Today was a very quiet and sad day, so the quiet was good as I didn't have to slap a smile on my face and pretend my heart didn't hurt.
I learned this morning that my Auntie Monica (who is actually my grandfather's cousin so...my third cousin?) passed away yesterday.
Our family is very sparse and of the few we have....simply put, don't seem to do the whole family thing anyway. Auntie Monica and I were friends though. She was a wonderful woman, but I was a really sucky friend to her. She's been living in tiny room in a nursing home since she broke her hip, and the last time I saw her she told me she knew wasn't going back home again. I told her I'd be back the next week, but the next week Daniel had a sniffle, not even a cold, but her health wasn;'t well and I didn't want her catching anything we brought in. The next week was the same, and the week after I had allergies that I couldn't be sure wasn't the beginning of a cold, and then I had surgery and looked like shit for so long that there was no way I was going to drop past and freak her old lady shit out. By the time my face had healed enough, I needed more surgery, and then more again....but they're all just excuses when really, the Sunday habit was broken before it even started as I'd usually remember I'd meant to go visit her in the middle of the night the following day.
Her daughter (and my godmother, who used to be a nun and who is now a cop. For reals) called today, and in speaking of her mother, told me that Auntie Monica knew I was busy and understood I couldn't come by. But I could have. I should have made the time instead of waiting for it to magically appear.
She also told me that her mum was confused a lot so when she'd look at the photos I sent of Daniel, of her with him in April last year, she'd speak of our visit like it was only yesterday.
It doesn't make me feel any better though, that she thought we'd just been, because I should have given her a lot more memories than just those few, and I should have given myself more memories of her.
Today was another day where I woke up to the thought that it might be nice to go and see her, but if she hadn't died, the truth is I doubt I would have made it to see her anyway.
We got each other though? Regardless of the sporadic visits and the rather huge age gap.
It hurts to think about never getting another chance to be as good a friend to her as she was to me are getting annoying, , and even more when I think about Daniel growing up without knowing her.
I know she's still with me though, by my side, even though I can't see her.
Which is what Auntie Monica told me after my father had died, and are the words that saved me from drowning in grief.
As much as I didn't see her enough, I don't know how I'm going to be with never seeing her again.
Day (and I had to count on my fingers to work this out) five of Synarel and apart from an attack of the major fatigues on day one, so far so good.
My understanding of this drug is that while its role is to scare your ovaries into playing possum, its initial effect is a "flare" in ovarian activity, which would explain the initial fatigue and the irritating feeling that my entire self existed soley to drag around the enormous undercarriage I felt I was suddenly sporting.
Which is WAY more than you needed to know about me.
Now I'm entering the dried Up Old Prune phase of the drug's effect, so am conflicted as to whether I'd rather be playing bingo or lawn bowls. Side effects are limited to feeling fluttery on the inside, like my heart is quivering instead of beating, fearing the atrophy of the same undercarriage that felt SO LARGE the other day, and having my skin feel weird below the surface. My scalp tingles too, the freak me out factor of sais being surpassed only by my fear that it will only get worse.
And now for an aside which will give me the opportunity for a whinge: if you know me at all, you'd also know that my hair has been falling out for around six or seven years, so hair tingles freak my aforementioned shit right out. It's left me with a receding hairline when women aren't meant to ever lose their hairline, they're only supposed to thin all over the top of their heads. Which I also have, as well profuse hair loss on the temporal region that was so severe it needed micrografting. OHYESI'MSO GORGEOUS.
My hairloss has, in all honestly, almost destroyed my self esteem.
