Month: January 2014

*New Catchy Title*

I’m CMV-negative, so Mr. Happy Pants, a 6’4″, 205-lb, atheist, mechanical engineering postdoc who said this in his donor profile

What life lessons would you hope to pass on to your own child one day?

Work hard. Read voraciously. Be well rounded and always improve your skills in some area. Ignore television at any cost; learn to resist socialization, advertising, and propaganda; eat whole foods. Go to the mountains and the desert. Cultivate a respect for evidence and develop the power of accurate observation. Learn mathematics and calibrate your standard of “knowing” in everyday life against the mathematical one.

is out.

I’m sad about it. I wanted to have Mr. Happy Pants’ babies. To be honest, I wanted Mr. Happy Pants to be my husband.

Now I’m leaning towards a grad student in systems engineering who’s summited Kilimanjaro. His parenting philosophy doesn’t make me swoon like Mr. HP’s, and neither babykilimanjaro.com nor babysystemsengineer.com do anything for me, but he’s CMV-negative.

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I’m not making the decision to have a child on my own out of fear, per se, but my sense of urgency is renewed when a 41-year-old friend goes in for her 7-week appointment and they can’t find the baby’s heartbeat.

I want this. If I wait too long, it may not happen. Or it may happen and then no heartbeat.

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My period comes on like a earthquake. Out to dinner with friends, I find myself pressing on the flesh under my belly button and rocking side to side. By the time I get home, my cramps are the worst I can ever remember. I climb onto my bed, prop myself on my elbows and knees, and jam a heating pad against my uterus. I moan and sway there for long time. The situation is not improving. A hot bath helps, but damn if it isn’t 90 minutes before the ibuprofen starts to kick in and the tremors subside. Is my womb trying to prepare me for childbirth?

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Last visit, the clinic told me to come in for a baseline ultrasound on Day 1, 2, or 3 of my cycle. I’m led to a dimly lit room with black and white photos of cherubic babies on the walls. The nurse’s assistant tells me to undress from the waist down, hop up on the table, and cover myself with the drape. I go to the restroom and remove my tampon first. Worried that I’ll bleed on their table, I’m relieved to find one of these under the drape:

Minus adorable wall-eyed puppy.
Minus adorable wall-eyed puppy.

The nurse enters the room and tells me to put my feet in the stirrups. She slides a lubey wand up-in. My ovaries—at least that’s what she says they are—appear on a grainy screen. “There’s the right one… aaaaand left. Beautiful,” she says.

I guess that bodes well. Now I just have to order sperm.

I’m Crying and Dying Because of This Budweiser Commercial

See, that puppy just wants to be with her horsey best friend and even goes through the RAIN to say hi, and that hot rancher just keeps takin her back (sigh—ha ha), and the puppy lady is like *sorry about that*… *again*, and *hey, quit escapin under the fence!*, and then the puppy gets adopted and put in that fancy car, but that puppy is not a fancy car city type, she’s a *ranch dog*, and that Clydesdale does the horse equivalent of running through a crowded airport to stop a loved one from boarding a plane for that internship in Paris because it LOVES that puppy, and it jumps over that fence RIGHT AT THE SWELL OF THE SONG, and its posse is all *Yo back that ass up, city slicker*, and the city slicker’s like WHOA WTF, and the puppy goes back to the hot rancher and her horsey BFF, and I’ve watched it seven times.

Eight times.

OK, eleven times.

Fayshun Quest

Let’s talk about fashion, because we haven’t done that in awhile.

You may or may not have followed along in my recent quest.

I first went to several discount stores: Ross Dress for Less, TJ Maxx, etc. It was not going well.

Eventually, I ended up at Macy’s, which seemed to be no better. 

  The only half-decent ones I found were like 160 bucks. No. Absolutely not.

I decided to head to other department stores.

She was in a nylon track suit, no less!

Like this but red.
Like this but red. It was delightful.

My gay husband Paul reminded me that Gypsy Rose Lee, too, wore tassels. That was a good point. I told him I’d buy a tassel-less purse and some sassy pasties.

Seriously, gross.

Indeed, there were a number of problems with that purse.

Finally, I hit Sears--yes, Sears--and the first one I picked up was from a designer with the same name as my sister. Fate.

purse purchased

You may be wondering why I needed boots, given that last year I bought tall boots and short boots. Well. The tall boots, which I loved so much, are wicked uncomfortable. They just barely zip around my calves. It's like wearing calf-tourniquets all day. Plus, as I mentioned, they're so tall, the tops dig into my inner thigh fat. So I never wear them.

