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The Groups
Nice to meet you. Have I told you about my hoo ha?
I don’t meet many new people. With my world revolving around GM there just isn’t much of an opportunity to socialize outside of the house. So I have some friendly chats with the ladies I see weekly at GM’s hair salon. I have a rapport with the bag boy and check out lady at the grocery store. And of course the people at the pharmacy only know me through the medications that I pick up for Mother & GM.
Lately I have started trying to chat up the regulars at the fitness center, but since I don’t play golf and I don’t have a prostate I rarely exceed the 2 minute mark in banter.
This morning I realized that I am loosing my people skills. Or rather my meeting new people skills. I had an informal job interview to be a pet sitter for another neighbor. I walked in, was pounced on by the sweetest Golden Retriever I have ever met, scratched the ear of a nonchalant tabby and then sat down to chat with the pet owner/potential employer. Not one minute went by and I found myself saying, “Well I am also trying to have a baby.” Granted this was said in response to the, “So what are your interests?” question, and having a baby is probably mu number one interest. But really. Does the lady need to know? Did I really need to get all involved in talking about it? I mean, I really T A L K E D about it.
As soon as I revealed it I felt like such a freak. How on earth could something so private, so personal have tripped so easily off of my tongue to a person was only 8 minutes shy of being a stranger? Is this all I am? A woman trying to have a baby?
The dog and the cat made it clear that they were cool with me, but who knows if they had been more ambivalent I may not have been hired. I don’t think I offended this woman. In fact she actually THANKED me for being honest and open. “I Find it refreshing” is what she said to my face. But I continue to be mortified at what she probably really thought.
Seriously- can you imagine the pizza delivery boy chatting you up about his constipation? The woman that rotates your tires talking about her inability to orgasm? The man at the bank giving you your balance slip and a piece of his mind about how his father craps the bed?
Inappropriate. That is what I was. On the walk home I considered writing a letter of apology, but I think I will let it drop. I also have to wonder if my freedom of speech was so forthcoming since I knew that my potential employer was a lesbian. Which is lame of me to assume that every lesbian couple is an expert of fertility. Very unprogressive.
Am I alone in this? Have you guys found that all you want to talk about and discuss is hoo ha business? Maybe this is why my non baby making friends stopped e-mailing…
I should have told you…
Yesterday was cycle day one for me. I bet if I had told you that you would have totally had a different perspective on my little brat-fest I posted yesterday. You would have told me to make some waffles and get over myself. Well I did have some waffles. And they were damn good. And somewhere between 2pm and 10pm yesterday I got over myself.
For me to bitch about one month was pretty lame. Of course I adore you all for allowing me to have a bit of a wallow, but the reality is, the possible recipient of my potential eggs has probably been waiting 9 times that long (at least). Sure I have been at this trying for a kid game for enough time that I warrant a bitch out of jail for free card, but 24 hours is enough whining.
I doubt I will chill on the angst tho. So if I ever seem like I am being all nonchalant about it I am SO faking it. Also, bonus points to those of you that pointed out that in the midst of my little Eloise stomp-fest I managed to squeeze in a jab at my fat. Oh my fat! I can always find a way to blame you for the evils of the world. Kind of a bad habit, right?
Anyhow, I am zen-ish today, or at least right this moment. If I get analytical about things I can remember that it is a supply and demand world. Unfortunately there are more women in need of eggs than there are donors. Sad, sad fact. But a fact that should bode well for a doubting donor, like myself. Please remind me of that when I start to go off the deep end again.
(&, uh, thanks for not telling me to shut the fuck up yesterday. Cycle day one brings out the best in me. 
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What are we waiting for?
June.
I have officially been told to calm the fuck down until the end of June. Don’t flinch when the phone rings now. Don’t dig through the penny savers thinking an envelope is trapped between carpet cleaning ads. Don’t accuse people of not checking voice-mail in a timely fashion.
While I was told that I was on the list the truth of the matter is that I am NOT on the list. Not yet. I will be on the next list.
And while this isn’t a set back it kind of feels like one. So of course when the coordinating nurse said, “and IF you get picked/matched you will find out in June” I felt like her IF had this funky echo that immediately translated to, “calm the fuck down you fat lame asshole. Nobody will be wanting your eggs anyhow. Don’t get your hopes up.” Yep. I heard all of that in her IF. I speak the language of angst and am fluent in insecurity.
I guess it just feels like I have been waiting forever. And I am sick of it. And even though I have this sort of deadline now and there should be some relief in that. There is none.
Instead I am full of dread and sorrow and fear. I can see the sign in the road that says, “This freeway will be ending soon.” That sign is just over a month away.
And sure we can all hope and hypothesize…but the truth of the matter is I still may not get picked. Just promise to still be here to help clean me up when I don’t get the call.
