in one piece

i'm home.

my dad's wife is quite nice, and she loved the scarf i took her. my relatives all acted as though nothing had ever happened, which was bizarre but beat the hell out of any ugly scenes. i didn't have any significant conversation after the good-to-see-yous with them, but that dynamic suited me fine.

my father's sister, my beloved aunt greta, died 7 1/2 years ago, after her final of three bouts with cancer. her 70-year-old husband fell while jogging around the local lake on friday and was hospitalized a few floors away from my dad. one of his two sons and his family were there visiting him; my cousin and his brother are the only people in my dad's family who have made any attempt to contact me in the last three years, i'm sure because they've been mostly out of the loop since their mom died. i got the chance to tell my cousin that if hans had been a girl, he would have been named greta. it meant the world to my cousin. while i don't wish my uncle bodily harm, i'm grateful that the situation to tell my cousin presented itself. it made the trip better for me.

my dad. he's strengthened some since he was first hospitalized. he's having a colonostomy on tuesday. after that surgery, his liver specialist takes over. because the cancer that spread to his liver is already stage four, the most advanced stage, they can't get rid of it, but with what they can do for him, the liver guy expects him to have two years left. my dad seems to be taking it well. i don't wish him dead, but dead seems like it might be preferable to dragging it out for two years. he may not agree. in fact, he is determined to fight it. they've also found some spots on his lungs, but there's not even a plan for those yet, apparently.

i took him a quaker hymnal i bought for him several years ago but had never given to him. he collects hymnals of other denominations and faiths and in other languages. he was so pleased with it, and apparently read the history of some of the hymns during the night when he couldn't sleep. he was pleased that i came, too.

it was tiring, but i'm glad i went. it lifted some guilt. even though i know intellectually that it has been for my own mental health and personal dignity that i have limited my contact with him the last several years, there's still that dutiful daughter ethos that dogs me and wants to punish me for not adhering to "honor thy father". it's bullshit, frankly, but there it is. and so i think, at least where my dad is concerned, i'm going to be able to sleep better now.

so that was my trip in a nutshell: uneventful. my father's seemingly imminent death postponed until further notice. jerry springer-worthy family feud averted. not very interesting blogging. and i like it that way. i suspect my dad does, too.

...and i'd like to thank the academy...

i am bad about writing thank you notes. it's not because i'm not grateful. i have trouble doing things i don't do well, and i struggle with expressing my gratitude in writing. now, justin - he writes a mean thank you note. he wrote almost all of our wedding thank-yous; i was happy to address and stuff and stamp all the envelopes in return for that kind of beautifulness.

but it's important that i say thank you today. there are many things for which i need to thank a ton of my fellow bloggers, but right now i need to express my gratitude to everyone who has surrounded me with their sympathy and well wishes and undeserved compliments and understanding. i wear your sentiments around my shoulders like a superhero's cape as i leave to see my father. you all give me strength.

i fly out in a few hours. my brother is reportedly trying to de-smoke his truck for my benefit as i write this post, and he will pick me up just before noon from the tampa airport and carry me to the hospital. i have no idea what my dad's wife likes (my sister once described her taste as "country", but that could mean so many things), but i bought her a scarf as a token of nice-to-meet-you-ness, and i've packed it next to the quaker hymnal i'm taking to my dad, who used to collect hymnals of various denominations and languages. i've also packed my camera. will it be appropriate to take pictures? will my dad even want pictures of him taken in a hospital bed? who knows. i'll play it by ear.

i hope it goes well. if it doesn't, at least it will be short. i fly out at noon on sunday, back to justin and love and acceptance and fresh mushrooms and episodes 2 and 3 of disc 3 of season 2 of six feet under. by 2:30 sunday, i will be safe again. provided i don't make any more illegal left turns on the way home from the airport.

raindrops keep fallin' on my head

in the continuing saga of "what more can the universe dump on me?", i got a traffic ticket this morning, taking justin to work. he doesn't even work on fridays; he picked up some extra hours today which will now go to pay my ticket. or they would if i could figure out how much the ticket is. i have read the entire thing, front and back, and it does not say. maybe it's a free ticket! or maybe not. i could contest it - it was raining, it was dusk (or whatever you call it in the morning), i don't normally drive at that time of day - but i'd have to take off work, which will either cause my already shortened trip to italy to get even shorter or mean an unpaid day, which would cost far more than the ticket, surely. maybe not. maybe a left turn during rush hour is a huge fine. you could see how making a left turn at an intersection where even the ticketing officer described the traffic as "light" could seriously jeopardize public safety. if we keep making left turns, the terrorists win. i should just shut up and mail in the fine. except i don't know how much it is.

New Study: Abortion/Stillbirth Linked to Increased Risk of Child Abuse

Wow. This is alot to digest. I found this linked on an anti-choice blog while doing some research on stillbirth. Certainly, it seems to me to be a case of grasping at insignificant stats to confirm bias. I'm curious what others think. I'll opine later. - Justinian

Authors Say Emotional Healing After Abortion Will Increase Likelihood of "Violence Free" Families

SPRINGFIELD, Il., October 24, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A new study published in the medical journal Acta Paediatrica has found that women who have had an abortion are 2.4 times more likely to physically abuse their children.

The study, led by Priscilla Coleman of Bowling Green State University, looked at data taken from a survey of 518 low-income women in Baltimore who were receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children and who had at least one child aged 12 years or younger. The data compared rates of child abuse and neglect among women who had experienced either an involuntary (miscarriage or stillbirth) or voluntary (induced abortion) pregnancy loss.

The results showed that women with a history of one induced abortion were 2.4 times more likely to physically abuse their children than women who had not had an abortion. In addition, the increase in risk among women who had experienced an abortion was more significant than the increase among women who had experienced a miscarriage or stillbirth.
The authors suggested that "emotional difficulties and unresolved grief responses" from pregnancy loss, whether voluntary or involuntary, could have a negative impact on women's mental health and lead to unhealthy parenting responses. Past studies have linked pregnancy loss to an increase in grief reactions, anxiety, depression, sleep disturbances, and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, all of which can have a negative impact on parent/child relationships.

In addition, induced abortion has been linked to an increased risk of substance abuse and suicidal thoughts, and a 2002 study published in the Journal of Child Psychiatry and Psychology found that children whose mothers had a history of abortion tended to have less supportive home environments and more behavioral difficulties.

The current study showed that although a single involuntary pregnancy loss did not significantly increase the risk of child abuse or neglect, physical abuse was more common among women who had experienced multiple involuntary pregnancy losses. However, women who had repeat abortions were not more likely to abuse their children than women who had one abortion, although abortion increased the risk of physical abuse overall.

In addition, neither form of pregnancy loss was linked to child neglect, leading the authors to speculate that mothers with unresolved losses may be able to "go through the motions" of meeting their children's basic needs but have difficulty coping with issues such as anger or parent/child conflict.

"Regardless of the specific mechanisms at play, maternal history of one induced abortion does appear to be a marker for increased risk of physical abuse," the authors wrote.

They also noted that while emotional difficulties related to miscarriage or stillbirth are usually resolved within a few years, women who have abortions are often not given an opportunity to resolve feelings of grief or other related emotions. According to Elliot Institute director Dr. David Reardon, who has worked on more than a dozen published studies documenting abortion's negative impact on women, many women either feel a need to keep the abortion a secret or are told to simply "move on" when they try to discuss their pain.

Reardon said that greater attention needs to be focused on the long-term effects of abortion on women and their families.
"The common perception seems to be that abortion solves the immediate problem of a crisis pregnancy and that therefore it must be a positive thing for women," he said. "However, more and more studies such as this one show that abortion can have a severe and lasting impact on women's lives, shaping their futures and the futures of their families for years to come."
The current study is one of the first to compare rates of child abuse among women who had experienced an involuntary pregnancy loss as opposed to those who experienced a voluntary loss. However, the authors noted that the findings were limited by the size of the study and called for more research to be done using larger groups of women.

"In the event that such a large scale effort yields robust findings consistent with those described ... more efforts should be directed toward helping women restore their emotional health following abortion," the authors wrote. "Investment in such programs is likely to improve the quality of their lives and increase the likelihood that their future families will be violence free."

Study Citation: Priscilla K. Coleman, Charles D. Maxey, Vincent M. Rue, and Catherine T. Coyle, Associations between voluntary and involuntary forms of pregnancy loss and child maltreatment among low-income mothers, Acta Paediatrica 94, 2005.

