I have a Facebook friend, a woman I knew in college. Back then, we ran with the same crowd, but I wouldn't have called us bosom buddies. Now, uh...._____ years later, as grown up women with one child each and fertility issues, we find comfort in each other and a friendship we never had back then. She is a great ear when I need to vent, and I hope I fulfill the same role adequately for her. However, tonight she is on my shit list.
She reminded me, in a FB email, that she became a teenager TWENTY SEVEN YEARS AGO. That made me do some basic math myself.
1. First dyed hair - 25 years ago
2. Graduated from high school - 21 years ago
3. Pierced nose - 20 years ago
4. First tattoo - 20 years ago
5. First time I said " I am totally going to marry this man" - 18 years ago
And now the baggers at the grocery store call me "ma'am.
Excuse me while I throw up in my mouth a little.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Another weekend, half gone
Well, I am not pregnant. The newest medication does seem to be normalizing my cycle though - no spotting for 10 days BEFORE my period this month. Maybe we'll get lucky (heh) this next cycle, and I won't have to go in and get put on Clomid or some such. I mean, I am a woman who made twins on her own last year - what the frak will happen to me if they put me on a fertility drug??
To the promise that returning to blogging meant a reduction in obsessing about aforementioned pregnancy or lack thereof - I bring you........unrelated news!
Well, not really. Not a whole lot going on here other than the usual summertime in the South stuff. You know, multiple trips to H*me Dep*t to find ANYTHING that will keep the ()#$*%( deer out of my tomato plants so I don't have to gun down Bambi in front of my four year old. A trip to the grocery store to get candles for the Minotaur's birthday cake. The Kraken's first ever viewing of Monsters Inc. (the highlight of the weekend thus far - no princesses!) A little romp through the backyard in a bathing suit (the Kraken, not me. I don't want to scare the neighbors).
So, you know. Nothing new. Just all the stuff that, mushed together, makes up our lives. And it is some seriously good stuff.
To the promise that returning to blogging meant a reduction in obsessing about aforementioned pregnancy or lack thereof - I bring you........unrelated news!
Well, not really. Not a whole lot going on here other than the usual summertime in the South stuff. You know, multiple trips to H*me Dep*t to find ANYTHING that will keep the ()#$*%( deer out of my tomato plants so I don't have to gun down Bambi in front of my four year old. A trip to the grocery store to get candles for the Minotaur's birthday cake. The Kraken's first ever viewing of Monsters Inc. (the highlight of the weekend thus far - no princesses!) A little romp through the backyard in a bathing suit (the Kraken, not me. I don't want to scare the neighbors).
So, you know. Nothing new. Just all the stuff that, mushed together, makes up our lives. And it is some seriously good stuff.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Tonight's cuteness
(Overheard while cooking tacos during the Kraken's nightly bedtime ritual with her daddy)
Minotaur: Kraken, you need to use the potty before bed.
Kraken: Daddy, nothing's going to come. You are KILLING me!
(this is the part where I dropped the spatula on my foot)
Minotaur: Kraken, you need to use the potty before bed.
Kraken: Daddy, nothing's going to come. You are KILLING me!
(this is the part where I dropped the spatula on my foot)
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
What kind of parents
Tell their daughter that she has to play quiet games because it's 15 minutes until bedtime, and then instigate a full fledged nerf cannonball fight with the Playmobil pirate set? And does it make me a bad person if I teach her to aim for her father's face?
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Sunday
You know what's awesome about having a childless couple over for supper? Someone else to play freeze tag with the Kraken so the Minotaur and I don't have to. Good times.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Here I am again
Forgive me, internets, for I have slacked. It has been almost five months since my last posting. To some extent, this is due to my discovery of the wonderfully entertaining Facebook, where I have been spending most of my online time catching up with people I went to school with in the first grade, and discovering that one of my former clients is quite good friends with one of my former um.........friends. Eeeps. Heheheheheh.
Another main benefit of Facebook is that the avenues for self-expression are more restricted than blogging, so it's the perfect medium for letting people know how well I know 80's horror flick storylines and what I made for supper the night before. But, going on endlessly about the one topic that's eaten my life whole like a peckish boa constrictor for the past year and a half? Not so much.
If anyone still has this blog in their newsfeed, you will remember that in 2008 I suffered three miscarriages, four babies in total. Towards the end of the-year-that-will-live-on-in-infamy, it was discovered that I have a clotting disorder that is in all likelihood the cause of all the misery. And now, my daughter's pediatrician has informed me that it is also probably the cause of the severe anemia that put the Kraken in the NICU for the first day of her life, and almost required a complete blood transfusion on her four week old body. There's one that will make it hard to breathe for a minute. A little more clotting in that umbilical cord, and I would not have my daughter.
