Real Life 101

Fertility testing! What fun!

The HSG was … it was … well, unpleasant comes to mind. Unpleasant because the doctor was an hour late, I forgot my book in the car, and I spent 45 minutes sitting bare-assed in a chair in a dark, cold office wearing only a sweater, a paper gown and socks. Also, ouch. Not “ouch” as in, “There is an eight pound human being trying to squeeze its way through my vagina!” but nonetheless something I wouldn’t voluntarily put myself through ever again.

Technically, I was supposed to have the HSG last month but there were reasons outside my control that made the scheduling of this procedure all but impossible. I simply couldn’t fit it into my schedule. After all, the grocery shopping needs to get done sometime. These things just can’t be put on hold, you know. We need to eat.

The HSG taught me two things:

1)      My tubes are fine. (See: I Told You So)

2)      Fallopian tubes are very, very tiny. I had pictured giant interstate highway sized tubes, as seen in my 7^th grade Health textbook and the diagrams on the back of my doctor’s door. But, no. They are skinny little things. Also, they tend to ache when half a gallon of radioactive dye is forced through them.

The whole thing took about ten minutes (not including the hour or so of waiting) and I was fine afterward, although I did take full advantage of the situation and spent a good deal of the afternoon lounging on the couch watching CSI DVD’s while my husband cooked and cleaned and chased Christopher around.

Blogging Amidst the Destruction

I returned from Boston Saturday evening to find that my laundry-room-slash-bathroom had no walls, ceiling or floor. There was also a washing machine and sink in my dining room, and a dryer in my front room, nestled nicely between the couches and the boxes of Ikea cabinets, the new sink and the toilet that have been housed in there for the past week and a half. Also, my entire first floor was covered in a nice thick layer of white chalk dust from the sheetrock that had been torn off of the walls.

There’s no better time to start semi-major home renovations than the Christmas season, or so it would seem, as this is our third year in a row of doing so. On the upside, we don’t host any of the holidays at our house or I might find myself enjoying Thanksgiving turkey seated comfortably between my grandmother and the dryer. But there is still the problem as to where to place the Christmas tree. As it stands right now, there is a very good chance that I may find myself opening gifts on Christmas morning while sitting atop the toilet.

Last week, when the dryer was not blocking the path from the dining room to the kitchen and you could walk into the laundry room without falling to your death on the cold concrete basement floor, I was not considering such trivial matters as the placement of the Christmas tree because there were other, more pressing matters to think about. Like picking out cabinets and drafting death threats to various Ikea customer service representatives. And besides, Christmas? That’s like two months away. And then it dawned on me that, holy shit, Thanksgiving is next week. When the hell did that happen?

And Now, Due to Popular Demand, the ‘Before’ Photos

(Pam, you will now be referred to as ‘Popular Demand’)

And just in case anyone else is interested, here are the pictures.

I will warn you, it’s ugly. Embarrassingly ugly. But it’s going to be beautiful, really. Someday. Probably years from now. Because home improvement projects always take us 750 times longer than we plan on. Our deck took 3 years and all we had to do was hire someone, so there you go.

The Great Laundry Room and Bathroom Remodel. Part One of Infinity.

Immediately after moving into our house I went on a little bit of a bender trying to rid the place of all of the things that I deemed way too ugly to coexist with. I ripped out carpets, broke down shelving units, and tore down mini-blinds with little forethought as to what I would put in their place until I was ready to paint and re-decorate. Here we are three-plus years later, and on a warm summer night our neighbors can get a nice view of my stark white, nearly naked ass traipsing through my kitchen at midnight in search of a snack because, curtains? Well, I haven’t gotten around to that yet.

In our laundry room there was a large cabinet-slash-closet-slash-shelving unit that was among one of the very first things to be scheduled for demolition. We knew that the previous owners had replaced the floor in that room before selling the house. What we didn’t know, but instead discovered midway through destruction of the cabinet, was that they never bothered to move the cabinet out of the way before laying down the new floor. They just put flooring around the cabinet, not underneath. Which, with the cabinet gone, leaves a nice 6x4 hole revealing the 1970’s era yellowed laminate flooring that’s underneath the new floor. Highly attractive.

Since the laundry room and the adjoining bathroom were #458 or so on our list of Things in this House that Look like Ass and Need Immediate Fixing, I have since been creatively covering up the hole with an assortment of cardboard boxes, cases of soda and piles of dirty laundry. I have also been know to fly across the kitchen in leaps and bounds to prevent a guest from trying to use that bathroom (yes, because of the ugliness, but also because it hasn’t been cleaned since 2002), insisting that the toilet is broken and that they will need to close that door right now and head on upstairs.

