Can we have your sperm?
I don’t like to jinx things, at all, but I just wanted to say, as a public statement to the universe, that I would really love for something wonderful to happen for my birthday, just this one time.
If not, I’ll know there’s something else in line for me, somewhere down the line, but hey, a girl can ask.
I had to break my silence for this. What a beautiful way to end my day. First California, next the U.S. A girl can hope.
For the first time in many months I have found myself dreaming of a baby. It’s been a while since I’ve discussed TTC, at length or in seriousness. It’s mostly frivilous girly chirping with my best friend, usually as we coo over knitting patterns for baby booties and such. And then, this weekend.
I went down to the Greenbelt with the above mentioned friend. We waded through bone chilling water, watched dogs frolick in the foam and skipped rocks along the glassy surface. We sunbathed on a rock that jettied out from the river bank and I burnt my poor shoulders and calves to a lobster-y colour. Rather than retreat to the BF’s house, we trugged onto the mall. Our last stop in said mall was at Janie & Jack, the most horrible, evil store any mall could have. I felt little parts of my heart wither and die as we cooed over gorgeous girly dresses and painfully cute boyish jumpers. I suppose that was enough to force my sun stoned brain into dreaming of babies, of pregnancy, of a little life Fil and I forge within my body.
It’s hard to come to terms with the realization that my heart is not willing to move on from TTC. My brain rationalizes, tells my heart what everyone knows to be fact – we’re too poor, our relationship is not strong enough, we don’t have the room, what about insurance. My body protests, saying that it’s not ready, not strong enough or healthy enough yet. And my heart… well, she just keeps dreaming of tiny wrinkled feet.
I have mastered the art of pretending not to care. Of never speaking about babies to Fil – I simply gush in the general direction of my best friend, who reciprocates with so much excitement it’s almost shocking. I wonder if I were to bury this for so long, would I forget that the desire even exists?
Maybe this is all due to the sun, which has made me a very sick Att.
I feel terrible for not posting this earlier. I mean, how could I forget?! I suppose the same way I forgot to post Monster’s 12th birthday letter until well over 16 days past his birthday. I think it was the unemployment thing, the stagnation of life that happens and enfolds you when you’re scrabbling to search for that light at the end of the tunnel. The long ass tunnel I was stuck in for 2 months. That was torture.
My last post, on the 5th, was at 5 in the afternoon. Hey, that’s kind of neat. Anyway, I posted shortly after returning home from an interview wherein I got the job. I can’t believe I didn’t mention it or anything, but I guess I was high on life and feeling goopy with emotions towards my son. I’ll never know. The past week was a blur of activity and happiness.
I can honestly say that for the first time in a year I thorougly enjoy what I’m doing. My first job was taxing and frustrating, trying to squish a 40 hour position into 20 hours was too much to ask of one person. My second job was easy, but boring. I guess it was a nice break in the monotony, though. My third job, the most recent past one, was trying in its own way – a personal way.
This job, however, is brilliant. I’m transcribing dictations for two lawyers and helping around the office as needed. I love my boss, even if he is batty, and I love the office manager and other lawyers here. It’s relaxed enough to not make me feel stressed, I don’t have to battle 7 a.m. traffice since I start at 9 a.m. and lunch isn’t a thing to plan around, it just happens. I can’t say it’ll always be like this, what if it won’t? It doesn’t matter. I didn’t fall into a position that was overwhelming in its duties and priorities. I’m easing in, slowly taking things on as they come at me, learning the programmes and systems as things flow. I’m just starting to answer the phones on a more regular basis, with slightly more confidence than last week.
I’m looking at long term employment here. I’ll work here through my transcription degree and transition into a part-time medical transcription job while continuing to work for this law firm. I hope that after two years, I’ll have accrued enough in-field practice to bid the firm adieu and focus full time on my medical transcription job. So I’m going to be insanely busy.
One thing I realized, with great sadness, is that we will be living in our same apartment for another year. Which means Monster is stuck at the same school for another year. Which means we’re stuck in our crappy neighbourhood for another year. Tihs also means we wait another year to get a dog. Which kind of destroyed me for about three days. I want a dog with such a ridiculous passion, I imagine every dog I see on the street as being our dog and how it would work out. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. Another year to plan isn’t too bad, though.
The last thing on my mind right now is TTC. It’s still there, though, gnawing at my brain. Every time I see a little baby, my heart gets that fluttery feeling and I wonder when our relationship will get back on that track. Not any time soon, and I’ve accepted that. I cherish that knowledge and hope that when we are ready, we have everything we need to hit the ground running. This includes a dog first. And a bigger place – a rented house, maybe? Who knows.
