Category: Uncategorized

MEMO

To: The Universe
From: DaniGirl
Re: Messing with my head

Dear Universe,

Thank you for an exciting first week of September. Sending my eldest son off to meet his kindergarten teacher for the first time would have been more than enough excitement for a single week, and yet you were kind enough to add the pregnancy adventure to that.

You could have stopped there. Really, that would be more than enough to keep a girl awake nights, pondering mini-vans and bedroom arrangements and parenting three children under six.

And yet, you didn’t quite thing that was enough. You decided to mess with my head just a little bit more. I think maybe you are playing a cosmic game of “let’s see how far she bends before she snaps” and you’re about to win.

Yes, I’m talking about the blood test results. The blood test results that, at 3491, seem inordinately high for me to be just five weeks pregnant. Yes, I realize that a high beta number is an indicator of a good, strong pregnancy, and for that I am extremely grateful.

But there’s that other thing. That thing about how a high beta can also mean multiples. And you know that my father was a twin, his father was a twin, and my mother’s father was a twin.

The clinic won’t be doing an ultrasound for another two weeks, which leaves me to stew in my own speculative juices for what seems like an eternity. Because universe, I really think it’s a bit twisted if you find the idea of twins is funny.

Anxiously,
DaniGirl

*pinch*

*pinch*

*pinch*

Nope, not dreaming. I keep waiting to wake up, to shake it off, to have someone explain that I’m the butt of some cosmic joke. But so far, so good. (whispers, touching wood) I’m still pregnant.

And yes, you can expect about nine more months of this.

So I imagine there are a few of you out there who would like some details on this. Well, here’s the scoop. Beloved and I hadn’t exactly decided to try or not to try after frostie didn’t work out. Beloved wasn’t opposed to the idea of a third child per se, but he was nervous about the idea of trying again. So we didn’t exactly try, in the way we did before Tristan was conceived, but we were both rather aware of my reproductive timing during the month.

It took me a couple of weeks to get over the loss of frostie’s potential, which was the most sad and painful part of the cycle not working out. To be completely honest with you, it all seems like aeons ago, and I can’t believe it’s only been a little over a month since we found out it didn’t work out. We had our few sad days, but it was very easy to come to terms with the outcome because of my unwavering conviction that everything happens for a reason. And I had really made peace with the idea of only having two children in my life. I had even started to think about packing up my old maternity stuff, and some of my most sentimental baby things.

You might remember that the cycle ended on my birthday, August 1. So when September 1 rolled around and I still hadn’t had a visit from “Aunt Flo”, I started getting annoyed. Not curious, and not excited, because I was absolutely positive it was just my body messing with my head again. I was a full week late back in May, too, and that turned out to be nothing, so I figured this was, too.

As the weekend progressed, I started paying more and more attention to the toilet paper again, and really started to wonder. Finally, I decided Sunday night to take one of my leftover pregnancy tests on Monday morning not because I thought I was pregnant, but because I wanted to quell the swells of anxious curiousity that were starting to build. I had no indications whatsoever from my body that I might be pregnant – no sore boobs, no nausea, no aversions, nothing. And so even though I was giving in to the test, I was completely expecting a single line.

It was just a little bit before six o’clock in the morning, and Simon had already been up for an hour. When he first woke a little before five, I was surprised to be able to convince him to stay in his crib for another half hour, listening to his lullaby CD. He had been in my bed with me, kicking and turning and tossing like a landed trout when I finally gave up and let him get up. I had almost forgotten the foil pack with the test in it that I had put on the counter the night before, and almost put it back under the sink because I just didn’t feel like dealing with the negative test that early in the morning. But I couldn’t stand the niggling voice of possibility whispering in my subconscious.

I watched the pink tint race up the stick, first triggering the test line – and then the other test line. And I thought, in a rather uninspired moment, “Hey, there aren’t supposed to be two test lines.” I was gobsmacked.

By the time I made it downstairs, Beloved was putting on a Doodlebops DVD for Simon. My hand was shaking so badly he could barely see the tiny stick I was thrusting at him. We collapsed onto the couch in a daze, and Simon laughed obliviously at the TV.

