The second line is now not as ghostly as it was. It is a bit darker. Not very, but enough to send my heart soaring.

I try to be happy about it.

But instantly after seeing that second line on the stick, dark thoughts of all possible complications gathered to plague me. I wish I could keep them at bay.

I am afraid to be happy, truth be told. And now I understand what they mean by ‘ignorance is bliss’. Bloody know-it-all gene…

Later edit – I could not resist, obviously, so I went and got a digital wee-stick. Well, it is true. I am schwanger. Is there panic attacks medication compatible with Schwangerschaft?!

Formal complaint

To whom it may concern, including God/Demiurge/Creator, saints, deputy saints, angels, archangels, seraphims, cherubs, stars in any formation, shape and density, supernovas, pagan gods – apologies for not taking the time to mention you all, but we feel it would take the focus away from the complaint, and it IS big, so, here we go

With highest respect to any and all of you, we have to bring to your attention (individually and/or collectively) one mistake during the processing of certain files submitted to your office, which unfortunately led to serious consequences. We are willing to trust that it was an honest mistake, and hope that the situation can still be mended. But we strongly feel that you need to acknowledge said mistake and take appropriate measures to remedy it.

We are referring to certain petitions filed under general chapter ‘Baby’, subchapter ‘Conceiving abilities’, which we discovered, after months of submittal we might specify, that are deferred without prior notice and for an undetermined period of time. We do not intend to allude to your granting similar petitions to other petitioners who may or may not have more (or less) qualities compared to the current complainants, this does not make the point of the present complaint. But we do want to emphasize the current perfectly eligible state of the complainants, their eagerness to enter motherhood being coupled with financial means to support future offspring, mental awareness of what educating such offspring entails, moral conduct befitting the responsible position of mother, and, most importantly, the endless supply of pure, unadulterated love the complainants are already bestowing upon the idea of said offspring. (Yes, we are aware pure and unadulterated are synonyms, but we are using them both in order to convey the intensity and importance of this fact, in case it goes amiss.)

We are no longer hung up on the initial deferral, although, as a matter of fact, we are, and please note that waiting and hoping month after month after month can do nasty things to one formerly sane mind, but, to better rephrase the idea, we are willing to let that one go. We are addressing you this complaint in respect to our latest petition for a “BREAK”, which was not given proper attention from your office and instead we received ”HEARTBREAK”, under various forms (failed IVF; cyst and ovulation under suppression; inability to go the IVF route due to ghastly sense of humour when placing ovaries inside one’s body; chemical pregnancies; miscarriage; repeated miscarriages; PCOS; endo, and so on). We trust we are in concordance that the notions could not be more different. As for the results of such mishap, we would rather not detail, lest our clients relieve such ordeals. Nevertheless, all retribution for damages past and present can be forgotten by granting the initial ‘Baby’ petition, which in our opinion is the best solution to our predicament.

We would be most grateful if you would reply as soon as possible so that this matter can be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.

Sincerely,

Breeder, Rugrats & associates,
Attorneys at law

representing, among other clients, Mina, Rambler, Susan, Me, Sassy, Mo, Jenny, Eilleen, Kassidy, Barrenblog, and many MANY more

PERSONAL NOTE FROM MINA

Ghost line? GHOST line on an effing HPT? Are you trying to kill me slowly?! If I were not pursuing pregnancy, that would most certainly mean ‘trouble’. Since I am, this means diddly-squat. And honestly, this is NOT fair! There.

The week started with bad news. Sassy, I am so sorry.

I got some other news which were not what I expected them to be, more precisely the opposite of what I expected. Not life changing, but if the small matters are resolved this way, what can one expect of the big ones, huh?

My boob is no longer ‘pregnant’. No other part of me feels ‘pregnant’, so most probably I am not. The jury is still out on this one, should hand in the verdict on Sunday. And I can’t bring myself to expect another BFN, just because it is not Sunday yet. I so don’t like this.

The world as we know it is coming to an end. Why? Because there is something that my MIL and I agree upon. That would be that FIL is a cretin. Or undeniable and purposefully moronic. Whichever works perfectly for him. Not to bore you with another lengthy family anecdote, he did something stupid at work, really stupid, totally avoidable, but he chose to be an arse and not tell anything about what he had done. AND naturally he got caught, of course, since he considers thinking ahead beneath him. He does not stoop that low to cover his mistakes. Nor does he assume responsibility when faced with his mistakes.

And when he is confronted by his boss, what does he do? He says nothing. He does not let the man finish his speech. HE LEAVES THE OFFICE. True story. He botches something rather big, rather loads of money involved, and this is the time he chooses to give up his cowardly arse-licking attitude towards his boss! His problem is that he treats everyone as he treats his wife. And people are in general baffled by his rudeness and total lack of respect, that they remain speechless, which he mistakes as a clear sign that he is right every time. Regardless of the fact that rightness is not involved in any way.

