“I had a little accident.”

Sorry for the bitch-fest lately.  I’ll try to do better.  So even though I’m sick today, I’m not going to whine about it.  Instead, I’ll tell you an amusing story.

Hubby is notoriously clumsy.  He’s all long limbs and elbows, constantly bumping into things.  So, of course, he’s accident-prone.  He twisted his ankle playing laser tag at our joint bachelor/bachelorette party.  I carried him out of there on my back (okay, I carried him about four feet–the man is 6′ 3″).

It was actually a re-injury.  He had initially hurt himself playing soccer.  He was the goalkeeper on his team because no one else wanted balls flying at their face.  At some point, in his efforts to save a goal, he made a quick turn–too quick, apparently.

But that’s not even his worst soccer injury.  There was a game that, for whatever reason, I didn’t attend.  Hubby came home with band-aids holding his glasses together.  I was on the phone with my sister when he came in and just said “I’m gonna have to call you back,” and hung up.  When I took a closer look, he had cuts on his nose and eyebrow, too.

Me:  Honey, what happened?  Are you okay?
Hubby:  I had a little accident.
Me:  Obviously.
Hubby:  The funny thing is, I wasn’t even playing goalie when it happened.
Me:  Hilarious.  Seriously, what happened?

What had happened was that Hubby wanted to score a goal (or so I assume), and he was able to talk someone else into playing goalkeeper for a few minutes.  Not two minutes into being on the field, someone kicked the ball–from about a yard away–straight into Hubby’s face.  And they were worried about him playing goalie.  His glasses broke on impact, cutting his face.

You would think someone on a soccer team would have tape, but that was not the case, so his glasses and his face were temporarily held together with band-aids.

Fast forward to last week.  It had been a couple of years since any major injuries, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when Hubby came home from a bike ride saying, “Oh, Honey.  I had an accident.”  His arms and legs were bleeding, and he was complaining of a sore wrist.

Note to self (and anyone reading this):  Do not attempt to clean your glasses while making a right-hand turn on a bicycle.

He was scraped up pretty badly, but nothing that required stitches.  We got him cleaned up, removed what we could of the black road-burn, and patched him up with some industrial-sized bandages.

Now he’s all scabby and will probably have some (more) scars.  But he’s in one piece.

I call Hubby the clumsy one, but the truth is neither of us is exactly graceful.  I really hope poise skips a generation.

Wasted Weekend

I don’t want to complain, but I will.

And I can’t blame PMS this time.  It’s CD2.  Which is a problem in itself.  I shouldn’t have gotten my period until today or tomorrow.  That means I had a 22 day cycle.  The cycle before that was 26 days.  What the hell?  This is what I get for “bragging” that my cycles are usually so regular.  They’re always short, but 22 days?  This sucks.

I have cramps.  And achy legs.  I feel like shit.

Partly because our neighbors are on fire, but all the smoke is blowing this direction.  It turns the sun and moon an eery red as they hover above the horizon.  It makes an orange-y haze that lingers all day and irritates my throat.  It burns.  It makes me cough.

The same thing happened last year at this time.  Only that fire was so big and the winds so fierce that we actually had ash falling from the sky like dirty snow.  It covered our parked cars and clogged the filters on our swamp coolers (the evaporated-water cooling systems we use in this dry climate).

I’ve been bitchy and irritable for days.  I don’t like it when I become this person.

The high point of my weekend was Friday night, when Hubby and I went to dinner with Sincerity and her partner, T.  We ate good food and talked about movies and books and bad TV and the near-stabbing I witnessed at work.  I did a lot of talking, which is not typical for me.  But for some reason I do it a lot when the four of us are together, maybe to make up for the fact that Hubby is so quiet.  He’s usually the chatty one.  He can literally talk for 20 minutes straight without me saying a word.  Or maybe he was so quiet because I didn’t shut up.

