Riding the single woman zeitgeist

To summarize, a few things about me --

• I canceled an engagement when I was 21, because I thought the guy wasn't stable enough to build a family with. (oh, by the way, his wife and five-year-old son seem to think he's doing a fine job these days.)


• I dumped a guy when I was 25 because I was intimidated by his family wealth. Also, I thought he didn't believe in marriage and didn't want kids. Last I heard, he's still married to the woman he got pregnant two months after we broke up. They have at least one other kid.


• I thought the series finales of both Friends and Sex and the City were ridiculous, because the most recent reuniting of the couples gave me no reassurance that they woudn't break up again as they had countless times before.


• I am currently trying to conceive a baby with donor sperm -- I have another insemination attempt scheduled for tomorrow -- because I am 37 and unmarried.


• I have a sweet boyfriend who is a good man and adores me, but I refuse to marry him because of religious and philosophical differences, but also because I'm just not feeling it in my gut.


• My Dances-with-Wolves-style Indian name is Paralyzed By Indecision


• I recently watched the movie Say Anything

Despite all these facts, it might surprise you to know that I did not write this article.

But I could have, clearly. Not only that, I should have (why am I not writing more?).

I also should have read this article several years ago, when it still might have done me some good.

Recently, the Lumberjack, the Captain, and a former boss have all put the moves on me in some way or another. It really doesn't help an indecisive type such as myself to be all "strong bidder" like this, when really I should just settle (down) and get married, already.

Sigh.

All My Georges

Okay, so my husband is gorgeous, charming, funny... yeah, yeah, we all know that already.

What I'm finding funny lately, and what this clip reinforced for me today, is how much, as he gets gently older, he's beginning to look like my dad.

(oh, yes, Dad's a hottie. Hands off, ladies!)

NYTimes "wonderfully easy" pea soup

Slice and sauté an onion.
Add 3 cups chicken stock, a 1-pound bag of frozen peas, 1/3 cup oats, 1/8 teaspoon cardamom, some salt and pepper.
Bring to boil.
Purée in blender.

From How to Survive in New York on 99 Cents

Men Create More Housework for Women - Yahoo! News

Well THERE'S a shock.

The Nonna Files

When I was little, I used to watch my grandmother cook. She didn’t write anything down, so neither did I. I thought I’d learned her recipes, kept them in the muscle memory of my hands.

I grew up, she passed away, I worked more and cooked less. One day I realized I couldn’t remember anymore.

I feared it was too late. But when I told her friends M and A my regret, I discovered they'd all shared recipes, and the friends had written them down. Now every week we pull out the card file, and I learn a new dish. Some were from my grandmother, some are M or A’s, and some were scrawled on the back of a paper plate during a party, source unknown. But each recipe, I assure you, is from someone’s Italian grandmother.

Lesson #1: Pizzelle

Sure, you can buy them in the market in those plastic boxes, but homemade is better. The only problem is that to make them at home, you need an iron to press out the cookies, and maybe you don’t want another very specialized appliance in your kitchen.

When I confessed to A that I’d always preferred her pizelle to my grandmother’s, she laughed because she uses my grandmother’s recipe. Here’s her secret: A doesn’t use a regular pizzelle iron, she uses an old Black Angus sandwich grill, which has an adjustable hinge height, so it doesn’t press as tight.

So if you like your pizzelle thin and light and crisp, and you have lots of storage space in your kitchen, get a pizzelle iron. But if you prefer a slightly denser cookie with a little more heft, you could experiment with a patterned sandwich press. Or you could search eBay for a Black Angus.

3 cups flour
1 ½ cups sugar
2 ½ tsp. baking powder
6 eggs
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, melted
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. anise extract

Sift flour, sugar and baking powder into a large bowl. In a small bowl, beat the eggs lightly, then stir into dry ingredients. Add melted butter and extracts, and stir by hand until batter is smooth and glossy. Let batter rest for half an hour. While batter rests, heat up the iron, get it good and hot.

Put a little butter on a paper towel and grease the iron plates up well, then wipe of any excess. You only have to do this before you start pressing cookies; after the first batch, the butter in the batter will keep the plates lubed up.