Geese babies are growing up!
Look, I don’t have a kid (yet) so you will just have to fuss and coo over the fertile wildlife that shares my zip code. I am pleased to report that the Goose Family has declared our backyard as a safe place to hang. There are many backyards to choose from so it feels like an honor or sorts.
I took these through the window in the den so as not to disturb…so any fuzziness isn’t a creative choice 
New Theme!
In celebration of Earth Day and the return of Heroes the Photo Friday theme for this week is: How are you Saving the World?
I watch loads of television during the day. Well actually I should say that I have the television ON for most of the day. I turn it on once GM wakes up and we begin our routines. We usually have Sea Inn Inn on while we work on crossword puzzles. Then during lunch if I haven’t set a B!ography or History special for us to watch we tune in to home or self improvement shows.
The morning news becomes annoying after the 1st hour. The stories repeat and I get snarky with the talking heads about dumb things like inflection.
But I have a point (rare, but I do). Yesterday the news was full of this new napkin sleeve thing that Sheryl Crow created. The dining sleeve is meant to replace or reduce the amount of paper napkins we use. GM thought that was the funniest thing in the world. She spills on her shirt all of the time- it just happens. You try being 85 and maintaining a steady equilibrium from plate to mouth. But we don’t stress about it. So GM started saying that She was saving the world as she never ends up using the napkin as everything always lands on her shirts.
So that started me thinking…how else are we saving the world? During the day GM & I both get up to pee around 400 times. But we maybe flush the toilet 3 times a day. Gross? Who cares. We’ve always just adhered to the rule: If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down. Not flushing is a great way to help the planet.
And don’t get me started on recycling. I know, for a fact, that I am the BEST recycler on the block in the Gated Community. How do I know this? Because the lovely lads that collect he recycling every wednesday morning tell me that they always have to stop the truck in front of my house. I love that. I am proud of that. & I am so thankful that we have such a wonderful thing as curbside recycling. However you may now get a bigger picture of just how many bottles of nutrition shakes and cans diet caffeine free coke are consumed…which goes back to the peeing…
I am sure there are a million other things we could do at home to help the environment. I am looking forward to seeing your photos and any tips you want to share with the rest of the class.
Where are the donors lurking?
So now that I am forcing myself to stay hopeful and optimistic I am desperately looking for other women that are walking, are about to be walking or are even thinking about walking down this donor egg path.
You know how we all swap funny stories about cervical mucus and laugh about post IUI superstitions? Well I am craving that sort of connection. Someone that can quietly whisper in my ear, “I’ve SO been where you are.”
See the beautiful thing about the IVP (Internet Vagina Posse) is that chances are whatever you are going through from picking out a donor, dealing with known donor craziness, wonky ovulation, conception to birth there is always (ALWAYS) someone to chime in with advice. Odds are whatever freak out you are having 20 of us also had that same freak out.
But I don’t know of anyone in the IVP that has been a donor or pondered it. And you see, I am getting itchy for some empathy and hand holding.
I’ve found a few blogs of women that will be recipients and I read them like a secret, under the covers racy novel. I want to know every single emotion and all of their worries. Whatever they feel like sharing with the internet at large I inhale like a handful of m&m’s.
However, I haven’t found any donor blogs that aren’t younger women donating exclusively for monetary gains. Excellent in their own right as interesting reading material…it just doesn’t quench my brain like I want it to.
I’m wondering if all of this should be a secret. Should I not be writing about this? Am I putting myself at risk? Are there women looking for donor eggs that are repulsed by me? Will they stumble across this site and gawk at all of the swearing? the angst? the fillintheblank?
I could just be stressing because it is something active that I can be doing. In less than a week I will be getting my period. If I had been matched and selected immediately I could be gearing up for for a bcp cycle. So the fact that the phone hasn’t rung has be nervous. Where is that woman that has been here to walk me through? Are you out there?
April 23’s Power…and other shit
Guess what I learned? When a series of cool and groovy things happen all in a cute little cluster you should ENJOY it, because chances are a shit storm is on its way to you. Just as I had feared, my bliss from string of good things was dimmed due to a handful of icky things.
For starters some anonymous asshole did this to my mailbox. And did you know that if your mailbox has been rammed right off of its post that it is considered illegal for the mail-carrier to deliver mail to your door? At least that is what the temp delivery person said to me on Saturday. All I heard was, “blah, blah, blah, inconvenience for me to get out of my truck, blah, blah, you know I shouldn’t be giving you your mail, blah, blah.” But really, after waking up to discover that an asshole had done such damage and NOT LEFT A NOTE, no one was going to mess with me. Or, as the case my be, hold my U$ Magazine hostage.
