Wordless Wednesday: Nerd Alert

One was amazing. I cannot wait to see the other.
 

Team Edward or Team Harry? Which is better? Discuss ^_^

Meet my niece!

She's just stunning. Mommy and baby are just fine. Daddy is beaming. And my niece is the cutest newborn ever. And boy howdy does she have a set of lungs on her! Just wanted to post a few pics since we're on the road. We were home for a good friend's wedding as well, so we are whirlwinding back to Boston as I write. In the meantime, soak up the adorableness that is my new niece, Willow!

EDIT: I've put the pics behind the cut for sensitivity. Forgot that BlogPress doesn't include my span=fullpost html. And thanks for stopping by from the LFCA!








- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Wordless Wednesday: Garden Snoop

Shhh! Don't tell... I'm the Garden Snoop!

Come see the rest of my garden snooping at gardensnoop.tumblr.com!

I like to take pictures of flowers and pretty plants in my travels. I don't trespass: everything is in public view. This new blog is mostly for my own amusement, but also to crowd-source plants and flowers I don't recognize, like this clematis above. (I twitpic'd it and got the answer in a matter of minutes. Ah, the power of social media.)

This brings my blog count up to three now: HWSL, Thinking Deliciously, and now, Garden Snoop.

The Game of L-if-E

I titled my post today thinking about LIFE, a game I didn't actually start playing until I moved in with Larry 6 years ago; I never owned the game growing up, but Larry took his set when we moved in together. We've played it maybe a dozen or so times. It's one of those game that I'm like, "Oooh, let's play LIFE!" and then I forget how much of a pain it is to setup and kind of boring to play once you get into it. But I've been thinking a lot about it in the last 24 hours, and the fact that our favorite acronym, IF (infertility) is right smack dab in the middle of it.

On our drive home from our awesome weekend in NH last night*, Larry asked me if he thought we should pay off our credit cards with the money we currently have in savings. (*General updates on life lately at the bottom of this post). If we did this, we'd have about $1500 left in savings. We've worked really hard to save what we have so far. I'm all for paying off credit cards (I managed to successfully pay off two very high interest cards with over $10K in debt with the help of a debt management plan 3 years ago), but I'm reluctant to let go of our nest egg so quickly. We rarely live on credit anymore, compared to six years ago when that's just about all we had (and thus, what caused me to nearly drive us completely into credit card debt).

Our conversation shifted to the old debate again: do we buy a child or a house? Because let's face it: adoption or DE/IVF, we're still "buying" a child. It's not a pretty thought, but it's our reality. If we were to soften it, let's say we're buying "a shot at parenthood." We then drifted our conversation into very uncharted waters: choosing to live childfree.

Advantages: not worrying so much about money (hopefully) in that our resources would not be spread across three family members; the ability to travel more; more freedom in general; buying lots of cool things because we are rather consumerist people by nature. Disadvantages: Oh... you know... that whole "not ever having kids" thing. We decided that ultimately, we feel like we'd regret not having kids together, but it was a worthwhile argument to float out there, see what that felt like for a few minutes. We gained a new found respect for some of our childfree family friends in the process, as we talked about their lives and what they're able to do as a result of being childfree.

With my current job situation all topsy turvy (it's so complicated it makes me a little nauseous thinking about it) and my desire to move out of higher ed, we're faced with having to find our own place to live for the first time in three years. We've done the renting gig before, but our first apartment experience was a rare one: we rented a condo, paid no utilities, and our rent only went up $100 over the course of three years. Did I mention this place had a washer/dryer and dishwasher in unit, free parking for two cars, allowed us to have pets with no deposit, and air conditioning? Yeah, we live in a much different rental market. Boston/Metro ain't cheap. This has been quite the wake-up call in recent weeks.

So now the question is, do we rent or buy? I don't want to keep pissing away money by renting, especially when we've managed to save so much. But we've basically got enough money to afford either a 3% down-payment on a very modestly priced home, or all of the initial payments for adoption. The problem of buying a home in MA is that if we want to live anywhere nice, convenient, or T-accessible, there's nothing under $500K. We're in the $200-300K market, and $300K is pushing it. I don't want to live in Lynn, South Boston, or Dorchester. If we buy a home, I don't want to buy a "starter home" (that term drives me insane). I want this to be the place we put down roots, which for us, is a daunting prospect considering we've lived like gypsies the past 6 years.

