Starfish Envy

It's All Too Much

Yesterday.  Four a.m.  Wake up to Moose throwing up a pair of socks.  Clean up socky vomit.  Sleep a couple hours.  Get up, get ready for work, drive 25 miles across town to pick up sperm, drive back to doctor's office, drop off sperm, drive to work.  

Call and ask dog walker to check on Moose during the day.  Work a couple hours.  Drive back to doctor's office for lunchtime IUI. Back to work again.  Work all afternoon.  

Drive home.  Find pool of vomited blood in front of fireplace.  Clean up pool of vomited blood.  Load Moose into car.  Take Moose to emergency vet (which also happens to be the place he goes every week for physical therapy).  

Grab dinner.  Work 'til eleven.  

Drive BACK to emergency vet to sign a piece of paper saying Moose can stay all night for monitoring and to pay $1200.  

In bed at 12:30.  Can't sleep.

Today.  Back to my doctor at 9:15 a.m. for another IUI.  

By this time I'm pretty much just a big blob of tired.  

There's no positive thinking.  There's no meditation.  There's no gratitude.  

There's just let's-get-this-done-fast-so-I-can-get-to-work.

On the way back to the office, I pick up a prescription for progesterone.  I wonder why I bother. 

Later, I tell WP I don't even want to get pregnant this cycle.  She doesn't buy it.  But I mean it.

I'm stressed out right now.  I'm mad.  I'm out of sorts.  (I blame asshole delivery driver.) And I'm worried that the eggs I just shot sperm at developed in an angry, stressed environment.  Which makes me more angry and stressed.  It's not good.  

Anyway.  

After work, I pick up Moose from the vet.  He's so happy to see me, he makes everything almost all better.

And while I am still worried about how crappy and not-positive I'm feeling, I think I'm starting to get over not wanting this cycle to work.  I can't say I WANT it to work.  I'm just not sure I DON'T want it to.  Which is at least a step in the right direction.      

Sorry, no blog post tonight.  Day from hell, involving dog throwing up blood and other miscellaneous horse hooey.  Ten thirty, and the madness shows no signs of easing up.  Grrr.

My Twenty-First Weekly Reading List

After my delivery driver debacle, a friend forwarded this piece from tinybuddha on how to deal when your world gets all shook up.  The woman who wrote it lived through a pretty enormous earthquake.  In comparison, my traumatic experience barely even tipped the scale... but this article still helped.  If anyone out there is going through a shake-up, I hope it'll help you, too.   

Loved this bit of wisdom from Zen Habits: "The more energy you spend, the more you have."  Yowza, is that true.  And there's more where that came from.  Just follow the link.  

Crazy narcissists should not be allowed to date.  

Since we've been talking about women in Hollywood a bit lately, I thought I'd include this piece from Time Magazine: Are Women Getting Short Shrift in Late Night?  Uh, yeah. 

I just can't resist posts about pets.  Especially about the things we can learn from them.  Cheesy, I know.  I can't help it.   

Finally, for all you Lie To Me fans, thought you might enjoy this short film Tim Roth did for Funny Or Die.  It is, indeed, pretty funny.  

Y'Know What DOESN'T Suck?

You guys!

Gotta say, if you have to get berated by a psycho, make sure you have a supportive and vocal bloggy community to make it all better.  It was especially appreciated because after a crappy thing like that, you kinda just want someone to give you a hug.  And I have no hugger.  So having commenters and emailers really, really helped. 

Every morning, I get a quote from Real Simple, and this morning's quote felt particularly appropriate.  Doesn't hurt that it's from my favorite writer, Isak Dinesen: "The cure for anything is salt water-- sweat, tears, or the sea."   

I got the tears part covered on Saturday; this morning I did the sweat thing, thanks to a serious work-out with my trainer; now gimme, say, I dunno, a week in Hawaii, and I'll be just like new!

And here's another great quote, this time from Maya Angelou: "People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget what you made them feel."

You guys made me feel supported and cared for.  Thank you.

Mean People Suck

You know how some days just MASSIVELY SUCK?

I had one of those days on Saturday.  It was SOOOO fun.

Not.  Remotely.   

The day o' massive suckage started with an altercation with a hostile delivery truck driver at my favorite breakfast spot that ended with me crying.  For hours.  Seriously. Hours.  Through both an ultrasound and an acupuncture session.  The guy was f'ing crazy and terrifying.  If the manager of the restaurant hadn't come out when he did, I would have called 911.  As in, my finger was about to press the second '1' when help arrived.

A staggeringly not good start to the day.

Which was then followed by an appointment with my OB/Gyn's partner, who is now handling my fertility endeavors.  He was very nice, and distracted me from my tears with tales of the presents he's getting his kids for their birthdays.  But the ultrasound showed that I only have three follicles this month.  After having four last month-- with a lower dose of fertility meds, mind you-- I was disappointed.  I know that all it takes is one good egg, but when it comes to follicles, the more there are, the merrier I am.  

I am not merry about three.  In fact, it's all feeling rather pointless.

And THEN I went to my new acupuncturist, who seems good, but who clearly felt I should be seeing a Reproductive Endocrinologist, not mucking about with a regular old OB/Gyn.  Which, on top of the morning I'd just had, was really too much for me to handle.  By the time I got home I was contemplating putting my head in the oven.

Not really.  It's too hot to be anywhere near an oven.

But I was miserable beyond description.  I couldn't even take a nap.  Every time I closed my eyes, psycho delivery truck driver was there, berating me for not being able to back my car up around his big f'ing delivery truck.   

