Night of the Meatloaf

Last night, I sat alone in a corner booth of a fast-food burrito joint, with black mascara streaks all over my face.

It was awesome, as you can probably imagine.

Jason sent me an email in the afternoon to tell me there was a work happy hour he had to go to, but he wouldn't be too late.

I sent him an email reminding him that, in typical end-of-the-week fashion, we had no food in the house, so could he pick something up before he came home? Burritos from Chipotle would be good, I suggested.

Mmmm, Chipotle, I thought, after hitting send. Chipotle would be very, VERY good.

And so I waited. I fed Noah his dinner, lamented the lack of ANYTHING ELSE EDIBLE in the house, at least anything edible that wouldn't 1) turn my stomach or 2) spoil my appetite for the sure-to-be delicious burrito that would arrive any second now, and then I spent an hour engaged in a completely pointless and circular argument with Noah about exactly what potty-related business was worthy of an M&M, and no, you don't get one for just sitting there, and stared at the clock.

7 pm.

7:30.

God, I was hungry.

At 8 pm Jason came home. That would be...late, in my mind. I struggled to hoist myself off the bathroom floor and almost blacked out. My blood sugar was crashing through the floor but thank God there was something to eat in this damn place now.

When I got downstairs, Jason was putting groceries away. He'd gone grocery shopping. There was no Chipotle. I asked him what he'd gotten for dinner and he gestured towards the packages of raw meat on the counter. Raw meat that would all need to be cooked.

And never mind the fact that I am eating almost exclusively vegetarian these days, because meat -- the look, texture, taste of all of it, including fish and poultry -- makes my still-delicate stomach flip-flop. I will eat it, usually when we go to some food event that Jason signs us up for, but these nights invariably end with me dry-heaving in a restaurant bathroom. If I am not expressly in the mood for it, I might as well be choking down grubs on Survivor.

Last night, something about the sight of all that raw meat just made me lose. My. Mind.

"IT'S EIGHT O'CLOCK!" I railed. "EIGHT! AND NOW I'M SUPPOSED TO COOK? I TOLD YOU TO BRING SOMETHING HOME! YOU TOLD ME YOU WOULDN'T BE LATE! I'M ABOUT TO PASS OUT AND YOU BRING HOME MEATLOAF MIX? THAT TAKES OVER AN HOUR!"

I stormed around the kitchen, coursing with hunger and hormones. Jason shrugged and told me to uh, get over it, he didn't pick up Chipotle, too fucking bad. Here, have some pita chips, or some cheese. I reminded him that dairy has also been particularly unkind to my digestive tract as well. As for the pita chips, well...I just didn't want any damn pita chips.

"What is your PROBLEM today?" he asked, referring to an email I'd sent him earlier about something completely unrelated, in which I declared that he was Officially Driving Me Crazy About <Unrelated Topic>, Oh My God.

It was your typical male-female fight. He saw the literal issue at hand, which was not a big deal. He went to the grocery store, so just pick something else and eat it.

I saw hours-long abandonment and a refusal to listen to me or take my pregnant needs seriously, even if to him they sound trivial. No matter how many times I've told him about the meat thing and the food cravings thing and the food aversions thing, I still get the sense that he thinks I'm just trying to be difficult. And gee, you know what? I'd like to go to happy hour with adults some time too! But I don't! Because that would inconvenience YOUUUUU and make you leave work early and WE ALL KNOW how much more important YOUR JOB is and I paced and stewed and composed eloquent tirades in my head about why this is about SO MUCH MORE than burritos and going grocery shopping when it's already late and not calling to find out if there was something I needed or wanted at the store and I never ask him for more than a glass of water while he's already up...but instead of saying any of these things I grabbed my car keys and diaper bag and told him I needed to get out of the house for a little bit, just like every hysterical pregnant lady in every movie who grabs her purse and announces she's going home to her mother.

What can I say? I was really, REALLY hungry.

I got in the car and started driving. Within a few minutes I was crying, even though I didn't know why. Well, I did. Narrowing it down to a single reason was what I couldn't do.