The MASSIVE amount of hair I lost three months after Daniel was born has never replaced itself, and as I'm one of the lucky ducks who loses hair after a general anaesthetic, I had three big sheds last year too, so my hair is looking pretty fucking scary right now. The last anaesthetic I had was in July, so following the three three three rule (three months after the event your hair will fall and will continue to do so for three months, after which it appears dormant for another three, which is when you start noting the regrowth) anyone normal person would now be coming out of the apparent dormant phase and would be noticing the beginnings of singnifcant regrowth. I, however, am experiencing another shed that is related to I Don't Know What The Eff, which commenced some time in December. The post partum shedding did me a fabor though, and made me realise that rather than being freaked out about the amount of hair I was losing, I needed to appreciate the hair I had left. I mean, if I had as much hair now as I did three years ago, I'd be stoked, but three years ago I was fuh-reaking out about my hair! my god! etc. That's not to say that my hair (or lack of) is not the thing that affects me most of all. It is. I hate anyone looking at me, so I hate leaving the house because every day is a bad hair day and I feel like everyone is looking at me, or more specifically, my patchy hiarline - but if I let that fear change my behaviour, I'd never leave the house at all and additionally, I'd never stop crying. My job - and my personality - requires that I interact with people regularly, and while the question is always on my mind "can they see my bald patches?" , if they can, they probably think I can't because I always appear to be cool and confident and positively hirsute.
ANYWAY
That's the synarel update. It's going well, and the major symptom is that it makes me talk about mah bald spots.
Probably because the scalp tingling is like a constant reminder that my follicles are like time bombs.
Fortunately, the inner heart trembling feeling isn't freaking me out, which is amazing considering that only a couple or four years ago, I had panic attacks that were both heralded and caused by this exact same feeling.
I've come a long way, baby.
And after owning my current mobile phone for, like, almost two years, I've finally worked out how to email image and video files from it to myself.
Hollie just hangs around in his arms like someone has removed her skeleton and her independent thought patterns. Daniel carries her around until he realises that cat fur stuck to his hands freaks him out.
Today was a bit of a red letter day for daniel too, as he went to the gym creche this morning wearing a pair of big boy pants ("BIH BAH PAHS!") under his jeans.
I'm totally not pushing the little guy into being toilet trained. When he turned two, I began removing his nappy when we were home. He never had an accident, but he also hung on until nap and bed times. Then I began putting on DVDs and he'd sit there all day mindlessly peeing and pooping until I realised that, as impressed as I was at all the potties full of varying excrements, he wasn't really learning anything, so on went the big boy pants. Daniel had one (ONE!) accident before realising, "Ack! Feels icky!", and that he could pee in the potty if he took his pants off first. Most often, I need to help him, but once or twice he's surprised me by walking proudly through the house, pantsless and carrying a potty full of wee to the bathroom for disposal.
He's been getting mixed messages though when it comes to being either fully trained or even just a little more trained than he already is, as he wears pullups at daycare, nappies or pullups when we go out, and real underwear when we're at home. To see if he's ready to take it further, I really need to give him some consistency, and I need to trust him because he's showing me he's ready by knowing the difference between weeing willy nilly (no pun intended) when wearing one thing, and controlling his weeing when wearing another.
Toilet "training" suggests his toileting is guided by my wants. That I'm training him. It's not and I'm not. If anything, he's training me. I've simply explained things to him and provided the opportunity, and he's showing me he's ready to make some changes to what he's always known.
His (facist) daycare centre want him to be totally trained before I can deliver him to them in underwear, which I think is ridiculous. How is he supposed to learn how to be fully dry if twice a week he's wearing pullups that he pees in?
It's annoying as I pay them to care for my child, and because money is exchanged, I should be able to tell them "this is how it is". it's not like they're doing me a favour by volunteering their time, you know? Their argument is that it's a hygiene issue, and mine is that if I can hear Daniel say "weewee, pawtee!", then because it's their job to look after Daniel, they should be listening for him to tell them too, instead of telling me it's a hygiene issue that I need to be aware of.
I figure that if he has an accident, it's their issue because Daniel is dry 100% of the time when at home.
ON the other hand, the gym creche = LOVE! Unlike his daycare who see this time as being problematic, they were happy for Daniel and his underpanted state - and they were really busy this morning too, wiht three of them and about a billion kids milling around. He was with them for around 45 minutes and they took time out to take him to the toilet, and kept an eye out for any signs he might want to go again. I took him again as we were leaving, and he got all excited like he had done with them ("WEEWEE!! TOYWEE!!") even though he didn't actually do anything either time he was there.
