Category Archive

Today is my grandmother’s birthday.

It has taken me nearly an hour, sitting, staring at these pictures, to even type that sentence. The words to describe how deeply and constantly I miss her don’t seem to exist. They are frozen somewhere inside me, and my heart aches with the weight of them.

You can probably guess where I am based on that title. I feel like I talk of little else, as if my entire life exists here in this freezing cold, dark classroom and my only job is to listen to endless lecture about library administration, and yet I am only here once a week. But somehow it is by far the longest part of my week, and it takes me so long to shake it off that I am barely over it when I have to go back. It won’t surprise you to learn, then, that even though February is dead, and even though it was 73 degrees here today, and even though things are not All That Bad, I am still in a February state of mind. Everything, and I do mean everything, like the unraked leaves in my yard and the three baskets of unfolded laundry in my living room and this sudden eruption of zits on my face, feels like the world’s most insurmountable hurdle, and I can’t imagine how I will ever survive it. Even this blog is bugging me, not the blog itself, but the act of blogging. I don’t really feel I have all that much to say, but this is one more example of neglect, one more thing I never get to, one more source of self-imposed guilt. That’s really sad considering the only things I can manage to think about when I do sit down at the computer involve how much I hate graduate school and how addicted I am to cream cheese & chives wheat thins. At least my absence is generally good for you, because if I did write daily about what’s really on my mind (see above re: wheat thins) and one of you actually died or even just passed out from boredom, then I’d really have something to feel guilty about, wouldn’t I?

If wheat thins aren’t your thing and you need something else to ponder, here are some other important battles I’m fighting. I’d love it if you could offer up some insight.

• Why is it that I am 33 years old, engaging in regular combat with flab and eye wrinkles, and I still find myself standing in the skin care aisle at Tar.get looking for something to clear up my ACNE?
• Along those lines, why will Boudreaux’s Butt Paste clear up a diaper rash that looks like the advanced stages of leprosy overnight, but will increase my zits ad infinitum in a matter of hours?
• And finally, how is it that I can drop my bottle of prescription allergy medication into the TOILET with no ill effects on the contents, but rinsing the bottle under the faucet to negate the toilet incident causes a near flood inside the bottle, thereby turning my little white pills into tiny masses of useless mush?

I am not dead. I have not been abducted by aliens. I am not even preoccupied by anything new or exciting (other than the daily antics of this small person I live with who refuses to walk in spite of proven ability but still manages to get into every forbidden realm of my house).  I would love to say this immense stretch of nothingness on my blog has been the result of brilliance and creativity elsewhere, but I’m sorry to report that any novel I might have started in the past three weeks would begin, “She only meant to eat a few Wheat Thins to tide her over until lunch, but the box was empty by noon.” No. It’s just February, and for me that means all of my energy is used up just walking around and breathing, so anything extra, like writing stuff and reading stuff and communicating with people, is not likely to happen.

There’s light at the end of the tunnel, though, and it’s not a train this time (it was a train last week, and it was called the Grad School Express, and it flattened me, but I think my recovery is nearly complete). Thankfully, February the Month will fizzle and die in a mere two days, and February the State of My Mind will slowly cross fade into something like springtime and deep breaths and lightness shortly thereafter. And even though I feel sort of trite and whiny talking about my great heaviness when there is so much heavier heaviness in the world, even the part of the world that encompasses some of my dearest reader friends, I am heavy nonetheless, and when I am light again I will have so much to say, and only a small portion of it will involve Wheat Thins.

Remember that thing I told you about the other day, the really horrible thing? I am choosing not to speak of it at this time. It is even more horrible than I thought, and I don’t want to talk about it right now. Nonetheless, I appreciate the wishes of love and light more than you know.

What I would really like to talk about today is this little person with whom I now share a life, this little person who, in the weeks and weeks when I was not blogging, turned 6 and then 7 months old. I know I am biased, but she is truly amazing, and while the rapid passing of time is a little bothersome to me, I don’t really have time to be sad about her growing up right before my eyes, because watching her grow up right before my eyes is entertainment at its finest. With this to watch on a daily basis, who has time to pine about the past?