I have no idea if this is true for other stay-at-home-moms or women who altered their careers after having children, but even the most innocuous, run-of-the-mill argument can sometimes really drive home the power disparity of our household, and how financially dependent I am on Jason, how the majority of my contributions don't get assigned an hourly rate, and how this has changed our relationship and my opinion of myself in ways I didn't expect.

Money is tight right now. Not "we can't pay the electric bill" tight, but tight. I don't think I can afford to go to Blogher (AGAIN), our savings have never been lower and the list of unavoidable boring expenses looms large in the distance. The deck needs refinishing, the screen door is busted, the car lease is up and preschool deposits are due. A couple months of not watching out for every dollar or properly spacing big expenditures stupidly got us here in the first place; a lack of advertising checks and a huge tax payment have made it hard to climb out of the hole. We'll be fine, of course, but it's uncomfortable. There will be no vacations or anniversary plans or push presents or spoiling of the new baby. Next year looks like it will better. But as for right now, it's not a financial situation either of us enjoy or are really used to.

And it's during times like this that I am painfully aware of how little I contribute to our overall budget, despite feeling tied to the computer for hours a day, deadlines day after day after day, with no sick days or vacation time or retirement account, all so I can watch Noah grow up over the ridge of my laptop screen. But then I did insist on a bi-monthly housecleaning service, which is both an incredible help and an incredible guilt-raiser, especially when one of the cleaners mentioned that she went into labor with her last child while vacuuming a client's house.

Oh, the angst of the modern woman, balance, having it all, the topics of a million self-help books and feminist arguments -- all too much to ponder during a single car ride to the Chipotle down the street.

I knew I was being ridiculous, that I was letting myself blow something small out of proportion just to cover for the zillion other tiny anxieties currently keeping me up at night, along with my pregnant bladder. I felt stupid, so I turned my head away from the other cars at stoplights, just in case anyone was able to see me and my blubbering.

I pulled into one of those expectant mother parking spaces and took a deep breath. See? How nice! This is just what I needed. A guy on a cell phone held the door for me and I ordered my vegetarian burrito with hot salsa and sat down to a leisurely meal.

There was no high chair to juggle, no one demanding bits of my tortilla. The burrito tasted every bit as delicious as I'd hoped, and I sat there for awhile after I finished it, picking stray bits of rice off the foil wrapper and wondering what I could possibly say to Jason when I got back home. Do I just admit that I was acting crazy? Do I just blame pregnancy and be done with it? Do I try to maybe mention that I could use a little bit of extra sensitivity right now? Do I really feel like a night of talking about my pregnant little feeeeeeeelings and that just because everything is magnified times a zillion it doesn't mean I shouldn't ever get taken seriously, even if it really is just a request for a vegetarian burrito that gets answered with prepackaged meatloaf mix?

I thought about killing more time by wandering the aisles of CVS, but decided the evening didn't need to get any more melodramatic or Britney-esque. I got back in the car and that's when realized I'd neglected to check my makeup before and that's probably why I got some weird looks in the restaurant.

I got home around 9:30. I walked in and immediately saw Noah in the living room, wide awake and still dressed. He was watching Cars.

I felt my brain slowly make the switch to FLIP YOUR SHIT again (what, am I REALLY the only one who pays attention to bedtime? must I ALWAYS be the non-fun parent? does no one else here REALIZE what it's like to be trapped all day with a off-his-schedule toddler who is NOT gonna just sleep in tomorrow morning to make up for the lack of sleep?) but NO, I was not to let this night get the better of me again. I wordlessly walked upstairs and filled the bathtub.

I climbed in, along with a three-year-old bath ballistic from LUSH (ever wondered if those things expire? yes. they do, and sigh.) and laid there for awhile in the disappointingly tepid water. (Add hot water heater repairs to the list, and sigh.) I surveyed my fat belly and stretch marks -- I'm getting new ones already, ugly purple ones across my stomach and down my thighs, nothing like the spiderweb of thin white ones  -- that I didn't even get until 38 weeks -- from last time. After 10 minutes I drained the water because I didn't want to look at myself anymore.

