1.  Another bill from my lab that was submitted to the correct insurance company!  This is two out of, say, fifty in the last six months!  Maybe, someday, they will completely fix the computer glitch and the lab nightmare will end.  Happy to pay my $15 co-pay, just for the novelty of not having to go argue with a phone-tech at this point!

2.  We still have so much good food in the house, and I’m even getting to nibble at some of it.  Apples with cheese are good.  Milk is still my BFF.  Stew, anything greasy or rich?  Not so much.  But bread is good.  Even buttered bread is good, provided I don’t slather it on the way I normally do.  And I don’t have to cook, which is good, given my current “to look at food is to experience heartburn” condition.

3.  It’s gorgeous outside.  55* and simply perfect.  Feels like springtime!

4.  Only another 6 days of PIO!

5. The Boy loves me even when I’m cranky and scared and lashing out and absolutely miserable to be around.  Damn, I’m lucky.

1. LOTR day was a success.  Alas, I was not able to fully partake of the hobbity eating, since rich food doesn’t like me these days, & the consensus was that hobbits are very fond of rich food, but it was still fun.  I got lots of knitting (actually ripping out, and re-knitting, due to an unfortunate color combination) done, and much laughter was had by all (and much rabbit stew was had by some.) At 208 minutes for #1, #2 at  223 minutes, and #3 at 250 minutes, that was 681 minutes of hobbity (& elvish and dwarven) wonderfulness.  Not to mention Viggo.

2.  A big old day of nothing planned.  We got to bed at about 1am, and while my body insists that 8am is the best time to wake up and get moving, I fully intend to nap throughout the day.

I am learning to really love naps…

3.  No need to cook tonight, as we have plenty of food in the house.  Rather obscene, the amount of food, if you really want to know…

4.  Cat Stevens.  I love his music, his old stuff, his pre-conversion stuff.  And it makes me smile whenever I hear it.  Which isn’t a bad recommendation at all.

5.  Sourdough bread for morning toast.  With butter & honey.  And a glass of milk afterwards.  Pure gastronomic heaven.

So I finally got around to seeing the movie Up.  Honestly, I’ve been wanting to for a while – I love Pixar movies – but I’d been warned away because one of the central themes of the movie is the old couple’s childlessness and how it affects the rest of their lives – and it’s even highlighted by a shot of her weeping in a doctor’s office after what, (I was told in a hushed whisper by someone emphasizing to me what a bad movie for kids it was), was probably a miscarriage.  Yeah.  Heaven forbid that children should learn that not everyone gets to have kids just because they want them desperately.

At the time, I was grateful for the warning, since my feeling was, “Been there.  Done that.  Don’t need to see it played out in a cartoon, ferchrissakes.”

Boy, was I wrong.

This is an excellent movie.  This was probably one of the best movies I’ve seen in years.  I was weeping – so was the Boy – and laughing out loud, (“Squirrel!”) and generally having a better time being entertained by media than I have in – literally – years.

And yes, it was possibly the most sensitive portrayal of the toll infertility & miscarriage takes on a person and on a marriage that I’ve ever seen.  And also a damned fine portrayal of what the human heart is capable of in the aftermath of loss and grief.  Not to mention having several talking dogs in the cast, which always improves a movie in my mind.  ”I just met you and I love you.”  (If I ever get a male dog, its name will be Dug.)

I am terrifically impressed.  And I wish I’d seen it earlier.  I might have wept, but it might also have lifted me up at a time when I needed it even more than I do these days.  Well done, Pixar.

(“Squirrel!”)

1.  Yesterday’s sentence in the Realm of Pain wasn’t completely horrible.  The Princess was being, well, sane.  I finally got an answer from one of the people at Central regarding transfers.  There’s every chance that our assistant manager just got a promotion – not so good, because I like her, but good because it would mean I’m only at one branch (though, unfortunately, not the branch I prefer.  But still, one branch is better than two for my sanity)  And the Princess seemed to be making an effort to be civil and, well, nice.  Maybe I need to lose my shit and call her ass out more often.  I think it did her good.

2.  Snow!  Deep snow!  Not enough snow to cancel work but still.  It’s Snow!  Big snow!  Wow!  And it’s still coming down!  Wow!

3.  Looking forward to the weekend.  Don’t intend to do much of anything except be sociable on Sunday.  Saturday, I might not even get out of my pjs.  So looking forward to it.

4.  Ginger ale.  I love it, even though it makes me burp something fierce.

5.  Yesterday was a – dare I even write this down? – spotting-free day.  Nothing.  All day long.  Nothing at all.  Wow.  Sort of forgotten how good that feels…

Ok, so I’m not dealing well with all this spotting.

Not at all.

Instead of living week to week for ultrasounds, or even hanging in there til my first trimester is over (hah!) I’m living pretty much bathroom-trip to bathroom-trip, based on the color of the toilet paper.  And thanks to the overactive bladder, that’s pretty much hour to hour.

