Continued Validation

So you remember fBFF, right?
for any newer readers/stalkers, that's former BestFriendForever... we were close the first few years I lived in NJ - served as each other's maid of honor, watched Grey's Anatomy together weekly with wine, shopped together in thrift stores, all that good stuff like texting a million times a day and emailing back and forth at work...

and then this happened:
she got a positive HPT, yet two days later tested negative at the doctor and had a chemical pregnancy.
I came over, brought the bags of candy, fun nail polish colors, and was just there for her.

two weeks later, I got my very first positive HPT.

three weeks later, fBFF got her sticky BFP...

aaaaaand about five weeks after that, the missed miscarriage was diagnosed and I had to have a D&C.

I ranted (at the time) about the stupid shit she said to me...
shit like "it was God's intention" (she's not even religious.)

and "you didn't want to be gross and fat and hot this summer..." (my EDD would have been November 30th) ((oh and let's not forget she was pregnant at the time - she obviously thought it was fine for herself to be gross and fat and hot that summer...))

and then I tried to explain/complain that we were medically advised to wait 2-3 cycles after the D&C surgery before we could try again.
And she was all, "Well, next April would be a very nice time to have a baby!" (to which I mentally responded, hours later, "NO, this November would have been a fucking nice time to have a baby")


Re-reading these old posts of mine, remembering that she had once asked me if I was avoiding her because she was pregnant (and I wasn't...) and recalling that I had eventually responded with an email that took some time to compile:
I still love you and am excited for you, but to be bluntly honest, a few of the last texts you sent, about "just be glad I don’t have to be fat this summer," and that "April/may is a good time to have a baby" kinda hurt me… Obviously I still value our friendship, I just needed some time off.. and I hope this came across when I first said it, but I am very sorry to hear about your cousin..

I totally got reaffirmation that pulling back from that 'friendship' was the best decision to make for me.  Validation even more when, on my birthday that summer - still not pregnant again yet (I think we were just barely post-O in our first TTCAL cycle... one that ended in a BFN) - and she text me, not Happy Birthday, but that they found out - THEY'RE HAVING A BOY! SQUEE!  -_-



And then, perusing through more old emails from that summer, I came across a conversation with a kettle-bell instructor (I had taken a kettle-bell boot camp a few weeks before the very first BFP, and then had not signed up for the next class).

*****
Trainer: 
Just wanted to see how everything is going and when was the due date again?

ME 
(after taking a lot of time trying to figure out how best to respond without making him feel like a shit for asking):
"Thanks for checking in with everything. I really appreciate it but unfortunately, we lost the heartbeat at 3 months... We're just working on fixing up things at the new house (moved in December) and adopting a new dog, keeping busy!

Trainer: 
I'm so sorry to hear that... :(
I'm debating putting in another class on Thursdays. Would you be interested in coming back? I'd really like to have you on board
******


How perfect a response.  He didn't avoid addressing it, he didn't dance around and ignore that line in my email about what happened. He gave a kind and succinct "I'm so sorry."

How is it that a thirty-some-year-old man handled it better than someone I once considered a best friend?  How did that female friend, one who had just experienced a CP weeks before, botch things and shove her foot in her mouth so horribly?

Because irreparable damage was done... and in situations since then, I have been reaffirmed in my decision to remove myself from that friendship.



Thank god there have been other phenomenal friendships that developed from May of 2012, and for those I will be forever grateful!




PostScript (because it's so much fancier than "P.S.")
IUD check on Tuesday went well - it's still in place (good thing!) except - I've had some heavier/clottier spotting today and yesterday.
Dafuq?

How am I going to wear a bikini in Turks & Caicos in four weeks?!
(Have I told you we're going?!?!??!?!?! EEEEEEEE!!!! WITHOUT KIDS TOO!!)

Not a Reading Update...

seriously.

This Writing-a-Book stuff is time consuming!

I've barely read (and my barely reading is like, 1 book every 8 days. LOL)

and I've been staying up way too late for way too many nights (five of the last 7 nights has been past midnight...)


