these are things that happened.
Posted: October 27, 2013 Filed under: day in the life, doula, family, friends, history, home, stupidly introspective 1 CommentThe funeral was good, y’all. I love them. For a while, I tried to couch that love in more acceptable phrases like “it was as good as such things can be” and “it was lovely” and “it’s an important right of passage” but more recently, I just admit I love them. A little group-emotion-solidarity? Yes. Some ritual? Yes. Talking about the best parts of a person? Yes.
From an email to Bionic:
****’s dad is a preacher – it was his wife who died – and when everyone stands and greets each other with “peace be with you” he came over to the side of the church where a bunch of us were standing and only doing a little greeting and peace-ing and said, hanky (yes, hanky – I’d brought one of my grandma’s to give to **** and good thing I did because she gave it to her dad in the middle of the service) in hand, “for those of you are are not as familiar with our traditions, peace be with all of you” which was the most moving part of the whole deal. ****’s family really is delightful and I am so glad I went. Totally worth the 4 hour drive. Also, rural Virginia. Be still my heart.
It’s possible that one could just read my emails to Bionic (Did you really need a link again? I didn’t think so.) and Uberbutch and skip this blog entirely.
Friday I went to (another) birthday party that involved a viewing of the Topp Twins documentary and a spin in a sauna. I was exhausted from all the driving over the past couple days, and because I am a wimp, but it was an awfully nice birthday party. There was cake:
Wow, that’s not such a good picture. Sorry. Now, I’ma be honest here, since it’s my blog and all, and tell you I don’t love the sentiment on the cake. However, the birthday recipient loved it as did the host who commissioned it and the cake itself was delicious, so I’ll call it a win. Plus, all the other pictures have people in them so this is what you get.
Then Saturday (y’all, this is just like a diary!) I went to a baby shower. Yes. For my dear friend M who worked long and hard to get this baby. I had sorted through a box of baby things that a friend gave me years ago (cho-girl hid it for me in her house for a long time and then it lived in the shed and then it was just time for it to go) and I gave the bulk of it to some other friends (who might have a girl), but I saved some plain and lovely shirts and a little pair of pants for M (who knows she is having a boy). And gave her two tiny hats that were the only baby things I’d ever bought for myself because I knew she’d treasure them and also just use them. There is only so much standing on sentiment that one can do on some hats. Now, I was… unsettled? bothered?… by a number of things at this shower, but they were things that don’t relate to infertility and so from that point of view the shower was great. I am really glad I went, just to make this retelling of my friend’s shower all about me.
Last night I did nothing. It was heaven. There’d been too much time away from home and my internal organs were starting to shrivel up. I ate left overs and watched trashy tv and polished my shoes and my roommate’s shoes with my grandpa’s shoe shine kit. There was a fire. In the stove. Unrelated to my grandpa’s shoe shine kit.
This afternoon, I’m going to Red Row Farm. Five years ago, when they still lived in Starrhill, W yelled over the fence early in the morning that L’s water had broken and so we spent that drizzly Saturday walking around Starrhill and 10th & Page trying to get labor started. A little less than 24 hours later, A arrived and I fed his mama ice chips that I think she still claims are the best thing ever, and watched as they encouraged A to nurse and became a family. I left them at the hospital and came back to Starrhill and got the nicest hug from L’s mama who had just arrived from NJ. It was a pretty great day.
public v private
Posted: May 19, 2013 Filed under: history, stupidly introspective, the big IF, ttc, western medicine 1 CommentY’all, the cheater RE is a private hospital. My old RE was in an endocrinology clinic in the public hospital. I knew all this. I’d compared and contrasted public and private medical establishments when I went to the Richmond RE for IVF. It was fancy pants. The button to call the elevator was normal elevator-call-button sized, but the marble (!) inset around it was bigger than my head. The elevator call button at my nice old RE’s sometimes had a piece of paper with an up arrow drawn on with ballpoint pen. (For years – yes, I was there for years – it was forbidden to take said elevator to the 3rd and final floor there. So it was mysterious! One of the nurses told me it was just full of old chairs, but it was still full of mystery to me.)