Around 10 o'clock I heard Jason put Noah to bed. GAH GAH GAH, my head chanted, as I resisted the urge to remind him to brush our child's teeth. I turned on the TV in our bedroom to watch Lost.

Jason finally came in and asked if I was feeling better. I wasn't, but I shrugged and said I guessed so. I was too exhausted to explain any of it. He wouldn't understand. Hell, I barely understood.

He sat down on the bed and gingerly rubbed my leg and told me to get some sleep. I blurted out that I missed Julie, my friend who moved to California back in February, and started to cry. I could tell he was valiantly and desperately trying to find any connection between this and the thing about burritos. He told me to get some sleep again and retreated downstairs.

I tried to sleep, but the burrito gave me terrible heartburn.

***
It's 2 pm right now. Noah went down early for a nap, and I'm unshowered and still in my pajamas. It has just  occurred to me that I forgot to eat lunch. Minutes ago, Jason came home early.

He brought me flowers and chocolate ice cream.

In the Meantime We Got it Hard

Noah's occupational therapy has been...not going well. To put it mildly. We've made so little progress -- OT arrives at door, Noah bolts, spends entire session wailing from under the dining room table because he. Does. NOT. Want. To. Ride. On. A. Towel. Christ. Almighty. -- so his therapist suggested moving his sessions to the EI center and enrolling him in a couple structured class-type things.

Today was the first of those structured class-type things. The Lunch Bunch, they call it. For kids with oral motor problems and sensory food issues. On paper, it sounds lovely -- a little circle time, feeding plastic food to a puppet, then setting the table and eating some lunch, cleaning up and a story. Every other week the kids make the lunch; other weeks you bring it from home. One food they like and another they don't, which they will then be encouraged to lick or kiss or even just to TOUCH it while putting it in the clean-up bucket.

So it's a lot of kids who eat crackers and shriek at the sight of lunch meat, basically. Our kind of people.

But...oh God. I don't even know where to begin. There are no words for how badly this class went.

Noah screamed. And screamed. And. Screamed. He screamed when asked to sit on a little chair. He screamed when people sang. He screamed at the puppet and he screamed at the plastic fruit and he screamed at the sink and the plastic plates and his apple slices.

He wept and clung to me and then smashed his head into my face. The little girl next to us was obligingly kissing her ham and the little boy next to her was using a spoon to eat some yogurt and before I could help it, I was sobbing too. Big fat tears that I couldn't stop or hide because hello! I am the biggest failure in this room and I don't know how to make him stop screaming and sit in the chair and my face hurts now and while I am really, really heartbroken over how hard this is for him, JESUS CHRIST, it's a fucking CHAIR that you SIT ON, WHAT THE FUCK.

I wanted to bundle him up and go back to the car, to hug him and tell him he never has to go back.

I also wanted to leave him there and go back to the car and drive far, far away from him and stay there for days.

Instead, we stayed. I pulled myself together and wiped up my mascara smudges while everybody kindly looked the other way.  Noah threw himself down on a mat and screamed some more. We managed to get him to toss his uneaten apple slices in the clean-up bucket, even though the reward for cleaning up (you get to go read a book! and sit on more chairs!) resulted in more screaming.

45 minutes and several burst eardrums later, it was over. Noah was red, sweaty and tear-stained and I was filling out a form that asked me to comment on the day's activities, which ended up being a lot of Not Applicables and HA HA HA HAAAAAAAAAAAAs.

We had a one-on-one OT session right after, during which Noah was an angel. Of course. He jumped on a trampoline and rode on a little car and rolled around in a pile of pillows. I sat there and couldn't stop the awkward, shaken crying as I struggled to tell his therapist that really, I swear to God, I'm a good mother. I discipline, he listens to me, we get compliments on his behavior from strangers, he's loved and happy, we just don't have a lot of structure to our days and I've been feeling kind of blue lately and my best mom friend is moving to California in two months and I just found out yesterday and I think I should go back to work but we want another baby but I can't get pregnant but God, I have no business having another baby, 20 minutes ago I was ready to slap the shit out of the one I already have.

(OK, I don't think I quite said all of that out loud. At least I hope I didn't.)