Well, I’m glad to say that the days of ambushing unsuspecting guests who just want to pee are coming to an end. I spent all of last week measuring and drawing up plans and picking out cabinets and a sink and a toilet and finally, finally settling on a paint color that is so close to white I don’t know why I even bothered with all of the agonizing, and on Friday morning we kicked off The Great Laundry Room and Bathroom Remodel by heading off too IKEA to buy a few cabinets.

Many, many, many hours later … Hold on, I’m getting ahead of myself.

So we pulled into the IKEA parking lot at approximately 10:07, which was roughly seven minutes after they opened, and headed on up to Kitchens so that I could show Michael what I had picked out. From there we browsed a bit, briefly contemplated getting breakfast in the cafeteria, and made the huge mistake of letting Christopher play with the trains in the Children’s department. At around 11 a.m., after prying our screaming, thrashing child away from the train table because we are mean, mean parents, and hiding our faces in shame from the twenty or so gawking and astonished customers, we high-tailed it down to the warehouse to get our cabinets and get the hell out of there.

Once we arrived downstairs in the warehouse we were informed that, in stock or not, all cabinets have to be ‘ordered’ through the computer, pulled in the stock room, and picked up at furniture pick-up. (If you’ve never been to IKEA before, most things are self-serve in the warehouse so you don’t have to wait to pick anything up). And, that the only computer in the entire store from which cabinet orders could be placed was located back upstairs in the Kitchens department. Which wouldn’t be so bad if IKEA were not the size of Rhode Island.

Christopher could obviously no longer hang so Michael took him out to the car while I quickly ran back upstairs to the Kitchens department to place my order.

Quickly ran back upstairs. Ha! HA HA HA.

Back in Kitchens there were three people in line ahead of me, and one cashier. And, as this was my first cabinet buying experience at IKEA, I was learning as I went along. First I learned that there is no such thing as ‘quickly’ at IKEA. Second, I learned never to ask the question How long could this possibly take? while standing in line at IKEA. I mean, it was a Friday morning. On a Saturday afternoon there are a bajillion people at IKEA so Fridays should be a breeze, no? No. Third, I learned that in order to place a cabinet order at IKEA you have to fill out more forms than you did when you were registering to give birth at the hospital. Yes, even for four lousy cabinets and, yes, even if you already know exactly what you need, SKU numbers and all. You also have to submit blood, hair and urine samples, get fingerprinted, and initial here, here and here stating that you understand:

1)      You will have to wait an additional one to two hours in furniture pick-up for them to bring your cabinets out of the stockroom and hand them over to you. Yes, even on a Friday morning. And, no, you cannot just go back there and do it yourself. Even if you beg.

2)      If you happen to discover, no later than 30 seconds after pulling out of the parking lot, that your cabinets are broken or something is missing, it’s just too damn bad. And if you’re not okay with that policy then take a glimpse at the ‘Returns’ line on your way out. You’ll change your mind very quickly.

3)      It’s your own stupid fault that you got in line behind the contractor who was ordering enough cabinets to fill a large UHaul and, no, you may not sue IKEA for any emotional trauma that you’ve incurred during this visit.

Lastly, I learned that you really should get breakfast in the cafeteria before getting in line in the Kitchens department because, with all the standing and waiting and punching in of codes and filling out of forms, it is very likely that you will starve to death in the process.

Back downstairs at furniture pick-up, at ONE-FRIGGIN-THIRTY in the afternoon, my godsend of a husband greeted me with a very sticky toddler and what was left of a six-pack of fresh cinnamon buns, which I promptly inhaled (the buns, not the child). And then we let Christopher run loose and smear his cinnamon-glazed hands all over the fancy leather couches while we waited for our cabinets because, screw you, IKEA.

And then we went home and took a nap, instead of heading out to the Home Depot as we had originally planned, because we just couldn’t face another store. The end.

But not quite. Because we still have to do the actual remodeling part of the whole project. Which Michael will start this weekend while I am in Boston taking in a play and enjoying a fancy dinner.

