mydarlingcurse.com

you know, i am really going to have to start telling you more (when i type i think i’m having a top secret conversation with jack bauer - since my laptop is named jack the mac).

i’ll start with the present and work my way back since that probably won’t take as long:

today, friday, is “IVF stimulation - day 1″ i’ve been having it easy what with the one shot of lupron a day. that changed today. i go from one sub-q shot, to three. the truly wonderful thing about science and medicine is that it improves so rapidly. the things we did three years ago, some of them are obsolete. it’s amazing. we actually talked about it the first time we went back to see our doctor. things that they were working on three years ago are here. it’s exciting.

and yeah, i’ve done all this before, so the shots don’t phase me. but one of the meds has changed and since i am way to lazy to sign up for and attend the “shot teaching class” they have, i watched the vidoes online. how lame is that? what’s even more lame is that i watched them on jack, in bed, with hubbin. you’re jealous i know, the hotness of thursday night at my house is LAVA HOT!

anyway, the lupron shot is still the same - you draw liquid up into a needle and give yourself a shot. the menopur (which wasn’t around back then) needs to be reconstituted, but you don’t need a reconstitution needle, there is this Q-cap that totally helps. lots of Q’s in this post….so you mix it, draw it up and shoot it.

gonal-F is now in like an epi-pen. you turn the dial and push. i haven’t done that one yet, since it’s a PM med and you should take your meds 12 hours apart. but that used to need reconstitution too - and there were all these glass vials and stuff - what a pain.

i’m so glad things are more streamlined -especially since i have a two year old i need to keep an eye on while shooting up.

in some ways i’m really happy about doing this. i’m greatful to know that it works, so greatful. but i can’t help wonder if this is what we really want. deep down i know that i desperately want another sibling for boo. i will go BUY one if i have to, but no way in hell am i leaving her alone to take care of hubbin and i. but right now, i can honestly say that i don’t want someone new coming in and messing with this thang boo and i have going.

i know, i know, it’s truly pathetic that my best friend is a two year old, and my daughter, and someone’s poop i clean up. but we have a blast together and at night when i’m cuddling her - i can’t even entertain the idea of sharing my time with another little soul. i know that i totally will - come on! but in those twilight moments, it’s just me and her and my mom looking down on us and it’s perfect. i don’t want to mess with that.

i think that my cosmic thread is totally connected to her - we have the child we are meant to have. but who’s on the other end of her thread? is she too little to have a stitch in the cosmic quilt - i don’t think so. i just can’t imagine sharing my time. it seems like i have so little of it, how the hell am i going to incorporate another baby into an already tight schedule. i will, i’ve no doubt.

so many of the mom’s in Mom Class come off as doubtful, secret self-haters. i don’t want to read that way. there are/were so many questions swirling around having one baby - and i’m sure there is a completely different set about a second child.

but that’s what these shots led up to. in the next 14-18 days hubbin and i will make another baby (probably more than one, but don’t get me going on THAT). and i love thinking about it, i love the thought of getting pregnant again - especially since i know like two other women who are preggers now.

and i know that it will all be ok. i just can’t believe i’m doing this, again.

quick question - what if robert downey jr. played capitan jack sparrow instead of johnny depp? seriously, i think the results would have been close to the same. i just read that downey is going to be in a comic-book movie, and to me, that’s pretty close to acting in a movie based on a disney ride. don’t get me wrong, i love both these boys to death. try this: swap out depp for downey in pirates of the carribean, you’ll have a fun time thinking about it, i promise.

our most sober podcast yet - i’m a little disappointed in us.

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i heart dr. pryor at carlson parkway clinic. he’s goofy and kind and he’s the kind of white bread doctor that bill cosby and richard mulligan would have had as a side kick. dr. pryor diagnosed the gunk - not as allergies, as i had thought, but as a serious sinus infection. one that i’ve obviously had for a while what with the coughing up gunk and now it having a funky taste to it. it has a funky taste because it’s an INFECTION. how gross is that?

anywoot, he gave me an Rx for antibiotics and away we go. i’m still feeling crumby - light-headed and horking up stuff, but it’s nice to know it’s not permanent and can be cured.