And oh-my-fucking-god can I just tell you right now how much I hate this?  Feeling fine, feeling great, in fact, because the sick just keeps getting blechier, and the boobs keep getting sorer, but then – hey, what’s this?  More blood.  Red blood, brown blood, pinkish blood.  Never a lot, never enough to make me say, “Whoa!  This looks like a miscarriage!”  But it’s blood.  Coming from the womb of death.  I hate it all.

Plus I’ve got a zit on my forehead, and since I break out when I’m NOT pregnant, it’s got me panicking over more than whether or not the Boy will ask me to the Valentine’s Day dance looking like this.

I’m just so damned weary of being afraid.  Scared sucks, and what’s almost worse is that I’m not even heart-poundingly panicked – I just feel resigned, somehow.  Fatalistic.  Like, if I’m going to lose this pregnancy too, can’t I just do it now instead of it dragging on for another week or two?  And that is so unlike me that it just annoys the hell out of me – when I can be bothered to feel annoyed.

I’m thinking of going in to the clinic tomorrow, instead of waiting til my day off on Thursday, just because I’m tired of the suspense.  I’m tired of waiting for a shoe to drop on my head, tired of waiting for the punchline that will make me cry.

I just want something to be easy – or at least not the hardest thing ever.  I keep doing what feels like the hardest thing ever, and it keeps not being enough to make any of this work.  This is a fucking donor egg pregnancy.  This is supposed to be cake.  Cake made from the fluffy, happy eggs of a sweet young thang.  And my ancient woodburning-oven can’t even bake it properly?  Someone get me a new recipe, damnitall.

Internets, I’m just so very tired.  And I want to stop bleeding.  And I want to stop waking up in the middle of the night, needing to pee, and just lying there until my bladder is ready to goddamned well explode, because I’m too scared to go into the bathroom where I might find more blood than my brain can rationalize away.

I just want to be pregnant.  With a baby.  A baby that I can feel somewhat confident might be around in another week or two.  Or month or two.  Or year or two.  Or decade or two.  And I’m seriously starting to wonder if that’s something I’m ever going to be allowed to have.

And I hate that.

Going to think about going in to pee now.

Maybe.  But I’ll bet it can wait anothe r 2o minutes if I put my mind to it.

Like many New Yawkers, we employ a woman who cleans our house once a week.  (There, I said it, I confessed – I am the most spoiled human being alive.  Actually, the Boy employs her, and since he’s the SAH-spouse, I think technically he’s the most spoiled human being alive.  But I digress…)  She is pleasant, good at her job, and kind enough to my dog that Nellie will follow her from room to room hoping for a kind look.  But she speaks – well, almost no English that I can tell.  Which is understandable, since she was born in Brazil and works for a Brazilian-owned cleaning company.  She & I usually manage to say good morning in the other’s language, and then I get out of her way if I happen to be home.  And three hours later our toilets are clean, our oven is sparkly, and I am grateful to have a clean home that I did not have to clean.

Tomorrow, however,  I will not be home.  I’ll be having blood drawn, and then visiting Mo for a hot chocolate fix.  My husband will be at a meeting.  Nothing world-shattering there, except – all of next month’s meds are being delivered tomorrow – for which a signature is required.  With my fabled delivery luck, they will be delivered in the wee hours of the morning, before I – or my husband – have returned from scary scary Manhattan.

Now, if I were going to be here when she arrives, I’d do my world-famous “librarian pretending to be Marcel Marceau” imitation by which I have instructed hundreds of non-English speaking children as to the meanings of their randomly assigned vocabulary words.  (Seriously – ever try to act out the word “slink” to a seven year old kid who only speaks Arabic?  Harder than it sounds.)  But I’ll be gone by the time she arrives – as will the Boy.  And I’m pretty sure she doesn’t read any more English than she speaks.

What’s a girl to do?

GOOGLE TRANSLATE TO THE RESCUE!!!

Bom Dia!  Eu estou esperando 2 pacotes importantes (medicina) estanho pelo correio.  Se o carterio toca a campainha, por favor responda a pora e assinar por qualquer pacote.  Obrigado!

By damn, I love the internet.  I love the fact that I can punch in text, and get back an approximation (a decent one, if the OTHER online translation service I employed to doublecheck is any indication) of the Portuguese translation.  It is, at least, good enough to assure me that she’ll understand that I’d really appreciate it if she’d answer the door and sign for the packages if they arrive while I’m away.  Or so I hope.  Otherwise, tomorrow’s going to turn into a long, long day of tracking down FedEx & UPS shipping centers in the darkest reaches of Queens somewhere.

Modern technology quite simply ROCKS.

Come on, join in the fun – anyone want to say something in Turkish?  Latvian?  Swahili?

Got the congratulatory call, and I’m happy to report that it’s high, but not super-duper high.

Which makes me Super Duper happy. 

(Damn, people are going to get sick of this good mood.  I’m totally ruining my badass rep these days, what with the grinning and the generally benevolent nodding & smiling going on…)

Internets, I feelz pregnant.

