Julia

Holidays

Steve doesn't believe in Mother's Day in much the same way that I do not believe in sex before ten o'clock in the morning. Although we could both justify our positions with sound reasoning (Steve arguing against commercialism, no doubt, while I would point to the well-known dangers of exposing oneself to the unhealthful effects of morning air, particularly after exertion) I think the fact of the matter is we really just don't want to be bothered.

And it is fine, usually. The lack of a well-financed (Patrick made me a card at school) Mother's Day, I mean. You would have to ask Steve how he feels about the moratorium on morning intimacy, although do wait until noon, won't you? He's strangely grumpy before then... . Anyway, I do not need Steve to buy me something for Mother's Day. It's enough to have Patrick insist that I hold his hand at Lands End so that *I* don't get lost. What else does any mother need, really?

I say "usually", though, because this year I really wanted Steve to get me something. Not because I was feeling especially in need of a big "Thanks for being the greatest mother in the world to our precious child, my darling" but because there was a watch I particularly wanted. The three of us had been in a store the week before and there was a watch made out of Scrabble tiles that I wanted more than I have ever wanted anything since Barbie's Dream House (which I never got, by the way). I drew Steve's attention to the watch. I tried it on for him to admire. I mentioned what a thoughtful gift it could make, especially with Mother's Day just around the corner. I rhapsodized on the importance of supporting local artists. He merely looked noncommittal.

I was hopeful that he would surprise me with it after all but that Sunday passed. No watch. Alas.

This past Tuesday I came home from running errands and found a neatly wrapped box on my desk. Inside was my Scrabble watch.

"Happy Feast of Maximum Occupancy!" yelled Steve. He is stubborn in his adherence to his beliefs, but sweet nonetheless.    

++

I am feeling really weird about the ultrasound tomorrow. I admit that my uncharacteristic confidence from the past week has faded, daily. I am no longer expecting to breeze into that dark little room tomorrow and start naming the twins. In fact I have no idea why I thought this was such a certainty in the first place. TWO? Do I look like the sort of person who is suddenly going to have TWO healthy embryos? Of course not. And don't I usually get morning sickness by now? Where's the morning sickness? Why do I feel so spectacularly unpregnant?

I am getting nervous again and I hate it.

Ultrasound tomorrow afternoon. Update posted at REDBOOK.

PS I just saw my reflection in the window and I have only now realized EXACTLY who I look like when the humidity gets this high. Remember the hairy little neanderthal kid in Land of the Lost? What was his name, do you recall? Whatever it was I look like his sister.

Chatty

Steve, Patrick and I were sitting around the dining room table yesterday doing an I SPY super-challenger book that, incidentally, is as hard as the blazes. You are familiar with the I SPY line of products? Lovely but strange photographs of lots and lots of things accompanied by vaguely creepy rhymes; the point being to locate the items mentioned in the verse. I cannot put my finger on why these books are unsettling but they are. Sort of like the sing-songy child's voice lilting through a haunted house. But my fear of the things is not the point, the point is Patrick likes them and the three of us had spent about ten minutes looking for the mousetrap in the photo.

Finally Patrick says, "Oh! I see it!"

"Where?" asks Steve.

"Right there," Patrick points.

Steve says, "Patrick, that is a croquet mallet."

"Yes," said Patrick, "but you could hit the mouse with it."

Worked for us. We moved on to "a sailor".

+++

Patrick was at school when I wrote that last post and I was somewhat, well, surprised to discover when Steve brought him home that he has a big scape on his cheek that he had not had at breakfast. When I questioned Patrick about it he was evasive; first, trying the old "What scrape?" defense before asserting "I picked up a knife and I stabbed myself in the face with it." He was obviously embarrassed about something and over the course of the day my technique of subtle questioning finally elicited the facts. He and Thuggo had been playing light sabers (Patrick, never having seen Star Wars or any related merchandising, calls these light savers) on the playground with sticks (verboten!) and Patrick parried when he should have thrust thus sustaining a hit, a very palpable hit. Then they both got in trouble as is right and proper, seeing as how they were both playing "whacking around with sticks" on the playground. As far as I can tell Patrick had never actually gotten in trouble at school; hence his acute embarrassment and desire to cover-up the whole incident as quickly as possible.

