Transitions

Wednesday night, as Paul and I were listening to a Q and A after a movie, our phones flickered with calls from my brother, who was visiting my parents in Florida. Paul and I looked at each other and wordlessly slipped past the row of people into the lobby. It was after 1 AM in Florida, so even as I dialed my brother back, I already knew, my father had passed away.

The hospice workers believe (or maybe they just tell you to make you feel better) that a person has a certain amount of control over one's death, and that if a person wants people there, he will wait, and if he doesn't, he will wait for that, too. My father died a couple of hours after my mother and siblings left for the evening, and during the twenty minute period between check-ins from the hospice worker.

Another thing people who work with the dying say, is that they will often see their patients, in the days before their deaths, looking into empty spaces, their eyes following things unseen. Some believe they are seeing angels. As a quasi-Buddhist, I have a very loose definition of angels, but I hope my father had some help in his transition to another plane of existence, I hope he felt he was moving toward something as well as moving away. I hope he did see angels.

Having visited so recently, I didn't go to Florida as it became clear things were coming to an end. I offered to help my sister with her kids here while she went because I wanted her to have the opportunity to see him again. My dad and I had a few good, honest moments when I visited, and we said a real, very heartfelt goodbye when I left, so I have no regrets on this point. Still, it has been a odd week, filled with early mornings, precocious questions from a four and a six-year old, and making peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches, intercut with reports via telephone. Sometimes the change in circumstance seems remote, as I laugh with my friends or play with the kids. And then, in a quiet moment, I find myself sobbing.

There will probably be more on this topic in the future, but for today, I thought I'd share these pictures from my visit a few weeks ago. The photo of me and my mom is a tiny bit blurry--my dad was unsteady when he took it. The picture of my parents I am glad for. We are not a particularly photogenic lot, so a good picture is a lucky one, and here my father looks very much like himself. His gaze looks focused, his bemused smile will be familiar to those who knew him.

The one that I cannot help loving on an artistic level is the last one. It is the last picture I took, or will ever take, of my father, and for me it captures so much of this moment in our lives--I can feel the connection between my father and my mother, their determined and studied commitment to their path. I see the sharpness of my father's shoulder blades beneath his shirt, his concentration on the ground beneath his feet, the way he dominates the frame, even as he prepares to walk out of it forever.

Context Snapshot # 1

This blog has various functions. One of the bigger ones--conceptually if not in practice, is a kind of "witness to the world" thing. I have this fantasy that if my blog landed in some electronic time capsule discovered later by aliens or the round- blobs-of-video-watching-dough that humanity evolves into, they will have some sense of the experience of being living during this time. Kind of like when they find day-to-day letters from some pioneer woman chatting aboutlife and describing the dress she's been pining for in the Sears and Robuck catalogue.

Talking to a friend recently, it occurred to me, that what is lacking in terms of "witness to the world-ness" is context. I do a fair-to-middling job of recording various things that happen to me, me, me. And the aliens will probably be able to extrapolate something about our society from my scintillating comparisons of hummus varieties on the market or growing paranoia at the DMV. But for their benefit--and/or more likely my own, should I skim through these posts in a few years--I should probably try to periodically, to give a little snapshot of what's happening in the world right now.

But, because I am aim to be not so much a journalist as an honest recorder of the human experience, my experience in fact, I should probably battle the temptation to seem intelligent and informed by researching and fact-checking etc., but instead note a few news as they actually filter into my awareness.