When she was brand new and just starting to grow into herself, I worried about milestones and development; I worry less about those things now. Who am I to pass judgement on when my daughter sits up when I, after almost 33* years of living, still walk full speed into door frames and trip over hairline cracks in the sidewalk? No, it is better to focus on her special skills and talents. For example:

• She can trill–roll her tongue–like a proper Spanish or Italian speaker, something many adults I know cannot do. Not only does she possess this skill, but she also has the ability to add different sounds to the trill. Sometimes she sounds like an exotic jungle bird, and sometimes she sounds like a motor, and sometimes she sounds like Cujo preparing to chew through a chain-link fence.
• One of her favorite foods is the Cheerio, slightly dampened and in large quantities. I have watched her pick up a Cheerio in a delicate manner, with her thumb and index finger, her tiny pinky extented. However, this is not her preferred mode of eating Cheerios. Mostly she picks up handfuls with both fists and shoves her hands into her mouth while making a hungry, enthusiastic chomping sound to rival Cookie Monster.
• She is an accomplished kicker. There is never a time when her feet are not moving. Even when she is on her belly doing her version of crawling (or The Worm, which is a much more accurate label) she is tapping the top of her right foot on the ground. It is cute, the kicking, until it gets all up close and personal with your stomach or an unprotected boob. Case in point: every morning this summer, instead of putting her back into her bed after the 6 a.m. bottle, I have put her in bed with me and enjoyed some snuggle time. But lately I have abandoned this practice because even in her sleep she is capable of a well-placed kick. It was all fine and good when I was awake: we would both go back to sleep after the early bottle, and then we would wake and lie in my bed and play until it was time for breakfast, and even though it was like being in bed with a tiny part-camel (she likes to blow raspberries), part-lobster (she also likes to pinch little pieces of skin with her vice-like thumb and index finger), part-donkey, it was a good time for both of us. But being jolted out of sleep by a tiny soccer kick to the chest–not a good time.

 And then there are those “normal” things, the baby book milestones:

• She sits up completely unassisted. If she starts to topple she steadies herself with her hands, or sometimes just by balancing herself with her own core strength. Yesterday she went from her stomach to a sitting position all by herself for the first time.
• She babbles. Her favorite syllables are “babababa” and “dadadada.” Whenever she says the latter I ask dramatically, “Who IS this Dada you speak of?” and she laughs impishly.
• She moves rapidly from point A to point B. It can’t be called crawling–like I said, it’s more like The Worm of Disco fame–but it’s fast and quite effective nonetheless.
• She waves, but mainly at things that aren’t there, or at herself in the mirror.
• She has started trying to pull herself up on things. Yesterday my mom put her in a round and fairly deep laundry tub, and by pressing her butt into the back and pulling up with her arms, she stood up by herself. It was a scary sight for me. Already I am considering tethering her to something so she cannot climb into the fireplace or escape out the front door.
• She is an accomplished peek-a-boo player and prefers the “cloth over face” method to the “hands over face” method. At first she would only pull the cloth from her own face, but now she pulls it from whatever face it is concealing, up to and including the Wee Hairy Beastie’s.
• She still has no teeth, but every day I am convinced all of them are going to emerge all at once based on the vehemence with which she chews on everything in sight.

I have wished in the past few days that I had the ability to cast a patronus and ward off the “dementors” (because I’m sure this is what they feel like, this cureless, constant ache), and I have wondered what my patronus would be if I had one. And then I see this, and I realize I don’t need a patronus, or perhaps I already have one.

*GASP.

I found out last week that my grandmother on my mom’s side is dying. Soon, probably. Some rare and apparently very advanced form of liver cancer. I am speechless.

Wordless in general, apparently, because it’s been several minutes since I typed those sentences up there, and I still don’t know what else to say. I have not seen her since the diagnosis and her unfathomable rapid downhill slide. I saw her a month ago, and she was the same as always, and even though I am planning to go see her on Thursday I don’t want to, because maybe then none of this will be real and she will call to say she’s dropping by to see the baby on the way to a doctor’s appointment, just like she has done for the past 7 months.

Still more minutes, and still no words. I’m cashing in a picture until I find some.

1. A question (for my Harry Potter friends): if you could have any magical power from the Harry Potter series, what would it be? What magical object would you like to possess? Me, I want to Apparate, and I really dig Hermione’s magic purse from book 7.

2. A request: Amanda! When I go to your blog I’m told it no longer exists! Where did you go?

3. A healty dose of paranoia: Have you ever discovered that bloggers who used to link to your site suddenly stopped linking to your site? Or is that, you know, just me? Was it something I said? Did I inadvertenly offend someone? Is it because I bottle-feed my baby? Am I in SEVENTH GRADE?

4. A picture: Mia and I spent yesterday afternoon visiting my friend MJ at her lake house. It was the lake I grew up on and spent countless hours swimming in, and yet…yesterday, floating around in brown water, the likes of which could be concealing all manner of scaly, slimy, slithery things, caused me to freak out a little. But I got over it, because my kid, she likes the water. So much, in fact, that she FELL ASLEEP while we were floating around, too-big life jacked be damned. Here we are a little while after the nap. Check out her hair exploding from under the cap. Do you think Art Garfunkel was my donor?