So yes, I have no other option but to agree with MIL. She has every right to be angry with him. On the other hand, she has no right to yell at us about this, nor to tell us not to laugh when she says something that she usually does to ‘make us laugh’. But we are used to her not being consistent. And I did think from the very beginning that FIL is a sack-of-shit, so taken this into consideration, perhaps the world will not end after all.

I do not know if he is fired yet. He called MIL telling her that he quit. Which proved to be a lie. Because he got called back, with the boss not being through telling him off and all. And, amazingly enough, he did go back. And said nothing about what happened next.
So we don’t know. But also, couldn’t care less. If you ask me, he would very much deserve to be let off, this is a crisis, people are losing their jobs, especially in his field, and he pulls something stupid like that? Hell yeah! Throw his sorry ass on the street. But when we give them thousands of euros and find out they only needed half, and they still have the gall to complain about not having enough money for petrol (‘we had to put only 10 euros worth of petrol, dear, these are hard times…’) – I do not want to hear what they will come up with when they have to live off their pensions. And yes, pensions in that country are miserable, but they have one somehow-handicapped pension (FIL) (don’t know the level, but he is not fully handicapped) and one person-taking-care-of-handicapped-and-faking-being-mentally-ill pension (MIL). Surely, she does not have to fake anything, she is mentally ill, but she prefers to bribe doctors to say she is, because she refuses any consult. Or proper working. In fairness, she was never able to hold any job. So perhaps having this pension is the only thing she is able to hold on to.

Enough with them already.

* * *

From some time now, I have been alternating between two moods, the ‘ooh, I could get’ and ‘ooh, surely I am not’. You know what I am talking about. Every month, I can theoretically get pregnant. Until I don’t. And everything starts over.

When starting TTC, you expect it to happen the first time. And when it doesn’t, or it ends bad, as was my case, you start all over, but with a mount of resentment against everyone who succeeds, no matter how, and against your own failure. If disappointment could be assessed, the woman who fails to conceive one cycle starts a new one with the amount of at least a-few-months-worth of brooding. When advanced maternal age is looming, those bloody ‘few’ months gain another ‘few’ more, and the negative feelings diversify.

I am rambling.

And the fact that I can’t help thinking ‘Oooh, I am pregn…’ every time I am aware of any bodily sensation, does not help. Which leads to ridiculous stuff like ‘Ooh, I’ve got something swelling in my ear, I must be preg… sorry’ (really? the first case of ear-pregnancy?), or ‘Ooh, I do pee more, perhaps…’ (you do drink loads of water, ‘atz kinda expected, love). Now I am pregnant in my left boob. Because it kinda hurts. Sure, last time it did, I was gestating a cyst. Now, being forewarned, I try palpating to find any cyst. Which made the initial pain not go away. Because constant groping and squeezing is known to have such effect sometimes. But at least I am no longer pregnant in my colon. That was not good.

I wish I could be able to suppress this initial reaction of thinking that I am pregnant every time I acknowledge something in my body. But I can’t. I’m conditioned, like a cat chasing a laser spot. While this laser spot is in my life, I cannot but chase it. And jump all over, on furniture and window sills, on anything that stands in my way (put hoops, I’ll jump through those as well). And I try to catch it with my paws. And for some reason, getting better at jumping does not get me any closer to having the laser spot.

Thankfully, I still retain some common sense and do not say these things out loud. But I can blog about it. Because I know there are other (cat-minded) women out there who just get what I am talking about.

So, for the moment, I am only half pregnant (my right breast is perfectly ok). And it is only my 5th cycle since the miscarriage.

Did you know that hope is the biggest whore there is? Because everyone goes to bed with hope. I am no different.

I mean the kind you have while you sleep.

I have a very special relation with dreams. I have fantastic, laugh-out-loud dreams, vivid, colourful, with music and everything. These are the good ones. Luckily, I have no particular bad dreams. I mean, not on the opposite pole of the good ones.

Lemme tell you about the most memorable.

I dreamt the entire video for ‘Jessie’s Girl’ (which you don’t know, because I am the only one to have seen it). At the time, I did not know it was Rick Springfield the one who sang it. In real life, I only knew the part with ‘I wish I had Jessie’s girl, tanananam, Jessie’s girl…’. In my dream though, not only did I know every line (which was a pleasant surprise, but hey, I was DREAMING), I was also the camera recording the video for this song. It was on a beach, there were a lot of boys and girls, dressed in 80s’ tennis attire, with the hand bands, and mullets, the works. I woke up very ‘under’ the dream, I was still dazzled by the 80s’ short pink and green shorts (80s being a period I do not particularly like, in any sense), by my hovering over the sand and the pier (that was COOL, since I was recording but I had not the body of a camera), and the singing, of course. It was some years ago. I told about this to my mates I was sharing the office with. For more than a week, one of them kept walking to the window, where my office was, and would turn suddenly and snapping his fingers at me, would go ‘Wish I had Jessie’s giiiiiirl…’.