So, for example:

In the last couple weeks:
-American pop idol Michael Jackson died. He was really popular during my youth. Had a big impact on the who music video industry. Late a subject of scorn due to accusations of "meddling" with young boys, and his mask-like visage--a result of way too many plastic surgeries. In death however, all seems forgiven, as there are tributes galore, and many a grief-stricken shout out on various social networking sites.
-Iran elected a new leader, and a lot of people there felt it was fraudulent, and there have been riots and protests and violence. And I don't know what's happening now, as the whole thing seems to have largely faded from the news.
-There's this thing going around called "Swine Flu." There was a lot of hubbub after the first few cases, with warnings that it was going to develop into a global epidemic. Now, I believe it HAS turned into a global epidemic, but only 300 people have died, and they seem mostly to be the very old, young, sick-with-other-things-too people who die from other kinds of flu as well, so it, too, has really diminished in terms of news coverage.
-Sarah Palin, who vaulted to fame as John McCain's running mate in the recent presidential election, has retired as governor of California.
A recent study has shown that Colorado is the only state in the union that has an obesity rate of less than 20 percent.

In case you (or the future aliens) are wondering, I get and forget my news from the following sources:

-A BBC newsfeed in my menu bar that I don't remember installing.
-A New York Times feed that comes to my email.
-The actual, made-out-of-paper Sunday L.A. Times, though often I don't get through the whole thing.
-The bank of televisions at the gym. (However, because I generally use the elliptical machines, which are in the third row behind the treadmills and the stationary bikes, I am too far away to read the subtitles. I can tell you that they were talking about -Sarah Palin on "The View" this morning, and I can tell you that Whoopi Goldberg had a lot to say on the subject, but have no idea what that was.)
-Occasionally, but rarely, other people's blogs, or links posted on Facebook.

Who Am I?

Frequent house guest and good friend D left this past week for Japan, leaving behind a space in our hearts, a small box of books, and extra suitcase and his camelback. He
also sold us his '95 Toyota Camry, making us once again a two car family--woo hoo!

Waiting in line at the DMV anyway to transfer the title, I decided the time had come to finally trade my Florida driver's license in for a California license. I had BOTH my passport and my birth certificate, so I felt pretty confident I could make this happen.

But apparently things have changed since the last time I got a California Driver's license--in the name of Barrington Smith. Because of concerns about identity theft, the none-to-helpful representative at the counter told me, when I reached her after an hour and a half, my license must EXACTLY match what is printed on my passport/birth certificate.

Some of you may know that my full given name was actually Susan Jean Barrington Smith. Then I got married, so make that Smith-Seetachitt. For over twenty years, I have used my middle name, Barrington, to conduct business. It is the name that is on my bank accounts, loan agreements, insurance documents, time cards, W-2 forms, and my social security card. Oh, and my current Florida driver's license. I pulled it out along with my social security card, and showed the representative. She was not impressed.

"Without a court ordered name change document, I can only put the exact name that appears on the passport."
"Okay, fine, if you want to put five names on that little card, go ahead. I've no idea how I'll airline reservations, but I'll figure it out."
"No, I can't, because the name has to match your social security card, so you need to get your social security card changed first."

??%"*9!!

In two countries and three states I've used my middle name with no problem...until now.

Apparently, to obtain a court ordered name change, I need to make a public notice in the newspaper for four weeks first, and then go to court. REALLY?! I don't even want to CHANGE my name. I just want to choose how to use the one I have!

I feel like my identity is being stolen--and not by identity thieves!!

Lethargy

So not into motion right now. There's a little cocktails/birthday thing for folks in our program tonight, and I just can't. make. myself. move. Moreover since it would require a change of clothes.

Instead, I think I will try to creep over to Paul's computer (he is out watching Transformers) and try to check out the Dr. Who series, highly recommended by my friend Safia.

In other news, I have been "following" myself on this blog for three days now, and...it doesn't seem to mean anything. It shows up on my reader with the heading "following," but I don't see any difference between following and subscribing. But it feels weird to be the only follower of myself, so I am attempting to figure out how to "unfollow" someone. Keep an eye on that right hand side bar for the exciting results!

Blog Housekeeping

Over the past couple of years, a few people have noted having trouble adding my blog to their RSS feeders. I have recently updated the template for this blog. It is kind of ugly, but it allowed me to add this "Subscribe To" window that is currently in the right-hand sidebar. If you are someone who has been unable to subscribe in the past, try clicking on that and let me know how it goes!