Halloween

I am not a creative type. At all. Therefore I have never in my life come up with an original Halloween costume idea. From ages 4 to 10 I was some version of Princess Leia. Not being a Star Wars fan even then, I have to imagine that it was the ‘princess’ part that appealed to me. After that I was a punk rock version of Madonna for a few years. In college I worked as a cocktail waitress in a nightclub, and despite my protests and complaints I was still required to dress up for our annual Halloween party. My costume was always something thrown together last minute and modified for maximum sluttiness. Slutty biker chic. Slutty construction worker. Slutty schoolgirl. I was not above sacrificing my dignity for a few good tips. Once I dressed up as Roller Girl (from Boogie Nights) for a party. Semi-creative and different. However, I’ve since learned that alcohol and roller skates are not a good combination.

And so my son is cursed with a mother who dresses him up in boring, store bought costumes. Last year he was a chicken from Old Navy. This year he was a Giraffe from the Osh Kosh outlet. Pathetic, I know. But unless one of you more creative and crafty types is offering to come up with a costume idea for next year AND whip that costume up from scratch, store bought it shall be.

On Friday we took our little giraffe out to a party at my friend’s office.

 

As you can see, he was thoroughly enjoying himself. He is so very much my child in this respect.

Last night, rather than go trick-or-treating in my parent’s much more kid-friendly neighborhood, we opted to stay home and give out candy. Judging from the way he avoided any and all social interaction at the Halloween party, I could only assume that trick-or-treating would more or less be Christopher clinging to me and burying his head in my shoulder while I collected the candy. Instead we stayed home, where Christopher clung to me and buried his head in my shoulder while I handed out candy.

We live on a street that is not very accessible unless you really, really like walking, so we only got twenty or so trick-or-treaters. Mostly we just hung out and ate candy while he protested being dressed up like a so-called giraffe, or as one trick-or-treater accurately pointed out when her friend inquired about his costume, “a baby in yellow polka dotted pajamas”.

   

Thomas the Effing Tank Engine

Few things in my life have been more frustrating and overwhelming than registering for wedding gifts. At the time we were living in a small apartment and were not planning on buying a house until at least a year after the wedding, so not only did I have no idea what we would need or what colors would match in our future bathroom, but I had no idea where I was going to put everything until then.

I browsed the internet, made a small list, and off to the store we went. Simple enough, I thought. But no. Suddenly Michael - the same man who, theoretically, could eat off of Styrofoam plates and sleep on hand-me-down Strawberry Shortcake sheets for years without even noticing - had developed strong opinions on dinnerware and linens and took a firm stance on hard anodized cookware over stainless steel. The dinnerware that I picked out was ‘too girly’, the sheets were cotton and he preferred flannel, and he insisted that we needed to register for over $700 worth of Calphalon cookware (a decision that I have yet to forgive him for because the word ‘hate’ doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel about those pans) even though we already had a full set of pots and pans that were perfectly fine.

If those scanner guns could be used as weapons we would have killed each other right there in the Housewares department of Macys.

Well, I’ve come to find out that there’s nothing to make you long for the ease and simplicity of the wedding registry like the world of children’s toys.

My cousin, who is 3, brought with him on vacation a set of Thomas trains that Christopher immediately recognized (“TOMMY!!!”), confiscated and was obsessed with all damn week. I had no idea that Christopher even knew who Thomas was. This is what I get for using TV as a babysitter when I find it physically impossible to drag my ass out of bed at seven in the morning. My son has since developed a severe Thomas fixation just in time to make this the Christmas Season from Hell. And while I’m glad that he’s finally showing interest in something not located in my kitchen cabinets, couldn’t he have picked something a little more my speed like Play-Doh or bubbles? I’m pretty good with bubbles.

After we got home I decided to look on EBay for some Thomas trains. And I found them. Not only trains but books and DVD’s and track sets and play sets and $350 train tables and sleeping bags and sheets and Halloween costumes and ride-on vehicles and an airport and a water tower and a rescue hospital and tunnels and bridges. And that was just the first page. I didn’t get much further because my head exploded and I had to go lie down.

I abandoned EBay for Amazon and discovered that Thomas has friends. And his friends have friends. Some of his friends are ‘retired’. Also, Thomas can be battery operated or wooden or die-cast or Take Along. And I have no idea what any of that means other than the fact that I could spend roughly the equivalent of tuition for a 4-year education at an ivy league school on this stuff and still not scratch the surface of the Thomas empire. All I want is a friggin train, people!

Thankfully Christopher is still young enough that I can pass off the IKEA knockoff track set, complete with trains for $14.99, as the real thing. And hopefully by next year I will have figured out what the difference is between the die-cast Thomas and the wooden Thomas (besides metal vs. wood, obviously) and why one is better than the other and avoid spending a jillion dollars one the set that is so clearly the wrong one and is not compatible with any of the cool accessories like the circus set and the aquarium, thus ruining my son’s Christmas because I am a 31-year-old woman who can’t figure out a simple thing like a child’s train set.

