Salt and Pickles

So, I’m (as mentioned before) no longer employed.

I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time. I’ve had a lot of grandiose plans.. from hanging out with friends who are also at home, to organizing and cleaning the house (lots of declutter) in preparation for the baby, crafting, cooking healthy meals and maybe even packing hans some yummy lunches in our Mr. Bento.

But now that I”m at home, I’m finding myself online a lot. I look around our truly messy and cluttery (which i kept putting off because.. hey, i’d be home soon and be able to have true time to devote to tackling it) house. It’s really cluttery and really messy and has piles here and there and everywhere. and it’s actually just pissing me off and overwhelming me so i don’t get much of anything done at all. and then i’m in a bad mood.
and i’m not doing any crafting or cooking because I want the house in a reasonable state first.

argh. I wish i just knew how to get started. (i know the answer is “just start”)

I no longer have a job. today was my last day, and it feels really really strange! 

I’ve known for a few years now that as soon as i was 6 months pregnant (ok, we jumped the gun by a month) I’d quit my job and take some time to myself.. and then when the baby came I’d stay home a few years and then figure out a whole new career because web development has turned out to just not be my thing.

but it still feels weird. I’d been at that job for 8 years, and I have a feeling that I’ll have a few days where I get up automatically and head to work only to wonder who the stranger is sitting at my desk. Or i’ll feel the urge to, at least. I really liked the people, the culture, the boss, the place. I’ll miss it.

but all that aside? WOO HOO. i’m going to mexico on Friday and when I get back I’ll be having lunch at Cafe Clem on sunny days, or reading books, or readying the house for baby, or learning to sew, or shopping at the farmers market & cooking great meals, or just sitting on my ass. hooray for ass-sitting. 

Yesterday was our anatomy scan. Things looked good with the baby & it’s measuring on target..  but my placenta was a bit low. Not ‘placenta previa’ necessarily,  but low enough that they’ll be monitoring it.

I really really hope it moves up.I would like a c-section to not be a foregone conclusion. We’ve already chosen our doula, damn it!  I’m fine with a C as a means to an end. but I’d like to feel like I still have a choice at this point. Even if at the end i have none.

oh and the two techs were 80% certain it is a girl.  

There’s not really much to say as one counts down the days past transfer. I mean, here I am staring at the screen trying to come up with something. Not so much.

I’ve been super grouchy, I have to say. I zoom from calm to super duper irritated in about 5 seconds flat. And I’m not so good at hiding it, either. Hans is just leaving me alone. Probably the best course of action all around.
I HAVE , however, been sleeping most awesomely the past few nights. I don’t even wake up when H comes to bed an hour after me. (normally I’m hyper attuned to anything going on around me)

I’ve always been the sort of person who, if she lost $20… would pretend she had never had the $20. This made getting over such things very easy. I’d just let it go. I’ve done ok with a variation of this with getting (or not getting) pregnant. I get ferociously sad for 2 days, and then I’m powering forward with my forehead down like a bull ready to head butt my way into parenthood.
It’s getting harder to do, though.

This weekend in tahoe, I plan to make a sock elephant, a quilted bird & maybe a clutch purse or two.

I feel flat. That’s the best description for how I feel post-transfer. I’m not quite sad, but I’m so flat. just a big blah. There’s a slight burning, like coal, low in my belly. And I sigh every few minutes. I dont’ know how to battle the flat.

I realize, looking over this journal.. or just listening to my own dialogue. It hasn’t occurred to me that I wont’ have a baby at the end of this. I mean, sure it’s come into my brain as a possibility but it’s not something i believe. I believe we will have a baby at the end of this.

I don’t know if this will make it all the more heartbreaking if we don’t .

We have discussed what we’d do if there were no baby at the end. I think we’ve decided not to adopt. Another long wait full of hope just sounds like more than we could take.

We decided I’d still quit my job.. take some time off, and find a new path. And we’d try to travel once or twice a year. Hans originally suggested that we take a big chunk that maybe would have been a college fund and travel for a year or so, but when i looked skeptical and mentioned how much he loved his job. well..that was amended. (Although I’m guessing he could take a few months off as sabbatical) So.. travel a few times a year, more skiing.. None of these would truly make up for not having a kid, but it would make our lives full. I would also work on creating things. Jewelry, take sewing classes, maybe glass blowing/bead making classes.

but again, the not adopting isn’t in stone. If IVF doesn’t work out, we may be right at the beginning and planning from scratch. I don’t know.

Speaking of IVF. dude. I’ve got two estrogen patches on my belly … and in two days, i’ll have 4. Having this much estrogen roiling around in my body is making me a sourpuss. I’m groucherrific and when Hans touches me or hangs out near me in a way I don’t like, i seriously throw a toddler-like tantrum.

today is acupuncture. or as i like to call it - my weekly nap. I usually take a long time to fall asleep if i’m taking a daytime nap, but in acupuncture I’m asleep within 5 minutes. It’s awesome.