Yesterday I was pissed that I was starting my period, and I stayed in my pajamas all day and watched the shows that have been multiplying on my DVR.  Since discovering this new obsession (blogging), I don’t watch nearly as much TV as I used to (and it was a lot).  But now I spend all my free time with a computer in my lap.  (It’s now working as a heating pad, which isn’t so bad.)  Yesterday I watched multiple episodes of Community, Giuliana & Bill, Parks & Rec, and New Girl, and I’m not done yet.  I still have The Ricky Gervais Show, Girls, and Modern Family to catch up on.

I just feel like I’m not doing anything.  I wish there was something I could do to get us out of limbo.  But other than giving Hubby his injections every couple of days, I’m helpless.  We’re still waiting to hear about a few jobs Hubby recently applied for.  Trying to be hopeful, but given the way the past four years have gone, it’s not easy.  And we can’t move forward with IVF until we know, one way or the other, what’s going to happen in August.  We don’t even know where we’re going to live, nevermind who’s going to attempt to impregnate me with one of Hubby’s 19 sperm.

I want to enjoy what’s left of my three-day weekend.  I hope the ibuprofen kicks in soon so I can start to feel like a person again instead of a miserable ball of pain.  The sky looks a little bluer today.  Maybe I’ll take a walk.

PMS?

Or TRB–Total Raving Bitch–which is what I feel like today.  I hate days like today, when nothing seems to go right, even the things that go right, and every. little. thing. can set me off.  I get terrible road rage on days like today, screaming at no one but myself.  Because I’m in such a shitty mood, this post is going to be short and not very sweet.  And in bullets because I can’t string together two coherent thoughts.  Here are a few of the triggers and consequences of my foul mood today:

• At a home visit, a mom kept saying stupid things like, “Doesn’t it make you just want to have a bunch of kids?” and “I bet you want six of your own, huh?  Just kidding,” when her kids were running around the house like little maniacs.  This mom has five, and frankly, I don’t blame the kids for their behavior at all.  I was trying to ignore it as best I could, but she just kept making those comments, and at one point, I wanted to scream, “Look, lady, I’m sorry you’ve got a houseful of little brats.  The only reason I don’t have six of my own right now is because I can’t.  But if I did, they’d act a whole lot better than your little monsters!”  Okay, I may be a bitch, but at this point, I still need my job.  Plus, I know how to behave in a way that is socially appropriate.
• Unless I’m in my car.  Then I go completely apeshit, slamming the steering wheel, screaming at the top of my lungs, even though I’m the only one that can hear my insane ranting.  Slow drivers piss me off.  People who refuse to use a turn signal piss me off.  People driving faster than me piss me off.  Basically, I would be happy if I had the road completely to myself.
• One of my coworkers was complaining, yet again, about her boy troubles.  I have no sympathy at this point.  I’ve heard it all before from her.  Suck it up, lady.  Move on.
• Then I come home to my husband, who has done nothing to deserve my ire, and snip at him for no reason whatsoever.  Just because I can.  Poor Hubby.
• Oh, and there’s pretty much no chance I’m pregnant.

And then I think, What the hell?  There are so many worse things that could be happening in my life right now.  Nothing is particularly wrong, but nothing is going particularly well, either.  Maybe if I just let out in one, long, sustained scream? 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nope.  Still feel like shit.  Maybe tomorrow will be better.

May ICLW

Whether you’re here for ICLW (International Comment Leaving Week) or for some other reason, welcome!  Here’s my intro for new readers/catch-up for those of you who’ve been playing along at home:

• Hubby and I have been together for 8 1/2 years, married for (almost) six.
• Hubby was diagnosed with hypogonadotropic hypogonadism when he was 16 (and still hadn’t hit puberty); his hormones were all kinds of out-of-whack, and he was put on testosterone replacement therapy (TRT).
• I have no idea whether he would have made sperm at some point on his own, but the TRT functioned to A) make him look like a dude, and B) give him a sperm count of zero.
• Fast forward to September 2011: we finally started fertility treatments, which, for us, involves me giving Hubby injections of hCG and hMG three times a week.
• He had his first semen analysis (SA) since starting this combo of meds in April 2012, and earlier this month we got the results:
• We have 19 sperm!  And no, that’s not 19 million, or even 19 thousand.  It’s 19.  Total.  But it’s a heck of a lot better than nothin’.
• For reasons that are out of our control (at the moment–I hope) we are not proceeding with IVF/ICSI at this point and instead are continuing the injections, hoping that number continues to rise.