Drop a teaspoon of batter into the center of each circle on the press, close it, and squeeze the handles together for about five seconds. Then let go and let cook for about 45 seconds. (Cook times will vary depending on your iron. Experiment with your first few batches, until you figure out how long it takes to achieve golden brown deliciousness.)

Carefully peel the cookies off the iron plates, using a table knife to protect your fingertips. Lay cookies flat on clean dish towels to cool. Once they’re cool, stack them and store in an airtight container.

While the pizzelle are right off the iron and still warm, they’re soft and malleable. If you’re so inclined and can work fast, twirl them into a cone shape or press them into a bowl, to serve ice cream.

More female trouble

A bit of stream of consciousness about something that's been making me feel creepy all day. Summarized from an IM with my darling bf:

Last St. Patrick's day, we were all at the bar, and the Lumberjack was there with his new undergrad girlfriend, who he'd met at a party in January. And I was sad, cried later, because it was the nail in the coffin that nothing was ever going to happen with us.

But it wasn't just that. There was something else that night that made me sad.
The Storm.

Storm had been friends with the Usual Suspects before I'd moved back home and met all these hooligans. Also, the Lumberjack used to cheat on his last girlfriend with her, but as far as I ever heard, they'd never actually dated for real. Since then, there had been some kind of falling out between Storm and the U.S., but she was still friends with 'Jack. But because of the circumstances, everything was hazy and unspoken by the time I started meeting these people.

I met Storm because 'Jack started bringing her to PubNight. Again, no one was talking, really, neither 'Jack nor the U.S., but as I understood it, 'Jack wasn't taking part in the falling out/shunning, so he brought his friend out, with no apologies nor explanations.

Now,
1. I liked her, she made a good first impression
2. I like 'Jack, and as such wanted to be friends with his friends, and know what's going on in his life. So I talked to her, we hit it off. And I want to make my own judgment about this new person I've met.

But she lives far away, and only seems to come to the area with him. So I'm beginning to notice that indeed, she is a little fucked up; the U.S aren't totally off-base. But still, I want to judge on my own.

Turns out Storm is still hung up on the Lumberjack. But she also has this boyfriend up where she lives. So she's been sublimating her romantic feelings into a friendship, like you do.

ANYway...
St. Pat's day, at the bar. Most of the Usual Suspects are there, as are 'Jack and his undergrad, and Storm and her guy, and me. The Undergrad is stuck to 'Jack like glue, and taking every opportunity to point out that he is HERS. While 'Jack pulls her aside to tell her to Chill, Storm asks me who the hell that is. I explain that she's 'Jack's new teeniebopper girlfriend, and Storm FLIPS OUT.

This is a woman with a boyfriend.

So part of the reason I was so sad after St. Paddy's was that I looked at Storm, who was the "other woman" for this guy with no honest and public relationship coming of it, and who now had a boyfriend and was still hung up on him. And I said to myself, "I do not want to be this woman. I tried, it didn't work, I need to move on. I deserve better."

And I mourned a little, but I did move on.

I also found out that night that Storm was moving back to the area -- in fact, right around the corner from me! So we'd exchanged phone numbers, and said we were going to hang out. She was supposed to move April 1.

The first week in April, she calls me, says "sorry I haven't checked in yet, turns out I'm moving April 15, everything's a mess."
I'm all, that's cool; let me know when you're settled in.
And then, she starts grilling me on 'Jack and the undergrad.
She's bullshit; starts in all -- APPARENTLY he's not her friend anymore, APPARENTLY he doesn't value her, if he's keeping these secrets from her. She says she HAS a boyfriend, she doesn't NEED 'Jack, et cetera.

I try to calm her, try to dissociate, get off the phone. She says she'll call me after she moves and settles in, and I don't here from her ever again.
That was almost exactly a year ago.

Since then, Storm always comes up when I run the Friend Finder on Facebook, but I never friend her, because she's not my friend. Today, when I ran it, though, something caught my eye.

Storm's new profile pic is a picture of her in a hospital bed, wearing a hospital gown...
with last year's boyfriend next to her....
and she's holding a newborn.

Yup, they had a baby a month ago.

So basically, she gave up on the Lumberjack, and got knocked up in short order.