Today on BART there was a woman sitting in seats diagonally across from me. She was wearing a beautifully tailored suit, a red and yellow scarf fashionably tossed around her neck, gold glinting glasses and sparkling jewelry. She was quite lovely and polished. She was working on some spreadsheets, bent over with concentration. I tend to people watch a lot on trains. I forget that people can see me watching them. very solipsistic of me. anyway.. as i was watching her, i noticed that her jaw was working overtime. She was chewing and chewing and chewing at a piece of gum. It made my jaws watch just to watch her.

I hate gum. It is ugly. it makes people look stupid .. their jaw working up and down over and over and over.
ugh. i hate gum. i hate the sound of the chewing. I hate the look of the chewing. hate. This is something I should probably deal with, since most kids like bubble gum. (maybe i can avoid their ever even finding out about the existence of gum?)

People who wait until a train comes and then just go straight to the door, completely ignoring the fact that there was a queue.

on a larger scale, I’ve realized my mother raised me into a conflicted snob. My mom was a luddite my entire years growing up. She spent her time thusly: teaching english, hiking/backpacking/rock climbing/running, cooking very wholesome from-scratch meals, gardening, reading literature (never bubblegum books for her), sewing me handmade stuffed animals and occasionally clothes, keeping a very clean house, taking me to ballet/puppet shows/festivals/etc, taking baths, always waking up early, living life fully.

We had one small black & white tv that I was allowed to watch a few hours a week on. They watched MASH and that was about it. As i grew older I was allowed a little more TV but not much. I bought my first computer in 1994 when I was 24.

So, this is the issue now. I find that I have a negative view of any time suck/passing that is not industrious/productive/creative/active or literary. My husband loves video games, and I (underneath somewhere) struggle with this sometimes because I see it as a negative time suck. (I don’t struggle with them because of loss of time with him. He’s very good at spending time with me and balancing all that … although we’ll fall into habits where we will spend less time together due to our interests, but if i ask.. he’s right there). I curl my lip. I inwardly scoff. This is bad enough. snobby and snotty.

But I also look down on myself. I read a lot of literature, ,but I also like trashier books (hell, sometimes i even like a good bodice ripper). We haven’t watched TV in a few years, but I want it back and when we have it I know i’ll watch it. I take lots of baths. I surf the internet A LOT. I avoid being creative, and I only cook a few times a week. I spend much of my outside-of-work (and probably inside-of-work) time doing very superficial time sucks. Things that are easy and occupy my attention so that I don’t have to do anything.
The thing is, I know inside that this is ok, but at the same time i don’t FEEL that it is ok. To be a successful worthy human, I seem to feel that people need to be like my mother. This seems to be a deeply ingrained belief. DEEPLY. i can never convince myself fully that it’s wrong. I’m not sure how to deal with that, when I like the internet. I like watching 7 seasons of Buffy in 2 months. I like drinking red wine, singing karaoke with friends, and reading a trashy book.

I do know that If i get old and what i look back on in my life is a lot of tv watching, internet surfing and bath taking.. I will be sad. So, on some level I’m right. I need to make sure that I’m creating a life that I’m proud of. But at the same time, it’s not bad that my husband likes to exert his energy and creativity in video games. and this is something I’m going to have to approach with myself when we have kids. Kids like to do fun simple things like play video games or watch the occasional tv show.

but as is obvious by many of the links on my blogroll, I also want to be the sort of mama who has that simple industrious waldorfy lifestyle for her kids.

and i want to stop being such a snob about the things people do (including me) to fill their time.
My mother now, i realize.. is addicted to being busy. She runs every day, she does lesson plans all night, she never (or rarely) takes a few hours for herself to just fill her time with lazy time. with mindless fun. She’s not actually the bastion of health that I have revered her to be.

ah. it all comes back to that thing they call ‘balance’. the biggest struggle of my life.

Nothing IVF related in this entry because: blah blah blah waiting waiting. two estrogen patches instead of one, but still. blah blah.

Last night in bed, Hans and I came up with my new title for when I quit working and stay at home. I will be one of the following: DOE (Domestic Operations Engineer), CDO (Chief of Domestic Operations), DOM (Domestic Operations Manager) , DDO (Director of Domestic Operations). which one do you think has the most pizazz?

I have other plans for that time besides, you know.. domestic operatioins. (like potentially being a Doula and starting a very small event planning biz for those looking for a non-cookie cutter event.) but I think I’ll feel less resentful if i have a fancy title, when the crappy stuff comes up. I wonder when I get to hire my first employee?

