more than a two week wait

Tonight: the weekly dinner with my parents. Roast chicken and a glass of cask wine in the backyard. The dogs doing a left-overs relay between the table and our feet.

My dad asks: So whats happening with... you know... ?

Course, I don't have anything new to tell him.

Well, we'll find out more next Tuesday, Dad. We've got another appointment then, I say.

He asks me if they've started me on the hormones yet. I think he must've been doing his homework. Which is sweet, in a clueless kind of way.

I didn't like to tell him that it just doesn't happen that quickly. And even if it did, I'm not sure I feel ready to get moving on it right away.

I actually want to wait for a while.

People seem to have a hard time understanding this. They seem to think I'm mad for wanting to waste more time when it's already been more than a year.

But I see it like this:

It's a project.

Quite literally.

I see it the same way I see my sewing projects.

Cause thing is, I could never, ever - not in my lifetime - be bothered to make a simple wrap-around skirt. I don't have the patience. I know it will only take two hours, but there is no way I am prepared to commit to that intensity of short-term anticipation. Neither the anticipation nor its attending frustrations.

And yet, bizarrely, I will happily make an entire quilt from scratch. I will choose the fabric. I will cut the pieces. I will sew the pieces together to make the top. I will pin down the batting. I will draw the design on with chalk. I will diligently and eagerly sew together my daggy quilt sandwich.

We are talking weeks of work. And I'm not even a retiree.

And this is how the time/baby-making equation feels to me now.

On some level, it was much much worse before all this, when I imagined every month would see the completion of the project.

When I thought it was only going to be a measly two weeks wait.