not looking for monogamy
Posted: August 29, 2007 Filed under: ttc 3 CommentsYeah, the monitor. You remember, right? The one I got from the very generous (and highly fertile) wife of a friend of an ex-girlfriend? That one. It’s a Clear Blue Easy.
I got it on cd 5 and set it on cd 6, but you can only back-set it 5 days, so it reads one day off for this cycle. That is, today is really cd 7 but it thinks it’s cd 6. Am I evil for confusing it like this? I figure it is not going to be my One And Only, you know. I’ve got the opk’s, the thermometer, my fingers for CM and CP (that’s cervical mucous and cervical position, for those of you not in the know), so the monitor and I will never be monogamous. Hence my willingness to play fast and loose with old Clear Blue.
And yes, I know that, according to the Book o’ Rules that came with the monitor, one is not ever supposed to use somebody else’s monitor. Because of Teh Germs (oh, the things I would have missed if I was one of those with huge fears of Teh Germs). And, more sensibly, because cycle information from the previous owner (user?) is stored and so the poor machine will think that you, the current owner (user?), and she, the previous owner (user?), are one and the same and it’s tiny machine brain will explode. Or at least give not as accurate information. But I figure that’s not such a big deal because, a) see above about my polyamourous approach to tracking my cycle, and b) the previous owner (user?) only used it for one cycle before she got pg. Thoughts?
Now, was that the post you thought you’d get when you read the title?
4:30
Posted: August 29, 2007 Filed under: friends, home Leave a commentIt used to be, back in the day here in Starr Hill, that things *happened* at 4:30: children and parents came and went from the house, the cats began to whine for dinner, I’d hit the point where I’d think I couldn’t make it through another minute of the day. Back in the day, it was rough, you know. But into all that, damn near invariably, there’d be a knock at the door and my dear, dear friend from next door would stroll in. “What up, cat?” he’d say to the cats, and he’d chat up whatever combination of children where still here and when they left, he’d listen while I cried about how I “hate this….” (by which I meant everything, back in the day), and he’d scan the paper and he’d just be there. And I would make it. Through the new job and the crappy assistant and the children and parents who wanted me all the fucking time and the sad, sad break-up.
I could tell you how he also took care of my house when I was gone, and showed Sophie how to play frisbee in the street. How we’d sit on the porch with the paper and talk about girls or just say nothing. How we picked plums from the tree by the school on our way the the theater and how that was the best season those plums ever had. But even if I told you all those things in the tiny and precious detail that they deserve, I would not even scratch the surface of the wonder that is this man.
They’re not made any better than this one.
Today, I was napping on the couch, and Sophie was hogging the internets and it got to be 4:30 and when I opened the front door to the knock that woke me up, there he was, same as ever – boy-huge shoes and falling-down pants, speaking to the cats and hugging Sophie.
He could not have been as happy to see me as I was to see him.
top secret sneak preview
Posted: August 29, 2007 Filed under: sewing (sort of) 4 Comments(That’s TSSP to you, Sianey.)
This is top secret. I’m not sure why.
weekend randomness and a mess of capitals
Posted: August 26, 2007 Filed under: friends, the girl, ttc, work 7 CommentsAfter year – years, I tell you, oh internets – of encouragement by me, Sophie is reading the comics. And reading the Mini Pages and doing all the puzzles therein. Out loud. It’s about damn time. All that printed entertainment had been going to waste all those years.
Lord. Now she is telling me all the jokes from it. Maybe this is not such a great development. And she says she loves Family Circus. *sigh* How do I go about improving her taste in comics?
As this is my last weekend of freedom/slackerdom, I have filled it with lots of naps, visiting, and some small amount of travel. I go back to work tomorrow and we set up and have meetings for a week, and the the children come after Labor Day.
