Too much to say

I'm not the only one who thinks of many marvelous things to write about and then rapidly clicks away from Blogger as soon as a blank page is presented, I know this.  However, I doubt there are many that give up dozens of times over a period of months rather than weeks because really - what would be the point?  You've heard it all before, I've written it all before.

I want to write, desperately.  I just don't know what to say that can't be summarized in a few short sentences.  I don't know whether I'm measuring in weeks or months, but I sincerely hope to write again like I used to.  Thinking about those more prolific days makes me wistful, and I don't need to be more wistful.  I want that outlet again, but talking about Then just makes me dwell on the now. Now is bad, now is shit.  I was sad a lot Then, but I don't recall hating who I had become, and how I was to others. 

The gist, to spare you numerous posts of endless laments, is that I fucked up coming here.  I've probably said that in at least a couple of the 5 or so posts I've written since moving over almost two years ago.  I still hate my job with a fervor I never thought possible, The Dude is doing things he does not want to do in the absence of gainful employment in his field, I don't really like the United States and a lot of its inhabitants, and the second child issue is a further knife in the otherwise shitastic clusterfuck that was my decision to up and move back.  My girl is amazing, wonderful, and is what holds my shattered pieces together.  She is my constant.  I have had some "episodes" (for lack of a better word) of depersonalization, as diagnosed by the internet and my highly-qualified self, and she is the only thing which brings me back.

Since I now appear certifiably insane, if anyone else has experienced depersonalization before and cares to share their experiences, please do so in the comments or by email.  As we well know, I have always had some headspace issues, but not to this extent.  I have tried the "WE MUST GO BACK TO ENGLAND OR ELSE I WILL NEED TO BE COMMITTED!" approach, but here I remain.

So that's that.  Crazy.  Full of rage and hatred.  Looking for a cabin in which to live off the grid with my family.   What a post!

Tired

I wanted to blog about happy things - show you pictures of my barn, tell you of the random and probably age-inappropriate interests of my kindergartner, or...or...talk of other things significantly more engaging and lighthearted than my father. My father, the (not-so-recovering) alcoholic, PTSD suffering Vietnam veteran who has - PROUD MOMENT COMING - now graduated to domestic violence and attempted suicide.

I've blogged about him before, and I have recently tweeted about this drama, as it is one of those non-Facebook-type subjects for me. Re-reading those posts from a few years ago, I have just realized that this post does not have to be as long as I originally anticipated it to be, as I don't think I can better summarize my thoughts than what I have already written. I guess it is amplified now perhaps, with the two new elements of abuse and attempted suicide adding a bit more gravity to an already grave situation.

Since 2008, when I wrote about my Dad before, he moved out to California to live with his girlfriend. I have never met her, but my brother has been out to visit them and ascertains that she is quite possibly the kindest person one could ever meet. She has put up with repeated drunken nonsense from my Dad, and for some unknown reason she stood by him throughout what my Dad terms "slip-ups" - a vastly inaccurate term if ever there was one. My brother was always candid with my Dad's girlfriend; he told her after every "slip-up" that my Dad was never going to change. His issues have remained the sole constant in his life for the past 40+ years. They stayed ever-faithful through his marriage to my Mom, and a number of relationships since then. In my Dad's own words, those relationships ended due to various problems instigated by the women. It never had anything to do with him being a paranoid drunk unable to stay sober.

Last week, my brother and The Dude broke the news to me in tandem that my Dad was in jail. DUI? Old news. Dad had moved on to bigger and brighter things like kicking his girlfriend and smashing up her house. She took out a restraining order against him, which we applauded and supported. A day or two passed, and then we found out that my Dad tried to kill himself. This also, is a new development in his pantheon of Bad Behaviour. Even now I'm not sure how, as we have not been able to get through to him at the VA Hospital he may or may not be in. Well, he is there, as mentioned by a staff member the other day who spoke with my Dad to confirm that I could be added to the contact list. However, subsequent phone calls have yielded no response from anyone other than "Ma'am, we can't say whether he is here or not." I have pointed out that I don't need them to confirm, as I already know he is there as he was spoken to by a nurse while I was on hold previously, which would indicate, oh...I don't know...maybe that he is there?