Take a look around my little corner of the blogiverse, make yourself at home, and feel free to comment anywhere you’d like.  I’ve been busy writing, despite the fact we’re still hanging out in limbo land.  I can’t wait to meet or get re-acquainted with all of you!

*  *  *

Update:

Very sad news today.  Please send some love and support to Belle and Return to Go, who have suffered recent miscarriages.

The Lowest Point

In the summer of 2005, not-yet-Hubby and I had been together 2 3/4 years.  We had lived together for over a year.  But we had no plans to get married, other than knowing we would…someday.  Our timeline was based on when Hubby would finish his PhD.  That was how it was supposed to work.

But first he had to finish his second master’s degree.  And spend another couple of years on his dissertation.  It wasn’t something I was expecting to happen anytime soon.

That summer, we took a trip together, my first international trip that required flying over an ocean.  (I had been to Mexico when I was in college.)  We went to Israel for three weeks.  And we saw everything.

The first several days of our trip were spent exploring Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and cities in between.  After that, we hit the road and headed south, out of the city, through the desert.  We made some stops here and there, and ended up at our first major destination, the Dead Sea.  The road to get there was a vomit-inducing set of hairpin turns descending at an angle seemingly unfit for a motorized vehicle, or any vehicle, really.  I dug my fingernails into the armrest the whole way down.

The next day, we climbed Masada, starting from the lowest point on earth, up toward sea level.  It was over a hundred degrees, the peak of summer, and by the time we reached the top, we were both hot, sweaty, and winded.

According to Josephus, the history of Masada is not a happy one.  Let’s just say the site of a mass suicide doesn’t scream romance.  We strolled around, trying to catch our breath, and eventually found a shady spot to sit, overlooking the Dead Sea.  I was taking in the view of the desert, the sea, and Jordan beyond, when Hubby sat down next to me and said, “I have a surprise for you.”

When I turned to face him, he was holding a ring.  He didn’t ask a question, but simply stated, “I want to marry you.”

I don’t remember what I said, other than squealing “Yes!” which didn’t make a whole lot of sense because, again, he hadn’t asked a question.  I threw my arms around him, kissed him, put the ring on, examined it, kissed him again.  It was all very exciting.

I would tell the story, including the whole gory history of the setting, about 600 times in the coming months.  He had taken me completely by surprise, buying the ring when I was out of town for a conference.  It went against all our plans, but I didn’t care.  We were getting married!

We had so many amazing experiences on that trip.  We snorkelled with dolphins, we explored caves and ruins, we saw holy sites.  But the highlight was that morning at Masada.  We had gone from what was literally the lowest low to the highest high in a matter of a couple of hours.

When I said yes, I thought I knew what I was getting into.  I knew that we would need some help to have a baby.  I knew that Hubby had a long way to go before finishing his degree and getting a job.  For me, even though we’d started fertility treatments, December 2011 was my lowest low, the point when I felt hopeless, like all the hard work we were putting in–Hubby applying for job after job with nothing to show but rejection letters, injections that would take up to two years to work–was fruitless.  Like we were getting nowhere.  We’d been married more than five years, and it felt like nothing had changed.  That was when (and why) I started this blog.

We haven’t hit the highest high yet.  But good news is still good  news.  We have some sperm.  We’re that much closer to getting what we want.  And one of these days, even if no one asks the question, I am going to say yes.

May Poem (for realsies this time)

Big thanks to Mel for this assignment.  I can’t believe I’ve got a (roughly) finished product in a week.  If you haven’t checked out the MFA Sunday School, I highly recommend it!  And go to the comments section of this week’s assignment to see the other great sestinas people have written.

