Who Shot My Stork?

Once more outta the ditch, dear friends, once more

2012-05-30T23:31:00.000-04:00

I am assuming everybody who once stopped by to visit me is long gone, but in case you're out there listening... I had my first IVF appointment today. Assuming (yeah, yeah, ass, you, me, mostly me) that things go as planned I will be either pregnant or a drunk sometime about the end of July. I start my birth control pills Saturday. Four years later than planned, but here we go.

Heyya

2010-02-23T17:34:00.004-05:00

In case you were worried, I am not face down dead in a ditch somewhere.

I keep writing sentences right here and then deleting them because they sound stupid so I'll just go ahead and say it: I'm depressed. Terribly horribly depressed.

I have certainly had my moments before - I can't imagine anyone struggling with infertility hasn't gone through at least some period of feeling like the world is crushing your soul - but this has been a particularly brutal and chemical feeling. It is different from the despair I felt when A failed the bar, lost his job, and we used up our IVF savings on paying COBRA. That was awful. This...
A couple months ago I had a bit of a toothache and decided to try putting orajel on my tooth. I dabbed a little on and didn't feel anything so I squirted some more out and managed to get it all over my mouth and tongue and lips. Suddenly the orajel took hold and I felt the fat numbness spreading. It sounds stupid but I thought to myself - this is exactly what my life feels like right now. Just nothingness.
I just didn't have the energy to read or comment on blogs or come up with something to say about my life. I didn't care. I know how important it is to not let yourself get sucked in, so I still went to work, I still coached, I still met up with friends for dinner. I still smiled and laughed and joked and commented on facebook but it was like this big act, like maybe if I could fool everyone else into thinking I was normal that I just would be normal.

Depression is a lot like infertility - it's a medical condition and I shouldn't be ashamed of it, but I am. It seems like it should be easy to get over, but it's not. And just like infertility, it took me a while to accept there might be a problem.
Calliope has been great about gently and firmly pushing me to get help. I saw my doctor the other day and I'm trying out some drugs. She also asked me about therapy. I'm not terribly sold on the idea of formal therapy, though I know it works for some people. I do know that when I was blogging, you all were the best support and greatest advisers I could have wanted. So...I am going to try and jump back in. I missed you guys.

2009-10-30T21:08:00.002-04:00

I want to read and comment and all that, but I've been feeling crappy all day. Then tonight I figured it out. I have a motherfucking UTI. I think it has been years since I had one and guess what? It still sucks.

Also, I am out of Halloween candy.

Anyone turning the lights off and yelling at kids to get off their lawn tomorrow?

Explosions!

2009-10-22T22:03:00.003-04:00

I tried to think of something exciting to do, but I couldn't quite bring myself to try the suggested juggling of fireworks. Though we did have a big kaboom in town today when a tanker exploded on a busy section of highway.

Last night I stayed up until midnight working on a speech and really got into it - I think I did a halfway decent job of fixing it up and I had a lot of ideas for where the student can go with it. It's hard - it's supposed to be a type of speech that is very funny, but this kid is very religious so I can't make my completely off color jokes. I have to keep it clean. I struggled with that a LOT.

Today I went to work and then met my fellow coaches for a drink. We ate some garlic fries. Then at home I had some garlic bread that A made. I am going to smell like a garlic factory for a few days. I am one of those people that has garlic and it just ooooozes out of my pores. But I love it so.

Since being tired and smelling like I rub a clove of garlic over my body after showering aren't very exciting, I am going to tell you about things I like.

_________
Things I Like

A few months or years or decades ago, Calliope mentioned something about wanting to do reviews. And then like a gazillion years after that I thought "yeah, that would be fun because I want to tell the world about my bed!" And now, a lifetime after that, I have decided to tell you about things I like.
Why? No reason. How did I pick these things? Um. I bought them all fairly recently and liked them and thought you might like them too? Why should you care? I dunno. Why am I asking questions that you would probably not ask but pretending to be you while I ask them?
Because it's my blog bitches. Shut up.
Wait. I asked that.

1. Sarah Peyton Mattress. (Who the F is Sarah Peyton? Why doe she make mattresses? I do not know. I do not care enough to google it.) I bought a new mattress as soon as A got a job. We bought a big nice cushiony mattress a few years ago and I made A get a pillow top because I love sleeping inside a marshmallow. The only problem is that eventually the marshmallow became molded to his shape and was killing his back. When he was unemployed and we were daydreaming about being able to buy something other than food and COBRA, the first big purchase he always brought up was a new mattress. So after he got a job I ordered the cheapest memory foam mattress I could find. I hate firm, but I thought for him, I would tough it out.
I fucking love this thing. I sleep so well. Other than a couple days of faint chemically smells it has been a dream. And it was less than half the price of our old mattress once you added in the 20% off coupon I found online. I am totally a believer in this foam thing now.
It probably causes cancer and I just don't care. I will make up for it with my other happy healthy things I like. I give it an A-

2. Sweet potatoes. They are delicious, healthy and easy to make. I give them an A+

3. Kashi frozen meals. For all that I have a gourmet chef husband, I often grab a frozen meal to take to work. I bought some of these when the ghetto Kroger had them on manager's special and they were delicious (although one of guys who lobbies for the P0lice walked in and made comments about the extreme garlic smell after I ate one. Like I said.) Anywho. They were on sale for $3 last week adn i had a coupon for $1 off, so it was still a shockingly high $2, but I got a Mayan Harvest Bake. It was just fantastic. (And vegan!) And unlike any other frozen meal you can get. I like Kashi cereal, but Kashi frozen meals? Off the chain my friends, off the chain. I give them an A.

