I am not a real make-uppy girl, but I am totally trying this out this weekend.
And yes, I totally stole this from I *Heart* You
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
I finally got my birthday present from my best friend Jamie in the mail a few days ago.
That lovely, lovely girl got me an awesome gift: a Starbucks giftcard, and assorted supercute notecards and Post-Its. She included the note, “Per your Oversharing post, please do not tell me the ways in which you might use these. I’ll just trust that you will enjoy them.”
I love that chick.
That lovely, lovely girl got me an awesome gift: a Starbucks giftcard, and assorted supercute notecards and Post-Its. She included the note, “Per your Oversharing post, please do not tell me the ways in which you might use these. I’ll just trust that you will enjoy them.”
I love that chick.
Friday, May 16, 2008
The Drunken Baker Strikes Again!
This morning, my coworkers are the happy beneficiaries of homemade banana nut bread and orange cranberry cream cheese swirl bread. Yum!
*********
I am excited that it’s Friday – am thinking of taking a bit of vacation time and leaving a little early, even. Despite some of the usual work bullshit going on, and my previously mentioned funk, I’m in a good mood today because my plans changed at the last minute and will not have to go out of town this weekend.
“Why Gin, what plans do you speak of?”, you ask.
That would be the plan to travel to Mississippi to celebrate my sister’s high school graduation. Which is no longer occurring. Because she is a dumbass and failed algebra, despite the fact that she has long been identified as gifted, had only 2 core classes to complete this semester, and was finished with her school day at 1:15 each afternoon. Instead of this being a situation where everyone agrees that my sister is being an idiot and making bad decisions that have potential to fuck up her entire future, it has turned into a bunch of finger-pointing between my parents and the extended family she’s been living with this year. So while they all are playing Pin The Blame On The Shittiest Authority Figure, my sister is not graduating. From high school. In Mississippi. The dumbest state.
And I hate to say it, but in a way it is a relief that I don’t have to go deal with all of That and all of Them. The past several months, we haven’t been able to talk to any of that side of the family without it turning into a Big Dramatic Thing; it’s like if The Jerry Springer Show and The 700 Club had a lovechild.
So instead of getting into it, hillbilly-style, with my aunts, I will spend the weekend laying around in my pajamas and spending our economic stimulus check (WOOT!). Heaven.
This morning, my coworkers are the happy beneficiaries of homemade banana nut bread and orange cranberry cream cheese swirl bread. Yum!
*********
I am excited that it’s Friday – am thinking of taking a bit of vacation time and leaving a little early, even. Despite some of the usual work bullshit going on, and my previously mentioned funk, I’m in a good mood today because my plans changed at the last minute and will not have to go out of town this weekend.
“Why Gin, what plans do you speak of?”, you ask.
That would be the plan to travel to Mississippi to celebrate my sister’s high school graduation. Which is no longer occurring. Because she is a dumbass and failed algebra, despite the fact that she has long been identified as gifted, had only 2 core classes to complete this semester, and was finished with her school day at 1:15 each afternoon. Instead of this being a situation where everyone agrees that my sister is being an idiot and making bad decisions that have potential to fuck up her entire future, it has turned into a bunch of finger-pointing between my parents and the extended family she’s been living with this year. So while they all are playing Pin The Blame On The Shittiest Authority Figure, my sister is not graduating. From high school. In Mississippi. The dumbest state.
And I hate to say it, but in a way it is a relief that I don’t have to go deal with all of That and all of Them. The past several months, we haven’t been able to talk to any of that side of the family without it turning into a Big Dramatic Thing; it’s like if The Jerry Springer Show and The 700 Club had a lovechild.
So instead of getting into it, hillbilly-style, with my aunts, I will spend the weekend laying around in my pajamas and spending our economic stimulus check (WOOT!). Heaven.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
I hate that my last post is just hanging out there, all sad and vulnerable, so I’m putting something else up just so you don’t think I’m still suspended in that state of mind.
I told J about everything, and I feel better. I gripe about him sometimes, but he really is pretty amazing.