There is also, by default, a window that says, "Follow Me." I have no idea what this does. I think I can remove the whole thing, but thought I would leave it there for awhile and see what happens. What happens if you follow me? The only following I understand is Twitter. Do my 500 word posts download to your twitter account? What happens if I follow myself? Will it allow me to chase my own tail?

Technology. It moves on.

West Coast Again

Paul and I got back from our whirlwind nine-day trip to Florida last night. With full days of travel at either end, this left us a week: Three days in Sarasota with my parents, two days in Tallahassee, seeing friends (and Paul of course worked on a friend's film) and two days back in Sarasota with my dad while Mom zipped up to Indiana to organize some things up there.

Generally my parents "winter" in Florida, and return to Indiana each summer, and generally my siblings and I manage to travel to Indiana to stay in large rambling house we grew up in, see some friends, eat some tomatoes from the farmer's stand that sets up along the road in a field near our house. I usually cut across the back lot to visit the librarians at the small strip mall near our house, some of whom still remember me from story time hours and the summer reading program where I proudly read a hundred books, returning after each to fill out little questionnaires. Now I guess it would take me half a decade to read a hundred books.

This summer, my father has not been well enough to travel north, and in truth, may never do so again. Due to budget cuts, all the local libraries have been closed. The field with the tomato farmer has been annexed to a neighboring tree farm. The world turns.

The Florida trip was sad and happy, inspiring and daunting. I loved seeing our friends in Tallahassee, and there were a couple of perfect evenings that I could not improve upon by any editing. Writing and it's practice were never main topics of discussion, but with writers it is often referred to in passing, and even these small aside discussions were enough to jar me from the screenwriting hole I have burrowed into of late, reminding me, not for the first time, that I have some real contemplating to do about where and how to invest my writing time.

Seeing my parents was very emotional. They have a lot of transitions going on right now, and in truth, I can't even imagine what each of them is going through, but these days were a window into their lives right now. After several conversations and glowing recommendations from people who have been in similar situation, I imposed myself to set up some outside help in the form of instating a hospice team. and I hope it was the right thing to do. Paul says that I seem sure of myself in these decisions to the point of arrogance, but I am sure of nothing, except that in times of severe stress, the people you are trying to help don't have the resources to entertain the personal angst and indecision of people who are supposedly helping. I figure better to approach possible solutions with confidence enough to encourage a real try. If they fail, it won't be for lack of commitment. Hospice services can easily be revoked, but in my time there, the visit from the social worker alone seemed worth the paperwork. She spent almost three hours letting him talk and cry, and asking good questions, and the experience seemed to really raise his spirits and lessen his anxiety.

I kissed my dad goodbye yesterday knowing I might end up back in Florida for several more weeks this summer or it might be the last time I ever see him.

In either case, the moment highlighted my awareness throughout the trip of the imminent ending of ways of life that had become habitual. In Tallahassee we played a board came with our friends Mark and Becky, and it felt so oddly the same as it always had, though a year has passed. And then I would be washed over with a wave of realization that it might be another year before we do so again, maybe never in that same house, and depending on fate, maybe never.

Our friends David and Nancy showed up as several of us were hanging out at Frank and Cherie's house, and we all sat and joked in the living room as we had in the past but David and Nancy had stopped by to say goodbye, as they were leaving the following day for new jobs and lives in San Francisco. The chances of that particular group of people all gathering together in a single room is slim indeed.

So, cliches. Things are always changing. Nothing stays the same. Life is bittersweet.

Waves of gratitude for the family and friends that we love are succeeded by waves of sorrow that they cannot last--that we cannot last. But in the end I guess it is gratitude that wins out, for this impossible and temporary time we have been given.

Expiration Date

After being married for over eight years, I just found this out the other day. When Paul is buying something with a credit card, and it asks for the date of expiration, and say, the card says "10/31/09", he doesn't say "10-09", but "11-09" since that's the day it has actually expired.

Who does that?

Do you?

Am I the only one who says "10-09"?

Interestingly, the payment is accepted both ways.