4. Instead cup. I remember in high school having a friend come up and tell me that her Aunt Flo was coming to visit. She was looking at me really intently and asked me if I had anything. It was like somebody had just told me they owned a cat and then asked if I ate breakfast. I had never heard anyone use a euphamism for menstruation and it took several embarrasing moments before she whispered "A PAD! Do you have a PAD?!" I didn't but I had a tampon, which she declined. Somehow she had been transported from a time when tampons were strange and newfangled and a woman should think twice before putting something up her vag*na. I felt like her when I finally tried the instead cup. I am only vaguely crunchy granola when it suits me, so wearing a cup instead of a tampon or pad seemed very foreign. But being all down with being cheap won me over when I saw it on the clearance table. Hot damn I love it. No matter how thin a pad is, is usually feels awkward and I worry that it has bunched to one side and I am bleeding all over yet another pair of underwear. And my period does this thing where it comes super heavy for a day or two, then stops for a day, then gets medium for another day or two. So inevitably, I end up putting in a tampon on the 2nd or 3rd day only to realize six hours later that I have to pull dry cotton out. Or I pee and then the string is all doing its absorbant thing so I have to take it out and put in a new tampon. But the cup thing? I stuck it in and it was (except for cramps and my desire to kill) just like I was not having my period at all. And I coudl leave it in all day. It is a bit messy to take out, but what isn't? There is also the diva cup which is reusable, so I may switch and get one of those when I run out of these. Am I totally behind the times? I have friends that use this and now I feel like they must have viewed me like I viewed my friend in high school. Hello Me! Welcome to the 21st century. I give it an A-

Okay, fill me in. What am I missing out on in life? (Besides the whole kid thing. I know about that one.)

The exciting life of Io

2009-10-20T23:03:00.004-04:00

Not much happening 'round these here parts. I've been busy, it's just not terribly exciting. I'm coaching college spee.ch this year, which I really enjoy, but it takes a lot of time. Friday night I helped run a fundraiser at the Hall which would have been more fun if I could drink (they had good beer too!) but I knew I needed to get up early. I took the kids to a tournament on Saturday. I left my house at 4:30am and got home at 11:30pm and it's just an exhausting activity. It sounds pathetic to say that since it's not like I was running, but it takes lot of mental effort to judge and comment on speeches all day and try and actually give them something constructive to work on.

Sunday was spent with a tournament hangover, Monday after work I attended the team meeting and then had a coaches meeting, and tonight I coached for a couple hours before coming home. So yeah. I have absolutely nothing exciting to write about unless you are just dying to hear about me working on rewriting internal previews or something. (No, you aren't. Trust me.)
More coaching tomorrow night.
Um. That's it. I'll try and have something exciting happen on Thursday so I can blog about it!

Tattoo

2009-10-15T11:31:00.000-04:00

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Weekend

2009-10-14T22:21:00.004-04:00

I'm slightly concerned: After coaching speech interp events tonight I am thinking I have given the kids pieces that are all about IF. There is the infertility duo, the adoption poetry, and now there is a prose about a woman whose husband had his sperm aspirated because he has CBAVD. It's all totally a coincidence, but I feel like people will wonder how our whole team ended up doing pieces about infertility.

Of course, there was also a poetry program about drinking too much, which I certainly did this weekend. (Totally worth it.)

Several girlfriends and I rented a house on Lake Michigan last weekend. I left work early on Friday and was all stressed out because I was running late. One of my friends saw me and looked terribly concerned and asked me what was wrong. I realized I was stressing out about leaving half an hour late for vacation.

Yeah. So I calmed the fuck down.

I drove up with one other friend (one was supposed to come with us, but had the flu, three were coming later, and one lives in Michigan) and after we finally got on the road with our freedom and massive sugary caffeine-filled drinks, we were both loopy with joy. So loopy that half an hour in, we decided to get tattoos. In the next town we passed.

These fancy iphones and blackberries have their evil side - I was able to google tattoo parlors, find one that had a website and looked decent, and get directions there. We decided that so long as it didn't look scary, we'd be good and then M said "It would be awesome if they had some sort of 'buy one, get one!'"

The tattoo parlor did not look scary and wouldn't you know it - on the door there was a sign that for a limited time you could buy one, get one.

Once we got there (about the time the late group was supposed to arrive - whoops! We were supposed to get dinner ready) it was fairly late and we couldn't find the key for a while, but eventually we got into the house that I will buy when I win the lottery. It was nothing terribly fancy, but it was fantastic.

And being there with these amazing women was unbelievable. We drank wine and ate and curled up in front of the fireplace to watch movies and sat in the hot tub and ate and walked on the freezing cold beach and drank wine and ate and went to the little town to try on ridiculous hats and buy overpriced pottery. And ate. (We were all in charge of one meal, but each person somehow brought enough to feed a family for a month. And oh, the ginger almond muffins and chicken salad sandwiches and baked sweet potatoes...)

I just can't express what a wonderful weekend it was. The women I was with are all so amazing and strong and funny in totally offbeat ways. It's nice to feel like you can be yourself completely in a group setting without thinking somebody is giving you the hairy eyeball.
We are planning to do this trip every year (and M and I think everyone else should get tattoos, one a year and there can be a bye year next year because there were two this year. Nobody else seemed to jump on the idea though.)

I was thinking there might be another great group of women to do a stress-free weekend with...Wishing4one, are there any nice rental places in Egypt?!

