journey to the centre of the egg

re-move

2006-06-25T13:46:00.000+10:00

www.journeytothecentre.com

That's where I am.

:)

why the internet sucks

2006-06-23T17:33:00.000+10:00

Once there was girl named Meg, who spent many many hours setting up a new website. She fiddled; she fussed; she was proud.

And then she registered her domain name.

But then something went wrong. The registrar wasn't answering her questions! Instead, they were sending useless FAQs back towards her, and not making the changes she asked. It was all very suspicious.

Finally, after almost a week of literally tearing her hair out, Meg got the new site working. She posted on the old site, redirecting them to this site:

www.journeytothecetnre.com

Go on. Click on it.

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Doesn't look much like my blog, does it?

It, appears, friends, that I've been had.

(dodgy fucks)

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New site will be up and running soon -- not at that url obviously.

At least I hope so.

plans

2006-06-21T17:10:00.000+10:00

Well, we finally had our appointment with the nurse this afternoon. And while it is a huge and very exciting step, I fear it's not going to make for particularly interesting reading.

They did give us the O*vidrel trigger shot in a brand new six-pack cooler, though (Gotta love the ol' Linkistration), boldly emblazoned with this logo.

That was novel.

And I must say, it's nice to know we definitely get something lasting and tangible for our $3190.

So, in layman's terms -- there is laymen reading this, believe it or not (please skip the info if you are not a layman; I have no desire to bore) -- the process should look something like this:

Should, I said.

Should.

June 16th - Start the pill (M*icrogynon 30 ED)
July 2nd - Start S*ynarel nasal spray twice daily (decreases the amount of oestrogen produced by the ovaries providing a more controlled situation for ovarian stimulation and production of eggs.)
July 7th - Blood Test (To check that I am fully suppressed)
July 13th - Start G*onal F subcutaneous injections once a day (This acts directly on the ovaries to promote the growth of more than one follicle / egg)
July 21st - Ultrasound to check groth of follicles and uterine lining
July 22nd - Trigger Shot (to release eggs from follicles for ease of vacuuming)
July 24th - Egg Collection operation / Fun with Fabio
July 25th - Microinjection of sperm into eggs
July 29th - Embryo Transfer (5 day transfer - just one for now). Begin C*rinone progesterone gel (Progesterone helps to support the uterus for pregnancy)
August 14th - Pregnancy Test

So there you go.

It's all about to happen.

Yay.

I think.

embarrassing incident

2006-06-20T17:19:00.000+10:00

My mother swears that she does not remember this incident.

But I do.

It was significant, after all: It was the original S.W.B.

And we all know how reliable a six-year-old's memory is.

The incident occurred while we were visiting a friend of my mother's, who lived in a block of flats. They had been inside drinking coffee, as I played outside at the bottom of the long car park. There was an old cement block incinerator in the small garden there, and I had been poking around in it; searching for what, I don’t know.

What I found was a pair of bloodied underpants in a paper bag.

I ran inside, waving the underpants in my hand and screeching.

Mum, you have to call the police! Someone’s been murdered! I found these in the incinerator!

My mother and her friend were shocked, and rightly so. As my mother forced me to dispose of the evidence and sent me off to wash my hands, I heard her friend say to her:

I think you’re going to have to have a little talk with Megan.

Now this sparked my interest. A Little Talk. I nagged my mother all the way home: What did she mean by a little talk? Are we going to have a little talk? What was the little talk going to be about? Could she give me any hints?

My mother said: Not now, Megan.

A week or so later, when my father and brother were “elsewhere”, my mother sat me down next to her on the couch. She placed a book on the coffee table in front of us. It was a big square hard-cover, and very innocuous – all pastel colours and dainty line-drawings.

We went through the book together. She was very patient and calm, slowly pointing out the ovaries and the fallopian tubes and the uterus, and carefully, methodically explaining what each one did.

When we were done, I said to her:

So, the blood comes out because you have to make room for the egg?

My mother sighed.

Yes, Meg, that’s more or less it.

I believed this until I was about fifteen years old.

Sad, huh?

acupuncture #1

2006-06-17T15:52:00.000+10:00

First of all, I would like to thank those lovely women who delurked themselves to email me about my last, most ultra-secretive of posts. Yay for you and your high bravery. I hope you were not disappointed.

:)

Meanwhile:

Until this wave of articles appeared about a month ago, my mother had been looking at me funny, assuming I was just taking my message-board research too far.

(I do tend to take things too far sometimes, but that's another story.)

In fact, I am surprised I haven't mentioned it yet. Guess there just haven't been any interesting stories attached to the whole thing.

But I have been seeing a TCM practitioner for a while now. (And I can't tell you how long it took me to strike on that title. I called her the Chinese Medicine Lady until about ten minutes ago.)

And she rocks.

She actually specialises in Infertility and IVF. I've spent the last three months drinking some kind of black stinkyherb concoction and taking a heap of little round black pills. The herb drink started off tasting totally vile, but I appear to have developed a taste for it over time. Now I find it almost soothing in a masochistic kind of way.

I'm not sure what it is. I know I should probably ask, but I keep forgetting, and the mystique is almost gratifying; it evokes images of the old Chinese man from Gremlins. (I am trying to remember the name of this character cum hideous racial stereotype - Anyone know?)

We both had our first round of acupuncture yesterday, designed to draw the blood flow towards our nether-regions and improve the quality of our respective gametes.

I'd been looking forward to this for some time, both with anticipation and a little dread.

But it wasn't really that big a deal.

Basically, the needles felt no different going in to if you tapped yourself on the leg with two fingers. Only a couple of them hurt, and that was nothing much to speak of anyway, just like a very mild electric shock.

So was it relaxing?

Hmm. Not really, to be honest.

I actually found it quite intense. A little too tingly. Not nerve tingly. More just a general warmth and pressure throughout my body. Oh, it wasn't unpleasant per se, but after twenty minutes or so, I was ready for them to come out. I was getting a little edgy to move around, get up. I was having a few small muscle spasms, like before you go to sleep, and was strangely getting a little teary.

I felt quite heavy afterwards, and desirous of flopping in a deep lounge chair. Is that what relaxation feels like? (I'm not really familiar with relaxation, as a rule...)

I'd be curious to hear everyone else experiences with / thoughts about acupuncture and Chinese Medicine.

Yeah?

s.w.b.

2006-06-15T23:11:00.000+10:00

I want to tell you about the secret women's business.

But then it wouldn't be secret women's business.

Email me (journeytothecentre@hotmail.com) and I will forward you the intended post within 24 hours.

Girls only.

Sorry.

(Or not so sorry. Tee hee.)

Edit (next day): Come on, all ye olde lurkers - don't be scared to unveil yourselves. It's not a public execution. All you need to do is send me a blank email with "S.W.B." in the subject line. I won't sell your email address to a drug company. Promise! It's all in the spirit of fun! (And it really is just a regular post. You know: Writing. Words. English. That kind of stuff.)

emo

2006-06-15T19:01:00.000+10:00

Sometimes, when we're really close to people over a period of time, we come to see ourselves through their eyes. We believe them. And then one day we realise, and we try to break free. But the damage has already been done. Their words will stay with us. Always.

(I'm not having an emo day, by the way. I just wanted to explain the poem.)

(P.S. I have also been wanting to use the word emo for some time. I only learnt it a couple of months ago, and it amuses me.)

Emo Poem (not original title)

Name me then. No matter.
Your eyes have gone
from my reflection.
This letting go
defines me now.

And it's only roots.
Beginnings. Beneaths.

So indeed I might have been the one
who kicked up rotting leaves
around you; who dug away
wet clumps of earth
and turned them over in my hands
as if to form and reform -

But you and me,
we're only roots and broken glass.
Compost. Fifteen years.

I imagine then, your critical eye.
Those words of yours
grow up around my ankles
like a myth:

Seven years bad luck
for breaking you,
for breaking away.

No end to your mirrors now.
Even in absence.

(Double P.S. Although I was responsible for the poem, this photograph is neither of me or by me. I just found it on the internet.)

tagorama

2006-06-14T17:12:00.000+10:00

Tagged by Vee, I was.

So here, in lieu of anything useful to say (aside from "My period came today which means the process is starting soon and I am feeling really shitscared. My God, I can't tell you.") I will complete the distraction-meme as instructed.

Yes. That's what I'll do. Uh-huh.

Five items in my fridge:
1. Open cans of dog and cat food
2. Dry yeast
3. A bag of wilting baby spinach
4. A tube of wasabi
5. A very large jar of South Australian pickled onions (A gift from my in-laws. Don't ask.)

Five items in my closet:
1. Two fold up spring camp beds
2. My Year 12 formal dress (like I'll ever fit into that again)
3. A quilting mat and rotary cutter
4. Ugly 90s platform sneakers
5. A very old scanner that cost a lot at the time

Five items in my car:
N/A (*Sigh* It would have been an entertaining one too, as anyone who knows me In Real Life will tell you.)

Five items in my handbag:
1. A spiral notebook and assorted stationery
2. Lip Balm
3. My jar of Chinese stinkyherbs
4. Old bus tickets.
5. My last stash of the sadly discontinued Eclipse gum

And you know what? Make sure you fully link-istrate your memes.

That's when the distraction factor really kicks in.

collection

2006-06-13T18:14:00.000+10:00

I never really understood the shoe thing.

However, I considered the following:

a) Manuela and Nina's posts re: their collections
b) my earlier admission re: my winter coats
c) The need for time-killing re: waiting for IVF/ICSI #1

And decided it had to be done.

What I Buy Instead Of Shoes.
By Meg.

Reckon five leather jackets is a tad excessive?

Nah.

Didn't think so.

lucky

2006-06-11T15:11:00.000+10:00

On a good day, I think about the ways we've been lucky:

I feel lucky that our over-cautious rookie of a GP didn't turn us away when I dragged T. into her surgery only eight months after I went off the pill; and probably less than six months after we started actively TTC, complaining that we weren't pregnant yet.

I feel lucky that the issue was picked up while there was still a few boys in there to freeze.

I feel lucky that given that we have to go the ART route, we've managed to bypass most of the time-and-money-and-hope-eating stages in between, and progress directly to the infertility treatment big guns - IVF with ICSI. I remember Jenny (at least I think it was Jenny) once calling it Zero to IVF in Sixty Seconds.