Balloon Bass Band - "Sneaky 'n' Sleazy" by Unpopable

Saw this band "Unpopable" at a little bar in Pasadena last night. The guy has (as you can see here) created a kind of one string bass out of balloons. It's pretty cool. He makes each instrument the night of. Last night he was using a white balloon for the string and wearing a white T-shirt, so there was the added bonus that it mostly seemed like he was rocking out on this weird air guitar.

Hello. I've Just Got to Let You Know.

Fell off the blogging wagon (actually the opposite of that) lately, so don't think I mentioned this.

While placing flower/swag arrangements in celebrity trailers with another P.A. on American Idol, I realized how I might be getting too old for this when we had the following conversation.

ME: Okay, that's Keith Urban's done, who's left?
OTHER P.A.(looking at paper with dressing room layout): Um, Lionel, I can't tell which one is supposed to be hers.
ME: Whoa. Do you not know who Lionel Ritchie is?
OTHER P.A.: I think I've heard of her.
ME: Him. (singing) Cause I wonder where you are. And I wonder what you dooo. And I want to tell you so much... Anything?
OTHER P.A.: (shaking head, no recognition) Sorry.
ME: Nicole Ritchie's dad.
OTHER P.A.: Oh! Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Reading and Writing

Just bought a new blank book for four bucks, and having a cuppa tea that costs about the same. Up charge for subsituting soy for dairy? Fifty-five cents! Is it just me, or is that a lot?

Still, vanilla red tea latte. It was really good. I was conscious of enjoying it, and enjoying my new red notebook. Maybe it is the sudden absence of imminent deadlines, but I have been more consciously enjoying things lately. Listening to music as I fold laundry, the feel of sleeping on freshly changed sheets, the quiet satisfaction of crossing long-delayed administrative tasks off my list, the luxury of wandering the stacks at the library with no real time constraint.

Maybe part of my consciously enjoying is in counterpoint to talking to my parents, who are going through a difficult time right now. My father has been feeling unwell for over a month now, and he is not happy about it. One of his chief complaints of late is that it feels difficult to breathe. There's more to it than that, but the relevant bit is a conversation I had with him the other day, when he sounded miserable, and I asked him, "Is there anything left that is a respite from your suffering. Is there anything that you enjoy?" His response was that "It's hard to enjoy anything when you can't breathe."

I feel very sorry for my dad right now. I can only imagine that lack of breath (although his oxygen levels are fine) would feel a little like drowning, and would be quite panic inducing, but at the same time, I can't help but see some of his suffering comes as a result of how he has trained his mind over the years. Or how he has not. I am periodically reminded that gratitude takes practice, and that if we do not practice when things are going well, we will be ill-equipped to find it when things are not.

I wonder to myself if I would be grateful for the pleasure of sunlight on my skin if I was feeling like a couldn't breathe? Do I feel a passing moment of gratitude now, when, running to my car in a hurry, I notice the day is beautiful, that the air touching my face is perfect? Do I feel grateful for it when I am worried about money, about jobs, about career and babies? I do, and more so when I am in the habit of doing so. Sometimes I slip out of the habit, and have to struggle to get it back. How hard would it be if I were years out of the habit?

I remember once someone--maybe it was my dad--advising me when I was a young driver and worried about driving in a downpour. There was so much rain coming down I could barely see anything. He--whoever it was--pointed out, "Your are focusing at the rain on the windshield, you have to look beyond that." I made the adjustment, and found it helped quite a lot. I couldn't see the world like I could when it was not raining, but I could see it well enough to drive. And that was the point. And without my preconceptions of how I wanted things to look I might even have noticed how the blurry buildings and streetlights through the sparkling rain at dusk had a beauty of their own.

American Idol

So I'm not doing much writing this week--p.a.-ing at for the American Idol finale at the Nokia Theater downtown. Not sure how much I'm allowed to talk about it, but I'll say the work is pleasant enough so far, as are the people. Standard production fare.