She told me it will get easier. That some kids are just like this, that we'll figure it out and get him used to structure and stimuli and other children breathing his air and daring to sing in his presence. That yes, clearly his sensory problems are affecting his ability to deal with life and chairs, but everyone here understands. They know he's struggling because their kids struggle too. They've all been that mother -- the one with the out-of-control wigged-out Jekyll-and-Hyde child, terrified that everyone is judging you and your bratty kid and why doesn't she DO something to MAKE him stop crying -- and anyway, her point was that it will get easier.  Some day, at some point.

But probably not before next Wednesday at 11:30 am in room C7. See you there. Bring earplugs.

Not McLovinit

I am typing this in bed, but not the NICE kind of bed-typing (sitting up against multiple fluffy pillows in a marabou-trimmed dressing gown while everyone around you murmurs admiring words re: the strength of your will for blogging while consumptive). I'm typing with one hand while my laptop is precariously perched on one slightly raised knee; my other arm is wrapped around a snoring, sweaty toddler with whom I am currently sharing a nasty cold. His head is leaking fluids of various kinds onto my chest. There isn't a stitch of marabou to be found.

OK, that paragraph took waaaay to long to type (must I really use words like "precariously?"), so I'm going to attempt a Sleeping Toddler Slide-Off Triple Axel. Please hold.

***

Success! He's now dripping snot all over Jason's pillow. Outstanding.

***
Anyway. I've been wanting to post a thank you and acknowledgment for all the kind thoughts and crossed fingers you guys left on this post, but since so many of you were all, "Oh, but your sense of humor will obviously GET YOU THROUGH THIS," I kept trying to hide the extent of my true depressive funkitude about THAT WHOLE THING. The Internet thinks I'm plucky and resilient! I am a brave little toaster of staunch character! I am not burying my face in the bathroom wall tile and allowing myself a single melodramatic sob because Mother Fucking of Fuck in a Basket, it's almost 2008 and 2007 was supposed to be my year, man. The year of taking charge of my fertility (which...hmm, that's almost like...a book title of some kind?) and getting the baby-making thing done without the aid of crazy-making pharmaceuticals.

And now, in the process of avoiding Clomid or other fertility drugs, it appears that I have succeeded in making myself crazy. Amalah! FTW!

***
Two things to quickly change the subject:

1) The motor in my electric toothbrush died, and I sort-of panicked, holding the brush to my teeth and hitting the ON button over and over, like WHAT DO I DO NOW OMG, before it occurred to me that I could, you know, brush my teeth by MOVING MY DAMN ARM.

2) We rented Superbad, and while I like to think that I am an extremely creative and prolific user of the swear words, this movie made me feel like a fucking amateur. So much so that towards the end, when one character said something like, "You were taking a big dump and I caught a glimpse of your housing forms..." I turned to Jason and said, "Oh my God, is that what kids are calling it these days? I am so old."

Superbad Spoiler Alert! He was talking about housing forms. Like housing forms for college-housing housing forms. He was not talking about his friend's genitalia.

***
And now we're back:

We're going to the doctor next month. I have no idea what protocol we'll end up with, but we're going. We're doing this thang up right and official. Jason is actually noticing other people's infants in restaurants and is like, awwww. Which for him means the baby fever is pretty raging. (Then I jump up from our table to stalk these infants' mothers around the restrooms,  all, "Can I smell your baby's head? Please?" so I think we're about even.)

Hopefully this will be the last time I mention my malfunctioning female housing forms for awhile. Thank you for all your kind thoughts and finger crossing, which OH MY GOD, I could have just typed that originally and saved us all a lot of trouble.

Revelations

I hate going to the dentist. Oh, how I hate going to the dentist. I went for a cleaning last week and wriggled and twitched uncomfortably through the poking and the scraping, my tongue constantly and involuntarily getting in the way, while I fixated on the bulb of the overhead light, hoping that my dry burning eyeballs would distract me from what was going on in my mouth.

The hygienist pulled out the polishing toothbrush and I cringed -- this was the worst part, I always thought. The WORST.

And like every cleaning before, I realized that it wasn't -- that it actually barely bothered me at all.