Do you have any idea how frustrating it is when your mailbox gets destroyed in a gated community? First you get the neighbors looking at you as if maybe YOU did it. Then you have to collect your actual mailbox from across the street. Followed by the walk to the security hut where one has to fill out an incident report. They actually did not let me use the phrase “stupid, fucking, hit and run” as it might set off “alarms in the neighborhood”. What the hell? (this was when I had to remind myself that 60% of the gated community population is a card carrying member of AARP and probably would not respond well to filed incident reports with profanity.) Now we are in queue for maintenance…ugh.
So, you know, I got a bit cranky about all of that and maybe was not in the best of spirits when the phone rang to tell me that Mother’s cat is in renal failure. Yes the cat that we were told was fine. Yes the cat that we had loads of blood-work on to confirm the aforementioned “fine” diagnosis. Seems that the 2nd vet on staff was going through paperwork and decided that Mother’s cat’s blood-work wasn’t complete. So she asked, on friday, for us to bring Minnie (the kitty) back in for some repeat blood-work.
When they call you to tell you that a kitty is in renal failure they don’t care about the chain of command. There was no waiting for my Mother to come to the phone. It was just, “here are the facts” BAM! And so I had to be the one to wake Mother up and tell her the news. fuck. Not fun. No fun at all. We had to go to the vet and pick up an IV bag and some special kidney diet food. They are estimating that she will be without pain for a few more months. So every night Mother and I have to wrap Minnie up like a cat burrito and stab her with an IV needle and give her 100cc’s of fluid to keep her hydrated. We’ve done it twice now and it is torture.
Other kick me while I am down fodder was just your basic non stop stress headache and finding out that the photography job I was so excited about won’t be as steady as I would have hoped.
I’m not all the way back in the doldrums, I mean, hell, I’m on the list! So that euphoria can, and will have to, sustain me. And I am cool with that. Seriously- when too many good things happen at once I freak out. And then the universe smashes my mailbox to even things out. Yay for smashing! heh.
As for this date. Ah…April 23rd. I think many of us have dates that stick in our head. Some of us can rattle of the due dates of every trying cycle. There are others of us can remember a date for its random significance. My Mother, for instance, can remember when she got her braces off (March 18) and when she realized she wanted to go to Law School (February 1). I can’t get her to remember to unload the dishwasher…but that is another story.
I, on the other hand, have an association with a date that has no significance. For as long as I can remember I have had a “thing” for April 23rd. SOMETHING is going to happen to me on this date. I used to think it would be the day I got married, or maybe even the day I die. But as I have gotten older I think it might be something else. There was one cycle where my due date would have been April 23rd & so you just know I got all dorky about that. I’ve also had an insem on April 23rd. You could argue that maybe there was some event in my childhood on this date that stuck in my mind. A skating party? An Easter egg hunt? Regardless I find that I always have to make a fuss about this date just so when something DOES happen I can clearly point to my writings and say that I told you so. April 23rd, people…watch this date.
And lastly, because I would not have survived the weekend without it, my product endorsement for Photo Friday. I have written about this brand of wine before, but I feel that I should laud it as much as I can. I never would have thought that a pseudo wine snob, such as myself, would end up endorsing a red table wine. But this stuff is da bomb. It is smooth and mellow and fabulous infinity Plus the bottle label is so damn cute every time you take a chug from it you smile. Jest Red. Buy it, drink it, thank me later.
What the hell…?
I’m kind of worried that my “good things” mojo might be oozing out in unnecessary ways. I’m so not used to having good things go my way- at least not a series of good things. And now something ELSE kind of cool happened and it is hard not to think of the goodness dissipating like a long pass of wind in an often dormant case of IBS.
It’s like I took a long, hard chug of magic soda and all of this goodness is just farting out of me. Eventually it will run out and I will be left feeling, well, less bloated, but without the warm fizzies that is making me so happy and buoyant now.
Not that this extra good thing is huge…just a photograph of mine on national news…no biggie, right? A poot, not a strike up a match ripper. Right?
Oh whatever. I had a photograph on Sea Inn Inn!!!
I’ll rewind. You know the photo I shared a few days ago? This one. Well Mother and I are obsessed with Robin & Co on Sea Inn Inn headl!ne news. During the weather they have viewer submitted photos that always make us gasp. You know, those amazing storm photos or the ‘a tree just landed on my village’ photo. Mother, as she was leaving for work Wednesday, joked that she was going to send my photo in. Ha ha. As if.
But she did. And then this morning? It was on the effing news 3 times. Three. Mother, ever the intuitive one actually t!vo’d the morning news. I was somewhere else in a bucket all morning. This evening she hit play, zipped forward and there I was. She came running up to my room as if she needed help killing an army of Florida roaches. But no, she was blabbing and not making sense and all I understood was Sea Inn Inn, over and over. Scary.