I wish I could take a day off from work once a week just to write.  (I used to want to take a day off to catch up on cleaning house... now we have "Mags" coming for three hours every Monday - she puts away our clean laundry, picks up the kitchen (empties dishwasher, reloads, cleans counters) and puts the kids' toys away!  Every three weeks or so, she'll vacuum, change sheets, and clean bathrooms! I'm going to ask her to be my sister-wife next week...)


Instead of taking off work, I steal 30 minutes'time when I get home with the kids - after taking dogs out and feeding them, I set the kids up in the playroom and sit next door in the office and write. Button and Mack play together (or more like just in the same room) so quietly, it's AWESOME.
(I also steal time while at work.... ssssh!! I figure, as long as I'm still getting all my work done, why not??)



So, I'm still here!  At the beginning of chapter fifteen, just under 15K words... according to a word tracker I'm using (I plugged in a goal of 50K words - no clue if the book will be less, or if that many words just gets me close to the last chapter!) at my current average daily rate, I'll be done (with 50K words) by June 25th.

Only to start back at the beginning to deepen some sections, fluff others...



WHEW.

randoms

Yesterday, I almost got caught in a cell phone trap while on the road... apparently an "undercover" guy - not even in a car!! - "caught me with a phone in hand."
Dude - I only ever look at my phone while stopped at red lights... I didn't say that to the cops when they directed me into a parking lot down the road (the first cop radioed to these guys...)
I just said, "oh gosh - seriously, I'm usually very good at not being on it - he must have seen me just moving it from my lap to the cup holder..."
and they noted I had no points on my license (no violations - speeding tickets, moving violations, etc) and let me off with "just a warning..."




I continued on to my dentist appointment (a filling cracked two weeks ago)
the good news?  the tooth had no decay past what was already drilled out, it just needs a crown (and not a root canal as I feared...)
the bad news? I was being fitted with that mouth guard thing filled with goop to make molds for making the crown...
and when the dentist pulled the mold off, it pulled off my front crown (one that Ms. Mack had knocked off a few months back - with my cell phone -_-)

the really bad news? the dentist then dropped the crown on the floor...

(it was cleansed thoroughly and re-installed... ugh)





I crushed it at CarKaraoke this morning - HIT ME BABY ONE MORE TIME!




Before crooning in the car, I ducked into Walgreens (once again, in the craziness of setting up the housekeeper (day #2! so excited!) and getting kids dressed & shoe'd this morning, I dashed out of the house without brushing my teeth, so I decided to buy brush and paste for work...)

At the checkout, I put my micro-chipped Amex into the card reader, and then cashier (cute guy) goes, "You can take it out now..."

And in my head I thought, THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID!!!





I've got 9 chapters completed of TinCan... about 40 chapter-book-style pages.
I write about a page at a time - and "working on TinCan" also involves researching.  A LOT... thesaurus, dictionary, medical pages, etc. So I spend about an hour or so, and have only actually written 6-7 paragraphs...
This stuff is tedious!

But I do a bit each day, and cannot WAIT until it's finished... SO FREAKING EXCITED!

Challenge check-In

We left off with being in the middle of reading book number 17 this year...

Here's the new tally as of today! (not counting A Mother's Reckoning as read yet - got a few pages left, lol)

#17. The Chemist by Stephenie Meyer         Cat: 36/40: book by someone you admire           fin. Mar. 23rd
So - especially now that I am writing my own book, as a full-time working mom, I can totally respect the work that goes into it and can't believe how Ms. Twilight got out that whole series... AND THEN SOME! (of course - I don't think she worked - but just as hard to be a SAHM writing!!)
So - The Chemist was, I feel, totally different than her past more YA-ish works (Twilight, The Host) and it was pretty good! about a woman who worked for the government - basically as someone who assisted in "interrogations" with her chemical concoctions... and she's on the run. liked this book a lot!