FYI - the boo is over her fever and back to her own spunky self. she kicks my ass when i’m sick though.

the boo has been battling a raging temp since about 7 o’clock last night. she’s still herself, but she’s in massive cuddle mode. when i measured her temp last night around 1 o’clock in the morning, it was the highest i’ve ever seen it, 102.1. hubbin and i, well, and boo, have been really blessed that she’s gone almost two years without any serious illness. she’s had pink-eye (from day-care. and a special thanks to the parent who left it unchecked and kept bringing their kid in to daycare. the notice only went up after boo had it confirmed), and she’s had two ear infections.

but this fever, it seemed to come out of nowhere. hubbin took her to swimming class last night and he said she was fine. but i could tell the second they pulled up to the house and he took her out of the car that something wasn’t right. she’s a book, my boo, large print and easy to read. she’s get’s that from her mom.

so she’s home today, even thought it’s a day-care day. i have my mom writing class today and they are workshopping my piece, so i’d really like to go. thankfully, annie oakley is available to babysit and is practially bursting at the seams to come over and help. she’s such a mom. not mine, natch, but she’s got this universal momality to her that i just love.

it’s a pain having to change things today. i don’t want to say that i take her days at “school” for granted, but i do take full advantage of the time - the class, scheduling appointments, etc. i count on it, i guess. i’m totally able to adapt and change, but still, it’s a bummer that she’s sick.

still with the crud. dizziness, coughing up gunk, constantly blowing my nose, i even went so far as to show my drivers license and get the cold meds they make crystal meth from. nothing works. i keeping thinking that i’m lightheaded because i’m not eating much, or eating right, or whatever. but it’s not that. i can eat and still feel dizzy, i can lie down and still feel dizzy, it’s getting annoying.

I recently did one of those weird things you eventually get around to doing after someone dies. I changed some of the entries in my phone book. I’m not the type of person who can just cross someone out. I mean, in regards to the phone book, if someone moves, that’s one thing, the entry is still there. But to cross someone off because they died, that I can’t do. I have to rewrite the whole page. No longer do I have a listing for Mom and Dad. It’s just Dad, Mom is gone. Her cell phone number is gone. Her voice on voicemail, recorded when her speech was unimpaired and still pretty strong, dissolved into ether.

When my Auntie Jan died, it was a while before my cousin got around to disconnecting her telephone and voicemail. My aunt died suddenly on 23 December, food for Christmas brunch in the fridge, presents organized and labeled by name, but not wrapped. So many things of her life filling the house, but not her life, not her. There were so many times when I wanted to call her number, just to hear her on the voicemail. Auntie Jan would have called me creepy and weird, I’m totally okay with that. At least she’d have been there to make fun of me, that would have been better than having her ripped so suddenly from our lives. Her voice remained though, somewhere, out there in the digital age.

It’s not so much their voice that I want to hear, it’s the message. There was a pause on my aunt’s voicemail between “You’ve reached the —- residence” and “we’re not here right now”. You could hear Auntie Jan thinking of what she was going to say next. That short silence, that stumble in the thought process, that feeling of knowing how it will sound on the recording. That’s what I miss. She was gone, but there was this imprint of her humanity that lingered, who wouldn’t be tempted to hear that one last time. Auntie Jan’s cosmic voice is calling me a stup - “stoop” a family name for stupid - even as I write this.

It was that Christmas that my Mom’s voice started to change. It was so easily dismissed as stress or sickness that none of us really paid much attention to it. Looking back, it was just one of many in a long line of symptoms she had from the disease that eventually took her life. We didn’t know that then. I thought she was just run down from the Holiday’s. We spent so much time sobbing over those few days, everyone’s voice sufered. Auntie Jan’s death was sudden and painful - Christmas was her favorite.

Mom lost her voice gradually, over years. By the time I convinced her to see an Ears Nose and Throat specialist, the damage was permanent and they were baffled. There was no aparent reason for it. That made it worse. My Mom had this habit of calling me, just because….just to say hi. She had nothing to say, but she called anyway, and at the time it bugged the crap out of me. But now I miss it. I wish I could fully remember what she sounded like then, clear and strong. There were times during the last year that I had with her, that she would call and actually have something to say and for the life of me I couldn’t understand her. That bothered me too. I’d try so hard to listen - to hear her - to understand her words - and when I couldn’t I’d get frustrated. I’d think it was her fault. She knew she had trouble speaking, why didn’t she just slow down? “Mom, call me back when you can talk better.” Thankfully, she never took me to heart, if she had I’d have never heard from her again. She always called me back - a little stronger, a little louder, but it was temporary.

When Mom’s last days were upon us, strangely she seemed to speak more clearly. Then it was gone, her speech was gone. Her muscles had atrophied as well, so her ability to communicate was extremely limited. Shortly after my Mom was diagnosed, she and my Dad signed Health Care Directives. She had told me personally, and expressed in her directive that if she lost the ability to speak or communicate with loved ones, she did not want to be kept alive. Sadly that time came too soon. She was already in the hospital receiving hospice care when she lost all ability to communicate. One of the last things she said, or rather mouthed was “Vivian”, my daughter. After that he lips would move, but we couldn’t tell what words she was trying to form. There was no voice, no air behind her words.

