Uppercase Woman

Painful

Because my life isn't enough fun these days, today I got my tooth taken care of. But the dentist was ambitious and decided to take all four wisdom teeth out.

Ow. That really sucked.

Right now I'm just waiting for the numbness to wear off, even though I know I'll then be in pain. The numbness is really uncomfortable. I can't feel the lower half of my face. And Tori seems mildly alarmed by my bloody drool. Yikes.

The only good news? I'm eating me some fucking ice cream. Fuck weight watchers. Heh.

By the way, if you're coming down off the gas (yes, I had the gas, even though I'm a recovering addict/alcoholic--FOUR TEETH WERE PULLED), and your dentist likes to sing along to the radio, it's really, really weird. Imagine my surprise to come out of the fog to him singing "I'm a bluebird, I'm a bluebird, I'm a blue bird."

Bizarre.

Going to go lie down now.

Ten Random Things *EDITED TO ADD AN 11th THING*

1. The Fucking Furnace. Yesterday our furnace died AGAIN. This time it was the water pump (we don't have forced air heat--we have good ol' steam radiators). Another $700 we had to pull out of our asses. Now if the heat exchanger goes we'll be totally fucked. Fucked fucky fucked. And... the wood Charlie went out at 7am to get to warm the first floor of the house (um, by using the fireplace)? Wet.

2. I am an idiot. I'm only mentioning this cause Sarah needled me about it this morning while we were chatting on line. Saturday night we (Sarah, Pete, Charlie and I) went to see Porgy & Bess. Which was nice but not what I'd hoped for (Sarah says it well on her blog entry today). Plus it was about 15 hours long. As we left, I started trying to call my mom to let her know we were running late. Then I called to tell her we were stuck in the parking garage with every other opera attendee and the stupidest motherfucking parking attendant EVER. She didn't answer. We started to freak out. I called and called and called. I starting leaving dramatic messages on her voice mail. Charlie started to have visions of my mom's bum knee giving out on her and her falling down the stairs with the baby howling in the crib upstairs. Then it became my mom AND the baby both at the bottom of the stairs. Charlie and I started fighting cause he wanted to call our neighbors to have them go check on her and I didn't (the neighbors having an 18 month old baby and it being after midnight made it seem like a bad idea to me). Finally we persuaded Sarah to drive us back to our house first (our car was at her house) to drop me off to deal with whatever tragedy awaited us. Five minutes from our house, my mom calls. And I realize that all the calls? I made them to her HOME PHONE. Which was not with her, because it was at her HOME. Her cell phone, however, was conveniently right there in her bra. Yeah.

3. Meebo. Speaking of online chatting, have you heard of Meebo? Of course not, cause you're probably not a teenager if you read this blog. It's very cool. You can sign into every chat thingy you have on whatever computer you want. AWESOME.

4. Heroes last night. HOLY FUCKING SHIT WAS THAT AWESOME OR WHAT? **Spoiler** Clare going to sedate the radioactive dude while her face burned off? Possibly my favorite TV moment ever.

5. Weight Watchers Bread. Seriously, it's already pretty much like eating air. Does it have to literally be about eating air and have big giant holes in half of every loaf?

6. Fat-Free Potato Chips. I am not allowed to have these in the house. Because I eat the whole bag (at eight points, it seems almost OK!). And they are made with Olestra. Which is SO MUCH FUN if you like farting for, like, two hours straight.

7. The Black Donnellys. This? They replaced Studio 60 with this shit? Seriously? Someone needs to get fired. Those waifish little boys are SO NOT BELIEVABLE as Irish Gangsters. Are they even old enough to vote? For fuck's sake.

8.  Umbrella Strollers. We need to get one. As lovely as the Bugaboo is, when 'collapsed' (it just breaks into two parts and one folds up) it takes up all the room in our car (don't worry, it gets used every day walking around the neighborhood). We got a really cheapo one but it still takes up way too much car space. What do you like?

9. Dieting. I'm so totally over it already. I mean, I've been dieting for eight weeks. Shouldn't I weigh, like, 100 pounds less by now? Gah. (I've lost 12, by the way).