When I was very little, that vibrating doohickey made me cry. I had to be physically held down in the dentist chair for years. It made me scream and kick and flail and gag. One time I screamed so much I threw up all over myself -- just like Noah did after the nurse restrained his hand for all that time on Monday, squeezing out drops of blood after a completely painless finger prick.

Just like Noah. 

If I order a sandwich, it cannot contain any of the following: lettuce, pickles, raw onions.

I like lettuce, pickles and raw onions. But I can't eat them on a sandwich.  Last week in a fit of laziness I took Noah to McDonald's. He won't eat fries (he doesn't like crunchy-outside-soft-inside things), or nuggets (same thing, only worse because it's meat), or apple slices (are you soft or are you crunchy? make up your mind, fruit!), so he dipped his fingers in the caramel sauce and drank some milk. I figured that it served me right, but dammit, I was in the mood for a burger. I ordered a quarter pounder with cheese and forgot to ask for no pickles.

When I took a bite it felt like someone was scraping their fingernails on a chalkboard. Only the chalkboard was inside my skull, right between my ears. And so I, a nearly 30-year-old woman who prides herself immensely on gourmet cooking and adventurous dining, spat out a bite of hamburger onto a tray and picked the remaining pickles off.

I was the last one in my class to hang upside-down from the monkey bars and I hated sports so much I would cry when I was forced to participate.  Field Day was my own personal circle of hell. I couldn't run very fast or jump very far or kick or throw or hit a ball in pretty much any sport.

It was okay though, because I was girl. I was supposed to be cautious and prefer books and quiet toys.

I refused to wear turtlenecks for years. They gagged me. I would pull and stretch on the necks because I was sure I was choking. Eventually my entire body would start freaking out and...I don't know, but I still remember that desperate itching, like the fight-or-flight instinct kicking in and I would have to pull the shirt off, and those brief seconds while the elastic-y neck was over my face I thought I was going to die.

I remember that feeling because it came back a few years ago, when I started having panic attacks. My panic attacks always included gagging -- the feeling that I was not getting enough air. I was choking. I was being strangled. My chest was being crushed. I was drowning. Jason would shake me, force me to focus on the overhead light, and remind me that the only thing stopping my breathing was me.

I talked about this feeling in therapy a lot. We tried to dig for the reason -- some childhood trauma, perhaps? The older brother who wrapped a telephone cord around my neck? Who kept my torso trapped between his knees that one time until I cried? Did he maybe do other things that no one saw and I don't remember? Think about your other brothers, your neighbors, your uncles, find someone to blame for the way you are.

Looking back and connecting the dots like this is both helpful and frustrating. On the one hand, I outgrew most of my ticks, or at least learned to deal with them. I don't like the dentist, but I go. I use an electric toothbrush every day. Twice a day! I can wear a turtleneck if I want to. Which I don't. But I could! I played tennis in high school and even got pretty good, and while the thought of playing volleyball at the beach still fills me with a sense of dread and you-people-be-crazy-how-is-that-fun, no one is forcing me to play volleyball at the beach these days. I absolutely cannot ski, which breaks Jason's heart, but he loves me anyway. I eat a wide variety of foods and textures and there are worse things in life than pickle-less hamburgers.

On the other hand, Noah got all this stuff from me.

Even if your childhood is all-around pretty okay, you still want your own children to have an easier time than you did. You still want to correct whatever mistakes you think your parents made, and you still want your children to excel in the areas you lacked.

I'd love for Noah to be good at sports -- I don't care really, but let's face it, it just makes life easier for little boys. Jason would love for him to ski, although at this point we'd both be happy if he'd just let us drag him around the floor on a towel without howling in terror.

I'd love for Noah to eat more foods, to let us brush his teeth and rub his face. I'd love to hold his hand while we walk instead of carrying him everywhere, out in public and up and down stairs. I'd love for his first memories to NOT involve puking in a doctor's office because someone is doing something to you that drives your brain crazy in a way you can't explain.

I still hope all those things can happen for him -- he's so young -- and obviously we love him regardless, completely as-is.

Find someone to blame for the way you are. Well. Hi. Here I am. 