See the Study online: http://journalsonline.tandf.co.uk/link.asp?id=xr05...

is this year over yet? in which i air my dirty laundry

i wish my father didn't have cancer. but if he does, i wish our relationship were different. i wish our history were different. i wish that i could go to the bedside of my saintly, beloved father and send him off to his heaven, and he could give me some blessing, and we would be sad but know that his life was well-lived and none of us would have any regrets, except that he's leaving us.

but it's not like that.

my mother was a nurse who worked nights. my dad was a minister of a succession of very small churches that did not require his full-time attention, so my dad was my primary caretaker until i was seven or so.

i remember going with him to the bank drive-thru on monday mornings to deposit the church's offerings from the day before and always getting a dum-dum sucker, usually pineapple. we would make regular stops at 7-11 for mountain dew and moon pies or twinkies or those little pecan pies, and we would recycle our empty mountain dew bottles as fishing equipment. my dad would tie string around the neck of the empty bottle and fill it with torn bits of bread from the ends of the loaf at home, and we would drop our bottles over the side of a footbridge into a creek at a park and let the bottle fill up with hungry minnows. after we looked at them for a while, we'd drop the minnows back in the creek to resume their little lives, if they weren't too shell-shocked from their capture or the subsequent torture of being poured back into the creek.

my dad made me breakfast every morning, usually rice krispies or a concord grape jelly on white bread sandwich, folded over, please, and he packed my lunches of balogna sandwiches and potato chips in baggies. as often as he could, he'd slip in something even better/worse, like chips ahoy cookies or one of those fancy little pre-packaged bags of chips. sometimes he would write me funny little notes on my napkin.

he was my everything.

including my abuser.

my earliest memory, from around the time i turned three, is of him laying me down on my parents' bed to take my nap, and him laying down next to me and masturbating. he did it in front of me throughout my childhood, until i was in junior high and had a busy enough life of my own that i wasn't around to see it. i didn't tell anyone. i knew there was something not right, but it was all i knew.

there was never much peace between my parents, and by the time i was 14 or 15, my mom had no energy left for playing the role of the good pastor's wife. she started being too tired or too sick to go to much more than the sunday morning service, and even then she started to be a little irregular in attendance. i started to become the surrogate wife, going with him to church events. in the car, going to these things, my dad made me his confidante about his relationship with my mom. i felt it was me and him against the world, or at least against my mom.

when i went to college, my dad started to have extramarital affairs. over the years, almost all of them were with his secretaries. during the summers when i was home from college, i worked as his secretary, because every year it just so happened that he had just had another secretary quit. after i left school and my career took off, i stopped coming home very often. my dad wrote me letters which i never returned. i had outgrown him, had no use for him. as i came into my own, i finally started to develop a relationship with my mom for the first time in my life.

when i was 27, he had the first of a series of breakdowns. it was not a simple thing, but at its core was the fact that his current secretary had quit. my mother got him into a short-term residential program just for pastors and went with him. my dad came out of it visibly shaken; i suspect he was forced to confront himself and it was painful. he has never been given to introspection. a couple of months later, the last secretary's husband met with my parents and threatened them. my dad fell apart completely, but my mom kicked into gear. she tendered his resignation. she sold their house. i had just moved back to florida, to jacksonville, with my job, and she packed everything up and moved the family in with me for two months while she found and closed on a condo there.

things got worse. my father refused any further therapy or medication and drifted in and out of reality. he managed to get a part-time job in retail and in no time got involved with one of his female co-workers. at one point, after he made a dramatic and hysterical departure, we had to get the police to find him, and my mother had him committed. she did everything she could to help him, and he refused it all. finally, she filed for divorce.

i did everything i could to support my mom through the divorce (by this time i had become her confidante). and then when it was over, a funny thing happened. my father's behavior throughout my childhood suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks. i was depressed pretty much throughout my 20s. i was already seeing a psychiatrist who felt that, based on my family history, my depression was inherited and not something that would benefit from talk therapy, and he was trying out different anti-depressants on me.

i knew i needed some talk therapy now and started seeing a clinical counselor. i talked to him about my dad and everything that had happened. he asked me if i thought my father was turned on by masturbating in front of me. i honestly answered, no. i had learned he's just a person with no boundaries whatsoever. it wasn't about me; it was just about him being too immature to understand that it was wrong to do it when i was around. with that, the counselor dispatched me back to the shrink for more meds.

my dad kept trying to see me, and i desperately avoided him. finally, i wrote him a letter asking him to leave me alone for six months while i sorted things out. reportedly, it about killed him, but i didn't know what else to do. at the end of those six months, i confronted him. he sobbed, and apologized for hurting me, but steadfastly denied anything had ever happened. i walked away and didn't talk to him for a year.

at the end of that year, he moved to the town where he now lives to become the minister of another church. after a little while, my sister and i went down to see him. we were there over a sunday, and i was shocked to realize how easy it was for me, even after everything that had happened, to slip back into that pastor's wife role. it made me feel dirty, frankly. i didn't go down to see him again.

then i met justin, and got caught up in my life with him. and i found the right therapist, the one who could look me in the eye and call a spade a spade (namely, that what my dad had done was sexual abuse) and i began to heal. i recognized that my dad had the emotional maturity of a 12 year old and was never going to change. he was never going to respect any boundaries of appropriate behavior, and he was never going to admit what he had done, because he couldn't admit it to himself. it was up to me to establish and maintain the parameters of our relationship, and i chose to talk to him a couple of times a year and see him even less often.

when justin and i got engaged, after much internal turmoil, i decided to invite my dad to the wedding, but i would not let him officiate. justin came to the rescue with the quaker, officiant-free format that spared me. was there ever a better husband-to-be???

shortly after we got engaged, my sister got married. my parents were both unprepared for dealing with the awkwardness or being civil to each other, and the whole weekend was filled with hurt feelings and misunderstandings. after the ceremony, when family pictures were being taken, there was a misunderstanding about who was to be in what picture, and my mother hissed at my father to step down. it was more than my father could take, and he sat down right were he was, on the platform of the church sanctuary, and bawled uncontrollably. relatives tried to talk to him to no avail, and then my sister began to cry, so i went to him and told him he needed to get it together for my sister's sake. he cried harder. i told him if he couldn't get it together he should leave. i meant, he should step out into the hallway, but he took it to mean that he should get in the car and drive the three hours home right then and there.

he did, and his whole extended family, who had left the church with a "see ya at the reception" never reappeared. who knows what my dad said to his sisters, but when i got married six months later, no one in his family (except for two cousins whose mother died several years before and were therefore out of the family loop) came to the reception or even acknowledged my wedding with so much as a greeting card. i was hurt, but i understood that there was nothing i could do to change their understanding of things short of tell them the whole sordid story, and they would not have believed it anyway, so i left them to stew without me.

a few months later, my dad got married. i didn't know about the wedding until two weeks before it happened, and i couldn't work it out to get there. my dad has been married for over two years, and i have never met his wife. i can't imagine what she must think of me, or how he might have explained my absence to her.

when i got pregnant last year with hans, i was pretty at peace with the way things were. i had worked out my stuff where my dad was concerned, and i had no expectations of him. but i didn't want to pass any baggage on to my child, and so i made an effort to open the door a little to my dad. my dad would alternately be enthusiastic and write me long letters and then not be in contact for months. i was okay with it, because i had done what i could and didn't expect any miracles from him.

when hans died, he drove my sister's family here from florida. they were barely here for 24 hours, so there wasn't much time for my dad to do anything too inappropriate, and i appreciated the sacrifice he made to come. when i got pregnant with the tadpole, i called him earlier on this time, and he seemed genuinely thrilled. when i miscarried, my sister gave him the news. he sent me flowers, which was lovely and unexpected.

last night i talked to him in the hospital for about 15 minutes. he has been having stomach pains for months. a couple of months ago, he went to the doctor, who told him he was okay. then he started to lose weight, and the pains got worse, and finally last friday, he went to an urgent care center. they ran tests on him and asked him to come back monday for more tests; on monday, they asked him to come back tuesday for an ultrasound. after the ultrasound, they told him to go straight to the hospital.

the first doctor at the hospital told him he had colon cancer, and that it had spread to his liver, and that it was incurable. then the oncologist saw him and told him not to give up hope yet. theyre taking him into surgery monday to get out what they can and then can try chemotherapy. he is determined not to give up. he is also in much pain and very weak, so weak that the surgery is being put off until monday because they're trying to get enough protein in him for him to be strong enough to withstand surgery.

my brother implied that he made not be able to survive the surgery, if he lasts until monday, and begged me to come see him. one way or another, i will go down this weekend.

i'm not sure what will face me there. i don't expect any problems from my dad - i think he views me as his misguided, prodigal daughter and i know he would be happy to see me. i have no idea, however, what to expect from his wife, since i have no idea what her idea of me is. and i do expect to get shit from my dad's sister and her son, as soon as they can pull me away from my father's side. for that reason, i'm making the visit as short as possible; i was trying not to spend the night, but i think i might have to just because flight schedules are always limited on saturdays. so i'm steeling myself to listen to whatever garbage is spewed at me and to not respond to it. the most i will give them is my assurance that i will do nothing to cause my father any pain.

i do mean that. i'm only going to offer comfort, and so i don't regret it later. i'd like to end things with him on a high note. i just wish it didn't have to be right now.

my father has colon cancer, and it has spread to his liver.

there's so much i need to write, but now that i'm here, after all the phone calls with my brother and my sister and my dad and justin and my mom, i'm worn out. all i can do is stare at the screen.

in which i flip the bird at the greatest generation

the partner of the therapist who turned me down who was recommended by the world famous whoopie-ologist who turned me down called me back and is seeing me tuesday. i can't tell you the relief i feel. i have an appointment!

and in case she doesn't, you know, get it, i have a back-up plan in the works. my ob's social worker called me back and asked me twenty questions, and acknowledged that my needs are "highly specialized" and that she doesn't right off know anyone suited to them, but she's going to try to find me someone now that she has a better understanding of my scenario. maybe as a licensed clinical social worker she'll have more pull getting me in somewhere than i do on my own. if she found someone qualified closer to home, i'd definitely give that person a try, since the therapist with whom i have an appointment is on the other side of town, although at this point i'd fly somewhere on the weekends to get to a good therapist.

the comments of the "highly specialized" sort from the social worker and from every therapist i've tried to see and from the insurance company case worker worry me. given the percentage of pregnancies that terminate, why aren't there more people specializing in perinatal loss? why isn't there a "supporting parents in subsequent pregnancies" specialty? is the dearth of therapeutic support the result of the traditional silence about this kind of loss? i know every generation does the best that it can, but earlier generations failed us miserably by trying to sweep it under the carpet.

i'm pretty pissed at my elders. speaking of which, don't even get me started on either of our mothers.

carajo

I've let it be known that I'm looking to work some extra hours at work. I haven't, intentionally, worked extra hours in about three or four years. A good portion of that time spent seperating myself from all the bitty-mamma's who'd always play the 'kid card' to get me to work their weekends and holidays, because, well i'm not a dad and it was their desire to spend these days with their little lovilies.