I went for lab work Friday. So, yay me, right? Right. But, wow, did it make me miss my old lab people.
At the old RE’s, the lab was clearly a Lab. Not just because Amir and Michelle and the other nice lady whose name I wish I could remember wore white coats. But because there were Science Things in there. Not just a red bio-hazard sharps container and boxes of gloves, either. There were those racks where you stick everybody’s blood vials, and important looking notes stuck to the walls, and millions of drawers that were filled with More Science Stuff, and stacks of papers around the computer where they sent out orders for pick up and processing like “STAT”. (For real. Remember that? No. Because everybody who read my blog then is dead because I’ve been doing this for so damn long.) There was something of a partition so two people could get stuck at once, and there was a random hard chair by the door in addition to the chairs with the giant funny arms for the stick-ees to rest their arms on. Sometimes you’d even get to see the courier people come in to pick up all the bloods! So exciting! It was all Science! and Medicine! and Lab! But also they were so nice there, Amir and Michelle and that other nice lady. They always remembered me, even when it had been over a year since I’d seen them. And Amir once sat me down and gave me a very serious pep talk, drawing parallels between football and ttc, saying things like “you just have to stay in the game” and “you might be tired and feel like you are loosing, but keep playing – stay in the game.” Those are not direct quote, but you get the idea. Anyway. My lab people. Winners.
Now, if you’ll consult back to the top of this (already rather long) post, you’ll see that the new cheater RE is at a private hospital. This was pretty apparent at my first visit with Dr. Hot (whom I saw two weekends ago at the farmer’s market with her husband, whom I mistook for an adorable, tiny butch lesbian at first): fancy water cooler, matchy-matchy upholstered chairs, etc, etc. But it was this recent trip for blood work that really hammered the difference home. Y’all, the walls in the little “room” where I actually got stuck (by a nice blonde 12 year old – really, she was 12) were painted not one but two colors and the upholstered chair in the corner matched both of those colors. All the Science was hidden away somewhere else, but there was a chair that matched the walls. Who was supposed to sit in that matchy chair, I don’t know. I certainly didn’t get stuck in it – no blood on the goods! As we used to say in the costume shop. Maybe it’s for if you bring company into the lab? But it’s too far away from the chair where the business gets done for any hand-holding to take place, if you were the sort who needs hand-holding. Weird. And matchy. For all the (obvious?) care taken in the decoration of the little “room” it was strangely devoid of feeling. Or, rather, it’s feeling was empty. There were other little “rooms” off of the tastefully painted hallway from the (second) waiting room, so I guess the idea was confidentiality and comfort? But it was really not very comforting in there. And I could hear the chatty lady in the next “room” perfectly well. So really, I don’t know what they were trying to achieve.
It was fine, of course. I’m a bloodwork rockstar. The 12 year old who stuck me laughed at my jokes. She was good – it didn’t hurt at all. I got paper tape and gauze rather than a big itchy wrap bandage. But, wow, I missed my old lab people a lot.
an end.
Posted: July 21, 2012 Filed under: friends, history, home, stupidly introspective 1 CommentThere’s a funeral happening today, right now, in fact, down in scottsville and I am on a train headed to dc. I hate to miss a funeral. And while this one if for a man who I really didn’t know well, his passing looms large in my heart, marking the end of an era.
Sidney Tapscott died last week. I can’t claim that he was my friend, but he was a constant presence in my adult life and his absence is marked. Time was, there were fewer people on the downtown mall, and it felt like we all knew each other. I was very young, and more on the fringes of that scene than I probably thought at the time, but it felt like we were the whole world. There was art of all kinds happening and there was always somebody to talk or sit near. Some huge percentage of buildings were empty, but there was no feeling of emptiness. There was just a sense of possibility, which is, I suppose, what youth is.