I’ve been mulling over this post for several days. I’m still not sure of it–not sure what it should say, or if I really want to put it out there in the universe. It won’t be light or humorous, and it might show a side of me I don’t like revealing, and so I have to ask myself–isn’t there enough seriousness in the world without your contribution, and do you really want everyone to know you’re not impervious? The truth is, the only way through darkness is just that–through it. And you already knew I wasn’t impervious, didn’t you?

Here’s the thing: I get depressed in the winter. I’ve never been diagnosed, I don’t have a shrink, and the only antidepressants I’ve ever ingested are St. John’s Wort and crushed pineapple. My funk is self-diagnosed, it is inconsistent, it comes and goes. It is all gray and edgeless and smoky, like fog, and like fog, it is unbearably thick at times, and sometimes it isn’t there at all.

I call my depression February, because it is usually at its strongest during that dreary month, but sometimes February starts in November or December, and sometimes it lasts well into March. Some Februaries are better than others, but this year the shortest month has been one of my very longest. I don’t know why, and this bothers me; one of my strengths is knowing things, arming myself with information. It’s difficult to gather information when your strongest inclination is to sit and stare out the window or, at best, sit and stare at “Friends” on the television. When the actual month of February is over I find myself more and more able to surface, so I know there is a control button somewhere, some little person in my brain that says, “Oh, okay, it’s March now–let’s crack the window a little at a time, give her some air and light.” I feel like I ought to have more control over this, but in the midst of my February I just don’t.

My rational self, who is getting stronger by the day these days, wonders why I’m not more proactive about this February business. If I know it’s coming I should shield myself against it, right? Perhaps, but after all this time (I identified and named February in college) I still find myself blindsided when the fog starts creeping up, and by the time I am fully aware that it has returned I’m at a loss, and I’m lost. By the time February is over I’m so relieved to be free of it that I opt not to think of it–until it comes creeping back the following year and the cycle begins again.

I’ve a sneaking suspicion that I’m not alone, and while I certainly don’t expect any of you to give me the key to overcoming my February, or send me the secret potion that prevents the inexorable weighty sadness that is depression, it’s a small relief to confess it to you here. Saying “I’m fine, I’m okay” all of the time when really I’m not at all is exhausting, but admitting to this comptuer screen that I’m not fine–well, I feel a little lighter already. Now that you know, there’s no need to ask what’s wrong, because I can say February, and you will understand. You will know that all the things I’m not coping with, the everyday stuff that is part of living in the world, are not the cause of my heaviness; and you will know I’ll be coping with those things in due time, because already the weight is lifting. It is, after all, March.

*There is a special prize for the person who correctly identifies the origin of this post’s title.

Well, I’ve done it again. It’s been almost a month since I’ve been here. Not that I haven’t had plenty to talk about, mind you, and maybe that’s the problem–there’s been too much to talk about. It’s hard to know where to begin. I’ll just start at the beginning. Worked for Julie Andrews and all those little Von Trapp children, didn’t it?

I’ll try to make this short and sweet:

Remember Joey and Geena? You know, my egg and her 30 million potential cellular soulmates who rendezvoused on July 2? Apparently there was some chemistry there, because they hooked up and started making a fetus–I got a positive home pregnancy test 16 days after insemination. But they must have had a falling out, because about 10 days later I had an early miscarriage. In between there was a series of low non-doubling betas (for the non-TTCers out there, that basically means the hormone necessary for a healthy, thriving fetus was not being produced fast enough, and there was a shortage of it from the start), as well as some nasty business with my former fertility clinic, the NORTH CAROLINA CENTER FOR REPRODUCTIVE MEDICINE. (When I write the letter complaining about the unprofessionalism and inhumanity I encountered at this place I will post it for all to see.) I’m happy to report that I have a new doctor and plans to try again in the next few weeks. Hopefully all is well with Geena the Egg(s), but we’ve said our farewells to Joey. You know, three strikes and all. There is new sperm, but it doesn’t have a name, per se. So far I’m referring to it as “Czech Guy.” Stay tuned.