10. Love. The "new" Beatles album. Charlie got it for me for Valentine's Day and it finally arrived yesterday. It alternates between being frustrating and heartbreakingly beautiful (the strings added to "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" are amazing), and reminds me why I need to buy more Beatles albums on CD. Or MP3 or whatever (like I have an MP3 player. Ha). I never moved them over from vinyl. The songs are so much fun to sing to Tori.

11. Stolen check card. FUCK. Could this day get worse? Today, at work, while I was sitting right next to it (probably was waiting on customers) someone went into my bag, into my purse, and stole my check card. It was not TWO FEET from me. They then promptly ran to the stores selling women's clothing too small for me and overdrew our bank account. Meaning the $700 check we wrote to the furnace folks will bounce. So will my check to Weight Watchers. It's going to take at least two weeks to get the money back. So now our mortgage will have to be late unless we decide we don't need to eat or pay any other bills until we get the money back (I do get paid tonight at midnight, but the furnace check is nearly half my month's pay). The worst part? It was stolen, most likely, by someone I know. Either a student here at the college or one of my student workers. I'm crushed and annoyed and sad and even more worried about money now than usual. Fuck.

Normal, and TV nonsense (beware: this post is supremely boring)

So, apparently, according to over 150 experts (by experts I mean you guys) Tori is overwhelmingly, blissfully normal. Whew!

Why do I believe you more than I believe that stupid book?

I'm trying to get the courage up to burn the book. But since I'm adamantly anti book burning, I can't quite bring myself to do it. Would make a great photo though.

On to something completely trivial and near and dear to my heart: Television! *** SPOILER ALERTS ***

First off, who killed all of the people that used to do the script for the Oscars? Cause, seriously? That was one damned entertaining awards show. They even, by some ungodly miracle, managed to make the annoying announcement by the President of The Academy hilarious. Seriously. Was it all Ellen? Cause I tried really hard to love last year's show since my TV boyfriend hosted it, but it was not nearly as funny as it was this year. Really good TV even if I did miss all the big awards because MY GOD IT WAS MIDNIGHT ALREADY.

Secondly, fucking Gray's Anatomy. Seriously. Fuck you all for teasing us like that. First I thought maybe we'd get rid of Miss Emaciated, but no. Then we get to have ONE EPISODE with Denny again and just realize all over again why that character was so amazing and how sad it is that he died. God, he's just so warm and awesome. Build a show around that man, people! Come on.

Thirdly, Heroes. I cannot get me enough Heroes. That show kicks some serious ass, and features the only cheerleader I have ever adored ever in the history of ever.

Lastly, Friday Night Lights. What a crazy good show! I still feel like I'm watching a documentary instead of fiction. Really well done. And I hope and pray that Tori dates a guy like Matt Saracen.

Still loving Ugly Betty (oh my god, the kid performing the whole show of Hairspray on the subway ROCKED). Bored with ER but I can't. stop. watching. Watching Lost even though I don't really care. Still loving Medium. Enjoying Men In Trees mostly because it sorta reminds me of Sex & The City and I miss Sex & The City.

Very sad about the possible loss of Studio 60. The show wasn't all that interesting, but I love me some well written dialog. I really, really do. I'll miss it when it goes. Although who knows if they actually will cancel it.

Lastly, I can't believe it, but Charlie and I have gotten sucked into watching American Idol. After five years of resisting, we have succumbed. Sigh. Can you guess who is my favorite this season?

So, what are you watching? Or would you prefer that I just shut up and write about something else?

Development, or, How Does Your Baby Grow?

So, yes, I've got some fears about Tori's development.

As you know, I had a 70% placenta abruption on the day of her birth. Abruption can deprive a baby of several important things like blood and oxygen--which can cause brain damage, of course. Now, Tori has NEVER shown any signs of brain damage; no one (and by no one I mean her doctors) thinks she was ever really at risk.

But I still worry.

A huge amount of my worry can be traced to this fucking book. According to this book, Tori should be crawling, cruising, self-feeding, and filling out college applications by this point. Even if I correct for her prematurity (she was born at 35.5 weeks, so 4.5 week early), she's still woefully behind according to their "milestones" charts.

So I worry.

