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3 more Sleeps
I travel to the Northeast on Monday. It is just unreal to me. Completely unreal. And I am not packed nor have I prepared the house. And somehow I am pretty zen about it. Not sure if October was just some giant dress rehearsal, but I am ready to get on with The Show.
I think the fact that the past couple of weeks have been so nutty and wonky is also contributing to my low IVF stress situation. Last night I was so tired that I went to bed around 7. Then, magically, I woke myself up thirty minutes later and realized that I had not given myself my lupron shot. oops.
I know that I was just away from home in October, but I think you guys can believe me when I say that month was not really relaxing. I did have some delicious pockets of love that month. My dear friend M, who is again allowing me the use of her sparse spare bedroom, worked so hard in October to keep me amused and sane. But I was so crazily anxious about making enough eggs for the almost recipient and then there was the blood test from hell…By the time I got home any relaxing points I had stacked up had evaporated within the stress of almost having a scary blood virus. Crazy how that happens.
Now I am just looking forward to taking good walks in brisk weather and sleeping in the middle of the day. I also want to start the acupuncture as soon as possible in the hopes that it will detox my body in any way that it needs.
But really I feel like I am just running under water, rushing towards the Monday. It’s all about the Monday.
Beyond Bulletpoints (but not by much)
Let us all rejoice that nannynannyblogpostingeveryday is almost over. It has, I believe, been a challenge for not only those of us trying to come up with something to say everyday, but also those of you that try to keep up with us in the reading. Oy does my bloglines get all full and heavy some days!
? I reminded GM that I would be leaving next week to go to the Northeast. She said, “Refresh my memory- why are you leaving me?” I began to say that I was going back to the baby clinic and she interjected, “Oh yes. To go make the Julia.”
? I am researching quiet air purifiers if anyone has any input…
? Mother and I are getting new cell phones! We did our research and will be getting sony ericsson phones. We got the phones for nearly free as we renewed our contract with our cell service. Nearly free is awesome. I think I will be able to use bluetooth to sync some of my ical stuff up to the phone. I will love that.
? The other day I found a random box in a dresser drawer that I seldom use. The box contained miniature scented candles from Illuminations and I think it was a forgotten Christmas gift from several years ago. I am now stinking up the house with the most wonderful scents. (& no, that is not why I need an air purifier)
? My Mother has started blogging. Yes. Blogging. My Mother. And she expects me to read everything she writes. I haven’t figured out if she is doing this so that I might one day give her the url to this site or if she just really wants to connect with her friends. I think it is the latter. This morning she informed me that she wrote about my trying to have a baby and could I “check it over to make sure the facts and terms are correct?”
? Last night Mother and I decided to go to a flat wok place for dinner. It was 8:3o, GM was fast asleep and the flat wok place is literally 3 blocks away. I felt pretty guilty for leaving, but being able to have dinner with Mother was really nice. We sat next to a pro football player (for real) and his beautiful (stunning) wife with a giant (massive) diamond and their adorable (and sassy) 3 year old son. If you have never been to a flat wok place with a 3 year old at your table you should try it out. This kid was INTO it. Suddenly the show was the center of the universe and everyone at the table had the most rockin’ time all because this kid would constantly proclaim, “wow” and “is it real, Mommy?” The football pro was on his cell phone (iphone) for most of the meal, but when it came time to eat. Wow. Watch out.
? I fell asleep with my bare minerals makeup on last night. This morning I looked in the mirror and almost cried at how smooth my skin looked…then I realized it was just leftover makeup.
? BG Talula has somehow figured out that I am about to ditch her again. I don’t know how as I haven’t started packing. Hell I never unpacked from the October trip as to unpack was in some way admitting defeat. But BG knows and she is underfoot or in my face constantly. The first hour or so it is fucking adorable. The rest of the day it is just freaky. I must emit some sort of turkey bacon odor when I am about to go on a trip…
? I am still having random panics about whether or not it will snow in the Northeast while I am up there and how I will do in it. I mean you all know that I LOVE me some snow, but what if snow closes the clinic or something?
? It has been a while since I stopped dying my hair red. I can honestly tell you that the top of my head is now my true natural color (something that I haven’t seen since I was 13). I started noticing little blond hairs more and more often, but upon closer inspection I see that it is not blond. It is white. I am now musing on the idea of using a semi permanent reddish color before my trip
? I wish I could put some space between my bullet points.