I loved the short boots and used to wear them all the time. Used to.

See, Violet does this thing when she's nervous. She collects my shoes and bras. Doesn't chew them; just puts them in her bed or snuggles with them on the couch. I often come home from work to find a shoe, a slipper, a flip-flop, and/or a brassiere next to a warm spot on the chaise.

Look closely at the top right and bottom left. You can see her shadow against the wall.
Look closely at the top right and bottom left. You can see her shadow against the wall.

IMG_8235

Annoying to have to go around the house, gather my footwear, and toss my undergarments back in the hamper, but I can't get mad at her because

IMG_7472
she soooooooo cuuuuuuuuuuuute.

And besides, she never chewed them.

IMG_7642
MOTHERF

She must've been real nervous that day. So long, short boots.

The good news is, I went to DSW and found the same exact ones, except they didn't have them in brown, so I bought black. Fine, since I can't wear my black tall boots anyway because torture.

But now I need brown boots. Maybe brown tall boots? That don't boa-constrict or jam themselves into my laygs?

I'm exhausted just thinking about it.

Also, Kate told me to buy

Old Navy t-shirts
Old Navy t-shirts

in a variety of colors, you know, for layering with cardigans/jackets/whatnot. So I did.

...It's possible I've done less of the layering and more of the just wearing them with jeans and calling it a day.

Also, I haven't worn a skirt yet this school year.

<cowers, covers head>

First Appointment*

*not counting Duke Fertility, which was kind of a shitty experience

1. I only cry twice (once bc Feelings, and once when they draw blood for the infectious disease screening).

2. The nurse takes my height and weight by saying, “How tall are you, and how much do you weigh?” That’s cool.

3. Then she says, “You’re here alone?” I reply in the affirmative, and as if to explain the question, she says, “OK, sometimes the husband is coming in from another direction.” (ahem—hetero-normative!!, and also, See #1.)

4. A 38-year-old woman’s chance of conception, when trying, is 12%. With drugs, it can go up to 20%.

5. My insurance covers blood tests but maybe-probably not ultrasounds, insemination, and such because I’m using donor sperm. It would, definitely, cover all of that for 3 cycles if I were using a husband’s. (Read: discrimination.) The financial person says she’ll call BlueCross/BlueShield and let me know what she finds out.

6. The doc says he’d guess I’ve been exposed to CMV (a virus that can cause birth defects) because I hang around germ-monsters for a living, but the blood test results will be back on Friday. If, by some random chance, I’m CMV-negative, I’ll have to choose another donor because Mr. Happy Pants is CMV-positive. Guess I’ll wait to set up the new blog because I don’t want to jinx it by registering babyhappypants.com.

7. As of today, a real thing I’ve uttered to another person: “I’ve been told I have a tiny cervix.”

8. I could already pass for 4 months pregnant any day of the fucking week.

#nofilter #hahahajk #allthefilters
#nofilter #hahahajk #allthefilters

[Edit: After a commenter told me to “stop it”, I realized that it sounds like I’m putting myself down here. I’m not. I think I look pregnant, but it’s kind of cute, no?]

9. My iPhone app tells me I’ll ovulate on Valentine’s Day, which I think is a really sweet gesture on my ovaries’ part. But turns out the druggy drugs they’ll give me will make me ovulate whenever we say Go. So.

Stranger Danger

I don’t really talk to strangers much. Maybe because I have some social anxiety that prevents it. Maybe because I learned about Stranger Danger when I was kid—you remember: mustachioed guy with Mars bars offering rides home in his windowless van.

But one place I always found it easy to strike up conversations with people I didn’t know was the dog park. I used to go there all the time when my dogs were younger, and something about being in a fenced-in space watching these lovable beings running around, and slobbering, and pooping, makes people want to share with others about how their specific dog runs around, and slobbers, and poops.

So one day, I was chatting with a stranger—I’m sure—about the minutiae of our dogs’ bowel movements, when somehow we got off on a different topic. We started talking about creamsicles. You know what those are, right?

orange-creamsicle-pop
Orange popsicles with a vanilla center.

I don’t know about you, but when I was a kid and I’d hear popsicles, I’d be like, “Ooooh!” but if they turned out to be creamsicles, I was all

fresh prince running man

Good god. They were the best.

Anyway, this particular stranger said, “You know, Arby’s has a creamsicle milkshake.”