And there was Sidney, far from young, with his push broom balanced awkwardly in an old grocery cart, sweeping the bricks in front of Miller’s or hitting up somebody at Bizou for ice cream. He’d ask every girl he recognized for a hug and got away with it. He wore sweatbands on his wrists and on his head, and if it was hot, he wouldn’t wear a shirt under his overalls. He kept at least one watch buckled over those sweat bands. His hair stood up crazy all over the place and I often couldn’t understand what he said to me. He was remarkable in that he was an old man in the midst of a group of bright and creative and young people and we saw him and cared about him He was not invisible.
Sidney, may your service today be full of the people you loved. May your wake at Blue Moon be full of music and stories. I am glad beyond words that you had a friend to hold your hand as you died. May we all remember you. Rest in peace.
Links: obit, nailgun, Waldo, the hook, donate.
summer camp, days 1 and 2
Posted: July 2, 2011 Filed under: blogging, cali's camp, history, home, internet, ivp 2 CommentsShit, 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?
hahahaha. ha.
Posted: July 30, 2010 Filed under: history, miscarriage sucks, multi-week wait, possible girl in trouble, the big IF, ttc 8 Comments20.
Yes, friends, that’s a doubling time of 77.something hours or a little more than 3 days. Not great, but not nothing.
Keep breathing.
the things they don’t tell you
Posted: July 23, 2010 Filed under: 2ww, history, the big IF, ttc, western medicine 6 CommentsSo. You want to hear about my IVF cycle? Yeah. I know you do. It’s a riveting tale of drugs! and money! and my bruised belly. Money! Drugs! Bruises!
Okey doke. Now that you’re all settled in and ready, let’s see if I can make this some sort of coherent narrative….
Sometime back in June, I started Lupron (meds and jabbies courtesy of one of the ever generous members of the IVP). Oh, it was fun at first! I had to draw up 10 units of liquid into my little syringe and then pinch up some belly fat and jab it right in – 90º angle! – and then push the plunger in and it fulfilled all my medical fantasies. So fun! I was so hardcore! I could stick myself with a needle every night and not care! Woo and hoo! Lucky for me, I had really no side effects from the lupron – maybe menopause will be a breeze?
And then it started to get old. The injection sites would itch a bit and I gave myself one good sized bruise and the sheer waste of using a new needle every night…. I mean, I was and am grateful that I pulled together the money to do this and I tried to keep my proverbial chin up, but sheesh…. The constant jabbing seemed like adding injury to infertile insult.
Ha! And it wasn’t over! Once I hit cd 1 again, things really started getting good. I added – yes! – more meds! more needles! Now, let’s pause a minute to note that I really, really don’t mind needles. I have a mess of tattoos; I like to watch the lab guy do my blood draws; I pierced my own ears several times as a teenager (maybe we all did?). But the repetition of these all these IVF needles…. well, it was, as I said, getting old. So the news meds kicked in, one after the other: stims to rev my ovaries into overdrive, menopure to help with the overdrive and bump up the LH and then finally the big gun of the trigger. Looking at my protocol, I think I may even have been on the light side, in terms of the number of things I had to inject into my gut, so really, I know I didn’t have it as bad as other folks, but again, sheesh…
I was just… tired of it. Old, as I said. Do I seem to be repeating myself?
And in among the ritualized jabbings, there were wandings and bloodwork and phone calls. Oh, the phone calls. When you combine the new RE’s necessarily crazy schedule with my lack of a cell phone and inability to take calls at work, well, there was a lot of phone tag. See, for this IVF thing, I have become the proud owner of not one but two – yes, 2! – REs. My very dear doc here doesn’t have the facilities to do IVF, so he sends the serious infertiles to another RE in Richmond. All wandings and bloodwork are done here, retrieval and transfer in Richmond. There are, by necessity, a lot of phone calls and faxing. Anyway, it seems to be, in most cases, a very fruitful partner ship. My dear RE here very quietly quoted me a success rate that’s so high I don’t even dare to commit it to the internets.