The difference between a third (technically, a fourth) pregnancy and a first is that for the first, you will leap tall buildings to get a blood test for that early empirical confirmation of your pregnancy. This morning, however, I found myself asking, “Oh crap, do I have to go for a blood test? Is that required? When the heck am I going to have time to go for a blood test?” I called the fertility centre, because while I’m rather unexcited about the blood test, I really would like an early ultrasound. The nurse who took my call scolded me for not coming in for my scheduled beta test after the frostie cycle failed, saying it makes it harder to know for sure now when this pregnancy actually started. I know, I reassured her. I know. And so, having done her duty by scolding me, she told me to come on in for a test Tuesday morning, and I could hear the smile in her voice.

So if all goes according to plan, it will be a spring baby – maybe the end of April or the beginning of May. And as of today (thumping wildly on nearby wooden surfaces) I’m five weeks pregnant.

Some day, my complete inability to keep my personal life off the Interweb will come back to bite me in the ass.

Every now and then, I will be telling a story to a colleague of mine at work, and they will say, “Oh yes, I read all about that on your blog. So and so gave me the link.” I have no idea how many of you are reading, but I’m beginning to suspect it’s more than I thought!

So while I’m happy to have you reading, could I please ask that you keep our little secret just between you, me and the world wide web? With one notable exception, I’m not sure I’m ready to share this little tidbit with the management just yet.

Thanks!

Back in the day, when we were trying to conceive for the first time, I spent an inordinate amount of time dreaming up ways to announce my pregnancy. First, I was going to tell everyone in the thank you cards I sent out for our wedding gifts, then I was going to tell everyone at Thanksgiving, then I dreamt of announcing it in our Christmas cards that year. I imagined telling Beloved for his birthday in December, pictured announcing it on Christmas Eve, and even thought that the news might make a lovely birthday gift for my mother in February.

Needless to say, I was foiled every time. Those were the dark days of infertility.

And then with Tristan, because everybody knew we were going through the in vitro treatment, although there was a lot of joy involved in announcing his conception and my pregnancy, we had lost the element of surprise.

That’s why announcing my pregnancy with Simon was such fun. It was as much a shock to us as it was to the rest of the world, and I had fun playing with the element of surprise.

With frostie last month, it was fun to once again be dreaming up all kinds of ways to announce to you all that I was pregnant … right up until I took the test that turned out to be negative (and my period arrived like – well, like a period at the end of that sentence).

All this to say, I’ve spent more time than the average girl thinking about innovative ways to announce a pregnancy. And yet, when I really need some inspiration, my mind is completely blank. My muse has left the building.

Well, a picture is worth a thousand words, right?

How about that? I’m pregnant!

It’s Sunday morning, and the house is silent. I can hear the clock ticking in the next room and the rain spattering the window. I am completely unsettled by the silence.

The boys, both of them, spent last night with Granny and Papa Lou. It was the first time they both stayed over together, although Tristan has stayed over a few times before. They were, of course, beside themselves with excitement as we got ready to go over yesterday after dinner. I dropped them off, and they barely noticed when I left. Papa Lou had already set up the DVD player with their favourite movie, and Granny was in the kitchen preparing a snack tray. I knew they were in good hands.

Because Beloved is swamped with work and behind with his lesson plans, he elected to stay home while I went out for a movie with a friend. (The Illusionist – a terrific movie, except I kept waiting for Edward Norton to say, “I am Jack’s broken heart.”) When I got home the house was palpably emptier, and I had to convince myself not to go and look in on their empty beds just before I went to bed myself.

I just called over to see how things went. My mother has the boys out at WalMart, but my father said that it had gone reasonably well. “They were up at four thirty,” he added, almost as an afterthought.

“For the DAY?” I asked, cringing. “That’s a little early!”

“Hmmm, I thought so, too,” he said, with barely concealed irony.

Oh well. Maybe my folks will be willing to try again when they’re teenagers and sleeping until noon…

We got an e-mail from my 16-year-old nephew the other day. Turns out it was one of those hoax messages about MSN being shut down if you don’t forward this message to everyone in your contact list, and Beloved sent back a patient explanation that it was just a hoax, and an old one at that.