Right now, I’m happy. I haven’t been happy in months. My last job was sucking my soul straight from my body, and unemployment just made me feel terrible about myself. This job seems to be restoring a huge part of my personality to ‘right’. I’m also spending a lot of time with my best friend, and that seems to be helping substantially with my cabin fever.
My next post will be about the hardcore/awesome/amazing weekend I just spent with her. Let me just say that we communed with nature.
(Also, yesterday was my cat’s birthday. Nefertiti turned 6 years old. I remember the day I got her, she was only 8 weeks old and tiny as can be. It was the middle of summer and she used to cry because she couldn’t get onto the desk to sit with me. She learned how to crawl up the side of my bed, using her baby claws, just so she could sleep by my head. I miss the tiny, sweet kitten who watched Law & Order: SVU before bed and slept with her favourite toy mouse betwee her paws.)
Posting around here has been slim. Things at chez moi have been grimmer than they’ve ever been and I can’t seem to find the optimistic spark that usually gets me through horrible times.
This is how things went after unemployment. At first I was purely depressed. Fil was away – for a top secret reason – and I was stuck alone in a big empty apartment with two sleeping cats. I pretty much watched TV and ignored my parents’ phone calls. Once Fil got home, what got me to the next day was the optimistic ‘what if’. Applying for jobs always leaves that sense of “I could get this, and I could earn that salary and get those benefits and be OKAY.” It always leaves me with a great sense of possibility and fulfillment. So I tend to apply myself in abundance, knocking through Craig’s List, Yahoo! and the Chronicle with wild eyed enthusiasm. This wears off fast, and what kept me sane and afloat was the extension of my friend’s Netflix account so I could stream movies and TV shows online. It seriously saved my mental status from breaking.
With the introduction of this remarkable thing, I suddenly had pleasure. Something I hadn’t even felt while working. When you have money, things need to be done. We needed to run to the store to do Christmas shopping, or we needed to get groceries or something like that. Without money, there are no errands – except for grocery day, which happens since we get food stamps, but that’s once a month. So, with unemployment came free time, and with Netflix came something to fill the sucking void with noise and shiny happiness.
And then, here I am, saved by alternate realities. Some shows post their episodes as they air – Spartacus: Blood and Sand is one (Legend of the Seeker also has the current season streaming) – but most shows I just watch to enjoy. Mostly sci fi. There, I admit it, science fiction has saved me. And it dawned on me today how startlingly nerdy I am, how I am totally in love with that fact. I may have hurt my ankle (the one that I sprained a while ago) while running and had to put that on hold. I may have the worst writer’s block since forever. I may not have a job and have heartburn and argue with my partner on a far-too-frequent basis. But goddamnit if I don’t have something to keep me sane and happy and it’s science-fucking-fiction. (Don’t mind the cursing, I’m a passionate person at 4 a.m.)
What I’m really posting about is that, despite the unforeseen advantage of finding myself unemployed (as in, reacquainting with a friend who eventually gave me access to Netflix) is that I can finally take Monster to see his asthma specialist. The asthma specialist who put him on this great inhaler and super expensive name brand nasal spray that we couldn’t afford without Medicaid. This guy is wonderful, and although he seems to devalue our knowledge of our own kid, he knows a lot more about asthma than we ever will.
For the past two years Monster has become increasingly sensitive to the allergies in Austin. Anyone from Central Texas will tell you the allergies here are unique and terrible and no one is truly immune. I like to say I’m immune, but I right now I’m feeling the effects of Spring blooming in the form of painful headaches and a sinus infection brewing. I also get hit hard with cedar fever and I feel sick when the molds get crazy high like they tend to do. When Monster first moved here, it was like a light at the end of a long painful tunnel. His asthma seemed to resolve itself! Shock! The lack of constricting smog and chemical vapors seemed to help a lot and he rarely needs an emergency inhaler – usually during a coughing fit to relax his lungs, rather than during an asthma attack. But the seasonal allergies are so intense and cause such bronchial irritation, it is adversely affecting his asthma. Though he hasn’t had any asthma attacks – he takes a nightly inhaler for that – he never goes 3 weeks without getting mucus-y lungs and a terrible cough.
So, this free time I have to take him to his doctor will be used wisely. He’s got that terrible cough again and it woke him up about 30 minutes ago. I told him to turn his alarm off, I couldn’t send him to school with a good conscious, not after hearing how deep and booming it is.