I had been getting headaches and body aches all last week. I realized the reason was because my body felt that it needed to start forming itself to naturally fit the curve of my couch. Like memory foam. It found being upright uncomfortable and thus achey. This is a sign that I was spending too much time on my back with my feet over the arm rest, re-reading books I’ve read 3 times before and eating popcorn with too much butter. not good. not good at all.

So, this weekend we had friends over. We played games, drank drinks, laughed, peeked in on the hippie dance jam and were scared away, and went to bed late. It was great. I slept in late late and saturday was mosty a wash (we went to a birthday party but I didn’t know anybody and was .. well… bored. although the food was awesome: balogna & american cheese sammiches with the crusts cut off, hot dogs, bean dip, nachos with velveeta, a big popcorn machine, brownies. when I was a kid i wanted balogna on every birthday, because I was never allowed it at any other time).

Sunday, however, made up for it all. Miss Mani came over and picked me up and we went to La Note for brunch. I love that place. big bowls of cafe au lait (i gave up coffee nearly a year ago, but in a place like La Note.. you make an exception), fluffy slow cooked eggs, home made jam in their oatmeal raspberry pancakes. It’s french brunch perfection.

When we were done we went up into Tilden Park and walked around the lake. It’s an easy not-so-long walk, but we took some side trails and inhaled the fresh air, the smell of water, and were amazed by the 45,000 ducks (no really, i swear) that were swimming around making a quacky racket. also, it’s hard to be depressed when there are happy dogs frolicking in a lake.

I came home and cooked myself a steak and baked yam.. simultaneously broiling up hans a salmon filet & fingerling potatoes. (life became much easier when I realized we didn’t have to eat the same thing, as long as I chose something that took the same amount of time to cook. he doesn’t eat pig or cow.. except, you know.. when that magical bacon animal is to be found. somehow bacon is magic meat that must not come from any animal that’s on his no-no list). Wow that yam (and the steak too, really) was delicious. I’ve been using Alice Water’s Art of Simple Food for ideas this week.

Today i woke up super late (Hans had to work) again. Drank some Kefir.. stuffed down another yam that’d pre-cooked last night. (yum again) and headed over to a friend’s for a day of sewing. I consciously know that a combination of people and creativity (or outdoor activity) is the key to my mental health.. but I still fucking fight it. What is my deal, huh? I don’t know. I figure if I can answer that, a lot of people like me would like to hear about it. The sewing was great, even when i stumbled over it. The company was great too.

tonight was a dinner of egg fettucini with chicken/shiitake cream sauce and a side of green beans. again. yum. and easy.

Now I’m going to go read a sewing book in bed til it falls out of my fingers and I wake up with a book crease-mark in my forehead.

One other observation. I’ve noticed that as Hans gets older (granted, he’s still in his early 30’s, whereas I’m getting closer to 40) he just gets more handsome. He looks manly and handsome. Even with a gut (which is mostly gone, i’ve noticed) he looks good. Me? i look dumpy and my skin is really not cooperating with me at all. I will not age as nicely as him, but.. I blame him because he constantly shares his disgust with makeup, hair product and gives accolades to dumpy tshirts. So, I lounge around in yoga pants, a baggy tshirt and craptacular hair. I am blameless!

Good night. Haircut in imminent future.

wish list for today:
a new GOOD camera
a kindle
tons of new fabric
mad skillz

I had the kind of weekend where I was beating myself up a bit. I slept too much, I wasn’t productive.
I want to be somebody who uses all the many things i’ve collected for crafting.. and actually CREATE things. But I run into so many walls and I’m not even sure how to describe them. I guess I become overwhelmed by possibilities and so i just get paralyzed. craft-paralysis.
When there is some goal (like christmas is in two days), i am able to crank things out for an evening. I love the feeling, but it’s the impending doom “this has to get done now or i have no presents for anyone!” that makes me finally get off my ass and do something.
I have LOTS of blogs that I read (mostly crafty mama blogs) because I aspire to be like them in some way. I read them with this faint jealousy sneaking through my stomach. I wonder how they go from vague ideas to actual ideas.. if they just collect supplies all the time for eventual projects or if they have to go buy new stuff everytime a new idea comes up.
Maybe if/when I’m at home and have a lot more time on my hands.. this will force my hand. I’m afraid it won’t though. That that’s just a pipe dream.

I also have thought about blogging but , for the first time (I used to have another blog elsewhere)… I find myself paralyzed in the face of writing too. There’s a lot of shrugging and then reading of the internets going on in my house.

Maybe I should make a resolution, but i’ve never been good at resolutions.

