Flotsam

I am at my desk by 6:15 most mornings. I like the early part of the day—few people are in the office when I get there, and I can drink my coffee and check a few blogs and start my work serenely. But I will fall on my knees with joy when we gain an hour in October. Lately it has been so deeply dark when I wake up that every cell in my body shrills at me as I walk to the bathroom “What do you think you are doing, exactly? It is the MIDDLE of the NIGHT!”
No one likes arrive at work to the sound of crickets chirping.

But, honesty compels me to say that other than that things have been…good.
For instance:

1. Yesterday I called the Fancy RE’s clinic to see whether the H&IBOML had faxed them my records, as requested. The receptionist didn’t see them in my file.
“But let me check today’s mail and the fax machine, just in case.”
I started to assure her that such strenuousness wasn’t necessary, but she was gone. And then she was back—no records.
“That’s O.K. I’ll just call my clinic again,” I said, trying to keep the weariness out of my voice. When I first called the H&IBOML’s office to request the transfer of my records, you would have thought I was asking them to hand-transcribe my lab and ultrasound reports by the light of a flickering candle before walking barefoot across the city to deliver them to the Fancy RE.
I was not looking forward to repeating that conversation.
“Oh, I can call your clinic for you,” said the Fancy RE’s receptionist.
Then, of her own volition, she checked to make sure my new patient packet had been mailed, and assured me I would have it before Wednesday.
Throughout the phone call, she called me by my name—clearly indicating that she, in fact, knew what my name was. Also, she never once gave the impression that the time she was spending speaking to me was time that she would rather spend mucking out the stalls at a state fair. It was a heady, if disorienting, experience.

2. The Nearly Fiance has had a somewhat dramatic change of heart. Or, rather, it was revealed that his not-readiness, which I had taken to be the same vague not readiness that started after my last miscarriage, is actually a tied-to-very-specific-financial-and-career-related-contingencies-not-readiness. Apart from said contingencies, he is ready (as ready as you can ever be to go from childlessness to…not childlessness) whenever.
So as soon as he finds a teaching job and finishes the first draft of the book, we are Go.
Hopefully this will enable us to get a few cycles in before my MFA, while I am still at this job with insurance that covers fertility treatments (well…the first $5,000 of fertility treatments). During Serious Talk Saturday The Nearly stated that he wants children, whatever it takes to bring them to us. IVF, adoption–he will forge ahead with me whether it takes only one medicated IUI or…not.
I know it is an easy thing for him to say now—there is no way to anticipate how grueling things could be and what it may take out of us–but I needed to hear that from him. The result has been that for the first time, I was able to greet the virtual nursery that is Target on a Sunday afternoon with something like equanimity.

3. I have finally, finally been able to pay off some bills that have been staring me in the face, whispering in Peter Lorre voices “Pay us, or you will raise your children…IN DEBTORS PREE-SON!” The spectre of financial ruin (and accompanying self-loathing) that hovered over me during my freelance years (but doesn’t my double major in philosophy and creative non-fiction put me in high demand? you ask…) is receding, and I am starting to feel almost…secure. Or as financially secure as someone whose primary skill is comma usage can feel.

So, my precious, luscious Internets…
My bloated left ovary with its cysty “string of pearls” may fill me with foreboding by its resemblance to Barbara Bush, but things are looking up, at last.