Instinct.

"What exactly is going on here?" Miranda said as she stared into my bedroom.

"Oh that. I'm having a mattress sale. I've sold 3 already, I think, I forget."

Miranda was over so we could shop for mattresses and sperm donors. A lot has happened this week.

First, I quit my job at Persimmon, after 5 years there.

Everyone says to trust your gut. But what if your gut is ALWAYS wrong? Then should you trust the opposite of your gut? 

I went on a bike ride several weeks ago, and I guess as an experiment, my friend let me lead the way. 

I don't know if it was a form of manipulation, experimentation, or what.

After a fork in the road where I'd turned right, he'd say, "Your gut tell you to go this way?"

"YES!" I said confidently. "I'm learning to trust my instincts! I knew this was the right way, and sure enough, it is!" I was excited; I was going to get good at trusting myself.

Five minutes later, after we hit a dead end, it turned out that my instincts were wrong. He let this happen two or three times, and each time, I experienced more and more defeat and confusion -- as well as uncertainty about my instincts and who I could trust, if not even myself :-(

So even though everything in my gut said this New Job was bad news, I took it anyway, because it is now really obvious that my instincts are wrong. I figured it was a good opportunity to test this hypothesis. 

New Job was a disaster. Whereas at Persimmon I was mostly left to my own devices, at New Job, I had ZERO freedom. I wasn't even allowed to ring out a real customer... after 20 years in retail, running the decorating classes at Pottery Barn, hosting the children's events at Pottery Barn Kids, and serving as a keyholder at Persimmon.

I was informed there were rules and expectations, too:

* When ringing out a customer, first, all items should be turned barcode side up on the counter

* then, I should ring out items from tallest to shortest, with like items together

* then, I should stack them in the Outgoing Items tray, labels all facing out

* then, I should read all the items back to the customer to make sure I had gotten everything correct

* if the customer says thank you, I should respond with "you're so welcome" not "Sure!" or "No problem!" because older customers don't like that

* At the end of the night, I should do a once-over of the store, and if I see that an is missing, I should search through the Point of Sale to see whether or not anyone sold one of those items. If not, I should immediately contact the store owners so that they can watch the video footage to see if the item had been shoplifted. I mean WTF?

* Also, when tagging merchandise, strings for labels should be cut to 6 inches

Blog world, I just could. not. even. I felt like I was in a continual, unabated state of extreme anxiety 24/7 just thinking about this job and the next time I would have to go there. I lasted 5 hours before the Universe told me to quit.

I was driving to Book Club on Thursday when my phone rang. It was one of New Job's owners. "My wife won't be able to make your training session this coming Sunday, and neither of us are comfortable putting you on the sales floor without the proper register training."

UNIVERSE.

I MEAN, AMIRIGHT!?!?!?! I'm 41 years old. You don't "trust" me to ring out a damn customer with only 5 hours (and two decades) of training under my belt?! I am not a dumb high school student! 

I gracefully quit. (Plus, Persimmon offered me a raise to come back.)

All of this leads to my big mattress sale and Miranda coming over. I no longer trusted myself to buy a mattress, so Miranda offered to help me. In exchange, I offered to help her shop for a sperm donor.

We were at Book Club talking about possible summer travel plans when Miranda told us, "I'm a maybe on the travel. I hope to be pregnant this summer."

We all stared at her.

"I'm shopping for sperm donors, and I'm working with a fertility clinic. Enough of this 'waiting for a man.'"

We stared at her some more. We are all single women.

"The Christians in my life are trying to be supportive, but they also kind of think I'm going against God and Nature."

"For fuck's sake," I yelled. "WE'RE GOING TO BE AUNTS!!!!!!!!!!!!"

That is how I ended up at the Crooked Tree with Miranda, searching the Cryobank database for blond-haired, blue-eyed children.

I found a candidate I immediately fell in love with.

"I don't know," Miranda said. "He's kind of dark."

"I don't understand why he has to look like you," I said, looking at her blond hair and fair skin. "Is it so you don't get as many ignorant questions about his paternity?"

"Yeah," she replied, defeated. "It's the one piece of advice they gave me."

I get that. The world is cruel. 

But I'm also telling you, the kid I picked was freaking ADORABLE and he was Native American. 

"I DON'T CARE, I LOVE HIM!" I told her.

After 10 minutes on hold with the Cryobank, she got through to someone.

"I'm calling about Donor XXXXXX," she said. "The vial counts are low, but that's true of almost every candidate my friend and I pull up. How many vials remain?"

(It's recommended you get 4 vials to start with.)

"We have 1 vial left for this candidate," came the answer from the other end of the line.

Miranda hung up and looked at me, "I guess he's out. There's just no way."

After another 90 minutes of searching, I said, "I don't care. If it were me, I would take that last vial. Get your other 3 vials from somewhere else. If the Universe wants this to be your kid, it will work. If not, it won't work, and one of the vials from the other donors will work. Either way, it's out of your hands and the child that's meant to be yours will be yours."

That's hard logic to argue with, my friends. Even Miranda had to agree.

All this got me thinking, though. Am I supposed to be doing this kind of thing? Did the Universe bring Miranda back into my life to set me on the path to fertility? 

My instincts say NO.

But my instincts are mostly wrong.