twangypearl the elastic girl

hello estrogen my old friend

Zol@dex-days are over. Hurray! Although I can hardly complain, it didn't seem to bother me too much, apart from the insomnia.

(Well. Honesty compels me to make it a matter of public record that Zol@dex-sex is not as - ehem - "interesting" as the usual kind. For me at least. And now, let's draw a veil over that whole thing.

Quick, where's the veil? The veil..? 

Phew.)

Well, as I say, technically, the zola-days are over, and yet, I still can't sleep the whole night through, and I am having mildish hot flushes. (Which have the unexpected benefit of cutting down on central heating costs, incidentally).

Maybe my system is trying to reset itself. Who knows? It's such an intricate, fragile thing, this hormonal system. This whole gynaecological set-up. It makes my head hurt to think about it. When I grapple with the idea of it, sometimes I get this odd and alienated sensation, as if I am shooting backward through space, till everything in the world is tiny and ludicrous-looking, and I think:
Seriously, this is the apparatus we humans are to use to reproduce?

This is The Plan?
This..?

Am I the only one to feel like this? Feel free to jump in any time.
Aaaanytime at all!

My mother used to look at me sometimes when I was a child, being crackers in a world of my own creative, and say, not meanly at all, but as if she was telling me there was some pie left in the fridge:

I sometimes wonder if you are all there.

I think now might count as one of those moments.

ask me no questions

Episode 1, last week, in the Torture Chamber
As part of my "recovery", Ms Spangles, my physio, advised me to play ball with my "kids".

Hrmm, where are these kids of whom you speak, Spangly-eyed one?

She's a nice young woman. But what is this assumption that I am marriedwithchildren?
I could be gay/single/part of a harem with children/cats/donkeys/nothing, for all she knows.
I could have fertility issues, Spangles!
It was an opportunity to do a little awareness-raising, in a way. I could have answered with the stunningly obvious:
Not everyone has children, you know!
Or
We haven't been able to have them.

Cue: long pause? toe-curling embarrassment? learning moment?

We'll never know, because I just nodded dumbly. (I was delirious with relief, because I don't have to do back to physio for a month! HURRAY. Then I have to go back to see an Ortho-surgeon, who's going to tell me if I need an operation. But that's A WHOLE MONTH away! and no torture inbetween!)

Episode 2, last night, the doorbell rings.
Goody, I think, pushing myself off the sofa, it's L and/or A, my friends, the sisters, who are fans of the Drop-In.
But no.
It was two clean young men called Elder C*rey and Elder M*ore. They're from the "Knighted States", and want to come in for ten minutes.

Oh, quick, brain, think of a lie. A lie, brain, a lie!

I'm - eh - making the dinner!

Well, we'll have to run with that, brain. Unoriginal but plausible, I suppose.

They press a leaflet into my hands. They're on about The Family. Actually, they are proclaiming to the world some things we've heard before, some fairly obvious things and some things that are, at best, a matter of opinion.

Do I have a family?

Opportunity to stick it to them with a nice, loud, robotic:

No. We have fertility problems.

Except I didn't want to tell them. It's just too personal and sensitive a thing to blurt out like that.
So I went with:
We just got married.

Which was a lie, and a dopey lie, and why do I even care what these people think? Yes, I wanted them to go away and ask our neighbours instead, but really what WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME, THAT I CAN'T JUST BE HONEST?

Yeah. Since early childhood, I have been brainwashed to be nice (at the expense of honesty, clearly) and I just can't break out of it.

 

If anyone has got any good answers to the family question, I'd love to hear them.

Your less-than-frank,
Twangy

Show and Tell

Hello to all, from a blustery Ireland.
You are most welcome.
 __________________________________

In the park recently, in this autumnal weather, with the leaves turning overhead, I came across a couple of parents with a small boy, perched on a bike with stabilizers on it.

There was something so endearing about this family unit, so unassuming, as they pushed their boy off on his first solo ride.

His delighted cry, full of the surprise of discovery:

I can do it!

made my young/old heart fill with longing.

 
Have a look at Mel's Circle Time post to see all the Show and Tell posts.

Home for bewildered: Avoided, by a whisker

We've been through the wringer this weekend. It started in I.KEA, amongst all the nesting, clucking couples, choosing their SNIGLARs on Friday evening. JB was all morose and touchy, and not his normal lovely self (he really is very easy-going normally). But when I'd ask him, he'd claim to be "grand". This went on, the "grandness", until finally that night at home, he admitted to being a bit down about the rough 18 months we've had, and how he felt sad for us. Oh, JB, says I. Tell me next time, so I know.