Tori barely rolls over. She can, when she wants to--she's plenty strong enough. But she rarely seems to want to roll over. She sits up without support and without falling over, sometimes for up to an hour at a time. But she's showing no desire to crawl, not even yet getting up on her knees and doing that rocking thing pre-crawling babies do. If I put her on her belly and put her toys out of reach, she just stretches and grunts and tries to reach them. Very rarely, she will scoot backwards a bit. She can spin around while on her belly, but that's it. She can't use her first finger and her thumb as pinchers to pick up food. She won't open her hands to clap and play patty cake.

And she flaps. She sits and flaps her arms up and down like she's trying to fly away unless she's actually holding a toy. She isn't quite coordinated enough to get stuff into her mouth on her first try (I can't tell you how many times she's whacked herself in the forehead attempting to eat the TV remote, and yes, we allow her to chew on her very own remote which is the only way I can keep the cable remote in my greedy, television-controlling paws)  which makes me think about things like myelin disorders (myelin is the stuff that coats nerves and allows us to have control over our movements--and yes, that's the scientific explanation. And yes, I go there).

So I worry.

But when I look at other parenting resources, like this site, I find that Tori is doing all of the seven month development milestones and two-thirds of the eight month physical milestones. She does all of the social milestones for both months. Which means she's actually slightly advanced.

So, in order to stop fucking worrying, I'm going to stop reading that book. I'm just going to give it away. OK, maybe I'll recycle it. I don't want to "spread the worry," so to speak.

In the meantime, we are trying to work with Tori more. We've started putting her on her knees to encourage her to get into a crawling position. I'm trying to make her practice standing more (one problem there--turns out that in the Exersaucer she's usually on her toes, apparently, so when she stands she does it 'on pointe' and we have to encourage her to flatten her feet) and she can stand for two or three seconds on her own. She does lean forward while sitting and place both hands on the floor, which is apparently a prelude to crawling. 

So I'm working with her, and working on calming the hell down.

We'll get there. The other thing I'm going to do is stop comparing Tori to Sarah's daughter who was cruising at five months and walking by nine. Sarah's kid is an extremely tall child, after all (Tori is of average height, but is probably destined to follow in her mother's vertically challenged footsteps) which probably made walking easier for her. In recovery we always say to "compare yourself to yourself," and I'll try to do that with Tori. Compared to a month ago, after all, she's developed quite a bit.

Feel free to tell me in the comments how long it took your kid to do things.  But please refrain from telling me how "lucky" I am that she's not crawling yet. Please. It's kinda like telling an infertile to "just relax" or "oh, your life is better without kids!" I know chasing after a crawling baby is exhausting. Really.

Speaking of infertility (rough segue, I know)... You know what we infertiles were lacking? A catchy reggae dance tune, that's what. Ladysaw has rectified that error. Listen to the tune on her Myspace page--it's called, appropriately, "No Less of a Woman." Thanks to my buddy Nancy (mother of Tori's soon-to-be lesbian girlfriend) for the link.

Three Things

They always come in threes:

So. if you're at a friend's baby naming ceremony, and they talk at length about the cultural significance of Jordan Almonds (it's a northern African thing), and you decide to eat one in the spirit of the day, and you think it's just a touch too crunchy? Stop chewing immediately, and spit out the part of your tooth that just broke off.

That's one.

If your cable television starts to act all wonky, like for some reason the picture won't come up until you go into your DVR recordings and start to play one of the shows you've taped, then when it's over the cable works fine for some reason? Replace your box ASAP, rather than waiting until after you've taped some eight shows you REALLY WANT TO SEE. Because soon the DVR files will go all wonky too, and you will lose them all. And you can't tell replace the shows you lost cause you totally don't want to admit to watching Desperate Housewives.

That's two.

If you wake up in the morning, and the house feels really cold, don't just assume that it's because you are finally experiencing a warm spell so the furnace didn't kick in. It's because the pilot light has gone out. And if it won't stay lit, it's totally not because your husband is an idiot and criticizes everything you do. It's broken, and will cost $250 to fix, and the repair guy will tell you the furnace needs to be replaced and will cost $5,000 and you are going to have to accept the fact that you are NEVER going to get that used minivan you dream of. EVER. Or go on another cruise. Oh, and your baby's hands will feel like little ice cubes and you will feel sooooo guilty.