Random thoughts popping into my head

2009-10-08T21:49:00.004-04:00

Well, once again, I should be doing laundry...It's not that I really mind laundry, it's just the fact that I have to go down to the basement to do it. If we're ever fabulously wealthy (or just not poor) I will have the laundry in my closet.
I'm leaving tomorrow for a weekend in Michigan with my writing group girls, although one has sadly been stricken with the flu. I am going for my flu shot at HQ tomorrow morning. Having the flu last year was the worst three weeks - the whole not being able to get enough oxygen thing sucks ass.
Honeycrisp apples dipped in Greek Gods honey yogurt is seriously amazing.
I am in charge of dinner Saturday night and I bought steaks. They look delicious. I'm also making baked sweet potatoes.
While I was shopping, Charlie was getting pissed off about being left at home so he took a bunch of cat shit out of the litter box and put it under a chair in a pile. Nasty.
I coached speech on Wednesday. I have two girls doing a cutting from the play I mentioned before (What They Have) and I joked to the one who is supposed to be pregnant that the last girl I coached in a duo who was playing pregnant ended up GETTING pregnant. So she better be careful. I hope she doesn't end up pregnant.
After I coached them, the one I joked with stayed to work on her poetry program which is about ad0ption. It was totally an infertility themed night, and somehow I ended up mentioning that we were infertile. She gave me the "You should adopt!" speech, which included mentioning her parents had adopted three children. One "only cost $100!" because he was black. Er. Yeah. I was too tired to really respond to that properly.
I got a kick ass pair of brand new Justin boots for $5 at a garage sale.
I am writing on my work laptop which I have been bringing home ever since I dropped and killed my macbook. I'm hoping our friend can at least salvage my photos, which of course I never backed up.
I love crunchy peanut butter.

Wordless Wednesday. If it works from my phone

2009-10-07T21:19:00.000-04:00

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

My apologies are stale

2009-10-05T08:02:00.004-04:00

Do you read plays?
I started reading plays in high school. Being quite the little drama queen (Shocking, eh?), I got involved with theater. I also did interp events for sp.eech team which involved making cuttings from plays. In college, it was more of the same and I used to spend hours in the dusty stacks of the library (which, as I understand all school libraries are, was supposedly sinking into the ground from the weight of the books) rifling through thin cheaply printed playbooks.
When I went to NYC in August I spent a few hours at the Drama Book Shop flipping through plays trying to find material for the kids I coach. On the shelf of new plays I found one that made my chest tighten as soon as I read the description on the back:

What They Have by Kate Robin
Set in contemporary Los Angeles, the play explores the emotional strains that the decision to have a child -- or the inability to have one -- can put on married couples during the years when a pregnancy can be a tense and potentially traumatic experience, not to mention an expensive one. More broadly, it asks how we get what we want out of life, and how we learn to stop wanting it if we can't get it.

The two couples in the play start with one couple having had three miscarriages and no money to pursue treatment, while the other couple has money and is pregnant and is basically an IFers worst nightmare. But later on, the wealthy friends lose the baby and can't get pregnant again even with IVF, ICSI, etc, while the other couple has finally gotten far into a pregnancy and suddenly forgotten what infertility is like. [Edit: I know most of you have not forgotten, you are all incredible and sweet, it's just this character!]
At one point the two female friends are together and the newly infertile is admitting that they have been trying IVF and failing. After her friend asks her why she didn't tell her, Connie replies:
You don't want to hear about it...trust me. At first you'll feel bad for me, but then, in about ten minutes, I'll be ranting, because I've totally lost my mind, and you'll start thinking maybe I'm a little self-indulgent, what with all the problems in the world, the war and the famine, I can't expect to have everything, and actually now that you think of it, I have gotten everything I ever wanted (which isn't true, at all, but I know you'll think it), so isn't it only fair that this one thing should evade me?Isn't there a really wonderful spiritual lesson, a character building exercise to be found in all this? And the less compassion I feel from you, the more shrill and intolerable I'll become until you'll move past thoughts like "Why doesn't she just adopt?" to "Maybe it's better she not be a mother actually. Some women really shouldn't and Connie's always been a bit brittle, ambitious. She's not nurturing at all. Thank God she can't conceive. In fact, her infertility is yet another proof that God does exist and is always making the best decisions for the greater good."

(There is so much more. If I could buy this play and send it to all of you, I would. It's almost like reading a blog in play form.)

The feeling of almost losing your mind? And recognizing it, being deeply embarrassed by it, but still being unable to stop? I have that.

I'm also embarrassed by my lack of blogging and reading and supporting my friends. But I've played that tune before and my apologies grow stale - I just hope you understand, and if not, well, I understand. (Um, or quite possibly most people barely noticed and are now thinking I should shut up and move along here...)

So I was really busy for a minute there. And then I was lazy. And then I was both lazy and busy. And then I started looking at my reader so I could catch up and it sort of hit me that everyone was pregnant or parenting. (Yes, I know it's not true, but.) On an individual level I am really happy for everyone. I can look at pictures of Calliope's W and fall half in love with him or I can hear about Shinejil's belly growing and be thrilled for her, but it all just sort of adds up somehow.
Also, two of my real life infertile friends posted ultrasounds on their faceb0oks in the last two weeks. And instead of being happy that they had moved beyond, I saw one ultrasound and thought petty dark thought about the fact that all she had to do was a couple IUIs.
I don't want to be a selfish bitch. I just am.