But it's been awhile since I've been somewhere where hundreds of people daily drinking hundreds of cans and bottles of beverages, and to realize nothing is being recycled. It breaks my heart. I've been asking around, but haven't gotten the full story. Could be that the Nokia doesn't recycle. There are one or two containers around, but someone told me they saw them being emptied into the same dumpster.

However, it could be that it's like when I was working at Participant. I couldn't fathom that they wouldn't recycle, but then was told that the city of Beverly Hills sorts it all out. So there could be some kind of waste management I don't yet understand.

Outcome

If anyone was waiting with bated breath after the end of my last post. I figured out yesterday that I wasn't late at all. It's just been such a crazy month that one week felt like two. So today was actually 28 days...and I was right on time.

Still planning to talk about movies and stuff, but for the moment am still feeling guilty when I'm writing and it's not my rewrite for class. And my rewrite is not going that great.

Paul said something the other day, about the problem being that you can never know what your potential is...if you just knew that however hard you worked, you could only get to a certain level that was not awe-inspiring, you could just accept that and turn your attention to other things.

My friend S passed my resume along at her work, and I'm spending from Friday to Wednesday helping load in for the American Idol finale next week. Just PA work, and long hours...I haven't done that for awhile. Think it will be interesting to see how I feel at the end of the five days. I think a lot lately about just working, and not feeling guilty and not good enough about my writing all the time. But wonder how long it will take doing long hard days before I again start to idealize the life of an artist...

What to write when you haven't written

for awhile? It's hard to know where to start, whether with something heavy or light. I received a call from one of my oldest friends last weekend. Having stopped by my blog of late, she wondered if I was okay, as my posts had been a little "cryptic." Entirely unintentional on my part. Sometimes I am too drained to write much. Often I worry that I write too many words, say too many words. Occasionally I receive criticism that I am too "wordy," and I have to say that that particular criticism reaches some core part of me, so that I try to err in the opposite direction--and sometimes land in the region of cryptic. Which is a good thing to hear sometimes, as it gives me permission to use more words, when I have the energy to do so.

So, I have a few topics I'd like to discuss in the near future, only one that I'll address today these are:

1) pop culture report wolverine, star trek, lie to me, and after this evening, Dollhouse.
2) Review of items recently bought "As seen on TV."
and 3) the baby thing. This is where I will start.

As a re-cap, having a baby is kind of big issue around our house these days. I'm of a certain age, and despite our inauspicious financial situation at present, if we're going to do it, the time has come to, as they say "fish or cut bait."

Not that we haven't been making efforts in this arena before now, it's just that now is the first time in recent years that we've addressed the fact that our efforts have never had tangible results.

So finally we have gone to a Fertility Clinic. It has a good reputation, charges lots of money, and sent us a handwritten thank you note after our first appointment. One time we had to sit in the waiting room for some amount of time--probably less than an hour--and they sent us a handwritten apology and a Starbucks gift card. I realize this is not entirely relevant to my story--but I find it very interesting so thought I'd throw it in.

In answer to the questions that the few people we have told seem to have. We have taken many tests, and yes, I am ovulating, and yes, Paul's sperm is swimming, and yes there are eggs, and the requisite levels of hormones. But, one of my fallopian tubes is apparently blocked. This was not the case the last time I had an HSG test, before my cancer diagnosis, so it is probably a result of scar tissue adhesions in the wake of my surgery. To me, this kind of news, is more heartening than disheartening. Since ovaries tend to "take turns," it means that at least some percentage of the time, our lack of results have not been "unexplained" but very explainable.

Anyway...in the past few weeks, we've considered a lot of alternatives, including fertility drugs, but then, as fate would have it, the past reared its head, and we realized that there are some "inconclusive" indications that these same drugs might increase one's risk for certain cancers...Since my Ovarian cancer risk is already 10% higher than most peoples, and my Uterine cancer risk is 40%-60% higher, this gave us some pause. I went back to my old habit of perusing articles in medical journals late at night and making myself anxious and depressed.

And then one day I just realized that I have already picked my path for these sort of things, and that it has worked out okay. I have a little down time this summer...diet, meditation, acupuncture, a particular kind of massage, chinese herbs--and then we could have IUI, which is where a cleaned (they call it "scrubbed") sperm is place, via a syringe, very close to the cervix. Just a little boost, so it doesn't have to do all that hiking. I won't have the advantage of multiple eggs, but I AM ovulating...and if that dude could meditate himself an entire lactating breast, surely I can help my eggs out a bit.

So that's where we're at now. Nothing too dramatic. No trips to Thailand. Just a bit more exact version of what we've been doing, I guess. Hopefully with the help of the clinic's monitoring, we'll be able to tell which ovary is ovulating, and we can try when it's the right one and not the left one.

There is a little bit more on this topic...which is that I am, as I write this, five days behind my usual schedule...The HSG test has been known to "clear out" small blockages, making one's odds a little higher than usual for a few months after the procedure. However, it also can simply delay ovulation and menstruation, and I've read a number of people online who report delays, but negative pregnancy tests.

Still, I can tell Paul is harboring hopes--which he knows better than to show me, since it has so often been followed by disappointment. And for a few days at least, much as I guard against it, I'm walking around with a little "maybe" in my heart.

Applications from the Abyss

I'm preparing a number of applications for tomorrow, including writing-based scholarship applications at school, an application for teaching assistantships, and both Film Independent and Sundance Labs. This requires, in addition to the script itself, things like resumes, informational cover letters, and bios. These are dangerous to write when you are feeling like crap about almost everything, including the script you are sending.

Example: Barrington Smith-Seetachitt
Biography

Barrington was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, where she received a pretty good public-school education, augmented by music lessons, tennis lessons, and dance lessons. Her childhood dream was to become a librarian, because the library was her favorite place, and she liked to imagine herself at the front of the room, reading books to kids at story time. Today she thinks back to her old career aspirations and realizes it probably would have made her twenty times happier than living the stressed-out, culturally bereft, financially-on-the edge life she lives.

But you know what they say--half of writing is editing.

The News

Yesterday at the grocery store, I signed up for a year of the L.A. Times. I will get the paper Thursday thru Sunday--that's four papers a week--for the weekly price of 75 cents.

And they gave me a ten dollar gift card for the grocery store.

Can a newspaper even exist on this amount? I guess not. Well, maybe. If they increase circulation, they can give those numbers to their advertisers and sell more advertisements.

And maybe hook some new readers.

Fight on, newspapers, I hope you survive!

One thing that makes my day a little brighter

I have "hidden" all my friends on facebook who use "Lil Greenpatch" as their automatic status updater.

This probably makes me a bad person.

But since I've confessed that, I'll confess something else...those "friends" were the ones who, when I saw their friend requests, I thought either "ugh" or "why?"

So is the Lil Green Patch thing proof that I already had some intuition about how our FB friendship would progress, or is it just the reason I have come up with for the hiding people I really didn't know or like to begin with?

Or do I just have a disaffinity for people who love the environment?

Or do they feel the same about me, and just needed a mass of people to spam with this very good cause, and I was one of them?

I really don't hate the rainforest.

Check List

If you have experienced five or more of these symptoms within the same two week period--especially if a depressed mood or loss of interest or pleasure are among your symptoms--this could be indicative of an episode of depression.