That's three. It's done, right?

The only good news is that I uploaded lots of new photos. And I promise it's not just one of my "point the camera at Tori and click the shutter for twenty minutes" photo posts. There's photos of Tori in the snow! In a snowsuit! Playing the piano! And more! And some HILARIOUS shots of my attempts to photograph my broken tooth.Oh, and pornographic photos of dogs and cats sleeping together. Heh.

The other good news is that the tooth that broke is a wisdom tooth and was scheduled to come out anyway. And the cable company will replace the box for free. And we don't have to replace the furnace TODAY. We have time to save up, thank god. It's not all bad.

Tomorrow I'll post something cheerier. Like my fears about Tori's development. Heh.

Monday Monday

Ug. I'm fighting a killer migraine that so far has decided to ignore the following medications: ibuprofen, Excedrin, Maxalt, and a sausage-egg-and-cheese biscuit. Fucking hell.

I would skip posting today but since I was such a lousy poster last week I'm not going to let myself off the hook. Instead, I'm just going to bore you with some links!

Curiousgyrl sent me a link to this story about a pediatrician that refused to treat a little girl with an ear infection because--oh, the horror--the mother had TATTOOS. Apparently, tattoos offend his Christian sensibilities. Um, OK, whatEVER, motherfucker. Will one of you well-educated bible folks send me the verses in the bible that say, "Doctor, refuse to treat the sick children of the tattooed harlot!" Perhaps he's taking the "suffer the little children" idea literally? I'm aware that it says somewhere in the Old Testament that you should not mark or modify your body in any way--that's why some Jews don't get tattooed--but it's my understanding that Jesus himself was all about the FORGIVENESS. I can see refusing to treat the little girl if the mom is running around the lobby of the office with a tattoo gun threatening to give everyone a tattoo that says "My mom is cooler than YOURS" but otherwise, what the fuck? Seriously. It seems to me that the Christian thing for that doctor to do is open his heart and treat the little girl. Intolerance and bigotry are what Jesus was AGAINST.

On a different note, I'd recommend you check out the site Scarleteen. It's a great site with excellent sex ed info for teens. In high school I volunteered at a birth control clinic (I'm sure that SHOCKS you), and I was constantly surprised by how little my fellow students knew about the subject. This site is informative without being condescending. Spread the word. Thanks to Annie for the link.

Lastly, Charlie and I are quoted in the infertility cover article in this medical journal (to read the article, you have to download a PDF file) in the February issue. It's meant to educate doctors about the emotional side of infertility, and it does a great job. Especially awesome is the fact that not ONCE does the article claim IVF "implants" embryos in the womb. They say transfer, transfer, transfer! Kudos to Jesse Madsen, the author of the article. She rocks.

Enjoy your Monday!

God Bless, well, God, actually

Tuesday night's weather decided to actually be a winter storm, putting down a few inches of snow and then covering it with ice. It sucked for a lot of people (especially these poor folks), but for me it was just what the psychiatrist ordered. A nice day at home with some exercise (shoveling the looooong driveway and the sidewalk), some sex (heh), a nice home cooked dinner, and playing with Tori in front of a crackling fire went a long, long way to repairing my mood.

Thanks, God. I really needed that.

Today I'm heading back to work and looking forward to tomorrow (when I'll be at a trade show for the day). I'm feeling pretty good today; I slept pretty well, am eating healthy, and am having a good hair day. What more can a girl ask?

Well, for one, she can ask the idiots at Amazon to change their baby registry system. Apparently, they require a due date to register--which doesn't work at all for folks that are adopting. My friend Teendoc writes quite eloquently about it, including their prissy ass response:

I understand that you would want to create a baby registry without a due date or the arrival date, but as per the baby registry restrictions or policies due date for the baby is mandatory while creating a baby registry.

Well, that's odd, Amazondotassholes, since Babies R' Us manages to have a baby registry with a "So you're adopting!" option. Their "baby registry restrictions or policies" manage to encompass adopting families without much of a problem. Fucktards. Teendoc provides the phone number to their customer service department in her blog entry--let's blog the bastards! Take a minute to call and complain. I did.