New York was fantastic (and crazy hot - somehow nobody sweats as much as do, I was positively drippy, especially when I walked several miles to a party where I was surrounded by thin gorgeous German women. I think I may have alarmed them with my just-got-out-of-a-pool-with-my-clothes-on appearance.) My best friend L always makes me happy even when we are driving each other nuts. (I try to force her into loving BSG, she tries to force me into loving fondue brunches. She won the fondue argument, I lost the BSG one, but I am convinced it was just because she decided not to love it because I told her she would.)
The best part of NYC was that I got to meet Dora, who is totally a badass and is no doubt going to raise an awesome girl. I wish I had half the cool factor.

Really, not much is new - mostly I'm working. I've been coaching in the evenings, which is half fun and half makes me want to pull my hair out. (Oh sheltered Catholic kids who attend Mass twice on Sundays and use GW Bush as an example of a great president in your impromptu speeches...) I took the kids to their first tournament and taking them to another in a couple weeks where I will hopefully NOT run into A's ex girlfriend who had no trouble popping out a singleton and twins and who hates me despite the fact that she is all happy familied.

Okay, I must get moving now, quite literally, because this house next door that has been on stilts for two months?
They are lowering it today and I don't want to die when it collapses dramatically onto my office, so I'm grabbing up the dogs and heading next door.

Laundry or blogging?

2009-08-13T21:54:00.006-04:00

You win people. I have been a crappy lazy blogger lately, but there is laundry to be done before I leave for NYC tomorrow morning. So clearly, I need to update my blog. Right. Now. (Dora, if you do meet up with me and I look homeless it's because I never moved my clothes into the dryer and I had to patch together fuchsia leggings and neon green cardigans from my goodwill bag. Please don't run away.)(Actually, on second thought I think I want to keep those fuchsia leggings.)

Last weekend was really great. One of those weekends that just makes you feel *content*. A and I went to Pittsburgh to visit my friend E who moved back there last year. (She's the one whose asshole boyfriend dumped her when she was diagnosed with cancer.) I was kind of dreading going because I had somehow decided that it was an eight hour drive. When I realized it was only six and a half, suddenly that seemed totally reasonable!

We left Friday morning and somehow despite my getting us completely lost, made it in time for dinner. E's dad is classic Pittsburgh. He took us all to dinner at the original Primanti Bros. They bring your sandwich out on wax paper and the fries are on the sandwich. Hard to get your mouth around, but once you do...oh lordy. De-freaking-licious.

After we ate we went to a STLCardinals game. Right, they were playing the Pirates, but we were there for the Cards, as it is the family religion. (My mother is a heathen though - Cubs fan.) E's parents have great season tickets in the first row right above the third base line.
I got to see the Pirate Parrot:
The Pierogi(is that the plural too?), as they lined up to race around the field :
And most importantly, my boyfriend Yadier Molina:

The weather was fantastic, there was a breeze, I got to drink Yuengling. The Cardinals won, though considering the Pirates, that's not saying much. Sorry Pirates fans. But it's like how I have to admit that the Pacers make me cry. Or would if I really cared about basketball.

After the game there was a concert by O.A.R.
I didn't know them, but E was kind of a fan and they had a great fireworks show too. The lead singer lost his voice and the band really stepped up to try and put on a great show anyways. (As far as I am concerned, but then I have never been to an actual concert concert. Unless you count the symphony playing Led Zepplin.) Afterwards the band came over to where we were and met fans. They were all extremely gracious, to the point I am thinking I may buy one of their CDs just because of how the sax player stepped it up and because they all signed E's shirt for her.

We got back to E's parents house (she lives with her parents right now) at 1am and enjoyed chocolate milk (I brought Oberweis as requested. Mmm.) and beef bbq sandwiches.

The next morning A and I slept in then had coffee with the family's St. Bernard (so freaking sweet) while everyone else went to E's twin nieces' baptism. After church everyone came back to the house - by everyone I mean E's brothers, their kids, their knocked up girlfriends, their friends, and their friend's knocked up girlfriends. E's dad gave me the "watch out, babies are catching" nudge. Doh.
We had a huge brunch then A and I drove back to Indy in a sugar coma. I do not know how he drove because I was loopy with bacon and cherry pancakes and baptism cake. Maybe it was because he doesn't eat bacon.

We got home and although far too much of the weekend was spent in the car, it was just a really fantastic weekend.

This week was work, which is always fun. The scary house on stilts next door? Is now resting on our gutter. See? My office is on the left, certain death is on the right and all that is protecting me is an aluminum gutter.
I really should go work on my laundry...

But I still have more to ramble on about!

Really!

Um.

I am leaving for New York in the morning and I am really excited for my yearly trip. I usually go alone to visit my best friend. (Except for the year that A surprised me - I didn't get it until I was physically kicked out of the car at the airport by a friend who I thought was taking me to breakfast. I thought he had *accidentally* turned into the airport. I'm not the brightest.)

I'd tell you all about my exciting plans but I don't have any, just a vague idea I might meet up with a couple people and that I need to go the drama store. Gotta buy me some more drama. I'm starting coaching speech next week and I need to find some interp material. I somehow was really surprised today when my boss called to talk about next week because omyfuckingcheescake WHERE did August GO? I'm still living in July.

Laundry. Right.

I don't know why it takes me so long and such a desire to avoid laundry, but I am feeling sort of reluctant to talk about IF. For a supposed infertility blogger, I am pretty good at avoiding anything more detailed than pithy comments about how everyone has a child and I have nothing and woe is me.