I feel lucky that we didn't wait any longer to start trying for a baby, considering the fact that I (apparently) have time on my side.

I feel lucky that I live in a country where Gonal F is subsidised by the government, and that public health insurance will pay about half of my clinic fees. That even though we have no private health insurance, IVF is still not out of our price range entirely.

I feel lucky that T's ultrasound came back free of tumours.

I feel lucky that technology even makes this possible.

I feel lucky to have been born in a time and place where I am not stigmatised for being barren (such an offensive word, really, isn't it?) just because T. has two children from the good ol' days when his testicles still worked.

And it's a funny kind of lucky. But it's better than nothing.

reformed smoker

2006-06-10T17:20:00.000+10:00

People say that reformed smokers are much worse than people who never smoked. I am testament to this fact.

In my three months as a reformed smoker, I have tried everything I can think of to try and get my husband to quit too.

I have had tantrums. I have smashed ashtrays. I have pushed his filthy, smelly arse away in disgust on numerous occasions. I have pointed out the fact that he is forcing me into facing early widowhood as a crazy cat lady, a fact that is already compounded by our age difference. I have reminded him that he will not see his existing children into adulthood, let alone the one that he is attempting to make. I have even taken to calling him "sperm-killer", 'cause his smoking sure as hell doesn't help things along in that department.

I have done everything I can think of, nigh on saying "I will leave you if you don't stop." (though I feel so strongly about it that it could be the next step!)

None of it has worked, of course.

Look. Perhaps I'm being harsh.

But I just don't think there is any excuse.

If I can quite smoking, anyone can. Especially considering all the crappy drama I've been through in that three months.

You see, I wasn't just a coffee-break smoker. I was a Full On Hardened Smoker. I smoked rolling tobacco that I bought on the black market at $60 for half a kilo, because I couldn't afford to smoke anything else. I don't even know how many I smoked a day. I estimate forty, because I went through a packet of Tally Ho papers about every day and a half. But I can't really be sure. It was literally countless.

Every single thing in my life was punctuated by cigarettes.

So what can I do now, folks? I've pitched every argument, pulled every punch.

And I'm at a loss.

How can I get my husband to quit smoking??

minority group

2006-06-09T18:26:00.000+10:00

Oh, oral contraceptive pill, my old friend. Soon we shall meet again.

How I have missed the familiar rattle of your foil sheets; their fresh tinselly promise. So familiar. So strangely comforting.

Hmph. Whatever.

Strangely enough, it wasn't the well-documented absurdity of going back on the pill in order to make a baby that bothered me when I filled my prescription this afternoon, readying myself to start a-poppin' in a few days.

No, it was more to do with the packaging.

We all know how greedy drug companies are, don't we? I mean, there are like six different varieties of N*urofen, but they're all just I*boprofen, right?

So how come none of them have bothered to market a special IVF version of the pill? How come I have to go in there and get the regular four month's supply instead of just one?

And what is more - and I reserve the right to get a little petty here (and I certainly am being ridiculously petty) - Why should I have to put up with the woman at the chemist saying to me: Ooh, you'll need to make sure you get repeats next time; and having to reply: I don't need any repeats. It's for IVF (you stupid bitch)?

I didn't say the last bit out loud, of course.

The whole thing is kind of offensive in some way, don't you think? It's like saying we don't exist. God, we may be infertile, but aren't we valuable little consumers too? We deserve our very own product as much as the next person.

Capitalism should at least grant us that, right?

project

2006-06-08T17:13:00.000+10:00

I have finally finished my reports. Thank. Bloody. God.

The problem with teaching is that the workload is never even. You go crazy trying to finish everything off on time, then all at once you face the holidays, and the whole issue of unwinding.

Suddenly you have all this time. Not that I'm complaining or anything.

Still, I always need a project when the holidays come. Otherwise I fall into a giant sleep-till-twelve rut that makes it really really hard to get out of bed at any other time, even when school goes back.

Oh, and T. gets shitty with me, too. (He's a morning person. He pretends its just to compensate for my pure slothful laziness, but that's just a big lie.) And then I get annoyed back because I get up at 6am all term and I should be able to sleep in when I get the chance, and...

I'll stop there. You get the gist.

Anyway, the moral of the story is that I need a project.

A big craft project. At least one. Probably more.

I have nearly finished the giant winter scarf I've been working on (on the bus). I have a few unfinished quilting projects that I have no desire to pick up (Say what? I should actually use the huge pile of cheap printed fabric sitting in the hallway?) And although I still have the materials from before, I feel that starting those baby projects would be a little too optimistic right now, if not downright insane.

So I need some help.

I can do a lot of different things, though not particularly well: sew, crochet, knit, mosaic, print, collage, bead, quilt etc:

Anyone have any suggestions for projects? Favourite sites? Anything?

Come on. Help out an indecisive Libran.

Eh?

epiphany

2006-06-05T17:14:00.000+10:00

This morning, riding on the third of my three morning buses, the one where my journey embarrassingly meets that of my students, I had an epiphany.

For a moment, I saw myself from above:

A quiet, odd lady in an excessively big winter coat, knitting, with her hot water bottle unashamedly visible on her lap.

And then it hit me.

I am finally beyond caring what other people think.

How liberating.

where to start

2006-06-04T13:25:00.000+10:00

What I know:

As I write this, I'm sitting in a cafe near my house. It is swarming with Sunday tourists, and I am sitting on the back deck, stealing someone's wireless.

I came here to do work. Of which I currently have a painful, ridiculous amount, being reporting time.

But when I logged on half an hour ago I saw that the school intranet was down. Which means I can't do any of the things I'd planned.

What a bummer.

Not.

So I walked back to my place and I scrambled through papers on my desk until I found my most recent letter to Rosie, which I started last November, and picked up periodically until February, just after we found out about the virtually-no-sperm scenario.

And then I walked back, intending to finish it.

Rosie was my housemate for about three months when I was twenty-two.

She was (is) British, and was doing her big Australia trip, working in bars while she saved to go to Thailand. (I say that with fondness, of course.)

And it was only for three months, but they were big ones. For us both, I think. My younger brother had just been diagnosed with schizophrenia; I moved out of my parent's house; I was single for the first time since adolescence. I was trying to make my own life, really. I talk a bit about it here.

So when she left, we promised to write. And for the most part we have.

Then, as I waited for my coffee just now, I picked up the letter to read over it.

Some excerpts:

#1 - It's been five cycles and nothing has happened yet.

#2 - No progress on the pregnancy front. This makes eight months - a bit worrying.

#3 - There is no point speculating. We will find out soon enough where things stand.

#4 - It is bad. Drastically.

The question is: Where do you go from here?

Where do you start to explain?

It's ok with people who knew all along, even when we were "trying". Updates aren't too hard to manage. They're small pieces: Well, we went to see Dr. Willy on Tuesday, and he said... and then I said...

It's the whole big emotional saga I find difficult.

Where do you start?

Really, guys.

Where?

evil stepmother

2006-06-02T17:49:00.000+10:00

When I met T, my step-daughter was eight and my step-son was four. Now they are fourteen and ten.

Big kids. Easy to deal with.

But they always were.

In fact, I've always considered myself lucky in the whole step-department.

I heard so many horror stories growing up that I was determined from the beginning not to become the evil step-mother. Being younger, I considered myself an easy target for this. But the kids took to me pretty quickly, and I got along with their mother straight away, too - the last dregs of the break-up were long over by the time I came into the picture, and she was happily involved in a long-term relationship.

It was pretty neat and tidy, really.

But it feels less and less neat as time goes on.

Two years after I met them, their mother decided to move to the other side of the country with her partner and the kids.

Now, Australia is a big country.

To give you some idea: We are in the city on this map that is furthest South. They are in the city that is furthest north. There is approximately 3000 kilometers between us. That is over 18oo miles, or the distance between Denver and New York City, or Moscow and London.

It's a long fucking way.

I don't think I really understood the gravity of this at the time. We kind of knew we were powerless against the force of M's careful decision (and it was careful, I'll give her that). We just accepted it, telling ourselves that several good weeks a year was better than every second weekend in some ways.

The trouble is, the more I think about having/not having my own children, the angrier I get about this. Add an inexpliciably no-longer-fertile husband, an impending IVF cycle and many many dollars to the mix, and you have one pretty angry Meg.

On so many levels.

How do I feel about the fact that our maybechild will hardly ever have contact with their half-brother and sister? How do I feel about the fact that both the kids were accidents; that T. used to work and they didn't even really want him to? How do I feel about the fact that A, my step-son, really has no male role model, and the fact that he so clearly needs one? How can I avoid getting pissed off on principle that we have to pay for airfares for T. to go visit next month (Not me. Hell, we can't afford that!) instead of putting it toward IVF treatment? We were certainly not the ones who made the decision to move the kids to the other side of the country!

And how can M. have the nerve to get all touchy when we dare to broach the idea of S, my step-daughter, coming to live with us for a bit in a year or two? Is being far away from your children difficult or something? Yes. Well.

Look.

I could go on.

But I'm probably boring you enough already, and I'm sure I made my point:

That some things just fucking bite.

Grr.

hector

2006-06-01T17:01:00.000+10:00

I was about to write T. off as being a whinger when he complained about giving samples.

Such a small role, really.

And then I found out what they're going to do to Hector the Super-Sperm:

Not only will they bonk him over the head so they can pick him up, but apparently they are also going to cut his little tail off.

Poor Hector.

But then, at least T. can say it's happening outside his body.

You know?

There is a difference.

fertility friend

2006-05-30T19:29:00.000+10:00

The decision is a no-brainer of course.

I'm not going to renew my Fertility Friend VIP membership now, am I?

I have been popping in there every so often - I must admit - just to see where in my cycle I am. But otherwise, I have been actively avoiding it, and its sickening insipid pink and purple colour scheme.

Yes. Even the colours make me depressed.

They remind me.

This was my worst month there; the most obsessive. I was determined it would work that time. I even bought bulk opk's off the internet, and you can see the one sad little negative pregancy test there on 12dpo too.

I feel sorry for that Meg. Her hope just seems so pathetic.