I'm glad of course, as I really need this situation to be complicated further. I have been wrestling with what to say to him if I was put through to the room he may or may not be in. My Dad has never addressed his problems with me. Ever. We gloss right over them and pretend that things are normal. Alcoholism and its effects are the subtext we disregard. Dad is a gruff ex-Marine not prone to discussing feelings, and I have both a fear of confrontation as well as the annoying habit of not wanting to upset anyone. I'm not going to go the route of my brother, which is to usually start these conversations with, "What the fuck is your problem?" I would say something stupid like, "Wow, you're a hard person to get ahold of!" I can type a novel here about it all, or rant to The Dude as to how complicated all of this is, but all I'll ever be able to say to my Dad are polite trivialities.

What if I did manufacture a spine and tell my Dad how much I want to shake him for being so goddamned selfish? Is it fair to do that to someone who has just decided that life isn't worth living? It seems kind of mean to go off on one with someone who has survived a suicide attempt, but then again, we have been tiptoeing around his bullshit for 20 years now. I can agonize over these things for hours, and occasionally I come to the conclusion that all of that thinking was for naught. This illness is too ingrained, too settled in. It's here for the duration, isn't it? The duration was almost up to two days ago, and who knows how much of an extension has been granted. I would love to read about intervention miracles whereby those who have been addicts for decades get better, but I don't read about them because they don't exist. If it hasn't happened now, by his 66th year, it isn't likely to. What stark realization will he have? People talk about needing to hit rock bottom - he presumably hit that in 1996 when he and my Mom split up for good. He was confronted for squandering my college fund, such as it was, and was out of our lives for years. As a parent, I would think rock bottom is not seeing your kids for YEARS because you are too fucked up to be around them. Does it get worse than that? We are years beyond that point now, so I'm not sure what happens next.

I apologise for all of the rhetorical questions. I don't expect answers. I know there aren't definite ones. Re-reading the comments on my old posts on this subject makes me realize that this is the only forum in my life that I can look to for genuine comfort, so thank you - even if you don't know the "right" thing to say.

And here we are again

No preamble here about not blogging 9 months, or whatever it has been. I'm just going to launch right into the meaty (though admittedly not thrilling)life updates.

I bought a barn. It is only one third converted, but that converted third is rather large and certainly habitable. It is an amazing, wonderful place, as well as the recipient of all of our "spare" money for the next 20 years in an effort to finish it. It is my haven, and on most days, the saving grace of my sanity. Pictures will follow at some point.

P is in kindergarten and is 5 1/2 at the end of this month. As always, she is equal parts marvelous and frustrating, but such is the life of a parent. She reads confidently and loves to learn - current interests include minerals, dinosaurs, and all things gross (gross science, gross history, etc). I have no idea where time has gone, and I would be lying if I said I didn't miss the baby/toddler thing. I know that is less about P getting older and the changes therein, and more about the whole barren womb thing. Ah, much has changed, but the best things stay the same.

I am still employed at the same place I have complained about in the past. One of the few positives I can say about it is that it has prepared me to work in my field anywhere else on this earth, because I can't imagine that I would be expected to balance as much as I do currently. Expectations are very high as well, and it is far too stressful a job considering the pittance I make. First world problems, blah blah blah.

At this point in time I feel devoted to getting back into this blogging thing, as I think it would help me since I will soon be trying AGAIN in earnest to get pregnant. I have zero faith that I will be successful, in either really - blogging or pregnancy. However, I'm 33 now, have some gray hairs magically appearing with frightening regularity, I read books about barns with a fervor some may find disturbing, and I drive an eco-friendly car which is often purchased by pensioners (so my car salesman said). It's time to grow up, stop being so goddamned flaky and stick to something for once. I blame Facebook and the bloody ease of microblogging, particularly as I'm friends on there with pretty much all 10 people that still have me in their blog feeds.