But then I watched it. And I saw my name on closed captioning and everything. Of course I had to grumble that I was referred to by a masculine pronoun, but the weatherman actually remarked what a cool photo is was and Robin (we love her) agreed.
So, yeah, I’m a dork. And this is a cool thing. But I might need some convincing that this is the sort of good thing doesn’t cancel out any other good thing that might happen, right?
On a high…part 2 (UPDATE)
Yesterday I doubt my feet touched the ground. I was literally lifted by this air bubble of hope and optimism. And if you haven’t been on that ride… you HAVE to give it a whirl. Clearly the Internet Vagina Posse (IVP) is the coolest group ever. It goes without saying that each and every “woo hoo” and congrats sent was inhaled like some sort of fantastic Dentist chair gas only making me feel so mushy and loved.
I know, as a collective IVP, that we have all had our moments and months and years of despair and shit vs. fan incidents. So having this cushion of support from folks that may not have much to spare, well I thank you for it. And I hope you know that when you need a hand to help you through people will BE there for you. If you let us. We are a powerful and strong tribe of women and honestly, I celebrate knowing you. (insert IVP gang signs)
So I bet you thought it wasn’t possible to get any higher than I was yesterday. Well there was! And it was totally legal.
What I haven’t written about yet is the excellent possibility that I am now an on-staff photographer at my Mother’s company. (smooch! I heart you, nepotism!) It isn’t anything glamorous or flashy. The company owns a bazillion shopping centers and they want “glamor” shots of them to get more business. They wanted to hire a pro. As luck would have it the people that wanted to hire this pro were in my Mother’s office, where she (like a good Mom) has framed photographs of some of my good stuff. Next thing you know I’m hired. Dude. I’M the pro!
Monday I got the call to “wear pants” to the first shoot. Um. Duh. But then I became curious. Why the fashion dictation? Well it turns out that the company has hired a cherry picker type contraption that will lift me 6 -8 stories above the ground. How fucking COOL is that? Sure I’m not too keen on heights or anything, but as a creative enterprise it is pretty exciting.
This morning I got up at 5am, took Charlie for the fastest morning walk ever, then drove down to do my pet sitting duties and THEN I drove out to this transportation yard where I met up with Richard. Ah Richard. The man that would strap me in to a kinky contraption. The man that showed me how to climb into a bucket. The man that I trusted with my life for 3 hours. The man who thought it was funny to leave me hanging a million feet above the ground while he ran to grab a cup of coffee.
I have to tell you, after the first 25 minutes of feeling like you might crap your pants, it is AWESOME. I felt so powerful and mighty and even found myself yelling down commands such as, “Hey! Can this go any higher and to the left?” Oh yes it can.
My Mom met up with us at the 3rd center and she took some funny photos of me in the bucket. I’ll share those later (as long as my ass doesn’t look too big). But for now here is a self portrait I took just before getting into the bucket at the 2nd center.
I’m on the list.
Yes.
I.
Am.
Phone consult was actually a lot of fun. The doctor was upbeat and bubbly AND laughed at my jokes. (nothing racy…just a funny bit I have about how I have male factor infertility…)
Halfway through the call, when we were gabbing about how one syncs up a cycle it dawned on me that she was talking as if I was accepted. So I interrupted her funny explanation of OHSS and said, “wait! Does this mean that the clinic is accepting me as a donor?” And SHE said, “Oh yes. We think you will be an excellent match for at least THREE of our established patients.”
Wow.
I asked what the next step would be/is and was told that she will walk down the hall with a smile on her face and give my application the official thumbs up. Then my name will be placed on the donor list. She wasn’t sure when the list would be sent out again, it is republished every 4-6 weeks. Once the new list goes out the patients looking to be matched will be called and given all of my information. If more than one person matches with me or picks me things can get interesting. No elaboration was given.
Once I get picked/matched I will have to get some blood-work done and the process of lining my cycle up with the recipient begins. We have to be ready to accept egg transfer on the same day so this could possibly take more than one cycle.
I am high on a cloud of optimism.
(of course in a few days I will begin stressing about whether or not I will get picked, whether or not I will make enough eggs, and whatever else I can find to freak about.)
For now, I am seriously, seriously grinning from ear to ear. And I am also a bit weepy. This may come out a bit more clumsy than I mean it to, but you know, somewhere, out there, there is someone that has been waiting for some fucking good news. And I don’t mean this in a narcissistic way at ALL, but fuck, maybe she has been waiting for some eggs from a 6 foot amazon and now she is going to get them. And just the idea, the very notion, that maybe two families are going to happen. fuck. That would be just a wonderful thing.
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