A and I had a discussion on our long car drive to Pittsburgh and back. We've not really discussed the whole IVF thing for a while. With him being jobless for a year, it wasn't something that was anywhere within reach so what was the point? Our savings dwindled and he was depressed and I was bitchy. But now that he has a job and is practicing law and our credit cards are paid off, I am feeling itchy again. Not that I don't spend money, but every time A went to play golf or ate lunch out (I bring my lunch every day) I felt myself getting a little more resentful that he wasn't putting every damn dime towards saving. Not that we had talked about it in more than general terms that next spring looked good. I just thought he should KNOW. I mean, I feel crappy enough about this that I have a damn infertility blog!

Something incredible actually happened that made me finally restart the conversation seriously. The incredible Calliope got an email from L who had some, er, "stuff" to donate to somebody who was going to do IVF. And she connected us and A and I now will have a little less to save up. It makes me want to weep with gratitude. (And if you have any mind powers, L's first ultrasound is on the 18th, so send her good wishes.)

So after we talked about where we are, where we need to be, and how we are going to get there, it looks like the beginning of 2010 (barring any crap, which would make me tear my hair out and claw my eyes) is what we are shooting for in terms of IVF. It's going to suck and we are really going to have to be frugal (after this weekend - I reserve the right to spend a couple hundred bucks in NYC), but I plan on having some real shit to bitch about soon. I want to comment on the irony of taking birth control pills and I want shitty lupron side effects and I want to post the obligatory "holy shit, look at all these drugs and syringes" picture.
I'm starting to think I may be slightly masochistic.

Better punish myself by finishing the laundry.

Still alive, kicking

2009-08-04T19:40:00.000-04:00

I'm going to try and type quickly before my computer dies. I broke off the power dealio and A swears that I broke the second power cord over a year ago. Ergh. Not good. But I'm hopeful that the massive tangle of cords that A wouldn't let me throw away has an extra power cord hiding in there somewhere.
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After promising to tell you all about my super exciting time at BlogHer, I was struck down by an evildoer who smeared flu germs all over my bag. At least, Lollipop Goldstein says that's what she did. And I believe her, because I was deathly ill all week. A few days of seventeen hours of sleep and not eating and I am six pounds lighter and still not feeling totally rested.
But before my week that got sucked into the blackhole of sickness, I had an awesome weekend. My old college roommate moved to town a few weeks ago to start law school. (And oh my goodness, tonight she posted on facebook a picture from junior year of us with our other roommate and how young were we!

-------------------
DOH. My computer died last night before I got very far. Glad I have a work laptop I can use for a few days until the magic that is ebay sends me a new cord.

I'm not sure where I was going with my old roomie, other than to say that it's exciting to have her in town. A friend of ours who lived across the hall from us freshman year (we were randomly assigned and then had an apartment junior year) came into town because she associate produced a film that showed in the Indy Film Fest, so we all got together and talked about being adults.

The day after we discussed how mature we were I drove up to Chicago where I could be completely immature and act like a teenager seeing sparkly vampires or something. By which I mean I got to meet Emily, Becky, and Melissa, the Stirrup Queen herself!
All three of them are exactly like what you would think meeting them online and it was so exciting to get to meet them in real life. Meeting Emily was like meeting an old friend. Becky was caustic and funny. And Mel is just like her writing - smart and thoughtful and humble. She let me follow her around like a lost puppy and hero worship her, which was very kind. I'm watching for the restraining order in the mail any day now.
Becky had spent the first day at Bl0gHer and was (rightly so) named the funniest damn blogger ever (or something like that) and received this beautiful massive ruby.
She had been invited to some swanky party with a guest list but while she dropped in, Emily and I got to stand out of the rain in the real VIP section. Let me tell you, not just anybody could get past that caution tape. You had to be somebody pretty special to climb over it.

Becky decided not to stay for the second day of the conference and
---
Ahem. If you are from the corporate arm of Bl0gHer the rest of this is made up since I don't know if it's kosher
---
so I got to take her pass and be her fan club president and pass out her cards the next day! Not only this, but in clearing out her hotel room, she was going to leave behind this guy:

That's right. A Robert Osborne bobblehead. Who's Robert Osborne, you ask? Why, he's the host of Turner Classic Movies. Of course. That's my finger on his shoulder, because we are the best of friends. And I know I look slightly insane, but I was just so happy to be there. Plus, I may be slightly insane.
Who else is good friends with him? Why, Mel is!
That's right, he came to dinner with us. (Though this first picture was actually taken in the bar we went into before realizing that there was nothing we wanted to eat. The waitress was very nice when we decided to leave after drinking our waters.)
Rob hung out with us all night.
---
Saturday I met up with Mel again and went to a few of the sessions. A lot of it was over my head or not relevant to me (I don't really care about growing my readership - in fact, who the hell are you people? Mom, are you reading this?! Ack!), but it was interesting to see all these women who feel as passionately about their community as we do about ours. And amusing to see the look of horror when I told the woman next to me that I.have.no.twitter. Gasp.
Of course, it was also sad to sit in a discussion about community and hear somebody say that she was miffed somebody had told her the way to get readers was to comment on other people's blogs. Why should she do that, she wondered.
And I got to go downstairs to get all the silly swag that booth people were handing out. No more Robert Osbornes, but I giddily grabbed everything else I found as though I needed baby food and brown lip gloss.
---
Then I went home and was sick for almost a week. I will spare you details.
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This Sunday I had my birthday. We were originally going to have a bbq with friends, but having been sick all week I didn't feel up to it so I just stayed in my pjs all day.

Hmm...what else, what else...