And I don't mean pathetic like you-totally-suck pathetic. I mean like Pathos; like the real sense of the word.

What makes it so pathetic is the fact that she didn't know that none of it was going to work. She just woke up every morning and whacked that thermometer under her tongue, assuming it would work eventually, justifying the fact that it didn't.

She. She.

I just realised I am writing in the third person.

It really does seem like another life.

baby think-it-over

2006-05-29T20:02:00.000+10:00

I know.

I've spent the last few months advocating telling people about the great artificial get-knocked-up project.

And there are advantages, really there are.

But aside from the obvious downsides (such as obnoxious middle-aged bachelor colleagues making comments like: Why don't you have an affair? That'd do the job), the other downside is that people ask you to babysit not out of the goodness of your heart, but as some kind of real live Baby Think-It-Over.

As if they're doing you a favour, not the other way around.

So it was in this spirit that I found myself with child on Saturday night.

With a six-month-old.

It seemed all eyes were on Meg as Baby S. was reverently passed over at 7pm: Will she make it through the night? Will she crack? Will she complain when she changes the dirty nappy? Will she get up at 3am to answer tiny cries? Will the reality of baby just be too much for our hopeful mother-to-be-to-be?

Ah, so many questions.

Not mine, of course.

I knew I'd be fine.

Ultimately.

And I was.

I get frustrated when people imply that I don't know what's coming to me; that if I did, somehow, I would suddenly, miraculously change my mind about all this.

Am I expected to know what it's like to have a new baby when I've never had one? Am I expected to come into motherhood ready? Custom-made mother? Off the rack?

Cause does anyone? Really?

I challenge all my critics - and sometimes I feel there are many - to find one new first-time mother who isn't bumbling around in the dark, trying to do her best. Who isn't just merely functioning, feeling her way.

I don't see why I should be expected to be any different, just because I've had so much longer to prepare than many other lucky people.

So much bloody longer to prepare.

update post

2006-05-25T19:32:00.000+10:00

Today it occurred to me the number of things I've half-mentioned over the last few weeks, and I felt compelled to provide a quick update.

So here you go, patient readers. An update.

* In the end, I got my own way on the staffroom drama. Just shows you that there's nothing like a car accident to convince your superiors that you've been going crazy. Bad part of this is... uh... they know you've been going crazy. This is a real bummer. I like to be as composed as possible in my real life (A depressingly British trait - no offence anyone - that seems to be my genetic legacy), and it freaks me out to have spilled all over the place in public.

*On this front, many of my students saw my hysterical you-killed-my-baby abuse of the other drivers through the bus window the other day: Oh, Miss! You went CRAZY! They were lucky you didn't have any golf clubs! said one of my year 7 students. (*SIGH*)

*I have almost been enjoying the bus rides. No, actually I have been enjoying the bus rides. The morning bus anyway, when everything is dark and cold and silent, and the mist curls itself along the road. I have been downloading ABC Radio documentaries (Our national Broadcaster, for my international friends) and actually making use of my iPod.

*Our savings seem to have gone to shit, but we did get a $12,500 credit card. (I can't quite believe it myself; banks are so irresponsible!)

*We have finally (I think) finished all the thousands of tests that are legally required before we can start the cycle. Our next appointment with Dr Willy is on Tuesday and he will activate us then (sounds a little menacing, doesn't it?) I will start on the pill at the start of my next period.

*We went to the Nurses' Seminar on Tuesday, where many couples walked in awkwardly, avoided eye contact with one another, and fumbled with Gonal F pens. I was amazed how little everyone seemed to know about how the whole thing works. Not that I'm yet an expert or anything. But still, you gotta google.

*And know what else? It finally feels real. I'm pumped.

amusement

2006-05-24T20:25:00.000+10:00

I'm not sure about the moral/legal implications of what I'm about to do (especially given the reasons why this was submitted), but this amused me so much that I just had to share it with you all.

I just couldn't resist.

Remember the plagiarised poetry incident a week or two ago?

Here is one of the pieces I received back:

Plagiarism.
A crime that one cannot afford to commit.
Here I am in my cell
pounding helplessly on the solid mortar for the sake of solace.
Being jailed is a time to regain composure and sustain mental sanity.

A beacon of light
The brightness and intensity of the blazing sun.
Abruptly, a wise teacher appeared from the centre of the brilliance,
reminding me once again
of the spiteful consequences of stealing.

How could I have been so dim-witted to engrave a piece of work
and call it my own?
I must attempt to forget my criminal history and edge myself back into the real world.

As hard as I try, I cannot erase the immoral images of the cold dark prison cell,
clothed in black and white stripes
surviving on stale bread and cheese.
How can one endure life when an undying guilt is forever carved into their skin?

The consequences of plagiarism
I will remember for eternity.

sans car

2006-05-22T21:20:00.000+10:00

Sometimes I think I should just be one of those women who doesn't do driving. (I have an aunt who's one of these. Though I never got a clear answer about why.)

Fact is, I am just a crap driver.

I have had three as close to major as you get without people getting hurt accidents and countless mini-bingles with poles and the like. I'm not exaggerating either. I really have lost count.

I am surprised anyone will even insure me.

T. is so used to it, that this afternoon, he didn't even really get mad. Instead, he said: Oh, you were about due for one, and gave me a hug.

And I needed it.

I was a frightful sight.

I was hysterical. Absolutely hysterical.

I just remember pointing at the remains of the car and screaming (yes, literally screaming) about how I am about to do IVF and we can't afford this shit and something to the effect of: thanks a fucking lot, this is my chance to be a mother do you understand this is my mother-fucking baby you have just destroyed you have just killed my child.

I might have been going a bit overboard of course.

But still.

Being sans car is hardly an ideal state of affairs right now.

So.

Moral of the story is:

The little red hatchback is gone.

Goodbye little red hatchback. Such a long, tenacious life you led.

And then I find myself sitting here faced with the prospect of trying to think about how this could possibly be a good thing.

So ok.

Here we go:

Number 1: I am off the road. This is blessing in itself, I would say

Number 2: The car was a piece of crap anyway (well, it was after four years of me). It wasn't far from death, and we had been spending a lot of money just keeping it on the road

Number 3: We will spend less on petrol/rego/insurance and help the planet by using less of its precious natural resources (!)

Number 4: I can get lots of marking done on public transport that I would otherwise procrastinate (like now)

Number 5: I will now have to wait for buses in the cold, which means I will have a reason to wear all the many retro winter coats that I have collected over the years.

And I'm not sure that makes up for it.

But it's going to have to do.

worse.

2006-05-22T18:13:00.000+10:00

Just when you think things couldn't possibly get any worse, they do.

I just wrote my car off at the back of a three-car pile-up.

photograph

2006-05-21T18:01:00.000+10:00

I saw this photograph for the first time last night.

And it disturbs me.

Big time.

It is so much like a Bill Henson image.

Except it's me.

A very very messed up, eighteen-year-old me.

A me that I had forgotten.

administrivia

2006-05-20T14:03:00.000+10:00

More on Cyclesista.

Lut C has suggested that cyclesista might be best organised as a team blog, and I am tending to agree, being engaged as I currently am in the good fight against my right wing fascist school administration.

Not to mention important prepatory appointments with friendly ultrasound wands and the like.

So.

I just wondered if any of you were interested in being part of the admin team? (Sounds very important, yes?)

Effectively this would mean that I would put you on the front page of Cyclesista as one of a number of people who could be contacted about the blog, and you would let people know the site is out there and have access to all the Blogger admin tasks such as editing posts etc.

And probably other stuff that I am way too much of a newbie to even conceive of.

Let me know.

teacher poem

2006-05-20T09:04:00.000+10:00

sometimes against you
i am dulled as utility steel,
fighting redundancy
with the empty clanging
of my will;

your twenty-five egos
as they scour thin
my studied veneer
of not caring.

i find myself braced
by the torch spit of
yellow cruelty:

forgetting adolescence
with its messy edges

its raw, sad wreckage.

crappest year ever

2006-05-19T18:52:00.000+10:00

It's official.

I am having the crappest year ever.

This year - 2006 - will be forever etched in my memory as the year that sucked absolute arse.

The drama is just so never-ending that I almost have to laugh.

Seriously.

So. Workplace restructures. A joy, aren't they? Especially when you get caught right in the middle of them when you're just about to start IVF treatment (which the bosses know), and find yourself moved into a new office where you don't know anyone at all, ostracised entirely from your existing support network (who are all going to be into a different new office, without you.)

And this is happening in less than a week. I was informed yesterday that I would be on my own.

It might sound trivial. But we are a close little bunch in my office, we are. We have a soup club, a sandwich club, a milk club. My colleagues are pretty much the only reason I have been able to function at work throughout this crappest of years. I don't know how I would have coped with things if they weren't around me every day. I am blessed having these people around me.

Was blessed.

I have spent the last two days having temper tantrums about it. I am fucking pissed off. I have had screaming tearful arguments with my superiors. I have badmouthed the school's administration to everyone I can think of. Half the staff in the school are incensed on my behalf.

Because you just can't treat your staff like that.

They know I need my people right now.

They just don't care.

project

2006-05-17T18:20:00.000+10:00

So I was driving home this afternoon, and I was thinking:

There are quite a few fantastic infertility blogrolls out there in the blogosphere, but none of them tell us who is cycling and when.

And then I thought to myself: I reckon it would be good to know.

So I decided to try to do a good deed. I decided to play mobiliser of on-line community and set up a blog that does just that.

It is here.

At http://cyclesista.blogspot.com

I was thinking that I could just make one main post each month; that I would just keep editing it as was necessary. And people could just email me and tell me when they are cycling and what kind of cycle it is and I could add a link to their blog.

And then - and this is the most important bit of all - everyone will know where to send the love.

What do you reckon, everyone?

Could it work?

Or am I just thinking way too big again?

soapbox

2006-05-15T18:20:00.000+10:00

Sometimes I wonder about the Internet.

Don’t you think it all just seems a little too convenient?

Example 1:

A year or so ago, my mother-in-law gave me a 1940s knitting machine. A big old iron thing; and if you swish it back and forth it will knit a row. It was great. But I was stuffed if I could work out how to use it. In fact, she couldn’t even remember herself.