I sobbed on her hard shoulder, frozen in time and pain, “I know you’re trying Mom, I can see it, but we can’t hear you or understand you anymore. I’m so sorry.” And I desperately wished that she’d be able to raise her arm and put it around me, or lift her hand and put it in my hair to let me know that it was okay. But she was trapped, nothing about her body worked anymore. When my tears subsided and I sat up to look at her, she was peaceful. The constant look of pain was gone, and I felt her trying to get her energy across to me - to comfort me.

I tried to think of something to say, but I couldn’t. I see now what a wonderful thing that was. Don’t get me wrong, we’d had our Mother/Daughter moments good and bad. I’d caused her pain by simply being a teenager and she’d thoroughly embarassed me by simply being my Mom. I’d leave her short, hidden notes and she never let me pay for anything. She’d call to tell me she was just going to stop by, I’d make tea and then we’d end up cleaning out a closet. She wore pink the day my daughter was born convinced I was having a girl. I would have bet money I was having a boy, but she told me a hundred time I was wrong, it was a girl. She was right. She always like it when I realized and admitted her brilliance. And those phone calls with nothing to say - that went both ways. My Mom and I talked to each other at least three times a day. If it was less then that, things didn’t feel right. There was nothing left unsaid between us, we’d taken advantage of what time we had.

In her final, wakeful hours, since there was nothing left unsaid, I started making things up…”Why yes, I have lost weight”, “I know, I think I’m smart and beautiful too.” These faint attempts at humor were temporary and I just told her I loved her and that I knew she loved me too. She loved me more than I’ll ever know, probably something close to the love that I have for my daughter. She always let me know how proud she was to be my Mom, how much she loved being my Mom.

I never doubted her, well that’s not true: see aforementioned teenage years. What I should have said was I never doubted my relationship with her. I never doubted us. I meant the world to her and she meant the world to me, and we knew that. So there really was nothing left to say except I Love You. But we didn’t even need that - it was understood - it was felt. She left me with full knowledge of her endless love, kindness and generosity. That can’t be deleted or crossed out. In that negative space of silence, that pause, that’s where her message is, in the unspoken.

i’ve offically had the gunk now for over 10 days. my nose is plugged, my throat hurts, i developed a cough last night, and now i’m having weird ear drainage, popping and other stuff. last night i was surprisingly overcome with nausea. like i was curled around a bucket for a while. dry heaving doesn’t help a sore throat either.

i’m not sure what is worse actually throwing up or the lingering feeling like you are going to throw up. once you hurl, you generally feel better. but what if you don’t hurl and that icky, burpy, mouth full of saliva feeling sticks around, comes in waves and then doesn’t go away? that was last night for me. and i still haven’t completely found my sea-legs today either.

i just want to cuddle boo while we both sleep. there are times when i’m so miserable at night that i go into her room, gently pick her up and roll her onto my shoulder, and rock in the big chair. there is a stillness and comfort to her sleeping on me. not that she needs it, which usually isn’t the case. there are some kids who can ONLY fall asleep on their moms and then she’s like - hurry up and fall asleep - jon stewart comes on in five minutes. i need boo way more than she needs me. i need the weight of her little kid bones on my body to calm it, to ease my mind. she untangles me effortlessly.

yeah, it’s a little creepy that i sneak into my daughter’s room for a stealth cuddle. but it could be worse.

i am supposed to be coming up with something masterful to write for “the Mom class” tomorrow and i’m so vexed, so horribly, horribly vexed at what the instructor gave us for our first reading. an excerpt from “waiting for birdy, et. al.” in which the author actually relays this experience (in a nutshell)….

since the authoress is pregnant she has to stop nursing her two year old son. the son says the new baby will have to use cup since “the nursings” (what he calls mom’s breasts) are his and they baby can’t use them. and she’s swooning at his cuteness and i’m ready to smack her upside the head. then, Then, THEN she says something like….my son and i had two glorious years together nursing and now he’s just getting the swill from the bottom of the barrell because i’m pregnant.

