Mary Scarlet

Tales of drivebys and cowardice

I thought I was pretty much beyond it, honestly, and then this happened today.

The scene: a hallway outside my office. I am talking to a (female) colleague ... when will we be having the holiday "security meeting" ... how much scotch is left in that bottle from last time... the usual Wednesday afternoon stuff.

Another colleague (also female) I know only very slightly walks by and says, "When are you gonna have a baby?"

Me: [stunned silence] "... Uh, I don't know, is that how we're greeting each other these days? [recovering slightly] When are YOU having a baby?"

Her: "No, my kids are grown, I'm done!"

Me: [laughing uncomfortably, backing away]

Later, as I was relaying this story to a good friend, who also happens to work with me and is the only person who actually knew about the pregnancy, and, I must admit, sort of congratulating myself that I didn't lose it totally, and isn't it great that I don't really get upset by these drivebys, though she's lucky she didn't get her head ripped off ... and what ever happened to the rule that you DON'T ASK SOMEONE IF THEY ARE PREGNANT UNLESS YOU ACTUALLY SEE A BABY COMING FROM THEIR VAGINA ... blah blah blah ... and my friend gets this uncomfortable look on his face [yes, he is a man, and yes, he is one of my best friends, and yes, he actually listens to me when I talk about this stuff].

So as it turns out, this same woman came up to him out of the blue in the week that I was pregnant that he knew I was pregnant before the miscarriage, and asked him almost the same question: "I've been watching Mary and, well, is she pregnant?"

You know where this is going, right? That instead of taking this to mean that a) she's a total bitchface, and b) I need to lose some weight because even random strangers are beginning to infer things, I've decided that it means that she is psychic and she has mysterious powers of seeing, and even though every medical test we've taken says the chances of it happening are beyond miniscule, somehow we have miraculously succeeded in conceiving naturally and SHE COULD SENSE IT with her evil powers, and it will all be kittens and lollipops from here on out.

La la la ... I'm not listening to you.

...well, it was a nice thought anyway...

Moving on to the cowardice portion of our program:

I received a copy of my chart. It has been sitting in my bedroom for five days. I took it to work over the weekend and made a photocopy, eyes clamped firmly shut so that I wouldn't accidentally read anything upsetting. I am afraid to look at it.

Help me.

-Mary Scarlet
Listning to "Steve Martin: A Wild and Crazy Guy" (see, esp, track 6, "...but listen to THIS ..." God I love Steve Martin)

p.s. Cute baby Christmas Card Count: 1

When you have nothing to say pictures will do as well

Last year it was so dry here that nothing grew well. The yield from our pear tree was low; the few that did get near full size were poached by squirrels.

This year, everything has been lush and green. We've had more rain, but I can't help feeling that last year's drought had something to do with this explosion of life. Energy was stored up, or something. I was sitting in the yard yesterday while light wind brought down spent pear blossoms and propeller seeds from the maple next door. When I got up close to the pear tree I was amazed. It is covered in pearlets. I don't remember seeing them at this stage in development, not long after fertilization, flower stems thickening and fruit beginning to swell at the end.  It is glorious. The tree does not seem capable of it. The pear tree is one of the reasons we bought this house--I was so enchanted to find it--but we've been waiting for it to give up the ghost. Scarred and burnt-looking branches, and it just looks so spent and tired.

The lilies of the valley and phlox and peonies are also bursting out this week.

We are starting to plan our big vacation in August. We have just under two weeks and will drive west. I want to see Glacier National Park, he wants to visit the Badlands, and there's also Yellowstone and Mount Rushmore. A little too much for that amount of time without rushing so we're trying to narrow it down. Both of us grew up taking our summer vacations by car; he to California in a VW with six siblings and me repeatedly to both coasts in a van with five. Somehow neither one of us has ever been to Montana and I'm dying to go. We're not great campers but it seems blasphemous to go there and stay in motels. We are late making our plans, I know.

The biggest problem will probably be what to do with our four cats for that long. Unbelievable that anyone could resist these guys, but they won't be quite as tiny and adorable by August.

I am either going to have to move our adoption discussion to a more concrete place or stop calling this an infertility blog or something. I can't write about our cats forever. Work talk is forbidden, and I am enough out of touch with my family and several of my friends that there isn't really much I can say on those topics either. I am running out of excuses for not taking a long hard look. It is a scary thing to face.

Cat people: please advise

Remember back when we were talking about getting a dog? After I finally made the decision that I could live with it, my husband spent some time researching, looking into it, talking about it, but ultimately decided that we should get another cat instead of a dog. Too much work for dogs, and we're both pretty busy just now. We've got two dysfunctional 10 year old cats, who are not littermates. We decided to get another young cat, and this past weekend, we found out that my sister-in-law's cat had five kittens, and they'll be ready to leave their mother next weekend. SOOO, what we need advice about is: should we take one or two? How much difference is there between three cats in the house and four in terms of smell, maintenance, etc.? I'm also looking for suggestions for cat names. None of that froofroo cutesy kitty stuff, though. Mustard. Junkyard. Stinky. Knuckles. That kind of name is OK.

