I’m having a really hard time concentrating.  Between getting hit in the gut about the holiday coming up – holidays I was planning on being at my most beautifully pregnant – and being excited about our upcoming cycle, and being in an in-between place at work, while we prepare to close down this location and get shipped off to parts unknown, I’m simply having a hard time concentrating on anything at all.

Like speaking.  I’m just as likely to wander off in the middle of a conversation as I am to bring it to its natural conclusion.  Embarrassing, and I assure you it has nothing to do with the quality of the conversation; it’s just me.  I’m a space case right now.

I did have the rather interesting experience of explaining ART to a russian-speaking co-worker.  She was reading a gossip mag & didn’t know what “surrogate” meant as applied to some movie star who just used a surrogate to carry her children.  Trying to explain that required an understanding of IVF, and trying to explain IVF to a middle-aged, very sheltered (still lives with her parents) woman who is the epitome of the stereotype “Librarian” was an interesting experience.

“Well, then they take a needle and put it up inside you.”
“Wait – how big a needle?”
“A big needle.  Which is why you’re asleep.”
“But you know.  You know about this needle going there before you are being put to sleep.”
“Um, yeah.  You know.”

It was interesting, and really emphasized for me how few “normal” people really understand what IVF is about.  How the prospect of needles the length of your arm up there isn’t nearly as horrifying as the prospect of not needing the needles because the drugs didn’t have anything to work with.  Or the fear that none of the aspirated follicles will contain a mature egg.  Or the fear that any of the myriad of things that can go wrong will go wrong.  But needle-fear?  I don’t know about you, but I lost that particular phobia a long time ago.

In other news, I’m crampy, which used to mean that my period was due any second now.  These days?  Since I started fucking with my body like this?  Could be anywhere from a day to a week away.  Ah, the giddy anticipation!  The excitement!

Sigh.  The complete lack of ability to focus on anything else until this is happening.  Please hurry up, body.  I don’t think my brain can take much more of this.