8 Things About Me

Okay, so I have been thinking that this Lu.pron thing is a piece of cake. The injections are not so bad, I feel a tiny sting when the tip of the needle pierces the skin but then it is smooth sailing. And no side effects. And no bruises (just a few tiny black pin-pricks here and there). I thought. However, last night I woke up totally sweaty, and I am grumpy as all hell. And my boobs are super sore and I have a headache. Poor TW. It is his birthday today, and I walked in the door after work and immediately started griping about the dishes (I had left a note for him to unload the dishwasher). Also, I had made him a birthday dinner last night - I made a really expensive beef tenderloin roast for him, his dad, PT and me. And he told me he ate some of the leftovers for lunch, by chopping it up and scrambling it in some eggs. I almost castrated him. He scrambled $26.99/lb beef tenderloin in eggs? OMG. I ripped him a new one. I stormed out of the house and took the puppy to the dog park. On the way there I realized that I really shouldn’t have gotten so unbelievably upset over some left over meat. How he eats his leftovers for lunch really shouldn’t concern me so much! And I was at work so he fended for himself (which is actually better than usual — sometimes I come home and he hasn’t eaten all day!)…was it right to scream and yell and slam the doors because of his scrambled egg lunch? Probably not. I am going to blame it on the Lu.pron. But it could possibly be because I am just naturally a raging bitch. Not sure. I will keep you posted on that whole thing and will let you know as soon as I figure it out.

Missed Conceptions nominated me for the “8 Things About Me” meme…so here goes!

1. I am terrible at sharing. If I order something really yummy at a restaurant, I don’t want to give bites to anyone. I also covet things like my favorite hair tie, my favorite pen, because I don’t want anyone else to use it (even if I am not using it!). I force myself to share but it is really hard. I know this about myself and it scares the shit out of me, since I want to be a mom so much. Mom’s have to share everything. Will this change when I have a baby? I sure as hell hope so. I need to work on this. In other ways I am very generous, like with my time, and I will do anything for my friends and loved ones. But share my favorite pen? Not so much.
2. I need to touch my keys. I think I have some sort of OCD? I need to know where my keys are at all times. I lost them once about 10 years ago and ever since then, I obsess about them. You would think this would have caused me to always leave them in the same place, but I get so distracted…one time I found them in the freezer! Not only do I need to know where they are, I have to touch them. So if I am out for dinner with friends (for example), I will open my purse at least 5 times to make sure my keys are in my purse (and touch them). Even if I just checked 1/2 an hour before, I do it again, knowing that I haven’t moved them (but also knowing I am such a spaz, that maybe I did move them?)
3. I have had 2 nose jobs. Yes, TWO. When I was 10 I walked face first into a very clean sliding glass door. My nose was always bigger than I liked but after that I had a prominent bump on one side of my nose…I had a “good side” and a “bad side”, and I was always aware of which side was visible to the people around me. When I turned 18 I asked my parents if I could get a nose job, and they said it was fine (I was shocked!). So, the summer before college, I got my nose fixed. The doctor called it a “deviated septum” and truth be told, I did breathe much better afterwards….and my nose was straight. The recovery was horrible. But the next summer I had a follow-up and the doctor was not pleased with the results and offered to do it again for free. And I said yes! So I did the whole thing again. Amazingly, I am still not happy with my nose. This was 20 years ago and I think that nose jobs have come a long way…but don’t worry, I am not going through it again! The scary part is that TW has a long Italian/Greek nose…our baby will probably be worse than Cyrano. TW just found out that I got a nose job because when we were moving he found this old picture of me. I never told him — I truly blocked the whole thing. But I came clean…and now he makes fun of me. Argh!
4. I always have at least 4 of everything in the supply closet (probably related to the OCD!). Four toothpastes, four packages of toilet paper, four laundry detergents, etc. If I get down to 2 of something, I need to run to Target to replenish ASAP. If I only have 1 left of something (even if the opened one is almost full), I feel the DIRE need to shop for it, like it is an emergency. I never run out of ANYTHING.
5. I love animals but I eat meat. I cannot reconcile this at all. I never squish a spider, no matter how ugly it is. I trap it under a cup and take it outside. I volunteer my free time to save unwanted puppies. I am the person who stops every person on the street with a dog so I can give the dog some love (usually I get on the ground with the dog, no matter what I am wearing). I love ALL animals, even reptiles. I want to be a vegetarian but meat has been so ingrained in my life from an early age, even when I give it up for a while, I go back to it like an addiction. My dad grew up in Eastern Europe (as a jew) during World War II, and almost starved. My mom grew up in India and meat was a coveted thing, maybe obtained once every two months. So when they came here to the U.S. and meat was so available, they fed it to us 5 days a week, like it was a well-earned prize (and in a way, it was). But I know what horrible, awful deaths these poor animals go through. And even though I think about it all the time, I still buy steak at the grocery store. I get so obsessed about the environment and the plight of domestic and wild animals that sometimes I cry, but I feel too paralyzed to do anything about it. I could seriously pay a therapist every day for the rest of my life, just on this issue alone.
6. I weigh myself twice a day. I know this is really bad for the morale, but my mom bought me a scale when I was 12 and the only time I have skipped weighing myself is when I am on vacation and there isn’t a scale in the bathroom. I play this game in the evening before I go to sleep, I weigh myself and then predict how much I will weigh the next morning, thinking about what I ate that day, and how much I exercised, and what I am wearing. I always weigh myself clothed at night and naked in the morning. (Oh God, more OCD).
7. I never eat breakfast. I know that it is “the most important meal of the day”. However, when I was still in grade school, my mom slowly reduced her efforts at breakfast from cooking a hot meal, to making frozen waffles, to pouring cereal, to leaving cereal out for me to pour. At the end of the breakfast era, she would leave the cereal out but leave a vitamin in the bottom of the empty bowl, knowing I would just pop that and go to school. My mom and dad were not breakfast eaters either, just coffee and tea. I am so used to going about my morning with no food in my stomach that on the weird occasion when I do eat in the morning, I am totally thrown off. And I am actually much hungrier on the days when I eat breakfast. I don’t get hungry until lunch. I asked my doctor if this was okay, and she said not to force myself to eat if I am not hungry. So there.
8. Cooking is my therapy. I love to cook. I love everything about it. I love thinking up new recipes and imagining how the individual ingredients will combine to tantalize the people who eat it. I never use recipes while I am cooking but I read them for fun and modify as I feel fit. I watch cooking shows all the time for ideas as well. No matter how tired I am after a shitty day at work, I can go grocery shopping (which I also LOVE), get home and put together an awesome meal for family and friends. And I always feel rejuvenated afterwards. Feeding people is love. This is the one thing that I love to share.