I got my period yesterday, so I am once again focusing on my reproductive system. 26 day cycle. Headaches and crankiness seem to me much worse now, and cramps less bothersome. I'm taking these as signs that I am sliding, sliding. It bothers me that I'm even focused on this. That I even took note of the approach of my period. That I even wondered whether it could be, might be ... you know. I don't know what I would say if I had to answer that question about whether or not I had mourned the biological child we'll never have. Yes, I did. I had a miscarriage. I spent days, weeks, months crying and mourning that and all our failed cycles. But there is a teeny tiny glimmer there in the back of my head every month, still. Even though it is far more likely I'd have an ectopic or another miscarriage than anything else.

Things are very peaceful and loving between my husband and I this week, since Saturday. We are closer, since the blowup did force us to talk more about ourselves, and the way we feel about each other than we have in a long time. I am glad for that, but I still feel how long this road is before us. And that's just to even get to a point where we can really talk about adoption.

So, for now, cats. What say you?

Another stroke of genius

I had an idea yesterday and my husband thinks I'm a genius. So let me just say patent pending patent pending patent pending because he said I had to.

Don't you think there should be such a thing as "Hair School"? For normal girls so that we can learn how to care for our unruly, unsatisfying hair? I've read so much lately from people, like me, who have never quite got the knack of making the damn stuff behave on a daily basis. Any fool can to go a salon for a cut and blow dry, but what do you do the next day? There could be "Wavy, Coarse Hair School" and "Flat, Lank Hair School" and even "Triangle Head Hair School."

I would totally go to Hair School. Does anyone know of such a thing already existing?

Also, I would like to bid a fond welcome to the two searchers who were looking for "queefing during yoga" and "boob falling out accidentally." You are my heroes because clearly you have hilarious lives during which embarassing things happen.

(Adoption seminar tomorrow! I will post toute suite!)

Showing the world my mad

Yesterday was not as bad as I thought it would be. Thanks to all of you for stopping by to say hi or dropping me a note or sending me good vibes. I felt them, truly.

Today was a different story. Today I am really mad. I mean, pissed off, furious. It's just this baby crap backing up on me, and the unbearable sameness of all these days in the last month. They aren't the same, you know? But they are too. I can't even conjure up an excited flutter in my stomach to think what it would have been like to be bringing home something small and pink and scary this week. Just a dull, dull, dull, we are the same tonight as we were yesterday and tomorrow we will be the same again.

I'm mad at my husband, who has been having a really tough time going through his own thing. But I reminded him on Monday about the due date. Why should I even have to remind him? I don't know. He really felt the loss and suffered with it, but he deals with things in his own way, and it's about putting things to rest, and turning away. But I'm still really fucking mad at him for not commenting about the due date arriving, and then passing, yesterday, or today. I need to tell him that I'm angry, and I will. When I can do it without wanting to scream, scream, SCREAM at him.

I need to take myself off to the gym with the loudest music I can get my hands on. This seems to be the only thing that helps me. And by "helps me" I mean lets me get to sleep at night because it surely is not helping my butt get any smaller. And then after the gym, after what I hope will be a full nights sleep, and a few days of mental rest and seeing my family, I need to find help. Because this is really so scary, to be so angry. What's even scarier is how little of it shows on the outside. It's frustrated, silent, welling up anger, and I don't want to explode my head with it. I have almost bitten through my lips already once this week. My teeth can't take any more clenching.

-Mary Scarlet, mad
I AM ANGRY

Dilemma of the week

I am trying to decide what my husband is getting for his birthday. It's a big one, and it looks like it will be coinciding with big news about a promotion that he has been waiting a long time for (and richly deserves).

Dog or very nice new briefcase?

Here's the situation: I did not grow up with pets, and I am afraid of dogs. I'm ashamed to admit this but I have really really tried and can't seem to get over it. I'm not petrified, like I am if a bug or spider walks on me, but I get pretty nervous. Except that our neighbor across the street has a very sweet and well-behaved dog that I love.  I'm also pretty disgusted by the idea of picking up fresh steaming poop left by a creature that will never, ever grow out of it.

We've been having the dog debate since long before we were married, and I have been adamantly refusing. I haven't told him but lately I've been wavering just a tiny little bit. I don't believe he'll really always be home in time to walk the dog every day and I don't want my gardent to get ruined, so I'm still pretty opposed, but how long should I be refusing something he really, really, REEEEALLY wants? But the smell, the hair, and my god, the poop.

In case anyone's wondering, as much as I know people love their pets, this pet debate is in no way analagous to the debate about whether or not to have kids. We know that, right? Yes, there's responsibility with both but it's on a totally different level.

We do already have cats. They're hairy and annoying enough.