Another time, I dreamt of small Chinese people. As everywhere in the world, there was a Chinese community in my country as well. I had nothing to do with them. Ever! Still, I dreamt of finding out that three of them, very tiny I would say (I am in the tall-ish department myself, so that might not be objective), were… paedophiles. Never saw them doing anything, but I heard they were. In true burn-the-Salem-witches style, I ran after them, cornered them and starting shouting ‘paedophiles’ while pummelling whatever was in my fists’ way. Huh, right?! I wonder what Freud would make of that… Especially since I woke up with a very palpable sense of something well done.

I also dreamt of taking my tiny car of that time to a rather special car-wash. They ‘washed’ it with paint (5 kilos, no more, no less, I saw them use 5 1-kilo cans of paint), fortunately matching its original paint, and the drying was performed by a … donkey, whose job was to run very fast around the car, in circles, of course. I even made a very catchy slogan for that car-wash in my dream, very silly and utterly untranslatable from my native language.

I also dream in foreign languages. What is frustrating is that no matter how fluently I speak German in my dreams, that exercise is of no use in real life. Learning a foreign language is mostly ‘repeat-till-you-throw-up’ exercise. But it does not work with repeat-in-your-dreams exercise. Too bad…

Anaesthetics have a very pleasant effect on me. I feel them working, close my eyes, and just dive into a tunnel of pastel colours, more precisely I think of myself as young Anakin driving to victory in the race from ‘The Phantom Menace’, only the race takes places in a world of cotton candy, where I take turns to the left and right, leaving behind me sparkly (literally) traces in pink and pistachio and baby-blue. MAD! Ok, not precisely REM, but still, dreams I can remember.

So, the latest of my dreams.

I was in my home town, where I was chased by vampires (this is the New Moon-mania alright) and I was defending myself (successfully) by throwing tins of canned beans at theirs heads. Being vampires and all, they did not bleed, but it was clear that my throwing skills (vastly improved from the ones in real life) were magically denting their white foreheads. They could not get to me! Because I was staving them off with canned beans, of all things.

Not one dull moment in my sleep, I’m telling ya.

The good thing, as I said, is that my nightmares are normal, compared to the outlandish good dreams. I fall and can’t reach the ground, or I am in a sea-storm, or I see bloody teeth and do not know if they are mine, that kind of stuff. They are never prescient. Ever. Thank God! And they are rare. Again, thank God.

So, it is easy understandable why I place absolutely no weight on dreams. Mine or others’. But especially mine. That would be daft, wouldn’t it?!

It’s here.

I did laugh.

I hope you have a laugh as well, in case you did not know it.

I find news about celebrities amusing. I like to read about them, to know who is with whom doing what (including movies, among so many other endeavours).

I got into this early on, when I was a young girl in a communist country where books were the only entertainment I had. I discovered somehow in the big library I had at home some books about Hollywood stars, like Greta Garbo, Frank Sinatra, Fred Astaire… I got hooked. I still love biographies. Anyway, I consider this my little vice. I do not intend to get rid of it any time soon.

Being a professional moaner, I do have something to moan about about my little vice. Nowadays, the stars are no longer what they used to be. The proper glamour is gone, baby, gone (couldn’t resist, you know.. ). But this does not mean that I do not read all I can find in my spare time about them.

Another problem is the fact that more than half of this ‘entertainment’ news are practically invented by people who can barely write. Sorry, people who can’t ‘right good’. Yeah, I mean I do read lies written in gawd-awful grammar. I do, I know I shouldn’t…

Bon, so, why the sudden unrequited confession? Well, I found this piece of news. About Celine Dion, of all people.

I do not like her. I think she does have a good voice, but not exactly my cup of tea. I think she is not good looking. Too bonny-assed, the face is too narrow, the nose is too pointy, and how ’bout that chest-poundin’ during her singin’, huh? Come ooooooon…

BUT. No matter what I think about her in general, I’ve just gained some respect for her. Because she does not hide about the IVF. Although she could, mind you! She had one round of IVF in August, another in October, she spoke about both of them while practically doing them. She did not wait the usual three months. She said she was pregnant when most probably she got her two lines, she said she was no longer pregnant when perhaps her beta stopped doubling properly.