There was music in Lynchburg yesterday afternoon and I rode down with some friends and had a throughly enjoyable trip. We only saw the last bit of music, missing several other great people but to make up for that I scored (I hope) a fertility monitor. The whole reason for the trip was to attend the official opening of the coffee shop some friends just bought. So. The wife of the man they bought it from was there with her (4th?) tiny, tiny baby. And one of the owners of the coffee shop (who happens to be an ex from long, long ago) was holding said tiny baby, and knows all about my continued attempts at conception, and passed me the baby. Realizing the mother didn’t know who the hell I was I felt some explanation was in order and I told her how I’d been ttc for a while now and she warmed right up to the subject and wanted to know if I had tried using a fertility monitor. Then she offered me hers, plus the 50 sticks she’s still got to go with it. Then, after I’m done with it, I am to pass it on to my ex, who is thinking of having another baby shortly. Now I just need to coordinate picking it up. And thank her profusely.
In other productive news, I also cleaned out the gutters at school, after being put in pseudo-charge of playground workday after my boss left. This meant I was up on a ladder, with lots of parents asking me what to do while we all melted in the million degree heat.
I made a new friend out of an old acquaintance, and through her met a very nice femme-y gay girl who lives not 5 blocks from me. This is great because yay! New friends! Especially those who will sit on the porch and drink whiskey into the night. While I’d rather be knocked up and avoiding Teh Whiskey, it was nice to have my Last Weekend of Summer include whiskey on the porch, which is The Summer Activity To End All Summer Activities.
check it
Posted: August 25, 2007 Filed under: friends, shameless endoresment Leave a commentWoo and hoo! You and all your friends can now buy the most fabulous children’s clothes *ever* from Treehouse Togs at their new place on Etsy.
As a highly trained Montessori teacher, I fully endorse these clothes. They will not only boost your child’s self-esteem with their amazing cuteness, but also aid in the development of Self Care Skillz because they are designed so children can dress themselves. Additionally, your child’s innate sense of aesthetics will blossom just by seeing these beautiful garments in his or her closet. (Only one of those comments is actually legit, I’ll leave it to you to figure out which one.)
Aren’t you so ‘cited?
dinner
Posted: August 25, 2007 Filed under: food 8 Comments
There’s a long-ass, but so, so, so great, post over at An Accident of Hope about local food. I love some local food (actually I love all things local; it’s the result of working at an independent bookstore when The Devil, I mean, B*rns and N*ble, came to town), but it’s a slippery slope, man. Once you start noticing what you’re eating that’s local, it’s great: you get to chat with the folks who grew it or made it, there’s not petroleum stains on your food, the tomatoes are all the better for living though a winter without them, blah, blah, blah. You know all the arguments, I’m sure. But then you realize you’re counting! What’s local on my plate today?! And you strive for more – this cheese is from Fredericksburg, but this one, *this* one is from northern Albemarle! Hooray! And then one day you wake up and you see your roommate has bought some grapes. In Virginia? In early June? When there are more strawberries and blueberries and raspberries (from the back yard, no less) than you can shake a stick at? Ack! And they are on a piece of green styrofoam, and shrink-wrapped! And your head explodes.
Meanwhile, here’s tonight’s dinner. Yes, you know I’m counting. Can’t help it.
- black eyed peas, from the market, shelled on the porch
- tomatoes from the farm, beefsteak and flame
- cucumbers from the farm (also in the pitcher of water back there – Best Drink Of The Summer™)
- zucchini bread from one of my home visit families, local zucchini from their CSA, not sure of the origin of the flour, certainly the sugar wasn’t local- but damn, that’s some good zucchini bread
- local beer, used to be brewed just a couple blocks west, but now it’s in Crozet, I hear
- salt, not local, but delicious
- balsamic, also not local, also delicious
- butter, not local (yes, I have some guilt over not making my own butter)
- lemon in the background, not local *sigh*
- mass o’ peppers in the background, from the farm, destiny unknown – I don’t like plain peppers that much; I wish they were spicy, but they are not
friday
Posted: August 24, 2007 Filed under: home, the girl, work 2 Comments
Sophie fell asleep upside down in the chair after reading this afternoon. It was like relay napping – first me, then her. It is so fucking hot here that there is nothing else to do but lay around under the fan and nap and read. The humidity has made her hair very curly, which she hates, but I (secretly) love.