Way to move on!

Honestly, this is great for her, she looks happy, and moving on was clearly the right thing to do. And she's engaged to the baby's father.

But I can't help it, the timing of it just makes me go ew ew ew.

Am I right? B says that's a fucked up story, full of fucked up people and fucked up decisions and fucked up emotions, and yes, ew.

I've been creeped out all day, so just wanted to share. (though I know this is not the breeding story I have been promising you, sorry...)

Spot Cloooney's girlfriend

back in her wilder clubbing days, at something called 108 Degrees.

Looks like wild but charming fun at the start. Then perhaps the photog went back to a hotel with some hookers, but no Larson there, so don't feel the need ot scroll all the way to the end.

Lollapalooza 2008 : Westward to Chicago!

I had such a great time last year, I'd like to make it an annual trip. Captain's going too; he helped make last year's trip such a blast.

But hey, it's a big place, there's room for more if you want to come! We've missed the early-bird super discount, but advance-sale tix are still available.

Come on, come on! So much fun!

Slice: Di Fara on Facebook!

Best. Pizza. Ever.

Go ahead, become a fan.

my haiku is so prescient

Haiku2 for maggiebex
waiting for the egg to arrive and there was a big fan of using
@ aboutmylife.netadvogato.orgblogger.comblogs.gnome.orgblogspot.comdeadjournal.comgreatestjournal.cominsanejournal.comlivejournal.commyspace.comspaces.msn.com
Created by Grahame

Fellowship of the Peep

Missing Easter already.

Lost children

The other night I went looking for my beloved box set of Sports Night, to introduce some poor deprived soul who'd never watched its brilliance before.

It was gone. In its place, I found a box set of Season One of Angel, not mine.

Did we trade? Or maybe it wasn't an even trade; maybe one person has my Sports Night, and I have someone else's Angel. Honestly, I have no recollection of any of the borrowing. Considering I've had Children of Men out from Netflix since May 2007, my DVD amnesia is neither surprising nor unprecedented.

It is unfortunate, however, so please check your collections and let me know. Let's get all the DVDs back to their proper homes.

Clinton - Obama, Obama - Clinton

In general, I'm a big fan of using the existing rules to shake up the status quo. Just one more reason why this idea sounds so appealing to me.

Of course, there's the added bonus of making history twice, and holding on to the Oval Office for 16 years...

Umami umami umami tsunami

Art is great and all, but is the food limited to actual umami-riffic-ness? Restless people need to know!

BFN

As they say on the boards. I know you're eager for news, so I'm posting from my conference (sshh).

How could I have possibly forgotten to pick up a test, you ask? Honestly, I was pretty sure it would be negative, so my subconscious must have, surprisingly, preferred taxes to bad news.

I'll try again soon, and you'll be sure to hear all about it.

Thanks again, all you darlings!

Taxed

You're all going to hate me.

I had to prep my taxes last night, and I forgot to buy a pregnancy test.

Right now I'm catching a train to New York for a conference. I will try to remember to buy a test in Penn station or somewhere, so as to have news for you all tomorrow.

And now for something completely different

While I've been writing about Very Serious Things, "living life explicitly" and perhaps Sharing Too Much, the interwebs have continued to churn out the funny. The past few days have been particularly rich.

So herewith, a selection for your amusement:

Echo Park Time Travel Mart, Barbarian Repellent

Star Wars according to a 3-year old

Monkey Star Wars

Official happy Sex and the City trailer #1

Longer, sadder, Sex and the City trailer #2

Stuff White People Like

I love New England

Jimmy Kimmel loves Ben Affleck (I point you to Gawker because they've got links to the whole history and lead-up of the gag)

For the Somervillionaires, TomCat Champion warns you of Snow Emergency

Okay, okay, and one that is related to current events, but still funny:
Handy forum abbreviations

Rollercoaster

During the night, the period/spotting/whatever it is stopped.

This morning, my temp was elevated again.

I checked the chart again, and I talked to my nurse friend, who thinks it's impossible that I would have gotten my period so early. Math is hard!

Tomorrow, I will pee on a stick. I think this is why normal people don't go public with their baby drama until the second trimester...