I'm really sorry. But it'll be okay in the end.

Paranoid Android

JASON: So. Anything interesting happen today?

AMY: I spent the whole day dealing with shit.

JASON: Ooh, was there some kind of Internet drama?

AMY: No. Like actual, physical shit. I spent the whole day dealing with feces.

JASON. Ooh, Noah?

AMY: Well, yes. Noah kept saying he had to go apoopoo but wouldn't go on the potty and he wanted to watch the Potty Time With Elmo video 14 dozen times and then Max pooped in the office twice and Ceiba crapped on the stairs.

JASON: Uh.

AMY: Yeah. It was an enriching day. I do good work.

***

I've been in a bit of a cranky funk this week and feeling immensely sorry for myself for no reason at all.

Well, okay, unless you count this as a valid reason for funkitude:

Of course, after cursing the coffee maker out for RISING AGAINST ME, FOR MAKING EVERYTHING WORSE, I realized I'd forgotten to put the inner plastic basket thing in before the filter and thus this was all my own fault but COME ON, I was still totally ready to cry about it.

Or, you know, grab a straw and suck that shit up off the countertop.

Same thing with all the pet poop. Max, in a fit of old age and/or belated moving-related rebellion, has decided he will not use his litter box if it is not P-E-R-F-E-C-T-L-Y clean. Which means I must scoop it out after he goes EVERY TIME and sift it and add fresh litter EVERY TIME, or else he relieves himself six inches to the right of the box. As I am extremely lazy and forgetful and also trying to prove a point that he's being ridiculous, just CRAP IN THE BOX ALREADY, he's been having a lot of accidents.

So I clean it all up and always manage to spill litter on the floor, and then I grab the mini-handvac thing and of course, it's never fully charged because I am extremely lazy and never remember to charge it, but at the time I am all, WOE IS ME and *SHAKES FIST AT THE HEAVENS* and that's when I punch myself in the face because dude, it's some kitty litter on the carpet, get a damn grip and call the vet already.

(Seriously. Can you believe this is the most interesting story I've managed to come up with all week?)

(Does your brain itch as it atrophies? Or is it more of a stinging-type sensation?)

Several months ago I blamed a similar funk on the weather. Which is completely gorgeous right now. Except maybe it's a little too hot, plus there are mosquitoes, and I get a sinus headache from all the fucking grass and nature and shit.

Basically, hi. I'm a whiny little bitch who is never happy. Also probably on the rag.

But look! Here's some baby beefcake.

(Hey. Anybody want to join my little ray-of-sunshine ass for a Top Chef open thread tonight at the Mamapop forums? It'll be just like you're sitting in my living room, except you don't have to put up with me asking for foot rubs. Also sometimes I get a little gassy after dinner, so yeah. Forums are totally the way to watch TV with me.)

(Also, of COURSE it was reaction number 3. What kind of mature human being do you people take me for?)

Number Two

This morning Noah and I played our game of Gimme Kisses. I tell him to gimme kisses, please. He shakes his head no, and then I swoop in for a kiss anyway, while making a big, exaggerated mmmmmmmmmmmmmMWA sound. Then he giggles.

This morning I stopped playing after a few kisses. He started humming. "Mmmmmm." He reached up and put his hands on my cheeks and leaned in.

"MWA!" he shrieked, covering my face with kisses. Then we both giggled.

Yeah. I gotta get me another one of these.

***
Two things I said I'd never do again:

1) Have another child.
2) Take Clomid.

They went together pretty nicely, I thought.

But like a lot things I swore I'd never do (suburbs! yard! skinny jeans! hotdogs for lunch!), I changed my mind about Number One. I want another baby. WE want another baby.

The five of you who read the ClubMom blog know that Jason and I have been trying for awhile now. I don't know how long, exactly. Maybe since Noah's first birthday? Maybe even before that? I seem to remember using the BlogHer swag bag condom at some point, but honestly, we've never really used birth control since Noah was born.

"It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world," Jason said once about a second pregnancy, while I pondered the calendar in a minor morning-after freakout and looked at him, like THAT'S BITCH-CRAZY TALK, HELL YES IT WOULD BE, OUR CHILD STILL HAS POOPS THAT SHOOT PAST HIS NECK.