Enter the Internet -

I managed to trace a copy of the manual from an obscure craft company in Somewhere, Canada.

Example 2:

At least ten years ago, my husband watched an obscure 1980s Russian film on late night television. For some reason, he remembered it as the best film he ever saw. All he could recall was that in one gruelling scene, a small child is forced to watch a dying horse (sounds pleasant doesn’t it?)

Enter the Internet -

Googling various configurations of the terms Russian, film, horse, death, war, child, and swamp allowed him to trace himself a copy from Dodgyville, Singapore.

So you see.

I love the Internet as much as the next person.

But something’s not right.

Because yesterday, marking middle school assignments, I realised I was experiencing my annual dose of Mass Plagiarism.

It usually happens about once a year, when my vigilance from the last episode has worn off. I find myself giving the kids a little bit of credit, and setting them an assignment that doesn’t build in all sorts of plagiarism safeguards. Usually it is something uninventive and innocuous, such as a poetry anthology or chapter summaries. (I know, I wouldn’t particularly want to do those assignments either, but it can’t all be whizz-bang, can it?)

And when I get it back, I realise there’s no point even looking at most of them.

So today I sent an email to the level co-ordinator, explaining to her that several students would be getting a zero for their most recent assignment.

And what happened?

She informed me that they would not be getting a zero, but would be given, instead, an opportunity to resubmit the work.

Free of penalty, presumably.

Because Lord knows, plagiarism is not a serious issue.

No.

Not at all.

In fact, who cares about giving credit to the people who really produced anything, when their work is so freely and wantonly being flashed all over the Internet?

Hmm.

There’s something wrong here, folks.

Does knowledge become less valuable when it is so freely available?

Perhaps it does.

After all, think of the pirate market. Think of all those games, mp3s, programs, movies that are downloaded every day by people all over the world.

And I’m as guilty as the next person: I was on a P2P network just yesterday, downloading those meditation tracks I promised myself. Do any of them credit anyone for their hard work?

Of course not.

No, they were titled things like: Guardian Angle Meditationn, nostressmeditation4 and deep relaxation by anonymous male.

How I wish I was joking.

Is it any surprise that kids think plagiarism is ok when the Internet values so little; makes so many things free?

It’s all just a little too easy.

A little too convenient.

.

2006-05-12T18:14:00.000+10:00

I feel I owe you all a coherent post, and I have been trying to write it for several hours.

But I don't know where to start.

R's funeral was today. It was awful. Inexpressably, hideously, cruelly awful. I don't know how to even begin to describe it: How it was to see the casket as it passed me, the unbearable sadness of the photos of him as a six-year-old in a gold paper crown.

And I could tell you now all the things I wish I could've said or done to change things. All the things I regret. But as my husband (beautiful and supportive as ever) said to me this afternoon when he held me shaking: Everyone who cared about him will be thinking those things, Meg. It doesn't mean they're true.

And I did care about R.

All you teachers out there will understand this:

R. was different.

Number one, he was physically very different, as a result of a genetic condition he was born with. He also had a severe visual impairment that made reading and writing extremely difficult for him.

But number 2, R. had been difficult. In the past anyway. Not just run-of-the-mill difficult, but serious difficult. Offensive, dangerous difficult. Hostile, angry, even disturbed. And we don't have a hell of a lot of those kids at my school.

Fortunately, by the time I knew him, he had mellowed out. He had "found God" - in fact was a leader at a local evangelical church- and was vehemently promoting drug use as a consciousness-expander amongst his peers.

It sounds funny, but he really was.

R. was a real character.

And I was really fond of him. My mum has called it a special interest. And she is right. R was very opinionated, and highly articulate and intelligent. He constantly challenged both me and his peers on our ideas about the text or the issue being studied. He made our English classes interesting, bursting out as he did with his strong, sometimes out-there ideas. Creating delicious argument among kids who are so used to sitting silently and accepting.

R. was truly, truly one of a kind. You don't forget kids like that.

Instead, you just wish you had the time to thank them.

So there it is, I guess, out in the internet, his safe place:

Thank you, R.

Thank you so much.

recover

2006-05-11T15:52:00.000+10:00

Things I will do this weekend to recover my mental health
By Meg

1. Download some poxy guided meditation tracks

2. Watch at one trashy four hour mini series without moving from the couch

3. Buy a bottle of expensive smelly stuff and have a bath so hot it almost makes me faint.

4. Crochet that scarf I've been meaning to make

5. Make cookies

6. Write lists until I feel like things are a little more under control.

good news

2006-05-10T14:52:00.001+10:00

Some good news for a change:

Today some colleagues and I got a regional teaching award for a unit we developed together.

It was nice.

not all ok

2006-05-09T18:17:00.000+10:00

I finally gave in this afternoon and tried to talk to someone.

And I hated it. I felt contrived. I felt dramatic. I felt like I was exploiting this tragedy. I felt like I have no right to need counselling. I felt like I was being a pathetic, self-pitying whinger.

And so I pretty much froze up.

I know they were trying to help. But there's nothing anyone can tell me that I don't already know. I can be my own counsellor. All I need to do is look in the mirror and repeat the arguments to myself:

I know that no one ends their life just because of an exam. I know that I couldn't have helped him when he asked me - it wouldn't have been fair. I know that my teaching, or infertility-distracted lack thereof, would not have been a make or break factor in his decision. I know that there so many other, bigger reasons.

And I also know I would probably be dealing with it better if I didn't have so many other things on my mind.

Which is part of the problem I guess.

Have you ever felt like you just needed to cry? But that you just couldn't get it physically out of you? Instead, you function. I use that expression Medicating Busy-ness.

You write lists. You walk around with a tight ball inside your throat. You find yourself momentarily staring at the wall. You have random outbursts when someone bumps into you in the hall, or you realise you have run out of milk, or you can't find the CD player in the staffroom, like happened to me today.

That's where I've been at. Mostly ok, I guess. But not all. And not always.

Zombie-land.

And no, I don't want to talk about it.

gone (drunken post #1)

2006-05-07T18:32:00.000+10:00

Dear K.

Re: this.

I cried all the way home this afternoon, grieving our friendship.

Did you blow it off, every time I called? Did you say to yourself: Next week we'll catch up - Meg won't care? She knows how busy I am right now.

You were wrong. I didn't know.

Every time you broke plans with me and I told myself you were just tied up in your own world, what I was really thinking was: If she calls, she cares.

Yet you showed me, again and again, that you didn't.

Where were you when I needed you? Because I made plans with you, over and over and you just kept on saying: Meg, I am just really tired/busy/hung over tonight, and for some reason I was meant to accept that when the fact of the matter was:

I needed you, fuck K, I really needed you.

But you could not even find the time to be there. And everything, everything else in your life, was more important than me, even when I tried to make it right again.

And you know what?

It breaks my heart, but I'm not sure I can find a way to forgive that.

Love Meg x

i would explain

2006-05-06T17:48:00.000+10:00

how when the assistant principal called me on thursday i knew it could not be good that she called his death unexpected and it wasn't not to me

how no one wanted to use the s word not even the school psychologist who put a pile of pamphlets on the table and told us that we needed the three t's today - talking touch and tears and she was so excited to be finally busy and useful that i wanted to punch her in the face

how i had his work on my desk and i had to look at it and he only wrote three sentences and then i found out that tuesdays exam was his last straw and that he had tried tuesday night after the exam but it didnt work and no one had done anything

how then i remembered how he had put up his hand and i had walked over to him and he said to me what if i don't get it and i said do what you can and i just blew it off because i thought it was his own fault for not preparing and how he looked so helpless and so desperate and i looked across later and he was slumped in his seat and i didn't do anything

how i knew the question was too hard how i didn't fight hard enough to change it and if i wasn't so distracted about the ivf maybe i would've had more of an eye on my job because i have been a crap teacher lately and i knew it

how my brain says no one does this because they fail an exam and that he was so disturbed that i had made jokes to my husband and my mother about him being like the trench coat mafia and i know its not my fault but

how i was even afraid of him for the first couple of weeks and god i am so sorry i am an adult i am supposed to be bigger than that

how he was so different and so striking and sometimes so hostile and there is no friends to grieve him and how on the camp he asked to be in my group and tried so hard to be friendly tried so hard to be changed

how i had to tell some of my colleagues and i was so conscious of my face and i didn't know what to do with it when they broke down and i patted them on the shoulder

how i wonder will they put up a poster in the office and put up flowers and will i have to do a spread in the school magazine so all the kids can pretend as if they liked him as if they were his best mate

how i feel like i cannot should not be upset because god his poor family, his cheerful brother i cannot even imagine what they are going through but still all your words of support in my comments are appreciated because it is hard anyway

and how i know that nothing i could've said would have changed all the hidden angry sadness of his nineteen years

but how i wish i had said it anyway

.

2006-05-04T22:59:00.000+10:00

this afternoon
one of my students
committed suicide.

ten things i hate

2006-05-03T15:38:00.000+10:00

(Otherwise entitled "List-making: An easy solution to afternoon crabbiness")
(Otherwise entitled "How to alienate readers")

By Meg

1. When two or more attention-seeking, drunken girls kiss each other on reality TV shows like the vile, disgusting Big Brother 06. This seriously pisses me off. Since when does being a real lesbian have anything at all to do with mens' fantasies?

2. Grown women who collect teddies. Worse still, grown women with bumper stickers that say "When all else fails, hug your teddy." What is with this??

3. Australian patriotism in all its forms, especially if it looks like this (and including anyone who uses the words battler, larrikin or mateship).

4. Tourist who drive down the mountain at 40 kms an hour, eye-balling our houses with a string of traffic behind them.

5. High heel shoes with ankle straps. Not only skanky and Mariah Carey-ish, but unflattering too.

6. Abrasively loud and zany Morning Show radio DJs. I just can't handle it that early in the morning; it's offensive.

7. Impulse body sprays (*shudder*). Traumatic memories of being trapped, suffocating, in the Phys Ed. change rooms in early high school.

8. MSN abbreviations outside of MSN (or even inside it to be honest). Do you know how many kids are so used to writing the letter "u" instead of the word "you" that they even submit their English assignments like that? It's shameful. Honestly, some of these abbreviations are so bizarre they aren't even legible.