As you might imagine, spending a year in and out of pregnancies, wincing every time you go to the bathroom for fear of that telltale swipe of blood on the toilet paper that tells the story of the misery to come, doesn't really lend itself to thinking about anything else. Talking about anything else. BLOGGING about anything else. Every post was an update on the most recent pregnancy, or pregnancy loss. I started to feel like the hamster in the wheel - running, running, running, but getting nowhere fast. I gave up the blog, I thought for good, because it was one more place for me to completely shut out the rest of my life. My life was suffering. My daughter was suffering, living with a mother who burst into tears at Target, or the dinner table, or in the car.
From that fact that I am, in fact, posting, some of you may be beginning to wonder if I have finally succeeded where I have previously failed. The answer is, I don't know. This is our fifth month of trying to conceive again. I am taking prenatals, an additional folic acid supplement, low-dose aspirin therapy, and progesterone. I am on day 23 of a normally 29 day cycle. Too early to test, but late enough for those annoying symptoms that are common to early pregnancy (hopes UP, hopes UP!) and PMS (crap, shit, fuck, dammit, hell). This is my least favorite part, and the time I am most likely to obsess about the maybes and the probablies.
So why am I here? I don't know that either, but I suspect it has a lot to do with the book the Minotaur brought home to me - Mommy Confidential - the memoir comprising the collected blog posts of Mindy Roberts, famous for The Mommy Blog. Fun book, but not always easy to read because she blogs through some seriously tough shit. Divorce, career change, complete emotional meltdown - it's all there. And going through it with her.......I remembered. You know, why I used to blog? The years go by more quickly than summer vacation when you're ten years old and suddenly the Kraken is almost 5, and I am sidling towards 40 with my eyes averted so I won't have to look. I want to remember it. The little details, the inconsequential moments that, when strung together like Christmas lights on a tree, make up our lives. Some of those lights may be burnt out or cracked, and the wires frayed from when the cats chewed the cord half through, but it's all part of the show.
I want to be part of my own life again, no matter what else is to come in this next round of spin the baby wheel. It's a life that has a lot of good things in it, and I WANT TO REMEMBER.
Another main benefit of Facebook is that the avenues for self-expression are more restricted than blogging, so it's the perfect medium for letting people know how well I know 80's horror flick storylines and what I made for supper the night before. But, going on endlessly about the one topic that's eaten my life whole like a peckish boa constrictor for the past year and a half? Not so much.
If anyone still has this blog in their newsfeed, you will remember that in 2008 I suffered three miscarriages, four babies in total. Towards the end of the-year-that-will-live-on-in-infamy, it was discovered that I have a clotting disorder that is in all likelihood the cause of all the misery. And now, my daughter's pediatrician has informed me that it is also probably the cause of the severe anemia that put the Kraken in the NICU for the first day of her life, and almost required a complete blood transfusion on her four week old body. There's one that will make it hard to breathe for a minute. A little more clotting in that umbilical cord, and I would not have my daughter.
As you might imagine, spending a year in and out of pregnancies, wincing every time you go to the bathroom for fear of that telltale swipe of blood on the toilet paper that tells the story of the misery to come, doesn't really lend itself to thinking about anything else. Talking about anything else. BLOGGING about anything else. Every post was an update on the most recent pregnancy, or pregnancy loss. I started to feel like the hamster in the wheel - running, running, running, but getting nowhere fast. I gave up the blog, I thought for good, because it was one more place for me to completely shut out the rest of my life. My life was suffering. My daughter was suffering, living with a mother who burst into tears at Target, or the dinner table, or in the car.
From that fact that I am, in fact, posting, some of you may be beginning to wonder if I have finally succeeded where I have previously failed. The answer is, I don't know. This is our fifth month of trying to conceive again. I am taking prenatals, an additional folic acid supplement, low-dose aspirin therapy, and progesterone. I am on day 23 of a normally 29 day cycle. Too early to test, but late enough for those annoying symptoms that are common to early pregnancy (hopes UP, hopes UP!) and PMS (crap, shit, fuck, dammit, hell). This is my least favorite part, and the time I am most likely to obsess about the maybes and the probablies.
So why am I here? I don't know that either, but I suspect it has a lot to do with the book the Minotaur brought home to me - Mommy Confidential - the memoir comprising the collected blog posts of Mindy Roberts, famous for The Mommy Blog. Fun book, but not always easy to read because she blogs through some seriously tough shit. Divorce, career change, complete emotional meltdown - it's all there. And going through it with her.......I remembered. You know, why I used to blog? The years go by more quickly than summer vacation when you're ten years old and suddenly the Kraken is almost 5, and I am sidling towards 40 with my eyes averted so I won't have to look. I want to remember it. The little details, the inconsequential moments that, when strung together like Christmas lights on a tree, make up our lives. Some of those lights may be burnt out or cracked, and the wires frayed from when the cats chewed the cord half through, but it's all part of the show.
I want to be part of my own life again, no matter what else is to come in this next round of spin the baby wheel. It's a life that has a lot of good things in it, and I WANT TO REMEMBER.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Home again
And getting reacclimated to my normal life after 2 weeks of the Great North American Christmas Tour. About 3 more weeks before we hop back on the baby making train, so I'm drinking my gin and playing on the Internets this evening.
Happy New Year, everyone!
Happy New Year, everyone!
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