So yes, barn, kindergartner, still no baby in this vacant womb, hates job. I could have saved us all the trouble and just typed that. Must get back to watching Barbie: Swan Lake with the Sassy Tornado of Hair, Teeth, and Fingernails. Girl may lecture you on Jurassic vs. Cretaceous periods, but in her down time nothing makes her happier than a shitty Barbie movie.

Shut the Front Door

I am pretty much the laziest and most easily distracted person alive. Despite my failures in communication with blog friends and two completely defunct-through-neglect blogs not to mention this one, I'm starting another venture - Shut the Front Door.

Lately I have wanted to say more here than I can without fear of being outed or compromising my anonymity. It all sounds very dramatic when it couldn't be more pedestrian, as I really just wanted to talk more about job frustrations but don't feel comfortable doing so here. I'm friends on Facebook with people I work with, so that's out, and Twitter...well, what can you really say in 140 characters anyway?

It came to me recently that it would be nice to have a members-only online forum to take any similar concerns private so they were not readable to all of the internet. Yes, there are password-protected posts, but I'll be honest - not only can I not be bothered to do that on my own posts and notify readers of the password, but I never remember others' passwords either. Again with the lazy.

It will be a private forum, and all memberships will need to be approved by me. I want to make sure it is a space in which everyone feels comfortable to share freely without the accompanying paranoia that I get when I talk about certain things on my blog. It's obviously not a replacement blog, because lord knows I would never tend to that either if so, but on the odd occasion you feel the need to talk about work, marital issues, sexual concerns, or if you're worried that your cat is trying to kill you, come hither. There are comment functions, so you would be able to get feedback on what you are saying just as you would on your blog.

It will not be a place for talking about any bloggers in a negative way, so behave yourselves. I also do not intend for any detailed personal information to be posted there, so it's not as if anyone will be providing their addresses, names of places of employment, or even real names of spouses/kids/etc (unless you are comfortable with that). I suppose you could be anonymous based on the name you set up in the account, but I will need to know who you are in the initial stage (as in blog name or connection to this collection of bloggers)for membership purposes. That information would obviously not go beyond my inbox if required of course.

I've started this here. I have no idea whether this site is any good at forum hosting, so we shall see how it goes. If you go to the search box in the upper left of the homepage and type in "Shut the front door" the forum will come up with the option to join. This may work, or it may be a complete fucking disaster. We shall see!

UPDATE: It appears as if forum.com is shit. Not only can some of you not access it, but I as the administrator cannot even log in. Hmph. It is a beta version after all, but really. I guess I will spend some of my evening post-ice cream dinner with P looking at other options.

Still here

It's so hard to come up with pithy subject titles which allude to the subject to be discussed without being obscenely cliche or cheesy. "Drowning", "HATE HATE HATE", "Grey", "Please feel free to tell me to shut the fuck up with all the bellyaching" (and so on) were all considered and promptly binned.

Well, I'm still in the United States, so let's start there. It's strange - there is so, so much I want to say in order for me to try to work out the shit if even just in my own head, but with the amount of things to say it all just becomes tiresome. Half the time I start venting to The Dude and just give up through sheer exhaustion, both mental and physical, and feel the need to retire for a 20 year nap.

I started out in the let's-get-it-all-out mode not a mere 15 minutes ago (yes, it has taken me that long to get this far...shameful), and my head is now a jumble of half-constructed thoughts and random filler that I'll never be able to bring together in this post. I struggle a lot lately with a foggy head and the general inability to express myself coherently, which isn't exactly conducive to my working life either.

I want to talk about why I miss England, and how I possibly don't miss it as much as I think I do. I want to talk about how I'm pretty sure a lot of Americans (except the ones reading this blog) completely lack a sense of humour and are fake, back-stabbing assholes. I want to talk about how, contrary to what your fair selves indicated previously, I really am fucking up my kid's life with startling aplomb. I think I may have said pretty much that exact same thing last time, but I'm running on fumes here.

There is good news amongst all of the talk of dark days and gloomy thoughts - I have now reached the end of my 6 month probationary period at work, so I am eligible for prescription cover. Thus, I will be hot-footing it to my doctor's someday soon to beg for sweet, medicinal relief. The bad parts of life keep elbowing into the sunny slivers which occasionally peek through, and it's not fair to The Dude and P.