For several years, I couldn't get through a day without one of these people calling me up looking for me to cover for them. Folks i didn't even know would walk up to me and ask me what my shift was - and could I cover them this week! "well, no, because I only work for people who greet me in a civil manner before begging me to work for them."

But anyhow, I've a tendancy to blabber - so here I am, opening myself up for the chump that I am. A coworker calls me up, asking if I'd be willing to switch shifts with her, some major kid issues.

I don't know, that's really the only time that Laura and I have to sleep in -- ie, spend together with no other obligations. I need some hours, but here I really don't get any out of the deal, just a crappier shift than my own. Why bother? She's got kid issues.

So do I.

Allow me to be selfish for a moment.

all clear

for those of you dying to know, my cervix is closed and i am infection- and fibroid-free. i have the all clear to try again as soon as i've had a period. i did not emit any potentially embarrassing substances on my ob's hand while he examined me. and my ob is also a fan of "middlesex", the book i am re-reading at the moment so i can discuss it with justin, who just read it, since i have forgotten many of the details.

strangely, discussing fictional characters with rare gender disorders and non-traditional genitalia with one's ob while said ob is feeling one up makes the whole process less disconcerting.

i also poured out my therapist frustrations to him, and his secretary has already called me back this morning with the number of the ob/gyn department's social worker, who wants to talk to me more specifically to help me find the right person.

it's overcast, but it's not raining today. i think it's a sign.

feeling a bit ranty

in the ongoing hunt for the right therapist, the sexologist's partner has not called me back, but i found the other woman she recommended today on my provider list. she was there all the time; i had just misunderstood her first name. now i'm crossing my fingers that she'll call me back tomorrow.

the psychiatrists in my mother-in-law's practice told her they didn't know anyone to recommend, but my mil recommended a minister (from a famously conservative, politically-active church in a suburb far away) she has seen for counseling and asked if she could give him my number. ugh. there's something not right about one's mil trying to give one's number to another man.

i'm starting to feel like tom arnold, desperately trying to find "the one". maybe i should take out a billboard.

*****

will it ever stop raining? will i ever see the sun again? will my mental health survive another cleveland winter and a new office with no sunlight (not that there's any sunlight to be seen anyway)?

will my mother and mother-in-law ever stop exchanging misinformation?

*****

i would so like to start my period. if it happens, it means my gear is back in, well, gear, and it opens the door to try, try again. the d&c was three weeks ago yesterday, so i was hoping it would start yesterday, like it did after i delivered hans, but no such luck yet.

it will probably start with a gush during my checkup tomorrow morning when my ob has his hand in my hoo-ha. which would be a cruel reminder to be careful what you wish for.

in which i pick my new poison, among other things

over our dinner of pesto pizza, i reached across to smell justin's hefeweizen, and i didn't smell the *ick* i usually get from his imported beers. so i took a swig. guess what? it's good. the next time we go to our neighborhood microbrewery, i'm trying their wheat beer, instead of a fuzzy purple lotus or whatever the $9 drink du jour is.

i just became a slightly cheaper date.

*****

i lost hours more of my life today on the search for the right therapist. the therapist i want called me personally from god knows where and explained she's actually traveling through thanksgiving (after we talked, i found a bajillion google items about her as a renowed sexologist[!], and she has quite the conference speaking schedule lined up for the next month, so i guess she was telling the truth), but she recommended three other people to me. one's not on my insurance, another's a man (which i don't think is the right fit for me right now, although it just occurred to me i've always had male therapists before...hmmmmm), and the third one may not be taking patients, but i left her a message anyway.

i've tapped the american psychiatric association, the ohio psychiatric association, the american psychological association, the ohio psychological association, therapistfinder.net, hygeia, and SHARES. i've perused the staff rosters at the three closest hospitals. i just keep banging my head against a wall. justin asked me why i hadn't called his mom. she's the office manager of a psychiatric practice. duh. it would be weird to see someone in that practice, but they could tell me who's who and maybe make a call to get me in with someone good rather than waiting forever. so i called my mother-in-law, and she's going to call me back tomorrow.

please let something, the right thing, work out. i'm running out of legal coping mechanisms.

*****

i'm blushing from my fellow bloggers' compliments. i didn't think it was a particularly flattering picture, with the previous night's makeup melted and smeared into my face, but apparently some of you out there dig that sort of thing. which may say more about you than me. hmmmm.

and to jill: my eyebrows only appear groomed when i wear makeup, which currently is only for special occasions, which is about once per quarter. you should get a load of them without makeup. or worse yet, without being plucked. *shudder*

i wrote to gabesmama a little about my relationship with cosmetics recently, and it's been on my mind since then. i came of age in texas. in the 80s, for pete's sake. the images to which i aspired all involved blue eyeshadow and pink foundation and big hair. i wore makeup every day of my life, from the day i turned twelve (when it became legal with my mom and i could stop applying it in the locker room when i got to school and wiping it off in the choir room restroom before i went home) until hans died, when i was 35 years and four months old. a few weeks later, i took care with applying liquid eyeliner and waterproof mascara and won't-kiss-off lipstick for hans's memorial service; i felt like i needed to be as pulled together as i could be that day, for him.

after that day, i just stopped.

i never thought it would be so easy. for two-thirds of my life, i wouldn't even run into the grocery store without makeup on. but just that quickly, it was over.

my grief has been like a razor. after hans died, that razor was dangerously sharp, and it pared away everything non-essential to me. apparently, the makeup that i thought an inherent part of my existence was actually just an excess. i can't speak for the people who have to look at me at work all day, but for me, it's been a lovely gift from hans - the freedom to not care about it any more.

i think that my grief/razor has gotten rusty lately. after the tadpole, the razor stopped cutting things away so cleanly; instead, it just keeps nicking me, and i think my nicks are getting infected.

and the results are in

my ob called back this morning, while i was in the shower. with shampoo in my eyes, i explained my concerns to him, and he verified that the triploidy result was ours. so now we know.

now if i can only untangle the therapist knot so easily today.

scenes from my birthday weekend

justin and i were awakened at 7:00 am, on a sunday morning, by a telemarketer. bastards.

we got up since we were awake anyway, and i made biscuits, which we ate with herbed butter and boca italian sausage coins and pomegranate juice. our house is completely clean and we had no obligations this morning, so we got to climb back in bed and, ahem, continue the birthday celebration.

and my birthday was an all-around lovely day.

i woke up early yesterday and got the urge to clean out my closet. okay, it wasn't a particularly lovely task, but it was satisfying when completed. if being 36 means i get an urge-a-day like that one, things will be much nicer around here from now on. we decided on the perfect place to hang my birthday mola in the living room and got it put up and the lighting rearranged with a minimum of cursing.

justin and i went to the market and had our breakfast on the balcony before buying all the fresh stuff for the party, and to farkas bakery for a dobos torte for my birthday cake, and to family dollar for paper goods and coloring books. we cooked and cleaned like crazy, then got ourselves cleaned up and went to our friend charlie's first birthday party. he was intrigued by the caterpillar xylophone/keyboard we got him, but he really got into his cake that looked like a turtle. he's a reserved person, so it was nice to see him really enjoying smacking his hands in a puddle of frosting.

despite the anxiety i always have before we have a party, it was a relaxed evening. catherine arrived first with stephen and sam, who is model-cute; he has blonde hair and blue eyes outlined with dark lashes. he should be in a toddler snowsuit in the ll bean catalog. catherine brought me a beautiful silver necklace; my camera is not good enough to get it properly into focus, but it has an interwoven design acknowleding the past, present and future. it was so nice to finally meet catherine in person; we should have done it a long time ago, no farther apart than we live. i was surprised by how soft-spoken she is! she is so passionate on her blog that i expected her to be more dramatic; instead she is ladylike and composed. who knew.

