Much better, thanks

Nothing like a week of Belgian beers, fresh mussels, absolutely amazing old friends, and other delights to make you forget about it all. I'm truly grateful for my friends: It was just like old times, but somehow better because, well, I'm not as insane as I was when I was in my early 20s. My paper was over first thing, and I basically spent the week wandering around Philly and NYC with my guy, wining, dining, exploring--we even took a bizarre trip to coastal Jersey, to peruse the deserted boardwalks and gaze at the ocean. We drank hot chocolate under the Manhattan Bridge. We ate really good dim sum and croissants (not at the same time).

Then we came home, and were wonderfully grateful for our much improved and improving house, our goofy cats, the peace, quiet and darkness that prevails in our small college town. Thanksgiving was low-key and low-stress at my MIL's house, veggie fare followed by a walk down the country roads around her place.

The ankle basically got over itself after Wednesday, which was spent driving and by Thursday, I had no discernible limp.

So life is good.

That great joker, the Universe

Please, please, you're killing me with all these laughable foibles!

Last night, as my husband and I were walking home, I sprained my ankle.

Now, I get to load and haul about 100 lbs of equipment to prepare for an event in the Big City that my university is exhibiting at. Then I get to go east for our week-long jaunt, which will of course involve ample walking.

Ha ha ha.

See you next week! Americans out there, have a good turkey day, in case I don't get a chance to post!

"It's my party...

...and I'll bleed if I want to."

My body is convinced that it must absolutely not skip a month. So it's pretending to menstruate. If I weren't getting these confounded blood tests showing that ovulation would be a scientific oddity, I'd be sure I was having my cycle, as per normal.

Anyone ever heard of having an ectopic, the numbers falling sloooowly, but you still have to buy fucking tampons?!? Isn't that just the biggest injustice?

At least I can still drink.

I'm off to a week-long trip to the East Coast, to a conference where I'll give a paper while my guy samples the local brews, and then we're going for a few days to NYC, my old stomping grounds.

Smorgasbord

• Thanks for all the thoughts on that silly article. It seems that many of us have made a similar journey from sentiment to cold, harsh reality, even Eurydice, who did end up going the home birth route. As you put it, Eurydice, the really annoying thing about that article was its stupidity (i.e. the focus on fine home furnishings). That shallowness irritates, as the experience--whether innocent or haunted by loss--will never be shallow for us.
  
  
• I have been having the oddest dreams lately. In one, I was suddenly issued a roster of students for a class I only vaguely remembered agreeing to teach, on the history of funk, oddly enough (not my specialty; I'm as WASP as you get). The kids started filing in with all these weird craft projects to represent, say, Detroit's funk scene and its evolution, and I had no.idea.at.all. what I was supposed to do.
  
  Then, last night, I dreamed I was five or six months pregnant. This was not the focus of the dream, however, because I was kidnapped along with a bunch of Mongolian children by some sort of terrorists. They were somewhat lame terrorists, and I was oddly calm and collected, caring for the children, forgoing food to feed them (yeah, as if I would ever be so saintly when gestating), disputing the terrorists' assertions, etc. The oddest thing was how in my dream, it felt so natural to be pregnant and caring for children. Not my default state at all.
  
  
• Wish me luck and my last blood test today.
  
  
• ETA: AAAAAAHHH! hCG=13.5. Nurse Sweetie suspects I'm injecting microdoses on the sly (we laugh a lot together). So now I ask that you wish that I be completely unpregnant come Dec. 1 (my next b/t, may it be the last!).
  

Wherein she gets mean

[completely gratuitous rant about birthing practices. Feel free to skip if it will cause distress.]

Articles like this one used to make me nod, before we ever tried to conceive. Then, they used to make me cringe and rage, when I couldn't seem to get pregnant or even get any answers regarding said non-pregnantness. It seemed like a magical world where women had mind-blowing wonderful experiences and were profoundly changed in ways I would never get to know because I was somehow broken.

Now, they just make me laugh.

I mean, I'm all for people doing what they think is best for them. Want to give birth in an inflatable pool in the middle of your tiny Queens kitchen? Go ahead! Want to believe it makes you feel fantastic and empowered? Knock yourself out.

I just know that if I ever get that far, I'm not really going to give a shit. I no longer care if I wind up with a C-section. I don't care if I have a doula. While I think it's a shame that my state outlaws midwives, I don't think I'll ever need one.

Why? Because I doubt I will ever have the luxury of a low-risk pregnancy. Just judging by my fabulous track record so far. This used to make my heart ache. Now all I want is a living child and my health left more or less intact.

My mom always urged me to go to a hospital to give birth. Why? Because I was a complicated (though fast and nearly painless) birth: I had all sorts of stuff going on at birth that was resolved, only because I was right there with access to medical care. Otherwise, the docs said I might have had serious mental disabilities.

I always told her I preferred to plan for a home birth with a midwife, that it was my decision, or our decision. My husband was born at home, after all.

But no, that delusion has been shattered: If I ever get that far, I'm sure as hell going to be in the least risky place possible. Which apparently is our local hospital. I've had enough with taking risks and letting nature take its course. Nature's course for me is clearly not a very nice one.

Brain function normal

More or less. Or as normal as can be.

So, how have you been?

There's nothing to report on the, uh, lower front. No dramatic bleeds, fascinating test results (that's my bad--keep forgetting to find out what number in the low teens I'm at now), wild and woolly life decisions (llamas! I'll raise llamas!).

Just me, my sleeping ute, my good man, and a bunch of rain soaked leaves and heat-seeking kitties.

ETA: 14, people. As in hCG=14. Just laugh with me. Come on! Oh, and have some of this lovely microbrew...

In Brief

*Worked at polls. Had a good time. Was up for 22 hours, due to excitement after election was called.

*Went to RE, who has no idea why my hCG is dropping slower than a slug in molasses. No cycling before January, most likely. Oh well.

*Drove up to Big City for a conference. Worked a 10-hour day.

*Met the ever-awesome Io for a beer! Yeah!

*Stayed the night in Big City, then woke up and worked an 11-hour day.

*Came home, passed out.

*Woke up, drove an hour back to Big City, repeated.

*Came home, wrote press release.

*Scrapped brains off of floor.

Happy weekend!