Fingers crossed that my next post is not a muddled, confused mess. I don't expect to be jumping out of bed in the morning desperate to go to work, but I want to be able to function like a real human again. I want to write on here, comment on other blogs again - all the stuff I used to do before in The Motherland. You know, before I was crazy that other time. God willing and the Creek don't rise.

Stuck

There is an impulse in me to head to my blog when I am down and feel there is nowhere else to go - the histrionic blogging equivalent of drunk dialing. I come here because I want someone to tell me that everything will work out for the best, to offer some brilliant advice which hadn't previously occurred to me. That is my modus operandi in situations like these; I seem to think the only way out will be via direction given by someone else. Rather than addressing the problem(s) myself, I always want to rely on other people to change my way of thinking. As if a snippet of wisdom doled out by you, or by my Mom, life will align and all will be well. Intellectually I know that I am basically fucked, and this is what it is, that no three line comment left here will stop me wondering if life will ever be truly, unreservedly good.

My brain is not currently in a position to devise a well-crafted post, so I will just get it all out there, hit "publish post", and regret it as soon as I do.

I don't like being back here. Every single day I wonder why we have made this move when we were comfortable in the UK in so many ways - we had job security, we owned our own property, P was enrolled in a great school in which she was flourishing. Ok, we didn't actually *like* our jobs, which was the initial impetus to come back to the US. Oh, we had grown out of our flat too and were looking to sell, acknowledging that even in moving to a bigger place we still wouldn't have the space we wanted for P. The US seemed the obvious choice to improve those areas, but guess what? The joke is on us. We can't sell our property in the UK, we spend more in rent per month than we would on a mortgage for a very nice house, The Dude can't find a job, I HATE my new job, and P goes to a sub-standard daycare/school which manages to drain even more money that we don't have. Bills keep coming in, as they are wont to do, and I'm in constant amazement that we pay so much for not having much of anything quantifiable.

My job might give me a stroke, and on a calmer day I might evaluate how I can't yet decide whether the US workplace is shit overall, or if it's just my place of employment. I was lucky back in the UK - I loved the people I worked with, so I guess it's my turn to be in a work environment that is largely unbearable. Under ordinary circumstances, I genuinely love the field I'm in, but I now dread going to work every day. I sometimes sneak into the bathroom and cry, thinking about how I just want to be home with my baby. Those who know me know that this is *not* Pru-like behaviour, so there is obviously a glitch or 50 in the system somewhere.

We tell ourselves that we need just that "one thing" - a job for him, an offer on our flat in the UK, and then it would all start to be ok. We say that to one another when we are both doom and gloom, but I don't believe it, and I very much doubt The Dude does either.

There are P-related (future) school issues that are also being thrown at us, and I'm just so sick of thinking about it that I'll just skip over it here. When I'm back to being sane, if only for a moment, I have parent-of-a-near-5-year-old crap to bring up on the blog but I can't be arsed right now. Suffice it to say, it's so, so hard to not feel as if I have completely screwed her over in all of this. We moved over here to give her more, and she's living a pale imitation of her former life right now. It tears me apart thinking that I have consciously done this to her.

I try to recall that revisionist personal history is powerful. It makes you think that you were much happier before, that had you stayed in that life, everything would have been fine - peace in the status quo. Truth is, I know I wasn't happy before. I needed change, and I got it. Now I don't want it. I'm always discontent, there, here, everywhere. It doesn't matter. I don't know what I need to do in order to be happy, or if I can be. The DRAMA, I know.

So there it is. I know, it's just one of a hundred times I write these posts. I'll get over it, until the next time when I do it all over again. Don't feel obligated to indulge me by dispensing sage advice, just please, no one say that it could be worse. Things could always be worse - that doesn't make it better.