§        §        §

State Fair

The year Mom died, Dad took us to the fair.
It was August, and the late summer sun
scorched my neck and shoulders, too
exposed in a strappy tank.  I spent the rest
of our trip aware of the radiating heat, hoping
pink would soon fade to a golden tan, a song

for Midwestern summers I could sing
when I returned west, a sign of how I’d fared
during my weeks at home.  My hope
had been to get my dad out in the sun.
After a good house-scrubbing, he deserved a rest,
though we’d cleaned less than I wanted to.

He made it hard, every dusty trinket too
meaningful to throw away. The mopping, rinsing
dishes, vacuuming, all the things my mom had done, now rested
with him.  Added to his 60-hour week, it seemed unfair,
but he didn’t have a choice, and any reason
my sister or I could give, in the hope

he would accept some help, well, that hope
was punctured with excuses: working nights, sleeping until two
or three in the afternoon.  He rarely saw the sun;
when would someone come who wouldn’t wake him, sing
while cleaning, or move the furniture?  The whole affair
would bring him too much grief.  He needed rest.

We couldn’t have his heart arrest
like Mom’s did.  My sister and I were left to hope
he’d find a way to take care of himself and fare
better than we expected him to
without her.  We’d lived out of earshot of her song
for years, the closest of her sons

and daughters an hour’s drive away.  But the sun
of her life had set, and she could rest
in the heaven of her choosing.  We wouldn’t hear her sing
in church, the vibrato of her high notes lending hope
to those who knew pain and sickness, too.
Dad took us to the fair,

maybe to forget his solitude, or in hope
of remembering sunnier days, releasing
prayers, unsung, like all the rest.

§        §        §

P.S.  I know I promised an engagement story.  This is clearly not it.  It’s coming.

Updated 5-20-12
You guys were sweet not to notice, or at least not to comment on it, but I totally messed up the end of my sestina.  Somehow, I forgot about “fair” and had some version of “sing” twice.  I fixed it, but I’m not sure I like it as much as the original.  Let me know what you think.

State Fair

The year Mom died, Dad took us to the fair.
It was August, and the late summer sun
scorched my neck and shoulders, too
exposed in a strappy tank.  I spent the rest
of our trip aware of the radiating heat, hoping
pink would soon fade to a golden tan, a song

for Midwestern summers I could sing
when I returned west, a sign of how I’d fared
during my weeks at home.  My hope
had been to get my dad out in the sun.
After a good house-scrubbing, he deserved a rest,
though we’d cleaned less than I wanted to.

He made it hard, every dusty trinket too
meaningful to throw away. The mopping, rinsing
dishes, vacuuming, all the things my mom had done, now rested
with him.  Added to his 60-hour week, it seemed unfair,
but he didn’t have a choice, and any reason
my sister or I could give, in the hope

he would accept some help, well, that hope
was punctured with excuses: working nights, sleeping until two
or three in the afternoon.  He rarely saw the sun;
when would someone come who wouldn’t wake him, sing
while cleaning, or move the furniture?  The whole affair
would bring him too much grief.  He needed rest.

We couldn’t have his heart arrest
like Mom’s did.  My sister and I were left to hope
he’d find a way to take care of himself and fare
better than we expected him to
without her.  We’d lived out of earshot of her song
for years, the closest of her sons

and daughters an hour’s drive away.  But the sun
of her life had set, and she could rest
in the heaven of her choosing.  We wouldn’t hear her sing
in church, the vibrato of her high notes lending hope
to those who knew pain and sickness, too.
Dad took us to the fair,

maybe to forget his solitude, or in hope
of remembering sunnier days, whispering fare-
wells and prayers, unsung, like all the rest.

All Hubby, All the Time

Thanks for tuning back in to the Hubby channel.  Our regularly scheduled programming will resume as soon as we have news and/or a plan.

Until then, it’s all about Hubby.

His thoughts on his recent insomnia:
“When I get a job, I will sleep like a baby.  And when we have a baby, I’ll probably sleep at my job.”