End of problem, or so we thought.

Saturday was shaky. But better. We went to see Up (which is very good. A child's film with a grown-up central theme, about losing your grip on your dreams and getting older. (How apt)).
In the foyer, JB told me he had been putting money aside for our next visit to the ChildDr in December. Well, (I said) as I 'd explained before, I only made the appointment because the secretary rang me and put me on the spot - I had not committed myself to it. Oh, grand, he said.
By the time we got out I was feeling very sorry for myself. My shoulder was aching, (apparently I have arthritis in it, I discovered on Thursday) I was tired (the 4AM watch continues), I didn't want to think about IVF in December, I was depressed about the whole effing everything.
I started to cry quietly. He asked me if I was ok. We got home. I went into the kitchen, and to my astonishment, he, the JB, my lovely compassionate JB, turned on his computer and started working on a paper, ignoring his sobbing wife.

Me (bitterly, with maximum sarcasm): That must be very important to you, J.
He said he didn't know what to say, and I said he didn't have to say anything, just be with me and give me a hug. Then the whole thing came out, (incoherently, in an un-Jane-like messy rush) about how I felt pressurized to do IVF, and I didn't feel I was getting any support, or he would stick by me even if it was a disaster, and he was avoiding me and just burying himself in work. He admitted he used work to avoid thinking about our problems but he was there with me and we would be okay, he loved me no matter what. Things ended on a better note. He was happy we had cleared the air, we had a bit of a laugh on the sofa about ourselves.

End of problem, or so we thought.

Sunday morning. What does JB want to do today? (Does he want to come down to see my parents, as previously discussed?).

He said: I think I'll stay here and do some work.

ARGG.
More tears. Seriously, this was his response to last night's discussion? Seriously, now? MORE WORK?

Well, (he said) really he just wanted some time by himself and didn't want to hurt my feelings.
Well. I could understand that, I often ask for quiet time. That was okay.

I sometimes think you'd be better off without me, says JB. Your life would be less painful.

Sad silence.

And then a little voice in my head pointed out that the JB feeling guilty like this, it is not good, for either of us.
Thank you, little voice.
In a moment of inspiration, I got up and got my little book, The Portable Therapist, which I bought while having a wobble on our honeymoon. It is so sensible and kind.

We read some chapters to each other and it was like being trapped in a blind alley, and suddenly finding a door handle. The author, a wise, wise woman, tells how destructive and pointless guilt is, how it paralyses you, how it turns into blame and resentment. and prevents you from really living. So all the guilt the poor JB was feeling about wanting a biological child so much, about my having the lap and all the treatment I might need, and the guilt I felt about not being able to get pregnant, all had to stop.
Oh!

What a relief.

Not that that's going to be as simple as that, of course. But I feel like a door opened for us. There's help there if we need it.

We are finally, finally, on the same page, at least for now.

 

state of play

Menopause symptoms=0

(Unless you count the rush of blood to the head I got when JB had the NERVE to ask me to get him some mayonnaise and milk the other day and then, after 10 mins, ADD green apples to that list as if he'd never heard of rush hour traffic and parking. This was even as he kindly was rushing home to let me in, when I found I'd locked myself out. Yes, that could have been sheer crankiness, but oh look! here's the zola.dex, let me hide behind that.)
So:

Menopause symptoms=1

All is well. In fact, things are wonderfully quiet internally. You don't realise how much of a tide of hormones your mood rides on until it stops, everything is still, you are unchained from the beast and you become calm and powerful and Jane Fonda-in-that-l'Oreal-ad-like.
(Well, one can but hope).

Here's another thing:

I've been painting the front door, and feeling urges to bake, and knit.
So help me, I think I'm nesting.

Menopause, the preview!

Two days ago, I went to the GP to have my hormones murdered suffocated momentarily surpressed via zola.dex. I am almost pleased to say that she was nearly as confused as me as to what exactly the ChildDr was up to, and kept asking me what I thought the plan might be. We went over the scenarios a few times, and she explained the zola.dex effect (temporarily to push a woman, kicking and screaming, (in my case), into menopause) before she finally, in a spirit of, "ah sure, you might as well" plunged the waspish sting into the fat of my belly.
I had a few lip wobbles on the way home. My inner voice-over kept saying: but I don't WANT to go into menopause! (I am assuming I am not the only one with a inner voice-over? Anyone? ..anyone? Mine sounds like it's about three), maybe because I didn't understand the need of the treatment, and wasn't prepared for it. A chugger (charity mugger - we have the highest % of chuggers in the world per capita in this town, a fact I have from a reliable source, ie. me) approached me and losing heart as she saw my face, just said: How are you? on a falling intonation. That even a chugger knew it wasn't a good time to "talk for a minute", as their euphemism has it, says it all.