Needless to say, the “I’m pregnant. No wait, I’m not pregnant” saga occupied a lot of my time and energy. Disappointment, sadness, anger (thanks to the clinic), and general physical discomfort can take a lot out of a girl. I spent a great deal of time on the couch reading and staring at the television. Oh yeah, and eating Sweet 16 chocolate doughnuts. There were a lot of doughnuts. Fortunately I watched and read some decent things, and even listened to some good music. I’m now in love with Coldplay’s new CD, as well as everything Jack Johnson has ever recorded. I re-read the entire Harry Potter series while waiting for a borrowed copy of The Half Blood Prince (which I read in less than 24 hours.) I also read The Mermaid Chair, The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters, The Solace of Leaving Early, The Obituary Writer, The Color of Light, and the first few chapters of both Ya-Yas in Bloom and Kate Vaiden. I also watched (or in some cases, re-watched) “National Treasure,” “In Good Company,” “City Slickers,” “The First Wives Club,” “Notting Hill,” “Steel Magnolias,” “Racing Stripes,” “Miss Congeniality 2,” “Ocean’s Twelve,” “Frequency,” and about a gazillion re-runs of “Friends” and “Will and Grace.”

But even though I felt like my weeklong slug-a-thon was the right thing to do for my body (and probably my mind as well), I can only be a slug for so long. When I finally started to feel like a real person again I escaped my house, the couch, the TV, and yes, the computer. I thought a lot about all the blog posts I could have written, but I never wrote them. I just wasn’t ready to talk about any of this until now, and while there were normal things I could have written about, I couldn’t seem to get it done. I had writer’s block, which is just a simple way of saying “I have to process these many words in my head before they can become sentences so I can turn them into paragraphs, and processing takes time.” I think I’ve processed everything now, though, and it’s good to be back.

Note: This post was originally much longer and far more philosophical, but apparently when blogger.com schedules down time for maintenance purposes, there is no way to save what you have been typing for over an hour, thus causing all of your highly processed words, sentences and paragraphs to disappear. If only it were so simple to make the pounds I’ve gained from aforementioned lying around and eating doughnuts vanish from my ass….

Guess it doesn’t get any more real than this.

God, I’m going to miss that man. I hope there’s football wherever he is today.

All afternoon I was sure I would sit down and write something eloquent here, but it’s not going to happen. My friend and colleague Charlie Griffin died today. He was not sick. There was no accident. He was jogging, and he collapsed, and by the time a stranger found him he was gone. Charlie was the most even-tempered person I’ve ever known. When times were hard and work was shit he could still crack a joke and get a laugh. He told the damnedest stories–made you believe the biggest pile of BS without cracking a hint of a smile. There was always a smile in his eyes, though, so you always had to wonder if he was pulling one over on you. I keep hoping to find out that he’s pulling one over on us all today, that he’s going to return to school in August with stories about going toward the light and bargaining with the devil, that there’s somebody else in town named Charles Griffin, and the one we know and love is at home in his recliner watching baseball with his cat in his lap. I know there’s not much use in that line of thinking, but I just can’t wrap my mind around the reality. I’m stuck in the surreal place.

…and I’m afraid I’m gonna blow. Well, not anymore. I think the danger has passed and the damage has been done, but I must say, I was worried about myself yesterday. Here’s what happened. About six months ago I was shopping with my family at an outlet mall in Charlotte, which is a 90 minute drive from my house. While there I purchased two giant batteries from the Black and Decker outlet for my POS Dust Buster. I was dubious, but the man behind the counter assured me that these batteries were intended for ALL B&D rechargeable products, so I bought them in hopes that my handy mini-vac would do more than sigh pitifully and pass out every time I tried to use it. Later that evening I set about trying to install one or both of them, but I could see no possible way that these missile-like objects were going to fit anywhere inside my vacuum. In fact, I never even took a single battery out of it’s packaging–after trying in vain to access the very small battery compartment, and after getting all sorts of cuts and scrapes on my hands from trying to force the alleged battery pack from its hard plastic casing, I threw the Dust Buster on the floor of the garage. The battery pack came flying out, and attached to it was a warning: Danger–do not remove this battery! There you go. In retrospect I should have sued the Black and Decker outlet. That was 5 months ago, and I have since purchased a new turbo powered Dust Buster that kicks ass.

Yesterday I had a class in Charlotte, so I knew I’d be passing by the outlet mall for the first time since December. I had planned ahead, making sure to put the Black and Decker bag in my car, and then I proceeded to drive to Charlotte on a quarter of a tank. I pulled into the outlet mall lot on fumes that evening. You see, I paid 25 bucks for the batteries, and I was planning to use the returned cash to fill up my gas tank. But when the cashier opened the bag the receipt was gone. Now this sack of sh–I mean, bag of batteries has been sitting on a shelf in my hall closet since late December, and I know I didn’t ditch the receipt, so God only knows what happened to it (yes, I searched my car and have since searched the hall closet–nada). The Black and Decker policy for returns with no receipts is to assign the customer a store credit. Well, I didn’t want store credit, I wanted fuel. I tried pointing out the wall-o-batteries just like mine right behind the cashier desk (”Look, that’s what I bought. See, they’re 25 dollars.”) but that didn’t work. Enter the store manager, who said, and I quote, “You just need to look around the store and find an exchange.” I didn’t like his tone. I explained that I didn’t want to look around the store. He explained their policy once again. I explained that he could keep his batteries and his store credit, and I slid the batteries across the counter toward him. As I left the store I had an Ally McBeal moment where I imagined what would have happened had those cylindrical little missile-looking batteries actually been missiles. The explosion rang in my head until I got to my car, and then I sat in the driver’s seat and cried.

