Place

Okay, so I’m rather late to the healing salon party and in a way I don’t think it matters.

Knowing me, I’m probably not writing about quite the right thing, anyway, because gad knows I’ve spent the better part of seven years blogging about the wrong thing in as much detail as humanly possible. Some of the things I’ve gone and written about speculums are dead dodgy, for a start, and there was this time I turned them into a personal art project with mixed results and so on. I’ll leave somebody else to pull my back archives for speculum art because unfortunately I never did create the tag ‘speculum rabbit’ to celebrate the occasion and to be brutally honest the sheer weight of crap I’ve written over the years makes finding the post in question a bit to terrifying at this time of night.

In other words, life has phases, even virtual ones, and for those of you who found my coffee-fuelled ramblings at the frazzled Mama stage, this is my story.

I am a real person.

For those of you who prefer it straight,  these are my kids and this is my life. I have public blogs for both and am happy to share. I try not to get comment linkback here for obvious fanny-related posts aplenty along the IVF brick road way, but a friend acquired here is a friend. Period.

So, once upon a time I wrote about infertility. About dead babies. About my period. About cycle after cycle. About IVF. About miscarriages. About loss.

At the end of the day what I write about is my life so over the years what I write about has changed. My life has changed. I write about my ridiculously funny, wonderful, terrifying, rewarding, life-hogging job, my children, the family I finally have. I even write about my blasted home renovations or at least I plan to when I can get around it because goodness knows if I haven’t already bored the socks off of the last reader, then writing about paint colours should do the job for me.

I write about my life and that’s all I can do. I’m not good at other stuff. I like to write about my feelings, my day, the things I probably shouldn’t put on social media. I’ve done it for seven years and I guess this blog is seven years of me, in a slightly neurotic nutshell.

I don’t have the time I used to. I  adore working in obgyn, but it’s pretty much a lifestyle option. Accordingly, I have to pony up and pass some real ass big girly part doctor exams one of these days.  I also have three children.

Something has to give. I don’t write as often as the post come into my head. I simply can’t anymore.

But I write, anyway. Half the time i should really be doing something else, like folding the neverending pile of washing, but instead I write to you all.

Because I want to and it’s as simple as that.

I write about my infertility, about my losses, about my children, about my work and about ME. I can’t change it. I can’t sex it up any.  My place may not be squarely in the infertility blogosphere any more, but I am here nonetheless. I can’t say I fancy chasing fresh readers in Mamablogland because what I write isn’t conditional on how many people read. I just write. From both sides of the stirrups.

I plan to keep writing. I aim to be funny as piss if I can do so, because personally that’s about  the best coping strategy I have and goodness knows I’m going to be stressed enough over the next half a dozen years to need a little light relief. A vent. I don’t think there’ll be any new stuff about IVF. I could be wrong, but for so very many reasons I think that part of my life is done. But if you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be on the other side of the stirrups, then I guess I’m your lass. The one with the bad reproductive past history.

I can’t control my audience, who and how many. It doesn’t matter.

I write because I want to do so and I thank you all, whatever brings you here and however many of you there may or may not be.

Now if you’ll excuse me, Bhaji is being a right bugger and has just escaped from her baby straightjacket for the third time in an hour and is duly flailing looking for the boobie. Yes, I am cussing myself for that particular sleep association right now.

g

At your age.

I do apologise for the prolonged radio silence after my totally gratuitous use of a sympathetic audience to convict LS of being a hard-assed insurance judgment passer in his utterly unaware absence.

By the way, if you were wondering, I think I’ve hit upon the very best way to have an argument with your spouse with that last post. In blissful absentia is the way to go. Not only do I get the smug satisfaction of being right, right, RIGHT (Ha!), but there was much less shouting and no tiresome interjections when WE all wanted to speak.

I should do it more often.

Anyway, I do apologise for the lapse in communications but it turns out that, unlike having newborn preemie twins who were bottle-fed and slept like tops in between on accounts of small and prem-ness, having boisterous three year old twins belting around the house singing the poo-bum song combined with a rather less inclined to nap full-term singleton with a vaguely indecent relationship with my breasts at all times means that I have very little time to blog.

Who knew?

Also, I broke the ice and nursed in public in a cafe yesterday because there was no bloody way I was going to be able to drag Saag and Naan away from toast and babychinos without bloodshed and I was amazed to discover that the earth did not cave in, after all. Yes, I think about five dozen men carefully looked at my breasts and then just as hurriedly didn’t look at my breasts and generally spent quite a lot of time NOT looking at my breasts while sipping lattes a bit faster than planned but that’s okay because I think we all plan to pretend it never happened. Particularly the men sitting with, say, their wives.  

I think looking at female tits is just hard wired and it’s like trying to ask people not to slow down and stare at a car accident on the other side of the freeway, they can’t help it and you’re late even though there is technically nothing wrong with the bit of road you’re driving on at all.

Pet peeve that.

Regardless, on top of the three children and public boob shenanigans, my other mother in law (the nice one who I adore because she always brings FOOD when she visits and that is my kind of houseguest made in greedy heaven right there and yes I really do have two mothers in law thanks to the wonders of remarriage. Lucky me) was visiting recently and thus it’s been even harder than usual to blog.

I truly do utterly adore her and she’s great to talk to but I note that (ignoring the less fun aspects like baby sh!t and sleepless nights and crying and stuff) when I voiced a bit of sadness that I would never have a squidgy newborn to snuggle with again on accounts of career et cetera, the response was a surprised sounding ‘Well of course not, there’s your age, anyway.’

I thought I was having a good wrinkle day but apparently I have now entered the phase of life better known as ‘dried up ovaries’ even to people I see twice a year.

If I wasn’t being vaguely silly about the whole episode I could observe that I kind of want to cry when I think about that statement. At my age. Am I that old already?

G

Maybe next time I’ll tell you about my adventures in the land of cup-of-tea-making electric pump because I finally caved and got a real big girl pump having finally given myself w@nkers wrist with my trusty arthritic wheezy old hand pump. Have exchanged bed-spring sounding creaking for chu-chug, chu-chug.

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The maternity shirt I would rather wear.

 

It’s been a long week.

G

Not Helping.

Scene: Superkarkit supermarket on a busy Friday afternoon

Geohde: Avec whiny twins and a full trolley of shit groceries. The act of lifting at least one whiny twin causes recalcitrant round ligament misbehaviour i.e. some tiny midget appears out of nowhere and stabs me clean in the fanny with a red-hot poker. Cue frozen pained, non-moving wince. Cue further wails of discontent from now non-moving twin.

Crime: Sympathetic glance and a ‘How long have you got to go, dear?’ from the checkout lady.

Sentence: One Breath Holding Count to Ten ‘A Long Time’.

Sometimes it would be easier to say what I am thinking which is that most of what I am gestating is 13 weeks of bouncing baby fat because it’s either that or I have the world’s most obsetrically minute pelvis in the entire world. Actually, since when I lie on my back I seem to have a uterine friend hanging out for all to see, it’s probably the latter, but I dearly wish I could just tell people to fuck off sometimes. Don’t we all?

Hastily edited to add that, um, the US-as-she-is-spoke versus real English strikes again (or at least I think so) from the comments. Where I am a fanny is the bit in front of the bit I think YOU all think I am referring to. My bottom is just fine. Really, it is.

And so it goes.

Denizens of the Internet, just in case you wondered (although I guess you’ve all probably figured out that owning two screaming two year olds means that stabbing oneself with teeny-tiny doses of FSH is rather less of a dramatic affair the 4th transfer around) I’m stimming.

Apparently.

I mean, I’ve been jabbing for DAYS now and sometimes I’m still surprised that I get the right end into my flabby gut, what with all the leg pulling and yelling for ‘Mama, NOW!’.

As I recall, the LAST time I did this, there was a little less flab to choose from and a lot less distraction. Needle Time was a serious time Chez MII. It’s somewhere between the fifth verse of the Hokey Pokey song and bedtime these days and usually also right after I’ve burned my hand getting dinner out of the oven.

Okay, don’t frown at me like that because I know my nose is growing, a LOT more flab. Can we move on, please?

LAST time I could get down to the muscle layer with my baby subcutaneous needles and this time I’ve got the excess skin of a shar-pei on a Sumo Special diet to contend with. Not only is the old grey mare not what she used to be, half of her bits are no longer in the last known postcode.

Regardless, my first monitoring scan is Friday and could you all think firstly egg shaped thoughts and then follow it by ONE egg shaped thoughts?

I’m only on 33 IU but my ovaries are right tarts when it comes to the stuff and quite frankly I hope I am not canned.

Finally, I think my shining moment in my paid life this week was a by nessecity loud phone call to a resoundingly deaf but mere sprightly 70 something daughter of a 99 year old who was dubbed Not For Resuscitation on the grounds of ‘why?’. It devolved to something blunt and farcical like  ’IF YOUR MOTHER’S HEART WAS TO STOP BEATING OR SHE WAS TO DEVELOP A GENERAL DISINCLINATION TO BREATHING WE DON’T ACTUALLY PLAN TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT (except order pizza and take a wee break), (as loudly as possible) DO YOU UNDERSTAND?’.

Then I turned around and recognised half of the senior executives of my health service in uniforms right behind me, where they were up until that moment having a carefully guided sanitized tour of our much maligned ED.

Sorry about that one, boss, except I’m slightly more sorry that I first muttered some expletives and a general opinion that I was only nice from the teeth outwards to the incredibly ungrateful lady with back pain who gave me a face full of abuse about why she wanted a CT scan NOW after I carefully explained why she didn’t warrant one.

The suits probably found my parting reference to tontine inhalational therapy a little inappropriate as well, I’m gathering.

Tact never was my strong point.

I don’t like being pregnant.

There, I said it.

I do not like being pregnant. Gravid. With child. Gestating. Incubating. I do not feel all warm and fuzzy when my proverbial oven is cooking buns, and I can think of about a million things that are more physically pleasurable than the elegant condition known so charmingly as being ‘knocked up’.

I. Do. Not. Like. Being. Pregnant.

Please don’t hate me. I know it is not in the best of taste for an infertile woman who has hit the baby jackpot to admit it, but I just don’t get off on being the approximate dimensions of a planetary satellite. I like to be able to turn over in bed at night, unassisted. Heck, I like to sleep on my stomach. Apart from the superficial physical aspects, being pregnant mainly makes me feel alternately terrified my babies have died while I wasn’t looking, or simply inescapably enormously fat.

I am a traitor. I do not ‘glow’, I ooze sebum and I collect backne. I sweat like a pig-wrangler on a busy day. My nose develops a non-disguisable (by even the most enthusiastic hairstylist) collection of pimples. I snore. Loudly.

Even in the first trimester, when the whole shebang is physically easy for a non-porcelain phone conversating type, I do not like it. I am crippled by horrifying anxiety. I have weekly scans, because magical thinking tells me my baby shall die if I do not peek as often as possible. I own a doppler and spend literally hours finding a heartbeat at  early gestations. I cry if I am not successful.

I do not like being pregnant.

My grooming suffers in exponential concordance with my expanding girth. I stop brushing my hair. I gain forests in areas that are normally heavily logged. I wear items more conventionally recognisable as tents, as apparel, and in public.

I do not lovingly stroke my belly as I sit, but wince as a contraction reminds me that bending in the middle is yet another item ranked rather highly on my personal uterine verboten list. Unmedicated with contraction stopping Fun Drugs, I go to the toilet about fifty times an hour, more than half convinced I shall prolapse an infant whilst sitting on the can because the pressure in my pelvis dictates that not even a millimetre of urine and a baby can coexist peacefully. Medicated with drugs that should drop my blood pressure, I become horribly hypertensive anyway and I swell until I am cursed with Fat Fingers to go with my Fat Arse.

I am hungry all day long and additionally at 10pm, midnight, 2am, 4am and 6am, but the insane reflux means that I have to choose between enjoying a second, more acidic, version of each meal or spitting partly digested food and stomach acid into the bathroom sink. Sometimes a bucket, because I cannot walk beyond a waddle.

I get ravenous appetite derived stretchmarks on my ass, and when the blasted thing duly shrinks post partum, I am left with cheeks that could hold pencils up. Hands free. But that’s okay, because so can my stomach. Also, my bowels can really hang out, thanks to the wonders of a diastasis recti. I do not like what being pregnant does to my body. The first time I saw myself post partum, I almost cried. My stretchmarks and muffin top bother me, they fail to fill me with warmth that I mostly successfully (2/3 of efforts to date) grew human beings.

I do not like being pregnant.

There.

Now that I have said it, I can feel simultaneously heavily relieved to have gotten that small confession off my chest and mildly terrified that the heavens shall open up and the rain of judgement shall pour forth heavily upon my ungrateful head. I love my children, but I do not like being pregnant. That is all.

Even I have a limit.

Oh yes, I do.

Although I often complain mightily about the fact that the combination of a member of the general public with at least one functioning retina encountering in their visual field two babies the very same age seems to achieve bloodlessly what early psychiatry did not, i.e. complete buggering up of the frontal lobes (usually via something sharp up the through the bone at the top of the schnozz or through the back of the eyeball, combined with a little vigorous back and forth mushing action, in case you wondered), even I have my limits.

Besides, although I get sick of answering the same questions all day, every day, every now and then in a virtual field of Dumb, Daft or Plain Impossible, I encounter a particularly spectacular Tall Poppy Of Stupid. I secretly delight in acquiring a refreshingly new piece of idiocy to place happily on the top of my personal argument in favour of breeding licences.

Make that not so secretly.

I’ll live with the fact that most of my verbal output in public is a endless repeat loop of ‘yes, they’re VERY close in age, that’s because they’re this thing you get when you have two babies in your belly at once better known as twins, yes, they’re both girls, no one is not a boy, no, really, I am quite sure about that point, I change the nappies, Naan is wang-free, she is just bald, no they are NOT identical, well done you I wouldn’t have noticed myself, why now that you mention it I guess my hands ARE full since I never seem to get more than about ten metres without encountering the twin version of the Spanish Inquisition’.

Actually I am usually quite polite about it and I only say some of the more heavily sarcastic items in my head where they shan’t do any lasting damage to the psyche of the asker. Unless you happen to believe in ESP, in which case you shall probably see inside my cranium a teeny-tiny buzzy plane skywriting the politically-incorrect RETARD. In big, fat, red letters.

Regardless of the above pointless waffle about the questions that shall never ever end and how I have grown almost fond of them and now ask them of myself to save time, I actually had a point to make. About limits.

Here’s the deal, Random Other Twin Mama.

I do love commiserating with a sympathetic audience about the above matters, really I do. I enjoyed our chat. Well, right up until the bit where it went a bit pear and I had to go find someone else to make conversation with in a wee bit of a hurry.

You see, oh fellow Frazzled One, I don’t have quite as much sympathy for your plight with regards to the fact that people inevitably ask if your girls are identical or not as I do for my clearly-bloody-fraternal own.

I’m not a utter heartless cow, I promise, it’s just this funny convention gets in the way. I make no case for the fairness of the matter, and I hate to break it to you several years too late like this, but we live in a society where a child with beautiful flowing waist-long hair worn in a ponytail is known as a ‘girl’.

Not, please note, no matter WHAT the reality is in the Nappy Area, as a ‘boy’.

Really, lovvie, it’s no freaking wonder people gush over your ‘girls’, including me. It’s just the way it is. Blame society.

If you could put that stink-eye away I would be most grateful.

You Are Not Helping The Cause, okay?

Why, yes, I did.

Dear Internet,

Due to Severe Ongoing Computer Infirmary on the grounds that it is Bloody Old and Can’t Be Expected to Possibly Keep Up with anything much beyond being a mildly decorative paperweight (and I really should do the kind thing and put it out of it’s misery already, preferably with a hammer), oh and lest I forget my life, I’ve not really been able to whine to the world wide web at large (or indifferent) for some days now.

Fortunately, the gods of working motherboard have smiled upon me after an hour spent unhappily swearing ‘WORK damnit, work, the eight hour day is standard in the first world you slack sod’ at my PC and restarting innumerable times, I have the Internet.

HI, Internet, I’ve missed you.

I have but a brief tale on this occasion, pulled from the Annals of Daft Twin Stuff, mostly because I’ve just about reached yet another critical mass of ‘did they really just ask me that?’ and it helps somewhat to vent just a tiny bit.

Actually, to be brutally honest, the cerebral cortex minus questioning is gradually fading over time, and I almost miss it. Since Saag and Naan are so very different in size, temperment and most other things that strangers like to assume constitutes twin-ness, people seem to instead think that I have not spent much money on condoms in the last two years, rather than that they are actually twins.

Ok ‘twiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnns’.

Fraternal twins are allowed to fish from wildly different ends of the available gene-pool, world.

If I dress them both head to toe in pink matching outfits pre-emptively, you’re meant to pick up on the not-so-subtle cue and refrain from asking ‘So are they twins?’ (duh), followed by ‘a boy and a girl, right?’ (wrong, oh-so very very wrong). Both of those items happened to me today.

Please, I implore you world, if you don’t want to be on the receiving end of a carefully blank face and measured ‘No, she’s sixty seconds older and the boy dripping in pink is a girl’, just bite your tongue. For me?

Going grocery shopping with twins really is the most wonderful never-ending source of things to write about, suffice it to say.

My case in point is as follows (real conversation):

Woman In Supermarket: After the usual obligatory clarification of twin status, I shan’t bore you (again) with THOSE questions and one mildly uncomfortable up-and-down Geohde Inspection that had me concerned I’d ventured out with fresh vomit down my jeans again. Actually, I lie, I had and I knew it. ‘Oh, TWIIIINS! (pause for laser glare of physique) Did you carry them yourself?’

Geohde:  Gobsmacked at a new and clever permutation ‘are they yours insert-brackets skinny b!tch’. ‘Yes, I did. They were quite heavy as I recall’.

WIS: ‘Oh, my! So what’s your secret?’

Geohde: ‘A special blend of custom methylated deoxyribonucleic acid’.

WIS: Furrowing forehead ‘Wow! Were can I get some, you look GREEEAT! Do they have it in the pharmacy here?’.

Geohde: ‘I got mine from my parents.’

Boom-Boom-Pow.

I’m not very nice sometimes, am I?

Yet again.

Oh deary me, but it never gets old.

Public Dumb, however well intentioned, is truly evergreen. It’s like black, always in vogue somewhere. Usually my supermarket, to my eternal regret because the Terrible Twosome love nothing more than a hearty Stare At Stuff once a day.

Sadly, no matter how many times I smile (purely from the teeth outwards in a kind of never-heard-THAT-before rictus) to all those smug ‘You must have your hands full then!’ and the like, it keeps coming. For variety, I can oh-so-patiently explain the gender of two pink-swathed to within an inch of their lives girls, and if I’m feeling particularly gluttonous for punishment I may linger a little too long in the sweets aisle, thus committing my cranky self to summon up the reserves required to cheerfully answer the inevitable zygosity question of two very clearly fraternal children.

But there’s always a new person next time to ask exactly the same questions.

I’m nice to them, really I am, because it’s not their fault I get asked every fifty metres all day, every day, but oh how the novelty has worn off.

Please come up with some new questions, can you, world?

Ones that DON’T ask about what I did with my vag.ina, breas.ts, conception method or grimly predict a messy death in two years time (complete with only valuables flushed down the loo ‘to keep them safe!’ and toast ‘posted’ in my clunky old VCR), surrounded by my own personal army of small heathens running riot.

Anyway.

Perhaps I should pick a supermarket populated only by the frazzled looking parents of multiples, so I can get milk and coffee (god how I love coffee, it’s bordering on indecent and vaguely inexplicable given the Indian Takeaways sleep through perfectly well thank-you. Now don’t mention The Sleep, just in case you jinx me, okay?) unmolested by such sterling enquiries such as the following from yesterday’s excursion:

• ‘Are they twins?’, followed by an in-the-same-breath breathtakingly insulting ‘Are they YOUR babies?’

Yes, (strained grin) they are on both accounts, now just fu!k off to somewhere very far away, please.  Now.

If you linger to enquire about whether they shot out of my groin or not, I’ll have to get all impolite and I prefer not to do that now the Terrible Twosome babble half the things I say in their best tactless parrot impersonation.

We’ve already had a cheery chorus of ‘fuhfunfufuh….‘ in stereo after I spilled boiling milk over myself inadvertently. Yes, making coffee. 

I’m very pleased to report that they can’t yet do ‘kkkkk’, but it is only a matter of time. Like the next time I fail to remember that a metal container full of boiling milk is actually hot on the outside, too. I’m clever with my liberties with the Laws of Physics like that.

Additionally, the asker was a rather nice old coot (Yes, complete with tweed cap. No, I wouldn’t want to be a passenger in his car either, I can only speculate the driving skills from the Elderly Cap Wearing Fraternity remain as terrifying as ever) who wouldn’t have really deserved my forthright recounting of the fact that I have a receipt for the conception and knocking-up action involved, so yes they sodding well ARE mine in a way that few people can claim and as a bonus item if I don’t like them anymore when they’re 20, perhaps my clinic does refunds.

Honestly. Given I’m about as tactless as they come, my poor tongue is being chewed to bits in regular fits of ‘betternotsayit’.

Oh, and the guy who came to install one of our Mortgage Expanding Blinds (In a small aside, holy shit, I had no idea that several feet of fabric combined with anti-strangulation cords and non-chewable parts were so damn expensive. I’m vaguely disappointed they’re not in actual fact gold plated) did see fit to exclaim the following:

• ‘They look close in age, who’s older?’

I’ve given up caring about the reaction to a dead pan ‘Saag, by sixty seconds, but only because Naan was transverse and it took a bit of rummaging to get a hold of a reluctant leg to drag her out. She’s always been a stubborn child, and eviction from the womb was no exception. Otherwise it’s be closer.’

Cue gobsmacked ‘Are they twins, then?’

Sherlock Holmes, tell me what YOU reckon.

Sigh.

A simple ‘I don’t know’ would suffice.

Dear Lady At Party,

It was lovely, albeit slightly awkward to meet you. Actually, I lie. It sucked.

Yes, I may be a comparative retard, especially when it comes to social graces and small talk with strangers (oh how I loath small talk) but when I make conversation at a party I like to find out what YOUR connection the the host is, since that’s the reason we’re both there.

It’s usually a fairly reliable strategy for the inevitable five minutes I need to fill in to get enough details to hang on your name, so that I remember you next time we meet. I make a point of getting names right, if I possibly can, after years spent ruing the consequences of not paying attention the first time.

After all, I like it when people get mine right, so why not return the favour?

In a small aside, a note to That Woman in Mothers’ group. I have to confess that, no, I am not the  owner of the name you keep calling me and I think we’re past the point where I can admit that fact without looking like a prize arse, so it’s slightly awkward to say the least. Because the rest of the group clearly knows it too and none of us say anything when you call me it. That’s why we keep looking at each other with those funny sideways looks you’ve probably been wondering if you’re imagining.

So, coming back to my tale of dinner-party death, I naturally asked the connection, and you told me your spouse went to the same school. I asked the obvious follow-up of which one, just to keep from one of those silences. You replied ‘BlahBlahVille College’.

I honestly didn’t know where BlahBlahVille might be.

So I asked where it was. I was genuinely curious since I’ve lived in this city all my adult life and I’d not heard of it.

I certainly wasn’t prepared to be bowled over by the reply ‘Probably in BlahBlahVille itself, if there’s such a place’, followed closely with ‘Perhaps on BlahBlahVille road‘, and the downright sarky ‘Near BlahBlahVille Station, if there’s a train line out that way?’, concluding with the ever helpful ‘I didn’t go to school there, so how should I know?’

Cheers.

You were the highlight of my evening.

They have a cure for The Stupid now, right?

Because I’m just wondering if I can order a dose, stat?

Perhaps if I explain, you (the clever people of the Internet) can tell me which of us in the below email exchange needs the urgent treatment.

Ever magnanimous, I have to prepared to concede it might be me.

But either way, yes, I have to childishly admit to having rather too much fun drawing out my point, rather than simply ignoring the privacy disclaimer like most people would, opening the attachment and checking for myself.

I could have done that, but then who would I joust with for kicks?

Besides.

To give some background, I was going to say something rude about how this person is a total dolt, because she’s also creatively fucked up communication regarding every other matter regarding this property in small ways (and often BIG ways, like say settlement date by a mere three freaking months. That one still gives me 3am cold sweats when I re-run the experience in my dreams). So a sodding street name should be no big surprise, but then again, I’d have to swear to say that. So I just didn’t.

Oh, and since the first email comes off like she’d doing me a favour, nope. I was meant to get a written copy of the report in question a month ago when we settled the house, but nobody remembered to do that bit. Eventually I got bored of waiting for it to fall from the sky, and asked for it.
Perhaps it is me who has everything arse about tits, but here’s the deal before you begin (Oh, how I love a good snippy email exchange, it warms the cockles):

• This is a series of emails about the house we just moved in to.
• The house that is in ‘streetwelivein‘ and NOT in ‘someotherstreet‘.
• The house that, being as it is on a construction site has both a ‘lot number X’ and ‘street number Y’ to identify it (they’re not the same number, as hinted by the cunning use of X and Y).

Suffice it to say that whilst I am vague at times, I’m pretty clear on where I live. I didn’t need her to break it down for me, and simultaneously miss my point entirely. Really. I spent enough money and angst on purchasing this house and moving into the damn thing that it’s location is well and truly burned into my brain.

Please do tell me if you have accidentally gone and moved into the wrong house by mistake, because I’d feel rather less patronised if this IS indeed a common error that developers encounter and therefore normally spend their days sending people their correct address by email.

I know where I live. If I didn’t, well, I’d be rather worried. Not knowing your street address is a Bad Thing in most adults.

Names changed, obviously, to protect the something-or-other. Parentheses my commentary.

—————————————————————————————————————-

Subject: Lot X Someotherstreet  – building inspection report
From: Developer
To: Geohde

Hi Geohde

Please find attached for your records the building inspection report carried out on your property at the above address prior to handover and settlement. This report has been passed onto the builder to attend to any outstanding items.

Should you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me. [Questions? Nah! What's a small matter like the wrong fucking property between friends?]

Regards,

Developer.

IMPORTANT NOTICE ABOUT CONFIDENTIALITY AND LEGAL PRIVILEGE

This email message (including attachments) is strictly confidential and is intended only for the use on the named addressee. It may contain legally privileged material. If you are not the addressee then you are hereby notified that this message has been received by you in error, and any legal privilege or confidentiality attached to it is not waived, lost or destroyed by reason of its mistaken delivery. Therefore you must not save, copy, print or distribute it or take any action in reliance on it whatsoever. If you are not the addressee then please notify Developer immediately and delete the message and any attachments.

————————————————————————————————-

From: Geohde

To: Developer

Hi Developer- we’re lot X Streetwelivein Street. Just checking this is the right report…

G
—————————————————————————————————-

From: Developer
To: Geohde

Hi Geohde

Your property is Lot X not street number X. The street address is Y Streetwelivein Street.[No shit, Sherlock]

Regards,

Developer

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From: Geohde
To: Developer.

Hi Developer,

Thanks for clearing that up for me,  but that’s what I said already in my original email. Lot X Streetwelivein street.

My point was, if I was unclear (and I do apologise [kiss my arse]), that the title of the email for the inspection report refers to lot X Someotherstreet. So I am just checking [Seriously. You can kiss it.].

Thanks,

Geohde
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From: Developer
To: Geohde

Sorry I misunderstood [ya think?] - you are on Streetwelivein Street.

Developer.

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From: Geohde
To: Developer

Hi Developer:

Again. Apologies [Kiss my arse]. This is getting a bit funny [You total retard. How do I spell it out politely?]. Perhaps we’re talking at cross-purposes [Really, I think you ride the short bus]!
I know we’re lot X.

I know we’re street number Y.

I know we’re on Streetwelivein Street.

But the title of the email with regards to the attached report says, quite clearly, ‘Someotherstreet‘, and we don’t live there! [I can read my freaking street sign. You really didn't need to share that last newsflash]

I didn’t want to inadvertently open somebody else’s inspection report given the privacy disclaimer (say of lot X Someotherstreet and not lot x Streetwelivein street, to come back to my original point) and read it, so I wanted to check I had the right one first.[I was having too much fun]

I’ll just open it and see if the defects match this place since there seems to be ongoing confusion.[Now I'm bored]

Thanks

Geohde.

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Yeah, I am a cow sometimes. Tickle me Elmo next up, promise.

So, what dumb things have YOU said today?

Because if the answer is ‘none’, then:

A: You’re so far ahead of me I’m choking in your clever dust, and

B: Let me take your quota, please, because I think I need extra allowance.

As for myself, well. I’d say it would be no surprise to anybody, would it, if I’d managed to drop a particularly clever clanger into the middle of an innocuous conversation, completely derailing it. I’d like to blame fatigue but since I’ve been doing this sort of thing since I’ve been able to speak, I think I’m just lacking a Tact Centre in my brain. Or perhaps a frontal lobe.

Let me explain.

The babies and I (or, let’s be frank about this, just ME because two month olds don’t really make friends, although they will suck in a not-unsocial way on any exploratory limb of another child that gets within range) have made a lovely new friend in a fellow twin-wrangler. And her twins, obviously.

Hers are two years old, and seeing her both :

A: neatly dressed,

B: employed, and 

C: generally looking like she has her shit together.

…Gives me much hope for my future. Plus, she’s plain nice. I heart nice people, obviously. Most people do.

However, I do hope I haven’t screwed it up irrevocably.

My sin?

In the middle of a multiple baby nappy change (and as an aside, my goodness, two twin strollers at once does create somewhat of a public whiplash hazard) she politely encouraged one of her daughters to ‘Show Geohde how clever you are at taking your trousers off’.

I quipped, without thinking, ‘Hopefully that doesn’t become a post-pubertal trick, huh?’

…..and crickets chirped.

Oops.

I do hope I haven’t really screwed it up. Inadvertently implying that somebody’s two year old may grow up to become a tart does tend to be considered offensive.

Remind me to clap, instead, in future. Please.

Not your average dinner party conversation.

Recently I learned just how awkward friends with big gossipy mouths for good news, but who turn surprisingly silent about spreading decidedly bad news can make one’s social occasion rather, well, uncomfortable.

Let me set the scene. Birthday party of good friend. Lots of guests, many of whom I at least know on a first name basis and have met a few scattered times over the years. None (excepting the birthday-ee, or so I thought) aware of Pregnancy Number 1 and PBWCLEW. Insert obligatory general -and-or-vague chit-chat about nothing of import with people I remember very little about, but who apparently have heard things about ME, and let simmer……

Me (who unashamedly sucks ass when it comes to making small talk):‘So, how are you doing, long time no see, how’s (oh-fuckity-fuck-what’s-his-name-again) your other half doing? How is your (crap, what DOES she do for a living again) job (shite, hope she’s employed) going?….etc etc.’

Other woman: ‘Good, good. And you? How is Mr Geohde doing? (Shit, how did SHE remember?) Congrats on your good news by the way, how far along are you? I remember hearing when you were pregnant ages ago!’

Me: (Fuck. Glossing right over THAT) ‘I’m 18 weeks now.’

Other woman: (Clearly not picking up my subtle cue) ‘And is that your little girl over there?’.

Me: (Nervous laugh, going for bold-faced denial) ‘Nope, not mine! These will be my first’.

Indicating that I was going to grab something to eat, I made the obligatory ‘Nice to see you again’ and left her to presumably scurry off to the host to get the year-old gossip behind my back. 

I’m not really sure how else I could have handled that, even in retrospect. Not without about fifty ears all pricking up to listen in.

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Do what I say, not what I do.

Please.

I’m slightly, justifiably, a little on the embarrassed side to admit to public drunkenness when I’ve so recently poked fun from my beautiful Glass Tower about what other people do when drunk. Get your stones ready, Ladies and Gentleman, but before you throw let me say that neither I nor any of my companions ended up in ICU.

Ha-hem. Drinking is bad for you, I promise….

The special occasion, not that it needed to score too high on a scale of ‘special’, was the end of my second to last exam as a student ever.

Hopefully it’s the last time that I have to pretend to take blood from a plastic arm carefully positioned on a bed on the opposite side of the room to the actor playing ‘patient’, because that’s just weird. So is extensively questioning an actor about his medical history, in exhaustive detail, as he writhes on the bed pretending his heart out (literally) to be screaming in searing agony as his imaginary aorta dissects into two rather fragile tubes prone to explosive bleeding. Give the man some morphine, ferchrissakes, stick a great big fat IV in and scan him, now. Honestly. That’ll teach him to pretend to have serious conditions so damn convincingly.

But I digress.

I needed a drink, and several of my almost-doctor colleagues and I got our scruffy selves to a local bar where we set about obliterating all memory of the previous few hours by enthusiastically getting our drink on. I can’t say that I was feeling my most witty, but as the beer progressively loosened the inhibitory circuits between my tongue and my speech centre, I apparently became rather hilarious. This bar was one of the more overt meat meet markets that I’ve had the pleasure of spending offensive amounts of money on alcohol in, for some time.

Goodness knows, according to the newspaper version of sex-and-fertility 101 (and given my due-to-ovulate-please-g-d-I-hope-soon status) I should have been up there waving my hips in my best hooker heels, with the rest of them but, no. I was the jealous old cow in old baggy jeans bitching viciously about anyone-and-everyone within eye-shot. I had a blast.

In my defence, what else can someone do but snort with derision at all the primped up women walking bent-backed and arse out like old mother Hubbard to keep their balance in five inch stilettos? Let alone the unavoidable observation that, miraculously, they’re all ‘tanned’ a deep, golden orange. I presume that it wasn’t intended to be a homage to Halloween, but after the fourth short-skirt-orange-arse-flash of the night pumpkins kept coming to mind for some strange reason.

Oddly, the men these women were risking serious podiatric damage for weren’t all that impressive, honestly. Unless you like fifty different variations on ‘drunk guy in a suit’. But I’m bitter since not even one of those desperate bastards threw me even a hopeful ‘Oy, beautiful’. Pricks, the lot of them. Believe me when I say that I think some of them were trying to hit on the damn furniture, and yet I got nada. Zip.

Not good for the newly thirty year old ego, all things considered.

It was probably a good thing that one of my friends casually mentioned she was considering throwing up in the plastic plants, abruptly ending out evening. I always like to leave before I’m kicked out. Classier all round, really.

Tagged, tagged and tagged.

I commence this post in hunch-shouldered-head-down abject apology that I have been tagged three times and have yet to fulfil my end of the bargain.

I’m not normally this unreliable, I swear.

To be honest, I’ve contemplated writing this post several times. After the first and the second taggings would be good examples of my best-laid-plans-devolved-to-inertia-in-the-intervening-month(s). But it’s been a REAL challenge to even contemplate generating seven new things/odd things/embarrassing things/stupid things (or whatever exactly it is I’m meant to do) about myself that I have not immediately shared with liberal use of the CAPS LOCK or italics key with the entirety of the Internet some time ago. I’m so suicidally verbally incontinent about what I think/do that it is just not an easy task and I don’t get up to much, most days.

I’m just not that fascinating.

All I do all day is stick sharp things into people, feel stupid on ward rounds, hold retractors in theatre whilst wondering what all the wobbly bits actually are, and go ‘Oooh’ with interest when a particularly large polyp is fished out of someones butt during a colonoscopy (today, it looked like a rather large, slimy strawberry). I don’t even giggle when they bottom-trumpet (as people who have recently had a bowel-full of gas are prone to do).

I’m dull, dull, dull, but I shall do my best.

Without further ado, 7 things about myself:

1. I am weirdly flexible. I can do the splits, I can extend my fingers back far enough to almost shake hands backwards and I can partially dislocate my own shoulders although I have learned not to do this. It aches for days afterwards.

2. I am lazy. Very lazy. If I can wrangle it, watching Discovery Health counts as study and ward units I work on quickly get used to continual, ahem, ‘traffic jams’ rendering me late in the morning.

3. Oh crap, only at three? Scraping the bottom of the barrel some more…I am incredibly tactless. I have been known to ask ‘Since when?’ as a friend is noted to have lost weight, looking particularly svelte without the faintest clue that this might be construed as rude rather than the more frontal-lobe-functioning version of ‘I think you’ve always looked slim, how long ago did you lose the weight?’. Once to my shame, I even told a patient who had just had an amputation ‘Don’t run away’ as I went off to find a piece of equipment I needed. It took me the rest of the morning to work out just why he had looked so surprised.

Bad, very bad. Please don’t tell.

4. I am obsessively neat. My poor husband has been known to be cruelly evicted from the bed early in the morning just so I know it’s made before I head off to work. Threats of violence seem to stop him getting back in when I leave.

5. I am obsessively punctual. To everything. If you say ’5pm’, I will allow for the worst possible travel scenario, leave allowing this time fraction, and get there at least half an hour before anybody else does.

6. Despite items 4 and 5 above, I like to break rules. I hang my washing on the balcony on windy days in direct contradiction of the Body Corporate rules about ANY washing (hypothetically) merrily escaping and cheekily floating down to ground level. I drive fast. I run those annoying red lights that are on timer, clearly that nothing is coming, and it will otherwise be a five minute wait for the green. I don’t do my scheduled assignments unless someone asks for the missing paper.

As an aside, surprisingly they rarely do. I defend this behaviour by noting that I’ve yet to encounter an essay subject that will magically make me a Better Doctor by investing three hours.

7. Feel free to insert your own comments for this one. See item #2 above.

Some days it really *is* better to just stay in bed.

Today has been super, if I stretch my operating definition of ‘super’ to include ’stressful, rushed and full of those golden moments where I say something really daft and everyone goes quiet’. One of those days.

It all began innocently enough with a lazy opening of my eyes to admire the sunshine streaming in through my window. Something was niggling at me. Sunshine. Wait a minute, sunshine? Precisely half a second later my neurones arrived at the bone-chilling realisation that it’s normally dark at the hour I’m meant to get up.

Convulsively leaping out of bed, I angrily interrogated my alarm clock settings, only to find that the damn thing was politely asking if I wanted to continue snooze mode. ‘F*ck, piss and shite’ thought I, I don’t remember doing that.

Knowing that I could still just make the ward round, I left at high speed not precisely looking my most polished. Think wrinkled blouse, hair styled by a hurricane, knee-highs at mid-calf, and shoes still in hand. But more importantly than looking like a total fright, I was so far not too late.

I ate breakfast (in the car) on my now frantic bolt into the hospital, and then that helpfully intended but horribly inconvenient flashing light made a guest appearance.  Petrol stop required.

Accumulated lateness thus far, about 10 minutes.

The petrol station’s computers apparently saw me coming, calculated my degree of desperation and helpfully broke down as I attempted to pay.

Accumulated lateness by the time I was able to pay and leave, ooohhhhh, about 25 minutes.

Heavy traffic, of course, dogged my car all the way in. Slow trucks seemed to take especial delight into changing into my lane right in front of me and then, if possible, driving even more slowly.

Lateness now at about 35 minutes, but who’s counting? After a certain amount of lateness it no longer matters, after all.

I found the ward round, flustered and red faced. They were about half way done already and couldn’t resist the opportunity for a sarcastic ‘Glad you could join us’.

The pleasure’s all mine, really.

The day devolved from this rather inauspicious start to include some really daft things said by myself.

Without going into too much detail, it will suffice to say that I still appear to have that unteachable knack of being able to open my mouth, insert my foot, disconnect my frontal lobe and give the most tactless and/or stupid answer possible. Trust me, I’m damn good at it.

Thank you, Synarel.

I’m a little on the time-pressed side this evening, but I thought that since a picture allegedly tells a thousand words I could get away with a post as brief and lazy as this one will be.

Please use your thousand word allocation to make up a suitable tale about just how much fun a constant blinding headache  courtesy of my current arch-nemesis Synarel, really is.

It’s not simply ‘Not tonight, dear’, but ‘What do you mean, a shag? Are you effing suicidal? Oh my god, my brain is going to freaking explode out of my right eye socket, and I seem to have a rather warm poker jammed in my sinuses, dear‘ around these parts.

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Warmed by the flames of burning bridges, onward I press….

Reproductively speaking, it’s CD4. Moving right along from that mess….

Today I need to confess just how tactless I am.

It is perhaps my most major character flaw. I always mean well, my intentions are good. I’m basically a kind hearted softy. Just verbally tactless. Ok, I should probably admit to variable amounts of bitchiness, cynicism and sarcasm, but only in between my ears (and on this blog) where it doesn’t cause offence. Until someone comes up with a reliable method of mind reading, and not just guessing repeatedly, I doubt a sarky inner monologue will get me in trouble.

The case of bilateral foot in mouth disease I have is, however, probably incurable.

Hopefully the act of writing down my latest verbal indescretions will reinforce the lesson to think before I speak. Let me set the scene.

I had a job interview. On CD1.

Generally speaking, this is not my best day for putting a positive spin on things.

Additionally, the interview was at a hospital where I had no particular desire to work, given that I got the strong reek they seem to hire complete wankers.

I base this somewhat unkind assessment on the eye-roll invoking remarks of my fellow interview-ees in the waiting room. Bunch of pompous tossers. To be fair I suspect they were just nervous, but honestly, it wouldn’t have killed any of them to pull their head out of their ass for five minutes and tell me something about themselves (Ok so it was a job interview. Maybe this suited head in ass is more appropriate). Themselves as people. Not how they want to get on the plastic surgery program because that’s what their very wealthy father does, and that they have already published 5 papers in their semester breaks. Bully for them, but I happen not to give a shit. I’m too busy trying to earn a living, which they clearly do not have to worry about.

Needless to say by the time it was my turn, I had pretty much decided that I didn’t really want to be there. Since I’m terminally tactless this soon became clear to my interviewing panel.

The interview was truly farcical. The panel quite reasonably inquired why I would want to come to Most Excellent Tertiary Hospital (METH for short, both keeping them anonymous and indulging my juvenile mind with a derogatory nickname) over the other hospitals I’ve worked at and therefore clearly have more connection to.

I said to be honest, I didn’t.

You should have seen the facial contortions opposite me. One woman’s eyebrows made a clean break into her hairline and to the best of my knowledge haven’t been seen since. Clearly honesty is rare in the job interview scene, probably because most people aren’t as freaking suicidal as I am when it comes to their future career options.

For what it was worth, I tried to back peddle by stating that METH was an excellent hospital, and I was sure that I would learn a lot and have a well-balanced (the usual no sleep or overtime) intern year in their happy home.

We’ll see what comes of that, but I’m not holding my breath.

If that wasn’t enough, I put the other foot in my mouth later on in the day. I’d been trying to catch up informally with the director of training at another METH, since I’m not a local applicant and I’ve been told that sucking up is the way to go if I want a job.

The director emailed that 4.20 should be a good time for an interview, but to ring and confirm beforehand. So I did. And got ‘I don’t know yet, ring me back at 4.20′.

I shamefully admit that I rapidly decided to fuck the idea of loitering around a foreign hospital awaiting the summons of some Very Important Person. It wasn’t worth the travel for feigned arse licking on a ‘maybe I’ll have time for you’ basis. I made my excuses (all fairly transparent lies). Needless to say, I haven’t had an email back to reschedule.

Summary = two bridges burnt. Snort. For some reason, I find this funny, not terrifying.

I did put in three applications in the end, so there’s one hospital left to offend, if I can only find a way not to do it.

Guess I better not actually speak with, write to, or communicate in any way with any staff member from the remaining FAITH (fairly average indolent teaching hospital) if I want to work next year.

Why imply it was easy?

I know that I’m generally a bit of an irritable sod, but I managed to find another thing that is capable of shitting me to tears, if you’ll pardon the language.

This gem comes from no less than the BBC Health Page .

The abortion debate has been reignited in the UK by revolutionary ultrasound scans showing pictures of a 12 week-old foetus seemingly walking in the womb.

There have been calls for the legal time limit for abortions to be reduced from 24 to 12 weeks and Prime Minister Tony Blair has hinted that the law may be re-examined.

I hope those “calls” are not serious ones, at a minimum there HAS to be an exclusion for foetal anomoly incompatible with life (dodging the whole “social” later term abortion issue for a minute). Otherwise, the implication is that in a modern first world nation, a woman in the situation I was in would have HAD to carry to term. Can you imagine?

To make it clear, I think the women who DO carry babies with anencephaly to term are extraordinarily brave. I wish I had had the guts. I’d have a birth/death certificate/pictures/something instead of the aching nothing I have now. But I couldn’t have. And even though ending my pregnancy was one of the hardest things I ever had to make myself do, I am eternally greatful that I was given that option.

I’m not even going to mention further the following article, which equates later terminations with women not realising they were pregnant. Judgement, much? I wouldn’t have had a clue either, if I hadn’t been so obsessively trying to reproduce.

Ending a pregnancy is traumatic. Period. It doesn’t matter as to the how or why you got where you did. I hate this unmentioned implication that “Oh well, I’ll just have an abortion” is the response to the late “oops”.

Or am I being oversensitive?

Got it.

Today I’ve had the hot tip that I’m less important than a new mother. Glad that was cleared up. I feel so much better about myself for growing a baby with a fatal birth defect, now I’ve got it into my thick skull.

As for the inciting event, you ask?

My OB’s secretary called asking to change my appointment time from a Friday several weeks away, to the Thursday. Since my university never thinks I have a life or deserve to know what I’m doing that far in advance, I had no idea if *either* time was good or bad. The point being, it was all the same to me.

I’d already said ‘Yes, sure, fine’ and only thought the ‘whatever’ about the altered time, when she kept talking.

I assume that she was trying to apologise for moving the time, rather than rub it in that my baby is dead. She goes on to explain that a woman who has just had a beautiful healthy baby needs my appointment time more than I do, and if I could just take the one she doesn’t want, well, that would be so swell of me. Glad I could be of service.

And before you ask, yes she knows what happened, I spoke to her the day we found out about what was wrong with PBWCLEW. She just didn’t stop to think.

Got it. No baby. Not pregnant any more. Not important.

Glad we cleared that up for once and for all.

Yeah, right…

Today I had lunch with one of my closest girlfriends, for the first time since the whole PBWCLEW thing.

To refresh any failing memories…. you know, the pregnancy I fretted about relentlessly (and with great skill) until I was rewarded with something to REALLY worry about in the shape of an anencephalic baby who had every intention of going to term. Cutting a long story short, with the metaphorical gun to our heads, we gutwrenchingly decided that we had Other Plans about *that* given I would have gone start raving mad if I’d tried it (and got pretty darn close anyway).

I would have been 16 weeks a few days ago.

Instead of this happy scenario however, I have had the pleasure of an unforgettable un-fun wait for a, to call the proverbial spade a not-shovel, abortion (a word I hate to use). Closely followed by a stress-induced crash diet that has people commenting on how fabulous I’m looking lately. I’m tempted to blame it on amphetamine abuse or some such grossly inappropriate response, if only because I can’t shock people with the truth (although I’ve been sorely tempted at times).

The memories.

So, coming back to my (very lovely) friend.

Having had enough time since the acute fallout to not feel the need to inflict the gory details of my pain on others when I see them (until they squirm or cry, and I perversely feel a little better), it was safe for me to go out to lunch in public.

I was even happy to see her (beautifully healthy) baby daughter.

But

Well meaning advice (argggh) did strike again.

I mentioned the recurrence risk (say for convenience 1 in 20), and this normally wonderfully-brilliantly-sarcastic-twisted-bitter-woman-that-I-love-to-bits went all pollyanna on me and pointed out that 19 out of 20 would be fine. I’m glad I got THAT cleared up without the benefit of a calculator…

Additionally, if anybody else tells me that pregnancy is a great suppression therapy for PCOS it may end badly (especially if I know where you live, I’m devious).

Besides, my zit collection would beg to differ.

On: Happy New Year, from a hard nosed cow

NYE was the usual palaver this year, is it just me that doesn’t see the ‘magic’ of too much alcohol and crowded, expen$$ive everywhere?

The area around our (rather modest) apartment complex was a veritable wellspring of drunks in various postures of inebriation, ranging from wobbling slightly, to forced to sit, to having difficulty getting beer bottle to mouth, to discarding said beer bottle anywhere whilst spontaneously flashing rude bits, to my perennial personal favourite vomiting over the edge of the 20 somethingth floor balcony they are currently occupying. Class all the way.

I haven’t yet mentioned that drunk people have trouble reading the time yet either. Honestly we had a million scattered countdowns (all at def con 10, and slurred), some latecomers were still warbaling numbers with enthusiasm at quarter past.

So happy new year to all, and on to the next complaint/tale.

I know my posts are family heavy, which is no mean feat for a woman with two biological relatives in the country. I don’t see them an awful lot either, so I think the prominence has to do with the genetic streak of bilateral foot-in-mouth disease that we all have.

Keeping it short what happened is that upon having lunch with my sister and opening up further (and very painfully) about our fertility, or complete bloody lack thereof, she says to me the following:

‘Don’t take this the wrong way…..

(Which made my face start to tick…pet peeve…if you have to say this, then you KNOW it’s about to offend the listener. So don’t f*cking say it. Not hard. You can think it instead, or sing out ‘La La La’ until the impulse goes away)

……, but I’d never seen you as the maternal type’.

Cue open mouthed gape on my part

Apparently I eat my young.

I did, you will be relieved to note dear reader, just manage to bite down on the impulse to tell her that her miscarriage must’ve been all her fault in revenge.

A ‘sheeeeeeeesh‘ (with extra ‘e’s) is in order.

Tech Tags: tact family infertility new year

On:my father is an ass. Confirmation.

I title this entry ‘an ode to my not-so-tactful father OR what not to say to an infertile woman ‘

The dear man just got all top four on my list in our 5 minute ago phone conversation. Tact clearly runs in the family. Not only did he insert his foot, but followed it with the contents of the room.

1. what? why have children anyway?

I dunno, I was bored with my life and thought the welfare cheques were what I was missing?

Because I love my husband *damnit* and he will be an excellent f*cking father. And I hope to hell I’ll not be too bad at the parenthood thing myself.

2. why would you want to go do a thing like that (IVF)

erm…because we’re infertile. And we’d like to have children. Not in a ‘in passing, if it happens’ kinda way either.

3. What about your degree?

I will be finished before an IVF child, even if we got lucky FIRST f*cking time. (well, ok, NOT f*cking, but involving a pot, petri dish and incubator) And we don’t NEED two wages, so who cares if I’m late graduating?

4. Life’s much better without ‘em anyway, you can do so much more.

All I can say is ‘way to go, Dad’. It’s lucky we’re related or I wouldn’t be speaking to your insensitive ass for a loooooong time. Geez

Tech Tags: family foot+in+mouth infertility tact