The message we received was a forwarded version of the one my nephew sent to all his friends, and so I could see the e-mail addresses of everyone in his contact list. I’m not hyperbolizing when I say it was a terrifying insight into being a teenager in the 21st century.

There were a lot of the kind of thing I would have expected:
cinderella_princess@
daringgurly@
hershey_kiss_chick@
punkkrocker16@
morbid_purity__@
you-smell@
tarnished_blade_xo@

Now, I was pretty much a good kid at that age (you are doubtlessly shocked by that revelation) but I was into Dungeons and Dragons and other mischief, and I get the whole teenage angst thing; I get the whole exploration of the dark side, even as you still have your Air Supply album cover taped on the wall. (I’m really digging a hole for myself here, aren’t I?) But really, I do understand the whole teenage need to be cool, to shock, and the black lipstick and fingernail-polish rebellion.

But when I read some of the e-mail addresses these kids are using, it honestly made me sick to think about it:
barbiegonecrackwhore666@
bleed-the-dreams@
discipline-9mm@
fuct-up-kidd@
god_must_hate_me@
xokissofdeathxo@
lil_hottie_do_me@
xdreaming_of_deathx@

Maybe I’ll never be the cool mom I thought I would be. Maybe it’s time for me to start showing up for the 4 pm blue plate special and wearing socks with sandals, but if I found out my kid was putting out e-mail under the name “fuct up kid” or “barbie gone crack whore” … well, actually, I’d have no idea what to do. But it would definitely involve a suspension of e-mail priviledges, locking said child in his room until he goes off to college, and a lot of therapy for at least one of us.

What do you think? Am I so painfully unhip that you fear for my future teenagers, or do you find this as disturbing as I do?

Tristan just crept down the stairs, maybe 10 minutes after Beloved tucked him in and finished tonight’s chapters from Captain Underpants.

Tristan, sotto voce: “Mommy, where’s the fermoliter?”
Me, searching mental databanks for ‘fermoliter’: “Uhhhhhh…”

Tristan: “Because I have the hiccups.”
Me: *bursts into laughter*

Ohhhhhh, the fermoliter!!!! Now I get it.
Fermoliter = thermometer, which is needed to combat the dire symptom of hiccups. Right, makes perfect sense.

He’s since been downstairs once more with the eucalyptus chest cream. For the hiccups, you see.

I love fall fairs. I totally don’t get people who haven’t been to the fair in years – how can you not love them? Since I was a little girl, I don’t think I’ve missed a year. I’ll admit, I love the Western Fair, in my hometown of London, Ontario, best of them all. London’s inability to shake off its agricultural background makes the Western Fair a true fall fair with lots of livestock barns and pavillions full of exhibitors selling all manner of weird stuff, from hot tubs to acres of land on the moon.

The SuperEx is Ottawa’s our region’s biggest fall fair, but there are probably a dozen more in each of the small outlying communities like Metcalfe, Richmond, and Navan. It’s the inconveniently-located SuperEx that I never miss, though. It rarely changes, and that probably has a lot to do with why I love it so. And yet, this year was undoubtably one of the best years ever.

I don’t ride the midway rides much anymore, but now the boys are old enough to enjoy them, and I get to ride the merry-go-round for free and without feeling a little self-conscious. I did feel a little self-conscious riding bareback on a pony with Simon, but that was only because the 12-year-old girl leading the horse seemed overly concerned about my welfare, and her partner held on to my leg more tightly than they held on to Tristan riding by himself ahead of us. (And trying to hold on to a pony with your knees while balancing a two-year-old in front of you and still looking confident in your equestrian skills for the full five minute duration of the ride is more complicated than it looks – my knees still hurt.)

This year was the first time we were told that Tristan was too big to ride on a ride. Too big. He’s four years old, for goodness sake. And it didn’t look like a baby ride by any stretch of the imagination – it was a bunch of little cars made up to look like heavy machinery like backhoes and dump trucks and whatnot. What four year old wouldn’t love to do that?