WHAT?

and in the course of reading this crazy bitch i come to the very obvious conclusion that this woman has expressed no joy, no joy at all. not with her son, with her husband, or with the prospect of a second child. it’s all doom and gloom.

and all i can think of is psycho jen.

while i was pregnant psycho jen constantly accused me of being joyless. “you’re just not allowing yourself to be happy about this” she’d say. my, how fucking wrong she was - as usual.

i was so overwhelmed with happiness, constantly, every minute. i had to struggle to keep a straight face around people. it took us four years to get pregnant. four years - people get degrees in that amount of time and i couldn’t for the life of me get pregnant. we went through a year of BBT, six months of clomid, six failed attempts of IUI, and a failed IVF. i was cutting myself it got so bad.

then, in a rush of magic, she’s here. she’s inside, growing and working just as hard to get to us as we worked to get to her. and i was not going to waste one second on things that made me unhappy. i was going to make the vessel she was in as content and healthy as possible. i quit my job, i ate better, i drank more water, i laughed louder and longer, i hugged my mom a thousand times. joyless? no, never.

but i wasn’t advertising my utter happiness. we had stopped telling the masses what we were doing years ago. infertility is isolating. unless you know someone going through it, step by step along with you, no one will have a clue. they will just go pale, give you a glassy stare and say “gosh”. people stopped asking, and when they did we’d say - when there is good news, BELIEVE ME, you’ll know.

but we had all worked so hard for so long, and now the work was over. and i was beyond grateful. i loved all of it, every second. feeling sick? yeah, but I’M PREGNANT! can’t sleep? yeah, but I”M PREGNANT! the baby has hiccups nine times a day, usually between the hours of 3AM and 10 AM, yeah, but THE BABY….it’s the BABY that has hiccups. heartburn, constipation, hemorrhoids - yeah, but i’m pregnant. weird pregnancy sex, almost throwing up at the smell of mall chinese food, kicks and bumps and knocks and GOAL! she runs around the stadium and does a back hand spring and i pee a little in my pants, but i’m pregnant.

then…an angel of light is delievered unto us and she’s ours. and when she and i are sobbing at each other during that 4AM feeding, i never thought i couldn’t do it. i never questioned my ability to be good parent. i never had that frantic panic pregnant women get. i’ve gotten those calls, wails of fear and regret, “What was I thinking? I can’t be someone’s MOM! The baby is going to hate me. My husband isn’t going to help.” Well, yeah, nine times out of ten that last one is true. But not in my case. that 4AM crying jag - that’s normal - that’s hormonal - that’s temporary. we’re permenant, we’re family.

and i couldn’t wait to meet her, to see her, to nuzzle her, to smell her. she was half of him and half of me and how did that all work out? she simply rode in on fairy wings and made our wish come true.

how could anyone think i wasn’t happy?

some people have a strong adversion to reading dream posts, JCSG, Kelly, and i all feel that dream posts mean nothing to anyone but the dreamer. which is true. but this dream i had last night was awesome, honest.

ok, first of all, i was 16. and for whatever reason we were at a party hosted by Prince. (minnesota girls will always, always, at some point in thier lives, have a dream about Prince).

and get this, i was a violin protégé. so at the party, i meet a dashing, awkward, 19 year old bartender. the party turned out to be a photo op for Prince and all of the good things he does to encourage artistic youth. so it was kind of like the mickey mouse club. i got paried up with the 19 year old and sparks flew. innocent fun sparks from your 16 year old self before you really knew what sex was and took intense pleasure from deep kissing and new touch. and just typing the memory is making me feel good.

we broke off from the crowd and started exploring Prince’s mansion. for whatever reason, like there is reason to dreams, Prince had a bakery in his house. and there was a whole room with glass cases holding shinny doughnuts and cakes and tarts and candy and pie. the boy and i, desperately holding hands, shared a mini birthday cake. he let me eat the frosting roses and licked the sugar from my lips. i have never been so happy.

then some bullies showed up. they wanted to trash the bakery and we wouldn’t let them. but the boy, not having found his adultness, backed down. he gave way to the bullies and let go of my hand. and then the worst thing happened. my adult-self interjected and gave the boys a serious scolding - in my 16 year old body. they ran off.

and my boy, my sweet, sweet boy, he left me. he said i was too harsh. i was too like a man, and not enough like the girl he fell in love with. you feel in love with me?, i cried. (those peach and lemon days of youth when you could fall in love in 20 minutes, live a lifetime with each other in two hours and then carry the sorrow and scars for the rest of your life) there was still hours left of the party, and we had to decend a staircase arm in arm for another photo op. and he was so hurt and so disappointed in me, his arm had no strength in it for me. it was just there, not for me to hold onto, or lean against, or pull myself up by. it was there, just waiting to let go. and i’ve never been so sad. the photographer didn’t even take our picture.

i woke up sad, lamenting those days when i had the potential to be loved so fiercely.

then i hear shrieks and peals of laughter and “mommy, WAKE UP!” and boo is jumping on the bed and wanting to give me a big hug and her thin little arms of summer wrap around my neck in the morning. and i’m the only one for her. the only one.

the boy fades…even putting him down here doesn’t mean he’ll last. but i do still have the potential to be loved fiercely. these little arms of summer prove it.