It rained it's ass off today and as I sat in my office with the electricity flickering I was slightly worried about this:
This would be the view from my office porch of the house about five feet away from my office. Perhaps you can't tell what's under that plastic sheeting...

Nothing. Nothing at all. They are renovating the house, which was built in the 1800s, and the foundation work includes lifting the house into the air on two steel beams that are resting on pieces of wood. That are resting in the dirt. That is now mud.

So yeah, no collapse, but I was staying on the far side of my office all day just in case...

----
There is a church down the street from me and the new congregation/pastor/whoever fixed it up, which is good, but every time I pass it there are these happy smiley people outside. It's so happy it's starting to creep me out.
----
I'm going to NYC in a week and a half. Anyone out there want to hang out? I'll cry and hug you and post pictures of you with Robert Osborne.
----

Okay, that's all the random totally late updating I have in me for today. There may be developments in me robbing a bank or something coming up though, so stay tuned.

This is too cool

2009-07-25T12:46:00.000-04:00

I will write more when I am not typing on my blackberry's teeny keyboard, but since everyone else at BlogHer is twittery bloggery right now I was feeling left out.
Last night I got to meet Emily from Apron Strings for Emily and Becky from Mommy Wants Vodka. They are both incredibly awesome. Like really really awesome. I will write more about them when I get home and post pictures and what not. Sadly Becky decided to leave BlogHer early and not attend today. HAPPY time though, I have been elected president of her fan club (I was the only voter by the by) and am acting as her rep today. I've been handing out her cards.
I also got to meet Mel. As in THE Mel from Stirrup Queens. Emily and I went and got dinner/dessert with her and we had a good time talking.
I'm sitting with Mel now in a boringish sessionwhere people are asking different random questions. The chick next to me just asked for my twitter handle and was SHOCKED that I don't have one.
My thumbs are getting tired. More later.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Yargh

2009-07-20T18:13:00.006-04:00

I hesitate to use the word "busy" to describe this last week, because it seems to imply work or actual structured events or something. It was just a series of pop-up things that kept me from sitting down to write: My old college roommate moved to town so I took her around one evening to show her where to drink, I had dinner and walked with a friend one evening, the film fest opened and even though I don't work for them anymore, I felt obligated to go to the opening night party to schmooze.
On Saturday, my dad called me while I was at a garage sale with my mom and said that we needed to come pick him up. He'd gone to Cincinnati for a conference and threw himself down some steps on his way in, breaking his elbow, busting his left knee, and bloodying his entire face. Somehow we got him back to Indy, but the day was pretty much a bust. He'll be okay but he can't walk and his right arm is useless. Sunday was spent running errands for my mom.
He tried to get out of bed somehow this evening and ended up falling on the floor. My mom had to call the EMTs to get him back into his wheelchair. She's really upset, because she recognizes that she can't take care of him if this is going to happen.
We'll call tomorrow to see if we can get him in a rehabilitation center or something where there will be professionals to help him as he recovers.
I know he'll get better, but it's a reminder that he is getting old and my mom is going to have trouble taking care of him by herself, even with me nearby to help out.
Yargh.
I'm heading up to Chicago at the end of the week to meet up with the bloggers at BlogHer and hopefully anyone in the Chicago area that wants to find out for themselves that I am not really a thirteen year old boy who just writes an IF blog for shits and giggles.
I'll try and catch up on commenting and emails before then.

How to stop a conversation

2009-07-09T23:47:00.000-04:00

Of course, you already know don't you? Crack a joke about your infertility!
I had my writing group tonight, which was nice as we hadn't met for a while. We generally eat and talk before we write (er, that is *when* we write). Our lovely host has two kids and desperately wants the rest of us to become parents. Somehow she started in on D to get a move on having kids with his wife. He said that they were probably going to stop preventing soon and she said oh it was so much fun, though of course when she and her husband did it they got pregnant the first month both times. So he could only look forward to a few weeks of babymaking sex before they got pregnant.
Naturally I jumped in with "or a few years!" (they all know about our IF).
Strangely, the conversation switched to something else after that. Gee. I hope it wasn't something I said...
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

What? Tuesday already?

2009-07-07T16:49:00.002-04:00

I can't believe the weekend is already over. What the hey?
I worked on Friday, then went out with my friend who was recently diagnosed with cancer. Indeed, that asshole she was convinced was *the one* dumped her. I think in a way she was more upset about that than about the cancer. However, when I (and all the other ladies we were out with) offered to go staple his balls to the back of a portapotty she said that he wasn't worth beating the crap out of.
But if this guy ends up in a river somewhere I won't cry.
And I will make sure I have an alibi ahead of time.

Saturday I was feeling like crappola with a cold and spent most of the day in bed. (And then on the couch watching Battle* Galactic@ - we are over halfway through the third season and we are horribly addicted.)

Sunday we went to Cincinatti for the day to visit a family friend with my parents. A and my dad went to a Red's game, where they watched their beloved St Louis Cards beat the crap out of Cinci. My mom, her friend and I went to Ikea and this awesome grocery store where we bought massive amounts of food for dinner. After we ate, we walked down to Graeters, the most delicious ice cream store ever. Sadly, I didn't have dry ice to pack it in and bring it home. I would fill my freezer with this stuff.
We didn't get home until almost midnight and then I went and got Charlie from his best friends house.
Last night was another late night. I went with some of the Local guys up to beautiful Munc*e to attend a council meeting. Their spiteful mayor has laid off a fourth of the f*refighters up there. I won't go into details, but aside from all the ridiculous political crap, it's just not safe. They are severly understaffed.
Charlie came with so we sat outside, which was fine since the meeting room was full and the A/C hadn't been turned on. Afterwards, a bunch of us went out to dinner and Charlie did a great job of hanging out next to us. Of course, these guys can talk and drink beer forever, so we didn't get home until midnight again.