If you ask me how I feel, in general, about Patrick getting hit in the face with a stick I would say: bad.

If you ask me how I feel about Patrick getting hit in the face during the course of rowdy play with another kid (no doubt while laughing his fool head off and enjoying being a little naughty) I have to admit: pretty good.

All of which is to say... um... I don't want my kid being a victim but I am ok with him as a partner in crime? That doesn't seem to quite nail it... I'll need to work on the moral and get back to you.

This being, however, the very last day of preschool (big sigh) it is also all in the past. Next year Patrick will be attending an out-of-district school and he will have a whole new crop of children by whom to be led astray, bless his little heart.

Hey! I didn't tell you about the kindergarten did I?

We had a decided to go with a nearby school that has multi-age classrooms (kindergarten and first graders together), the only problem being that Patrick had to lottery into it. So I bit my nails for a couple of months and was quite relieved when they found a place for him. One of the things I really like about the school was that they transition the kindergartens to full-day throughout the year based upon each child's abilities. Not academic abilities, but their physical readiness to be there all day. So they look at the kid's willingness to separate and capacity for taking care of their own things and attention span and whatnot. It seems like such a kind and reasonable way to help ease kids into school that I was pleased. Especially with Little Lord OnlyChild's zipperphobia raging away over here.

And they also try to put each kid into the reading and math group that best suits their abilities in the specific unit. I, for example, would be placed with the other moderately competent people in Calculus, but would quickly be back in a slower-paced group when we worked on counting or god forbid fractions. I am hopeful that Patrick will do very well in this sort of environment, as they seem to have everything in place to meet a variety of different skill sets.

Knock wood, but I am happy and optimistic that next year will be good for him.

Speaking of happy and optimistic I cannot believe I am about to say this about a pregnancy of mine but I am. Both. Happy and optimistic. I could attribute it to a mystical sense of rightness or a Murphy-esque law that mandates that the moment I got my very first paying writing deal with the only caveat being to just NOT stay pregnant (a state I would have sworn I could accomplish standing on my head) I would actually stay pregnant (I actually have no idea what REDBOOK will do with me if this works out. I am guessing they will tactfully release me, perhaps reminding me that I am anxious to pursue other opportunities but that I have no hard feelings. maybe we should start a letter-writing campaign to save me); but really I think it is just my willingness to follow a logical path at the moment. We transferred what we believe to be two genetically normal embryos. We have no clear reason to believe that we have any issues outside of genetics. The only information available to us so far (the initial hcg levels) seem normal. Therefore, why not assume everything IS normal. Until, of course, we get further news to the contrary. 

And how are you?

PS REDBOOK post up.

Dynamic

Patrick has his last day of school on Monday. I admit that I felt a little pang typing that, but for the most part I am excited for him. So long preschool, here comes kindergarten.

Without just giving you directions to my house I realized I cannot actually say all that much more about Patrick's preschool. Every time we talk about it, though, I realize that the term "preschool" carries a lot of different meanings and often we are clearly not thinking of the same sort of thing. To clarify, Patrick's school is so tiny that the class meets under a mushroom. There is a room and a half and just two teachers: the head and the assistant/director/fund-raiser. It is truly a village school: nondenominational and nonprofit. Many parents of current students attended themselves once upon a time. While the school's mission is to provide early education; they also serve an incidental but undeniable purpose within the community. You meet people when your kids are in the school together and then you keep over-lapping in ways that I (who grew up as an urbanite) never even dreamed existed. Our neighbor's husband went to college with the husband of a woman whose daughter is in the Tuesday-Thursday class and who I know from the plant sale but who I also know from the playground committee, the book club and her friendship with my friend Catherine. Everyone, quite literally, knows everyone - and everyone is or was involved with the school.

This does not mean that you cannot pick fights there, it just means that you want to make very sure you are on the right side of those fights because you will be associated with your quarrel for the next thirty years. Seriously. So I spent a lot of time thinking about the situation at the school and how I should handle it and whether it was as grievous as my initial instincts led me to believe or whether, possibly, I was not in a great position to judge.

