear it all in the short term if I knew what awaited us.

But that is the dilemma of all time-travel, no? Alas.