Horse Latitudes

No pun intended, but despite its true meaning, I get a lot of mileage out of this term. Literally, "horse latitudes" refers to the subtropical areas of the ocean that are characterized by light, variable winds mixed with periods of calm, balmy temperatures and little precipitation. Perfect beach weather, right? Well, not so if you're trying to propel a ship across the ocean... using sails.

The "urban legend" version of the story has it that Spanish ships carting horses to the Americas got stuck in these light to nonexistent winds, and that the crew had to throw cargo -- usually the horses -- overboard to lighten the load (this is the version I remembered from my college oceanography course - sick and twisted as it is). The more humane version of the story (thanks, Wikipedia) suggests that the horses weren't cast away unless they had already perished due to low rations. There's another, perhaps more accurate, derivation (Wikipedia's got that one too), but why ruin a good story?

In either case, I've adopted the term for my own use and apply it to any situation where I feel I'm stuck waiting... to get somewhere, to do something, or waiting for something to happen.

So it occurs to me that it's a perfect term for those middle days of the dreaded Two Week Wait -- when you're waiting until it's time to take a pregnancy test -- somewhere from around 4 - 9 dpo where there's really nothing to do but wait. I've got my cross-hairs, but it's still way too early to test. Staring at my chart just strains my eyes, because there's really nothing to see (well, maybe an implantation dip if I'm lucky, I suppose). I'm even wondering if there is any point to temping during these days. But of course there is... it gives me something to DO.

Granted I suppose there are other ways I could occupy my time (still have a bunch of boxes to unpack from our move last month, for example), rather than this nearly literal navel-gazing --or is that naval gazing, since we're working with a nautical metaphor here? -- but really, I think it's more masochistic than narcissistic. The pot take forever to boil, but you can't stop watching it.

8 dpo and counting...

:sigh: