Pontificum Scriblerus

I can't believe it's June, I'm about to fight the final battle over at the hospital, after which my first fellowship year is over. I looked over my posts and writings starting around December of last year, and I must say, I am less than impressed. It has been a really tough year. In fact, after rattling off a bunch of bad things that happened to us so far in 2009, I asked hubby if he could think of anything good. After a while, we came up with: "Well, we got Blueberry..." Here is where a shrink away from an angry god's lightening beam. Nothing horrible has happened either, of course. We're healthy. We're still together. I survived my car accident with nary a scratch. I didn't get fired from my job. I didn't get pregnant, but I also didn't get pregnant and then get un-pregnant. However, I think the fact that I feel this way is indicative at the very least of my mood and attitude. Truth is, it's been an undeniably hard and parti...

I know it's only been 2 weeks, and sure, I expected to feel reluctance to get back into the grind, but I didn't expect to think of the hospital with such all encompassing bitter aversion.

I forgot to mention, as pointed out by an interested individual, that unlike her brother, my niece was all about me. I don't know why or what I did, but we were basically inseparable. She wanted to hold my hand and walk with me; she wanted to go swimming when I went swimming; she sat with me during meals and had me cut up her chicken. I'm, of course, drawing on a limited pool of childcare experiences, because as I mentioned, I used to babysit when I was 14, but that's really about it. So when the six-year-old would come and want to sit on my lap, or walk with me, or eat with me, I felt responsible for carrying some semblance of an intelligent conversation, as I would with any other company. I found myself uncomfortable by long episodes of silence while sitting with another human being. I was stressed out about finding appropriate topics that would interesting to us both. I ended up making smalltalk about the weather and the stock market, or something equally inane, wi...

I came to this realization when my little nephew, 3 years of age, categorically refused to give me a kiss. At first, it was cute: he was shy, and he didn't remember me from Christmas when he was just 1. He would not come close to me, hiding behind his mother. What added insult to injury was that he came to give his uncle, my husband, a kiss without a problem. My husband is tall and scary, and I'm so.... not! so what the hell! His parents first urged him, than begged him, the ordered him: "Kiss your aunt Sasha! Give Aunt Sasha a kiss! Give Aunt Sasha a kiss!" So, I was sad and offended, well, as much as one can be offended by a three-year-old. But then, I put myself in the kid's shoes. I distinctly remembered having a deaf aunt Tanya, who'd come over and I'd be called in to duty: "Give aunt a kiss!" She had an unbelievably wrinkly face, and questionable teeth, and a hearing aid. Everyone would be watching. It was awful. I completely empathized. I ...

Punta Cana, Punta Cana... Accepting us with open arms - right into a torrential downpour that kept us stranded in the wet lobby unable to wade across the resort into our villa. Well, at least our asses got upgraded to this awesome royal service suite. We have a jacuzzi for naughtiness and a menu for various pillows. I shit you not: aromatherapy pillow for a most relaxing sleep, orthopedic pillow for neck comfort, vibrating pillow for sexual release (just kidding. Or am I.) Given the current circumstances, ie the rain-slash-nothing to do, the nice room, the room service, there is an immediate cranking of the baby pressure to 11 on a scale of 1 to 10. Wowee, said the family. This is for making not just one baby, it's for making three! Get to it! Don't you wanna make a grandma out of me? Remember how I said I used to think the whole pregnancy thing was embarrassing, but I'm losing my sense of gynecological shame with each visit to the gyno? Yeah, not so much. Leave my apparatu...

Just a week or two ago, I left for work driving through streets lined with naked trees, and came back home through streets lined with blooming branches. Spring was here! Now, apparently, spring is already over, and it's so fucking hot and dusty outside! Hello, perpetual hot weather migraine!! Someone had the good mind to plant lilac shrubs outside by the garage. They're young, but the flowers are plentiful, and the scent fills the air, especially now that the air is thick with heat. The lilac scent... spells nostalgia for so many things...

January, 2005: MY NP: healthy healthy healthy! (snaps off gloves) now, what about babies? ME: I'm only 26! MY NP: you should really think about it! ME: I'm a medical resident with no money! MY NP: Pregnancy decreases your chances of breast cancer! ME: !@$#%@! June, 2007: HUSBAND: let's just tell our parents we're never having babies. ME: What?! Why?! HUSBAND: I don't want to be an old dad. ME: You're taking babies off the table?! HUSBAND: I just don't think you'll ever be ready. ME: @!#$#% December, 2007 : MY M-I-L: Babies come from PARIS!! (pokes me in belly) ME: your son had a cold, and I had my period. MY M-I-L: Let's see if you did anything weird in PARIS!! (wink wink) ME: Like what? MY M-I-L: babies bring so much joy! ME: (looks desperately for husband) !@$!@$!! March, 2008: 180 degrees June, 2008: Ovaries starting boiling January, 2009 : TECH: Hey, Sasha. Question. ME: ? TECH: Are you pregnant? ME: No. Why? TECH: Because you're always hungr...

I'm practicing saying the phrase: I'm struggling with infertility. That's what all the blogs and articles use to describe this, so I should get used to it too. I don't know if I'm actually "struggling," and I certainly don't even believe that I have "infertility," but I can't deny the fact that I've already seen the doctor, took drugs, and underwent a procedure - that didn't work. ANYWAY. Maybe because of that, my mind is occupied by various aspects of maternity, pregnancy, childbirth, and obstetrics in general. I'm an anxious person; things that aren't right drive me crazy, and I just cannot afford to be more crazy, so I usually try to live in my little bubble without having it burst by the recession, increasing insurance premiums, my huge debt, teenagers getting shot across the street or what have you. But the general paradigm of how pregnancy and childbirth are regarded has managed to really crawl under my skin. There a...

"- But my boobs will get huge! - So, you'll go to XYZ bra store and get what you need. - I will feel huge and ugly, and complain all the time! - You'll be worried about how many onesies you're gonna need, and whether the changing table should match the crib. (Hint: you don't need a changing table) - But I'll have stretchmarks! - Who's gonna care about a little stretchmark? - I will!! I dunno... I just find the whole pregnancy thing very embarrassing. - Embarrassing? How is it embarrassing? - Because everybody knows exactly what you did and when... - What do you mean? - Literally, they know what you did, and they can count back and know exactly when you did IT. - You don't think they know you're fucking now? - Yea, but they don't know when. Childish, right? - Honestly? - Yea - :) - But it's also that suddenly you're just this... thing with a purpose... It's also that you have to show your vadge off and they stick fingers in you and ma...

Today, I was driving and listening to Possum Kingdom by the Toadies. I was totally rocking out to this song, and getting a little turned on because the beat is kind of rhythmic and the lyrics are very sexual . I'm thinking, wow, this guy, he sounds hot! "I'll not be a gentleman... Give it up to me..." Hot! But what's up with "Do you wanna die?" Is he using "die" in the Shakespearean sense? So I decided to come home and google the song. Imagine my surprise to find out that the song is apparently a big controversy! Possum Kingdom turns out to be a lake in Texas, which is surrounded by local folklore, and the song is based on that. It's not about sexy love, it's about rape and death. Or Vampires. Then I YouTube'd the video to the song, and if I had a glimmer of hope that it was figurative, it was squashed there. A body bag is dragged out of a lake. In it, is a block of ice. A faceless man carves a woman's face in the ice with an ic...

There was an episode of Sex and the City, where Carrie decides she is going to "take a LOVAH," but after she does, she ends up suddenly feeling like she cannot be casual, and she wonders if women have a special hormonal trigger of some sort that causes them to get attached after having sex. I postulate that yes, and furthermore, you don't really need the sex per se. I got inseminated last week. It feels very strange to put that out there, but since this whole ordeal started, I've really lost my sense of shame, privacy, or the delicate nature of the whole conception business. It's a process just like any other process. This post isn't about that, although, I could probably write another post about just that. So, I got inseminated last week. When I went to the first appointment, I met with this mother hen-like Indian woman, who all but patted my hand as she explained the proposed sequence of events to me. The insemination fell on a weekend, so it was the doctor ...