there were 20 of us over the course of the evening, which is probably the perfect number when we're not opening up the carriage house and the weather is too dreary to spill over into the yard. my friend dyan brought me a clear, red recorder for my birthday, and i offered to play it with our friends who brought their guitars and played some blues for us, but they weren't too keen on jamming with me on "peace must be our goal" - the only song i could remember from my fourth grade recorder class. i did play it solo, though, to everyone's delight. really.

in the kitchen we had eggplant dip with sourdough crostini, caprese salad on a stick (toothpicks threaded with grape tomatoes and tiny balls of fresh mozzarella and basil leaves and drizzled with balsamic vinegar and olive oil on the platter), baked artichoke squares, thin wedges of spinach pizza, mushroom bread triangles, and a very garlicky cheese ball with assorted crackers. in the former den/hans's room/storage room/now den again, we had a tray piled with orange slices and red grapes, and a big bowl of halloween candy, and later slices of the dobos torte. justin unveiled his scottish ale, and i enjoyed a lovely bottle of cava. writing about it is making me hungry; i think i need to go forage for some leftovers. if you want to nosh with me, and want to pretend you are a 1950s housewife, you can make a cheeseball like mine. here is my recipe:

garlic cheese ball

4 c shredded cheddar cheese
4 oz softened cream cheese
1/2 c sour cream
1/3 c chopped green onion
4 crushed garlic cloves
1/4 teaspoon hot sauce
1 1/2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon chili powder

mash cheddar and cream cheeses together. mix in sour cream. stir in green onions, garlic, hot sauce, and vinegar. shape and roll into a ball. wrap in saran wrap and refrigerate for two hours, or until firm. toss paprika and chili powder together in a gallon-size ziploc bag. add cheese ball and toss in the powder to coat.

free, extra roller coaster rides

i can't find a therapist who is on my insurance plan and in a 15 mile radius of me and has had special training in grief and loss. i can, however, find many who are certified for substance abuse. what does that say about cleveland?

the therapist to which the grief referral center sent me called me today, and was lovely, but (despite my clearly stated request to the center) is not on my insurance plan. she was kind enough, though, to tell me what i need to ask when i check out other therapists and to offer to review my insurer's approved provider list and see if she could recommend anyone on it.

i then spent an hour on the phone (at work, no less!) with the mental health case worker from my insurance company, who has no idea who specializes in grief issues. all she can do is scan their entire list of approved providers and tell me which ones have the word "grief" in their summaries. i hung up with a list of nearly 20 providers to try.

the original, not-on-my-insurance therapist didn't know any of them.

the most promising one, a woman who specializes in both grief and women's issues, and who works out of the ob/gyn center of a reputable hospital affiliated with mine that is only about 20 minutes away, was out of the office, but her secretary called me back to let me know that she is booked solid for several weeks and couldn't possibly see me. she told me i should ask my insurer for another referral, but if i absolutely had to see her, she could give me a call next week to see if she thought i was a good fit, and then it would be about a month before i could have an actual office visit.

well, fuck you very much.

i worked down the list. therapists 2 through 19 did not have any special grief training, among other failings. and then, guess what? number 20 fit all the requirements! and she works for a christian counseling service.

i give up.

my head was in my hands on my desk when the phone rang. i ignored it. then the phone rang again, and i recognized justin's cell number; he was calling to tell me that my it was my ob that called and that he would be calling me back at work in a few minutes. i waited. my ob called again, and he let me know that they had the pathology results and that the miscarriage was caused by triploidy, or a whole extra set of 23 chromosomes, on top of the requisite 23 from each of us. my doctor was encouraged, because it's something completely random and not the result of any problem with me or justin.

he went on to talk about how long pathology had been working on it, and i said, "to tell you the truth, i'm kind of surprised to have the results already." he noted that it had been a while. "not that long," i said. nonetheless, he said, we've got the results, and they're good news for our future prospects.

after i called justin, i listened to my voice mail, and there was the message my ob had left when i ignored his first call. "after we spoke," he said, "i went back and checked with pathology and we did have results after all." the wheels started turning in my mind. my d&c was (late) on the 3rd; today is the 21st. he told me repeatedly that it took four weeks to even grow the culture on which the tests would then be run. it hasn't even been three weeks yet. and i didn't speak to him earlier today, or this week. the last time i spoke to him was in the recovery room after the d&c. i have a checkup next week, but the pathology results wouldn't have been back by then. i haven't called and asked for results, because at minimum it would be the first of november before there were any results.

i don't think the information he gave me was mine.

i called his office back immediately. of course, it was 4:35 and the office closes at 4:30. i left a message, but it will be monday until his secretary retrieves it and gives it to him. so who knows? certainly not me.

justin arrived at my office to pick me up at 5:00. i told him i don't think the triploidy diagnosis is ours. he freaked out. the thrust of the freak out was that i was not content to accept the one piece of positive news we've had all year. the ride home was long, and not just because of traffic.

justin eventually came to the conclusion that it was good that i question my health care team and that maybe there was some sense in what i was saying, but then he needed a new target for his frustration, so then he ranted about the hospital and what a (and i paraphrase) screw-up the whole operation is. we differ here - there are things he views as screw-ups that i do not. and we don't know yet what happened today. did my ob confuse me with someone else? (lovely thought.) did the lab switch specimens? we won't know until next week. until then, i'm not making any decisions. and i reminded justin that it was my body and it was up to me who i saw for obstetrical care. that sat really well with him.

we managed a truce, and he gave me my birthday card and then let me open my gift. four years ago, on my 32nd birthday, i bought a mola, a unique fabric art form of the kuna people of san blas, off the coast of colombia. (i had a memorable birthday in san blas, but that story is too long for today.) i had always planned to have it mounted and framed, but here we are, four years later. justin took my mola and had it beautifully framed for me. it is in a rustic wooden frame that suits it perfectly. after much deliberation, we have hung it in our living room. it is fabulous and perfect.

tomorrow we have to do some housecleaning and marketing and cooking, and then we are going to our friend charlie's 1st birthday party, and then we are coming back here for our party. i'm hoping tomorrow is all moments like when i opened the mola and none like i experienced on the phone today. i need some stability.

lovely calvin - meter maid

fecking meter maids...

$25 in a matter of the one minute it took to go get change from the shop. Dude was still processing my ticket as I walked out to put some change in the meter; "it's out of my hands now, I've already processed the ticket, if you want to dispute it, here's a number ...., sorry man"

Have you ever disputed a parking ticket? How'd that go? His advice was for me to get the shopkeeper to notarize a letter stating that I did indeed go inside to get some change.

When I was getting ready to walk away, I asked dude if when he's off duty, if he ever tells folks what he does for a living. He responded well a resolute "HELL NO, I tell 'em I work for the city - that's as much info as they get from me about what I do ..."

/end rant

color my world

did i mention i got my hair cut? well, i did. very butchy. i love it. also colored, which was an absolute necessity. i did not even get glanced at twice, much less carded, at the door of the show we saw the other night. just appalling. i'm certain it was because of the chorus of silver hair on my head shrieking, "noooooo! don't look at us! we're hideous!"

i started getting my hair colored when i was 20. by that time, i already had silvery threads at my temples, but i wasn't as interested in covering them as i was in exploring other personalities. blonde was fun, and the endless struggle to achieve the caramel i had as a child was an exciting way to spend an obscene amount of money, but i learned that at heart i was a redhead. why i would want red hair was incomprehensible to my mother, which of course only made me all the more determined to go ever-more-brightly red.

at 25, my career was getting serious, and i decided it was time to put away childish monthly color changes. i had my hair dyed back to my natural light-to-medium brown and then stopped coloring. i diverted my money to perfect suit/jewelry/shoe combinations.

and then one night at dinner with one of my co-workers, she waved her fork towards the crown of my head and said, "that's so pretty, the way the light catches the silver in your hair."

my hair has not been color-free since.

when justin and i met, my hair was auburn, which he loved and still considers my "natural" color. just before we left for two months in south america at the beginning of 2004, i had my bob nearly shaved off, so as to be low maintenance while we were on the road experiencing ever-changing electrical outlet scenarios making carrying the requisite number of hair dryers impossible, and i dyed my hair black.

black changed me. it allowed me to be someone i had never been, maybe because it's the one color i had never tried. the new, black-haired me was free to stop obsessing about how much older i was than justin, how different our backgrounds were, how different our tastes. black let me shed my mental dead weight. it also let me save some money; dying one's hair all-over black does not require the skilled attendance of a colorist, and i stopped going to my overpriced salon. i will forever be grateful to black.

just before hans died, when i was so discouraged, i bought a box of dark auburn at target and used it to brighten up the black a bit; my hair was still mostly black, but now with sparks in it. it cheered me up for the four days i had with my new color scheme before i learned hans was dead. but, hey, at least my hair looked sparky in the pictures of us with hans, or it would have if we had remembered to turn the camera flash on. oh, well.

maybe because i have felt like mud since february, i have kept it roughly the same color as mud, when i could be bothered to spend 45 minutes on myself. i colored right before i found out i was pregnant again, and was waiting until i got past that magical 13 week point before i risked coloring again. when i found out the pregnancy was over, i was at last free to color again, but i didn't have the energy.