PS: I've been doing lots of editing and rewriting of posts, and adding of images. If this is wreaking havoc with your feed reader, I apologize. If, on the other hand, it has *not* been wreaking havoc, you might want to go back and re-read for updates and new photos. But give me a few minutes; I have a few more to add...

Hit the spot? Not....

Wednesday, I felt stirrings.

Thursday, I saw a sign, right on time.

Friday, I was still seeing spots, which was still okay.

Saturday, I started worrying. By Saturday night, the spots should have been tapering off; instead, it was continuing, maybe even increasing. (come on, if you can watch CSI, you can read this.) But only a little; I still had hope. Anyway, Saturday was just WAY too early for a period, right?

Well, sure, if you presume that I ovulated on Tuesday or Wednesday, which is what we figured. But what if I'd actually ovulated Sunday, when the pee stick first went dark?

It is also worth noting at this time that, due to my erratic sleep habits, my temp charts are consistently an inconsistent mess. Here is what a normal temp chart should look like:

That little blip on Day 10 is what happens if you don't sleep the same number of hours every night or wake up at the same time every day. But overall, that sample chart shows lower temperatures pre-ovulation, and elevated temperatures afterwards. See that big leap on day 14? That's ovulation. See that big drop on day 28? That's the beginning of menstruation. If you're actually pregnant, you don't have a drop, you stay in the hot zone.

I have the worst sleeping habits in the world. Consequently, my temp charts are on crack, all over the place. So, though my temp did rise on the morning of the insemination, who knows if that meant anything?

Whatever, I'm babbling, and prolly giving TMI for some of you.

The point is, by Sunday it sure looked like my period, complete with cramps. I curled up crying and achy on the couch all morning...

This morning? My temp plummeted. No hot zone for me. As I said, my temps are ridiculous and oscillate wildly, so I'll still pee on a stick on Wednesday -- might as well. But it looks like I'll have to keep trying. One down, three to seven more to go!

I'm not going to lie; it sucks. I've been weepy and moody and short-tempered. I'm worried about racking up the continued expenses. But I knew, barring some miracle of beating the odds, that this is what I signed on for, probably for a year or more. And so I'm prepared to stick with it.

Thank you all so so much for your support, your involvement, your excitement. Blogging cannot express what it means to me, I swear.

I probably won't Twitter hourly as Nina requested, mostly because I still don't understand how to use Twitter. But I will keep the updates coming, promise.

In honor of J. Lo

.... and all my other peep-ettes who are currently baking, or have recently produced, a sweet bun in their respective ovens:



Seriously, I know so many pregnant women and already-birthed babies, that I'm knitting baby hats non-stop these days, and I'm still way behind...

And what of my own oven? Hmm... well I guess I can't put it off anymore with talk of grammar or celebs, can I?

Reader, I did it. I went and got inseminated.

In answer to the questions posed last Tuesday:

• Yes, I had time to choose a donor. To be honest, I had been dragging on this decision for weeks, and the only way I was ever going to make up my mind was under deadline pressure anyway.
  
• Yes, the bank was indeed able to deliver in time. Though that depends on what you mean by "in time."
  
• Yes, the Jolly German was happy to see me on Wednesday.
  
• Yes, I was back in the office well before the Big Important Meeting. And fortunately, the cramping and spotting didn't start until later that night.
  
• No, I did not try with B Thursday night.

Now for the details...
I spent last Tuesday running around like a crazy woman. Somehow, between meetings at both offices, I spoke to the sperm bank and confirmed that they could deliver to the Jolly German's office on Wednesday morning, as long as both I and the doctor faxed over some paperwork. I got the forms to the JG, confirmed that he had time to see me and that everything was in order.

Only one problem: even though the LH surge happens before ovulation, it's still preferable to do the insemination on the same day you see the pink line. Reason being, idle sperm can stay viable in the uterus for around 48-72 hours, whereas an unfertilized egg only stays viable for 12-18 hours. So it's much preferable to have the sperm already there, hanging out waiting for the egg to arrive. And there was no way the sperm would arrive on Tuesday -- I hadn't even chosen the donor yet! That said, the JG still thought it was worth a try, so we forged ahead with plans for Wednesday.

