Social Obligations in the Electronic Age

Back before the twitters and the books with faces and the tumbles and the flicks, I was on a private bulletin board with tons of cool people that I inherited from my husband. The board emerged as something to do between fantasy football and baseball and other random fantasy sports seasons and the stated purpose was to talk shit about and to each other. It was awesome.

After a little while, we got organized and made a little page where we could all keep track of where we were. Which, actually was a challenge back then. Not many were stationary for too long. Addresses, emails, phones, birthdays. Ah, birthdays.

On the day of your birthday, you could expect a whooosh of birthday wishes. Some funny, some sincere. It was awesome if you were on the receiving end. But then there were days when you forgot to check the boards. Maybe even a few days. Maybe you were even away from your computer for (don't faint) something like a whole week.

And then you came back and wow. Great. You find you are the one sole person who didn't wish someone a happy birthday. Awesome. And then there were other days when, you know, maybe you didn't feel like wishing a particular person a happy birthday. Not because you didn't like them, but because you didn't know them as well as others and maybe by being so effusive in your wishes to them it might make your really sincere wishes to other people seem less sincere....It got to the point where I hated birthdays. Anybody's. Because I felt like I HAD to say something. Or else be the dick. No one wants to be a dick.

Cue Faceb**k.

So now, everyone in the world, or at least those that can see your profile, see your birthday. And now, remembering someone's birthday isn't an accomplishment, isn't a pat yourself on the back because you remembered to pop the card in the mail. (With stamp. Bonus.) It's this thing you HAVE to do. Because you have no excuse. How could you forget someone's birthday when its right there up in the top corner of your screen, maybe even emailed to you. When I get those notices I cringe. Like, what are you, my mom?

As you probably know, I'm not a big fan of social obligations. I want to do things for people because I WANT to do them. I want people to do things for me because they feel the same. Not because they have to, not because some computer dinged at them. I mean, sure, it's awesome to get the pages full of FB wishes. Who doesn't dig that?

Wait. Maybe some of you don't. Does anybody not like them? Anyone see it as flotsam? Ok, fess up, anyone out there with fake birthdays listed to sort through the real friends and the FB friends? I know one or two people in real life who do.

In a strange and roundabout way here, I'm trying to get a handle on social media etiquette. Me, my brother, my mom. All Taurus. All with birthdays this week.

• If I send my mom a card and a little gift do I have to post on her wall too? 
• If I text my brother first thing in the morning, am I a jerk for not also publicly blessing the day he was born on his page? 
• If I do post on someone's wall, does that relieve me from any other birthday obligations? 
• Are you bothered if you expect someone to post on your wall and they don't? 
• If you can't see someone in person, if you could only have one, which would you rather have for your birthday? Card? Call? Text? Wall post? Shout out on the twitter?
• What do you prefer to give?

If I had a little more time this morning, I might have put that barrage of questions into a little poll, but for now, I'd just love your two cents. Any way you want to share them.

This Post is So Boring

Like, so boring, I'm not even sure why I'm pushing Publish.

But not every post can be a zinger, right? And not every day is an exciting day. Sometimes life is just, life.

Happy Earth Day, y'all.

Mostly, symbolic, I know. Doesn't have a lot of "meat" around it, but its a nice reminder to look around and think, What am I doing to love my surroundings and/or myself a little better these days?

At least that's what we've been trying to do. Trying to fill the time between now and the future with some basic tasks, some mindfulness. Some distractions.

All is fine on the surrogacy front so far. We've completed our draft of the contract, now its in the hands of our gestational surrogate and her attorney to see what they like/don't like. Then it will go back to ours. We'll tweak (hopefully not too much) and probably tweak again. It's all moving forward, but it is a process. And one that doesn't happen overnight. So, we've got some time on our hands.

So with that time, we've decided to:

1. Plant the garden, and by garden I mean the boxes and pots on the balcony that eventually take over and vie for space with M as he sits and does his puzzles out there. It's a love/hate relationship. I love the plants, he hates nearly toppling over the side every time he maneuvers to his chair with coffee and book and pen in hand. But he's a limber guy, and I think the fresh greens and herbs are worth it. (added challenge: I'm starting tomatoes and peppers from seed this year, which I've never done. As you know, I suck at thinning, so we'll see how this goes.)
2. Chill on the happy hours - yes, we have a happy place and yes it happens to be a bar and yes, everyone does know our name, but here's the thing - we realized last week that drinking a fancy beer can often be the caloric equivalent of eating a piece of chocolate cake. Yikes. And we wouldn't think of doing that more than once a week, M doesn't even eat cake (so annoying). Yet somehow...
3. Eat better. We don't eat poorly. In fact, we're pretty damn healthy. But we eat a lot. With gusto. While we're entirely meat and dairy-free at home, we have been known to lapse and get the occasional  large cheese pizza on the way home from previously mentioned happy place. And then eat the whole. damn. thing. We're trying to erase that habit from our routine completely. Luckily (for us, not him) our favorite pizza guy got into a fight with his boss and quit, so the temptation isn't as tempting as it once was. We're also trying to do a little better with portion control, which is actually easier now that we've...
4. Started p.9.0.x. Holy. Shit. The pain. It's better now. As in, it's good that we can now stand up and sit down without yelping. The first days were brutal. Now, it's just a dull, but kind of satisfying (?) ache. Week one is officially complete. We've worked out at least an hour every day. Sometimes more. We're sweating like fiends. And seriously, feeling kind of smugly great. It's fun to spend the morning with M. It's great to have a partner in the pain. I don't know how long we'll last. The timeframe is a little daunting. But every day we finish the routine is one more day of sweat that wasn't there before. It's easier to eat better in concert with this because for everything I put into my mouth I now consider the amount of this ridiculous, contortionist shit I will need to do to burn it off. I'm waiting for the rain to stop to see if this has any impact on my running - good, bad, indifferent. I mean, its not like I can get any slower....

On the Earth Day front, we've started to try to do more around the apartment to minimize impact. One huge piece of this is water. We seem to have the opposite problem of most of our house-owning friends. Our water pressure is actually too strong. So strong that faucets drip and there's nothing you can do about it. No tightening of bolts, no calling the landlord will stem the steady drip drip....(wait for it) drip. So we started to collect the drips and use the water that would have dripped down the drain to water the garden, the house plants, make the tea...We rack up at least a gallon from the kitchen sink alone. I cringe to think of how much water is running through our apartment building wasted, but at least there's one less tenant who's adding to that. And who knows, maybe there are others in the building that have figured this out well before us.  It's not rocket science.

So, there you have it. A boring, mundane, everyday post about everyday things that are happening in and around our household these days. Lots of cleaning house. Getting our bodies and heads right. Trying to be solid, and calm and strong and ready for whatever comes our way in the coming months.

Jumble

I'm a bit of a mess this morning. A huge jumbly brain-scrambled mess. I blame my dreams. Awful, awful dreams.

The kind that continue and develop and grow new layers throughout the night. No matter how many times you wake up and try to shake them off. Those.

The entire dream sequence took place in the house where I grew up, not far from here. The bedrooms, the kitchen, the driveway. All vividly drawn. It started with me curled under the covers in my parents' old water bed, heat turned up, trying to get warm, mom coming in and trying to comfort me. I had just learned that dad was going to take his doctors' advice and go to the hospital and, for lack of a better word, go get euthanized. His cancer had grown, no hope was in sight, and the docs thought this was the best approach, an easy, painless death.

He was packing an overnight bag - habit, I guess. But neither of us stopped him. He was cheerful enough, and relieved to have instructions to follow. He may have been whistling.

In real life, my dad is the type of person that takes a doctor's word as bond (except if those words have anything to do with losing weight). "He (or she) is the professional, not me. What do I know? They know best....."

I was crying and getting myself ready to go with him. Grabbing my knitting and the hat I had started to make for him. But he won't be able to wear it... I thought. I don't care. I. don't. care. I am making it anyway.

Dad came in as I was collecting my things and gave me a big hug and that's when the ocean of tears burst through. This is not ok by me! This is not ok by me! I don't know if I said this out loud or just repeated it to myself over and over again.

I realized my brother wasn't there and told my mom she had to find him. Fast. She explained he was out of town with a friend. I explained that if he missed a chance to say goodbye to dad and we let that happen he would never forgive us. And I wouldn't either. She agreed and made some calls. In seconds my brother was in the hallway, almost as tall as the low ceiling. "Hey, everyone! What's going on?" he jovially asked.

"Dad's going to the hospital," says mom.

...and not coming back. And not coming back. That is the part she omits.

My brother always seems to get the benefit of omissions. True, he has a hair trigger temper and has been known for his outbursts. What few people understand is that rage rages inside me too. I just have years and years of experience choking it down. So I get the full brunt of the Real. Brother gets digestible snippets. I apparently "can handle it."

As clearly evidenced by the sea of nightmares claiming me last night.

At this point, I wake. Try to shake it all off, and fall into another dream, this time with M's father willingly deciding to go get euthanized too. Again, cheerfully packing a bag, giving his rationale to us. What the fuck. Then it all turns weird. Those bits are slowly fading out of my memory. But I have a feeling the first half of the night is going to stick with me for quite some time.

**

Back to reality: the tumor in dad's lung has grown. The chemo hasn't worked. A new drug and protocol were started yesterday, but odds of it holding back the disease are minimal. There is no fix anymore. There will be no remission, simply a buying of time. I left work early last week and went to spend a few days with them. To hear the doctor say it myself. To see how my dad would react. To help get things in order. Finances, directives, powers of attorney.

Fuck. Just fuck.