Grandma Knows Best

Well, it turns out that all of the stress over what to pack was a complete waste of time because all I really needed was a raincoat. And earplugs.

It rained non-stop from the minute we left until we hit the Connecticut state line nine days later. Which was one day earlier than we planned to leave, but when you’re trapped indoors with nothing to do but watch TV and play Yahtzee for nine straight days in a town where the nearest Dunkin Donuts is a 25 mile ride and you actually get in your car and drive to the Dunkin Donuts just for SOMETHING to do – well, by Saturday we were more than ready to return to this overcrowded strip-mall of a place that we call home. 

Remember when I said that I was going away for a week of “rest, relaxation and outlet shopping”, complete with babysitting? Yeah. I was a bit off. I did manage to do some outlet shopping and scored a coat at the Gap for $9. And Michael and I did get to go to the movies by ourselves to see Elizabethtown. And I finished The Kite Runner (excellent, by the way) in record time. So it wasn’t a total loss. But the rest, relaxation and babysitting? Didn’t exactly turn out as I’d hoped.

First of all, keeping a child entertained indoors for one day is hard enough. When there are eighteen people in a house and only one of them wants to watch Sesame Street, well, it’s too bad that Big Bird doesn’t play for the Yankees because that would’ve been the only way that Christopher would’ve gotten to watch TV. And Yahtzee can get pretty aggravating when one of the players keeps trying to eat the dice. We brought some toys with us but there was a pool table and a vacuum cleaner and a kitchen filled with drawers of knives and spoons and, my god, my kid sure does love the kitchen. So, toys? Boring! And there was a staircase, and at the top of it a door. A door which Everyone. Constantly. Forgot. to. Shut! And nine days of trying to stop my son from pushing the vacuum down the stairs and yelling, “Get out of the kitchen!”, “Put the knife down!”, and “Get away from the stairs!” over and over and over again, was enough to make me want to toss myself down the stairs. 

And then there was bedtime …

(Pause while I weep into my hands) 

So we all know that Christopher hates to go to bed (“we all” being myself, Michael, the internet and the neighbors, and, thanks to this 'vacation', my extended family), and that he expresses that hatred by screaming at the top of his lungs for longish intervals and throwing everything out of his crib (but thankfully not climbing out of his crib anymore. For the time being.) We’ve kind of gotten used to it and the screaming usually stops after five or so minutes. He’s not scared or hurt or having attachment issues, he just knows that whatever is going on outside his room is a lot more fun than what’s going on inside his room and he wants to be part of it. It doesn’t matter if it’s just sitting around and watching it rain or, infinitely more boring, watching baseball – he wants a piece of the action. 

By bedtime on night one, we knew that there wasn’t a chance in hell that he was going down easily. He cried for about 3 seconds before grandparents, aunts and uncles all offered up their opinions on the subject. (My favorite piece of advice was from my grandmother: “That child is screaming because you won’t give him what he wants. Why don’t you just give him what he wants?”) Others, in that subtle, passive-aggressive way, basically called me a heartless bitch of a parent (“When my kids were young I couldn’t stand to hear them cry. I just don’t have the heart for that.”) I believe another conversation went like this:

Random Relative: “Let him stay up and play with the other kids. He’ll eventually tire out and go to sleep.”
Me: “No, he won’t.”
Random Relative: “Oh, yes he will. He’s just excited. He wants to play. He’ll be asleep in an hour.”
Me: “No, he won’t.”

And of course I gave in because if one more person remarked, “Wow, that kid has got some lungs on him” I was apt to punch them. That was around 8 o’clock. The rest of the kids (all older and, just to spite me, perfect sleepers) went to bed between 10 and 11. The adults went to bed around midnight. At one in the morning everyone was fast asleep – except for Christopher and me. And thus the challenge became putting him to sleep without waking the whole house up. The whole house that, in my slightly resentful and bitter opinion, kind of deserved to be woken up because they talked me into this situation, damn them!   

Most mornings he was up by 6 a.m. and most nights he went screeching off to bed around 11. And on the really fun nights he woke up at 3 a.m. and wanted nothing other than to go downstairs and play. Eventually we had to move to a room in the basement because when your child wakes up at 3 in the morning in a house where sixteen other people are fast asleep and he wants to play pool, your choices are basically to muffle his screams with a pillow (thank god for my husband or I might have) or take my grandmothers advice and let him wander around in the dark wielding a pool cue.