it's not that i hadn't been dreaming of color. i've been envisioning a return to pure black but with fuschia streaks. i don't know why. maybe to defy my impending birthday. maybe to test my ultra conservative employer. maybe just because i can.

after last weekend's non-carding, i knew it was time to do something, anything. i let the 19-year-old who's given me my last two haircuts at a much less expensive salon near my work color my hair. it's almost, but not quite, black, with eggplant colored undertones. it has gravity, but hints at fun. it smirks at the earnestness of my employer. best of all, it's given me some psychic wiggle room.

i'm feeling okay about turning 36. i'm still messed up about hans and the tadpole, but getting pregnant again suddenly seems within my grasp. last night, i finally and decisively cleared the last of my pre-justin-era clothes from the closet.

there is hope for me yet. i understand now that i just have to keep my hair up, and everything will work out fine.

poor, poor, pitiful us

i received a reply today from the pregnancy crisis center that held their "walk for life" on pregnancy and infant loss awareness day. in my e-mail to the center, i asked that they consider holding their events on a day other than this particular one in the future; the reply i received expressed sorrow for causing us additional pain and offered me free and confidential grief counseling. it did not offer any assurances of consideration for future scheduling of events, which i find disappointing. it's not as though there wasn't room for it in the e-mail; there was certainly room to get a couple of obvious digs in for their "life begins at conception" ideology.

but i'm not going to carry it any further; i wrote a polite e-mail and received a polite response. i don't need to get into a pissing war with these people. i don't have the energy for it, plus i don't want to rip too much on people who at least offer some support to women with unwanted pregnancies. i need to save my wrath for the old men in mesh caps with seed company logos on them who picket daily in front of planned parenthood. i don't think any woman ever gained anything from being harassed by an old farmer.

*****

the miscarriage has changed things. after hans, it was all about him. after our latest loss, the focus has turned inward. it feels like it's about us now - poor us, with our double losses.

i understand that the world does not revolve around us and our little pack of dead babies. there are bigger, more important things going on. someday i will actually get back to caring about them. but for now, i have little energy for anything else.

that change of focus has also put some distance between me and hans. the tadpole has become a buffer, in a way it didn't while it still had a pulse. i miss that closeness with hans, the closeness i had with him when he was inside me that i didn't really give up when he took up residence on our living room shelf, not until the last couple of weeks.

my desire for oblivion is greater now, which would be why i've been drinking daily (although i haven't had a drink yesterday or today, so yea for me). it's also part of why i've been wanting to buy a new house. after we lost hans, i never wanted to leave this house, because it's where we learned i was pregnant, and where i felt him move while i read awful baby magazines (10 ways to help your newborn sleep through the night!), and where i felt him dancing when we played the futureheads, and where we made his nest. now, though, the house has too much grief, too many dark corners and damp patches waiting to trip me up.

i've been driving justin nuts telling him about other houses for sale in our neighborhood and the ones to the immediate east and west of us. i've been telling him i no longer see us growing old in this house, which we used to both want. he did finally come around a week ago to the thought of us selling our house if we ever left the country to teach for a few years and then finding someplace new here in cleveland when we came back. two nights ago, while i was rinsing dishes and he was licking his plate, he surprised me by telling me that if we had a third loss, he would be ready to sell up, move away, and make a fresh start. i about fell over. he had even considered where we would be equidistant from my mom and his mom and his dad, although i don't think he understands how hard it would be for him to live below the mason dixon line, but we'll deal with that if the time ever comes.

here's hoping it never does.

the diy spirit

the very kind jeff w (whose own field of study is the americanization of the water baby ceremony!) has given us some invaluable information about the water baby ceremony, and we are ordering this book today that he recommended. from what we've learned so far from jeff, justin and i are thinking that the traditional japanese ceremony (which, if i understand correctly, is at least partly intended to keep the fetal spirit from coming back to bite you) may not be exactly our cup of tea. the americanized ceremony, which seems to be more for the benefit of the mother, is closer to what we want, but maybe not quite exactly it.

and so, as we often do, we'd like to adapt the ceremony to our particular use. we've been talking about it this morning and we are both thinking that we would like to host a ceremony at home. and we would like to invite fellow parents who have lost their children to participate with us. we will study up and disseminate more information as we gain it, but the ceremony would include sewing simple clothes for a statue and speaking about our wishes for our children. i don't know if it's normally appropriate, but afterwards, there would be food and drink, and everyone could take their dressed statue home to place in their own garden.

we are thinking this morning of our local fellow travelers, pengo and toni, catherine and stephen, and of others who might be able to drive in - deadbabymama, lisa p, sisyphus julie, lorem ipsum. maybe there are people farther out there, too, who would want to come. we're thinking of doing it soon, maybe a saturday in november, before the holidays and bad weather would make it too difficult. i think justin and i will do it regardless of who else wants to participate, but we would be happy to share the experience with as few or as many of you who wanted to join us. are you interested? let us know.

that "i'm only going to drink if i'm drinking with someone else" rule is getting annoying

i had desperately hoped that the grief referral people would get back to me today, but, alas, they did not. would they have any liability if i did something drastic while awaiting their call? i suppose not, unless in my original request i had indicated imminent self-destruction.

it's not that i'm considering drastic action - it's only that i'm getting desperate for some relief. also, the nightly drinking is contributing to flushed skin and dark under-eye circles and pesky weight gain, although the last item could also be blamed on my recently-acquired addiction to reese's miniatures. at least i don't require company for eating my beloved tiny cups of chocolaty, peanuty joy. in fact, company somewhat diminishes the experience, since it would mean fewer of those diminuitive treats for me.

clearly, professional help is in order. i can only hope a purveyor of licensed, calorie-free, grief therapy calls me tomorrow.

not in a family way

my mom called last night, and when i answered, she asked me what was wrong. i said, "what?" she said i sounded terrible. what can i say to that? when i didn't answer right away, she asked me if i was having a bad day. i laughed. "i'm having a bad year," i said.

later in the conversation, she asked how i was dealing with the miscarriage and how we were feeling about the future. all i could do was stutter. there's nothing i can explain to her about how i feel about the miscarriage that won't worry her more, and we don't really want to tell much of anyone if and when we do try to get pregnant - we feel enough pressure as it is without dealing with my mom's constant questions about the status of my uterus.

finally, i started telling her how i was recovering physically - at least it was something - and about the physiological ramifications of another pregnancy - something about having to be careful in the future to catch my eggs on the fresh side of my cycle and not at the end, when they're decaying into oblivion. hopefully, those thoughts will keep her occupied for a while. i don't know what else to do.

family is a weird, complicated thing. for example, i love my sister, and my nephew, but i'd like a break from them, and being reminded of what hans would be like now. my mother is wonderful, but i just don't want to talk to her about anything loss-related - although i have no problem talking about it with friends and doctors. my dad, with whom i barely have a relationship, called me last week; i let it go to voice mail and haven't listened to the message. justin's family, whom i adore (truly - i hit the jackpot of in-laws), is driving me nuts with their phone calls. i know they all care, but i want them to leave me alone.

i guess the age-old question is, would i choose to be close to any of these people, if they weren't already related to me? and the sad answer is, no. i could see being friendly with most of them, but if i didn't have an obligatory history, there would be little to bind us together.

what i want around me right now is the family i've chosen for myself. i want to rest in the cocoon of my chosen friends, both online and offline - the people who get it. i don't have any energy to coddle people who care but don't get it. i need all my energy for me, and for justin, and for the next occupant of my uterus. the rest of my family are on their own for a while.

what were these people thinking?

i did not know until today that yesterday was pregnancy and infant loss awareness day. but now that i do know, i am doubly offended by what was happening in our neighborhood yesterday.

the local anti-abortion, crisis pregnancy center sponsored a big 'ol "fun walk" aka "walk for life". please understand - i appreciate that there are people who, if they are opposed to abortion, at least walk their talk and provide support to women without other good options. this center is about to open a prenatal clinic, and they do offer other forms of support to women with unwanted pregnancies.

if you've read this blog for any time, you will understand that i think our neighborhood would be better served by better birth control education and by maintaining access to safe and affordable abortions. in fact, i was surprised the walk was being held in our very liberal neighborhood. but i forget how diverse our neighborhood is; whites in our neighborhood are overwhelmingly liberal, but there are also older white catholics as well as hispanic catholics and evangelicals, and evangelical blacks. however, the people walking in this event yesterday were all white. i can tell you, they weren't from this neck of the woods.

to have their prominent annual fundraiser on pregnancy and infant loss awareness day seems heartless. i think i'm going to have to write a letter. if, like me, they didn't know about the loss awareness day, they should be made aware so they don't do it again next year. i'm trying to give them the benefit of the doubt.

while i'm getting riled up about anti-abortion people, let me say a few uncharitable things about jim bob and michelle duggar, the arkansas couple with 16 kids:

1. according to jim bob duggar, if you take birth control pills, you can still get pregnant but the pill may cause a miscarriage. when you start out with that perception, where else can you go but dumber?
2. the duggars took their pill-induced miscarriage as a sign from god that they were to accept the gifts (aka children) god gave them, and that's when 2-16 started rolling out. i know we all have to find a way to deal with our losses, but if you believe your loss is god's punishment on you for using birth control - well, why would you want to worship a god like that???
3. and what gives you the right to lecture other people about using birth control???
4. for jim bob duggar's part, the whole freakishly-large family thing seems to me to be a ploy for more publicity to get him elected senator. i don't feel so bad for saying that now that i've seen his campaign materials pimping out his kids.
5. michelle duggar has the same hairstyle today that she did when their first family portrait was taken. in 1988, that hair would have been passable at best. today it's pretty appalling. based on their brand of religion and my personal experience, i'm guessing that the hair thing is supposed to bring glory to god and/or her husband, but it's pretty damn unattractive.

i must say, ripping on these people could become a habit. at least it's not as self-destructive a habit as drinking. speaking of which, i wish justin would hurry up and get home, because i'm trying to maintain a no-drinking-alone rule to keep the habit in check, but i could really use a drink.

in which i elaborate on our weekend, already introduced in summary by my beloved

when justin picked me up on from work on friday, we realized neither of knew exactly how to get to kent, so we drove down to akron (i work in suburban hell about halfway between cleveland and akron). we didn't have any plans (other than mine to lay waste to as many bottles as possible), so we got off at the exit labeled "downtown" and meandered into a neighborhood with a mexican restaurant, the name of which justin recognized as belonging to friends of friends, so we parked, put our names on the waiting list, and went next door to a coffee shop.

we drank italian soda (boysenberry for me, orange for justin) while we played chess at a table made for that purpose. when the restaurant rang justin's cell phone, i was giving justin a pounding and was just about to finish him off, so i say i won, but justin says it doesn't count. i think the least he could do is give me that victory, don't you? i haven't beat him at chess in so long; it would be the gentlemanly (not to mention charitable) thing for him to do.

back at two amigos (the restaurant), i saw a server walk by with a margarita the size of my head, to which i can only say, god bless america. of course, i had one, and it was fabulous, but the problem with giant margaritas is that i get messed up pretty quickly, and by the time i get to the bottom of it, i have lost all interest in getting any drunker. a good drunk requires persistence, pacing and variety, none of which the godzilla margarita affords. i had a delicious grilled veg burrito (in a spinach tortilla) covered in their salsa blanca, which was cream cheese and hot peppers (can't remember what kind - see previous description of margarita).

a few doors down is an old school, independent movie theater. they were only showing one movie (wallace and gromit) in their huge auditorium with seats so old the bottoms didn't snap back up on their own, and they only accepted cash, but justin found an atm in time for us to still see most of the previews. in the back of the theater was a huge bar, complete with booths and high tables, where one could sip a chardonnay with one's popcorn while watching the movie. there should be more theaters like that, no?

w&g was cute, with a surprising number of jokes for older folks. after the movie, i was thoroughly sober (another problem with the one-trick goliath margarita), so we decided to work on sugar comas instead. up the street was a place called mary coyle, an ice cream parlor that has been in operation since 1937, according to the signs. pine panelling covered the walls, and the booths and chairs were all upholstered in orange - and not because they were trying to be all retro-trendy. the football game of the high school across the street, st vincents/st marys (alma mater of basketball phenom lebron james, btw), was being broadcast into the restaurant by radio, and racks of postcards by the cash register featured the goodyear blimp. it was a little surreal. we ate frozen peanut butter pie covered in at least a cup of hot fudge sauce, and we lived to tell about it.

it was not the allnighter in new york or the bar crawl in madrid for which i had hoped. it wasn't even the drinking binge i threatened. but it wasn't bad.

yesterday we had one of our saturday-only breakfasts, vegetarian pigs in a blanket (boca breakfast links rolled up in reduced fat crescent rolls), before going to the hardware store and getting groceries and stopping by his grandma's. our vegan friend from san francisco is here on business, and he came over for dinner. we started with roasted red pepper hummus and whole wheat pita triangles, with chocolate porter for the boys and mac jack hard cider for me. then we had arugula and white bean soup (it was supposed to be escarole, not arugula, but the market didn't have escarole yesterday, so we adapted) with more beer, and then polenta with tomato-shiitake sauce and asparagus in lemon juice and browned butter with a bottle of malbec. then we finished up with apple cake (my best stab yet at making it without eggs, i must say) and vanilla soy ice cream and, well, more beer. i was going to make coffee, but none of us really wanted it. really, we all just wanted more beer.

we talked a little about baby stuff; our friend and his wife started trying to get pregnant a couple of months ago. they're only 29, but she was an only child, after two miscarriages, and is already worried and charting like a fiend, which is driving our friend mad. she's nearly two weeks late now, and three hpts have been negative, which makes me a little concerned about an ectopic pregnancy. does anyone know if an ectopic shows up on a hpt?

the three of us stood in line with the 22 year olds for the decemberists' show and none of us were carded. i really must get my hair colored. at least i did run into a woman coming out of the restroom who was older than me. either that, or she needs to get to the colorist more than i do. the band rocked harder than i expected, i must say, but i enjoyed it, and it helped make it more tolerable for the boys, who made non-stop jokes before the band came on about the band's (non-existent) hardcore roots. we left during the encore, because it had become unbearable for me to stand any longer (further cementing my status among the oldest people in the room). the shoes i wore were cute but lacking in support, and ever since the d&c, my tailbone and lower back have been out of whack (what exactly did they do to me in the operating room????). we got home and i crashed while the boys listened to records and drank more beer and figured out how to plug one of our old monitors that was still in the basement into the laptop, for which i am ever so grateful.

this morning when we woke up, we started the negotiations. you know the ones. tomorrow will be two weeks since the d&c. bleeding is down to .001 percent. we don't have any condoms in the house. we could use the old withdrawl method. neither of us really wants to use that method, which is neither fail-safe nor fun. we could take our chances. it would be okay if we got pregnant, wouldn't it? (believe it or not, that was justin's statement). it would be better to build the old endometrium back up and to have the starting date of at least *one* menstrual cycle to work with, wouldn't it? and so forth. in the end, we got dressed, went out for breakfast, and then bought some condoms. it wasn't what either of us really wanted to do; but it was lovely to get back in the proverbial saddle again, i must say.

if anyone is still reading this recitation of this weekend's happenings in la casa de los dead babies, then allow me to point out the relevant conclusions one may draw from this post:

1. i am really, really depressed, enough to want to drink myself silly around the clock.
2. polenta, at least without parmesan or romano stirred into it, cannot stand up to a spicy tomato sauce on its own.
3. arugula, however, is a fine substitute for escarole in soup.
4. justin and i are not going to have any problem being ready at the same time to try to get pregnant. hallelujah.

the weekend - quick

laura will update, i am sure, with a much more indepth and better written account of the weekend. I'm just online for a few minutes, backing up some hans stuff into email, just incase our computer goes shit again.

Laura ended up drinking a margarita the size of a fish bowl. in akron, not kent as advertised. then she and i went to a movie. a fucking kids movie at that. wallace and gromit and some franken-hare, her choice, not mine. we did laugh though.

we then went and buried ourselves under a mound of hot chocolate (peanut butter pie) at an old soda fountin. today - various errands and a brilliant 4 course meal with an old friend. then the decemberists show - which yes, we did quite enjoy.

if you are wondering how I am typing ... well, i'm hooked up with the laptop to laura's old moniter. it's just the lcd that's fecked and bestbuy are still bastards, so this will be our way for awhile until we figure out what to do next. plan a is to contact the state attorney general who happens to have a pending lawsuit against bestbuy....

anger management, or the lack thereof

today is the day i became angry. ooooooo, i'm good and fired up. it's a good thing justin has no internet access today, because he would be afraid.

what are the chances i would have two, unrelated losses in a row? after hans, the universe OWED me the tadpole.

i desperately need some relief. i wanted to get out of town - spontaneous flights to wherever are my valium. i wanted to fly to new york tonight, catch a show at whatever club, eat breakfast at some after hours place, and take the first morning flight home. justin, however, desperately wants to stay home and shopvac all the sawdust out of our carriage house and break down the garden. so instead, tonight we are driving to kent state, which campus i have never seen, and eating dinner at some middle-eastern place which may or may not still be there, since the last time justin visited it was approximately 1997. justin billed this trip as the opportunity to witness the site where his dad experienced his political awakening. just imagine how excited i am. tomorrow we are breaking down the garden, then i am cooking dinner for an old friend in town on business, then we may or may not see the decemberists if there are any tickets left.

i considered going out of town by myself, but (a) i really do want to be with justin and (b) i'm afraid of how much alcohol i might consume on my own. so i'm trapped here, and it makes me angry.

i'm sick and tired of people in my office coming to ask me if i've bought raffle tickets yet or placed any bids in the silent auction going on today in support of a large non-profit corporation that funds many social services. you know who i'm talking about; i just don't feel like shilling for them here today. ordinarily, i would support these events. at last year's auction, i placed the winning bid for 75 envelopes addressed in calligraphy, which i had planned to use for hans's birth announcements; instead, i had very elegantly-addressed death announcements. this year, i just don't care. i have had one shitty year, so all my donations are going toward the fund to get me some therapy and/or drunk, and the people helped by the you-know-what are just going to have to do without my help this time. the next person that dares to chirp at me about raffle tickets is going to regret it.

if justin thinks by taking me to a college town for the evening he's going to get off easy because he can take me to a college bar selling cheap beer for students, he better think again. i don't drink that kind of beer (i drink belgian lambics if i'm drinking beer, or i drink wine, or i drink hard liquor) and i plan to drink oceans tonight. he better bring his amex card.

strange days, indeed

the wife of the arkansas politician with 15 kids just gave birth to the 16th. they named the baby johannah - honestly, couldn't they have picked something else? i mean, they were willing to name one of the other members of their j-initialed brood "jinger" - once you've gone into that territory, why go back to something with old world roots and rub it in my face?

oh, and according to this story, mrs jim bob duggar (no, i'm not making up that name) is thinking about having another baby.