? GM just put her bra on all by herself! WOO HOO
? I joined a buddy group on eff eff for women doing IVF in November/December and there are like 5 million women in the group. It is overwhelming me. I can’t keep track and everyone has a “DH”. Sometimes I hate those two letters put together. Maybe I will start using it to refer to my Donor Hunk. My VIP (heh) membership expires in a month and my (not so secret) ambition is to get knocked up before then so I won’t ever have to pay to use the site again.
And finally: Snickerdoodles, also known, in some parts, as sand dollars (but this confuses me as there are Other cookies that are called sand dollars that actually look like sand dollars. Weird.)
Behold: The Best Cookie Ever
These are my most favorite cookies in the WORLD and I am very picky about how I like them. If you have never had one I will say that the key flavors are sugar and cinnamon with the key baking ingredient being cream of tartar. Some people like them a bit soft in the middle. Not me. I only like them if they are crunchy all the way through.
And not to be all snobby and shit about my favorite cookie, but they have supposedly existed since ancient Rome and Medieval Europe. Anything that has lasted that long has got to be pretty awesome, and they are. Oh they so are.
The lame thing is that I don’t have like an exact recipe that I love. I really should cultivate one. This weekend I might try my hand at baking some using this recipe. Let’s hope things turn out better than the pumpkin ravioli fiasco…
Less than a week.
Holy fuck. In less than one week I will be in the Northeast again and starting stims. I can hardly believe it is time (again).
It really hit me this morning as I took my last (!) birth control pill - I am feeling that glimmer of optimism. I find myself not being so depressed about Christmas because this little voice in my head is whispering, “this time next year…” Man is that voice annoying sometimes.
I mean, sure, there is a time and a place for optimism, but I can’t deal with it leaking out of me all willy nilly. Just yesterday I was in a funk of a mood. You know, one of those, “It will never work? Why can’t I just accept defeat?” wallow in self pity moments- exacerbated most beautifully by an eyeball headache.
And now? Now I am doing stupid stuff like humming and picking out holiday cards for GM to sign and wondering if I have enough time to make snicker-doodles before I leave…damn do I love snicker-doodles.
My better mood can also be attributed to something pretty major that happened in our house this morning: GM let me bathe her. In a real, actual, honest to goodness bathtub! I know. HUGE.
It has been months since GM has had a real bath. This is not to say that GM has not been clean. We use wet wipes for sensitive skin every evening and she is completely sanitary. However- there is nothing quite like a bathtub clean. And this morning she let me get her into the shower chair and bathe her. I think she might even have enjoyed it. We turned it into a game using a timer: she used a soapy washcloth to clean and then I would have less than a minute to try and rinse the soap away. I made a bet with her that we could get her bathed in under 5 minutes. I won!
She is now exhausted, but oh she smells so sweet and lovely. If anything it was wonderful to really just wash last week off of her.
I need to say that when you guys leave me comments on my posts about GM it really, really helps. This is not me begging for more comments- not at all. I just know that in our little on line community we are used to commenting on things like ovulation and trigger shots. That you all are still JUST as supportive when it comes to this massive part of my life means the world to me.
I am no expert on caring for GM, I do as much as she will allow me to do. But I think we have found our groove and I now can’t imagine anyone else taking care of her but me. Sometimes I feel like this time with her is a special and precious thing. And sometimes I get incredibly frustrated, and sometimes I feel like getting in my car and just driving away, but the more I take care of her the more I feel like I have been training for this my whole life.
Being Needed
There are maybe a handful of things that I might consider myself pretty good at. At the top of the relatively small list is my great appreciation over being needed. I just adore it. I enjoy taking care of people. I am a people that needs people to need them.
One of the hardest ‘battles’ I have had with GM is her refusal to need when she clearly, well, needs to. She is and always will be a fiercely independent woman. That stoic, steal magnolia is the thick skin of her very DNA. She, much like me, likes to be in charge and in control. I do believe that a great deal of my love of being needed was learned watching a woman like GM take care of so much. She was an idol of sorts when it came to being in charge.
So now we are in this interesting relationship where we both like to be the ‘boss’ and yet only one of us is really capable of it. Learning to yield the illusion of power has been something I have learned in the past 3 years. If I want GM to do something, whether it is take her medicine or drink her nutrition drinks, I must make it seem like it is her idea. It is an exhausting juggling act.