9. Jessica Simpson.

10. People who leave the dishwater to go cold in the sink. There is nothing worse than putting your hand into cold, soapy, scummy water to pull out a plug. Someone in my office has been doing this the last week or two. I am considering leaving a mean note.

in senior school

2006-05-02T19:29:00.000+10:00

I just got home from work, and I'm pissed.

I have just spent almost three hours pacing up and down a room filled final year students who were completing an exam. It was so boring. The most interesting thing I got to see in that time was the kids shaking their hands in the air to get rid of the writing cramps. That was my visual stimuli for the afternoon.

Welcome to my life.

Picture this:

You are calmly eating your lunch with your colleagues. A near-hysterical seventeen-year-old in a red senior school jumper (as opposed to blue - elite, yes?) appears in the doorway, waving a fat wad of paper at you.

Please can I see you, miss? Now?

You sigh a deep sigh. You have become resigned to this. It happens once a week on average, after all. You know exactly how it is going to end. You will look over the student's work; you will point out their errors, give them encouraging suggestions. They will look at you blankly. You will repeat these suggestions in different words.

If you are lucky, you will see the gleam of recognition shining back at you (We live for this. Sad, isn't it?) Most likely, however, the student will simply stare at the page, tears welling in their eyes.

I'm just really stressed out, they might say. My mum and dad will kill me if I don't do well this year.

At this point, you tell them that the stress is not going to help them study.

Try to relax, you say. This isn't the most important thing on earth.

You have several anecdotes to use in this situation. You think back, try to remember if you've used any of them with this particular student already. As relevant and/or appropriate, you repeat one or more of the following:

1. When you finished high school, at least six of your friends got into Engineering degrees. By the end of the first year of the course, none of them were still studying.

2. Your brother quit school when he was fourteen, and did an electrical apprenticeship. He makes double what you do, and you went to university.

3. You know someone (actually your friend's partner's friend - quite a degree of seperation - but they don't need to know that) who wanted to be a doctor, but didn't get in, so they did a science degree. When they had finished that, they reapplied for Medicine, and now they really are a doctor.

4. You didn't originally want to be a teacher (they are surprised by this, for some reason). In fact, it was something you decided in my mid-twenties. Most of your friends did not wind up doing what they wanted to do when they were seventeen.

Hopefully, the above works to placate said student. Usually one of them does, as long as you give a clear explanation of the moral.

For some reason, they can't always figure that bit out for themselves.

They're very short-sighted.

Poor little buggers.

Professor Willy #3

2006-05-01T17:52:00.000+10:00

Today at appointment #3 I think Professor Willy tried to make a joke.

He must be warming to us.

Professor Willy: So how many embryos have you decided to transfer?
Me: Oh, we decided no more than one.
Professor Willy: Well, it wouldn't be less than one, would it?

And then he looked at me for a laugh.

Unfortunately I hadn't realised he was joking.

He's that type.

Our GP says Professor Willy's a genius - but I'm left to imply that this means he is cold and aloof and will not make even the most rudimentary attempts to be reassuring. I know he does not respond well to pushy internet-educated women who take up his time by asking what a high-powered field is when he could be off making important research discoveries.

But as long as he makes us a baby, right?

It's just that he seems to be taking his time about it. There is simply very little news. My tests came back ok. My husband - although he does not have testicular cancer according to his ultrasound (phew) - still has very little sperm. We still don't entirely know why. And Professor Willy assures us that we will probably never really know.

Blah.

We knew that.

I can't believe how long it's taking just to get started. We have spent thousands of dollars in medical bills already, and nothing has even happened. Its just been tests, tests and more tests.

But I have to say, I did get my prescription for the Pill today, for a possible July cycle.

And I still can't quite get over it:

That's some weird kind of progress.

forgetting possibility

2006-04-30T14:50:00.000+10:00

I understand that to complain about aging when I am only twenty-eight years old might be a little irritating to many readers.

Let me try and justify myself.

I know I'm still a young person. I know these are only the first of the wrinkles (and it's really just a few around my eyes at this stage). I know this whole aging thing is going to start coming at me thicker and faster as time passes and that I will look back in a few years or more and want to punch myself for even thinking I was starting to get old when I was only in my goddamn twenties. Look, I know that.

But the thing you have to remember is: I've never aged before.

This is it - the first time.

I used to be able to eat what I wanted, and never put weight on my stomach. I used to be able to stay out drinking until 4am and still function the next morning. My lips used to be red enough naturally to get away with not wearing lipstick. Smoking two packs of Peter Stuyvesants a day didn't matter before; I was going to quit when I got older.

It's kinda scary.

Really it is.

And last night I caught up with a couple that I haven't seen since I was about twenty-one. Maybe twenty-two.

At the most.

Actually, I ran into them in the supermarket a few weeks ago; turns out they did the Hills Exodus not long after we did. To be honest, I'm quite amazed that it's taken so long to cross paths with them - they only live about a kilometre up the road. But I thought to myself: there's probably a reason for that, and their phone number promptly found it's way into the loose papers in the bottom of the drawer.

But they called. And last night I went out with them for a drink.

These people haven't seen me since I stopped wearing platform sneakers and psychedelic print babydoll dresses. A time in my life that my friend Adam refers to as my Fitzroy's Darling phase. When I was running poetry events and doing festivals and was so convinced of my own immortal alternative coolness that I think it could have actually been considered a mental health issue.

Obviously, such things are no longer. And that's probably a good thing, of course. But last night, after a few five-dollar glasses of bad sparkling white, I couldn't help being a little nostalgic for those times.

Why?

It wasn't because I was thinner / less wrinkled / had redder lips / anything else I listed above.

No, it wasn't that.

This goes beyond my complaints about aging.

What I was nostalgic for was the sense of possibility I felt back then. When the future was some dark sparkling unknown, and all the decisions were for later. And none of them mattered because I was hovering in a warm blackness outside of time, filled with visions of all the different things I might still do.

That was the real freedom.

And so this afternoon, I wonder: When did that feeling go away?

And more to the point: why did it?

city

2006-04-29T19:06:00.000+10:00

renters

2006-04-28T16:09:00.000+10:00

When I got home from work, it had just appeared.

Reckon if we owned our house (rather than being lowly renters) someone would have dared to come and shove a whopping great two-metre advertising billboard in our front yard without even asking?

Nah, I didn't think so.

Grr.

weird things

2006-04-27T20:59:00.000+10:00

Sarah! Beagle! I don’t think I know six more bloggers that haven’t been tagged yet!

But here you go. I will do this part.

*SIGH*

Weird Things.
By Meg.

1. I am a trichotillomaniac. What that means is I pull my hair out. Yep. I literally give myself bald patches. Apparently it’s a mild form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. This started when I was about 16 and I made the very angsty attention-seeking gesture of shaving my head. As it grew back, I started pulling out any uneven strands I could find, and it just never stopped. When I get stressed, I have to get my hair cut specifically to hide the missing clumps.

2. I tried to learn the guitar for eight months last year because of long-standing ambitions to be a country rock singer a la Casey Chambers. It didn’t get real far though. I stopped as soon as we got to bar chords; my hands just weren't strong enough.

3. I got arrested a few weeks ago, for drink driving. I got pulled over by the police, and blew double the legal limit after only one drink (really) so they put me in a divvy van and took me to the station, where I was interviewed in a holding cell. When they tested me again half an hour later, the machine said there was zero alcohol in my system. The police told me the original number was just because of mouth alcohol. It was all very traumatic.

4. I watch the fifteen-year-old Australian mini-series Brides of Christ nearly every school holidays, and I'm not even a catholic.

5. I used to work at a Home (not like a "can't wait to get home" home, but a "crazy people live here" home), and one of the residents - a schizophrenic - developed a delusion that he was married to me. He followed me around for months, staring, and one day he even asked me to give him a blow job. It was kinda scary and gross.

6. I have had the first verse of Barbara Streisand's Memories in my head off and on for two and half years: Memories / Like the corners of my mind / Misty water-colour memories / Of the way we were.

exposed

2006-04-25T21:06:00.000+10:00

Without wanting to offend anyone, I have been having a hard time working out why so many women want to keep their infertility experiences a secret. Why they are prepared to sit through so many painful but innocent questions, fume silently as other women tell long, loud stories about their pregnancies.

For me, it has seemed so much easier to tell people. As many as possible, actually.

Why?

I never mind when they ask about it, for one. I could personally tell the same story about sixty times and not have the damn thing off my chest: and then we went to the specialist, and he said...

Secondly, if they are the type to not ask - if it makes them feel uncomfortable - I find it gratifying, in a sadistic way, to force them to listen. Fuck, we are the ones who have to go through this shit. It's hardly going to hurt them to have to merely hear about it.

And third of all: Why should we perpetuate the taboo surrounding infertility and IVF? Isn't the best way to make people get it to take away all the shame and secrecy?

So this is what I had been thinking.

But then, I went for dinner at my parents tonight. First thing my mum said when I came in:

Tell me, Meg. Who were the special people who showed up on Saturday? Sorry, I read your blog.

Well.

At this, I just cut sick right off the bat, as we say in Australia.

Look, it wasn't so much that she mentioned the blog In Real Life. She's done that before. And to be honest, it is my own silly fault for telling her about it. But ultimately, I made that decision. I can deal with that. I'm happy to answer her questions. Whatever.

But not in front of three other people.

Three.

Three people who didn't know about the blog. And who I would never have told myself, because it would have made (ie. will make, does make) me feel exposed and invaded and completely helpless. Because I need to have control over something as intimate as this.

Kinda like the women who don't want other people to know about their IVF cycles, I guess.

Yeah. Kinda.

the inner child room

2006-04-24T20:03:00.000+10:00

This is a picture of my Inner Child Room.

In the Inner Child Room is every shiny, baubly piece of junk that I would have wanted as a kid, but that my mother was too tasteful to let me have.

The Inner Child Room contains, for example, the following objects:

1. A giant Flower Fairies poster
2. Tin foil stars
3. A snowstorm with a unicorn inside it
4. A very pink collage made from home decorating magazines
5. Lots of little perfume bottles (even though I never wear perfume)
6. A flashing psychedelic Jesus lamp
7. A zebra-print bedhead

I cannot tell you how much I love my Inner Child Room. I worked hard to make it so cheerful and tacky; so gratifying. I spent many hours in Two-dollar Shops searching for just the right glittery plaster figurines.

