Paper or plastic?

In this night before retrieval I'm pondering the important things - do I wear socks? If I do wear socks, I need to make sure they don't have holes in them or are otherwise embarrassing. Am I allowed to drink before the procedure? If so, should I just stick to water? Have I removed all the excess hair that otherwise left intact might scar a poor member of the clinic staff for life? Should I wear make-up? Not even a little bit? Will I drool? If the doctor is hot, will I, in my drug-induced stupor offer him a night he'll never forget? When I wake up and see The Dude, will I remember his name? Further to the drugged up line of thinking, will my under the influence self have the same potty mouth my blog self does? I can just see myself shouting at the nurses in the recovery area, "And all you motherfuckers can just step the fuck away from my cooter. Bitches."

All of these thoughts are flooding my mind because in the last few days I have pushed IVF to the back of my mind. The Dude has been suffering from very severe migraines since the end of last week, often leading me to ponder whether to get him to the emergency room. He was in such agony this weekend that I thought I'd have to phone WHYBAML and call the whole thing off. Unfortunately for The Dude I can go from calm to panic attack in about 10 seconds flat, and my attempts to stave off anxiety were proving largely unsuccessful. As I have no friends (cue sighs), I had to break down and call my mom last night just to get all of the pressure off my chest.

My mom is in the middle of a move, which I have spoken about in previous posts. I phoned her up at her new house, and she regaled me with stories of the move and my brother's inadequacy to do anything except beer runs for the assorted 20-somethings helping out. The entire time she was rattling on I was trying desperately not to burst into tears, occasionally putting my finger over the mouthpiece so that I could sob a bit and blow my nose. Eventually she said, "How was your day?" whereupon I gurgled something about The Dude being sick, me having the procedure on Tuesday, and being stressed out. She proceeded to do the motherly thing, giving advice, trying to soothe me, and told me that everything would be ok. With me still sobbing and not making much sense, she decided that this was an ok time to answer her call waiting. Five separate times. It is typical Pru's Mom to exhibit this type of behaviour. Consoling one minute, casually carrying on conversations with someone else the next. I suppose it's better than the time my brother was excitedly telling her a tale from his day at school and she was pretending to pay attention, albeit with a faraway look in her eyes. He did not even reach the denouemont of whatever boring story he was telling when she casually reached for the phone, dialled the number of her best friend and began a conversation with her, leaving my brother in the lurch.

The other entertaining aspect of this telephone conversation was when she said, "So is Tuesday when they harvest the eggs?" Egg harvesting? It's not the fucking Matrix. I assume that this is more or less the same as retrieval, but it sounds so sci fi. Hi, I'm an egg harvester. It brings to mind the Handmaid's Tale, as if I am nothing but a breeder. A crap one at that. Someone's going to want their money back.

Twelve hours from now my legs will be splayed and I my business will be exposed to yet another assortment of unfortunate individuals. So...what about those socks?