Within the last year GM has begun to trust me more and more. It has been one of the most cherished gifts: she has needed me.
The past 7 days have been hard for us as I had to rebuild her trust again. But when it came, it came so easily and so beautifully. She now lets me know when she needs help with simple tasks. There was a time that she would refuse to ask for help. If, say, she couldn’t get her bra hooked in she would just sit and stew in her bedroom chair, half naked, and take a nap. Eventually I would check in on her and offer help and she might accept it or I might have to force it.
In the past two days major breakthroughs have happened. I don’t know how long they will last, but I am savoring them while I can. GM asks me for help. Yesterday she asked me to help her make her bed. This morning she asked me to help her get dressed faster. “I’m tired of taking forever to get dressed. If you give me a hand it would be quicker.”
You see how she did that? She was able to ask for help through being in charge. I was thrilled to help. Positively glowing. We were able to get dressed in record time and she remarked, “See. It is much faster with four hands.” Yes. It is.
Last night Mother had picked up a baby monitor that was on clearance at the bulls-eye store. I brought the base in to GM’s room this morning and told her that it was her command base. “You are the boss of this hub”, I declared. “When you have a need or desire, simply speak it and one of your ladies in waiting will come assist you.”
GM looooooooooooved that.
Slowly it is all getting back to our version of normal. I am much more relaxed about leaving home for another 2+ weeks.
Where did Monday come from?
Is anyone else waking up and wondering how the hell Monday happened? Just seems like yesterday was Wednesday and yet here we are…But the good news is that I have had some good sleep.
Ok, that’s a bit of a stretch. What happened was that as soon as I got GM to bed I changed into my pj’s and sat watching the clock until 7. At 7 I lived the junkie life and shot my gut up with 10 units of lupron. Not 10 minutes later I felt the sweet, sweet, anti bliss of a lupron headache and rummaged the house looking for something safe to take to kill the beast. After ages (maybe 3 minutes of searching) I demanded (yes I did) that someone go and fetch me some pain medicine RIGHT NOW or I would stick a fork in my eye and bleed all over her purse.
Man my Mother can move fast!
So by 8pm I was finally medicated and kicking the crap out of my headache. But then I was all hot. And then I suddenly felt smelly and gross and hot and sweaty and sticky. I needed a shower. A shower was the ONLY thing that would calm me down. But I didn’t want to shower. The very idea of prying myself off of the bed and getting undressed was exhausting. I wanted some sort of futuristic Jetson machine to just bathe me in bed. Why oh why did we not live in a Jetson world?!?!
But I got up, all dopey on the tylenol PM, and feeling so heavy with guilt that I had demanded that mother run out and get it for me. But then sort of satisfied with love that she actually did.
And I showered. And I think it took me 6 hours to do it.
Really the point of all of this is to tell you that I got some sleep. For real sleep. As in passed out, no anxiety, no stress, dead to the world’s problems, asleep. And it was nice. I won’t say that I am bouncy and perky this morning. Not quite. But I woke up at 8am and that means that I got over 10 hours of catch up sleep. Not bad, right?
I want to really thank you guys for recommending getting a ‘baby’ monitor for GM’s room. That is a brilliant idea and I am so going to take you up on that. Your out of the box ideas reminded me that I needed to reconnect with the Alzheimer’s forum that I once used for advice oh so many moons ago. I posted a quick question there yesterday afternoon and by the end of the day I had tons of advice. Nice to know that there is an IAP (Internet Alzheimer’s Posse) available to me when I need it.
Never enough sleep
I am in a horrible sleep rut. This past week has been one of the most exhausting we have had in a while. My giant fear that GM will need me in the middle of the night has basically meant that I am not sleeping.
The day begins, for me, around 4 or 5 am. I wake up for some reason or other: I have to pee or I have heard a noise or Charlie has to pee. Then I convince myself that I woke up for some greater reason, that I need to be up in order to be ready, just in case.
So I settle myself into the couch in the den and sort of stare at the wall. Too terrified to turn on the tv or a lamp lest it wake GM, I just sit there in a bit of a trance.
Around 6am GM will wake up and go to the restroom. She is doing this better than she has in months. I watch her in secret as she shuffles down the hall and makes her way towards the nightlight lit bathroom. Once she is done, and I feel safely back into her bed, I can relax a bit. I even allow myself some television or a quick nap.