In the end, dude was dry for almost four hours as his nappy came off at 9am this morning, and we went to the gym at 11. We nipped in to the store at around noon, and got home sometime after 12.30, which is when the dude sprung a leak. We were at the front door too, and his potty was only five feet away and on the other side.
I reckon the morning out was a success though, not a failure, because seriously, four hours dry? Even I can't do that.
I had to go into the city today so the plan was to catch the train in and make a day of it by not only getting my bands adjusted, but by taking Daniel to the museum for a look at the freaky eyed stuffed animals (Daniel, looking at an elephant: "MOO COW! aibee: "it sure is, baby"). Then I thought we'd head down to the river for a run around in the park before heading back up the hill for some lunch at that oudoor cafe. I figured on two trains home rather than just the one because in Daniel's world, if there's anything better than being in a goddamn train, it's being in a fuckload of the fuckers.
So that's what we did today. We took the train and then we walked all over the freakin city, then we walked to the train station, took a train to WAY past our regular station, caught the train back again, and got off at a different station than our usual because life is all about variety.
And I am some kind of hard ass because I did all this despite the fact that, seconds before walking out the front door this morning, I kicked the fucking thing SO HARD that I think I broke my toe.
It was swollen when we left, and blue and swollen by the time we got home. Then I walked through the kitchen and COMPLETELY fucked my already injured toe up by kicking I don't know what the fuck or how the fuck it came to be in my path. My entire foot is now swollen and my toe is blue on top with black underneath bits.
**warning, gross out alert**
. . . . . . .
After two years (TWO! YEARS!) of post baby swollen, my feet finally and only recently returned to their pre pregnancy dainty fairy state, and here I am posting a photo and admitting ownership of this ugly ass foot. I'm obviously insane, and no doubt you are all "My GOD that girl has NASTY feet". Also, injuries may not appear as awesome on these pages as they do in real life because in real life, that little piggy is way fucked up.
In other semi-related news, birdman was out front of the museum.
And he was still there when we left an hour later.
Okay, all you can see is a nondescript, albeit writhing, blur in the centre of the screen. Lemme paint you a picture: it's a man and he's covered in pigeons. COVERED. IN. Although, most surprisingly, he did not appear to be covered in pigeon poop.
My bloods are done and I'll likely be starting Synarel this evening. It's a hormone suppressing nasal spray so say hello, instant menopause! which should be a blast.
My last experience with Synarel was probably not an accurate one in re its effects, seeings as how I was already pregnant with the Thomas The Tank Engine pyjama clad noisemaker sitting on the floor next to me, so I have no idea what to really expect this time. Unless of course I'm already pregnant again, in which case I know exactly what to expect, the primary symptom being rapidly increasing norkitude, followed closely by the entire world massively ramping up its inherent ability to annoy me.
Just so we're clear, a pregnancy now would be HIGHLY (so HIGHLY that if there were a bigger caps lock, I'd be using it before making it bold, italic and underlined) unlikely, especially considering I did four pregnancy tests throughout January because my uterus was making weird ass complaints and my hormones were making me complain. A lot. None of the tests were positive (which, surprise me not, fate!) but I sure wish someone had sent my bitchy AND teary (all at once, so if you piss me off, I promptly chew you a MASSIVE new asshole before crying great heaving sobs because maybe you don't like me anymore. FUN!) hormones and my gas making abilities the memo.
ANYWAY, I wasn't expecting to actually start start (as opposed to simply start) treatment until at least Wednesday, so not having planned a freak out for today vis a vis the process (pronounced with bunny ear air quotes) , I'm doing a fine job of worrying about the cost of all this instead.
There was so much to say the last time I approached an IVF cycle. This time around, I guess I reckon I've said it all before in my archives, circa January to April 2005. That stuff is way more entertaining than what it is now as with all the creative mothering going on for the past two years, any creative genius *coughcough* I once had has now been fully exchanged for what appears to be old chewing gum and sawdust.