He said he knew I’d been sad, he could see it (and I thought, “Wow, I guess I wasn’t faking it as well as I thought”, and after that I thought, “He’s my husband – I shouldn’t feel like I have to fake anything for him.”) I told him I was sorry for being such an ass to him over the past several weeks – I channeled my Sad into Mad, because that felt more productive. Does that make sense (or at least sound familiar) to anyone else? Like, “I can sit around and mope and be a weepy mess and get nothing done, or I can re-channel this into anger, which is at least a kind of energy, so my house and my life doesn’t totally fall apart.” And so that’s how I’ve been operating for the past 2 months, and Dude, no wonder I’ve been so tired – staying mad about essentially nothing all the time is hard fucking work. So (like a fool), rather than unburden myself, I held it all in and snapped at him over every little effing thing. My lovelies, hear these words and take them to heart: That is a stupid thing to do.
So we lay in bed the other night, and he held my hand tight as I cried and told him everything I’ve been holding on to. He asked why I hadn’t told him sooner, and that’s a question I still don’t have an answer for. I guess I was just afraid that saying it out loud would make it more real somehow. He admitted that he will never be able to feel as intensely about these things as I do – as a man, his experience is (and always will be) different. He suggested that I talk to our very good friend Erin, who has suffered an ectopic pregnancy, and has 3 beautiful little girls. I’m shocked that the idea had never occurred to me (and the fact that J could admit his inadequacy, but suggest someone who could better understand, made me fall in love with him a thousand times more).
So I’m feeling mostly better. I am convinced, though, that depression is like soap in a sponge – no matter how many times you clean it, you can never quite get it all out.
I told J about everything, and I feel better. I gripe about him sometimes, but he really is pretty amazing.
He said he knew I’d been sad, he could see it (and I thought, “Wow, I guess I wasn’t faking it as well as I thought”, and after that I thought, “He’s my husband – I shouldn’t feel like I have to fake anything for him.”) I told him I was sorry for being such an ass to him over the past several weeks – I channeled my Sad into Mad, because that felt more productive. Does that make sense (or at least sound familiar) to anyone else? Like, “I can sit around and mope and be a weepy mess and get nothing done, or I can re-channel this into anger, which is at least a kind of energy, so my house and my life doesn’t totally fall apart.” And so that’s how I’ve been operating for the past 2 months, and Dude, no wonder I’ve been so tired – staying mad about essentially nothing all the time is hard fucking work. So (like a fool), rather than unburden myself, I held it all in and snapped at him over every little effing thing. My lovelies, hear these words and take them to heart: That is a stupid thing to do.
So we lay in bed the other night, and he held my hand tight as I cried and told him everything I’ve been holding on to. He asked why I hadn’t told him sooner, and that’s a question I still don’t have an answer for. I guess I was just afraid that saying it out loud would make it more real somehow. He admitted that he will never be able to feel as intensely about these things as I do – as a man, his experience is (and always will be) different. He suggested that I talk to our very good friend Erin, who has suffered an ectopic pregnancy, and has 3 beautiful little girls. I’m shocked that the idea had never occurred to me (and the fact that J could admit his inadequacy, but suggest someone who could better understand, made me fall in love with him a thousand times more).
So I’m feeling mostly better. I am convinced, though, that depression is like soap in a sponge – no matter how many times you clean it, you can never quite get it all out.
Monday, May 12, 2008
My dear chickens, I’m sorry for the relative blog silence over the past couple of weeks. I’ve still had a Cloud Of Blah hanging over me – just can’t seem to shake it. So I haven’t been writing anything lately because it would all be tinged with whininess and martyrdom and Poor-Pitiful-Me-ness, so I abstained rather than drag you down into The Suck with me.
But.
The thing is, this blog is my space to purge, to rant if I need to, to blindly wave my hand around out there and hope someone catches it and holds on. I’ve debated whether or not to post about this – would it be thought-provoking or just self-serving? – but I’ve already learned that holding it in for the past couple of weeks hasn’t made me feel any better, so I’ll get it off my chest in hopes that I can find some relief; that I can breathe easier and sleep better at night.
1. My birthday was yesterday, the same day as Mother’s Day.
When I got off The Pill last summer and J and I started trying to get pregnant, I looked ahead at this year’s calendar (planner that I am), saw that my 26th birthday and Mother’s Day coincided this year, and took it as a Good Sign. I had daydreams of handing my mom a surprise Happy Mother’s Day, Grandmother! card, a Hallmark commercial come to life. All I really wanted for my birthday was to be pregnant.
Instead, for 12 hours I cooked and cleaned and cooked again and cleaned again and cooked some more for
1) my parents, who fought on the way to come over and have lunch with us, so they sulked and pointedly ignored each other for 3 uncomfortable hours, and then
2) my in-laws for dinner (7 of us in all), and they would not leave until I turned off the TV, stood in front of them, and said “Good night!” at 9 p.m.