Teendoc, by the way, earns my respect and admiration for choosing to induce breast milk so she can nurse that future baby (not that there's anything wrong with deciding NOT to do that! Don't yell at me!). I mostly am mentioning that so that I can segue into my next topic: my boobs, and how Tori is feeling about them these days.

Tori is starting to nurse less. I know it's partially because she's eating solids--and a fair amount, these days; she loves her mashed potatoes. But just in the last week or so it's been harder to convince her to latch on, even when she's tired and cranky and needs the comfort. Moxie suggested it might be related to teething, but I'm no longer convinced that the sleep disturbances from a week ago were related to teething (turns out that I was drinking the equivalent of 12 cups of coffee a day when I switched to drinking these things--now I've cut waaaaay down and we're all sleeping much better).

I'm still pumping (once in the mornings and once at work), and she's ingesting that every day (about 10 ounces) either mixed with food (ask for my potato buds made with breast milk recipe!) or by itself. She doesn't nurse much in the morning, but now she doesn't seem to want to nurse at night, and that used to be when she did her heavy duty nursing.

I can see how it would be easy at this point to wean her, but I have NO desire to do that. Not only because it's good for her, but because I love nursing her, and I love using nursing as a way to reconnect with her when I get home from work. And those extra points I get with Weight Watchers don't hurt either (and is why the dieting is going so well). Plus, whenever I hear stories like the one I linked to at the top of this entry (those folks trapped in their cars for 15 hours or more), I want to keep nursing Tori until she's old enough to forage in the wild on her own. Say when she's about 20 (kidding, kidding).

I'd be interested in hearing about your experiences with this. And, since we're discussing breast feeding here and there are folks with STRONG opinions about it, let us declare another Assvice Moratorium™. Experiences only, and tell me what worked for you. Any pushy or nasty comments will be promptly ridiculed. A little.

The Pit Looms Yet Again

So I find myself feeling a bit low of late. This happens, of course. Usually when it happens I find myself focusing on one thing and really hunkering down into the misery of it. Most often that thing is my weight. But I can't really complain about that right now; I'm down just over 10 pounds in the five weeks I've been back on 'ye old mammoth diet plan', and it's so shockingly easy I feel like an idiot for not going back on it sooner (oooh, there's something I could obsess about--how I wasted all that time NOT losing weight after Tori was born--I'll file that one away for later). So naturally, I needed to find something else to worry about.

Cheryl asked in the comments section yesterday how I was feeling about being back at work. When I emailed her back, I said I didn't want to talk about it because I didn't want to risk being Dooced like poor Buffy just did. But honestly, I'm not doing very well at all.

The truth is that I do LOVE my job, and I above and beyond imagining LOVE the place I work. I have never--in nearly thirty years of working (yes, I got my first job at age nine)--been treated so well by an employer. My boss is unbearably kind to me, and his boss is even nicer. My benefits are amazing, my pay is reasonable, and my work load eminently bearable.

But every single day I kiss Tori goodbye and head off to work I die just a little bit. I can't help but think of all the cool things we'd do if I was home--go swimming at the Y, check out our local kid's museum, go to music classes and see our friends that are home with kids too. Not to mention all the recovery meetings I'd go to, the healthy food I'd cook, the praying and meditating I'd get back in the practice of.

I've looked and looked, and the sad fact remains that there is no fairy godmother willing to pay me $30K to stay home with my daughter. Nor is there even a part-time job out there that will pay me $30 an hour for my delightful and diverse skill set (vet tech! marketer! public relations! event planner! store manager!). I've looked at other jobs out there, and there is not a single job better than the one I have now. There's nothing to it but to just sit tight and practice acceptance, and continue to do my job to the very best of my ability on a daily basis.

Grrrrrrrrrrrr. How much does THAT suck.

In recovery we talk about how we alcoholics sit on the bar stool waiting to be "plucked away" to a life of fame and fortune. I know that was true for me--I was sure someone would come in and see that I was an absolute fucking genius poet and they would catapult me into a life of riches and glory (because there are, oh, hundreds of poets living that glamorous life, right?).