So there were jabbed meds, there were wandings and bloodwork and phone calls and I threw acupuncture in there for good measure. And was it ever the best part of the whole deal. I really don’t want to sound too whiny here. I know other folks have a far harder time. It’s just I was, well, tired. From the meds a little, but more from five fucking years of beating my head against the same damn wall.
Um… where the hell are we in this “narrative”? Oh, yes. The trigger. For those lucky ones of you who haven’t been to infertility boot camp, trigger is the lay term for a big ass shot of HCG (that’s human chorionic gonadotropin to you, mister). In one’s ass. See, all those other jabs were in my belly, just into the nice layer of fat that’s there. But the HCG needs to go into the muscle. Fun times! I had a friend come over and do it for me. It’s too hard to stick your own self in the ass. At midnight. Because that’s how the Richmond RE told me to roll.
And now we get the the good part! Settle back into your seats, kids. Now we are at the egg retrieval part. This is where is starts to suck. Not in terms of outcome – go back and read the stats from the other day – but in terms of how I felt. Even with the tiredness and general blah of infertility, I never really felt physically bad. But, whooeee, was I a mess after the retrieval. Let’s tell it like a campfire story:
It was a bright and sunny day…… cho-girl and I left her house early so as to get the the new fancy pants clinic at my appointed time. I had, as instructed, neither eaten nor drunk anything at all since midnight. I was hungry. And I missed my bff, coffee, so bad it hurt. Poor me!
After getting almost lost and very certainly intimidated by the grand lobby of the fancy pants clinic, I was put in a gown and given cute socks and and allowed to pee and hooked up to an IV and then rolled away to the OR. I remember nothing after the rolly bed left the room. The drug guy, let’s call him Frank, as that’s his name, was good. And then I woke up. Still in the rolly bed, back in my room, where cho-girl had cued up the post egg retrieval playlist from the gf, who couldn’t be there herself. And then I was a little weepy. I think anesthesia does that to me? But otherwise ok. The clinic folks were so nice and they gave me crackers and ginger ale and continued to laugh at my jokes. Then they wheeled me out to the waiting Subaru to be taken home.
Oh, let’s make this a cliffhanger, shall we? This post is long enough as it is. Tune in later to hear how the aftermath went. Titled, “Hydrocodne and I Are Not BFFs.” or, “How About Some More Hippie Gatorade?”
stats
Posted: July 17, 2010 Filed under: history, the big IF, ttc 11 Comments6/18 – 7/11 – 10 units lupron
7/2 – 7/8 – 225 follistim
7/8 – 7/9 – 250 follistim
7/10 – 7/11 – 200 follistim
7/6 – 7/10 – 1 vial menopure
7/12 – 1 vial HCG
7/14 – 21 eggs
7/15 – 12 fertilized
7/16 – 6 graded (4, 4-, 3, 3, 3-, 2)
7/18 – 1 or 2 transferred
Hold on to your hats.
almost just like a mother
Posted: May 9, 2010 Filed under: history, miscarriage sucks, stupidly introspective, the big IF 9 CommentsInterestingly, I’ve never written a Mother’s Day Post. It seems sort of the sine qua non for infertility blogs. Ah, maybe *now* I’ve arrived!
I must say, prior to anything else, that my own mother wins – supportive and loving and willing to let me make my own way through things. My current struggle with Mother’s Day has nothing to do with her. Nothing.
Back in the day, when I thought I was just ttc, not actually infertile, I would read about how some people found Mother’s Day too hard to deal with, how they hated it. And I was all, “Aw. Poor them. I’m *so* okay with all this.” Totally cavalier and shit. At the same time I was nurturing fantasies of at home insems, no medical intervention, rainbows and unicorns and chocolate bacon and all that sort of shit.
Oh, how far we fall….