I suppose none of this is terribly interesting, as I have actually bored myself. But now you know what I've been up to.
I didn't want you to get any ideas.

Oh! And speaking of travel. I am going up to Chicago during BlogHer (July 24 & 25)
Who's meeting me for dinner/drinks/girly things/bizarre happenings?

Coinkydink?

2009-07-02T21:33:00.000-04:00

Just went to the bookstore to buy Mel's book *Navigating the Land of IF* (squeeeeee!). I flipped it open when I picked it up and the page I landed on had a chart for a couple with azoospermia. It looked at the options of IVF w/ ICSI, donor sperm and adoption.
I smiled (how freaking cool is this book going to be?) closed it and bounded up to the checkout.
So. Standing in line...
Both the woman in front of me and the woman behind me had an adorable daughter. Both girls were adopted.
I stood there clutching my fabulous infertility book wondering if the universe was trying to tell me something.
Do you ever question the path you have chosen?
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Floored

2009-06-30T19:04:00.009-04:00

What the hell is wrong with me? My brain is clearly wired wrong. You know how women are supposed to forget how bad labor was or something so they'll want to have more kids? I think that part of my brain got rerouted to the home improvement portion of my brain.

A_ went out of town on Friday. He's been planning to have a "man weekend" for over a year. It was supposed to be a celebration of finishing law school/passing the bar. Yeah.
So he finally went off to have it. He drove down to Nashville and a friend of his drove up from Florida and they played golf and went out to a pub and all that not-really-exciting-jazz.

I didn't mention to him that while he was gone I planned on replacing our bathroom floor. Our only bathroom.
Our house was built in the early 1930s and is a small bungalow with some great original bits and some horrid horrid not so original bits. The bathroom floor was dirty stained whitish linoleum that had been placed right over tile, so you could see the pattern pressed through it. I pulled up the linoleum to reveal small tiles in two shades of pink and tiny maroon tiles connecting them. I'm pretty sure it was not the original and was actually put in in the 1950s, so I felt not so bad about destroying it.

I somehow thought that I could:
Rip this up on Friday evening
Put down the new tile on Saturday
Grout on Sunday before A got back.

WHY I thought this, I do not know.

This is my floor Saturday night after twelve hours of prying and scraping up tile.

By the time A got home at 3pm on Sunday I had finished popping up all of the tile except around the toilet. The ancient, ancient toilet.

And being as brilliant as I am, I convinced A that if we took the old toilet up I would be able to pop up the rest of the tile, put down the underlayment, set the new tile and pop a brand new toilet on.
I mean, easy peasy, right?

Ergh.

Luckily my office has full bathrooms with showers and fresh towels and toilets where one can pee. (Oh glorious toilets!)
I finally put in the new toilet last night, though using the bathroom was a problem because we couldn't walk on the tile yet.
I am happy to say the tile is now walkable so once I drag everything out of the bathtub, finish laying some edge pieces and grout the whole thing I'll be done!

_________

Of course...I still have a new bathroom sink in my back closet and I want to rip out the shower surround and retile it...

Testing

2009-06-26T12:18:00.000-04:00

Trying to see if this mobile blog thing will work.
One good thing did happen yesterday - we got our new mattress delivered. For months we had been saying that the first thing we would buy when we had money would be a new mattress. Our old one was four years old and was quite nice for the first year or so.
(This came right after the horrible terrible awful disgusting bed bug period of our lives. I now carefully check my bed everywhere I go.)
So this new bed is a memory foam and I think it will take some getting used to but my back already feels better. It's firm and you can't really shift in bed which I tend to do.
Ok. This is enough inane babbling to make one mobile post.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Fuckshitballs

2009-06-25T19:09:00.003-04:00

One of my really good friends just called and told me she has cancer. Non hodgkins lymphoma. She doesn't know anything yet, just that she has it. She goes in to find out what's next tomorrow morning.
We talked for about an hour and the entire time I tried to stay upbeat because she said it was really hard on her when the people she had told so far got emotional and told her she would be okay. So I tried to let her know I was here for her and joked and talked about her boyfriend (who has suddenly decided that he's not sure he can handle being with her and I swear to GOD I might drive to fucking Pennsylvania and rip his puny little balls right off of him). And the whole time I kept thinking - Shit. Am I going to do the cancer equivalent of telling her to just relax? Am I going to make an inappropriate joke and upset her? Why did I just tell her I signed up to the bone marrow registry as though that means a goddamn thing? What the fuck do I say when all I want to do is wail to the Gods that this is NOT OKAY.
Sorry to unload this here, but I had to get it out. I started bawling after we hung up and needed to get out my rage. I'm supposed to go visit in August. We're going to a baseball game. I don't know if there is anything I can do until then. Anyone ever have cancer? Is there something you would have liked to receive in the mail? Stupid things I should refrain from saying? Anything?

Edit: And Michael Jackson is dead? I feel like I am swimming underwater. This day is not real.

Remember me?

2009-06-24T19:49:00.004-04:00

I was at a garage sale and bought a motherfucking bumbo seat.

For those of you that are not aware, a bumbo seat is this nifty little seat for zee babies.

I saw this seat in its pristine condition and it was a great deal and the people threw in a really cute dog collar for me to give Charlie's best buddy. My mom asked me why I was buying it and I lied. I told her I had a friend that was looking for one. (And no, I'm not coming back to blogging to tell you that I got knocked up and just haven't told my mom yet.) I just wanted one.