It was not the birthday I’d hoped for.
2. This is something I have not even told J.
My hormone treatments consisted of several different meds – Clomid, estrogen, progesterone – to induce/encourage different phases of my cycle. One of the last months I was doing it, after J and I had had our dutiful Babymaking Sex at the appointed times, I waited, I pee-tested on two different occasions, no dice. I went to the doctor, told the nurse I wasn’t pregnant, and she told me to continue with my Prometrium to induce a period. I did, and when my period started several days later, it was heavier than normal. Much heavier. Significantly heaver.
When I went back in to the doctor several days later, the physician’s assistant asked how my treatments were going – I told her about continuing the Prometrium, and she looked at me, then at the (same) nurse, shocked. “You should have come in for a blood test before you started the Prometrium again – you still could have been pregnant.” And her saying that out loud voiced my darkest fear, what I couldn’t even admit to myself – what I still can’t admit to myself. Maybe I did it. To myself. Because a stupid nurse made a stupid mistake.
I just walked out, numb, and cried the whole way home. When my next month of treatment failed to get me pregnant, I called the doctor’s office and told them I was taking a break.
And here we are.
It has taken me hours to get through writing this post. I really hope it brings me some comfort, because I don’t know what else to do.
But.
The thing is, this blog is my space to purge, to rant if I need to, to blindly wave my hand around out there and hope someone catches it and holds on. I’ve debated whether or not to post about this – would it be thought-provoking or just self-serving? – but I’ve already learned that holding it in for the past couple of weeks hasn’t made me feel any better, so I’ll get it off my chest in hopes that I can find some relief; that I can breathe easier and sleep better at night.
1. My birthday was yesterday, the same day as Mother’s Day.
When I got off The Pill last summer and J and I started trying to get pregnant, I looked ahead at this year’s calendar (planner that I am), saw that my 26th birthday and Mother’s Day coincided this year, and took it as a Good Sign. I had daydreams of handing my mom a surprise Happy Mother’s Day, Grandmother! card, a Hallmark commercial come to life. All I really wanted for my birthday was to be pregnant.
Instead, for 12 hours I cooked and cleaned and cooked again and cleaned again and cooked some more for
1) my parents, who fought on the way to come over and have lunch with us, so they sulked and pointedly ignored each other for 3 uncomfortable hours, and then
2) my in-laws for dinner (7 of us in all), and they would not leave until I turned off the TV, stood in front of them, and said “Good night!” at 9 p.m.
It was not the birthday I’d hoped for.
2. This is something I have not even told J.
My hormone treatments consisted of several different meds – Clomid, estrogen, progesterone – to induce/encourage different phases of my cycle. One of the last months I was doing it, after J and I had had our dutiful Babymaking Sex at the appointed times, I waited, I pee-tested on two different occasions, no dice. I went to the doctor, told the nurse I wasn’t pregnant, and she told me to continue with my Prometrium to induce a period. I did, and when my period started several days later, it was heavier than normal. Much heavier. Significantly heaver.
When I went back in to the doctor several days later, the physician’s assistant asked how my treatments were going – I told her about continuing the Prometrium, and she looked at me, then at the (same) nurse, shocked. “You should have come in for a blood test before you started the Prometrium again – you still could have been pregnant.” And her saying that out loud voiced my darkest fear, what I couldn’t even admit to myself – what I still can’t admit to myself. Maybe I did it. To myself. Because a stupid nurse made a stupid mistake.
I just walked out, numb, and cried the whole way home. When my next month of treatment failed to get me pregnant, I called the doctor’s office and told them I was taking a break.
And here we are.
It has taken me hours to get through writing this post. I really hope it brings me some comfort, because I don’t know what else to do.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
I do this thing where I appear organized and busy – I have several piles of Important-Looking Papers, highlighted and redlined, and clipboards holding more stacks of calendars and chart. I have different-colored notebooks for each of the different meetings I attend, so my notes aren’t lost. I have flow charts that I have printed out and highlighted with green, yellow, orange, and pink, for the progressing stages, and posted on the walls of my cube. I have my Phone Voice, which is slightly harried, but still friendly and polite. I have multiple email replies, Excel spreadsheets, and PDFs open at once – look at me, I’m multi-tasking! But don’t be fooled – I’m only trying to distract you from my ineptitude.
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