Prick.  

Anyhoo... 

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It's now Sunday, and I still feel pretty much like crap.  When something that unpleasant happens (and nothing that unpleasant has happened to me in years, maybe ever, if I don't include the deaths of loved ones), it makes me feel generally unsafe.  Ill at ease. Like people aren't who I think they are.  Like I should be somewhere else, be someone else.

It's not a good feeling.  I hope it goes away soon.

By tomorrow morning would be nice.

Not Your Great-Great-Grandmother's Dinner Party

It feels appropriate, after yesterday's dinner party post, to share some entertaining tips from our dear old friend, the Woman's Exchange Cook Book.  Be forewarned.  There are some doozies.

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Be on the alert, and in case of accident, hand your napkin to the guest, and if necessary remove the trouble as soon as possible, lay down a mat on the soiled cloth, and replenish with knives and forks, napkin, etc., and procure the guest a fresh supply of what he was eating.

Always hand the sauce for each particular dish to the guest partaking of that dish.

If menus or bills of fare are used, place one at each plate.  (Melissa de la Cruz is ALL OVER this one.)

Napkins are never supposed to appear a second time without washing.  Hence napkin rings are domestic secrets, and not for company.

Never let two kinds of animal food or two kinds of pastry be eaten from the same plate; make a fresh course of each.

One good waiter is worth much more than two poor ones. 

Everybody is always out of bread; prevent it if you can.

Two hours is long enough to serve any dinner that Christians ought to eat; three hours and half is too long.  

The host goes in first with the lady, whom he seats to his right.  The hostess goes in last with the gentleman, whom she places at her right.

Gloves are removed at the table and laid in the lap, under the napkin.

Ladies should draw their skirts in to a space that will not crowd their neighbors.

It is not proper to dip the knife or fork into the salt.

Avoid discussing the food.

A small house is more easily kept clean than a palace.

A dirty kitchen and bad cooking have driven many a husband and son, and many a daughter too, from a home that should have been a refuge from temptation.

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Well, I certainly agree with that one about the palace.

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On a totally different note, I got blood test results back from my doctor today.  My FSH this month is 7.2!  An excellent sign.  And my doctor's increased my dosage of Follistim. I'll find out on Saturday how many follicles I've got growing.  Hopefully a lot!

A Menu For Success

Okay, I am now officially a grown up.

Why?

Because tonight I went to a dinner party with a menu.  And not just any menu.  A fabulous menu featuring the cover art from Ally Carter's new book Only the Good Spy Young.  Ally was the charming and talented guest of honor, and the hostess extraordinaire was the prolific and brilliant Melissa de la Cruz. (If you haven't read Melissa's Blue Bloods series, run right out and get it.  Or just click the link.) 

But let's get back to this menu situation.

THERE WAS ONE!

I tell you, I can never again have a menu-less dinner party.  It made everything just that much more festive, just that much more important, just that much more fun.

Also, for the record, the food was amazing, and the company was even better.  Every now and then, I love my life.

Podcast Anyone?

If you're a regular here, you know I don't write about work.  

Okay, yeah, so maybe it creeps in from time to time.  But not often, and only in the most general terms.  

Which is why I was torn about posting a link to an interview WP and I did earlier this week with Mo Ryan from the Chicago Tribune and her partner in podcasting crime, Ryan McGee.  And then I realized that part of the reason we were asked to do the interview was, in fact, this blog-- specifically, posts here that touch on the topic of being a woman and a writer in Hollywood.  (Here's an example.)

So if you're as interested in that subject as I am, check out the podcast.  Many thanks to the two Ryans for delving into this endlessly complicated subject.  There's a lot more to say, and a lot more progress to be made... but we really have come a long way, baby.  

My Twentieth Weekly Reading List

What?  How is it possible I've been doing this list for twenty weeks?  

Guess time flies when you're not getting pregnant.  (I know, I know.  Whiny.  But you gotta give me one little whine, right?)

Fortunately, there's a lot of great work in the blogosphere to distract me.  

For example:  of all the How To ideas in the world, this one on how to get your kids to let you kiss them just might be my favorite.  

I stumbled on this article about things not to say to a writer, and I just had to include it.  I have only ever agreed to read a manuscript written by someone I didn't know one time, and it didn't go well.  The short version is: he died.  It was awful.  The message? Ask me to read your manuscript at your own peril.  

Then there's this great series of posts from some of my favorite mommy and wannabemommy bloggers:  

Here's one on a four year journey to motherhood.  And the journey's not over.    

And I loved this post on guilt... or the lack of it.  I can only hope to be half as guilt-free as this mom.   

And then this beautiful post from jellybeanmama on vigilance.  

Finally, for this week's this-is-my-hood post, here's a video on how my neighborhood is gentrifying.  (The video isn't exactly right about the swap meet, by the way.  There are no restrictions on the vendors, and the meet is actually growing.)

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So that's it for this week, list-wise.  Back tomorrow.  No whining, I swear.  

Proven Otherwise

Bad News:  Not pregnant.

Good News:  Went online to search for a new donor and discovered that my donor wasn't completely sold out anymore.  Suddenly, two vials were available.  I'm assuming someone got pregnant and returned their remaining vials.  

However the vials got there, I'm happy to have 'em.

So now I'm considering my options.  I may take a month or two off... or move on to IVF... or try the same protocol again.  Really don't know.  

All I know is that my most immediate plan is to take a very long nap.