In some ways, I think I've done the same thing with this blog. I sit here, waving my girlie bits (VAGINA) around the Internet, hoping someone will see and decide that, just like Dooce, I deserve to be paid a large amount of money JUST TO BE ME. I've thought about pursuing writing more and done not one thing about it (OK, I pitched one story to one place and was rightfully ignored). If I want to get paid to write, I need to get off my ass and do something and stop thinking that this blog is going to make it happen.

After all, I didn't start this blog to become famous or earn a living. I started it so I could talk about how infertility was tearing me apart, and so I could get support and stop feeling so fucking alone all the damn time. And you all have given me more than any Internet whore could dream of.

But I suffer from magical thinking. I keep thinking that we'll win the lottery, and I'll be "taken away from all of this." But that's even less likely than becoming a famous blogger.

Sigh.

The good news is, I've been here before; this is the third time since I've been back at work that I've dipped into this pit. I know it's temporary. I won't feel this way forever, or frankly, feel this way tomorrow. Chances are that in a few days this will be a distant memory.

And spring is coming, snow currently falling be damned. Spring means summer and vacations and camping and lots of long, sunny days. I can hold on for that. Right?

Monday Meanderings

I would love to write a long and eloquent blog post about something or other, but I can't seem to stop sneezing long enough to think. I can't tell if it's allergies or cold or both or what the fuck it is. Damn winter.

Speaking of winter, they were predicting a great big snow storm here starting tomorrow and now it's just going to be sleet and rain mostly, so all my lovely dreams of a snow day have gone out the damned window. Fucking winter.

Lots of you asked how I felt about Anna Nicole Smith's death. Truth be told, I feel the same way I do whenever I hear about an addict dying; sad and unsurprised. I feel sad about the baby, though, and hope she ends up truly loved and cared for, and not passed around and around and tormented by court cases.

Also, lots of you asked for an update on my friend Zenzi (the one pregnant with twins that have Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome). The good news is that she's still pregnant; the bad news is that she is in the hospital for the remainder of the pregnancy. She's feeling pretty good, except that she hates hospitals and especially hates the one she's in. The babies are doing OK; she's 30 weeks now, and has finished the steroids to help their lungs mature so they could be fine. The smaller baby is experiencing some heart decelerations; they don't know why. And there might be a possibility of a chromosonal abnormality with one twin. So, basically, Zenzi is in the hospital being pelted by both good and bad information, and the babies could be born at anytime.

Keep her in your prayers, if you do that sort of thing. Send her good thoughts if you don't.

Ug. I have literally sneezed 14 times while typing this. Fucking nose.

Oh, last but not least: my review of Pan's Labyrinth. Did you know it was in Spanish? Nope, me either. No idea. I knew there was a Mexican director, but since the last movie I saw that he directed was Hellboy it didn't occur to me it wouldn't be in English. Not like I mind, but subtitles require a little more attention than I was hoping to give a movie on a Saturday afternoon.

Basically, I'll say this: it's a beautiful, mesmerizing and tragic movie. I was expecting something along the lines of a darker Chronicles of Narnia, and it's not. It's more like a dark version of Life is Beautiful.  Yes, darker than Life is Beautiful.  Without giving away much, here are the things it included that I didn't need to see on the big screen: child in danger, pregnant woman staggering about bleeding, baby in danger, really really really fucking creepy monster that eats children, and guy getting face smashed in with a bottle (with an unflinching camera on his face the whole time--very similar to that horrible French movie Irreversible). It wasn't uplifting or happy in any fucking way. The only moment that made me smile involved someone getting shot.

It was a great movie, and one I wish I'd seen before I had a baby, or placenta abrubtion, or my husband  ever had the words "We've managed to get ahead of the bleeding" spoken to him. So, there you go. A ringing endorsement.

That's all from me today. I'm going to go sneeze. Fucking fuck fuck.

Friday Friday FRIDAY

I am so pleased it's Friday I can't even TELL you. In fact I'm so busy being pleased I have almost nothing to share with you today... not much going on. Looks like Tori is teething and this time it's not as pain-free for her as it was last time. Um, I'm trying to cut down on my addiction to these. Tomorrow my mom is watching Tori in the afternoon so we can run errands and see a movie. Yeah.

Since I have nothing to say, I thought you might enjoy this if you haven't seen it already (very short! and fine for work). HILARIOUS.

Have a great weekend!