#18. Sia by Josh Grayson           Cat: N/A               fin. Mar. 25th
It happened - I read a book (some books, by now) that just do NOT fit into any category...
And I think this will happen a lot this year - as I download more and more free books based on BookBub deals. (but not all of them good - I started one, and thought - bleh - stopped reading it and archived it...)
anyways - this was a nice fluff read about a girl who had lost her memory, found herself homeless - but then a week later was "discovered" by a classmate volunteering at a soup kitchen - she was in fact the daughter of a very wealthy couple in Beverly Hills (or something like that)
was good for light reading

#19. Revelation by Carter Wilson          Cat: N/A         fin. Mar. 26th
another free read recommended by bookbub...
This was actually a pretty cool book... here's the synopsis from GoodReads:

When Harden Campbell wakes cold and beaten in a dirt-floor cell, he finds only three other things in the room with him: the mutilated body of his good friend, an ancient typewriter, and a stack of blank paper, the top sheet of which has a single, typed sentence.

"Tell me a story."

He is locked away by a "friend" named Coyote, who created a "religion" as an experiment. Pretty cool psychological story...


#20. Beyond Grace's Rainbow by Carmel Harrington          Cat: by an author from a country you've never visited            fin. Mar. 29th
(The author was born in Wexford, Ireland and the story is set there - which is fun to read after becoming a little familiar with it from reading Outlander)
This book.
Not written phenomenally, but a good story - a single mother (she estranged her baby daddy because he was an alcoholic) is diagnosed with cancer; she goes through treatment while also trying to track down her biological mother (she was adopted at birth) so she can possibly pursue finding a bone-marrow match. (slight Spoiler Alert) at one point in the book toward the end, there was a bit of a twist that as I read it, I thought - WELL FUCK YOU BOOK! for doing that, and then literally set my nook down on the counter, and walked away saying out loud, "I NEED A MINUTE before we can continue..." (LOL good thing E isn't home when I do this... he'd call the white coats!)
So, and then the "epilogue" ended and I was still like, DAFUQ.
so did I like it? hate it?
I feel like if it was written more eloquently, I would have hated to love it, due to the ending, but - it was moderately good writing so - meh...


#21. Waiting for You by Catherine Miller        Cat: N/A                 fin. Apr. 1st
a lighter read (not that the TOPIC was light - a woman who is facing secondary infertility, and whose husband seems to have checked out - spending more and more time in his office/apartment in London where he spends the work week, who is also hiding SOMETHING HUGE) but it was a quick read with language and writing easy to pick back up after reading in spurts at bedtime and during lunchtime at work.



Currently Reading :
finishing up A Mother's Reckoning

and reading Ssh! by Stacey Nash (a free bookbub read... I am starting to feel the need, after The Chemist, and Outlander and the heavy Sue Klebold book, to get back into something deep - Jodi Picoult may be up next - but at the same time, am trying to keep focus on "TinCan" so we'll see...)

Reading & Writing (and 'rithmetic?!)

(I've been trying to focus writing time - even while at work LOL - onto The Next Great American Novel (or going forward, TNGAN - or even better/easier to remember and write - "TinCan!") 
ok start over - so I've been trying to focus my writing time on TinCan, so the blog may suffer a bit... but here's a post I started writing while in the throes of highlighting...)
(ALSO - reading update to immediately follow this)




somewhere, today someone's world -as they know it- is ending.

There is someone who has just received that phone call about their spouse's fatal car accident.

There is someone who is sitting at their parent's bedside, listening to them take their last breath.

There is someone who has just lost a child.

There is someone whose whole axis has just shifted - been totally knocked off kilter - from fresh tragedy.



And yet.

The world continues to turn.

And yet - "How can that guy be cutting his grass?? DOESN'T HE KNOW MOM IS IN HERE DYING?!"


"How can they blithely waltz into the office, smiling - DON'T THEY KNOW WE WERE JUST TOLD THE WORST NEWS EVER??"




I recently sat out on my back porch - beer, monitor (Mack was napping), book, highlighter and pen (this book.. needs notes and highlighted sections. you'll see...) and enjoyed the first warmish (55 degrees!) sunny day in a long time...

Another "first" in a while, I am reading a paperback.  I pointedly ordered this one from Amazon - proceeds from the purchase will go directly to charities dedicated to helping the mentally ill.

Why, this book of all books, did I order archaically in paperback? (And natch, pay for it! (I can download most books for free........ #sorryNotSorry) )


Because 33 years ago this year, my grandmother's world shifted terribly - her son, with a fresh baby and wife, died by suicide.