Why hello there

My initial concern was that I wouldn't remember how to get to my blog, and even if I did - would I know how to log in and where to go once I was? I managed this after a couple of tries, then realized the larger problem would be whether I remember how to write. I'm concerned that until I get back into the swing of things (assuming I can manage to blog more than once every 6 months), I'll write in the self-conscious style that plagued my early posts. Reading my old posts you'd be forgiven for thinking you'd stumbled onto a 13 year old's diary, not the blog of someone in their late 20s talking about infertility. Late 20s...oh, those were the days.

So yes, I'm "back", though I never really left. I shifted my whole life and family back to the fair shores of the US and got lazy. Creating a new life for three is hard, let me tell you. I could pretend that I have no time, but I do. My kid (nearly 4 1/2 - SHIT) goes to bed at 7.30pm, I go to bed around 11pm every night. That is 3 1/2 hours of nothingness. Said nothingness is largely spent watching TV or DVDs with The Dude, catching up on what we have missed all these years away. Let me tell you - you people have got this reality TV thing down. Yes, it is "you people", because though I have lived in the US for three months and uh, I am American, I'm having some outsider issues which I hope will lessen soon.

My job is frustrating; it seems the notion of "training" is not important to the new place, yet haranguing me for not doing something I did not even know existed is acceptable. I am very independent and thorough, so this is not my chosen method in which to work. Professionally, I wouldn't want to do anything else, but I'm not sure if this is the institution for me. I am trying to be open-minded about it because I know it can take awhile to adjust, particularly when you come from a familiar, comfortable environment. I've been increasingly homesick for a country I am not even from, and on most days I debate whether I've done the right thing.

So here we are, dropped in an unfamiliar place, slowly getting our bearings. The Dude vacillates between thinking that the life we'll have here will be great once we sell our place in the UK and he finds a job, and OH MY GOD WHAT HAVE WE DONE? He has started doing some part-time coaching which has alleviated some of the overall pervasive misery, but neither one of us can help thinking about the two fairly good-paying jobs and property that we owned (god, I hate renting) and left behind.

P is just peachy regardless. She's happy here, she's happy there, she'd be happy in Eritrea. She is a jolly little bean, if not a jolly little dictating bean. See, I suppose not everything changes. We question our decision on her behalf as well, because even though she's well-adjusted, things could always be better. I wonder if anyone ever feels confident that their child(ren)have the very best life that they can provide. I didn't feel as if I was doing that in England, which was part of the reason for the move. Yet, I certainly don't feel as if I'm doing that here either. I don't know if that ideal space exists.

So yes, I am here. Disjointed, confused, stumbling blindly through life both real and cyber. My goal for this week is to read blogs, so watch yourselves. That is, if I can remember how to sign in and comment on them. Oh yeah, or if I'm not distracted by all of the quality reality television - damn you Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and Millionaire Matchmaker!

Bon Voyage

Four months of silence, yet I consistently don't know what to say when faced with a blank Blogger screen. The gist is this:

-I got a job in the US.
-I, and by which I mean only me, leave England after 8+ years on Wednesday. One day from now.
-I am terrified.
-I will be away from The Dude and P for two or three weeks, perhaps more.
-I have had one month to prepare for this and I have failed. Majorly.
-For the next few days I will mostly be crying and trying not to throw up repeatedly. This applies to repeatedly trying not to throw up, as well as possibly trying not to throw up repeatedly.
-This is a lot harder than I thought it would be.

I'm not sure what the next month will bring. I will try my best not to beseige this place with my misery whilst I'm trying to sort out my new life over there alone.

Shit. Fuck. Bollocks. Wank.

Maman

When I was pregnant, I finally began to realise the weight attached to my own notion of motherhood. I never perceived myself to be the maternal type, and my relationship with my own mother, though loving, has some element of distance because we are two very different people. I have never been particularly fond of children, and even with one of my own, maintain a withdrawn, wary stance when it comes to the children of others. Since I had P, I suppose my Mom and I have grown closer, though I do feel as if my general emotional reservedness is at odds with her outgoing, emotionally bold personality.

