yes, friends, it’s true

I am still officially infertile.

Today’s beta was “less than 1.2″ – how’s that for consistant!  It’s the same as every beta I had this summer!  Even cost the same!  The woman who I love at the lab rolled her eyes when I told her how much it was.  ”It’s not a fancy test” she snorted.  At least the lab people love me.

Oh, well.  Oh fucking well.

 

 

omfg kittens!

JFC, I hate doing pictures in WP.  Why is it so hard?  Or, alternatively, why am I so dumb?

Anyway, let’s cover the kitten portion of the update!  Who doesn’t love a kitten?  Not me, that’s not who.  How many negatives is that?  Are those past sentences even sensible?  To be clear, I love a kitten.  Hell, I love two kittens!  And, yes, I got some more kittens.

Back in the spring, May, I think, a friend’s 11 year old spent the weekend with me and, poor child, she had never been to the SPCA!  Such neglect.  So I took her.  And I was strong, my friends.  Strong.  The main area of cats was full of sweet and soft kitties and we petted everyone.  And I was still strong as we moved into the kitty overflow area, which is just a hallway with extra cages full of kittens.  And we petted everyone of them, too. Until we got to the last cage, where I popped open the door to hold the kittens.  Because I’d been strong, so I was sure I could handle a little kitten snuggle.  And the little black one was so funny with his giant ear hair!  What bad could come of holding him?  No bad.  I was sure.  But then I picked him up and held him by my neck and he felt just like Walter, Jr.  And I knew I had to take him home with me.  But he had this sister…. I could hardly afford one more cat, let alone two. So forget it.  But!  It was two for one day!  Two kittens for the price of one!

And so now they live with me.  Walter III, who you can call Trip, and Bernice, who loves with the truest heart.  I have yet to regret getting them.

(Pictures courtesy of LB, who logs her lunch, but never blogs.)

 

too good not to note

Search engine terms from today:

soul mate london korean food	1
girl pee picture	1

Oh, my.

 

 

oh, bed rest…

See, I should have been writing all this weekend, since I am on bed rest and all.  But nooooo.  There have been Issues.  So I am just writing now, and well, since it has been an age since I wrote two posts within a decade of each other, I will assume y’all are not surprised.  But!  Let’s get back on the horse, yes?  Yes.

Commitment.  It’s what’s for breakfast, as Bionic would tell you, if she were writing Caved, which clearly she is not, or else there would be things to read on here.

What would you like to hear about first?  The bed rest or the Issues?  I know!  Let’s do a list!  Other, better bloggers are a little touchy about lists, but I love them with a fierce and devoted love that is akin to my love for popcorn.

Here we go!

1. I am on bedrest post an embryo transfer on Friday.  Yes, I can’t seem to quit you, fertility procedures….  Do not ask about the state of my bank account; I don’t.  This was and was not the aforementioned last ditch effort, which I mentioned afore.  However, the wonder of the links in that post still stands.
2. While I was busy receiving Friday’s embryos, which are certainly loving and giving, one of my cats was, I assume, hit by a car.  Now, this is sad.  It is.  However, I’ll be honest and say that it is not nearly as sad as when other cats of mine have died.  This cat, sweet pretty boy that he was, was only sort of mine.  I’d taken him in to save him from a life in Manhattan, which his former owner thought would be horrible for him, and to judge by his love running about outside, I think she was right.  So he lived here, although he quit coming in the house when the kittens arrived (WTF?!  Kittens?).  He ate on the front porch and was as friendly as you could want in a cat, galloping in from wherever he went across the street, rubbing his head against my leg.  He was huge and black and gorgeous with shoulders like a football player. He would not keep a collar on.  He would disappear for a day or so at a time, and loved to hunt.  The bird population will not miss him.  But my neighbor will.  She loved him with a devotion people usually reserve for their own pets, and she has many, mind you.  She is the one who found him and I might be the most sad about that.  He is buried on the north side of my house, along with Bailey and Walter, Jr.
3. Not to go from that to something else entirely, but Saturday morning, the toilet in my brand-new-fab-re-done downstairs bathroom started over flowing.  All over my gorgeous new floor.  And under the wall, into and across the hallway.  Fun times!  So I said “fuck bedrest” and started bailing the toilet because it was too full to plunge, and also mopping up the toilet water with every single rag I have and some throw rugs for good measure.  It was horrid.  And then the water level went up some more and I bailed the bucket into the sink and then bailed the toilet into the bucket some more, because the bucket was so heavy I was pretty sure I shouldn’t lift it.  And the water I was bailing was *warm*.  Which made me fear a huge systemic clog, since the washer was running.  And then I cried and called my dad.  Who came over and valiantly plunged and snaked and plunged some more, but in vain.  So then I called a rooter. And called him again.  And again and again.  Also in vain.  By 6:30, I gave up and called somebody else and he showed up and cleared the clog and talked my ear off.  And then he left and I could pee.  Whew.

So this has been the lest restful bed rest so far, although I have high hopes for today.

What else shall I tell y’all about?  The new kittens?  The down and dirty tale of exactly how my infertility goes these day with sub-topics like the draw of genetics and What Bitterness Means To Me?  The roundabout of roommates?  Links to some great blogs of families incorporating Montessori ideas into the spaces they make for their babies?  The slippery slope that is me and tv via netflix?

You can always log your lunch while you think it over.

 

seems we forgot all about the library like we told my old man now

Weekend recap.

Saturday.