1. Depressed Mood
A person may report feeling "sad" or "empty" or may cry frequently. YES
2. Decreased Interest or Pleasure
A person may show markedly diminished interest or pleasure in all, or almost all, daily activities. YES
3. Weight Changes
Significant changes in weight when not attempting to gain or lose (a gain or loss of 5% or more in a month. NO. I don't think. Maybe I have put on a few pounds. What's 5% of 135?
4. Sleep Disturbances
Insomnia or sleeping too much. THE SECOND ONE. I went to bed at 9pm last night and woke up this morning at 10AM.
5. Psychomotor Agitation or Retardation
The person may be observed to be either agitated and restless or physically slowed down in their movements. NOT SURE. Don't feel that quick, but then I'm not in a position to "observe the person."
6. Fatigue
Deep fatigue or a loss of energy. YES YES YES
7. Feelings of Worthlessness or Guilt
A depressed person may feel that they have no value or they may feel inappropriately guilty about things they have no control over. OH. IS THAT NOT NORMAL?
8. "Brain Fog"
A depressed person may have a diminished ability to think, concentrate or make decisions. OH, SORRY. I GOT DISTRACTED. YES. I THINK. IS THAT A GOOD ANSWER?
9. Thoughts of Death
A depressed person may have recurring thoughts of death, especially thoughts of suicide, with or without a specific plan. NO. Why would I commit suicide when I can go back to bed?

How many was that?

Conflicted

I have been working on decision-making as a skill my entire life, and I'm still fairly bad at it.

We have a rehearsal for a pitching event at school this morning at which attendance is not required, but requested. It will be followed closely by my niece's "princess birthday party" this afternoon--I am still in the process of pressing and cleaning my "Fairy Godmother" dress I found at Jet Rag earlier this week. Tonight there is a art show featuring someone loosely connected to my parents, and two different Birthday celebrations. And our D is visiting this weekend...his number of visits diminishing as he prepares to move to Japan in June.

I have been to every rehearsal so far. Today is faculty/alumni day, so I guess if I want faculty and alumni to know I come to these things, today is the day I should go. However it means the performers really have people to perform to that they probably care about (and rightly so) more than me. At some point the lack of my body might mean they have to pitch to each other. Not the end of the world. And yet the guilt...

And yet the guilt if I don't write...now less than seven days from the May 1 deadline for scholarship scripts, final school projects, assistant applications.

Do I tend to have an inflated view of my own importance? Do I still have ill-tended boundaries? Should I be more protective and passionate about my own goals? Or is it just a little lazy and selfish?

My stomach literally knots up over these little decisions, on a fairly consistent basis...is that normal? No one else really talks about it.

Tomorrow our friend from Austin has a film at the Newport Film Festival. The trip is over an hour each way, and sadly our car maintenance situation is a bit precarious. But he's an old friend, and I really want to support his film. Why haven't we taken our car to the shop before (obvious reasons, we are sharing one car so it involves lots of logistics, and are scared it will be really expensive). Stomach knots already.

Unexpected

Histopingogram today. Otherwise know as a "dye test,' the radiologist puts some contrast liquid into your cervix and and then uses that to see if it comes out through your fallopian tubes.

Although he could see my left fallopian tube, no fluid seemed to pass through, implying that it is blocked. I didn't expect that.

The right side seems fine.

Two Ways of Seeing a River

From the essay by Mark Twain. I think about it often in relationship to my chosen craft.

Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had gone out of the majestic river! I still keep in mind a certain wonderful sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me. A broad expanse of the river was turned to blood; in the middle distance the red hue brightened into gold, through which a solitary log came floating, black and conspicuous; in one place a long, slanting mark lay sparkling upon the water; in another the surface was broken by boiling, tumbling rings, that were as many-tinted as an opal; where the ruddy flush was faintest, was a smooth spot that was covered with graceful circles and radiating lines, ever so delicately traced....
.... But as I have said, a day came when I began to cease from noting the glories and the charms which the moon and the sun and the twilight wrought upon the river's face; another day came when I ceased altogether to note them. Then, if that sunset scene had been repeated, I should have looked upon it without rapture, and should have commented upon it, inwardly, in this fashion: "This sun means that we are going to have wind to-morrow; that floating log means that the river is rising, small thanks to it; that slanting mark on the water refers to a bluff reef which is going to kill somebody's steamboat one of these nights, if it keeps on stretching out like that; those tumbling 'boils' show a dissolving bar and a changing channel there; the lines and circles in the slick water over yonder are a warning that that troublesome place is shoaling up dangerously; that silver streak in the shadow of the forest is the 'break' from a new snag, and he has located himself in the very best place he could have found to fish for steamboats; that tall dead tree, with a single living branch, is not going to last long, and then how is a body ever going to get through this blind place at night without the friendly old landmark?"