But then I gradually came around to his way of thinking. No, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. In a lot of ways it would be pretty great.

***
Which brings us to rethinking Thing Number Two. Stupid Number Two.

The 10 of you who have been reading all along might remember that I took Clomid for a few months with no success, waaay back in 2004.  Those were pretty much the most miserable months of my life and I went completely batshit crazy afterwards, with depression and panic and I was just all around a Big Hot Mess. (I can't even bring myself to link to the entries from that time, even though they don't even begin to really express just how bad things got.)

I'm not sure if I've ever really spelled out my fertility issues here, so for those just joining us: I am annovulatory. I do not ovulate on my own, ever. I get periods -- usually every 45 to 50 days, but sometimes much more infrequent. In 2001 (2002? god, am senile. where the fuck are my keys?) I got two periods for the entire year.

We don't really know why -- I don't have PCOS or thyroid problems. I had an eating disorder all through high school, but I'd already had irregular periods for a few years before my anorexia developed. So I float around in the pool of Unexplained Infertility, watching my cycles get longer and more whacked out by the month. It's not insurmountable and it's not the end of the world -- but it's enough to color and complicate your reproductive plans.

After upping the dose of Clomid a couple times, I managed to ovulate, but didn't conceive. Then I got sick and we decided to take some time off from the baby-making and try again in the new year.

Then, of course, I fucking got pregnant. Like a normal human being, without Clomid or an IUI or even a damn thermometer. (The people who told me it was because I "just relaxed" are all buried under the floorboards of our old condo, thankyouverymuch.)

That pretty much brings us to now. I hoped that having Noah would "fix" everything. Like he was this 9-pound, 15-ounce Post-It Note that said HEY LOOK! WAY TO GO ON THE FULFILLING OF YOUR PRIMARY PURPOSE, OVARIES!

But no, everything is the same as it has always been. Which means we have two options:

1) Wait and see if we get lucky again.
2) Try Clomid again.

Stupid Number Two.

***
I don't know what option we're going to go with, honestly. On the one hand, I'm sick of thinking about this and marking tiny yet ultimately useless X's on the calendar. I'm sick of wondering if we'll get lucky next month or next year or ever.

On the other hand, I don't necessarily feel ready right this second to have another baby. Sometimes I still feel like I just HAD a baby. That I still HAVE a baby. That it's too soon and too much and maybe we should just let it happen when it's meant to happen, like Jason always said pre-Noah, and it pisses me off that he was right because I don't necessarily believe that things always happen when they're "meant" to happen, I mean, look at every reality TV show in the history of reality TV shows where my favorite contestant got voted off too soon.

On the other hand, Jason and I are both much, MUCH younger than our siblings. In a lot of ways we were only children. Which wasn't bad at all, oh no, but...I don't know. I think I'd enjoy watching Noah grow up with a sibling close to his age and wonder if we shouldn't get a little aggressive before too much time passes. I worry he'll be spoiled or lonely on his own, blah blah typical family planning mindfuck.

On the other hand, Clomid made me crazy.

I wonder if it would be as bad this time, since maybe I would be (shut up) more relaxed, since I have Noah and the knowledge that I CAN get pregnant and CAN carry to term, and honestly, I don't necessarily feel like not having a second child would be any big devastating thing. I mean, we want one, but if you told me tomorrow that our family was complete as-is I'd still feel pretty damn lucky and content.

On the other hand, I might only think that because deep down, I'm secretly pretty smug and confident that we'll be able to have a second baby eventually.

On the other hand, I am fresh out of other hands. I'm talking in circles and boring even myself. And I find myself pretty fascinating. Look! My belly button is squishy.

***

I look at his face and know that he is enough. He is more than enough. And yet because he is enough, more than enough, to fill my heart and life with such mind-boggling amounts of joy, I cannot help but wonder what it must be like to have that joy times two.

I cannot help but to take his face in my hands and cover it with kisses, while silently praying gimme baby. Please.

Title Intentionally Left Blank

Quick. Somebody give me a topic to write about. I am too tired to think of one.