It's making me feel better just thinking about it.

My recommendation: Tomorrow go and buy yourself one of those cheap musical jewellery boxes with a spinning ballerina inside.

Put it in the spare room, like I do.

No one ever has to see it there.

Except you.

re: chestnut day

2006-04-23T16:31:00.000+10:00

I hate being a host.

I always have.

It's not because I don't like to organise parties, or cook for them, or have people in my home. I like those parts of it.

What I hate is the hour or so before anyone arrives. The way I inevitably find myself filled with a kind of adolescent dread that no one will come. That no one likes me. That I will be left crying in the closet like Jennifer Garner in Suddenly Thirty (yes, I have seen it. I'm so ashamed) while every person I know goes off and does whatever they considered more fun than me.

It's an irrational, stupid fear. But for some reason it gets me every time.

I never ever have a party on my birthday for these reasons. Add birthday reflectiveness to this mix, and you have a lethal combination.

So you can imagine the state I was in yesterday at 2pm (two hours after the time the invitation loosely, relaxedly suggested) when not one person had arrived to come and harvest chestnuts with us.

I started drinking early. I sent some enquiring text messages. I made phone calls: My closest friends were on their way. That was the important thing.

But the question was out there.

Where was everyone else I invited?

The truth is, folks, I don't know where they were.

And the better part of me says I don't care.

After all, I'm no longer eighteen years old and drinking beer in a parents' garage. I'm no longer in my early twenties, running around the city at 3am or spending every night at poetry readings. We collect friends at all these different phases in our lives, but how many of them stay around beyond that one particular moment?

Do we even want them to?

It seems like such a cruel thing to do to sit down with yourself and ruthlessly cull friends as if they were daisy petals: This one stays, this one goes. But I've been feeling lately as if that's kinda where I'm at.

Perhaps it's something that needs to be done every few years.

Because yesterday afternoon - even if it sounds unbearably corny - the people that really mattered were there.

The people I really value in my life as it is and as I want it to be.

In the here and the now.

yesterday

2006-04-23T09:43:00.000+10:00

those who can't do, teach?

2006-04-21T16:09:00.000+10:00

It happens around once a year at around this time.

Summer ends. It gets windy. A tree falls on the phone lines. Meg is without a phone for a number of days.

Uh-oh. No dial-up.

Turns out there's a downside to living in a forest.

There hasn't been a great deal happening though, I must say. I had parent/teacher night (Reminding me, yet again, that I will never delude myself about my own child's academic potential.) Felix appeared with mysterious injuries to his paw. I watched a crime show for the first time in months.

The end?

Um.

Yes.

To be honest, It was pretty sad to observe myself trying to function without internet access.

I mean, I knew I was addictive - I smoked at least thirty cigarettes a day until about two months ago (Go me for quitting! Rah!) - but I didn't know I was addictive about this.

I had no idea.

Look. Really. Here is how badly I wanted to sit down and blog my life away: I even considered designing a unit of classwork based around Blogger so I could ask the tech-boys at school to unblock the site without looking suspicious.

Pathetic? Maybe.

But then, I'm writing again, aren't I?

And once, in my young person's naivety, I considered that a writer was what I was going to be.

Remember that expression?

Going. To. Be.

With two Year 12 English classes, I still hear it a lot.

Unfortunately.

just cause

2006-04-17T17:18:00.000+10:00

Every so often, someone asks me: Why do you want to have a baby?

I don't think they mean to be rude. I think mostly they're just curious.

But it's not an easy one to answer. Often Just Do has to suffice, or Cause, or worse - Not sure.

I can be very inarticulate at times.

But then, how can you explain something that is so big that it would just sound absurd if you tried to explain it in the context of every-day conversation?

Oh, you know how it is... Life, Death, Love, Eternity.

Shit like that.

Somehow I can't imagine it.

Ideas, anyone?

prank

2006-04-16T19:35:00.000+10:00

Remember prank phone calls?

I made them as a teenager. Most of us did, right?

The difference was, mine were annoying and harmless.

Last night, between 2:30 and 4am we got some basic hang-up pranks. But after we took the phone off the hook, they started leaving messages:

Yes, they swore.
Yes, they swore at us.
Yes, they used a creepy male Scream voice.
Yes, they used our names.

(Though I imagine they just got them from the answering machine message)

I am trying hard to laugh about it. But it wasn’t very funny.

In fact, it kind of scared me, and I have spent most of today trying to think of comebacks should they call back again tonight. I even considered changing the message on the answering machine in order to address them directly.

I know I really shouldn't let some drunk teenage fuckwits get the better of me, but I actually feel really invaded.

Why would somebody do this? Sure, I understand the mentality of the Gotcha Call – infantile as it is – and I can even comprehend the sadistic amusement of getting someone out of bed at that hour of the morning.

But why would you dial a random number and threaten people you don’t even know?

What is fun about that?

my outdoor type

2006-04-15T17:46:00.001+10:00

There's a song by mid-nineties band The Lemonheads called I lied about being the outdoor type.

I identify with it wholly.

To be fair, though, I didn't know I was lying. I just thought I was exaggerating a little. When T. and I went on our first real date - a picnic in the country - I oohed and aahed over the little red and white toadstools.

Because I do like Nature. As a concept.

That is, I love driving through it, looking at it and sitting on a rug in it. I like drinking tea from a thermos in it.

I do not like walking through it for extended periods of time, especially on unpaved tracks. I do not like the bottom of my freshly-washed jeans being soaked with mud. I do not like having to climb over slippery, mouldy logs. I do not like slipping over on fungus-covered bark, or having to beat my way through dark, wet, stringy, disgusting undergrowth.

Unfortunately, this is what outdoor excursions with T. invariably become.

This morning I made the foolish mistake of thinking to myself: Hey, it's Easter Saturday. Let's make like the tourists and do a walk then have Devonshire Tea.

I had a pleasant granny-walk in mind. Quiet. Gentle. Harmless. Enjoyable.

And that's how it began. As you can see above.

However, it didn't take long for me to be suckered into one of T's inevitable shortcuts, a frightening journey into the dark interior of the forest that involved all of the above things, and more.

It was like the bottom of the ocean in there.

It was like the Blair Witch Project.

It was creepy and wrong.

And when finally, after an hour or so, we found our miraculous way out of that wet purgatory, T. turned to me and said:

Remember how you love my adventurous spirit?

Lucky for him, I almost could.

That's how relieved I was.

ben the cat

2006-04-14T19:26:00.000+10:00

twisted logic

2006-04-13T19:23:00.000+10:00

So I went to have my hair cut today.

My hairdresser is twelve weeks pregnant.

No, I don't mind. Really, it wasn't too bad an introduction to the delights of Pregnacy News for the Infertile; that delightful category I have too recently come to place myself in.

I didn't have to smile, bare-toothed, and barely restraining my malice while she told me how terrible the morning sickness was.

Because she worked bloody hard for this pregnancy. Three years worth of hard work, in fact. And several months of hormones. In fact, she told me she felt bad about telling me, cause I know how you feel, love.

And that made it ok. Like in some part of my twisted brain - for some reason - her suffering means she deserves it.

Which obviously follows that those who get pregnant naturally and quickly do not deserve it.

Which means that natural pregnacies are less valuable.

Ahem.

Well.

Something here is not right.

Monitor me, friends:

I think I am about two weeks away from bitter and twisted.

casual dress day

2006-04-12T17:47:00.000+10:00

The more cycnical teachers among us like to say: Casual dress means casual minds.

Perhaps they're right.

I however, have much more urgent questions regarding Casual Dress Day:

Why, girls, why?

What is with these 1980's black bogan jeans they are all wearing? What do the girls think when they look in the mirror? Hmm, these spray on jeans really flatter my arse?

I don't get it. No one, and I mean NO ONE, looks good in these things.

Am I just getting old or is this the worse fashion revival ever?

hard wishes for tristan

2006-04-11T20:11:00.000+10:00

My Dearest Tristan,

I checked in this morning, wishing so hard - God, so, so hard - to see those little green men for you.

And then, when I saw them, I found myself crying. I was blurry with the large font, the red type bouncing across the screen.

Because I don't know how to tell you: I am so happy for you.

I have wished this for you. You have persevered so long. You have endured so many heartbreaks. And all that time, you cheered for us all, made us bright emoticons, even there inside your own disappointment.

When the doctor told me our numbers on that first weekend, you were there. Just seventeen hours behind, you said. But you were so far ahead.

You told me what to do; you told me what would happen. You gave me certainty, gave me facts. Here, Meg: there will be this, then this, then this. Here is what you need to do.

I functioned from your clear advice.

So I wanted to thank you, today. Now. On this day that you will remember. Today I send kisses to you, to F., and to your embryo twins.

Hard wishes across the Pacific.

xxx

all relative

2006-04-10T16:25:00.000+10:00

Despite the failure of my earlier attempts at photography, I have decided I am going to be like New York Hack and take a photograph a day.

After all, I thought, it's all relative.

You never know what other people will be interested in.

Because I know I've often been intrigued by images people have put online. And not just the ones taken by professionals. Sometimes the most interesting photographs are the candid ones; the corners of couches, the backs of heads. Nothing spectacular, but the suggestion of other things:

That texture of someone elses' life.

poem #4

2006-04-09T11:08:00.000+10:00

corkscrew lonely

you can turn them off you know,
those silent winding corkscrew nights.

this i tell her
gently sipping my tea.

you don't have to get angry.
you don't have to get sad.
no need to scratch out
sprawling curly lists
of where you fit
and what you are
to him.

and oh-so-frank
i look at her
as if she cannot disagree.

my wise eyebrows perched.

but then,
if she could see me
rolling up cigarettes
late at night like a spy

just to busy my fingers.

modern moist towelette collecting

2006-04-08T17:40:00.000+10:00

What is the strangest thing you ever heard of someone collecting?

I bet it's not as weird as this.

My brother (yes, the one with mental health issues) collects moist towelettes.

I believe it started by accident. A few Kentucky Fried Chicken towelettes in the glove compartment, a small stash in the top drawer. For emergencies. Harmless enough, right?