Our purpose in sending Patrick to preschool in the first place was to give him a taste of independence and to help him learn to develop relationships with other children and adults. Patrick, as I have probably made clear in the past, was markedly lopsided as he turned three. He had some wicked cool skills but he was also noticeably immature. As the other children were starting to play together he was just getting into parallel play. As the kids starting developing special friendships and, more recently, distinct social groups, Patrick began to realize that playing with other kids was actually a whole lot of fun. He just wasn't quite sure... how to get started.

For whatever reason I have always been certain that Patrick would catch up with himself eventually. He just needed time and some patience and an understanding environment in which he could be gently nudged in the directions he wanted to go. The preschool has been a great place for him. The teachers and the kids know him and like him and he feels comfortable with them. Just as he started to get it all together and his teachers and I could see the his social synapses start clicking connections all over the place (whoa! trains with TWO people are TWICE as fun!) the bully problem arose.

And I was fucking furious. I am embarrassed to admit how angry I was at the poor kid who I saw as the force that would single-handedly drive Patrick backwards into shyness and isolation. School, as far as I was concerned, was for MY kid. All the other children were just so many playmates for Precious.

You can see that this is silly, and eventually I did too. Part of putting him in a group situation for a few hours a week was to, you know, put him in a group situation, myriad personalities and all. When we had preschool conferences a few weeks ago the teacher told me about how very, well, NORMAL Patrick is now. He has some academic chops but more importantly he is a happy silly little boy who loves playing with other children. And he is GOOD at it. She talked about how much he enjoys creative play and hanging out with the boys and all the things he was not interested in last year. She also mentioned, "Patrick is going through an anti-Thuggo period right now."

"Oh?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. "When he sits next to him at circle time or snack he tends to say, 'I don't like Thug. He hits.'"

"Ah," I said.

This is probably a strange thing for me to be proud of but I was, a little. It sounded to me like Patrick had decided to make it very clear that he did not appreciate being hit anymore and he was making an issue of it.

When I came home I told Patrick about all the good things his teacher had said about him, but I also mentioned that it isn't nice to say you don't like someone. Patrick reasonably pointed out that he doesn't like it when someone hits him and it isn't nice. I suggested that it might be better to just avoid the hitter, but he shrugged. I dropped it.

When I took him to school on Monday the children were gathered in the upstairs foyer on their way to a field trip. Leaning against the wall were three boys, one of whom was Thuggo.

"Hey!" said one, "Patrick's here! We'll need to make room for him!"

"Stand next to me Patrick," said Thuggo and when Patrick raced over Thug slung a companionable arm around his shoulder.

"Do you like my new shoes?" Patrick asked extending a foot.

"Yes," said Thuggo. "Do you like my new sandals?"

"Oh yes," said Patrick.      

That afternoon when I picked him up I said that it seemed like Thuggo was being pretty friendly these days.

"Oh yeah," Patrick told me. "I said to him that I didn't want him to hit me ever again and he understood and is nice now."

Well then. Can't argue with results I suppose.

I will be honest; I do not think the school has done the aggressive kid any favors in letting his big and little transgressions go unchecked. I think he will have a hard time in kindergarten (where the tolerance for such things is nonexistent) and I am sorry for it. I think there was an opportunity to help him learn to modify his behavior in a classroom setting this past year and I do not think that was done.    

That said, I think Patrick (who is, after all, my real concern) ultimately benefited from the association, occasional knocks to the head and dithery teachers notwithstanding. In fact, as a few of you pointed out, this was an important part of Patrick's socialization. Dealing with difficult people, learning to confide in me when he had a problem, and developing his own strategies in how to deal with things were necessary steps in the process of growing up a little. I would have preferred for it not to have happened, but I am pleased that Patrick has developed enough to champion himself when he needs to do so.

When I watch him run over to ask strange children to play at the playground I can see how much he has grown in this area. When I watch him calmly accept their occasional rejections (it happens) I can see how important it was that he has learned to deal with social reversals.

Now if we could only do something about his willingness to dress himself....

PS Leaving for my beta in about thirty minutes. Results by this afternoon which I will put up in a REDBOOK post (but they write it this way. always. in emails and everything. isn't it rude not to follow an entity's preferred form of address?)