We’re in our second IVF cycle. This time a frozen cycle. I’m back to nightly injections.. and adding an estrogen patch starting on friday. Sometime in the first week of february, two embryos from our last cycle will be transferred and we’ll see what happens.

I’m much less emotionally involved this time, and maybe that’s a good thing. I’m reading the craftymama blogs again, I’m daydreaming a bit and hoping a bit again.. but I’m also just not as obsessed as I was last time.
I took 2 months off (thus the no entries in this blog) from baby thinking. I drank what I wanted, I ate what I wanted, I didn’t go to acupuncture. I just took 2 months off for the first time in 19 months. It was the best feeling in the world. I’d told myself before that I’d relax and not think about it for a month or two, but I was never actually capable of doing so.

I’m trying to re-invest. I’m getting there.

I’m a little depressed lately, but it has a lot less to do with making babies and a lot more to do with feeling like I’m not being who I want to be and not doing what I want to do.

Luckily

holy fuck, i forgot how good Ibarra is. I used to have Ibarra made mexican hot chocolate in San Diego all the time.. but it’s increasingly hard to find up here in the bay area. i only once found a restaurant that served it, and they went out of business.
So at the Berkeley Bowl i found blocks of Ibarra (it comes in blocks, rather than powder. .. and you can grate it into hot milk or even just melt chunks of it.. i start out grating it but usually give up and start just cutting bits of it to throw into the heating milk) and the past two nights Hans and I have been enjoying delicious mildly frothy (thank you, whisk) cocoa.

I’m rereading Little Women. I LOVED LOVED LOVED this book as a girl. I still love it, but it’s tempered a little with eye-rolls at the way women are written… but I know it’s a product of its time. What i find interesting is that right up into my teens, I thought it was a perfect example of how young ladies should be. I think it was a self esteem thing.. the little women were all these things I wasn’t. (patient, demure, loving, sedate.. whereas I was moody, impatient, cranky and potty mouthed)

It’s funny how a little ‘fuck’ thrown into a new blog can make me start to feel a bit more like myself. There’s always an awkward first week or two, in finding my voice. No matter how many years i’ve blogged.. a new one always starts out stilted. strangely formal.

So far I haven’t felt any real side effects to my injections. I have been a little sleepier than normal, but otherwise I’ve felt fine. birth control pills, however, turned me into the anti-heather. The last time I took the pill was 1996, i think. The ring and the shot were fine. neither affected me too negatively. The pill turns me into a cranky, unloving wanker head. Hans would try to be affectionate, and I’d just curl in on myself and retreat. I know that can’t feel very good when the person you want to be closest to just wants you to go away. Luckily, within two days of going back off the pill..I was affectionate and playful again. I have to do them in the beginning of an IVF cycle, so I guess we just have to deal with the occasional 2 weeks of anti-heather.

My sock-elephant came dangerously close to being finished,, but the second ear totally crashed my happy. There I was floating high on my janky but cute elephant when the second ear just wouldn’t go on right. I tried 3 tries and then threw her in a sewing box and I’ll give it another try later this week.

I hereby acknowledge that I know nothing whatsoever about sewing machines. I have two (well, actually I have 3.. they were all given to me. One , which has a hand press rather than foot.. i will return to the friend who gave it to me. the other two I got from my mother in law, and I’ll return the one I don’t end up using to her) and I don’t know how to thread them or run them or do anything with them.
I knew how to do some basic stuff in high school (very very basic) but all that knowledge is completely gone.

Hans has gone to his college co-op 35th anniversary party today. He went to Stanford and lived in a crazy hippie co-op, where they ate vegan and baked bread naked for new recruits. My boy. He’s a not-so-closeted hippie. His reunion/anniversary party today will consist of yoga (he skipped that bit), signing up to cook dinner (which i think he will do), a dance party, and some other crunchabulous things.
I did my reunion-wife bit last year for his 10 year college reunion (2 parties in a weekend) coupled with his company picnic, all on the same weekend. I think this could have been very entertaining, but I decided to stay home today.

So I’m home alone and the loft is filled with sunlight. I’ve been attempting to make a sock elephant but i’m having to hand sew (which I’m not so hot at either) since I can’t figure out the threading of the damn sewing machines. I really really want to learn to sew, but I’m not going to learn it on my own.. that’s obvious.
I have one leg done of my elephant, and a mighty fine leg it is too.

Godzilla is sleeping next to me on the couch, his nose tucked under his back leg. a second ago he was in that weird splayed sitting position that only cats can do, licking his belly and non-existant balls.

Hans won’t be back til late tonight.. so i’ll watch the two movies I got at the vid store.. try to finish the elephant.. and do my injections myself tonight.

I’m not quite sure how my day has gone by so quickly already

I’m missing out on Roller Derby championships tonight, but that’s ok. I’m enjoying my month of laying low.