Oct
21

Insert Pun Here.

You haven’t lived until you have projectile vomited macaroni & cheese and undigested peas out of your nose, smelled your own stomach contents with every subsequent inhale, and then dragged yourself out of bed at 7:00 the next morning to drive to the office—ON A SATURDAY—in a noble, if Quixote-esque attempt to meet an un-meetable deadline, only to find (after a twenty minute drive!) that the systems are down and there is nothing for you to do but drive back home and try to go back to sleep, only you can’t, because what is that poke, poke, poking pain on the left side of your nether regions? It is familiar, that pain…the familiar, poking pain of a jagged stone inching its way through your ureter. It is The Stone of Damocles.
And how have you been?

I apologize for my protracted absence, but the aforementioned un-meetable deadline has been ruling my world for the last few weeks, leaving no room for anything save the occasional bleary, half-asleep thought when I get up to pee for the fourth time at night, and I can assure you that these thoughts would not make good blog entires (example: Are there T-shirts that say “Dermatologists Do It With The Largest Organ,” and if not, why?).

My days proceed thusly: I wake up at 5:30, drive to the office, workworkwork all day, have a meeting wherein my team sits around reiterating the un-meetableness of the current deadline, and then I come home, eat dinner, and fall asleep at an hour generally reserved for the bedtimes of six-year olds and elderly maiden aunts. I do this five days a week, and have been working Saturdays as well, with the exception of yesterday, as detailed above. The un-meetableness of this current deadline is not merely hyperbole—it is Pocket Part season, which I have written about before in all its gory, overtime-laden glory, and added to that is the fact that the legislature of the jurisdiction I work on has decided to have a special session or two, just for kicks, and hey, maybe the governor won’t get around to signing anything until WE HAVE ALREADY RUN PAGES for most of the 120 volumes…and I am realizing that this is not making any sense, so let me put it this way:
Suppose you are making a dress, an intricately beaded dress with a ten-foot-long train, and the beads encrusting this garment are actually made of wood, and each is whittled from an entire mature oak. By hand. With a plastic knife. And let’s say that you have more or less finished this massive undertaking, after months years of toil, and are now putting the finishing touches on the train. And let’s say that the princess for whom the dress is intended sweeps into the room one day and says that she has changed her mind about the bodice, and wooden beads are so last season, and wouldn’t it be better to re-do the whole thing in beads fashioned each from the shell of a rare clam found at the bottom of an inaccessible Russian sea? And also she would like it by Tuesday.
So, it is busy around here, and will be until at least the day of the un-meetable deadline, October 31st, which also happens to be my birthday, which means I will be celebrating by beating my head against an ancient printer and keening at a pitch only audible to dogs and small children.

Adding another frisson of excitement is the fact that, as I mentioned before, I seem to have another kidney stone. Alas, as I said wildly to Scott just yesterday, I CANNOT HAVE A KIDNEY STONE UNTIL THE POCKET PART SHIPS. So I am ignoring it for now. I will call a doctor tomorrow, and keep drinking water, but unless the pain becomes unbearable, the stone will just have to wait until my editorial schedule is a bit less…fraught. I am going to try and wrangle a pity ultrasound for sometime this week, however, because I have become very nervous about this pregnancy all of a sudden. Okay, not “all of a sudden.” I continue to be very nervous about this pregnancy, and this nervousness has been exacerbated by the fact that my mother came for a visit and told everyone she knows that I am pregnant with twins, and “everyone she knows” included my boss’ boss and an assortment of my colleagues, as well as most of our family, and now I am suddenly faced with a plethora of people who will need to be told if I lose one or both of the babies.

This was not the plan—I have myself told no one except my mother and my few friends close enough to have known about the IVF cycle. I did tell the cats that I am having kittens, but they don’t leave the apartment and thus won’t be spreading the news around any time soon.
I am not ready for people to know, and while I was touched by how excited my mother is, and how excited others have been for me, no one seems to understand that when I say (as I do, every single time the subject comes up) that it is still early, I am not just being demure or overly cautious: IT IS STILL EARLY, I am only just over ten weeks pregnant. Both Scott and my mother wave this off, and according to Scott “everybody who sees you already knows,” which is his very polite way of telling me that I am huge, which is at least better than the times he laughs openly and points at my stomach. I do look rather pregnant, and I know people are speculating at the office, and there is only so much a person can hide with a strategically placed legal pad. But still. I am not ready.
And to add to my not-readiness, I can only find one heartbeat with the doppler. That one heartbeat makes me grin sappily every time I hear it, but I would really prefer to find two, and I can’t, and it’s frightening me even more now that there will be people to untell if god forbid something should be wrong.

So, to sum up: I need a pity ultrasound. And also maybe a Valium. And I am never eating macaroni & cheese again.

By Alexa | Posted in Ceci N'est Pas Une Ecrivaine |