At 8 the day really begins and I try to stay alert as I clean the house, do laundry, strip beds and prepare meals. By noon I am beyond exhausted and I begin to chastise myself for getting up so early and being a worry wart. Everything is fine, I tell myself. She is doing great, we have met our quota for one shitty thing a month, time to relax.
But the relaxing isn’t happening. How do I relax?
I know I am not getting enough sleep and I can see how that is just fucking my entire person up. I just wish I could catch up a bit.
Once more, with feeling.
Popping birth control pills is sort of drab and dreary. In theory you are aware that in a few weeks you will be off the pills and ON the more exciting drugs. You know that the birth control pills are making you slightly crazy, but they don’t elicit as much empathy as the more ka-pow drugs of IVF. There just isn’t any immediacy. BCP are the eventually drugs. As in you take the pills and eventually you will be in your IVF cycle. But while you are just on the bcp, who gives a fuck.
Oh but then things change. With one word your dull cycle changes and suddenly the IVF process switches over to something with a bit more octane in it. And that word is lupron.
When lupron comes to the party the music changes and and the entire aura of IVF begins to glow. Now you are really DOING something that is special and different. College girls and your single girlfriends take birth control pills. But the cool kids inject lupron. Those fabulous bitter girls tucked in to the corner of the party always have the better drugs and now, finally, you are badass enough to hang with them.
Tonight is the first lupron inject night. 10 days until I will be in the Northeast and stimming.
And in the famous words of Bri’s boyfriend I plan on, “making it work”.
Love is all around.
Yesterday afternoon, as I was napping on the couch while GM was napping in her chair, both of us exhausted from just being, Good Neighbor Friends (GNF) dropped off Thanksgiving. I’m not talking a small little plate of stuffing, they brought an ENTIRE Thanksgiving feast.
The week being what it is I had pretty much canceled the holiday around here. The idea of cooking was a laugh. The idea of even leaving the house was a riot.
I know some of you without a password don’t know exactly what is going on. I will not get into specifics, but I will try to explain where we are right now. Something happened this week with GM. She is fine, but it was a scary incident. Again, everything is now just fine. However her memory has been reset.
I was on the phone with Ms. B last night talking about the week and she summed it up the best when she said it was like GM’s mind was a telephone switchboard. She is usually connected, somewhat in the present. When the incident happened she was a complete disconnect, but now that she is recovering she has plugged her phone back into an old extension.
So GM is pretty different right now.
Her being so different has really changed how I care for her as she demands/needs constant supervision and care. It is exhausting. And within that exhaustion there was no way I was going to be able to pull of any sort of holiday meal.
But you see, love is all around. No joke. It totally is. Love comes from friends in the form of calls, e-mails and comments. Love is coming from Mother who has been picking up lots of slack around the house this week. And love came, in a giant way, from GNF.
Once I got GM tucked into bed last night I was able to make myself a plate filled with the food they brought: turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, stuffing, rolls, cranberry sauce, glazed carrots, an entire apple pie. Can you imagine receiving such love? It was the best meal I have ever had. It was so completely comforting and soothing. It helped me sleep better and this morning I am feeling like I can deal with whatever this day will bring.
And I honestly have no idea what sort of day that will be.
Thankful For:
1. Being and living in a home with my Mother & Grandmother.
2. Being able to give love & receive love.
3. Friends that know exactly what to say.
4. 1/2 fat peppermint ice cream.
5. having no cysts on my ovaries and a good scan.
6. photo albums.
7. neighbors that are amazing.
8. the NEC, for helping right a wrong.
9. pet stain removers.
10. Talula and Charlie, despite my need for #9.
Sleep was good last night, but I couldn’t stop myself from waking up super early and coming down to the den. I just need to be down here, just because. The parade will begin on TV in a few hours and I will snuggle up into the couch and watch the magic. I do have so, so much to be thankful and grateful for this year. All of the battles I have fought, all of the victories and the defeats…I’m still here, WE are still here.
And I hope you know that I am thankful for all of you that take the time to read me and support me. You have strength when I do not. It is oh so powerful. I wish you all, wherever you are, a beautiful day. I hope it is full of good food, good friends, good family, and great health.
[watching the parade now. No balloons/ floats until 9:58am. WTF? I was about to get all disgruntled, but then Dolly Parton began to sing so I am all better.]
Protected: Protected: Home for the wednesday.
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