Last May, it hit me. Oh, yes, I should have seen it coming. I’d already become one of Those Infertiles – you know the ones: the ones I used to sigh and shake my head for. Poor them. Only it became poor me. Somewhere along the line, it became poor me. And the crowning moment was that Mother’s Day. It bit.
Was it because had the miscarriage not happened, I would have been a mother then? Or was it simply the slow erosion of my sense of self? Or just that 5 years is too long to do the same thing over and over with no success? Whatever it was, I think it marked the moment when I began to think of myself as infertile. Not just lacking in sperm, not just unlucky or impatient. But infertile with a capital IF.
The kind who has friends they don’t really talk to any more. The kind who hides behind newspapers so as to not see acquaintances with babies and feels small and stupid for not being big enough to deal. The kind who uses a medical diagnosis as an identity. The kind who can’t speak with hope anymore because that line’s been disconnected.
We’re still here, though. Us infertiles. It almost feels like coming out. You get to put a name to how you feel. You get a community of people. You get to swap stories and use acronyms nobody else gets. You get to hope that by telling your story, somebody somewhere will feel a little less alone. But the difference between being infertile and being gay is there’s no joy in infertility. I’d not wish it on anybody.
Since the miscarriage, I’ve taken to referring to “when I was pregnant,” with increasing ease. If I were to pick it apart, and clearly that’s just what I am going to to do, there are several things going on. Oh, let’s make a list. Just for fun.
- civic/social duty. Lots of women have miscarriages. Fewer talk about it. Even fewer will talk about how it went. So I should step into the breech, yes?
- it happened. So it’s worth mentioning. I could glance down and look away, or I could say, “yeah, when I was pregnant, I…..” Or “… right, that was when I was pregnant, so….”
- healing. The more times I talk about it, the easier it gets to talk about. Also, see #1 above as the corollary to this.
- shock value. Self explanatory, also relates to #1 above.
- truth. I was pregnant once. I might never be again. I want to remember.
Maybe that was the closest I’ll ever get to motherhood. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s not. I know that’s a very narrow definition of motherhood and not one I really subscribe to, but, for real, y’all. Maybe that’s as good as it gets for me. Maybe those 7 weeks and a handful of days are it. I don’t even count it as a baby – it was too early and too hard to believe for that. But I was a mama, just for those couple few weeks.
And I’m still here. Scarred and scared and very, very low on hope, but still here. No stronger, no smarter, no better – worse, I think, in a lot of ways. But still here. Struggling with my motherfucking baggage as I climb back on the train one more time.
Happy Mother’s Day.
and i’m out
Posted: August 20, 2007 Filed under: history, ttc Leave a commentAs in out of the baby game this cycle, not as in coming out as gay. Although that’s also true, it’s old news.
What I mean is, my temp dropped this morning, and will, I’m sure, continue to fall, and so I must not be pregnant. And so we commence the weeping and the gnashing of teeth phase.
To distract you while I do that, here are the journal-y bits I wrote for myself a year ago, un-edited except for name removals. It turned out to only be a journal of two days plus a lot of flash-backs. Too bad I don’t know how to do some flashy thing to indicate that a flash-back is coming – you’ll just have to imagine The Flash.
Friday, August 18th, 2006
The neighbor’s kid, the ones I don’t know, is yelling behind me and I am still not pregnant. That’s really no surprise, since Fed Ex lost the last sperm shipment. Lost it. Yeah. B and I had a nice moment via IM imagining the guy who runs the sperm bank out looking for it – “Here sperm! Heeeerrrreee spermy sperm!” But to to avail. Fucking Fed Ex. I knew they were run by Republicans but I didn’t think they’d intentionally undermine my baby plans.I’ve begun to think I should be keeping track fo this whole mess – for The Baby, you know. “Here honey, read this,” I’ll say when questions come up. It will be a nice variation on the birds and bees talk, no? A nice story about the million times (well, 5 as of now) the Fed Ex man came by and the fights with the combination lock that I had no idea how to use (oh, the things I didn’t learn at my tiny and trusting high school) and the interminably long 2 week waits for my period.It’s been over a year now, since I went in to see my nurse-practitioner for an exam to fill out all the crazy paper work the sperm bank wanted. Over a year since my roommate and I sat in the kitchen while she studied and I began reading profiles of donors for the final cull and neighbor L showed up and took over because I was tearing my hair out. Almost exactly a year since my boss ran out to the front of the school to take a picture of the Fed Ex man before he drove away because it was phase-in week at school and I couldn’t leave my classroom. And still, I am not pregnant.