The last time I was looking down the barrel of a Long Stimulation Regime there were so many feelings, while this time there only appears to be doing. I've done the work up, I've done the crazies, I'll be doing more blood tests, then I'll be doing the thing that replaces the wahoo, hanky panky stuff that usually leads to the baby making, then I'll be doing that weird progesterone thing, followed shortly by doing the pregnancy test thing which, all being well, will be followed by doing the whole not being able to touch my toes anymore thing all over again.
The other day's gasping inability to breathe made me assume it was terror depleting me of rational thought and oxygen, but I don't think I actually am terrified. Or even scared. That being said, it is safe to say I'm concerned about the process, but the outcome? May I'm splitting hairs, but I have concerns, but I'm not concerned about what happens once the whole shebang is past its Pee On A Stick phase.
The process is pretty fucking scary, y'all, even with the support of a partner and possibly your mother. People go nuts doing this, even if only for a discreet hormone induced period of time, and here I am, doing it not only alone but while also being the only support system Daniel knows.
I'm pretty scared about that because irrational thoughts and feelings are typical for any hormone shift, and this proposed hormone shift promises to be HUGE, not typical, and typically I get crabby and short tempered, and then I get hopeless and depressed, and then I get my period and I have a week of The Normal and then it all starts again. Which is what will happen in the following weeks but on a BIG scale. Kind of like throwing back a double espresso when what you're used to is a weak decaf, and while I'd like to think I'll be able to keep the crazy hidden, I'm also not delusional enough to assume I'm going to be able to cram that amount of crazy down for anyone.
Let's assume though, that I'm not incarcerated under suspicion of being responsible for the freshly buried bodies in the back yard over the next few weeks. Given my assumed liberty and associated freedom to birth another child outside of the Australian prison system, I have no qualms about my ability to cope with a change in our family stasis. Coping will happen, as it did with Daniel. My experience of that pregnancy followed (obviously, duh) by his arrival taught me that as much as we worry about what is to be, when it is, we do okay.
Or even better than.
Which is how I feel about the life we're leading now. Which is why I'm confident that this mission is a good thing.
I'm not at all blase about the impact another child will have on our lives though, regardless of how I sound. I do worry about Daniel's world being shat upon by the arrival of a squalling, screaming competitor to my undivided attention. When I think about giving up what we have now, the absolute privilege of being each others' one and only, the special bond an only child shares with its unpartnered mother, a lump comes to my throat. Those things are short term bonuses in a long term life, so shouldn't cloud any vision of the potential and probable long term gains of disrupting this personal nirvana.
Daniel stands to gain one of the best friends he could ever have. Granted, it's likely the road to that idyllic partnership will be paved with rivalry, jealousy and a multitude of hits, kicks, whacks, and punches, but it may also be these very things forging their relationship and strengthening their bond.
Additionally, being the only child of a sole parent is a bigass responsibility, especially so when that parent (me!) has little or no extended family support (the apparently invisible clan of other bees), and while there are many reasons why I'd like another child, Daniel's future security is a big motivating factor now.
I want him to have someone else besides me in his life, and I REALLY don't want him to feel that all I have is him.
The long term goal is a second for Daniel, and a side kick for each other. My long term goal is to relieve myself of any future regrets. Another child accompanying that specific goal will mean I've achieved even more than I could have ever hoped for.
Which is why I'm doing this for me. Because I rue so much of my life and because I can't imagine not at least trying for some of what I'd thought I'd have. I seem to be powered by regret so I know that in as short a time as a year, I'd be steeping in even more of it for not grabbing this time dependent opportunity with both hands and with my legs in the air.
Over on Parentdish, Linda's wondering why she wasn't counting down the seconds for her family to grow to its current proportions.
I have been counting down the seconds. I've been counting them down since Daniel was the naked, purple faced newborn I first met, and now that the seconds until Project Newbee begins are down from the multiple kajillion mark to approximately 350000, I'm as scared as shit. I've probably always been scared as shit, but now I'm open to admitting it to myself because, why not make life a miserable hunk of terrifed?