*****

yesterday, i wore my black, wool felt, double-breasted blazer. i adore it. it may be my favorite jacket ever. but i hadn't worn it in a while. the last time i wore it was when i went in for the non-stress test at which i learned hans was dead. technically, that was the next-to-last time; i was immediately admitted to the hospital, so i wore it home the next day, too, after the delivery. it was a little weird, wearing it - it made me so sad, and yet it's an inherently comforting piece of clothing, too.

another dissonant experience yesterday: in the afternoon, over the phone, justin and i had such a bad conversation. you'd think we would have learned by now to not get into serious stuff while we're both at work, but you'd be wrong. then at 10:00, i picked up justin from the train and offered an olive branch by asking to buy him a drink. we went to our neighborhood wine bar, and had the loveliest malbec and a fabulous cheese and fruit plate complete with hot-out-of-the-oven baguette, and i told him that my heart's desire was to start trying after i have a period, and - god bless him - he was willing to talk about the logistics of such a plan, including how that would affect my job and insurance prospects (i'd have to stay in my much-despised job at least through my next maternity leave, if i actually got that far). we laughed and ate a very stinky stilton and talked to the bartenders about stouts and world music, and it was paradise - the only time all day i felt really good. and then we got home and things soured. i went to sleep miserable, and i think justin did, too. this morning we affirmed that we still love each other and are in this whole thing together, but sometimes our differences seem insurmountable.

i think the reason why amusement parks give such short roller coaster rides is that the roller coaster experience is only fun for about 60 seconds; after that, it gets exhausting, and everyone starts puking, and generally losing satisfaction with the experience. that's how i feel right now.

my day in 60 seconds

my new primary physician apparently only sees geriatric patients (remind me to tell my ob how insulted i am at his referral), so instead i saw the opposite-of-my-ob - talked endlessly about himself and was not fun to look at - who at least discovered the problem with my ears (allergies, not infections). at work, i had a nearly hour-long q&a session with my grrrls about hans's ashes. it was pretty fecking cool. then i stressed myself out for an hour by running medical insurance comparisons; i can't seem to find the plan with 100% coverage and no deductible or co-pay but the lowest monthly premiums of all the available options. let me know if you see it. i ended my workless work day with an e-chat with my favorite hospital chaplain, who gave me some good resources for finding a new, loss-oriented therapist but is herself moving to the other end of my state, both geographically and politically. god help her there. she also asked if we'd be willing to participate in grief training for l&d nurses - would we?!?!?! there is so little on which justin and i have agreed today - i can't even get into it now - but we agreed that we want to participate. and now i am going to go pick up my darling husband and we will have a nice drink together somewhere very grown up and i will try to thwack some sense into him. g'night.

obligatory 30 minutes of net time before work

Lunch review:

Lunch was absolutely spectacular. My buddy is a chef, working under the guy who runs the culinary school at one of the local colleges. Today they opened up their 'bistro' for the students to highlight their skills, mostly for faculty, etc. These kids have promise.

Damn, it was quite a nice meal .. they had a few veggie options (fresh green salads, fruit, pecan bread with honey margarine) for me and the grill guy hooked me up with a nice mushroom medley over fluffy, delicious garlic smashed potatoes. Desert, mmmmmm, a flourless chocolate cake, a pumpkin pecan cheesecake and bananas foster (with which I convinced the dessert chef to really put some flames into it - i'm talking hair metal pyrotechnics!!!) so fine.

Matt's brother Mike is in town as well, so it was great to see him. He's a national forest ranger out in Moab, Utah. Funny this: he was helping out a couple of guys on the trail and they got to talking: turns out that this guy went to the same high school as us, a few years older, played hockey and now lives on the same street as Laura and I - he also owns a carriage house. It's bizzaro world Justin. Small world.

Ok, that is all - the east coast is underwater, or radars are broken, so flights are mad delayed. Time to make the bread....

adventures in woe

how pathetic am i that i would stay late at work to read blogs? i must get my fix now - i won't be able to check up on anyone for another 24 hours!

i feel like my butt is made of cement, but i'm trying to make some progress. i made a dr's appt for tomorrow morning to get my ears checked out - it seems my ear infection has returned, dammit. and i sent the hospital chaplain an e-mail asking for some recommendations of therapists that specialize in perinatal loss. and i told two more people that the tadpole is gone. and i looked at some houses online.

i love our house, but i'm starting to feel like it's not meant to be our lifelong home. there has been so much joy for me there, but it's also the home of all my grief. clouds of doom await me around every corner there. i want to make a fresh start.

but moving is a huge step. i'm only up for baby steps right now. so i'm going to go return the maternity clothes i bought last week - one less depressing thing to have hanging around the house.

so yeah

the computer is broken and we're still under doctors orders to, um, not ... so what in the world will we do at home all week?

i shall be finishing my book, Middlesex, within the next day and don't have any other books in line. book recommendations are welcome.

I'm that guy in cartoons

in what can only be described as an animated folly; I tripped, fell and sent my laptop flying through the air. my ankle hurts like a mutha. somehow, the laptop survived the fall - but - klutz that I am, I wasn't done. I limped and stumbled towards my bed, again carrying the laptop. A moment later, I had fallen again and in slow motion, I watched my laptop bounce off my bedside table and onto the floor.

the pixels are totally fecked. everything else seems to have survived the crash, but I can't see anything. the desktop looks as if a rock has been thrown through a widow - done smashed and totalled. I was looking at the manufacturers warranty - and they don't cover accidents. However, I remember being seemingly suckered into buying Best Buys "no questions asked warranty", which supercedes the manufacture warranty - I asked the salesman several times if this covered everything, to which he said yes. Even accidents? Yes. So I guess we shall see ... anyone else been through a Best Buy warranty? Were you succesful - did you have to pitch a fit?

Is there any saving the screen on the laptop? or once pixels have been destroyed, is it a need for anew?

the end of the world

in a story of great comedy that i will leave for justin to tell when he is ready, our laptop has been utterly destroyed. so blogging may be a little slow for a while. crap.

justin, while not destroyed, needs to see the doctor and is resisting my efforts to take him there. the destruction of our laptop is awful but not life-ending, whereas the permanent crippling of my husband would be significantly life-altering. if i were at home, where i want to be, i would thwack him and make him get in the car.

oh, no, not i!

i did survive. thanks for everyone's well wishes for today. happily, yesterday's dam-breaking floods gave way to the merest trickling stream of bleeding today, making the workplace logistics easier than i thought possible.

but it did suck. when i got to work and went to see my boss, he regretted to inform me that i was not eligible for grieving days, at which point i began crying. he felt awful about it, and the h.r. counselor felt awful about it, but it was not their policy to grant grieving days when "well, it had been such a short time." i snorted through my tears. "so, what's the cut-off point?" i asked him. he didn't know, but at least he acknowledged that it didn't make much sense.

ah, nothing like crying in front of your boss.

my co-workers gave me some space for the first couple of hours, since i arrived crying and brushing everyone off, but then at lunch time they circled in and started asking questions, and by then i could talk about losing the tadpole and it made everything some better. sometimes they drive me nuts, but my girls rock.

apparently, my girls also didn't talk while i was gone, so no one knew where i had been or why, which caused much staring at my belly but no awkward questions from the masses, to which i say, hallelujah. there are a couple of field reps - the one who just started who lost her daughter a few months ago, and another one who's just been a good phone friend to me and whose wife had a miscarriage before their now-toddler-aged son was born - who knew i was pregnant, and i told them today, and they were both just lovely about it, although the woman who just lost her daughter sent me a lot of stuff about god in her e-mail to which i had no response.

what could i possibly say? good for you, that you have your faith? i hope it keeps you warm at night? i just didn't reply to that stuff. but i do envy her. at least it's something. and the fact that my faith is pretty much non-existent doesn't mean i don't look for some crutch. exhibit a: the multiple indulgences in sausage this last week, culminating in the sausage sampler at the brew house on saturday while justin was bottling his scottish ale he brewed for our party. exhibit b: 2 1/2 bags of reese's miniatures consumed in the last 2 1/2 days. (these exhibits would appear to be a certain obstacle to the "ten pounds in ten weeks" plan we had going here.)