Okay, now that you all think I am neurotic and not fit to be a mother (except maybe for the cooking thing), I nominate SarahS-P to do the meme next.

About the SIL

I am back - the trip was good for the most part - it was great to see my brother. However, the party yesterday was a pretty much a bummer (but the food was really good!). The moms were uptight about having a dog around their kids, so I had to keep my puppy on a leash at my side THE WHOLE TIME. I was pretty isolated, sitting on the periphery of the party. Most of the parents with kids left by about 4pm so then I let my puppy go off leash and could join in a little. There were some cute babies & toddlers there but the focus of conversation was babies, labor, potty training, etc. I was REALLY grumpy and I guess sitting outside the circle with the dog was my choice too, I just couldn’t handle all the baby talk.

I said that my SIL can be a passive-aggressive BEE-ATCH, and that is the godforsaken truth. However, she has made some sacrifices when she chose to be with my brother. Some of the choices that she has made — I don’t understand. And I don’t always understand their relationship — I love my brother to death. He is hilarious and smart — he is a doctor — and he is quickly becoming a very well-respected specialist in his field. I only wish they didn’t live across the country because I only get to see him once or twice a year (this year will be three times - a world record!). We are only 18 months apart in age, and we have always been close (except for a short “war” when I was in highschool and I thought he was too nerdy to be seen with me).

The SIL and my brother met the summer before he started med school. He was a baby — 23 years old. She was a 30 year old WOMAN. I thought it was so weird that this older woman was so taken by my little brother. He thought of it as a summer fling, she obviously didn’t. I went to visit him one day (he was living in the city teaching MCAT classes) and SIL showed up unannounced (they had been dating for two months or so)…he had just received his acceptance notices to medical schools and was trying to decide where to go. She showed up with brochures from the various chambers of commerce. And she was saying things like, “When WE move…” and “I think WE should move here…” my poor brother’s eyes were popping out of his head. They obviously hadn’t discussed this at all.