1. the market, pre-yuppie invasion.  Got tiny pumpkins for singing the 5 Little Pumpkin song at school.  Did not get any meat.  Am sorry now.
2. let the kittens outside to play.
3. let the chickens out of their yard to be temporarily free range.
4. visited with LB.
5. coffee out plus tiny grocery shopping at Reid’s with newly re-found gift card!
6. helped change spark plugs on dad’s truck.  Got to borrow t-bird.  Fair trade, yes?
7. went to tiny reunion of kids from my summer job/birthday party, which was fab.
8. dinner with K and E, which was also fab.
9. bed, ah, bed….

Sunday.

1. let kittens out again to play.  Kittens are SO happy!  So!  Happy!
2. let chickens out again, too.  Chickens are SO chickens!  Just chickens.
3. had coffee and the comics in the sun on the front porch
4. admired frolicking kittens
5. yard work:  moved thyme and oregano to newly weeded bed on the south side of the house; moved wooly thyme from pot to ground in two spots to reclaim it’s ground-cover roots, mowed lawn.
6. gamboling kittens!
7. laundry:  delicates, whites, sheets.  All on the line. (I run out of clothes pins before I run out of line space with my new clothesline.)
8. moved litterbox to mudroom, freeing downstairs bathroom from lowly “cat bathroom” status and facilitating transition to no motherfucking litterbox.  I hope.
9. picked up LB in the t-bird and went for a drive.  Saw Jim Waive play, drove home.  Did not cruise through a hamberger stand, but had fun all the same.

The end.

 

this is a ttc blog, damn it.

Lest I forget, in the midst of back to school trials and indefinite breaks, these folks, the Injector and Lesbian Dad,  remind me about what is it that I set out to do and why I want to do it.

Three failed FETs this summer.  One last ditch effort this fall sometime.  Work is kicking my proverbial ass.  Hold on to your hats, my friends.

 

 

xx

Back in the day, my high school didn’t start until after Labor Day. All the public schools did, but we lucky kids at Tandem got an extra little bit of summer.
That said, I have no idea, really, what the exact first day of school would have been, back in 1991. But it roughly coincides with some day this week.
Which means I have been friends with LB for 20 years.
Yes, that is twenty. Over half my life.

I can’t even think of enough ways to say how glad I am.

 

they should kick me out of camp

Oh, camp…  I can’t even remember what day it is….

Let’s go look.

Oh, yeah, day 8.  Teaching.  Um, well. That’s what I do.  For work, that is.  And also because I generally love it – the money’s not good enough to make anyone stick around; you have to love it at least a little bit.  Or, if you’re me, you also stick around because you have no other marketable skills.  My kids are two, and don’t yet read (although they are great a picking their noses), so blogs mean very little to them.

Shall we play catch up?  We shall.

Day 7.  I don’t think I have a favorite for any meal – weird, considering I also had no guilty pleasures.  Wow, do I love food blogs, though.  And, yes, I would totally write one if I had enough motivation to do anything at all.  Note my tumblr, which is all about lunch and hasn’t been updated in forever, and the last post wasn’t even  my lunch.  Maybe I should get back on that… or you could!  You, too, could half-ass-ed-ly fulfill your food blogger fantasies and log your lunch!

Day 6.  I never try new things because I hate new things.  For real.

Day 5.  Ummm…. I don’t know what I like best to do on my birthday.  (See why I need to be kicked out of camp – can’t answer the damn questions.)  Usually, LB and I have a party of sorts, because our birthdays are so close together.

Day 4.  Being an adult surprises the shit out of me daily.  What is this leaky pipe and why do I have to deal with it?  Where did these bills come from?  And who are all these damn cats and to whom do they belong?! I think the world of blogging has taught me about generosity.  How to have it and how to be on the receiving end of it.  Thanks for that lesson, Cali.  For real.

 

 

summer camp day 3

Look!  It’s summer camp!

Day Three.  Guilty Pleasures.

• Popcorn in bed with a book.
• umm….
• well…

Maybe I don’t have so many of these?  I think my guilt tends to be about things that don’t bring me any pleasure.  Probably this says something important about me, but I’m not sure what it is.

 

summer camp, days 1 and 2

Shit, I am late for camp.  What a surprise.

So let’s play catch up, shall we?

Day 1 – Provide a photo or sketch or dramatic rendering of the space where you normally blog.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Home.  I usually blog at home.  Sometimes when I travel, but mostly at home.  In the chair by the fire, or on the couch or on the porch swing that you can almost see in the far right of the above picture.   I don’t think I have ever blogged at my desk, which is really more storage space than work space.  This picture is from long ago, before I ripped out all those bushes and the droopy fence.

Day 2 -What were you like in high school? What extracurricular activities, if any, did you take part in during high school? Did you consider yourself a writer?

What *was* I like in high school?  Umm…. much like I am now?  Short, sort of brown, but without any tattoos.  Nice, I hope?

I didn’t really take part in any extra-curriculars.  A lot of my friends played field hockey, so I went with them to games because it was fun.  I was the manager.  Sort of.  That meant I braided everybody’s hair and stored their jewelry on my person during games.  I did some costuming, which sort of started by accident when the husband of the woman who taught me to sew was brought in to direct the school play one year and she was the costume designer; she had me help her with alterations and then the next year I sort of stuck with it.  Otherwise, I spent a lot of time with my friends, doing things I probably shouldn’t  commit to permanent record.

Oh, summer camp…  now can we sing songs by the fire and then go make out in the cabins?