But it soon got out of control.

For me, that is.

Oh, I hide behind the fact that it's his collection. I laugh along like the best of them; claim I'm merely showing an interest.

But I am the one who found the website.

I am the one who has been in email contact with the "editor" of Modern Moist Towelette Collecting (in fact, he emailed me an mp3 of his most recent track, Baby, you're like a moist towellette.)

I bought the glass container that displays the vibrancy of my brother's collection in its full glory.

And no one ever thinks it's as funny as I do.

So now you know:

My name is Meg, and I'm a moist towelette-aholic.

not what I meant at all

2006-04-07T19:32:00.000+10:00

This last week, a line from The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot has been coming into my head:

"That is not what I meant, at all.
That is not it, at all."

I studied this poem in first year University. I have no idea if I am taking the line out of context. I probably am. But there it is, running through my head like a sad apology.

Like a denial: That is not what I meant at all.

I am sorrysorrysorry.

You see, I had the unfortunate experience of having to send an old friend a very forthright email today. And part of me wishes I had just left it hovering in that polite place between passive-aggression and diplomacy.

Why do so many of us feel so guilty about allowing ourselves to get angry? Why do we wear our silence with such stoicism, as if our cool distance is something to be proud of? Why this urge to take it back? To keep the peace?

I've wasted so much of my life doing this:

Look how reasonable I am. Nothing ruffles me. You're hurting me, but that's ok.

But honestly, I don't have the energy for it anymore.

Infertility is making me brash.

beginning of winter

2006-04-06T17:51:00.000+10:00

I had this great post planned out.

I was going to give you a walking tour of my neighbourhood.

I had it planned out so well. I waited till just the right time of the afternoon. I put on my coat and scarf and the fingerless mittens. Put Felix on his leash. I had visions in my head of a series of snapshots, detailing the route. Each one would have the dog walking ahead on his leash in the foreground; perhaps a tiny corner of my hand, a la Wolfenstein. Perhaps in a couple, even my toe as I took a step. But the focus would be the scenery, which would change.

It was all going to be very artistic.

It wasn't.

I'm not a photographer.

But I still wanted to show you properly where I live. And more importantly, why the landscape has been a comfort to me the last couple of days. When the mist has suddenly appeared, curling over itself in the sudden beginnings of Winter. That first green chill; its fallen chestnuts.

Because it's just so beautiful.

And it's hard to stay depressed when you see that every day.

And you know, the bizarre thing is, I'm not sure I would've even noticed this if I hadn't been feeling so damn rotten. I don't usually pay that much attention. Not like this.

In fact, I can picture it: This time last year, I probably would have rushed inside after work, switched on America's Next Top Model, made a quick pasta from a jar, and done some marking for another few hours.

Before all this, I would've been blind to anything as quiet as the seasons' change.

Blind to anything slower than me.

t.m.i. (as they say)

2006-04-04T19:15:00.000+10:00

There are to be no gleeful awakenings from this terrible dream.

Yep. It’s for certain.

Less than 100,000 lonely spermy-boys left.

So, we’ve still a testicular ultrasound to do as a final check that it’s not that worst case scenario – there’s no lumps where there shouldn’t be though; obviously that’s a good sign - but elevated FSH in T’s bloodwork is pointing to testicular failure, just as Google University had led me to suspect.

In other words, it’s only gonna get worse.

I blame my mother-in-law for this.

Really. I do.

In fact, I think we have grounds to make her pay for the treatments.

Look. Perhaps I'm being harsh. Please tell me if I am.

But really...

Picture this. You are changing your new son’s nappy. You unbutton his little lemon towelling jumpsuit, wipe his little poo-ey bum, throw the stinky little nappy in the bleach bucket.

Hmm… you think. Isn’t it strange? My son appears to have only one testicle...

You would think that any normal person would say to themselves: I think we better go and get that checked out.

Well. She didn’t.

Unfortunately for us.

How To Avoid Testicular Failure 101: Correct undescended testicles immediately.

(And she better not try telling us she didn’t notice. I don’t believe that for one second.)

Anyway. Long story short:

Apparently it was not picked up and corrected until he was twelve, when his father - randomly walking in while T. was in the shower - just happened to notice that things just didn’t look quite right.

Now that must have been traumatic.

So much so that it took my poor husband five full years of marriage and one semen analysis to get around to telling me. And what’s more - to be fair - is that I am now further traumatising him by announcing it to the world.

(Um, hi baby. Love ya.)

Well. He'd have to have known the story would come up eventually.

This blog is about his sperm, after all. At least partially.

crazy

2006-04-03T19:03:00.000+10:00

Only a few times in my life have I ever really wondered if I was going crazy.

1. When I broke up with my first boyfriend when I was seventeen
2. When my brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia when I was twenty-one
3. When I was tortured by fifteen-year-old boys in my first year of teaching when I was twenty-five
4. When I found out that there was no sperm when I was twenty-eight (ie. Right About Now)

That’s four. Only four.

And I know: I’m not much fun when I’m crazy. I am obsessive. I am nervy. I am teary. I can’t concentrate. I get pimples, and my eyes go red. I leave kettles to boil dry and melt to the stove-top. I wander around, muttering like a homeless person in my black velvet jacket and floppy hat, wearing multi-coloured fingerless mittens and fake flowers. I carry my cat in a quilted bag and talk to strangers on public transport about the Virgin Mary.

Sad thing is that it’s kinda true, except for the last bit.

The question right now is how accountable I am for this current wave of craziness.

Considering.

Because I’m not getting a real good response right now, guys. I’m not really anybody’s favourite person. I feel like I’m hanging out with the other fruit in the proverbial too hard basket.

I’m difficult right now. I’m petulant. I'm moody.

And yes, I’m not always finding it easy to think about other people.

And they say: Princess Meg thinks there’s no world outside of herself. Princess Meg always gets what she wants.

And I think: Yeah right she does.

Yeah.
Fucking.
Right.

Not surprisingly, the last couple of days haven’t been much fun for me. I’ve just come out of another Weekend of Tears. Which I can’t really be bothered getting into, suffice to say that I’m apparently pissing people off with my self-absorption, a.k.a. the fact that I am stressed out and full of good old fashioned grief right now.

And that it's not always expressing itself in the kind of benign tears that gratify people because it means they can be my shoulder to cry on.

So I’m not sure what I can do about it.

Considering.

Except hopehopehope that tomorrow, at our follow-up appointment with Doctor Willy, maybe we’ll get some answers.

And that knowing why, maybe I’ll be able to start moving on.

Un-crazy.

poem #3

2006-04-01T17:19:00.000+11:00

wedding poem

We didn’t see it then -

Not then,
in the cool darkness
of an adolescent summer,
boy-hipped and shiny
on the lawn’s green damp:

Nah, not me.
It’s just a piece of paper
anyway.

(The certainty
of a ponytail, flipped
over burnt shoulders.)

We didn’t see it then -

That maybe,
sometime,
(even just for a day)
we would dare to forgive
the vague enormity
of Big Words,
the fussings of white,
of flowers.

Or that one day
we would be ready to make
our own gardens.

romanticising

2006-03-31T21:36:00.000+11:00

Anyone who knows me will tell you I've always been marvellous at romanticising things.

The way I see it, even the roughest edges of life can be made beautiful. All you need to do is look through a bus window with your headphones on, and play the title song from the saddest film you can remember.

This works best if it's raining, or if it's some time in the early evening, when you can trace your name on the glass in the fog of your breath, and imagine you are the main character on a long, bittersweet journey of self-discovery.

Today I realised this even works with infertility.

And why not?

You see, this afternoon, I read this piece of writing. And it got me thinking, it did.

It got me thinking about all of you, brave women, and about how much strength it takes to endure these things.

And because my husband is working overnight this evening, and I got to indulge the rare pleasure of eating out alone - and because there is no better place for a good fit of romanticising than the corner table in your favourite cafe with only your notebook as company - I realised something important:

That the reality of that strength is already beautiful.

It doesn't need to be romanticised.

gonna have to when

2006-03-30T18:51:00.000+11:00

Today was so awful that my dog's diahorrea, sadly, was the highlight of my day.

You see, today it was a curriculum day. I sat in a lecture theatre and listened to people talk about this for eight hours.

Honestly. I can't tell you.

I was dying.

But then, this is not meant to be a story about my boring day.

No. Certainly not. This is a story about my husband, and how - since we have been attempting our babymaking - he has developed the extremely irratating habit of getting me to do / not do things by making reference to the fact that I will have to / have to not do them when we have a baby.

It appears that I have finally stumbled apon one of the hitherto surprisingly rare disadvantages of being married to a man with children from before.

Like tonight, right?

Cleaning up the dog following its diahorrea became a chance to develop my skills au faecal:

It's just like changing a nappy, Meg. You're going to have to do it when we have a baby.

See this dog?

It was not like changing a nappy. Felix is a long-haired, meat-eating border collie for chrissake. Not a baby.

I literally had to go to the supermarket to buy a plastic bucket, and rubber gloves.

All T. had to do was hold him down, laughing, while I scrubbed, and the brown water whirled slowly, revoltingly, down the sink.

Surely no one elses' husband could be quite so annoying?

Surely not?

poem #2

2006-03-29T19:14:00.000+11:00

afterbirth

1.
Simple, I thought:
We make vows under bright
palm trees. You flash
gold on my finger.
This is final.
I choose you.

Never again the need
for fierce and tearful kisses.
Never the need
for desperate alleys
or raking nails. Never again
the silver fear shooting
up my spine,
my silent chanting
don't ever leave me
don't ever go.

With your sunshine promise,
I am released.

2.
I am full of excuses
as I tumble into
warm numbness. The distance
is thick as a cliché.
I am sighing, I am whispering
like my mother.

There is canned sitcom laughter.
I mention, amused,
how I swore I'd never be
like those TV couples, with their
worn and snappy cruelty.
I think of my foolishness.
A thin smile;
it's funny cause it's true.
There's comfort in
this normalcy.

In bed, I merely tolerate
the lump of you.

3.
Time off work. I am
without excuses, empty of
my medicating busy-ness.
I lie knitting on the
spare room bed. Unravelling,
untangling.