PPS I think I have concluded in this post that I am glad Patrick kept getting bonked in the head while his teachers failed to protect him because it forced him to handle the situation on his own, which in turn resulted in both a tentative friendship with the kid who had been worrying him and a new-found sense of his own abilities. Does that sound right? Somehow my overprotective heart thinks that must be wrong.

PPPS That said, I asked Patrick if he wanted to bring one of his phenomenal Lego creations for the very last show-and-tell today.

"Um, I think Thuggo will be there."

"So?"

"Soooooooooooo," like, DUH, "I would rather he didn't smash up my Legos."

There was a long pause and Patrick finally said, "Oh I know! I'll bring the geode from Arizona! Thug can't break a rock."

Adaptabilty in action.

Brief

[Just scroll down to the bottom if you want to know what the beta was today. You KNOW I can't just start with it. I've tried but it conflicts with my prime directive or something.]

Steve's theory is that somehow the first hot days of the season cause the satellite on our roof to shift slightly, pointing it NNESW instead of NNWSE so that our internet connection must first bounce off Mars. In sum: our ability to communicate with the outside world has been shot to holy hell today. So I am sorry for the delay in posting, although even with (drool) DSL or (drool drool slurp drool) a T1 line I would not have gotten here much sooner.

I left at 7:45 this morning to spend four hours hauling plants around a parking lot for the preschool plant sale. Would you like to know how many other parents volunteered? Zero. They all waved cheerfully as they dropped off their charges and then zipped away again. Probably en route to Target, the creeps. I finished organizing the plants just in time to leave for my blood draw; and then got out of my OB's office just in time to drive back to the school to get Patrick and all the plants I had ordered for myself. Never give me an order form for anything. Or rather, if your church is in need of a new roof, I'm your one-woman stop. I am completely without self-control when handed a sheet full of little blank boxes headed "Product Number" and "Qty". The neighbor kids sold me enough gift wrap last year to adorn the entire exterior of the house and so much candy I have not yet eaten half of it (Me! Candy-face!) And despite the fact that I already have enough Boy Scout popcorn to keep America's cinemas afloat for six months to a year and I do not actually like popcorn; I always order more.

I had not realized quite how crazy I got with the plant sale, though, until I calculated how many trips it was going to take to get it all to our house and how many little holes I was going to need to dig. Shoot me. Why is everything in Minnesota a goddamned annual? Snapdragons? Annual. Violas? Lobelia? Creeping Phlox? Campanula? An every year refresh. So after feeding Patrick a truly half-assed lunch (ham torn into pieces and strawberries) he and I trudged out to start putting all the plants in the ground before they die. As a four-almost-five-year-old Patrick is great. The best. Unsurpassed. As an undergardener, however, he sucks. Just for reference, the LAST thing you want your assistant to do as you are working perilously close to an ant-hill of unknown friendliness is poke a long stick into it.

Speaking of preschool, I have been asked repeatedly about what happened with the aggressive kid and the ineffectual teacher. And I promise I will tell you all about it next. This week. I swear. It's sort of complicated and I have shifted in my view of things slightly since I first started talking about it and I want to make sure I get it right; so it is taking me a while to write about it.

Now I desperately need a bath. I have dirt... everywhere.

But before I go, the beta was great. Monday 837, two days later 2104. I am pleased and extremely hopeful about this one, I must say. Not to sound all superstitious but good betas are so much more promising than bad ones. My levels with Patrick were high (and the other pregnancies that did not display abnormalities until much later in their development) so I do think I tend to metabolize quickly, or something, but I still believe both embryos implanted. I just... feel like it, you know? I do not for an instant believe that we will actually have two twin double more-than-one babies, however. Eleven failures (including multiple sacs that one time) and all of a sudden we are going to get to keep BOTH? No way. I don't say that to sound negative I just honestly do not believe it is possible. But that's ok. I feel lucky to even be able to dismiss it as a possibility.

I feel really lucky right now.