Vacation

I am off to Vermont for a week of rest, relaxation and outlet shopping. I have no idea what to pack because it’s October and I’m sitting here in flip-flops and a tank top and it’s in the high 70’s outside. Not that I’m complaining, it just complicates my already severe over-packing issues. Luckily we are driving so I’m only limited to how much I can squeeze into the back of the truck. See, having a big, obnoxious SUV isn’t all that bad – it may cost us $9,000 in gas to get there but I could bring the entire contents of my closet if necessary.

We are renting a house with a whole lot of family, which translates to ‘free childcare for a week’. There’s nothing like kicking back and watching 12 consecutive hours of VH1 while other people willingly care for your child. My grandfather – God bless his patient heart – actually enjoys helping Christopher strap and unstrap the seat belt on his portable high-chair over and over and over again. If it makes the man happy, who am I to argue?

Have a good week!

One day. One child. One half of the room.

7 a.m.:

   

7 p.m.:*

 

*Toys missing from second set of photographs have been relocated to the kitchen, bathroom, staircase, dog's bed, laundry room, deck, cabinets, freezer, Tupperware drawer and upstairs hallway.

No wonder I never have any time to do anything. I'm too busy cleaning.

The Plan

I spent last Friday morning sitting in the doctor’s office (not the waiting room but his actual office, complete with desk, computer, ass-numbing chairs and a wall full of degrees), awaiting the arrival of His Medicalness and trying to concentrate on an article in Time magazine, which was not easy what with the pounding heartbeat and the little voice in the back of my head constantly whispering, “Run. Run now! Before it’s too late!”

Hours and hours later (when calculated using waiting room time) the doc arrived, glanced over my chart, and tried to figure out who the hell I was and what I was doing sitting across the desk from him.

After stating my purpose we went over the routine questions:

Normal cycles? Check. Ovulation? Check. Previous pregnancy? Check. Diagnosis: Subfertility. Translation: Doesn’t get pregnant easily. Co-pay: $20.

Hell, I could’ve told me that and saved the twenty bucks. 

After giving me my non-diagnosis diagnosis, the doc asked, “So, what would you like to do about this?”

Um, I’d like you to perform a pregnancy charm on me? Or perhaps you could test the water at my house, because all of the other women in my neighborhood seem to be getting pregnant? IF I HAD AN ANSWER TO THAT QUESTION I WOULDN”T BE HERE, NOW WOULD I? Jackass.

And then we came up with The Plan.

The Plan* is:

1.      Give husband strict orders to knock me up THIS month.

2.      Stop kidding self and move on to step 3.

3.      Ingest mass quantities of Motrin, Valium, Ativan, and Cuervo 1800, as recommended by doctor, and report for ‘totally unnecessary but just in-case’ HSG.

4.      Send husband off to clinic for semen analysis.

5.      Contemplate the fairness of the female test vs. male test and politely request that nurse at clinic stick husband with a few needles or something just to even up the score a bit.

6.      Recommence with the intercourse for a few months.

7.      Realize that when the doctor stated that many women become pregnant following an HSG, he was talking about other women, (like the ones that actually needed the test in the first place?), not you.

8.      Recommence with the complaining and the tequila drinking.

9.      Watch as twits like Britney Spears and her unemployed and perpetually stoned, deadbeat dad of a husband conceive yet another child (Kevin: 4. Brit: 2) and bitch to anyone who will listen because, what the fuck?  (If you’re wondering if I think that I’m somehow better that Britney, let me explain something to you: Yes. Yes, I do.)

10. Purchase new shoes (some people drink, some buy shoes. Me? I do both).

11. Move on to IUI’s.

* I took the liberty of slightly revising the plan. The doc said nothing about Valium. And, if I recall correctly, he also said nothing about a pap smear, but he was nice enough to throw one in there anyways.

In other news, the project that I was on for work - you know, the one that was preventing me from keeping you up to date on my every thought and action? It’s been cancelled. CANCELLED! I can’t say for certain why, but I suspect that someone eventually figured out they were paying a bajillion dollars to watch me contemplate my shoes. And really, that money could be better spent on other things. Like computers.

So I’m back (now with medical jargon!) and looking for new excuses for being too lazy to post. So far I’ve come up with 1) too busy watching the new season of TV, 2) trying to figure out what the hell happened to Scrubs, and also why the writers of Lost won’t just give me a little satisfaction, damn them! and 3) going to Boston for an all-girls weekend of shameless indulgence in all things alcoholic and retail (you know, to practice for steps 8 and 10 of The Plan).