I feel alone. I feel lost. I feel like this is second best and because I'm all kinds of fucked up, I feel like I have to resort to a test tube with anonymous sperm because I am unacceptable and so, will always be unwanted.
Objectively, I know this is a crock of shit but subjective aibee is a pain in the ass.
My home phone never rings unless, of course, Daniel is napping and I am approximately ten minutes into catching a few zed's myself. Which is what just happened and which is why I'm here tapping out this grouch encrusted mini entry because when I answered the frickin' thing, no one was there. OF COURSE.
Reliable sources state that Daniel is, out of all the children filtering through workplace's creche facilities, the most Thomas The Tank Engine addicted, in that he goes from being pried from my person to happily sitting in a chair directly in front of the television and, if he has his way, about four inches from the screen, pointing at, naming, and counting off all the tank engines one by one about 0.4 seconds after the Thomas dvd is loaded in the player. In this mode, he has absolutely NO awareness that the outside world exists. It's kind of creepy.
Toilet training seemed to be going well, until I realised that Daniel was only peeing in the potty when a Thomas The Tank Engine extravaganza was syphoning his brain out via his ears. That being the case, Daniel wasn't choosing to pee in the appropriate vessel, he was just mindlessly letting the floodgates open while he happened to be perched on the appropriate vessel. If I was to hazard a guess as to why he had no problem wiht his butt being jammed in his potty for hours on end, I'd say it was because his once complex and highly functioning brain was being replaced by a more basic reptilian one,and as such, his butt had simply ceased to exist as a part of him. Instead, it was merely an object that allowed him to stay upright while participating in the ThomasFest necessary for his survival.
So I nixed the damn tank engine and Daniel stopped peeing in the potty.
We've moved on from the No Pants deal and are onto the Big Boy Pants ("big bah pahs!). He's only had one accident so far, so he's doing really well, especially since I'm not doing the intensive, every half an hour remindy/sitty stuff. Maybe if I pushed it, he'd be trained by now, but I'm too lazy to do that. The story I tell though, is that I don't want to pressure him because seriously, who wants to admit to The Lazy?
Daniel was given some Thomas the Tank Engine pyjamas and big bah pahs(!) yesterday, so spent the evening dressing himself. Of course, he literally ended up putting the shorts on upside down, and wore then underneath the big bah pahs(!) that were also upside down and back to front. Very elegant, especially with the underpants he was jauntily sporting on his head.
I was going to write an entry on Nurse Shithead, the one who totally fucked me over last month. Quick recap, she brickwalled me from treatment when, I know now, she could have (should have) easily told me to call back the following week, or even the week after because having NOT spoken to that slag this month, I know that the IVF action starts three weeks from the date you first call in, meaning, she had three weeks to play with before legally giving me an absolute "no" for that month.
Che fucking moll.
ANYWAY, I was going to write about her (and look! I did!) but figured a more positive way to start the month was to say wahoo, game on, and ahoy there mateys. Bloods on the eighteenth with down regulating commencing shortly thereafter on a date determined by the results.
The luscious angel who took my call this time made me realize what a TOTAL fucking ho that last nurse was, so while I’m (I’m not sure “excited” is the right word to describe how I feel about body slamming my own hormones into submission before ramping my body to dizzying heights with enough of their hormones to make me ovulate like a sow, then being knocked off my gourd [something I am looking forward too] so they can stick a needle [a needle][!!] up my lady business and siphon off a few eggs before putting two of them back in, all plump and ripe and doubling in size every x number of minutes, and then turning me into some kind of freaky human éclair, what with all the delighful I’ll be indulging in throughout the following weeks [months, if when this pregnancy thing takes hold]) looking forward to, in some weird masochistic kind of way, the upcoming event, I’m also crazy angry at fucking ho nurse because had she nto been the phone bitch that day, I’d be loading up on the drugs right now for a retrieval and transfer this month.
Which is such a weird way of describing the beginning of a new human being.