[Oops, sorry. Having just googled this very data point myself:

11dp5dt - 837

13dp5dt - 2104]

Home Again

I cannot believe I am agreeing with this old chestnut, but a dry heat really IS less unpleasant than a humid one. Tuscon (no, wait. Tucson. shouldn't that word look right-er one way than the other?) was 104 degrees this weekend but it actually wasn't all that bad. Compared to, say, Charleston or Florida over 85 it was downright pleasant. I say this, of course, because my hair behaved beautifully in the desert air. You know, one of these days I am just going to give up the charade and admit that this blog is really about my hair. I think we'll all be happier.

It was a good trip. Patrick and I had reviewed a website on Things To Do in Tucson before we left and he had identified a few places that he really wanted to visit. My father and step-mother seemed happy to accommodate him in every little thing, so it was sort of a Patrick-a-thon for four days. We went on a cave tour that pleased him enormously. We went to the science museum at the university and saw a planetarium show about Saturn and two of her moons. He and Steve and my father explored the desert and saw fascinating desert-y things. My Dad brought out his telescope so that Patrick could look at the planets for himself (I've mentioned that I am surrounded by space geeks, yes?) The rest of the time Patrick spent swimming in the pool (all hail the orange arm floaties) or eating black olives. Patrick would trade anything in the world for just a few black olives (brined, preferably) and my step-mother kept bringing him little bowls full of them. All day long. It reminded me of my favorite part in Starring Sally J Freeman as Herself (loved that book) in which she goes to a restaurant in Miami for her (twelfth?) birthday and the waiter brings over an entire bowl of whipped cream for her to eat with a spoon if she pleases. This made a profound impression upon me when I first read the book because it seemed like the height of decadent ambition. What more could any reasonable person want than to be allowed unlimited access to whipped cream? That is how Patrick feels about olives. 

And, since it was that side of the family, no one at any time felt the slightest urge to DISCUSS anything, like why we hadn't seen them for four years. So Patrick was happy and I was happy. Steve is always happy. And the food was good.

If there was any possible way I could have posted about this while I was gone, without the risk of alerting my father to the existence of my blog, I would have done so. But I could not. So, a little late, sorry, but I did put a REDBOOK post up on Friday (by tapping it out my my weensy pocket PC, saving the file on an SD card, asking to go to Walgreens for cough medicine and peppermint patties, and then zipping into Kinko's instead to email the file to the good people of online publishing) and I will have another one up this afternoon. The gist of the last one was that my HPTs never turned negative while I tested for the trigger (!) so I seem to be pregnant (!!) and the gist of the next one will be my first beta result (that I don't have yet, although the draw for it this morning has left a swollen bruise inside my elbow the size of a Sacajawea dollar). And yes, I realize my need for privacy in this area is absurd in light of the fact that my moon-faced photo is next to the heading "My struggle to get pregnant" or something like that in this month's REDBOOK magazine (they let me have three whole pages. well, one and two halves but still. I was flattered) with a link to here (hello REDBOOK readers) but there it is. What can I say? I just don't think my Dad reads REDBOOK (ps. the all caps thing is killing me.)      

OK. I was hoping that the phone would ring while I wrote this but I guess it is not to be.

Update at Infertility Diaries later today. I'm nervous about the beta, actually. The last two IVF cycles the betas were less than stellar, and look how they turned out. Of course I had great betas with those other pregnancies and... nevermind. I think everyone is just always nervous, regardless.

Bear With Me

Once upon a time I moved in with my father and stepmother after graduating from college and I was an utter nightmare. Truly horrible. I am typing this with one hand over my face in shame as I recall the series of mostly drunken and completely obnoxious behaviors that culminated in my leaving them a note one day explaining that I would be living in Honduras when they returned from their weekend trip. So... back in a year or so - see ya.

In retrospect, it was kind of my stepmother not to kill me during my tenure under their roof. Young people rarely appreciate the little courtesies of the older generation and I am sorry to say that it took almost a decade for me to fully appreciate her forbearance. But I did and I assume she forgave me and everything was fine until my brother and I had a Bleak House-esque falling out with my father. Over money, of course, like most family quarrels. Being as it was with my father, though, the "quarrel" involved no raised voices and no angry words. I sent him a cold email expressing my displeasure with certain (one might say greedy) behaviors and he... never wrote back. Thus starting an estrangement that lasted for about four years. My brother, meanwhile, had promptly and happily reconciled with them and spent his free time (which was considerable after giving up golf) urging me to make nice.   