STOP.

WUT.

Now I was at the dog park in Carrboro when this happened, and if you’ve ever been there, you know there’s an Arby’s, like, a quarter of a mile away. And I was like, Fuuuuuuuuuuuck this place—I’m out. I loaded up my dogs and headed for the drive-thru.

I wasn’t familiar with Arby’s menu—I mean, is anybody? Does ANYBODY go to Arby’s? Be honest, how many of you have been to Arby’s in the last month?

No, it’s definitely a nationwide drug front.

Anyway, I got some kind of sandwich and some fries—you know to balance out the meal—and the motherfucking creamsicle milkshake.

arby's orange cream shake

I only ate about half the sandwich and half the fries because they were just OK, but when I tell you the creamsicle milkshake… was a creamsicle milkshake—listen, it was a creamsicle… but also a milkshake. I was in dire ice cream headache pain but could not stop slurping it down. Thing was gone in 2½ minutes.

I lived in Hillsborough at the time, so I went home, dropped the dogs off, and headed to Durham to go out for the night. So I was on I-85 headed east when the stomach cramp hit me. It was one of those that makes you kind of stand up out of your seat, as if you might be able to get away from it?

And I was scared because I was on that stretch of highway between Hillsborough and Durham where there are no exits whatsoever. Hoping that the cramp was a one-off, I settled back into my seat, but alas. Alas! My guts started convulsing inside me. I hit the gas pedal. I needed to make it to Route 70, and I needed to do a very rude thing indeed to some poor gas station’s bathroom. I sped towards Durham, but it became VERY clear VERY soon that I was just not. going. to make it.

And that’s a weird moment, you know? When you realize that in a very short time you’re going to be a person who has shat in the woods next to the highway.

For the rest of your life.

You can’t un-become that person.

Forever and ever, if you find yourself in a game of I Never, and somebody says, “I’ve never dropped a roadside deuce,” you’re going to have to drink. It’s very humbling.

But I didn’t really have time to consider what was happening. I pulled off the interstate, grabbed some napkins from the Arby’s bag still in the front seat, and sprinted—as much as one can sprint while squeezing her ass cheeks together—into the woods.

Now I grew up in the country, just down yonder from Mr. Proffitt’s cattle farm, so I know of which I’m about to speak. When I say what came out of my body was a cowpie, I mean, in circumference, height, volume, consistency, everything—

’twas a cow pie.

Like, have you ever taken a shit so big that, when you stood up, you were off-balance? That’s how it was. Like all my organs had shifted to make room for it and now they had to slide back into place.

I staggered back to my car and made it home, and everything was totally fine—I didn’t end up in the ER or anything–but the take-away, of course, is that Stranger Danger is not always a dude in a van with candy. Sometimes it’s a friendly person at the dog park with advice about fast food.

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1,700 Miles with Dad

Dad and I drove to Massachusetts and back for Christmas. You’re welcome.

Dad: (apropos of I don’t know what) I am one clever son of a bitch.

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Dad: (recalling an acquaintance) What was her name? Siduri? No, that was the barmaid from Gilgamesh.

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munchies-cheese-fix
Dad: Stuff is fuckin delicious.

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Dad: (on the trip north) My ass hurts. Not the ass. The muscles underneath the ass. The ass muscles.

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Dad: Hard to know who to root for. I guess I’m rooting for the Buddhists.

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Dad: You and I could start a dog farm!

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Dad: (digging in his coat pocket, where he has stowed a few, loose) Care for a ginger snap?

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Dad: I pressed the button for water and instead the machine gave me something disgusting, like root beer. Who drinks root beer? You like root beer?
Me: Sure.
Dad: Well, de gustibus no est disputandum. That means “Carthage must be destroyed”. No, just kidding.

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My 4-year-old niece: An M&M is a dead gumdrop.
Dad: That’s poetic. Metaphor.

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Dad: (after the waitress set my steak in front of me and headed back to the kitchen) What’d she say?
Me: Your liver’s coming out.
Dad: That sounds serious.

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Dad: (at Starbucks) Large black coffee. None of their hippie concoctions.

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Dad: (on the trip south) My ass hurts. Not the ass. The bones and joints underneath the ass.

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Dad: I don’t go to Mummy’s dentist. I don’t like Mummy’s dentist. She’s all smiley and nice.

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Dad: I’m glad I showered and shaved before we ran into your friend. That way she didn’t go around saying, “I saw Amy Scott with her derelict father.”