This is the time line:
July 2005 – decide to use spermbank, download forms, get exam and such so they can be filled out by J, my nurse-practitioner, who told me that I have a “well placed cervix.” Thanks. She was very supportive, reminding me that they can do IUI right there if I want to go that route. My boss donated a bunch of postage to the cause, throwing a couple extra stamps on the envelope with the forms because she wants to make sure it gets there. Oh, and some time early in the month, I tell my folks, who are beside themselves with excitement. S brought me prenatal vitamins from work at Whole Foods, after consulting with one of the “Whole Body” (lord) people about which ones I should take. The things are so fucking big, I feel like just taking them should knock me up. It doesn’t. Because I still had to pick a donor – ugh.Really, it is hard, still, for me to care too much about this. Or, rather, once I start to care, or to look very closely, then I get freaked out by things like one of the donors saying he is a Republican (and gay? wtf?). And really, so much of genetics is a crap shot, so much of it is so intertwined with environment that I really feel like knowing things about a donor gives a false sense of control. I mean, I’m not going to be parenting with the guy; I’ll be the one controlling the kid’s environment (not to an alarming degree, I hope). Knowing that donor # 50-bazillion’s great aunt was a smoker who didn’t like the color purple really doesn’t mean anything.
So yeah, but then I started to look at the profiles (which cost money, so I only got a few) and got all worked up about Republicans and people saying that kids *have* to go to college. Then neighbor L from next door showed up, all in a snit over having spent the evening shopping for a wedding dress and wanting a beer. And she took the computer from me and she and my roommate laughed their way through the profiles and tell me the 2 they think are best and then it was done – #35 – my new and virtual boyfriend.
Then it was –
August 2005 – in which I talked to Leland (my new best friend) at the spermbank and got excited and K gave me her unused OPK because she had started doing IVF. And I continued with my prenatals- wow, boosted iron levels did wonders for my work ethic. Meanwhile, school was getting ready to start, but really, that just seemed like a distraction.September 2005 – it turned out that I was going to ovulate sometime that first week of school – the craziest time of the year for a toddler class. All the parents are there, phasing their children in and they are all a little nervous and really, a box of dry ice and sperm showing up in the middle of that seemed -well – not so good. So my boss was going to meet the truck and sign for it and keep “Dad” as she liked to call it, in her office. She was also armed with a camera to document the occasion. But the Fed Ex guy came to the front door of the school and so one of the new assistants got the package and brought it in my classroom to me and I asked her to take it to the office, at which point my boss ran outside, yelling for the Fed Ex guy to wait, and then took his picture. She said he was surprised. Huh.
**********
Saturday, August 19th, 2006
Tonight the neighbors I do know are having guest. Their kid, who I find endlessly amusing, is doing his best to entertain himself while everybody hangs out on the porch and in the yard. I think there was another kid there earlier, but since I was inside, I’m really not sure. He talks a million miles a minute and is still young enough to have that slightly breathless quality to his speech, like talking is really hard work, but – god damn – there is just so much to say. They are listening to Sam Cooke.
So where was I….?
oh yeah –
September 2005
When I left school early, at noon, leaving B to clean everything up – thank you, B (really, there’s no way to know what a huge job it is to clean up a toddler class after the first day of school unless you’ve done it) – to go home to try to knock myself up. I took the computer to bed with me, for music, and thawed the tiny vials in my armpit, just like the book said. My roommate took the afternoon off work to keep me company and we ate leftover fried chicken and played half a game of cards before C and L came over to shower me with her already pregnant vibes. They were up here being refugees from Katrina. It was all so – – boring. I felt nothing; it was kind of messy and then I had to get up to go get S from her school.
