Hope in a bag

I wanted to tell you this story but it was too long to include in my last post.

One of the girls in my carpool up to the central coast, A, "probably" has PCOS. (She and her hubby haven't officially started trying yet, but since going off BCPs several months ago A has had nary a visit from AF, so she's already seeing an RE.) We got to talking on the ride up and turns out she knows a lady who owns a little herb shop in the town we were staying in. She was planning to pay her a visit and invited me to come along. Once we got to the hotel we borrowed our friend's car and headed downtown to locate said shop, of course in the hopes of finding the miracle cure to all our problems!

The shop was hard to find. A and I walked down the main drag and then had to go through a little corridor of shops off the street, then through a courtyard that ran behind all the shops, parallel to the main street. I am amazed we even found it. It wasn't a "shop" so much as a sort of long outdoor stall with a wall of shelves containing jars and jars and jars of herbs, teas and tinctures. The owner wasn't there, but there was a hippie girl running the cash register. She was busy with a customer, so A and I perused the shelves, looking for something that might work. They had a few teas specific to TTC, and A found something called "bring on the moon," which was perfect for her. I ended up settling for a "synergy blend" that's supposed to help regulate hormones. Unfortunately they didn't have the magic cure for unexplained IF, though why I was expecting a cure for my mystery ailment is beyond me anyway.

As the hippie girl started ringing us up we got to talking, and at some point I said something characteristically pessimistic about not expecting any of this to actually work. She looked at me and said if I keep thinking it will never happen then it won't. So I asked, half-joking, if she had anything for optimism. To my surprise, she turned back to the wall of jars, picked one off a shelf, opened it and let me take a whiff. YUM! Peppermint and licorice and all kinds of wonderfulness. It was called "festival blend" and the hippie chick told me she feels great whenever she drinks it. So I bought some of that as well (after asking her to make sure none of the ingredients interacted badly with those in the other tea, which she kindly did). Just thinking about the smell of it makes me perk up a bit!

A and I walked out of the herb shop feeling pretty good. And in about ten steps, we found ourselves walking literally right through the middle a huge circle of about 15 or so visibly pregnant moms in exercise gear, some with toddlers in jogging strollers. They were obviously meeting up for some prenatal exercise class. A and I just looked at each other and burst out laughing and couldn't stop! Seriously, I think any other time I would have been fighting back the tears, but somehow it was the funniest thing ever to both of us. The moms probably thought we were crazy as we giggled nonstop until they were out of sight.

It's hard not to take all that as some kind of "sign." In some ways I wish I still thought that way, but I don't. I'm just glad I could laugh at that moment.

I'll let you know how the teas work out for me. And I will try to be optimistic about it!