I feel bad for him, because he’s always taken medicine of some sort; nebulizer, ADHD medicine, allergy pills, inhaler. I have no idea what that’s like, so it’s hard to understand how weird it makes him feel. I rarely got sick as a kid, my only regular medicine was a Flinstone vitamin in elementary. Until recently, when I started taking woman’s vitamins, glucosamine and Nex!um I only took medicine when I needed it (i.e. ibuprofen, antibiotics). He’s gotten a rough hand, but I always remind him it could be worse. He just takes a small pill, uses an inhaler and nasal spray every night. He could have to stab his fingers for blood glucose readings all the time, like his aunt, or eat a special diet like his cousin with Crohn’s. I feel bad for him, sure, but I never want to see him feel so bad for himself he thinks he’s been dealt the worst hand. Not a lesson he’ll ever have to learn, because someone always has it worse.
*I’m writing Monster’s year letter. It’s taken me a bit to get it together, but I’ve been … well, blocked.
I haven’t blogged, or even attempted to, since January 15th. Oddly, I don’t feel the need to apologise, but I do feel the need to explain.
This journal has taken a left into the realm of NOT ABOUT TTC. Although I do consider myself to be on that track, I don’t see how I can get there with my relationship in shambles, you know, the way it’s been since I suddenly stopped blogging.
I feel terrible writing about these things, but the anonymity and the very small chance that anyone we know is reading this helps me open up a little more.
Fil and I haven’t shared a bed for a while. She sleeps in the living room and I sleep in the bedroom. At first, it was a great arrangement because Fil’s been doing some “work” on something that can’t be named. She works weird hours, with her friend, and is consequentially on the phone all the time. It became hard for me to try and fit myself into her “work” schedule, waiting to take showers with her or waiting to go to sleep with her. So she started sleeping on the couch. I stopped waiting. And our relationship is all but dead. I guess we’re working on it, and there seems to be sparks of what was, but I’m not holding my breath.
To add to that chaos, I lost my job (again!). We’ve found ourselves on the brink of losing our apartment (again!) and are once again forced to turn to our families for assistance. This time it hurts hard, because Monster’s birthday is the 20th and we can’t afford to buy him presents. Thankfully our families are pulling through and getting him things so his birthday doesn’t turn into a sucking black hole.
I spend hours a day filling out applications, e-mailing prospective employers and scouring the various wanted ads. Like last time, this will probably take 1 month. In the meantime, our electric, cable and credit card bills will go unpaid. Luckily, we have some help with rent. With any luck, I’ll have a job for next month.
Rather than pitying myself, I find that I can renew and rediscover the old me, the passionate, energetic me. The one who thrives, despite everything. Instead of wallowing in my joblessness, I’m trying to enjoy the smallest things. I’ve taken up running (the Couch-to-5K Running Plan) and focusing more on my fitness. I’ve also decided to get some help learning how to knit from my best friend, and I’ll help her with crocheting in return. Thankfully she loves her yarn, because I obviously can’t afford any yarn to practice with.
Being a stone’s throw from homelessness is scary. It was scary in September when we were close to moving to Michigan. It’s scary to think we might be headed that direction again. Even though I’m trying to keep an optimistic outlook on things, keep my chin up and shoulder the pain, I can’t help but feel we’re all strapped to a quickly sinking ship.
With any luck, I’ll have something better to report soon.
I have neglected this blog (but not you, dear blogroll) for a while. I have had lots to say, and yet… no words to say it with. I feel a wall has closed around the eloquent and open part of my brain.
For now, I would like to turn attention to the disaster unfolding in Haiti. While my family is unable to offer anything more than prayers, I know there are others out there who want to help, who can help, and those who are moving mountains to help (like Wycleaf Jean, the Jolie-Pitts and even our President).
“We are all from the same flesh,” and we must do what we can for our fellow people.
It’s a trend amongst end-of-November and December babies. The peppermint trend. If you’re one of these, you’ll know what I’m talking about instantly. The rush of giddy glee you get when you pass the ice cream section at HEB (or whatever) and see Breyer’s Peppermint ice cream in it’s red stripped carton sitting with the pumpkin pie and gingerbread flavours. The same joy you feel when they start putting out peppermint Hershey’s kisses or special edition peppermint hot chocolate. It’s a Winter baby thing.