Since then, I have been trying to see this as a positive thing, a nice calming, time-out kind of thing, where my ovaries realign themselves with the House of Leo, or something, and get all happy and productive.

However it is difficult not to take brooding account of every passing whim and give it the name of side-effect. Like I have a slight headache at the moment, as if I had a few too many last night. A side-effect, no doubt.

Lack of energy? SIDE-EFFECT!
Bad mood? SIDE-EFFECT!
Poor sense of decorum? SIDE-EFFECT!

No hot flushes so far, though, in fact, I have been even more chilly than usual of late.

I am finding myself really tedious. So in an effort to make my Month as a Menopausal Woman fun, I am calling it, Menopause, the preview! Which sounds like it should be, (maybe it already is), on Broadway. I am thinking how I could illustrate it.  More on this later..

In the meantime, I finished that job. In the end, they went for an animation of the members of staff jumping into a box, to illustrate the fact they are moving. Here's that Busin*ss Development Manager leaping:

Any resemblance to Mi*s Piggy (who is a very pretty pig anyway, don't you think?) is purely coincidental.

confusion

It is thus the life of a freelancer:

1. the work comes all at once, so you go demented trying to get it all done, working like a maniac and becoming a husk of your real self,
2. then you twiddle your thumbs for weeks, and take to making bets with yourself on the raindrops as they run down the window.
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2

It's a law of nature. So it did not surprise when two jobs flooded in, (to paraphrase Terry Wogan), while my brain is still all fogged up and duuuuull after the anesthetic. Everything seems far far away, minute and incomprehensible. Thinking is like trying to thread a tiny needle with huge woolly-mittened giant's hands.

One was just a look and feel for a website. Quite easy and functional, and the other is an animated e-card for - let's see, what is it they call themselves? Oh yes, str@tegic online communic@tions and marketing consult@nts.* HA HA HA. (Mirthless guffawing). These are the people that out-source everything at the lowest possible price, and pass it all off as their work. A deal was struck, in any case, and off I went to work. Then the Business Development Manager (again, HA HA HA) in charge of the job rang me yesterday morning, to reverse out of the deal. Suddenly my price was huge and unaffordable, and she battled me down another 40%, whining how much "work they put our way" (veiled threat) and how it was "a lovely little job" for me.

I'd GRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrr, but, honestly, I haven't the energy.

Now I am waiting for them to get back to me on my storyboards, while I flop-brainedly try to think about things. Like how I should be ringing the ChildDr, to re-hear what she said after the operation. You would think a surgeon would know how pointless it is to explain anything to someone who has just come to after an anaesthetic. But no. All I remember is:

.. mpfff... a month or so, to let it settle down.. lullll.. and then a couple of months.. your own..mhmm.. zolasomething.. puhfffump..

Which could mean anything. The nurse told me to get a prescription for zola.dex, which, if the price (e100) and security involved is anything to go by, must be fairly potent stuff. The chemist told me I'd need to get it every month, and then I made the dire mistake of looking it up on the internet, which confounded my giant's mitts even more, since it makes all kind of references to nasty side-effects, and the fact it dampens your hormones so it can be used for some kinds of breast cancer and if you continue to menstruate while on it, you should inform your doctor.

What was that, again?

... 

[trying to think]

...

Darkened room might be the thing now.

Till later

Twangy

* Oops, just occurred to me now that I should perhaps disguise that.

before and after

Laparoscopy Day on Thursday.
It really wasn't so bad, just like May said. (I mean, if I had a choice between a frozen shoulder and a lap, it's a bit of a toss-up, but I'd have to go for the lap).

The worst part was being left (fasting! on an empty stomach! that is, hungry! and thirsty! I think the point is made!) to wait in a series of windowless rooms for hours, being interrupted every once in a while for a blood test or to fill in a form.

So far I haven't been given any before and after images, so I have improvised:

Or, you know, something like that.

Destiny is calling

Well well well. (The story of the three wells, as my father used to say, in a fine example of Dad humour). Here we are again. The Time, as JB calls it, came in a timely fashion, (though oddly, it was almost painless). So no miracle then, I am for the chop. And, to add insult to injury, (literally) it's going to be rather expensive.