It's like the game of LIFE. Here's this little formula you're supposed to follow: education, career, marriage, house, kids, blah blah blah... And here's your stack of starter play money. Sadly, we don't have that starter stack of cash, and the stack that we do have we're holding onto for dear life. Spinning our brightly colored decision wheel isn't just a part of playing the game: it's a real gamble for our future. It's frustrating and disconcerting sometimes. My husband likes to remind me that this is all about opportunities but I suppose I can be a bit of a pessimist, and all I see is struggle.

I hate this feeling of inaction, of holding dice in my hand with a wide swath of possibility before me, unable to commit to anything right now, afraid to roll a wrong number and making the wrong decision.

The game of life is really the game of "if."

(Photo by Meganne Soh  via Flickr.)

General Updates:
Thanks for an awesome ICLW last week! Great to meet so many new people and add more blogs to my Reader. Sorry I've been MIA the last few days; Larry and I spent a weekend in Lake Winnipesaukee at a friend's lake house. Limited internet access left me virtually off the grid all weekend. We had an amazing time and felt refreshed and relaxed. We did a ton of fishing (I caught 14 sunfish and Larry managed to snag a 2lb smallmouth bass!) and had a great time with four of our friends. I even managed to survive a weekend with a 6 month old and two dogs ^_^ Here are some of my favorite photos from the weekend:

Wordless Wednesday

First time I'm trying this whole Wordless Wednesday blog meme. I love photography and I love my Lumix LX3. Here's a sampling of some of my artsy-fartsy photos. You can click on the slideshow below to open the whole gallery of thumbnails. Enjoy!

EDIT: Here are a couple of pictures from my birthday yesterday...

Left: Lovely flowers from my in-laws, waiting for me when I woke up yesterday morning. Right: Chocolate fondue at The Melting Pot! I don't know how they did it, but it was delicious ^_^

Show & Tell 4: Japan

It's time for another Show and Tell post! Show and Tell is brought to you by Mel over at Stirrup Queens. Make sure to go and check out what the other kids are showing this week!

I promised to show off some pictures from our trip to Japan last month, so here they are! We spent two  weeks in Japan from October 10-24, staying with my uncle for most of the time. He, my Aunt, and my Obachan (grandmother) were incredibly gracious hosts. We managed to visit eight cities (Nara, Osaka, Tokyo, Kobe, Arima, Iga-Ueno, Hiroshima, Kyoto) in just thirteen days!  It was quite simply the most amazing trip of my life: beautiful, spiritual, renewing. relaxing. We took over 1300 pictures and nearly two  hours of video. Here are some of my favorite shots from the trip:

This is Dōtonbori in Osaka. It's crazy busy, loud, and boisterous. We liked Osaka. as it reminded us of Boston in terms of lots of the bars and restaurant scene, with lots of intriguing people. Also, the guy in the suit? That's my uncle! This is one of my favorite pics from the whole trip.

This is Tosen Shrine in Arima, in the mountains north of Kobe. Arima was probably our favorite city; it's a resort town with hot springs all over the mountain that are pumped to the various resorts. The shrine was an accidental find while wandering the city; I found out later that the Shinto gods believed to be housed here not only protect the city, but are fertility gods as well. This shrine is often venerated by childless couples hoping to conceive. Go fig, huh?

This is the A-Bomb Dome in Hiroshima. What a profound, beautiful, haunting day. The Hiroshima Peace Park and Museum were probably one of the most humbling experiences of my life. This A-Bomb Dome, originally a government building, has been perpetually maintained in its original ruined state since the day of the bombing in 1944. One of the few structures to survive the bombing, it is officially the last structure still standing from that day.

These are two incredible photos are from the Kurama no Hi-Matsuri in Kurama, just north of Kyoto. It's a fire festival where men, wearing nothing more than loin cloths and sashes (pictured top), carry giant torches - anywhere from 15-18ft in length weighing more than 150 lbs each - up and down the mountain in an attempt to call the Shinto god down from the mountain. These giant torches are then made into a huge bonfire (pictured bottom). This festival has been done every year for the last 1300 years. It was the most primal thing I've ever experienced and we feel really lucky to be witnessed it first-hand.

You might recognize these torii (gates) from Memoirs of a Geisha. These are from Fuishimi Inari Taisha, just south of Kyoto where more than 10,000 vermillion torii snake their way around the mountain to a summit shrine honoring the Shinto god of rice, wine, business and prosperity, Inari. While we didn't make it to the summit, it was fun making our ascent through the dizzying orange labyrinth of gates. And the lady on the left? That would be me :)

What's the coolest vacation or most relaxing trip you've ever been on?