and you know what? i went church shopping today. justin and i went to the local quaker outfit for a while a couple of years back, but i never felt like i connected with anyone there, which is a big part of what i want out of a church experience. i looked at them online today, but it's so hard for them to actually do anything there - it's so annoying. i looked at the local english-speaking buddhist temple, mostly to see what they offered locally in the way of a water baby ceremony, which appears to be nothing, plus there's too much lingo that i don't speak. i also looked at a united church of christ that a friend of ours attends and is less than two miles from us - really just in the next neighborhood. it's an inclusive place with much emphasis on social justice, and that element is appealing to me. i'm talking to justin about giving it a try.

i also decided it was time to take the advice i gave catherine. i e-mailed david and asked who he and/or toni saw after they lost calvin, so when i call the mental health preauthorization line at my insurance company to set up some more therapy, i can tell them who i want to see rather than vice versa.

and in other insurance news, when i got to work i had all kinds of propaganda awaiting me about insurance options for next year, and i saw that my employer is trying to push everyone away from my plan and into plans with 80% coverage and big deductibles. such a plan would be fine if i had no medical concerns, but i really hope to be racking up some regular medical bills next year, and such a plan is most definitely not fine. also, if we stay on my insurance, and if we try to conceive again soon, i am stuck with my sorry employer all the longer. we have to sit down and crunch the numbers, but justin is on board with us both going on his insurance, even if it costs a little more, to have the coverage i hope to need and to free me up to look for another job. i'm not really up to it just yet, but i will be soon, and i need to be free to do it.

wish me luck.

*****

to jeff w - welcome to our blog - nice to get a little whiff of testosterone around here! are you a blogger?

more reasons to not watch tv

i don't know why i turned it on, except that i couldn't decide what cd to play, and i needed background noise while justin was at work.

• on "america's funniest home videos", there was a segment of people creatively telling their parents that they were pregnant. it made me kind of ill. when i got pregnant the first time, we waited until my mom came to visit, then we took both our moms to lunch and over curry and pad thai i casually asked them what they'd like their grandchild to call them. a few days later, for father's day, we gave justin's dad a mug that said "#1 grandpa". with the tadpole, we were more matter of fact telling them; there were no special stagings or attempts to surprise. if and when we conceive again, i can't imagine telling them with anything more than caution. i envy those people in those videos, innocently singing "happy birthday, dear grandpa," because i'm sure if they sent in their videos to a tv show, then their pregnancies did not end in loss.
• i watched the opening credits of "extreme makeover: home edition" and just that little segment made me cry. ugh. that show is shameless.
• while i was making dinner and cleaning up the kitchen, "grey's anatomy" was on, and sandra oh's character got rushed into surgery because of an ectopic pregnancy, plus there was a baby in the nicu that was supposed to be inoperable but then it gained strength for no good reason and got a second chance. too much to take.

i'm turning off the tv now that justin is home and we're going up to bed. tomorrow will be my first morning to get ready for work and not be pregnant. the thought makes me unbearably sad.

i want to be invisigirl; or, back to posts with bodily substances mentioned

i do not want to go back to work tomorrow. i'm bleeding more heavily than a normal period, and i'm tired of wearing giant urinary incontinence pads to try to avoid the inevitable manual scrubbing out of my underpants, and i definitely do not want to take this show on the road.

i don't think i've bought a purse in the last five years big enough to tote around more than one of these pads at a time; nowadays i buy purses with the word "envelope" or "roll" in the names, little bags meant for a cell phone, a lipstick, maybe a slim wallet and an applicator-less tampon. the only sizeable purses i have in my closet are big buckety things, giant showy coach things, without which i thought i could not possibly live back in 1997, back when i used to actually wear suits and heels. i'm not sure why i've kept them, except that i (or whatever gift-giver) parted with significant amounts of cash for them, and they're in perfect condition. it just occurred to me that i should put them on e-bay. somewhere in the world, someone wants those giant discontinued models that can actually hold something. hmmmmmm.

but besides the logistical factors, i do not want to go back to work because i do not want to deal with people. my closest co-workers will be fine - we'll talk about the miscarriage for the first hour i'm there and then we'll actually do some work - but i'm on a hey-how-ya-doin basis with about half of the thousand people in the building, and i will pass many of them in the hallways at some point this week. most of them will look down or away; a brave few will try to maintain eye contact but their faces will freeze from the effort.

at almost-36, i am experiencing an entirely new feeling - the desire to be invisible. i've never felt it before. damn. that's strange. 'cause boy, do i feel it now. i need to be able to cloak myself in invisibility, with a dimmer switch that allows me to slowly, imperceptibly, turn myself back on, as people gradually get reaccustomed to my presence and the news of my misfortune gets stale.

but since i don't have a cloaking device, all i can do is pick nondescript clothes for tomorrow. and to be able to do so, i need to get off the couch and do some laundry.

with apologies to harold arlen...

i've got the world on a string
i'm sitting on a rainbow
got my son in a ring on my finger....

yes, thanks to the criminally insane people at lifegem, i could have the carbon extracted from hans's ashes and placed in one of their presses for 24 weeks and then voila! my little gem becomes an actual diamond. for as little as $2,699 he can be a yellow diamond; prices to turn him into a blue diamond start at $3,499. to get a full carat out of him costs a cool $20 grand, but you'll be happy to know there are volume discounts, as well as a 20% discount if you pre-plan and pre-purchase.

ew, ew, ew, ew, ew.

i'm not sure why i'm so uncomfortable with this process. i'm sure plenty of people are creeped out by my son's ashes sitting on the built-in sound system shelves in our living room. maybe it's the oily slickness of the company's presentation that makes it seem so icky.

am i the only one creeped out by this diamond business? do i need to schedule a new appointment with my therapist? or is this thing as icky as i think it is?

google game - justin

the city where I was born:
















the city where I live now:



















my name:




















my grandmothers name:














favorite food:









favorite drink:
















favorite song:




















favorite smell:

that google game

the city where i was born:






the city where i live now:








my name:

my grandmother's name:

my favorite food:

my favorite drink:

my favorite song:

my favorite smell:

but wait! there's more!

no sooner did i make my last post than i instantly thought of a bazillion other things i want to get out of my system, but since i just finished an encyclopedia, i thought i'd give it a bit before i hit you, dear reader, with more. but i'm impatient, plus i can't sit downstairs and watch tv, because my in-laws are working on my carriage house and it would look bad to lounge on the couch while they were sweating away, even if i can't be back there because when i work like that i bleed heavily, so the only place i can chill out is upstairs, and the computer was up here, so here goes:

1. i hate the fact that i will be 36 in 16 days. no, that's not exactly it; i hate that the fact that i am almost 36 is fucking up our lives. i like to pretend i am about 10 years younger (as people often misjudge), or at least the same age as justin (who is nearly 8 years younger). if i were 8 or 10 years younger, the chances of losing the tadpole would have been so much less, and the likely cause (trisomy) even less still. i know that justin loves me, but the fact remains that if he had married someone more age-appropriate, he would almost certainly not be in this boat. i told him how sorry i was that my old ass was killing our babies and that i wished he could have been with someone less risky, which, to his credit, upset him greatly. he assured me that he wanted to be with me and not with someone younger and that he wanted to go through this together. as dear sweet coalminer reminded me today, i am lucky in love.
2. on the good news front, when they did my pre-op bloodwork, the jk-b factor antibody that showed up after hans's birth did not show up at all, which makes it almost completely unlikely to be any threat to the next child we have that actually makes to the second half of its gestation. woo-hoo!
3. in less good news, my iv spot is still festering and generally pissing me off. there is about a three-inch section of vein, from the base of my palm shooting up my wrist, that is raised and hard and bruised. i've had about enough of that, thank you.
4. in mental health news, i decided not to ask my dr for serzone or anything else sunshine-inducing on monday. i'm doing okay. i'm sad, really, really sad, but i'm not broken, which is how i felt after hans. i feel battered but strong. i'm not ruling it out permanently, but i don't think i'm going to need it for now. it feels good to be stronger than my depression, dammit.
5. because of the absurd weather we are having, there are mosquitos working the neighborhood at dusk, and they focused their attack on my modestly-covered person last night, quite successfully. i even have a bite on my boob. how that is even possible eludes me. but they must be stopped. off with their heads!
6. i am so grossed out that katie holmes is pregnant by tom cruise, or whomever. it's so awful i don't even want to make jokes. ewwwwwwww. (shudder)
7. every time my father-in-law runs the saw in the carriage house, my light and a/c in this house flicker. i wasn't really dying to blog about this fact earlier. i just thought it was interesting. now that i write it, i see it really isn't.
8. we're having portobello french dips for dinner because i was craving a real, philadelphia, italian hot beef sandwich today, and when i tried to explain it to justin, it reminded him of when i used to make him french dips with mushrooms, which i haven't done in ages, so i did it tonight. because i'm still (mentally) struggling with the eating of all things green and vegetables generally, we are going to get some plant content from berry smoothies. and really, can you imagine anything better than a hot, juicy, seasoned portobello sandwich and frozen strawberries and blueberries and blackberries headed down your gullet? well, i can't.