What do you want from your space?

That was the big question Organizer Peter Walsh from TLC's Clean Sweep posed yesterday to an audience of clutterbugs at the Detroit Home & Garden show. I went to the program expecting to hear about how to motivate yourself to clean up your space, but I didn't expect the methods to bring tears to my eyes.

Our house is a wreck right now, between a new job and a week of illness bookended by a weekend away and a weekend of worry. But ... what do I want from the space? That's part of the problem. I don't have the power to put what I want from the space into the space. That doesn't mean I'd logically say it can fill up with clutter if we can't have a baby, but that seems to be the effect.

It's not just our finances stuck in limbo as we try to create the future we want, it's also, in a way, our lives. With each step, we try to move toward the path we want, even though we haven't actually found the trail yet. If we never find this path, which others will we regret giving up or not having followed?

I called the nurse this morning, and she seemed puzzled. Bleeding in early pregnancy isn't uncommon, she said, especially spotting.

It's heavier than spotting, but not as heavy as the heavy period they told me to look for, I told her. Hmm. Puzzling. Any unusual period, she said, and they want to rule out pregnancy before moving on. When she found out it started on Saturday, she moved the blood test up from Thursday to today so I can start birth control in preparation for the next cycle if the test is negative.

"Is the hormone from the trigger shot out of my system?"

"Oh yes."

"Is it late enough to tell for sure?"

"Oh yes. The number will be low if it's positive, because it's still so early, but we'll be able to tell."

So I should have an answer one way or another this afternoon. Either way, it will be fine. A negative is obviously not what we'd hoped for going in. A positive at this point isn't a guarantee of any sort, an unavoidable fact after two miscarriages. But I've never been as good with uncertainty as I am at dealing with the answer when I have it. Positive or negative, we move on.