What messy love! I feel us
knotted by each other,
all limbs and heads and
swollen lumpy heart.
A muck of blood,
stomping, churning, grabbing
for love and freedom.
And compassion-tears,
their sad falling as we brave
the ugliness of you and me.

Holding on, staying put:
The viscera, the afterbirth of marriage.

more than a two week wait

2006-03-28T21:23:00.001+11:00

Tonight: the weekly dinner with my parents. Roast chicken and a glass of cask wine in the backyard. The dogs doing a left-overs relay between the table and our feet.

My dad asks: So whats happening with... you know... ?

Course, I don't have anything new to tell him.

Well, we'll find out more next Tuesday, Dad. We've got another appointment then, I say.

He asks me if they've started me on the hormones yet. I think he must've been doing his homework. Which is sweet, in a clueless kind of way.

I didn't like to tell him that it just doesn't happen that quickly. And even if it did, I'm not sure I feel ready to get moving on it right away.

I actually want to wait for a while.

People seem to have a hard time understanding this. They seem to think I'm mad for wanting to waste more time when it's already been more than a year.

But I see it like this:

It's a project.

Quite literally.

I see it the same way I see my sewing projects.

Cause thing is, I could never, ever - not in my lifetime - be bothered to make a simple wrap-around skirt. I don't have the patience. I know it will only take two hours, but there is no way I am prepared to commit to that intensity of short-term anticipation. Neither the anticipation nor its attending frustrations.

And yet, bizarrely, I will happily make an entire quilt from scratch. I will choose the fabric. I will cut the pieces. I will sew the pieces together to make the top. I will pin down the batting. I will draw the design on with chalk. I will diligently and eagerly sew together my daggy quilt sandwich.

We are talking weeks of work. And I'm not even a retiree.

And this is how the time/baby-making equation feels to me now.

On some level, it was much much worse before all this, when I imagined every month would see the completion of the project.

When I thought it was only going to be a measly two weeks wait.

little red hatchback

2006-03-27T17:40:00.000+11:00

This morning on the way to work, I turned off the radio in a fit of raging lefty disgust.

It was a big mistake, that's for sure.

It allowed me to hear some new badsounds in the hatchback. My infamous little red hatchback. My fifteen-year-old, beat-up, messy hatchback, that has lived long and survived much - a new engine, two radiators, multiple minor accidents and at least one 3000km road trip.

Yes, we have indeed spent more money keeping this car on the road than we ever did on actually buying it (a meagre $2000). But it keeps going, this one does, despite the cruellest predictions of my father.

The sounds I heard this morning, however, were certainly not healthy. They sounded like metal. Like a low groan, a rumble of scraping steel, deep down in the wheels.

It was the wheel bearings.

Not just one, but all four.

And when I dropped off the hatchback this afternoon, and the mechanic wiped his oily mechanic's brow with the back of his hand and spat twice, powerfully, on the concrete beside him, he said to me: Look, this one's gonna cost you about a quarter of an IVF cycle.

Well, he didn't really. But that's what I heard.

reasons

2006-03-26T15:27:00.000+11:00

The day after we got the devastating ain't nearly enough sperm news, I went to see a psychic.

I know. Incorrigible.

But I do this. I do it every time there's a crisis. People in the industry talk about people like me as being their worst clients. We rush in, expecting immediate answers, unwilling to put in the hard yards of real spiritual development. We never follow up. We just want to be told what to do; what's going to happen.

Yep. They're right.

But for me it's also about needing to know the reason. You know, the big reason why things happen. Somewhat linked to the idea of things being meant to be. No matter how many "psychics" don't tell me this, I always hope the next one will.

My brain knows I have to let go of this one. Things do not necessarily happen for a reason. It's entirely adolescent to think they do. It's completely ignorant. The only thing it reveals really is that in one's own naivety, one has absolutely no sensitivity to the very awful, very real ordeals of other people. Yes, bad shit happens to good people, as they say. Some things can't be justified by pseudo-spiritual new-age blah. War? Natural disaster? Third world poverty? Terminal illness?

(And no, I'm not sure the idea of reincarnation IS enough.)

Yet despite this, there's still a little part of me that needs to believe it. It really does. And it's totally out of my control. I've tried to tell it to go swallow an eyeball, but it won't. It's a tenacious little bugger of a belief.

With that in mind, I ask you to humour me for a moment...

Now listen up, you, you crazy irrational belief. We are infertile. Why US?

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

Answer: There is no reason.

So then what?

Do I just grieve teary-eyed and ashamed in supermarket queues for the rest of my life, or until this yucky, freaky IVF/ICSI business brings us our child?

Or do I take a deep breath, and ask myself: Well, what good can I take from this? This thing without a reason?

How can I give this my own purpose?

medicating busy-ness

2006-03-25T14:11:00.000+11:00

Four times a year I have to go through this.

It is the final Saturday of the school holidays. The countdown is over by this stage. The ten, nine, eight, seven, six of it. By this stage I am trying to tell myself it is just a regular weekend, as if that will psych me into "teacher-mode" again after my deliciously lazy fortnight of real life.

Sheer dread, I tell you.

It's the adjustment that's difficult. The shock. The sudden need for that mean face.

After two weeks, I'm always feeling pretty out of character. The blackboard-shoulders are a looking a little withered. The vocal chords are a bit mushy. I've certainly never any idea how I will force myself out of bed at 6:30 am the following Monday.

But then I think about the reality of it.

And I realise there is something nice about the cheerful chaos of teaching. The listmaking, photocopying, emailing, planning, assessing. The pushing your way through mobs of fifteen-year-olds in smelly corridors, chasing after DVD players, tending to cricket injuries.

The busy-ness I am about to face again?

It can be medicating.

alas. natural conception.

2006-03-24T16:36:00.000+11:00

Ovum
(an old poem)

in a thin line
i feel you peeling
in the right of my pelvis.

you are swollen and
freshly broken, with the
pink ragged edge
of a text book image

cycle day eighteen:

his palm making
soft waves, on my
naked wishing
belly.

rainy days and cum-days

2006-03-23T17:51:00.000+11:00

In the world of infertility, any sort of Progress seems to be exciting.

Today T. gave his second sample. Momentous. Indeed, this is none other than the long-awaited second test - the one that is supposed to allow me to "wake up and find out it is all a terrible dream." That he simply missed the cup the first time around. Or even better - that someone forgot to punch in a couple of zeros on that first report.

(I'm not embarrassed to admit I have fantasized about the legal battle.)

So today. International Cum- day. Great Day of Cum.

We amused ourselves briefly in the tense lead-up: How many songs include lyrics that can be converted from "Monday" to "Cum-day"?

Cum-day I have Friday on my mind
Rainy days and Cum-days always get me down
Cum-day, Cum-day
Tell me why, I don't like Cum-days

Unfortunately this one ran out of steam pretty quickly and resisted all attempts to be resurrected after the appointment, when T. emerged from the infamous Little Room, wearing an odd, insular expression somewhere between distaste, fascination, and amusement.

He grabbed me tightly. I added "trauma" to the list.

Meg. The guy in the porno looked like Fabio, he said.

Good Lord.

My poor, poor husband.

and then it hit me.

2006-03-22T23:38:00.000+11:00

You know in those cheesy coming-of-age films, how there is always the huge Moment of Choice, the Moment When Everything Changed? When Kevin Arnold makes his favourite observation: And then it hit me..?

We always complain that life is not like that. Not neat, not tidy - that there's no closure in real life. And maybe this is true. But still, we recognise these moments when we feel them happening to us. We know when something's going to be big.

The day we found out about all this was like that. (All this. A healthy euphemism.)

I didn't expect it, that's for sure. It had only been eight months of "trying" when we had the initial consultation. Real trying, though - we're talking charting, temping, opks. We're talking laboured, bona fide "TTC". I had expected the doc to say "Go away, crazy lady. Come back in another four months when you might have a REAL issue." After all, I'd never had any women's problems - not really - and my fella already had two kids from a previous relationship. But she didn't. Instead she sent us for tests.

Presumably she was humouring me too.

When the results were ready, maybe three weeks later, I even went to the doctor alone. That's how certain I was. I was braced for the usual irritating piece of advice: Stop trying so hard, and it will happen.

When I walked into her office at the surgery, she was looking at my blood test results. Pages of them. She went through quickly, ticking, ticking, ticking: Progesterone wonderful... free testosterone looks good... iron levels a bit low but normal... you're definitely ovulating... yes, everything looks fine.

No surprises then.

She looked up. Smiled.

So I asked.

Have the results of the semen analysis come through yet?

Here is how it happened after that, moment for moment: The doctor got out of the swivel-chair, went into reception, and called pathology for a fax. The phone rang. I heard the spit of the printer, the plastic zipping of the lines, left to right, left to right, left to right. One page through. Click.

I looked out the window as I waited. Ferns. Birds. The sounds of school children leaving the primary school. Mothers. Comforting three-thirty sounds.

And a moment later, behind me in the doorway, the hmm of the doctor looking at the sheet that had arrived.

Hmm.

I knew right then that it was going to be big.

What I Know:

2006-03-21T20:53:00.000+11:00

Right now, in this moment, I am afraid I am not witty enough to be a blogger. Not edgy enough. That I will never be able to do the all-important snappy dialogue, Gilmore Girls style. Who will read this? Am I wasting my time? Am I really that narcissistic that it should matter? Is that what this is really about?

As a teenager, I used to write lists of things I knew for sure.

What I Know... the list would begin. I know I got an A+ for my English exam. I know I hate my mum's Townhouse Chicken Casserole. I know I smoked three menthol cigarettes today.

There was something concrete in that. Something as comforting as "Anne of Green Gables" after a nightmare. It stopped me from being afraid.

And I'm afraid now.

It's embarrassing to admit it. Already. Post number one and she is having a bad day.

So here: I am afraid I won't be able to handle this infertility business. I am afraid that this is just the beginning of the heartbreaks; that it's going to get worse before it gets better, that this is nothing but a taste of what I'm going to endure when the IVFs begin. I am afraid that I will take it out on people, that they will think me bitter and manipulative and cold, when really I am just sad.

And most of all, I am afraid I will never be a mother.

What I Know:
Writing it down doesn't make it go away.