I would love for him to get a job.  Like, really, really soon.  Not only for his well-being and sense of worth.  Selfishly, I need him to get a job so I can quit mine.  Oh, yeah, and so we can move forward with IVF.

But, you know, well-being and self-worth and all that, too.

Poor Hubby.  He’s been working so hard.  Just to get a job.  I think once he actually has one, the workload will decrease dramatically.

Totally unrelated, we’ve been hit by the mothpocalypse lately.  Normally, Hubby doesn’t do well with bugs.  They creep him out a little.  He usually makes me kill them, which I hate because I don’t mind some bugs, especially spiders, unless I convince myself they’re covered with germs or are likely to crawl through my ear canal and into my brain.

But since the moth invasion, Hubby’s been on a mission.  He is out to get every last one of those moths, even though I would rather let them flit around the lights until their short life span comes to a natural end.  Last night, as I was getting ready for bed, I noticed a moth on the wall, right above my pillow.  I debated about calling Hubby, but because of the ear canal thing, I decided I’d let him take care of it.

He chased that thing around, swatting at it mid-air, for a good fifteen minutes (okay, maybe not that long, but I was already in bed at this point, and it seemed to take forever when all I really wanted was to go to sleep).  Lesson learned?  I should have let Cat go after the moth instead of Hubby.  She probably would have been more efficient.

(Even now, he’s looking around, searching for moths to attack!)

Stay tuned for our next episode: the engagement story!

(Not the May) Poem

The latest assignment from Mel’s MFA Sunday School is to write a sestina.  The rules are simple, but the task is incredibly difficult.  I’m working on it.  I’ve written one before, though, and since I’ve been writing a bit more about my relationship with Hubby, I thought I’d share my one successful sestina (still untitled) here:

We drove east, past the largest cross
in the Western Hemisphere
just outside the town of Groom.
From a great distance
we could see how tall and white
someone in Texas thinks Jesus stands.

We didn’t stop to get out and stand
at its base, where the stations of the cross
in bronze surround the gaudy, metallic white
of the original.  In another hemisphere
they’ve built a bigger monument, a distant
symbol of the church’s groom.

As a child, I had been groomed
to be the good Christian girl, to stand
by my parents’ morals.  But with distance
from mother and father, first across
the state, then the country, outside their sphere
of influence, the black and white

world I had known became less white.
They would not have chosen this groom
for me, a Jew from the hemisphere
opposite the one in which they stand.
He does not wear a cross
or a star around his neck and distances

himself from all talk of religion.  The distance
he traveled to eventually meet me, a white
girl from the Midwest, was not crossed
with the intention of becoming my groom.
But here we stand,
a matched set, the hemisphere

of my heart locked into the hemisphere
of his.  He holds my hand and drives the distance
between our life and where my old life stood,
in a Missouri town, mostly white
and Protestant.  I check the mirror, groom
my hair, and watch that cross

grow smaller where it stands, a white
point on this hemisphere, with distance,
out of sight.  I kiss my groom and drop the cross.

By Popular Demand

(because that sounds more impressive than “at the request of three people”…)

I bring you: the first date story.

Hubby and I “met” on an online dating site (shock! horror!).  This was eight and a half years ago, before the “one in five relationships” a certain dating site now proclaims start that way.  Hubby had been trying his hand at this particular form of dating for quite a while, only to be disappointed time after time.  I had tried online dating a year before, shortly after moving to a new city.  I think I had had three first dates at that point.  And zero second dates.  But I was willing to try again for one very specific reason.

I had recently had my heart broken.  Again.  By the same man boy who had done it to me so many times before.  He had been in and out of my life, passing through like a ghost each time, leaving no trace afterward, no evidence that he cared about me at all.  This last time,  I thought we had really connected, that we had grown, that this time was different.  I had been there for him as he took care of his dying grandmother.  I had fallen in love all over again.  But he dropped off the face of the planet yet again, and I was crushed.

That was in July.  By October, I was just plain pissed off.  I wanted revenge.  I wanted to prove that I was over him.  I didn’t know that, instead of a rebound, I would find my forever love.