I Like This

It's about eighteen minutes long, but if you are a writer, as I know a number of you are, I think you will find it time worth spending.

Tuesdays

I have Tuesdays off this semester. Sometimes I feel a twinge—not exactly of guilt, but perhaps of slackness, that I petitioned out of a required production class and now I have this “free day” that no one else in my class has. I know in my head I’ve spent years doing set work, and more years than that doing production office work, but it is indicative of the power of being placed in any social setting, that it’s difficult not to think that you should be doing—and valuing—what other people are doing and valuing. (Which is why, in general, I think it is good (good as in functional) to find social groups that can support and propel you in the things you want to do—be that writing, or political activism, or going on a diet. Although I see an inherent danger, if one dives into and accepts a value system presented by a social group, without much real, individual reflection on the matter...but I digress.)

What I have to remind myself, or maybe not remind myself, but struggle to reconcile, is that I am not at the same part of my life as most of my classmates, and although our life experiences led us all to the same school, our lives are not exactly at the same juncture. For instance, many of my “free” Tuesdays of late, have been, in fact, not free, but dedicated to doctor’s visits. Some of these are a result of my past illness, and some not.

In fact the last three, the gynocologist, the endocrinologist, and the infertility clinic, were not related, except insofar as the illness and its aftermath have contributed to our letting time pass us by. The last time we talked to a doctor about baby-making (pre-cancer) we were reassured, told we “had time,” and advised to try on our own for another year before jumping into any treatments.

Six years later, it is a different story. The endocrinologist reluctantly gave me a prescription for Clomid, but urged that we not fool around, but go straight to an infertility clinic as time is growing short. At the infertility clinic, our doctor explained that forty is not the magic number, but that it is the marker that seems to indicate a lot of changes in outcome, so they were very happy to see me some months shy of that number.

I have always been adamant that I did not want to put myself through the emotional gauntlet I have seen friends traverse, with tests and drugs, then stronger drugs, then IVF, which sometimes works, and just as often does not…

But, as the years have passed and I've realized that Paul—and sometimes I—still unconsciously referred to hypothetical kids, I figured it would be better to really consider our options now than to look back years from now and regret what we didn’t do.

The state of mind that is “future regret management” is a tricky one. Its key characteristic is that you have to believe you did all you could in the given circumstances. When I went to the endocrinologist, I thought a couple cycles of Clomid would be enough to stave off any demons of regret—that it would mean we tried. But she made it clear that without combining the drug with IUI, it wouldn’t be a real effort at all. So "trying" quickly became redefined as continuing a little further down the path.

There, our doctor explained that the Clomid IUI combo at our age only has a 5% success rate per cycle. But if we did injectable drugs (which aren’t referred to by name, but simply as “injectables”), we could raise those chance to 15-20%.

Of course, we would exceed our spending cap of $3000 before completing one cycle, but what if, in the future, a few thousand dollars doesn’t mean that much? How do we explain our decision to spend what at the time seemed like a lot of money for something that we knew was unlikely to work? (And who exactly am I explaining myself to, in these imagined conversations, is a topic for another post.)

By doubling our investment again, we could again double our chances:
$12,000 equals one round of IVF with a 40% success rate.

This is something we’d never considered. I have never wanted to subject my body to something that extreme, and how could we justify spending that amount—and let’s be clear, that money source would be yet more student loans-- on less than a 50-50 chance of bringing a kid into the world—and that’s without even thinking about how we don’t really have the resources to raise any but a completely healthy baby once he’s born.

So that’s a step we decided we wouldn’t take, and decided we would be fine with that. No regrets.

Until we considered that everything would be cheaper in Thailand.

And that’s a whole other can of worms.

First how ever, I need to get through the first round of tests.

The next one is on Tuesday.