The lawyer is still on the scene and because I'm about to do all this, is all “can you imagine how gorgeous our kids would be?”, which makes me want to kick him in the nuts because yes, I can. Fueling my nut kicking urges are his assertions that “if you’d given some indication you were interested in me when we were teenagers, we’d have got married, had a billion kids, and we’d still be happy now.”.
To which I reply "You're the guy. That was your job.".
Not that I believe that if, etc, we’d have even got married, or that we'd still be married, of that if we were, that we'd still be happy now because "married" and "happy" are not words I'd ever think to use in the same sentence but ANYWAY, I still want to kick him harder when he says things like “I’d have made your life easier” because my life has kind of sucked and if I could turn back time, etc.
On the other hand, I do like hearing about how he loved me then because those years, my teenage years, were SO hard, and when everything else I heard and felt about myself was so ugly, he thought I was beautiful and worth the risk of loving.
But he's not prepared to take that risk now so SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY. God.
I don't reckon I want to take any lurve risks either because, bleah, too hard. Also there are a lot of dipshits you've got to go through before you find out....that either they're ALL dipshits or that you're a total dipshit magnet because the whole exercise proved to be yet another BIGASSED waste of time.
Case in point: this guy I know, Mick, which is totally NOT a pseudonym because seriously, that amount of idiotic doesn't deserve the brainspace it takes me to think of alternate names. So, yes, Mick, who I've known casually for five or six years, has intermittently sent me text messages over that time. More recently though, he's got more...friendly, I guess, and has invited himself over for coffee (will I never learn that "coffee" is a euphemism for "dry hump"?), and has texted me several invitations to either offer to help me get my next child (for real, and I'm not kidding when I tell you that all I said was "I'd love more kids") or to catch up "later". I don't do "later", not do I do ridiculous text message conversations. Unless they're a) funny or b) one liners like "be there in 5". I'm always doing something "later", like working or cleaning or walking or shopping or running errands or catching up with friends who don't text and who do say things like "wanna catch up at 4pm?". "Later" stresses me out because when I think of later, I think of all the shit I have to do later.
POINT BEING, the last time Mick asked me around for coffee "later" I said bla bla, can;t do later, need a time because I'm busy, bla bla. Then he said some SHIT about getting the hint. I texted him back (because LORD knows I love a text message conversation) because it wasn't a hint, it's my life. I'm a sole parent who works. My son is in care two days a week, the rest of the time I'm with him or am working around him. Those two days he's in care? I work. Like a dog, actually, because when when I'm not in paid employment, I'm at home cleaning the crud off the floor or doing the laundry or running errands or whatever the fuck else is on my long assed list of things to do every freakin' day. I felt like a bit of a bitch when he said he said "later" to give me time to do whatever I need to do, so when I collected Daniel, I told him where I was at, that I'm at the store, Daniel's with me, and then we have to run some errands after that. It's six o clock by then so the chance of catching up are minimal because, hello? Two year old, who needs to eat, chillax, and then sleep, so I tell him, thanks for thinking of us, maybe some other day? To which he replies "no".
This from the same man who was all prepared to have children with me not ten days prior to this getting all up in himself because my life has no pause button. It never stops, and while I can sit here and tap out an entry now, it's only because I'm ignoring the patina of disgusting all over the kitchen floor, and believe the bathroom can last another day before exploding into a seething ball of bacteria. My son is sleeping the sleep of the massively over tired right now too, which gives em some time , but that's because I had to work at 7am, and instead of taking him home to nap afterwards, he went to the gym creche so I could work one of my other jobs. There's no one else to rely on when it all gets too much, so it never gets to be too much because it can't be too much. I don't have that option.
That's not a complaint, it's a fact, which is why I don't want to take risks and get my heart broken by more of the same stupidity. Mine and theirs. I simply don;t have time, nor do I have the want to divide myself up even more emotionally.
So if anyone reading wants to court a sole parent, consider this a public service announcement: if they can't find the time to see you, help them make the time. Mop the damn floor for them, or scrub their bathroom, or offer to pick up a few things from the store.
If you're not prepared to do that, what in hell are you doing expecting them to cram even more busy into their life?