I resisted, not so much because I don't like my father or did not frequently find myself reading something I thought he would enjoy but being unable to share it; but because I hate awkwardness and I wasn't sure how to get back in touch without it.

Then right after Christmas my brother verbally sketched a scene of such melodramatic pathos (my aging father who hates the phone rushing to pick it up in hopes it might be me calling) that my cold proud heart was melted and I sent the man a damned email.

Reply, reply, attached photos of Patrick, reply, tentative visit suggestion proffered, accepted, reply, difficulty finding acceptable time, reply, Arizona getting hotter by the second, final decision made to go May 10th. I'm not sure why I thought it would be wise to make this visit between transfer and beta, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. I guess because I can more easily imagine becoming a professional trombonist than I can visualize discussing any of this with my father ("any of this" incorporating: pregnancy, miscarriage or IVF) and I figured it would be a nice distraction.      

Speaking of nice distractions, I am off to get my eyebrows tended to by the lovely and capable Kelly of the Wax.

And if you feel you were brought here under the false pretense of cycle news or preschool aggressor musings, get in line. My brother called last night and asked, point-blank, whether there was any way to determine if a pregnancy exists prior to the blood draw and, if so, to take the required steps forthwith. I almost hung up on him.    

Updates later this week, unless I am baked to death by the hot desert air; in which case it has been a pleasure knowing you. 

Water, Water

I never do this (do I ever do this? no, I never do) but I have a product recommendation for you. Well, maybe not YOU, personally, because I am certain you do not entertain unwholesome fears of blanching your baby, but maybe for a friend.

As best as I can tell from the box we received, this was invented by or designed by or financed by (or something) an old friend of Steve's and it is rather cool. It Velcros onto your bathtub faucet and then it tells you what temperature the water is that is filling the tub. Patrick thinks it is FASCINATING and said a breezy goodbye to the duck spout cover that had been his constant companion since the Moving Day Head Injury. Remember that? The day we moved into this house Steve took Patrick upstairs for his bath and Patrick, just shy of a year, stood up in the tub and promptly pitched forward, slashing his forehead on the drain pull. They had to glue his head back together. I was... not amused. 

We have been using it for about a week now and, like I said, it's cool. So I thought I would share. Besides, as Steve reasonably pointed out, if *I* had invented something (as unlikely as that seems) and the friend had a mommy blog of sorts (ditto that) he would do it for me. Noblesse oblige.

Speaking of water, Steve and I have a battle raging over the quality of ours. We have a private well, a fact that made me extremely nervous when we bought this house (before people started gluing Patrick back together and I realized I had bigger issues). I kept picturing that shot from the bottom of the well where a lone stone drops remorselessly downward making no splash; and then Steve and I setting off like the Joads, dry and dusty husks of our former selves. The nice thing about city water is you can rely upon its quantity (although in Minneapolis, in the spring, when the river rises... there is a distinct SMELL. a wet/dead dog smell that is troubling until, say, late May).

As it turned out, knock wood, we have had no supply issues and, better, no cadaverous seasonal odors either. The only problem is that the water has a rather high mineral content so the original owners of the house installed a water softener. Steve loves this softener. He likes nothing better than to haul enormous bags of salt into the basement to fill 'er up. I loathe it. I loathe the softened water. It tastes like the stuff that comes out of the faucet in large hotels and it feels slippery. And it does TERRIBLE things to my hair. Many's the time I have stood there in the shower frantically trying to scrub the soap out while the soft as silk water whispers uselessly past. Drives me crazy.

Steve, however, feels that completely untreated water will, like, destroy the pipes or something. As if that justifies my walking around with hair like this. So we have in theory agreed to a compromise that allows him to soften the water just a wee little bit. Of course he always cheats and I always know instantly because my tea feels funny on my tongue and my hair frizzes like wool. 

It always comes down to water rights, you know.