(Now, I’m not saying it’s exclusively our thing. That would be weird to exclude those born in the other 11.5 months. Nor am I saying that all people born in this narrow time frame like the peppermint flavoured stuff. But in my observations, the majority of the people whose eyes glaze over at the mention of peppermint mocha coffee creamer are, indeed, Winter babies.)
So, the peppermint thing is my favourite thing in the whole world. I look forward to it in July. I start jonsing for peppermint hot chocolate as Monster starts school in August. Totally inappropriate because it’s sweltering and anything warm would probably kill me. I get excited when it’s November, because any minute they’re going to stock the peppermint goods.
I also get excited for December because, of course, it’s my birthday month. It’s my best friend’s birthday month. And it’s Christmas. I love Christmas. All things Christmas. Christmas carols, Christmas specials, Christmas lights. I’m nothing like Fil in this aspect, who is so Grinch-y it’s almost comical. I know it all stems from her childhood, and the fact that her Christmas’ weren’t very bright. She thinks of Christmas as a time to stress over money and gifts and family. But, for me, she’s been trying to love Christmas. So I’m over here oozing Christmas cheer. Don’t mind me.
This Sunday I turn 21. I’m not over the moon about having a birthday, but I am glad I can order a margarita for a treat and adopt Monster. Woohoo!
So, I’m lame. I can’t even keep up with NaBloPoMo. In my defense, I have been incredibly busy since the 12th.
Let me start off by saying that, yes, I realise it’s only Novemeber, but as parents, Fil and I start thinking about Christmas 1 to 2 months in advance. So, while we haven’t even bought our seasonal tofurkey, we’re already thinking about Black Friday deals and wrapping paper.
I only get paid twice a month, the first Friday and the second Friday. It’s obvious where the first pay check goes (rent) and the second pay check is used on bills and household necessities. Due to the time of the year (Christmas), the majority of that second pay check is getting rerouted to presents for the boy and for the family. So far we’ve managed to tackle 4 presents for the boy and one family member totally knocked out, while two others remain partially done. As for my parents and grandparents, we’re at a loss. To cut down on cost, we’re doing joint presents for each pair, but we’re not sure what a good present would be. Eh.
We’ve become ridiculously skilled at managing our budget around this time of year. We’ve made money spread thinner than the last bit of butter on 3 slices of toast. Monster has always had presents under the tree. I’ll admit, it was much easier when he was a Lego freak, because we could fill in holes with Star Wars sets. But, now that he’s gone through and sold all of his Legos and grown past that stage, we’re panicked about what to get him. Thankfully, both sides of the family have promised to pitch in for a group present (Fil’s side is getting us the XBox 360 while my side is getting us the PS3) and we were able to fill in huge gaps with new games he’s been drooling over for months. He’s only getting a few games (4 total, 3 for the new systems and 1 for the old PS2 that he’s getting in his room) but they’re expensive enough to take up a good chunk of our $350 budget.
We’re smart about these things, now. Last year, if you look at the pictures (in retrospect, I didn’t actually get around to posting them), he got a good amount of kids toys. Legos, Nerf guns, plastic warriors. You get the picture. We were completely unsure about our purchases, because he was on the cusp of “too old” and rarely played with his toys that he already had, especially the Legos. We made an agreement, “this is the last year” we said. And it was. We’ve now made the same promise, about light sabers and other kinds of toys, unless he specifically asks for it. It’s a hard thing to swallow, because that means we’re parting with his childhood. Not completely, because in most ways he is still a child, but we’re still packing up the last of his boys sized clothes and getting him shoes that look enormous (and they are, he wears a size 9 in mens, and even at a half size too big, they fit my feet).
I guess what I’m getting at here is that this coming Christmas will be, in many ways, bittersweet. How tightly do I hold onto the memories we’ll make? Will this be the last year he writes a letter to Santa? What about the Candy Cane Monster? Will he still thrill at the sight of a hand written note and candy cane-turned-monster stashed away in his room? I know each memory we create with our son is more precious than gold, but how hard do you hold onto such things, when you never know how long they’ll stay a child?
Next year, we’ll have a whole new set of worries and joys (TTC) to focus on accompanying the Christmas distress. So I’d like to focus hard on my son this year, and think long and hard about what kind of cookies to make Santa this year, because he loves both snickerdoodles and chocolate-chip-peanut the best.
As for song of the day, I think I’ll go with In a Graveyard – Rufus Wainright. I first heard the song in 9th grade, after a friend posted it when the days got long and cold. Because of that, I will always connect that song with the odd cold days here in Texas, and like the past few days, today is one of those. (Also, it’s a beautiful song.)