My Mom lost her mother when I, her first child, was not yet a year old. Growing up, I knew how profoundly her loss affected her - she was apologetic that I never knew my grandmother, and her mourning was two-fold now that she too had a daughter. I didn't think much about the daughter-mother-grandmother link until I was trying to get pregnant and had a dreadful nightmare that my Mom died right after I had a daughter of my own. I was lost as she had been, struggling to come to terms with new motherhood and grief simultaneously. It was a strange, lingering dream which annoyingly elbowed its way into my waking life and provided a very odd world for me mentally for quite some time afterwards.

Since I had P, I haven't lingered on that dream much. I can't. As most of you know, I have some issues with anxiety, so the further away those thoughts, the better. My worry is often allocated entirely to P, and there is so much of it, there is not often much spare. This afternoon my brother called to say that my Mom took herself to the ER early this morning because she was having heart palpitations. Because "rational" is not a word often associated with my mental processes, I have been going to extremes all day. My brother has not seemed overly concerned, but then again, he's male, and I'm 4000 miles away and helpless. He often downplays all of my Dad's forays into alcoholic idiocy, so I know he's worried too and just masking it well.

Being a negative person and extreme worrier, this only goes one way with me. Even if it's nothing this time, it has awakened an alarm within me so that from now until someone actually dies, I will think every phone call is bad news. I know it sounds horribly melodramatic and an exaggeration, but this is how my mind works. It has always latched on to one occasion where something went wrong, and thus every other time the same situation presents itself, I assume it to be bad. Once The Dude had head pain so severe that I rushed him to the ER, with me believing he was surely experiencing an aneurysm and would die before we got there. Instead, he was 26 when he discovered he inherited his mother's tendency to debilitating migraines. Nonetheless, with every twinge, every need to take an Excedrin, it's 11 years ago again and I'm bracing myself for the worst.

Since my brother phoned, I have been catastrophizing. That's what us anxious people do, and who am I to disappoint? I am now starkly aware of my Mom's mortality, and cannot think of anything else. I think of it in terms of her being my own mother of course, but also her presence as the Granny P adores. I could be a mother defining my own mother to my child in purely anecdotal terms one day - soon? - just as she was 25 years ago. My mind then goes further, just to fuck with me even more, to remind me that as I'm trying to get pregnant again, I have possible dead-grandmother emotional baggage for that hypothetical child as well. Yes, yes, I know it all sounds so absurd, and to be honest typing it makes me feel a bit ridiculous. Regretfully, rational thought does not mix well with catastrophizing.

My Mom rang about an hour ago, scaring the shit out of me as that blessed ring will do from now on. She wanted to tell me that all was ok, "so you'll sleep well tonight." Ha! She's in a difficult place - other than being more or less on her own to deal with this, she has to concern herself with my fragile mental state. She knows how I am. She often brings up the many times in my childhood when I would be too anxious to sleep and she had to stroke my hair and talk about our "peaceful place." Apparently her issue (something about a sinus which I WILL NOT Google, or I shall never sleep again) can be treated by something as simple as medication, or at its most invasive extreme, a pacemaker.

Strangely enough, there was a line that had been bouncing around in my head all week, one which I read somewhere - I'm paraphrasing, but basically, the important things that change your life are the ones which happen in a second. We tend to ascribe all the gravity of our lives to the things we ponder over and over again - do I move back to the US? Do I greet infertility again to see if I can try my luck again? - rather than the ones which can change it all in an instant.

I was in an awkward mental place prior to all of this anyway, so it's only natural that the weirdness should be extended a bit longer. I guess it's a combination of PMS (because OF COURSE my period is impending), and general mental imbalance, but I have been near tears or tearful for the past 48 hours. Now I guess I at least have a good reason to be so. I'm so paranoid, another fun aspect of my uh, issues, that I picture people reading this and rolling their eyes. Many of you have lost your mothers, or had mothers with issues more severe than what appears to be a rather harmless condition as far as heart things go, and here I am, rabbitting on like the most overreacting-nest person who ever overreacted. If anyone would like to talk me down off the ledge, you are more than welcome to do so.

Music Monday: It's About Damn Time

I don't even know how long it has been since I did MM. I could look, but that requires effort and I'm fresh out of that. As I tweeted yesterday, my kid is being an absolute gobshite lately and a bit of a cow, so I feel capable of little other than dribbling on myself, staring forelornly into middle distance, and oh - hooking you up with some music.