This morning was The Morning Of The Home Visit Marathon – 5 visits in 3 and 1/2 hours. Greenbriar to Belmont to Ivy to Ruckersville to Barboursville. And then back to Starr Hill in time for lunch with Jen at the Diner before picking Sophie up. Whew. It was like a whirlwind tour of the county. It’s pretty here – it really, really is. The sun came out after a week of hiding and so it was suddenly again true Virginia in August – hot like you don’t want to move and so hazy and humid you can hardly see the sky, let alone the mountains. But, lord, it is pretty.
Last night, in the midst of the sangria (oh god, so good…), I was talking with the girl I had dinner with about the land here. See, she just moved back to Virginia and she said something about wanting to write more and thinking that would be easier, somehow, at home. Even the sky looks different here, she said. (She was far more eloquent in the way she put it, but I was not taking notes – sadly.) I started running on about something I’d read in one of Montessori’s books about how physicians in her day – say, 100 years ago – would send really sick folks back to the land where they were born. It was supposed to be healing, or something, because a person would have a connection with that land, having been exposed to it in infancy. Now, old Maria used this to help justify her ideas about oh-so-carefully constructing an infant’s environment, because that’s one of the first and best tools that babies use to create themselves, but it hit me like a ton of bricks that summer I was doing my Montessori training. I was away from home, from my bed and my house and my world, for the longest I’d ever been and I realized, I missed the land – flat out missed it. I do appreciate how pretty or breathtaking it might be somewhere else, but there is something else entirely about how it looks here, where I’m from (although, I wasn’t born here, just raised here). There’s a palpable sense of relief for me, flying home from somewhere, when I see that first bit of the mountains out by the airport, an almost painful feeling like falling in love when I cross the Blue Ridge at Afton and see the valley spread out, looking like it will never end, like it goes on and on until it gets to the Pacific a whole continent away.
So, even though I drove to hell and back, even though it was hot and humid in the car like a motherfucking sponge, it sure was pretty. Pretty like the end of summer, which it is, and stuck in my mind, helping me to create myself, still, like Maria said.
not
Posted: August 23, 2007 Filed under: friends, the girl, ttc, work 2 CommentsHmmm….. no more ambiguity. My period started this morning. Interestingly, I seem to have cycled through all the more intense emotions about this failed attempt already, and so I am surprisingly ok.
So let’s move on. On to the fact that Sophie is done with her homework and hogging the phone – her looming adolescence is….. looming.
I’ve been home-visiting all this week, to get my new children ready for the start of school, and that is always a treat. Home visits are such a nice way to introduce myself to the children – even my grandmother is impressed by them.
And now, I am off to a dinner involving lots of sangria with a new friend, courtesy of Evren. The new friend, I mean – Evren bears no responsibility for the sangria.
my best girl
Posted: August 22, 2007 Filed under: the girl Leave a commentSophie, my pretend child, is back from her extended trip out west (where she got to see Kater, lucky both of them). She’s been gone for over 2 weeks and it was like to kill me. As was not seeing her mama.
You see, Sophie is my girl. I’ve been keeping her since she was 3 – almost 9 years now – and the connection I have with her and her mother is one of the most amazing ones in my life. Sophie tried to teach me to ride a bike and her mama found my donor for me, because as she says, she’s going to get me pregnant or die trying. They are my family. (An addition, not a replacement – my blood family is great, too.)
And, as public schools start again tomorrow, we are back in the swing of things. I’ll pick her up from the usual place at the back of her school, under the tree, *after* the buses have pulled out (it’s clusterfuck with the buses there), and we’ll come home. She’ll sit in the chair by the stove to do her homework and I’ll wish she’d use the table, and she’ll interrupt herself to get a drink of water from the tiny glasses I put on a low shelf for her years ago when she was little.
Or maybe we’ll go to the coffee shop for coffee and ice cream instead.
now for some more ambiguity
Posted: August 21, 2007 Filed under: ttc, ttw 4 CommentsAnd my temp is back up again.
But I overslept and so took it an hour later than usual
But no positive test to go with it.
Lord.
caved 