i am a butterfly…

Making Use of All That Time

Jury duty seemed the perfect time to start breaking in the Total Knitting Tote Scott gave me for my birthday last November. So I carefully packed with with the right side of Arwen and a fresh yarn cake, because I’m near the end of the current one. I had visions of using all this wonderful time with no distractions to knit like crazy.

Total rows knitted on Arwen during jury duty: 8

Instead, I’ve been spending my time reading the most ridiculous drivel of a novel I’ve read in ages. I picked it up at the CVS across the street from the courthouse when I went in for tampons.* It’s a Mary Higgins Clark novel called, something like, I Heard That Song Before. This book is so poorly written and silly, but for some reason I’m sucked in and spending all my jury time reading it instead of knitting. Maybe it’s because it’s set in Englewood, NJ and MHC makes sure to make sure the reader understands that part of Bergen County. (Nick Greco was driving through Cresskill, a town near Englewood.) It’s all just so absurd, and I can’t stop reading it.

I just remembered that MHC does live somewhere around there, because when I worked at a bank in Hillsdale, she was rumored to be one of our customers. So she does know the area well, and now she’s gone and proved it in a novel.

*Yes, my period arrived on May 7, exactly on schedule. But did I have tampons packed in my bag? Of course not.

Jury Duty: Day 2

What could they have in store for us today? Yesterday, it was a fire drill that evacuated the entire courthouse. A building that occupies a full two city blocks, which means it holds a LOT of people. They got all those people out quickly enough, but then had no solid plan for getting us all back in, so we stood outside for an hour and a half while they got things organized and we packed onto the sidewalks like cattle before being herded in to go through security again.

Good times.

(Yet Another) Book Meme

I like memes like this, where all I need to do is bold or italicize and whatnot.  I found this one via And She Knits Too. 

What surprises me about this list is how many Neil Gaiman books are on it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Oh goody…

…it’s Mother’s Day again. Yay.

Mother’s Day has actually gotten a bit easier for me over the years. Probably because my own mother lives so far away, which allows me to make a phone call and say “happy mother’s day” once, then chat about anything else. If we had to go do the big Mother’s Day brunch thing every year, with all those happy moms and their beautiful infants and children, I imagine it would be a lot more difficult to handle.

This year, Scott and I are either going hiking or heading out to the wilds of New Jersey so Scott can train a friend on some advanced Excel stuff. (One of those things is happening Saturday, but I can’t remember which.) Either way, we’ll be somewhere I can forget what day it is.

The Thing Is…

Infertility takes all your hopes and wishes and dreams and dashes them to little bits upon the rocks of harsh reality. After enough of this abuse, hope doesn’t just wither; it’s crushed, smothered, and, finally, thoroughly extinguished.

It’s at that point that you either break under the pressure or become a jaded cynic who manages to avoid being hurt anymore by employing a vicious black humor tempered with a breezy pessimism. I chose the latter. I don’t break.

The thing about IVF is that it requires you to rekindle that hope, over and over and over and over again. And each time it doesn’t work, you’re tossed out into the storm once again and tumbled around till you’re battered and cut and bleeding and raw. Every time you start an IVF cycle, you have to be willing to let that happen to you again.

Sometimes, I wonder if it wouldn’t be easier, less painful, to just make a choice to live child-free than it is to have that tiny flame snuffed so many times. I know I’m not ready for that, and Scott seems horrified by the idea whenever I bring it up, but I wonder if it wouldn’t hurt less.

Spring

What An Odd Position In Which to Find Myself

For once, I’m the calm one. The rational one. The one who realizes that there isn’t a finite amount of babies in the world and that someone else getting pregnant doesn’t mean that that I have one less chance of getting there myself.

This time, it’s Scott who can’t take it, and I confess that I find this a strange turn of events. He’s always been so steady and calm. He’s been the rock that keeps me from being swept out into the ocean when I lose myself and get tumbled around by the crashing waves. Now he’s the one being tumbled around, and I’m trying to find ways to talk him back to shore.

We have a fringe acquaintance who found herself unexpectedly pregnant a few months ago. I think I’ve mentioned her before. She’s not happy about being pregnant and it’s very clear that she doesn’t want the baby. I understand that there are women who don’t enjoy being pregnant but do want and love their babies, but this woman is not one of them. She only ever talks about the pregnancy to complain. There’s absolutely no happiness at the idea of being a mother. It’s only dread and disgust about the whole thing.