Because 20 years ago this year, my uncle's world - as he knew it - ended when his teenage daughter (my cousin) died by suicide. (On her LAST DAY of a second stay in a treatment facility...)

Because over 4 years ago, E's father received a call from her sister - her world had come tumbling down when her husband (E's uncle) died by suicide.


The woman who wrote A Mother's Reckoning lost her son - seventeen years old - to suicide.

The book I'm reading is also about another very difficult topic - school shootings.

A Mother's Reckoning is written by Sue Klebold, mother to Dylan Klebold - one of two shooters from the Columbine massacre in 1999.


I read a fabulous review/discussion of this book, here.


This story, written by a mother who discovers she didn't know who her child was, touches on just that - the fear that I know I have as a parent: that one day, they'll become someone you don't recognize.

As Button develops friends at daycare, and falls on the playground - as he wrestles on the lawn with the neighborhood boy who is only 6 months older but about 6 inches and what seems like 60 lbs - you realize they will become independent at some point, that they will develop into a separate entity.

I hope and pray we are doing right as their parents to create an open communication - for good stories, for bad times when they need help...






((that's all I wrote on that. still wrapping up reading the book, as I'm in the last chapter of "aftermath" years later - I spent a lot of Monday at work reading about the massacre, and the victims, and the police reports - and at the end of day fell down a rabbit hole that led me from - at the time- the deadliest school shooting in US history, to the wiki page on the Virginia Tech shooting, which with its occurrence, became the deadliest school shooting - and then farther down the hole to the Orlando nightclub tragedy.
After the recent scary false-alarm at our local mall, I just keep praying that the violence does not encroach on our lives - not the daycare, not our work places, not our neighborhood))

NOVEL NEWS UPDATE!

(speaking of news.. The President that no one expected to win executed the first military action of his campaign last night.  My assistant this morning asked me what I thought of it.

It took me about 2 full minutes to gather my thoughts before I spoke. 

I never really get into politics here, and only in the last very few years have I educated myself and read articles and news stories, and while I want to bury my head in the sand of my bubble/snowdome of first world problems (the coffee in the break room isn't hot enough for me in the morning, because the carafe was filled at 8am and by 9am it's still warm, but not as warm as I like and I can't microwave it in my mug because there's metal elements. total #FWP) I also feel the need be aware of what's going on in the world, as scary as it may be to consider what the future may hold for my children.

((I'll be honest - a small part of the reason I started following things more closely was to theoretically be able to get a head start on getting the hell out of dodge when the hypothetical shit may or may not hit the fan, whatever that hypothetical shit may be... I had a dream the other night that we WATCHED as a weird plane went down over the horizon - crashed in a sense, and warheads started launching from where it had crashed. Dream-Me was already mentally grabbing as many bottles of water, cans of soup, and precious mementos as possible - cramming in any bag at arm's reach - as we flung the kids into car seats and peeled out, heading west.))

ANYWAYS - no, the news I refer to in the title is an update on The Next Great American Novel that I started writing while sitting in Starbucks on Tuesday... 

 

The number of pages and chapters written so far (17 chapter-book pages, an intro and five chapters) doesn't very accurately represent the hours of work put in so far which include researching medical jargon, university settings/academia, and creating characters - from their date of birth to their favorite food to their inner weaknesses and strengths.

I have the entire plot laid out (partially in print, partially in my head) and each time I "read" through what the finished product will be in my head, I get giddy and dance around and then stay up way too late (i.e. past MIDNIGHT) writing/researching/typing & deleting and typing some more.

YOU GUYS - I am so f*cking excited about this.

(Especially excited that this may make me the next Stephenie Meyer and then I can quit my day job shortly after publication because MGM/Searchlight/21stCenturyFox will want to purchase the rights and I will get to help audition actors/actresses and hand-pick the faces that get to bring my people to life.)

((I might be getting ahead of myself...))

(((I'm especially proud that I actually did work today while on the clock, the first deviation all day being the writing of this blog post...)))

I'm also looking forward to a glass of Clos du Bois chardonnay, my favorite white wine... 47 more minutes til the whistle blows!