Then there was nothing. Just the 2 weeks of waiting, which was weird and drawn out and I thought every twinge and headache meant something. And I was fucking fried with school starting, but of course I thought that was An Early Sign. I was terribly moody for the last few days of this and sat at the kitchen table and cried about missing Z for the first time in weeks. My roommate came home and said we should get out of the house and when I went to pee before we left I found my period had started. I think we went somewhere and I had a drink. But, really, I don’t remember. Which bring us to
October, 2005
In which I get screwed by Fed Ex (not for the last time) and their fucking blue laws.
So Fed Ex does not deliver or ship on Sundays. Now, normally, I am all in favor of a day of rest. I like rest. I am lazy and I think there should be more rest. But, Fed Ex’s old-school-Protestant-no-work-on-Sunday shit is not so cool. What it meant, for me, was that I missed inseminating that cycle. I needed sperm on Monday, I thought, and I missed the window of time to order it for a Saturday delivery. So nothing in October. Nothing. But lots of drinking. And then it was
November 2005
I’d thought I might not do a hit in November, because it put the due date really close the the start of school. But then I said fuck it and did it anyway. My roommate had begun the process of moving to Scottsville with her new girlfriend at this point, and so I kept my own-self company. After I managed to get the fucking lock open. I’d had the sperm shipped in liquid nitrogen, because I thought it might be needed on a Monday and so it would have to be kept cold for longer than the 48 hours allowed by dry ice (see above about Fed Ex and their god damned blue laws). So the container this all comes in is not nearly as innocuous looking as the nice little cardboard box surrounding the styrofoam cooler holding the dry ice. This shit is big. It looks like a small R2D2 like robot and has a combination lock holding it shut.
Now, I don’t know combination locks. I never had to open one more than 2 times, and I think that was when I was 10. We had no locks on our lockers at my high school. We had lots of trust and respect instead. Combination lock skills may be the one thing I did not learn in high school. So I fought with the lock on the robot container by myself for a while. Then I called J, because everyone else I know is usually asleep after 11 and because she is helpful like that. But she was not answering her phone. So I turned to the internet, with the thought of learning to crack a lock (because that’s easier than learning to open one the regular way?) and then I wised up and emailed Leland at the sperm bank. He sent me a very clear and informative email and I was all set – access to the goods and a new skill. Woo and Hoo.
Well, that one didn’t work either, clearly, or else I’d be sitting on the porch with a 3 week old baby, lamenting the start of school, instead of sitting out here with the computer lamenting the start of school. I don’t really remember the wait with that round. Oh, except my period was a day late – just enough extra hours to make me hope a little bit.
Then I quit for a while. Quit the prenatals and quit charting (stupid, I know) and tried not to focus on it. Heh. I’ve been trying to work with the school year calendar from the beginning (I know, again, stupid) because it just works well: deliver in late spring or early summer, take the summer off from camp, go back to work at the start of the next year. Maybe I have some control issues. But really, I can’t not work and since I cannot take off a whole year (who’d pay the mortgage?), I am unwilling to be away from my class at that tender beginning of the year phase. So conceiving in December, or even January of February was not part of the plan. So I waited. Some more. I drank hot toddies with my annual holiday guest, A, tried to make nice with Z and was sad her and did not go to LA. I figured I’d try again in March.
The picked over, cleaned up and pared down (as in minus most of the history) version is over at the IVP – source of all knowledge and refuge for the downtrodden – where I explain how and why I chose my new donor. Since you can read it there, I won’t bore you with it here.
Reading over this, I am once again overwhelmed and delighted by just how happy and excited and helpful my friends are with all this shit. Thanks, y’all.
But really, enough about me.
caved 