She ended up leaving a little while later and he didn’t know what to do. He literally thought he was just having fun with this older woman, a last hoorah before med school took over his life. She obviously had other plans. So we talked about it and I said, “You HAVE to tell her how you feel!” He said that he didn’t want her to move with him but didn’t know how to break the news. I suggested that he tell her he wanted to go up for one semester without her, to settle in and get into the med school routine, and then they could talk about it if it still made sense. I thought that after 5 or 6 months of long-distance, the relationship would fizzle out anyway. Anyway, he never ended up saying anything and she went with him to med school. That was 13 years ago! So, something must work in their relationship although I don’t get it. She is overbearing and abrasive and passive aggressive and even after all this time, I feel that my brother deserves better.

They actually aren’t really married. When my brother was quite young (still in highschool) he announced he was never getting married and never having children. (I actually think this is part of the pressure that I feel to have a baby … I am the end of the line, and in addition to yearning to have a little baby to complete my family, I also want my parents to know the joy of being a grandparent). Anyway, my brother stuck to his guns. He and SIL had a commitment ceremony in 2000, it was pretty much just like a wedding, but there was no officiant to seal the deal. It was actually quite funny — my brother agreed to “throw a party” celebrating their union (or something like that), but then SIL took over the planning…rented out a place, got hotel rooms for everyone, there was a rehearsal dinner and then the ceremony the next day…she wore a white dress, they said vows, they exchanged rings, they cut a cake. We call it the big un-wedding of 2000. I bet some of the guests don’t even know they didn’t really get married. My poor brother was completely dragged into it. The pictures are classic, he has this look of irritation on his face, like he can’t believe what is going on. So that was the way she got around the wedding thing. I actually felt quite bad for her. It was obviously really important to her that she get married. It is just very bizarre. It is the big family joke.

On the kids thing: SIL knew that he didn’t want kids from day one, but she chose to stay with him. She is now 43 years old. She has finally stopped talking about kids,but for a while there, it was all she talked about….she would say that she had a dream she was pregnant, or had a baby, or was in labor. She even started gathering adoption information until my brother told her that adopting a baby is the same thing as having a kid and if she was that set on having kids, she should leave him and find someone else that wants them. My mom and I totally thought she was going to get pregnant “by accident” but she didn’t. She stayed. I cannot imagine feeling how I do about wanting a baby and just pushing it aside to stay in my relationship. It was something I discussed with my husband when we were dating — we both wanted kids. And if he hadn’t wanted another kid, I probably wouldn’t have married him. I can’t turn the feeling off like that. I wonder if she really was able to turn it off, or if it is something she is just dealing with. How hard for her. But it was a choice that she made, a choice I really don’t understand. I just think of me and my husband — it just wouldn’t work out if he didn’t want a baby. I wouldn’t be able to just sit back, the way I feel about it, and say, “That’s okay, we won’t have one then”.

I sometimes wonder if her attitude and demeanor has something to do with this huge sacrifice that she made.

The Pre-Teen going on 25

I have heard that kids mature a lot faster now than they did in the “old days” when I was a pre-teen. And maybe I just don’t remember clearly, since I was 11 years old in 1980. But I certainly don’t think I was as “advanced” as PT is. First of all, she is sprouting little boobies. Lately when she is in the shower, if I am in the bathroom, I keep trying to take a peek to see if she has any pubic hair. I haven’t seen any yet, but I am sure it is coming soon (sorry, is that totally horrible that I do that? I am just so curious!). I am pretty sure she is going to start her period any minute. She is tall and slim, and wants to wear make-up (which we don’t let her do)….sometimes she tries to “sneak” it like we won’t notice. I always notice and tell her to go and wash it off (it is hard not to notice, she tends to over-do it!). It is my fault that she even has make-up. I gave her a bunch of stuff to play around with when she used to play “dress-up” with her friends. She no longer plays dress-up, but she has the make-up.

These days the social scene is very different than when I was growing up. Now all the kids have cell-phones (PT got one from her mom but we don’t let her use it when she is at our house unless she is supervised), e-mail accounts, myspace pages. We watch her very carefully when she is on the computer, and myspace is a HUGE no-no. Chat rooms are forbidden. The hard part is that when she is at her mother’s house, she is not supervised and does all the things that we don’t allow her to do. The good part is that PT is the worst liar I have ever known. She has learned that I always know when she is lying, so now she doesn’t even bother. She tells me the truth even if it lands her in big-shit-trouble.