Happy Friday!!!

Reporting from your local Starbucks....

Listen - I'm usually a dunkin-kinda-gal... (medium french vanilla - skim milk - 2 sugars!) but I'll occasionally hit up Starbucks for a fun treat... (tall green tea latte... or skinny vanilla latte) and each time I visit the green mermaid, the college students (notepads, laptop & highlighters spread out) and the writers (coffee. laptop - usually on facebook or other writers-block-distraction) and the small business owners (calculators, quickbooks open...) catch my eye.


I feel like if I had the attention span, I could be an author. But I hated a certain writing class in highschool mostly because the teacher made us draft. and draft, and re-draft and DRAFT AGAIN.  And I like(d) to write off the cuff and edit along the way, and usually my "first draft" IS my final draft...

But today, I'm going to pretend and role-play....

See, I'm sitting at my neighborhood Starbucks - cafe breakfast sandwich half eaten, green tea latte empty, and a cup of yogurt (perfect art tableau for instagram, if I did that kind of stuff! lol) - waiting for my car to be done at the Kia service department (oil change - THOUSANDS of miles overdue - and some recall maintenance... something about anti-corrosive spray they want to put on the undercarriage... which E explained to Button this morning as, "Mommy's car is starting to fall apart, so they want to put this special spray on it." and then as I was later loading kids up in the car, Button said - "Mom. you better drive FAST to that place, your car is going to fall apart!!")



Anyways - I've also been fighting a cold the past two days - I would have called out sick yesterday had the biller/assistantt not already called out, and had I not already scheduled today off.  I left work about 1.5 hours early yesterday to get some true rest before picking kiddos up at 5:20.

Well - this morning I packed my laptop (ancient old thing from Inspiron that weighs like 20+ lbs...) and a bottle of water (I ain't paying for that sh*t at starbucks. free water > bougie water) and I've been working for the past hour from Starbucks (which conveniently will make up for yesterday afternoon).



and - well, maybe - now that I've finished with work for the day, maybe I will take a stab at writing! (HA - maybe 5 years from now I'll be the next STephenie Meyer and will be interviewing and be like, "It all started when my car needed service at the Kia dealership!")



But for now - a quick rant from Sunday that I penned while in bed (cathartic to get it out before I even put my feet down for the day! lol):


I believe that, thanks to evolution or some bullshit like that, that men are ingrained -they have it in their fucking CODING to think they get a free pass or pardon from child rearing for 95% of the time.
Because they're the hunter-gatherer or some shit.

Well maybe we need another round of evolution influenced mainly by the (relatively/in the last million years) new thing where mothers are working full time, where they are "hunter-gatherers" too.

I mean- maybe this deep instinctive feature is only in MY husband.
Because he seems to be evolved to a state where, because he's the male - and hunts/gathers a bit extra (his websites and side businesses which - lets be honest are his HOBBIES as well,and earn him $$ thousands $$ - as opposed to scrubbing dirty dishes and washing/ folding load after load of clothes which earn me only whatever money was found in pockets ($25.and it was my own money) ) he expects "his woman" to handle it all.


But then - and here's the real kicker!- he had the nerve, last Sunday after an unusual laid back weekend with us all home , to suggest that we take turns on Sundays- "maybe I'll take them for a few hours so you can 'get your stuff done or do your own thing' and then you take them for a few hours so I can 'do my thing'."

😑

Despite the fact that 'my own thing' would consist of fucking chores, and not sitting around reading and eating bon bons - and 'his own thing' would be his HOBBY which earns him mad money - this is all even MORE ironic because on average, every other weekend I've got both kids with me out shopping or at yoga and lunch - leaving E alone for HOURS.


The IRONY especially is that yesterday, I firstly let him asleep til TEN AM. And then had Button at Walmart from 11 til 2 (Mack slept from 1230-245!!) And then I took them both to a play date/mom date at my friend Dee's house-  and we didn't get back until 7:30!!!



How much fucking more of a break do you want???

And do I not deserve one at all? (Even if just to have a chance to wash YOUR dirty clothes and dishes you don't seem to pick up after yourself????)





/end rant








Off to start the next great American novel.
;)