Not really, I mean, I don’t feel as crampy as I’d like to, and my boobs don’t yet have the shiny, “ouch, don’t look at me!” level of tenderness I’ve come to associate with being sprogged-up.  But I’m thirsty like Death Valley in summertime thirsty.  I’m thirsty like this while I’m drinking my 13th glass of water for the day.  Seriously.  It’s a weird, weird feeling.  Especially since I know it mostly means I’m going to be up all night, because my bladder apparently accommodates this whole “drink water like it’s going out of fashion” fashion when in its upright, librarian position, but when it’s in prone or supine sleeping-Sprogblogger position?  Eeek.  Must.  Pee.  it out.  NOW.

Which is encouraging, if a bit maddening after the 4th or 5th bathroom trip since midnight.

And due to the crazy-making-ness of last time around’s HPTs that barely ever registered an almost-visible-to-the-naked-eye line even when my numbers were in the hundreds, I will be doing my damnedest not to POAS before 9dpt.  I may not make it that long (well, I might need a control test, you know?)  But I’m going to try not to feed the crazy.

Believe me, it’s growing by leaps & bounds all on its own.

Speaking of feeding, I fed the baby bok choy for lunch yesterday, even though delicious fatty meat- &/or deep fried dough products presented themselves. And the bok choy, it tasted good.

I’d like to claim that my superior palate prefers steamed bok choy to golden roasted dumplings, but it just aint so.  Deepfried usually wins hands down.

So my current infatuation with steamed veggies might have been pregnancy hormones, or it might have been the influence of MSG.  I was at “House of Andy”, after all, and I can’t tell for sure.  But Internets?

I’m feeling hopeful.

Now give me another glass of water.

Only symptoms really jumping to the forefront are PIO symptoms – crazy dreams, The Hunger, the Thirst, (and therefore, The Peeing).  But nothing really screams “Woohoo! Pregnant!” to me.

And that sucks.

Early days, I know, but I’m rather, um, impatient anyway, and have had my hopes up so very high for such a long time that it’s really going to, well, suck, if this comes to nothing.

But we’re not thinking about that.  No, we’re not.  Really.  Not at all.

We’re thinking about baby names and nursery themes.  We’re thinking about how much easier the Lovenox shots have gotten since they aren’t bruising the hell out of me anymore.  We’re thinking about putting up a new & improved Lovenox tutorial, in fact, because the ones I found when I was first trying to figure the damned things out just scared me instead of empowering me.  And since I’m going to be taking this stuff for another 7 months or so, I owe it to the Internets to repay some of the help I’ve found therein.  Or so says my must-stay-busy brain.  We’re thinking about new apps for my new iPod toy.  We’re thinking about interviewing OBs and we’re thinking about making up a new excell chart for the iPod.  Hell, we’re having silly little thoughts about learning to write apps.

We’re not thinking about sore breasts.  We’re not obsessively checking the size, shape, and texture of nipples in the mirror every time the bathroom door locks the world outside.  We’re not perfectly happy to wake up with a growling stomach.  We’re not delighted to be constipated.  We’re not smiling at every belly cramp.  No, not at all.  Really.  Not even a little bit.

Really.

Really.

So, being the compulsive symptom-watcher that I am, every twinge that’s hitting south of, oh, say, my shoulders has me convinced that this is it!  implantation cramping!  yes!

Ahem.  And then I snap back to reality and blink really hard and start obsessing about my sniffly nose.  Sniffles = pregnancy, right?  (And neveryoumind that I’ve had this headcold for about a week now…)

Anyway.  Yesterday, I felt definite cramps.  In the same places.  Over and over again.  But not nicely centered in the middle of my receptive (and oh-so-fabulous) uterus, mind you.  No, these were more ovarian-ishly located.  Or, to coin an even stupider term, fallopian-tubeishly located.  Not on the right or the left side, but both.  At once.  Twingeing at different times, but repeatedly in the same places. Yes folks, as of yesterday I’m convinced:  An embryo is currently implanting in each tube.  Because that’s the only way this could get more soap-opera-y.

(Well, ok, maybe not the only way, but I reserve the right to wait until Sprog’s about to be born before I learn that my cryogenically frozen twin sister – from whom I was separated at birth when I was stolen by pirates who coveted my psychic abilities [and the diamond-encrusted nappy I was wearing when the baroness found and adopted me] – just underwent a sex-change operation and is actually the father of my child.)

Actually, I like that ending more than my double-ectopic story, come to think about it.

The dreams have ramped up, the thirstiness – oh god, the thirstiness! – is present & accounted for, and as a result, the nighttime peeing has gotten out of hand.  At least it’s nicely coinciding with the complete exhaustion, but still, every time I woke from my bizarro dreams to pee, I lay there, wondering if the relief from easing my overfilled bladder would actually be worth getting out of bed, or if I should just tough it out, prone, for the next, oh four or five hours.

I don’t think I’m pregnant, Internets.  (or rather, if I am, I don’t think I can know that yet.)  But I’m pretty sure I’m absolutely batshit crazy.