Here We Go...

Alrighty, then, ready or not, here is my new blog address:

www.chaiandmandazi.com

It's not perfect, I may change the layout dramatically, or I may not.  

After driving myself crazy and nearly quitting the entire project out of sheer frustration, I gave up trying to put everything about myself, my life, my past, my present, and my future into a single name and just went with simple and homey.  

Chai?

Well, chai is tea in Swahili, whether plain or with maziwa (milk) and masala spices.  I grew up in East Africa and chai is a daily part of life.  And while I love coffee, I will always be a tea kind of girl.

Mandazi?

Another Swahili word, this time for a triangular shaped fried puffy donut type of thing (no word for it in English that I know of) made with cardamom.  Best served warm, wrapped in old greasy newspaper.

Chai and Mandazi were tea time treats that we would have whenever the lady who made Mandazi knocked on our door with her goods on a giant sufaria (round aluminum tray) perched atop her head.  Or when we would go hang out at our friends' house, whether American or African.

My family's method of eating Mandazi was to bite off one of the three corners and drizzle honey on the inside.  Or after biting the corner off, dipping it in our chai, letting it soak up all the yummy goodness in one bite.

So good.  So simple.  

Chai and Mandazi.  Life doesn't get any better.

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Coming Soon...

A new blog.  Owned totally by me, domain and all.  I'm so excited!

I thought I knew what I was doing, but I didn't so I screwed up the first domain I bought.  Thank goodness for 48 hours to change my mind!  In the end, though, I'm glad for the learning experience because I figured out I hated the domain I chose.  And I learned a ton, like you can't transfer a private domain ever while it is private, and no domain can be transferred within 60 days of purchase.  Something about registration, etc.  Don't even get me started on the steps to self-transferring either, versus paying someone over a hundred dollars to do for me.  It's so complicated.  Ugh.

I *think* I know what I'm doing, now, after staying up until two in the morning the other night, educating myself on the basics of domain ownership.  I hope I do.

And this time I'm taking my time and letting my name choices marinate.  It's such a big decision, like I'm branding myself or something.  And picking a name that encompasses the different facets of my life and writing without sounding generic or blasé is tough enough without throwing in availability.  Seriously, every perfect domain I can think of is already taken.  Shocker.

My naming rules are as follows: 1) short and sweet; 2) The blog name and domain must match; 3) all encompassing but not generic; 4) upbeat.

As soon as I figure out what I want to call my writing space, potentially forever (scary thought!), I will get everything set up with transferring over all my old posts and then give you my new home address.  

Have I mentioned I'm so excited??

Eeek!

(Ignore the continue reading button on this post.  I can't figure out how to make it not show up and this post is not truncated.  The joys of using a Wordpress skin on a Blogspot blog.  :/  Thanks!)

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In Between

I'm not sure where to begin this post.  I suppose with my last.

Yesterday I went through Facebook and deleted a bunch of dead profiles I was friends with, a lot of the husbands whose wives I'm friends with (but whom I don't interact with - the husbands I mean), and people who posted offensive matter consistently (like memes with foul language, etc), and people I had never heard from or who didn't even write on their own walls, etc.  

It amounted to about 200 friends, total.  Mostly acquaintances, actually, or people I haven't had a conversation with in many many years.

Those deletions and my changing feelings towards Facebook in general has me thinking about my blogging life and how nowadays I often lack inspiration to write.  But how I feel I need to write something because otherwise, why have a blog?

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The end of an season

The older I get, the less I like Facebook.

Part of it is the waiver you have to accept - that they can use whatever images you upload for whatever they want.  That alone has me seriously thinking of deleting my account.

Throw in all of the nasty fighting going on in the way of sarcastic memes directed at people in different political parties, of different religions, or different value systems and Facebook has been stressing me out big time.

I am by nature a high stress individual.  I get that.  Worry comes easily to me.  Wanting people to like me is something I too often crave and chase after.  But I also know what I believe and having that attacked, even by people who don't realize they are necessarily attacking me personally - more what I stand for, is not fun.  I don't enjoy the fighting, the bickering; or the inhibitions that the web removes.  I find people are much more willing to be horrible because they aren't doing it to my face or anyone else's.  It's through the guise of being funny, most of the time.  But it is annoying.  It makes me want to delete my account even more.

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Crazy, fun weekend

The weekend started off with a bang for us.  Literally.  

On Friday night, Hubby was giving Z a bath, and as he stood her up to wash her bum, she reached for a toy and fell over.  At first we thought she was fine and just crying because she was scared, as Hubby had seemingly caught her.  But a couple of moments later there was a growing goose egg on her forehead, turning ugly shades of deep blue and purple.  We threw her pjs on her, and still dripping, drove her straight to the ER.  

I have to say, our nearby hospital has an amazing ER.  We were in and out in less than 45 minutes, start to finish.  Z was more traumatized by being checked out by the doctor and several nurses, and cried harder than she did over her head.  Thankfully she was fine!  I think we were more of a wreck than anything and the ER pediatrician spent more time reassuring us than she did on checking Z out.  

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Peace and Freedom

I was pretty nervous yesterday morning as I called our FET nurse to let her know about Bear and our upcoming move, effectively canceling our FET and squashing any hopes for embryo adoption using our current home study.  I was very pleasantly surprised by her reaction, though, which was warmly congratulatory and understanding.  

I don't know what I expected, but I was prepared for her to be upset that we were canceling so late in the game, after she worked so hard to get us added to the September group in the first place.  Instead, she was extremely gracious and genuinely happy for us.  

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I Just Can't Chance It

The past few days of this week have been rather illuminating.  We've made some tough decisions (emotionally), but they were necessary and I think we're both in a good place.

We've decided to stop with our September FET.  Tomorrow I will make the necessary calls to the nurses and doctors involved, and make it official.  We had pretty much come to this conclusion last night, but wanted to give it 24 hours to see if we still agreed.  And we do.  

Our reasons are many and varied, but it comes down to a pregnancy right now being too risky with a newborn, a 900 mile move looming, a necessary and unavoidable cross-country trip to pick up Baby Bear (formerly Kumquat), busy Christmas plans, the end of Hubby's military career imminent, and the millions of details involved with so many life changes happening all at once.

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