They were both big enough to walk through the fun house by themselves, which I personally thought was a bad idea. They were fine all the way through, but Simon looked increasingly distressed at the noise, and the traffic backed up behind him as he oh-so-slowly navigated the shifting floor panels. I finally had to go in and rescue him to get him through the rolling barrel of a tunnel at the exit. It brought back memories of being scared half to death and getting stuck in a haunted house back when I was eight or nine, and standing at a window crying until my dad came in and escorted me out.

If I had to choose one thing, I’d say it was the games that I love the most. I like the squirt-the-clown’s mouth games, and the roll-the-balls to move your gravatar games, and especially the bet-on-the-horses game where you win loonies instead of dollar-store toys. The big hit for the boys this year was a shiny, multicoloured bead necklace remnant of Mardi Gras. Who would have guessed?

I love the exhibitions, too, especially the animal ones. We were admiring this large yellow snake when the handler draped her (him?) across my shoulders. Very cool, but it was a struggle convincing Beloved to come close enough even to snap this picture.

The most amazing part of the day was how the boys behaved. Granny and Papa Lou were with us, so the boys were deprived of nothing that caught their eyes, but they seemed to take everything with a grace that I don’t see every day. I was so proud of Tristan’s attitude, especially toward Simon. It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of the noise and the lights and everything else, but his manners never failed. He was especially considerate of Simon, too, making sure he saw the cool stuff and helping him on and off the rides. A whole day at the fair with no squabbles – I didn’t think it was possible.

Best day at the fair ever, no doubt. Even the long walk back to the car, parked a few blocks away in the leafy district, was pleasant. Even Tristan seemed aware of the magic, as he referred again and again to our “most special day” at the fair.

Sure, you can complain about the cost, or the noise, or the inconvenience, but I would – and will – do it all over again just to make sure the boys’ mental photo albums are filled with happy days like these.

There’s no comment game today. Sorry about that. I can never tell if you are playing along because you’re humouring me, or if you genuinely like those things. Let me know if you really enjoy them, and I’ll find some more.

Then again, there’s not much else today. It’s been a long week and my brain is pretty much fried this morning. That, and I’m having a bad sweater day, and I’m feeling peevish about it.

Do you have clothing that pisses you off? I’ve had this sweater for (stops to count on fingers) way too long. Maybe six or eight years? And I can’t stand it. It’s acrylic, which makes my skin hot – not to mention the static cling factor, and it’s a litte bit fuzzy, which is kind of annoying in a tickly sort of way, and it’s cut about an inch and a half too short, so that it makes my belly look like a third boob hanging a little too low.

So why am I wearing it? Because when I look at it on the hanger, it’s a lovely sweater. It’s a nice light knit in a creamy white. I love the neckline and the way it hangs. It is in theory a perfect light low-maintenance sweater for summer, but in actual practice, it feels yucky and is very unflattering on me. And I cannot reconcile these two views of the same sweater, so I leave it hanging in the closet year after year, and about every six months it finally wears me down enough that I pull it off the hanger and try it on, and usually, like this morning, I’m only considering it because I’m already late and short on choices and don’t have time to iron anything else, so by the time I get it on and realize how much I can’t stand it I’m already late for the bus and I have to run so there’s no time to switch it for a less offensive sweater. And then I spend the whole ride into town on the bus sulking about being duped into wearing my bad sweater and scheming about how I can find a spare minute to sneak into the Rideau Centre to buy another shirt just so I don’t have to put up with this annoying fucking sweater any longer than I have to.

That happens to you too, right?

Just got this reminder in my in box. I blogged about it a few days (weeks?) ago.

Dear Friends of First Book:
A few weeks ago we emailed you to announce National Benefit Days promotion taking place in Borders and Waldenbooks stores on August 26 and 27. With these dates just a few days away, we wanted to remind you to bring your shopping lists – and this coupon – to your local Borders or Waldenbooks store this Saturday and Sunday.

Just $25 spent on back-to-school shopping, a couple of great beach reads, or the latest CD or DVD release will help get one child in need his or her very own, and perhaps very first, new book. Borders will donate 10% of the proceeds from your purchases to First Book, who will use those funds to provide new books for children nationwide. You will benefit not only from the 10% taken off your purchase, but from the knowledge that you personally are giving children from low-income families the opportunity to read and own their first new books!

Thank you for your support of First Book!