I think that it is pretty fair to share the news from the very beginning. If it goes well, you get to enjoy the limelight of pregnancy longer. If it doesn’t, well, people are still gonna try to comfort you. It is better to tell them up front what’s what, than not tell them and be ‘treated’ with pearls of ignorance and stupidity. Of course, if it is to deal with stupidity, nothing can mitigate that. And I can understand somehow the attitude of ‘this is my problem, I have to deal with it, I do not want to share my pain with the world’. But if I were to do it, I would go for total honesty, even with strangers.

People certainly do not expect to ask ‘how you’ve been’ and to get as answer ‘well, not quite the best of times, for example, I was pregnant, but I lost the baby at 10 weeks’. They do not start the day thinking ‘how should I best deal with such an answer?’. And this is good, because, when caught off guard, people can’t think of anything else but to be honest. And it does trim turds out of your life.

I can understand that not too many persons I know can do that. I am a bit peculiar in this respect, I can put myself on ‘display’ sort of, because I have a lot of practice (I have only done it since I can remember stuff about my life, more or less…) and it is how I am, and I developed the mechanism to deal with this and its aftermath (some call it various names, I prefer to call it ‘crass innocence’), and I do not say that everyone should do it, but for me, it is better. I almost do not know how to be otherwise.

So, since Céline is a public person, and she cannot chose to be and act however she fancies, she is under constant scrutiny and judgement and we all know how cruel people can be totally gratuitously, being so frank about IVF is, well, startling. Granted, she does not precisely conform to the Hollywood standards, but she is a diva. I may not like your bony hiney, nor your chest-pounding, dear, but I do like your gumption. I hope you pull through and get your baby soon. And knowing that you have started this whole IVF carousel in April – babe, you can pound your chest to the moon and back, you certainly have earned the right to.

And since I get to be so frank about it, I confess: I have had enough of Nicole Richie, Giselle Bündchen, Coleen Rooney, Heidi Klum, Elen Pompeo, the Kardashian nincompoop or the former Playboy bunny, Kendra whatshername, and God knows whoever is pregnant out there and making headlines that can make one revisit lunch or breakfast, depending on the time of day. And it is not because they are pregnant and I am not. Or perhaps it is. But it is like reading pregnancy blogs written by over-fertiles who just last months made the grand exit out of their teens and got pregnant but having someone stare for two second at them. Too syrupy, too perfect, and the moms are too skinny, before and after birth – I can’t relate to that, it feels unreal and phony. It bugs me. Does that make me a hideous person with frustrations the size of Mont-Blanc? It does not matter to them. And I know I am not perfect. So, nothing new under the sun. Just venting, ya’ know, just venting. Waiting for my luck to change.

I started a few new posts. I binned them all in the end, none of them was worth posting.

I feel empty. As in nothing worth writing about. Whatever topic I might steal from another blogger, I can’t gather my thoughts enough to come up with something worth reading. And I guess I should give up the trend I have adopted lately, of sharing the most trivial of details.

So, until something at least funny happens to me, I will just read your blogs (hopefully YOU have something else better to say) and comment if I have to. By the way, sorry, Me, for leaving you a comment the size of a full-fledged post. I got a bit carried away. I can’t wait to hear how you sorted it out.

The mammogram thing went well, there is a cyst, but the doctor believes is harmless. The only memorable moment was when I almost expected something to leak out while my boob was squeezed during the radiography. When the technician asked me if it hurt, I swallowed back my retort ‘No, that’s the face I pull at 8h57.’ and only said ‘As long as it’s quick, I can take it’. And I did.

Then I went to get a cd hubs asked me to. I spent way too much in the cd store, I went to pick up one and got out of it with six. I like it when I discover new music, especially since I often have the impression that pretty much all was said and done in the music department. It’s not like they are brand new to me, I listened to bits and pieces, but never one album at a time. And I think there is one album here that I might like from the first to the last track, and it’s so rare when you like all the tracks from one album, and you could listen it it over and over. Boy, I’m giddy!

Monday, new start.

How do I chose to begin this new week/cycle?

By being an idiot, of course. (I do hope this counts when my chances are evaluated this month. I believe idiots have higher chances of reproduction. For whom it may concern: I am really doing my best in this respect.)

I have that mammogram to get over and done with. Scheduled for Nov. 3rd. And it appears that this year, Nov. 3rd is NOT on a Monday. Somebody must have changed that on purpose, just to spite me. (Please note the MIL’s wisdom finally rubbing on me. I thought avoiding responsibility is a nice way to start.)

Since being an oaf has its benefits, I get to get up at 6 in the morning again tomorrow and hop with the rain drops in the cold (at least I try to be a poetically creative self-delusional oaf).