Dave Rawlings Machine: To Be Young



Josh Ritter: Change of Time (frick on a stick I wanted to not like him or this song given my brother's worrying it-puts-the-lotion-on-the-skin love of all things Ritter)



She and Him: Ridin' in My Car (I like this quite a bit despite my abiding hatred of M Ward)



Beach House: Zebra



The Bird and the Bee: I Can't Go For That



Broken Bells: The High Road



Monsters of Folk: Dear God



Dawes: When My Time Comes



Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros: 40 Day Dream



Cold War Kids: Audience



Mumford and Sons: The Cave (there are other songs I could choose from this wonderful band, however, I love this song so much I hae every faith that if I listen to it a thousand times, I will get the job I want and become infinitely fertile. It will be so.)



I hope to be back later in the week with an honest to god blog post about real stuff. We shall see.

Huzzah

Heyyyy-oooooo! I've swept away the cobwebs and stomped on the spiders inhabiting this space. They will surely take up residence again when I've left this to rot for another few months. So, ignore the tumbleweeds, but don't get too excited and think that I have much of note to say.

Where have I been...yes, where have I been. I have been trying to get pregnant in the UK or employed in the US, consistently failed, had mini-breakdowns, resolved to smite my ovaries because they are bastards, cursed US higher education institutions for being close-minded (or perhaps just exhibiting good sense), adoring my magnificent daughter, resuming my MA in Art History, consequently not getting enough sleep, shunning blogging in favour of the ease and lack of commitment of Facebook, and not running enough. I think that about covers it.

Since I last blogged in January, I made some decisions. As alluded to above, I decided to give equal effort to the two things I want - a second child and a job in the US. Neither one of those options seem too keen to get things moving, but at least I am attempting to take action so that something will hopefully happen. Eventually. I bought myself one of those nifty Clearblue Easy Fertility Monitors that does all the hard work for me, because I tried the temp thing the first go round and it was all a bit much of a to-do. I barely even know what day it is or where I'm supposed to be, I'm sure as hell not put together enough to taking my temp before my eyes even open and then drafting it on a damn chart.

I'll tell you something else - I always said that I was a completely rubbish infertile, and you'll be pleased to know that is still the case. I never used OPKs before now, and I have no idea what the lines on the wee sticks even mean. No clue. I hold them up to the light every morning, trying to glean what knowledge exactly, I have no idea. I angle them against the skylight, squint, furrow my brow, draw no conclusions whatsoever, and put them in the bin. Thank god the little machine tells me my business or else I'd have no clue. The penis goes where?

I have been trying not to think about what happens after failure. I have very quickly fallen back into the mentality that pregnancy is something which happens to other people rather than me. I may have been pregnant before, but like a lot of things, the passage of time wears away memories slowly. I can barely remember that time with any accuracy, and though the evidence of my successful pregnancy is constantly smacking my ass and saying "Hey sugarbum" with a flawless Southern accent, I seem to disassociate her with the actual process of being pregnant.

Between cycles I don't much care which comes first - pregnancy or job. After a failed cycle, well, woebetide the poor Dude, who is relegated to a support position which largely involves staring blankly at me while I rage. Ah, the good old days, eh?

So yes, I'm back in this IF sphere again, begrudgingly. I might even stick around for a bit. Who am I kidding? I'll be here for years. I hope to put off the fun stuff like wandings and flashing my doctor for at least a little while, but I'll need somewhere to vent the reality. Facebook is crawling with work folk, family, and severe Christ-worshippers who would fall of their pews if they knew what I'm really like. I need this blog for that, as short of personal emails, this is still the only place where I can be me.

Simplification

Though I may not be blogging much lately, I am doing a lot of thinking, if that counts for anything. In the past couple of weeks I've been trying to get my (metaphorical) house in order, though, like all the other times, it will all soon fall apart. Again.