The other option is a very nice new leather briefcase, which he really wants. I'm talking like a real grownup man bag.

Did I mention that someone I work with knows someone who's giving away golden retriever puppies?

Yeah. Having a hard time with this one.

There is sun

Back from Texas, where it was a lovely 65 degrees, and although there is snow in Chicago that wasn't here when I left, the sun is finally out. I read in the local paper in Texas that January 23 has been calculated to be the most miserable day of the year (holidays over, back to work, bills pouring in, long gray cold days). I, however, am feeling surprisingly ok.

This business trip was the little barrier between me and my last IVF starting "for real." Even though I technically still have 2 more weeks on BCP, I excused myself from thinking too much about where this is going until returning.

So. I feel OK. I feel a little more hopeful, maybe, than I did when I found out about the barfly ovaries.  Maybe it's just this weird feeling the BCP is giving me, and the strangely full, heavy breasts. WTF is that by the way? I am a girl very much not in touch with her body as a rule. Remember the scene in "The Sure Thing" when John Cusack is taunting Daphne Zuniga about being repressed? "Reeeepreeeeesed ... reeeeeeeeeepreeeeeeeesed..." and she retaliates by whipping off shirt and bra and hanging out the car window, shrieking and wailing? That's how I feel today. The shirt is about to come flying off and I'm going to go hanging and flapping and screeching out the window. And if this cycle doesn't work, and maybe even if it does, the howling isn't going to stop for a long time. But I feel it's a more powerful yell, this time it's not abandoned and sad and cringing. A come to mama, boys, because I am totally going to kick your ass.

-Mary Scarlet
Listening to "Sugarfriend" by Poster Children

Garumph

Christmas shmristmas.

Things that are good:
Ovulated on day 14 this month. Perhaps my 33-year-old-ness is asserting itself. Fie to thee, barfly ovaries!
Work extremely busy in a thank-god-I-have-interesting-things-to-think-about way.
The new satellite system has DVR! which means I can record things without consulting the technical manuals.
Two darling brothers coming in to town this week for the holiday.
Husband.
Standing rib roast for Christmas dinner.
End of year celebratory Chicago hot dog lunch with best friend from work.
A Powerful Love.

Things that ain't:
Must truncate work holiday for important grant meeting next week.
Hate shopping, spent 6 HOURS SHOPPING ONLINE and still didn't finish it all.
No holly in the heart, no feeling the spirit, hours upon hours of holiday music have failed to coax any kind of a festive mood.
George Bush. NSA? Domestic spying? You stupid fuck.
A goddamn lot of cards with cute babies in them.

I have been seriously slacking in the commenting department this past week and expect to be even worse in the next so I'm officially taking a break. Just wanted to wish everyone a happy New Year and send all my love. (Except you, George Bush. You can suck eggs. No love for you.)

-Mary Scarlet
Listening to my computer hum, my cat gripe, stomach growl, teeth chatter

Important news for all of us

Study: Longer needles needed for fatter buttocks.

Because we just aren't getting sufficiently stabbed. In 23 out of 25 cases! I'm feeling stabby now...

As long as I'm wasting your time

Dear friends,

U have been so nice about putting up with my dorky musical waxings. I have one more favor to ask though ... can I try a new hairstyle? Need opinions.

My hair has been falling out something terrible since I started IVF. I've always been a big foreheaded girl:
[pix removed ... more later]
and the big forehead is getting bigger with all the hair loss. I'm not imagining it. I have a small mole that used to be about 1/2 inch back from my hairline and now it's pretty much teetering on the brink of the cliff, ready to fall into the giant expanse of forehead. (yes, am wearing braces in both those pix. they came off 2 mos ago yahoo (p.s. ceramic braces suck they are impossible to keep clean))

Anyhoo, I also have fairly coarse and wavy hair, and it wasn't until I discovered layering a few years ago that I ceased to have the dreaded triangle head every time I got a cut. Here was my latest cut, from many months ago, and note the becoming bags under the eyes (and no comments about the grody bathroom fixin's, we're busy just now, we'll get to it eventually):
[pix removed ... more later]

In addition to the giant forehead, the hair so quickly gets long and then blah is a pain to tame so it ends up in a ponytail or bun every day. I haven't had bangs since high school. What I really want is THIS HAIRCUT:
[pix removed ... you know what she looks like, right?]
What do you think? Can I do bangs if they're more like shorter layers? Will it make the very much thinning hair look even worse?

Also? Please don't tell Juliette Lewis I have pictures of her on my blog. I'm pretty sure she can kick my ass totally. (All pix coming down Monday night anyway.)

Thanks for any advice. Curly hair seems to challenge most stylists so I feel I need to go in knowing exactly what I want (my new one is great, she has curly hair herself, but she's only cut my hair once).

((Could I be using any more parentheses in this post?))

-Mary Scarlet
Listening to Ted Leo "Me and Mia"