But how on earth was Ms. Paralyzed by Indecision going to choose a donor?
I had been combing the donor catalogs at two different banks for months, and I could not make up my mind. Some days I liked them all, other days none were good enough. To make matters worse, one of the banks lets you build a "favorites" list for further review, but that list was not working properly. So I had been saving donor profiles for weeks, and ended up with nothing saved to review.

In between meetings, I logged on quickly, and saw that Donor of the Month had been updated. Amid all those baby pics, one sweet face leapt out at me. I checked his profile, and he sounded cute, funny, and clever. He even reminded me a bit of B in the personality department, and he was a film major! A quick call to the bank confirmed that his specimens were available for rush delivery.

The JG's office said that they would call me as soon as the package arrived Wednesday morning. My schedule was clear until the Big Meeting in the late afternoon, so all that was left to do was breathe deep, get some sleep, and wait.

Gosh, I was wishing I had someone to go with me, hold my hand, just Be There....

Remember the baby hats? I'd just finished one for my three-year-old neighbor, so I stopped by after dinner to drop it off. Her mom had the day off on Wednesday. Her mom is an Ob/Gyn. Her mom offered to come with me and hold my hand.

This was EXCELLENT. Not only did I have company and support, I also had a second set of trained eyes to make sure all went well.

I also had a FedEx tracking number. Wednesday morning, I may have brought down FedEx servers with the force and frequency of my page refreshing.

At 10:30 I got the call from the doc's office that my shipment had arrived. I told my boss I had to step out for a bit and hightailed it out of there, picking up my neighbor on the way.
As we waited for the JG in the exam room, the nurse came in with a huge shipping carton. Unopened. I had asked them to save the packaging, because I was curious, but they hadn't even looked inside!

Neighbor and I looked at each other, at the nurse, at the box. Nurse handed me scissors and said, "Here, you can do the honors and open it yourself!"

Neighbor said, "Um, you know it's frozen. You mean he hasn't defrosted it yet?"

Nurse explained that no one in the office had ever dealt with shipments of donor sperm before, so this was all new to ALL OF US. I opened the box.

It was a big liquid nitrogen vapor tank, with lots of instructions on how to safely handle the contents. We defrosted the specimen in a coffee-cup water bath, prepared a slide to check out the little swimmers, and we all went over to look at them.

Cute little swimmers! Swimming all over the place! So many! So motile! Yay!

I'll leave out the details of the moment of truth, because I know that some of you are already past your squeamishness threshold. Let me just say that I was very glad to have a friend's hand to hold on to. Definitely more pleasant to do this the traditional way. (every time one of these procedures causes my uterus to seize up in pain, I wonder how on earth I'm going to ever make it through labor...)

In the days that followed, I didn't feel anything particularly special or glowing going on. And to be honest, I wasn't surprised. When my tag-team docs reviewed my pee sticks and temperature chart, they exchanged some very serious and none too encouraging looks. They both really wished that I had arranged all this at least a day earlier, and weren't too sure that we had caught the window in time. It was very likely that the whole adventure had been a $650 dress rehearsal. Even if we had gotten the timing right, there's still only a 10% success rate for women my age, and it usually takes four to eight attempts before I should expect to actually conceive.

So I was prepared for a lack of baby magic. (This is also why the "B on Thursday?" issue turned out to be a non-issue. If I was borderline too late on Wednesday morning, then I was definitely too late by Thursday night.)

But then, during the lunar eclipse, I started to feel a little ... magical. And I started to think...
How incredibly cool, if I do indeed have a baby on my birthday -- which is Election Day, which one way or the other will definitely be historic -- to also be able to tell him that I first had stirrings of his presence during a breathtaking celestial event.

I know, call me sentimental, call me crazy even, but it's good to have hope, yes?

Yesterday, eight days after the insemination, I got a sign that sounds terrible but is actually good news:
Implantation spotting.
Right on time!

I'm not running out to order birth announcements; I still remember the odds. But I'm hopeful enough that on this Lenten Friday, I am following these guidelines that my 5-months-pregnant co-worker forwarded my way.

Per doc's instructions, I'll be taking a test next Wednesday, and I promise to let you all know how it goes.