Anyway, while I was away, thinking and pondering, pondering and thinking - my FIVE YEAR BLOGIVERSARY passed. Five damn years. Not only does this mean that I have been writing this claptrap for that amount of time, but that I've known my Cheese Wife for pretty much that long. There we were, but babes in the infertile wood, and he we are five years later, both with drastically different lives. I'm thankful that there are more of you out there that I have known for just about as long, and happy that we're all still around in some capacity - whether it is still in blog form, email, or Facebook. I scoff in the general direction of all those who say you cannot form "proper" relationships in cyberspace. Do people even say "cyberspace" anymore?

The wheels in my wee head have been turning, consumed with thoughts of my own personal evolution as a blogger. No doubt Mel would write about this subject (and probably has) far better than I can, but I'm just going to go and talk about it anyway.

Within the last year, if not a bit more, my perspective on blogging has changed quite drastically. In the time before, I was perhaps a bit too consumed with trying to plump up my traffic, increase my profile, and befriend big(ish) names. I was never too ambitious, as I think a lot of the bloggers classified as A-list are not very good writers and/or entertaining and wouldn't sell myself just for the sake of squealing when one linked to me (she says, mentioning good writing after that awkward sentence). I was never so crass as to be obvious about it; I just cannot starfuck without feeling like a dirty, dirty whore.

I don't know why I wanted more readers. I'm too much of a flake to handle the online friendships I have now, so I can't imagine, at least not conciously, that I wanted to make more friends. Perhaps it's a tiny amount of that basic, high school-ish desire to hang out with those that are considered the cool kids. For the most part, that isn't what it was about for me, since I didn't much care for that rubbish when I was in high school. Admittedly, there are some bloggers that are popular and that I think are downright fabulous, and even now in my devil-may-care phase, I'd be lying if I said I didn't secretly want them to read me, just once. Luckily, one of them, the aforementioned, almighty Mel, does pop in every once in awhile, and heck, I think she even likes me!

I have always enjoyed receiving comments, as we all do, and I've always drawn a parallel (at least on my own blog)with good writing yielding a higher number of comments. Of course we know that isn't strictly true, as I have been to some truly dire blogs with dozens of comments, but I judge my own blog differently for some reason. I think we've all been in a position in which we have written a post we are really proud of, or is particularly heartfelt, but draws very little response. I like writing, and since I don't do that in an academic setting at the moment (though this is to change in a few weeks' time), it's nice to have occasional feedback, however informal.

So yes, maybe it's the Citalopram setting my head right, perhaps it's because I'm an old lady now at 31 and will find joy in things like cats and pensions instead of blog popularity. It's not an issue of not enjoying my blog anymore - I can't invisage giving it up anytime soon, but I can't be bothered with all of the politics and preening. I'm going to go simple and just blog for blogging's sake. I'm going to keep on (trying) to read the same blogs I've known and loved for years, and not add any with the view of trying to garner new readers. I applaud those of you who have been that way since you started, clearly you're higher up the blogging evolutionary chain.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I must go dig out the raisin I've just dropped in my cleavage, then commence with the burning of patchouli and listening to the Grateful Dead.

Music Wednesday: Merry Christmas you bastards!

Yeah, ok, so I didn't quite manage to write this post for Sunday or Monday as promised, but such is my flakyness. Regardless, it's here now, with your requests as well as my own favourites.

May @Problem Uterus suggested Bruce Springsteen's "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" and Barenaked Ladies' "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen":





I don't care what anyone says, Christmas isn't Christmas without a little Bing.

Little Drummer Boy (with David Bowie)



White Christmas



My new sister in Mid-Atlantic statedom, Cali, wanted Happy Christmas (War Is Over) by John Lennon (I'm assuming, rather than the Celine version) and "Christmas Time is Here" from A Charlie Brown Christmas:






Since we don't get that 1964 jem "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" in the UK, I must rely on YouTube for my annual fix. Hurray for "Holly Jolly Christmas" and "Silver and Gold":





Eliza's Mom, always the musical brainiac has suggested The Killers' "Don't Shoot Me Santa", and yes, EM, they are wearing some pretty vile/fabulous Christmas sweaters! Her other recommendation, because she pretty much rocks, is Porn Orchard's "Christmas Sucks":