What else? I am 4dp5dt (four days past a transfer of five day old blastocysts - oops. one blast, one morula) and feeling pleasant. Waiting for good news is annoying, but an argument can be made that waiting for bad news beats the alternative of getting it. The hcg trigger shot has lingered (I tested. I was curious) longer than the last two times, with a clear second line 2dp5dt and a fainter but still obvious one 3dp5dt. I don't know about today yet. I am feeling rather mulish. We are going to see my father (I have a father) on Thursday for the first time in years and it is occurring to me that I don't want to know about the cycle yet. I mean, I don't want to know that this cycle did not work and get on a plane. Cowardly, but there it is. So despite years of preaching otherwise, I might actually wait for the stupid beta on Monday. I know! It goes against everything I believe in! Knowledge is power! Face the facts and move forward!

Hmmm. We'll see. Yikes! It is Patrick's birthday at school today (lots of summer birthdays so they spread 'em out all month) and I cleverly/stupidly offered to get them ice cream cupcakes, not realizing that I would then have to drive to pick them up and deliver them during my precious Patrick-free time. I've got to go!

Hope you are well.

Feel free to post when you got your first positive pregnancy test after transfer. NOT that I care, I add hastily. Just making conversation.      

       

Pardon My Dust

I lived!

I hoped I would. I even suspected that I would. But it is nice to have it confirmed. To be up and about, all hale and hearty once more.

This next part has nothing to do with anything but I feel compelled:

I am reading a regency romance right now, as I tend to do when I am stressed about anything. Apart from a gentle anxiety over whether the haughty Lord Crynstone will realize in time that Miss Amelia had naught to do with her uncle's treacherous plot to land them both in the parson's mousetrap by engineering that compromising scene in the rose garden; I find such light fare soothing. It frees the rest of my mind to worry obsessively over the embryos. Are they dead? Are they in Ireland (new post up at REDBOOK)? However, I cannot actually bring the book with me in public as it features a half-dressed man (as if the earl would strip to the waist for any other purpose than to help free his frantic stallion, Nightmare, from the ensnaring confines of a mysteriously damaged wooden bridge) and an equally immodest female. The cover, it is lurid.

So instead of shaming myself at the Y, I grabbed an old favorite off the shelf on my way out the door to Patrick's sports class: The Portable Dorothy Parker. I should state (and I doubt any of you will argue with me) that Dorothy Parker's poetry is execrable. Truly. It is a mystery to me how it was ever published. But her short stories are brilliant and her reviews, hilarious. She has this one about a Milne play called Give Me Yesterday... ha ha ha... SLAYS me every time ("Ah, Selly, Selly..."). For some reason I had never read the Introduction to this book and for some other reason I read it for the first time while I waited yesterday and this brings me to my rambling point:

That is the bitchiest forward I have ever read in my entire life. Seriously, Brendan Gill must've been dipping his quill in actual acid. It is annoying, certainly, to read fatuous praise for something you are already prepared to enjoy but good grief! He even takes out poor AE Housman in the process. And who is Brendan Gill, I'd like to know? I had to google him myself and all I came up with was the fact that he wrote the Introduction to The Portable. So there. Oh, and he wrote for the New Yorker for a couple, six decades. I realize this irritation is fifty years, oh no, SIXTY years past its prime but like I said, it was new to me. And I wanted to share. Am I right? Eh? Surely I am not the only one to find this Introduction beyond the pale? Don't all start shouting at once now; let's keep this civilized.

My ability to distract myself is amazing even me sometimes, I swear.

I just wrote this big thing about preschool but I don't have time to finish it right now. I'll save it and post it later this week.

I had promised an embryo update at REDBOOK, though, largely because I had been promised an embryo update so here it is:

who knows?

There were fourteen embryos biopsied yesterday. They don't check on them today. They will have PGD results by the time we show up for transfer (roughly), which sounded APPALLING because sitting around with that full-to-the-point-of-agony bladder without even knowing if there is any reason to be there or if I will just be sent home with regrets... bleh.

I emailed the PGD lab and he promised to call me in the morning before we go. So that's good. He also assured me that they had received the cells. So that's even better.

Wish us luck tomorrow if you would and I will post an update at Infertility Diaries.