Hubby sent me a message on a whim.  He later told me that he thought my profile was too good to be true, and therefore, must have been a fake.  Admittedly, the picture on my profile was the best photo of me ever taken.  But it was me.  The message included his email address and instructions to contact him there, as his subscription was about to expire.  In fact, it was the last day of his paid subscription, and the end of my two-week free trial.  It was our last chance to connect.

And connect we did.  We emailed each other daily for a couple of weeks.  Hubby was taking a three-hour long evening class, and at every break, he would run to a computer lab to check his email.  To see if my words were waiting for him there.  I’ve always been better at written communication than in person or, my least favorite, on the phone.  But after those first two weeks, Hubby wanted to meet.  He asked for my number so we could work out the details.

The first time I heard his voice.  His accent.  It wasn’t love yet, but it was something.

We made plans to meet at a bookstore, in the cafe.  I showed up early, ordered my coffee, and waited.  As the time of our meeting approached, I became more anxious.  I looked around the cafe, but I didn’t see any tall, dark-haired men with glasses.  So I stepped outside, and there he was, leaning a bit awkwardly against a low wall, waiting for me.  He beamed at me, and I felt my whole body blush.

We went inside, he ordered his hot chocolate, and we talked for the next three hours.  I loved how excited he got when talking about his field of study and his research, his crooked mouth.  We talked about my work, our families, books, chess (because there happened to be some people in the cafe playing–I didn’t know how to play, but Hubby did).

That was the first time we met, but to this day, I’m still not sure whether or not to call it a date.  Or maybe it should be called “First Date, part 1″.  Because later that same day, we had a real date.  He picked me up (I think he even brought me flowers), and we went to a movie.   It was a movie theater near my apartment that played independent and foreign films.  It has since been swallowed up by the car dealership next door–so sad.  In the lobby, not only could you order sandwiches and lattes at the concessions stand, but they had tables set up with board games you could play while waiting for your movie to start.  Including a chess set.  So Hubby and I sat down, and he attempted to teach me to play chess.  After he explained which pieces can move which directions, we played.  Which consisted of my hand hovering over the board and Hubby nodding or shaking his head to direct my moves.

After the movie, he drove me home.  We sat in his roommate’s truck saying our clumsy goodbyes.  I don’t remember what was said, but Hubby smiled, and I just leaned over and kissed him, right on the corner of his mouth.  Which made him smile even more.

It wasn’t all smooth sailing from there.  My stupid heart almost fucked everything up, somehow wanting to leave an opening, in case the other changed his mind and showed up at my door.  Hubby was unbelievably patient and understanding.  Because he was the one.  It just took me longer than him to figure that out.

I heart–no, I mean, hate–Mother’s Day

Updated at the bottom.

I really do.  I no longer have a mother.  I am not a mother myself.  This day is merely a reminder of what I do not have and what I so desperately want.

But I’d rather not dwell on that.  Because there are so many out there who–this year–have so much to be thankful for.  I can hardly wrap my brain around all the good news that’s been circulating the blogiverse lately.  It makes me want to celebrate, instead of wallow in my own misery, for once.

So, for sass, Audrey, unaffected, Ms Pollywog, with just a little help, Bleeding Tulip, Living Our Life In Cycles, mrs. brightside, Alissa, Belle, Her Royal Fabulousness, slowmamma, Mommy-in-Waiting, and Nisha T. : Happy Mother’s Day!  Enjoy it!

Of course, there are those of us for whom this particular day is merely a sad reminder of the grief, pain, and loss that has become our lives.  Cristy wrote a great post about how to survive this difficult day.

I’m going to try to be happy.  For one day, I want to focus on the positive.  And maybe next year, or the year after that, I’ll finally have a reason to be celebrated on Mother’s Day.  And that’s what I really want.

(UPDATED 5-12-12:  In my efforts to remember all the recent good news, I completely forgot one of the very first bloggers I connected with. *facepalm*  A huge shout-out to msfertility, who is approaching 18 weeks with her little medical miracle!  Happy Mother’s Day, dear!)