2/06/2006

Again with the disclosure issue

Sorry to harp on about this, but sadly this is what my life is consumed of at the moment. The stomach is pushing itself to the point that I may have to tell everyone that I come in regular contact with about Enid, and I have mentally set up a sort of hierarchy of disclosure. It's getting very confusing in my head at the moment, with all the levels floating about and dates on which a variety of people can be told. The Dude asks me nightly when he is "allowed" to tell persons a, b, and c, and each time I have to work out where they rank before I give him the answer.

I know most of this could be avoided if I just wore baggy clothing, but that's not my deal. As a person with issues with her weight, baggy clothes make me feel even bigger. Don't worry, nor am I the type to wear too tight clothes, creating the blessed muffin top or spilling-out-of-her-shoes nastiness. I just like to wear things that are fitted, though that too makes me sound like a bit of a skank. Anyway, take my word for it, I am always appropriately and decently dressed.

My primary disclosure dilemma at the moment is how and when I should tell my work "friend" and Child Bore Extraordinaire. I've written about this woman before, and frankly I'm too lazy to dig through my 100+ posts to discover when, as well as what I have said about her. Suffice it to say, Child Bore believes us to be much closer friends than I do. She's not exactly what I would look for in a friend, and if I'm being honest, I find the effort needed to be friends with her taxing and unnecessary. She, it seems, feels differently, as I was one of the few people invited to her wedding last year, and she counts me as one of her closest friends. Sometimes I feel guilty for feeling the way I do, but then again, I know if I had it my way I would stay merely acquaintances.

I feel obligated to tell Child Bore before I tell the others in my small office, much as I really don't want to. First of all, I do not want her to think that it means something - that we are in fact close friends that share this sort of information with each other first. Conversely, I don't want to not tell her first and risk her being offended. I may seem ambivalent when relationships with others' are concerned, but I always have this stupid need to not upset them as well. The next issue is that she will surely freak out and want to share birthing and child stories with me. This is the main reason I would like to keep this pregnancy a secret until there is a birth...I don't want to hear it! I don't give a shit! It's bad enough that Child Bore launches into kid stories in nearly every conversation now, when she knows very well how I feel about kids. She'll view this as some maternal bonding moment, which could always drive the "friendship" into acquaintance territory knowing how I feel about it. Hmm...something to think about and attempt to orchestrate.

Anyway, I have more or less decided that I will email her at home before our next office meeting and tell her. I plan on being very strict about what sort of reaction I do not want, and I'll just have to hope she sticks to it. I figure this way, she knows in advance, but only right before the others, thus not putting her in close friend, "Oh, I've known for weeks" territory. My primary question is, for those of you that feel the same way about children as I do, do you just grin and bear it, or is there a semi-polite way to say, "Sorry, I honestly don't give a fuck what your child gets up to. Your child bores me and we have nothing more in common now than we did before"?
Just curious.

I think this should be the last disclosure post I write. I apologise for all of this whining I've been doing lately, I know it's horribly self-indulgent and not very interesting.

To veer into the land of bitter and cynical again, as if it is ever very far away, I read something irritating on Celebrity Baby Blog the other day. Don't judge me please, I know a lot of you would classify it as a guilty pleasure. I mean, what's better than reading about abundantly fertile people when you're infertile? Anyway, there was a little blurb about Elisabeth Hasselbeck, who I have heard of, but have no idea what she does. Wasn't she on Survivor years ago or something and was fortunate to extend her 15 minutes by marrying an NFL player? The article discusses how Elisabeth has a 9 month old now, and once said that she wanted to conceive again when her first was 6 months old. CBB deduces that if Elisabeth has stuck by her word to get pregnant at that precise time (because it is that easy), she must be 3 months along already! The humour continues when we all have a little giggle at how Elisabeth has to brush her teeth for a very long time so that her husband falls asleep, allowing her to stay away from his dangerous erect man parts lest she get pregnant. Ugh.

I had that problem once. I was all, "Keep me away from a petri dish, £5000, and a vial of my husband's sperm because you don't even want to know what craziness will ensue!".

10 comments:

DD said...

I wish I could come up with a good line to tell your un-close friends how you don't really want to share in the details of their own birthings except to jump on top of a desk and shout, "It's all about me! ME, I tell you!" However, that is fraught with its own problems.

Anonymous said...

I love your little hierarchy of who's important enough to tell when. Makes us feel all the cooler for being way at the top.

*sigh*

Anonymous said...

Oh! Oh! I saw that too--the what's her name thing on Celebrity Baby Blog (I know, but I can't help myself). I didn't know whether to laugh uproariously or hunt her down and kill her. In the end, I settled for both. Just kidding.
Let's see, I told a few people when we were going to start trying almost a year ago. I guess that means I have a six-month-old around here somewhere...hmmm...

Linda said...

I know, totally. Don't even get me started about how long I brush MY teeth. It's a miracle I don't have like nineteen kids.

Snort.

Anonymous said...

Trust me, Elisabeth Hasselbeck sucks. That's all you need to know.

Lut C. said...

I used to dream of getting PG easy, surprising DH with the stick and sending my colleagues a mail with the good news under a misleading subject line (after the 12 week mark, I knew about that forever). Poof, long gone.

Now I fantasize about finally getting PG after many treatments and driving my husband crazy with my mood swings. My colleagues would get a dry e-mail (at the latest possible moment, first I'll pretend I just need to go on a diet) stating "guess what, I'm PG." Then I'd go on with a set of demands:
- no questions specific to the PG unless I start talking about it first.
- no birthing stories, never.
- no stories about complications, never.
To stiffle all questions of why all the drama, because it's a medium to high risk PG (they don't need to know that it may just be my sanity that's at risk)

Do you think IF is getting to me? ;-)

Anonymous said...

This could be the perfect time to make your stand against a too-close relationship with Child Bore Extraordinaire. By telling her later, along with your other co-workers, perhaps she would get the hint that she is equal among them, and not higher on your list? As you said, this could be the news that throws her over the edge into wanting to be your new best friend ... and do you really want to deal with that? Could subtlety work with her? Probably not, but may be worth a try!

Anonymous said...

Dag, if pregnancy can't get us out of having to put up with people like Child Bore, what good is it? Oh yeah, the kid thing. Hilarious about Hasselbeck. I am painfully aware of the ridiculousness of the fertile state now. It seems so infantile (pun intended) for people to have that sex=baby mentality.

Anonymous said...

Don't tell anyone. Ever. Just mysteriously go away one day and come back with a child.

MC said...

I hate child bores they are all coming back to work or pilates and shoving their babies or baby photos under my nose.