I'm sure there is some psychology term for being in denial and having all that crap you try to suppress come squeezing out the cracks somewhere in your life, but my psych class was a huge 8am lecture so I only showed up for the first class and the final. But whatever that is called, my armchair diagnosis came after I bought this motherfucking bumbo seat.

My last post was all about going down to N-ville and having a kick ass time. And I did, people, I did. I drank like my liver was still 20 and I didn't get enough sleep and I laughed. I met a gazillion amazing people and we talked about their films and art and politics and what a dick W*lliam Shitner was for not staying at the party long enough for anyone to meet him. And while I was down there I didn't think about not having kids.

I got back and was reading blogs and it started to feel like every person in the IF blogosphere was either pregnant or parenting. And as happy as I am for each of those friends, I felt like I had to get away for awhile. I wanted to get back to that mental place where I wasn't thinking about kids.

Yeah. That shit didn't work. So I'm back and I am going to be better than ever. (Hmmm..where have we heard that before? Oh. Right. Last time I came back to blogging after dropping off the face of the earth.) Seriously though. If you're reading this on g00gle reader or something, click over and check out my fancy new blog design from Calliope. She did a kick ass job and now I feel all primped and ready to go again. It will hopefully keep me from buying as much baby stuff at garage sales, though Calliope is getting a nice aqua bumbo seat mailed to her.

Let's catch you up to date:

1. A_ passed the bar, which sadly didn't equal sudden and instant wealth or fancy law job. But he did get a job as an associate professor at a university here in town (not the same one he used to teach at.) It pays decently, but nothing extraordinary. But it will keep us from having to beg my parents for a loan or start dealing crack. If we are careful and save, we should be able to try and get knocked up sometime within the next century. (I'm shooting for a year.) He's doing law on the side, though it's slow going to get started and he's spent more then he has made.

2. I am going to have another part time job next year coaching college speech. It doesn't pay massive amounts of money, but it will be really nice to have a team again. They are all good kids and I love the people I will be working with.

3. Charlie is still the cutest dog ever.

4. We took in the mother cat and four kittehs. I managed to adopt out all of them, which was fantastic. I think they all went to good homes and Fat Fluffy (my favorite kitten) and the mama cat are both with people I am friends with on faceb00k and they have posted great pictures.

5. My convention at work was great, other than the night I drank too much tequila (damn guy poured me a FULL GLASS, what was I supposed to do?), had a run in with two whores who didn't understand that nobody wanted to buy their services, and apparently almost got arrested because I was trying to break up a fight between two of my guys by grabbing them both by the collars and shoving their faces together while I growled at them.

6. I am planning to retile my bathroom floor this weekend while A is having a man weekend. We only have one bathroom, so I am slightly worried that we might go down to 0 if I screw this up.

7. I'm thinking about foster care. There is so much to say here that I can't think of what to write. So I will leave that for another post, because yes bitches, I am back to posting.

____________________________
What did I miss while I was gone?

My liver is happy to be back

2009-04-20T19:20:00.008-04:00

Thank you ALL so much for your comments about A passing the bar. It's a big step.

Tomorrow I am going to read through and try and comment on all five million posts I missed while I was gone...tonight I am too tired to do much of anything including type up all the excitement. I will just say that I averaged five hours of sleep a night, drank too goddamn much, and the favorite person I met was the driver for the G*bson bus.
Here are some pictures until my brain is capable of forming words.

On the red carpet with fellow juror Joe and art*stic d*rector Brian

The red carpet in morning before they set up. We were eating delicious cheeseburgers on the third floor.

My favorie guy, Don the bus driver.

Last night I decided that if we were waking up at 5:30am I would cut out and go to bed at 12:30. Which worked until these guys bust into my room at 3:30 am and jumped on top of me.
The fest*val had a tent set up for people with all access passes. It had free food and bar inside. I need a magical tent like this in my backyard.

Wait, my liver disagrees.

We went to a party that you had to have a special invite to and all that jazz. It ended up being lame which was super disappointing. I didn't even see Shat.ner. The food was good though.
Joe again, this time in front of a cool car we saw. It got cooler when Nicole K*dman and her hubby got out of it and walked right past us, but they were really just extra frosting. That building in the back was my hotel, which was awesome so we could stumble back without having to call a cab.

Oh glorious day

2009-04-17T08:32:00.002-04:00

FUCK YES. A passed the b.ar.
I haven't been talking about it because it made me want to puke every time I thought about it. And I couldn't handle any more good wishes. Now I am happy crying and my stomach has untied itself.
OK, going back to bed. It's 7:30 here and I have been up since 6am because I couldn't sleep.

2009-04-13T22:40:00.002-04:00

Ack! Just a quick note to say I'm a bad blogger this week. I'm heading down to Nashv*lle on Thursday afternoon to be on a f*lm fest.ival jury and I'm getting in two movies a night every day after work this week until I leave so I am neglecting all of you. (I may have procrastinated a bit on watching my movies...) And I'm not sure if I will really have time to blog from the festival (I may be too busy partying it up with Bi.ll Shat.ner and Ben Fol.ds - whee! Yay special invite parties! Oh and some country singer I don't know.)
So if you don't hear from me for the next week, I'll be back soon.

Kitteh video

2009-04-09T21:12:00.003-04:00

Oh the kittehs. They make my head esplode with cute. Even my brother was moved to baby talk to them, which shocked the hell out of me. Watch at your own risk.