It’s been difficult for me to watch, but it’s been hitting Scott a lot harder. He finally snapped this morning, when it was revealed that, at 5 months along, she hasn’t had a single prenatal appointment. Nor has she even been taking prenatal vitamins. The lack of pre-natal care is blamed on not having insurance, and I can understand that. However, I know for a fact that the city in which she lives has excellent programs for helping low-income pregnant women receive prenatal care. It’s there for the asking, and it just requires a phone call, which she has refused to make.

And I find the lack of pre-natal vitamins to be appalling. That lack isn’t due to lack of money; she just hasn’t gotten around to buying them is her stated reason.

I keep telling myself to just relax and let it go, that getting myself upset over it isn’t going to do anything and that, ultimately, her prenatal care is none of my business. For the most part, that works for me. Scott’s having a hard time with it, though. One of the rules of our marriage is that we can’t both lose it at the same time. One of us has to stay calm. I guess it’s his turn for once.

Jury Duty Is Ruining My Life

And it hasn’t even started yet.

I just called to make an appointment for the sonogram my oncologist wants. The earliest appointment they had was for the 8th. Great, said I, I’ll take it. But no, I realized, I start jury duty on the 7th, and it will be at least three days. So I had to make the appointment for the 14th, and just hope I don’t get picked for a jury.

The realization that I couldn’t take that songogram appointment on the 8th made me suddenly realized something else: guess when my new cycle is supposed to begin? If you picked May 8, you’re a winner!

That means I won’t be able to do any of the early cycle tests at the new IVF center, because I’ll be in the Bronx County courthouse all fucking day!

If I have to push these tests back yet another cycle. I’m going to be pissed.

Bridal Showers As a Full-Contact Sport

Saturday afternoon, we threw a bridal shower for my very dear friend F. I think it went splendidly, despite a few bumps in the road along the way during the planning*.

F. and I have been friends since I was 6 and she was 7, which is more years ago than I care to remember, but we’re in our third decade of friendship. Crazy, right? Because of our long friendship and because she is so happy with her husband-to-be - a prince finally found after a whole lot of toads - it was really important to me to make sure this day was special for her. And I think it was. She seemed pretty pleased with it all, and I think everyone who attended had a great time. I’m really happy with how it all turned out.

Of course, it really wasn’t a full-contact event. That’s just a joke, but I ended up as injured as if it was one. During food prep Friday night, I nearly severed a fingertip while chopping apples. Just the fleshy pad at the tip of my finger, not the bone, but there were some touch and go moments while Scott and I pondered the emergency room. Eventually, I decided against it, and that’s fine, because I don’t think stitches were necessary. The edges of the cut are even, not ragged, and we got the bleeding stopped pretty quickly** It’s staying closed on its own, too, so that’s good. I was going to get a tetanus shot yesterday, but I got lazy and didn’t, and now I probably won’t. Don’t lecture me. Shush.

Then, on Saturday, my husband decided to drive through Manhattan to the bakery to pick up the cupcakes, instead of taking the Cross Bronx and coming down the west side, which resulted in us sitting in bumper to bumper traffic for 45 minutes. THAT resulted in me getting out of the car and running to Ninth and 37th from Sixth and 40th, then back up to Ninth and 41st, because the bakery moved and I didn’t know, in shoes that were NOT meant for cross-town sprints. So my heels are blistered and hurt, and I’m so grateful right now that I don’t have to wear shoes most days, because that would be ouchy.

But it was all for a good cause, and I’d do it all over again, partially severed fingertip and all, if it meant giving F. a special day.

I should also mention that her future in-laws stepped up to the plate big time and opened their home to us for the shower when we had to change the original plans. It’s a warm and welcoming family F. is marrying into, and I couldn’t be happier for her.

*The surprise was blown early on by a very apologetic grandmother, the bridesmaid at whose home it was supposed to be ended up being put on permanent bed rest for the duration of her pregnancy, etc. You know, normal shower drama! Hopefully getting this out of the way early will ensure an uneventful wedding day.

**Good thing I remember something of my first aid training from 15 years ago!

WEBS

K. snapped this on her cell phone while I was inside the storing hyperventilating.

I have never in my life seen so much yarn in one place. People, they let you wander through and shop in the warehouse. So. Much. Yarn. I was giddy. I was all, “Railroad who? Screw music, I’m moving in here.”

A. was stunned by how much I spent,. but I’m telling you, I reined myself in hard. The damage could have been much, much worse. As it is, I came out with enough yarn to knit Cobblestone for Scott and another two sweaters worth of yarn for myself. Several skeins of sock yarn, a few skeins for a cabled scarf for me, and a skein of Malabrigo Lace rounded things out.