I am so tired. I am so super extra goddamned tired. Noah and Jason are still laid up with really bad colds, which means everyone is cranky and...well, sort of crusty. The snot pours on, my friends.

And then there's this.

Heather is Noah's first and only babysitter. She is our friend. She is a member of our family. We would not have survived the past 18 months or so without her, and now she's moving away and I sort want to throw myself on the ground and wrap my arms around her ankles while wailing don't leeeeeave meeeeee, and then maybe lock her in our basement for awhile. And I mean that in the nicest and most non-creepy-murdery way possible.

But I won't, because I'm happy for her and her awesome new job that will pay her more than I ever made at my old job, but WHATEVER, YOU WHORE. HAVE A NICE LIFE.

(ALSO I SAVED THIS WEEK'S EPISODE OF HOUSE FOR YOU. DO YOU NEED ME TO SAVE AMERICA'S NEXT TOP MODEL TOO?)

Anyway. I am still kind of blue and unsettled. Noah's throwing a million tantrums a day, probably because he feels like shit and isn't sleeping well either, but after the 999,999th hissyfit of the day my sympathy is ALL TAPPED OUT.  Seriously, son. An inability to get the fridge magnets lined up precisely to your liking is no reason to get all freaking nuclear and screamy.

Honestly, it's like he's learned NOTHING from all those episodes of Blue's Clues. Metacognition, my ass.

(DEAR HEATHER, ARE YOU FREE ON SATURDAY?)

(PS. Dead serious about the call for topics. Is hard to write interesting things when the only drama in your life is that there are only four tissues left and three hours before Jason gets home with more tissues and the beep.beep.beep.beep. clock sound from 24 is stuck in your head because dude, what if you run out of tissues? WHAT THEN? And then you remember that you could maybe use baby wipes or toilet paper or even a paper towel and you have plenty of those, so on second thought it's not very dramatic at all and maybe you should just chill the fuck out.)

(PPS. Someone is outside with a weedwhacker about three inches from my house, and I swear to God if they wake that child up from his nap I am going to go out there and whack them with this roll of paper towels.)

The Mean Reds

It's not just me, right? There's definitely something going around. Something in the air, maybe. Or in the water. Or in the multiple cups of coffee I drink to function during the day because I can't sleep at night.

Maybe it's that winter came back and ate spring and all the pretty little flowers that were blooming in my yard. Maybe it's because I even have a yard in the first place, and I miss our old condo and the cement and grit of the city.  Maybe it's that Noah's nose has been leaking like a faucet for days now, that Jason's already sick and I'm trying not to even acknowledge the scratchy feeling in my throat.

Maybe it's the terrible news at Virginia Tech and my inability to turn of effing CNN.

I don't know. Maybe it's just all these Girl Scout cookies I've been eating. (Damn you, Tagalongs! Fill the void already!)

Whatever it is, I don't think I'm the only one feeling this way. (Right? Right? That's your cue, commenty-type people. Hello? Fuck.)

I'm sad. Anxious. Constantly on edge. I've been having nightmares. Stupid anxiety dreams mixed with full-on weird ones, like a recurring dream where I've killed someone and gotten away with it -- but then the Backyardigans start singing to me from the television about how murder is oh so wrong, oh so wrong! and I am consumed with guilt --  Dostoevsky meets children's television, folks. Only in my brain. So I just stay up all night instead.

It's hard to write when I get like this. I know it will pass, I know everything is fundamentally okay, and I know I would regret writing some overwrought, navel-gazing rumination on any of the stupid petty shit that's wigging me out, so I should just...I don't know. Shut up and post some photos or something.

I would, except I don't know which Photoshop filter gets rid of toddler snot-face.

So here. Hold this photo up to a mirror and discover the name of the one thing that pretty much delights me to no end. It's the amalah.com brain teaser placemat!

(God, but I am dumb. Physics! Objects in mirrors, and such.)

We still don't have our archives back after this happened, and we don't have a solution to the Open Thread/captcha quagmire, but damn, it's good to have the site back. Because where else am I gonna post stuff like this?  The Muppets make everything so much better.