She is boy-crazy already. And she is very assertive and not shy or bashful at all. We will have our hands full. She has been e-mailing this boy that she has a crush on, I was looking over her shoulder. She told him that she can’t stop thinking about him and asked him how much he likes her. She asked him if they were boyfriend and girlfriend, and if they should start kissing!

OMG. The child is 11. She just finished the 5th grade. We are going to be in a LOAD of trouble if this is already starting. I told TW and he had a big talk with her, but the hard part is that her mother encourages this type of thing. Her mother treats her like a BFF instead of an 11 year old daughter. And with TW traveling so much (he will be gone all weekend) I have to be the evil step mother — I have rules, I enforce bed-time of 8:30, I watch her over her shoulder when she is on e-mail and I ask her lots of questions. Don’t get me wrong, we have a lot of fun too, but I figure if her mother isn’t going to act the part, then it is my job.

The custody arrangement is Friday - Friday, week on, week off. During the summer the exchange occurs at 9am on Friday morning. If PT is going to be with us for the week, we pick her up from her mother. If PT is going back to her mom’s for the week, her mother picks her up from us. During the school year the pick-up/drop off thing is at school. We drop PT off at school on Friday morning and her mom takes her home, and vise versa then next week. People always ask if this is hard for PT, but truth be told she has never known any other way. Her parents never married and they were only together until PT was 14 months old. She has been splitting her time ever since. The X is really a pain in the ass. I can tell you stories, and I am sure I will.

People warned me when I married a guy that already had shared custody of a kid. I poo-pooed them, saying I knew what I wanted and it would be fine. For the most part things are good. But things can get tough too.

Songs

You can tell a lot about a person by listening to their iPod. What’s on mine? Here are just a few gems:

• Freedom by George Michael
• Lady Marmalade from the Moulin Rouge Soundtrack
• Don’t Let Me Get Me by Pink
• 100 Years by Five for Fighting
• Suddenly I See by KT Tunstall
• Breathe Me by Sia (for any of your Six Feet Under fans, it was the very final song on the very final episode!)
• Everlong by the Foo Fighters
• Why Can’t I by Liz Phair
• If You Were Here by the Thompson Twins (from Sixteen Candles!)

Just a small sampling. What does it tell you about me? I have no idea.

Puppy Love

Doggie”C” –on watch. She was always on the look out. May she rest in peace.

Have you noticed that those TTC #1 are in love with their furry babies, maybe more than the rest of the general population? Some people don’t get it, but I literally feel like I gave birth to my puppy. Maybe that will change when I actually have a human baby, but for now, the connection I feel to my puppy is so strong. I think about him all the time, I feel a pull to come home to him, I worry about him constantly. Is that normal or totally neurotic? I lost my blue eyed doggie “C” to cancer in January. It was the most horrible thing i have ever experienced to date. She went through two surgeries, chemo, radiation, and acupuncture. I did everything I could and it was definitely time for her to say goodbye to this world. I still cry about her almost every day, even with puppy “S” in my life now. I did not get puppy “S” to replace doggie “C” — no way. But the house was so empty and quiet without some furry love, especially with TW gone so much. I volunteer at a rescue org and I met puppy “S” and just had to take him home. So he is my love bug, but doggie “C” is still deep in my heart and always will be. You gotta love the doggies.

Here is Puppy “S” when we first got him.

About….Me!

2:30pm. Here is my first post - WOW. I have joined the world of bloggers…I never thought I would be here! I hope this will be cathartic. Writing a journal (on paper) is so 80’s, I need to get with the program. I don’t know if anyone will care to read about my life, but hopefully I will have fun getting it all down. Bear with me as I familiarize myself with blogging, I don’t have a clue (yet).

I am a 38 year old woman, married for a little over 5 years. I have an 11 (almost 12) year old step-daughter, and a 6 month old puppy that keep my hands full. We have been trying to have a baby for about three years and I have never been pregnant….”trying means”: off the pill for three years, visits to the OB/RE office, 2 failed IUIs, discovering he has male factor problems, discovering I have a Luteal Phase Defect, charting BBT for the last 14 months. I am starting acupuncture tomorrow and I am scheduled for a water ultrasound on the 20th to make sure my “cavity” still looks okay. I had an HSG about a year ago that was completely normal. My FSH is 5.6 which seems to be pretty good for a 38 year old.

My husband has a job that takes him out of town quite a bit, so I am running the show. This is my journal of the challenges of caring for my step-daughter while desperately wanting a baby of my own. This is harder than I ever thought it would be!