I’m not normally like this. I’d like to blame the egg-growing hormones I’m taking in an effort to get pregnant on my last remaining vial of “Joey” sperm, but that’s only part of the problem. The water in my teapot runs much deeper, and you know what happens when you put too much water in a teapot. Let’s consider the following:

• Last Saturday my youngest sister graduated from high school. She’s 17. My other sister is 19 and will begin her second year of college in August. They are, each in her own way, the answers to every prayer I ever prayed as a kid. I was an only child for 11 years, and I didn’t want to be, and they were worth the wait. I have loved watching them grow up, loved sharing our similarities and discovering our unique differences. They are beautiful and funny and brilliant. But I have not always felt worthy of the answered prayers. There are so many things I’ve missed, so many hours I let slip by, and now that they’re both on the short end of the road to adulthood I feel the weight of those lost opportunities in a way I never have before. My rational mind reminds me that there’s nothing to be done about the past. My heart hopes the future is full of new possibilities.

• On Wednesday I attended a funeral service for the five-month old granddaughter of one of my dearest friends. The baby, Alice, was recently diagnosed with what we all believed was a reparable heart defect, but last Wednesday her little heart just stopped beating. Both of her parents are from my town so they brought her home to the church where they both grew up to bury her. The sanctuary was so full that people were standing two deep along the outer walls. My friend, with tears streaming down her face, kept reaching up to wipe her weeping husband’s cheeks. I’m not sure what was harder–mourning the loss of an infant or watching my friend suffer. It was a difficult day.

• Sometime late next week I will use up the last of the sperm I purchased back in April. If this attempt doesn’t result in pregnancy I will be back to square one, and with considerably less money than when I started this process. That’s not to say I won’t keep trying, but I was painfully naive to think it would all work out on the first round. Now the clinic is talking drugs and ultrasound to make sure I’m actually producing eggs, a possibility which had never occurred to me. Why is it that the only people who get pregnant quickly are the ones fooling around in the backseats of old cars?

Needless to say, the water has been rising all week. Who knew that the manager of a Black and Decker outlet would be the boiling point for me? I am happy to say, however, that the long drive home did improve. After talking with a few pals who cheered me up a bit, I called an old friend with whom I normally only communicate via email. When she found out I was trying to have a baby she insisted that I call her so we could properly catch up, but when I called yesterday she wasn’t at home. Her husband, whom I’ve never met or spoken to at all, was quite possibly the nicest man I’ve ever had a phone conversation with, so genuine and friendly was our brief chat. No doubt he was just practicing the Southern Way, but he spoke to me as if we’d known each other for years. He ended the call with, “You take care now, and we’ll look forward to seeing you soon.” I was almost glad my friend hadn’t been home.

Later I put in a mix CD I’d made for a road trip a few summers ago. Songs I’d forgotten existed came pouring out of my speakers, songs I love and enjoy singing very loudly with the windows down and the sunroof open. (Note to Jen: I must add to my favorite songs list “9 to 5″ by Dolly Parton.) And while I was delivering a particularly energetic rendition of “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing,” an 18-wheeler passed me, and there in the open driver’s side window on the lap of a huge bearded trucker was a tiny miniature pinscher, its little head bobbing happily in the wind. It was one of the cutest things I’ve seen in a long time.

Today is a better day. I’ve been taking a lot of deep breaths. I’ve been meditating on my ovaries, sending them positive messages about making lots of eggs. I’ve been listening to fun music and watching the birds feed in my yard. Today my friend who lost her granddaughter is on her way to the beach, and I can think of no better place to begin the healing process. Next week I think I’ll go find a sister or two to hang out with, and hopefully that last vial of sperm will meet an egg and make a baby. But right now I’m going to go vacuum my kitchen with the Dust Buster that actually works and try not to think too much about how I basically gave Black and Decker 25 bucks yesterday and nearly sent myself over the edge. After all, my missile fantasy just may be worth that much.