No point in arguing though, it's booked. The die is cast. (Hah! I used half-wittedly to think it was the dye is cast, I thought it was something to do with home hair-dye jobs gone bad. Oh dear.) I may have to stay overnight, in order to be starved, a thing I object to on two counts:
1) it costs even more of a fortune to stay overnight (because we made a mess of our health insurance, and the ChildDoctor only works at certain private hospitals) and
2) Sleep? huh, in my dreams! (ironically), in a hospital bed.
And oh! 3) pay 5 star hotel rates, to be starved?

WOE IS ME.

The JB is currently lounging around in Toronto like a playboy on some kind of a "work trip". Lucky divil.
I may need to make greater efforts in the socialising dept before he comes back to find me a wild lunatic who has lost the power of speech. The only person I spoke to today was my mother, on the phone. My voice sounded a bit croaky and out of practice, even after just a day.
(I work on my own in a shed at the bottom of the garden, with no one but slugs and spiders for company).
Further evidence I should probably Get Out More: I made a cake today. Whizzed it up, put it in the oven. Then it struck me that I had forgotten to put the eggs and milk (ie, the whole wet part) in the mixture, so, quick as lightning, I  retrieved the sludge from the oven where it had hardly started to cook at all, and beat them in determinedly. Good save, me.
 
Speaking of the cake, it is calling me from the house.
TWAAANNNNGY!!! If you don't eeeeat me, I won't have fulfilled my destiny! Myyy deeeestiny!

It's probably not a good sign when baked goods start speaking to you.
I best away before I add to the body of evidence against myself.
Till later,
Twangy

things keep happening

but in an inconveniently unrelated way, which makes it hard to weave them into a narrative. So, let's forget coherence and logic and just leap straight in:

PART I
Bit of a Blast from the Past this weekend, in the shape of OldSchoolFriend. Ah, OldSchoolFriend! She was my constant companion for all our school and college days, and then she moved to Surrey, married a local chap and had a little boy. (Well, naturally he was a baby at first. Over time he became a boy). Her brother (incidentally the lucky man who took me to my Debs dance. Ooh! *blushes at memory*) now lives in Dublin and so it was we all met up for a dinner in D*nnybrook. We ran into another Old Friend, D, there too.
Time was, in the late 80's, we all used to go out together on Friday nights, to the local pub, which was then called the L*rds Tavern, and is now defunct. There'd be an amount of drinking and late night carousing, all fairly normal studenty stuff.
D, though, couldn't get enough of anything, ever. He never knew when to stop. You know those people? He'd always be looking for more booze, more smokes, more all-night sessions, and so more drink-driving, more reckless mad behaviour.
Cut to 20 years later: and predictable as taxes, though sadder, last year he got throat cancer, and it was quite bad, I gather. He was treated and last winter got the all-clear. I remember at the time wondering with the JB if D had been scared straight, or not. Well, the answer, as so often, is kind of.
He has given up smoking, but that was only because he had no choice whatsoever, but he is still drinking like a maniac. Not surprisingly he hasn't anyone in his life, because he would drive anyone barking mad in 5 minutes. He has to be all outrageous ALL the time, you know? Maybe it's an Irish alcoholic thing, this need to be a mad character. You can't have a normal conversation with him, because he has to be wracking his brain all the time for the next CRAZYMAD thing he is going to SHOCK you with. As soon as he saw me, I knew it was coming:
Got any kids? You better get going you know, TICK! TOCK! biological clock! Getting on you know!
And there it was.
I couldn't work up a rage though, although it was indeed totally outrageous. I knew he didn't really mean anything by it, for one thing, it was just the MAD D talking, and for another, I couldn't help but remember how sick D really was last year. I don't know how fertile he could be either, after all his chemo.
His battles have been so much harder than mine, for all that he doesn't seem to care to acknowledge them.

PART II
Addiction to Internet - discovering exact severity thereof.
Last Thursday our internet connection slowly failed. Since then, like a vampire hanging around blood banks, I have been skulking around libraries, colleges and cafes, and even have ventured bravely into McD*nalds in the hope of picking up a stray signal. One night found me in the NoddyCar on the dark street outside the local library, furtively checking my email.
(Sorry, any passersby who may have been alarmed by the sight of a woman in a car, illuminated by a ghostly blue light. I wasn't up to no good, I promise.
Though I couldn't claim to be up to any actual good either).
A man representing Major Irish Telecommunications Corporation rushed over urgently, (within 3-5 business days), to check our modem.
Ah, she's dead, he said. We look at the modem with one light blinking sadly. She'd crashed.
(Modems, like ships and cars, are female, in case you didn't realise).
My new she-modem will be couriered across the city, (in 3-5 working days).
This is because my business is important to Major Irish Telecommunications Corporation.

Your appropriately reassured
Twangy