I didn't cry while I was there. Not once. Because I am the one that handles shit, you see. So the tears come when I don't expect them. In the car on the Turnpike, in the shower, while making dinner. Typing.

Now.

It was actually a really lovely visit if you ignore the reason I came in the first place. I took mom out of the house to drink good beer and eat fried pickles. I perched on the couch and let my dad explain the nuances of The Y*ung and the R*stless that I was clearly missing. Oh, he slept with her, oh I see. Oh she thinks that's her sister but she's really not.....ok, got it.

My dad joked and laughed and didn't take offense at things. Our relationship would be very different if there were 70 other years like this. But this is where we are now. And unlike in my dream, right now dad is willing to do anything to buy himself a little more time. So a new chemo started yesterday. We'll know fairly quickly if there is a benefit to it or not.

Meanwhile, I knit the hat that he requested. What color? "The color of hair."

Ok, dad. You got it. Whatever you'd like.

The Analogy Project

There is already a stunning collection of posts painting pictures of infertility and loss with analogies ranging from mountains to islands to trains to tracks to radishes.

Yes. Radishes. Here is my submission. An older post, but still one of my favorites.

There's still time to share yours. What images have you used to try to explain your situations to others? To yourself? Which ones resonate most with you?

A lot - crammed into one post - that I am struggling to title

I wrote the most amazing post yesterday morning. It was poignant, thoughtful...I mean, bordering on brilliant.

I can say this because I wrote it in my head on my run and cannot recall a single sentence of it. So, nothing to prove otherwise.

It must have been brilliant.

**

I'm playing hooky right now. Taking advantage of about an hour that I have between pushing through some early morning deadlines (done!) and before I need to start getting ready in earnest to get in the car and go do a presentation this afternoon. I have about an hour drive between me and my destination and a car stereo that actually functions, unlike the past. I'm looking forward to the afternoon.

Right now, I made some tea. I just played a game of solitaire. I'm clearing my head. I feel decadent. Indulgent, even. I have a space of time to myself. And to spend with you.

So, how are you?

Today is the day we always thought our daughters would be born. Its not their due date. Its not the day they actually did arrive. This was the magical date that M and I always assumed they would come and be with us. A few weeks earlier than expected, but late enough that they would still thrive. The would come yawning and then squealing, marking the day M's sister was born (happy birthday, A!) as well as the birth date of their strong and resilient grandmother. An exclamation of the first 48 hours of spring. A punctuation on my decades of life living without cancer, but with its aftermath. Today would be the end of some stories and the beginning of others.

Today is a day you wouldn't know about if you didn't follow us here. Its not a date we announce, or commemorate or purposefully celebrate or mourn, although that has been known to happen. It is simply a day of remembering a date that's significant in this way only to us. March 22 is the day of our loves.


**

This day, this time around is colored brightly by hope. Oh friends, we have good news. A green light update, if you will. We met our gestational surrogate and her husband face to face for the first time last Friday....They rock. We think so. Our doc thinks so. Our shrink thinks so. People, all systems are go.

They were nervous, as were we. We promptly shuttled them from the airport through a major city (cue traffic, culture shock, trying to stay awake after a 4 am wake up to catch the plane, yowch). They were total troopers through it all. We had no idea they weren't on a direct flight, or else we would have insisted they stay the night. But tickets had been booked, there were return flights to catch. We spent most of our time in waiting rooms and in our tiny car, but that's where the most intimate conversations are supposed to occur, right? Didn't I hear a PSA about that once? Having trouble talking to your teen? Take a drive, talk it out.....

There were no uncomfortable silences, no awkward moments. Expectations were suitably subdued on both sides. I don't think any of us are looking for new best friends. We are looking for some folks with kind and generous hearts and open minds.

And I can only speak for myself, but I think we've found that.

We have contracts to finalize but our doc is already thinking through transfer dates. Which look like they could be as early as May.

May, people. May. As in 2012.

As in, soon.

I would love to tell you more but those are some conversations we still need to have together. Our family of two has just multiplied and pulled in another one to help us build ours. So if I'm skimping on details, I'm not being coy, simply respectful.

But what I can share is a feeling of optimism that seems to be completely taking over M and me. I'm feeling surrounded and overwhelmed by love, riding it like a sea swell, hanging on like mad.

A Five Finger Exercise*

*and no, its nothing pervy, and is completely unrelated to a five-finger discount. It's 100% legal and maybe even good for you.

**

The alarm rings every weekday morning at 6:45 am, unless M. pops out of bed before that. My eyes open too, but just long enough to register that I have a few more minutes to sleep while M. hits the shower and gets dressed. He talks to me while I'm still buried in covers. Sometimes I remember what I say, often I don't. He leaves the room to grab a bite to eat. I catch a few more winks, then growl out of bed to meet him on the couch. If I'm blessed with a morning that doesn't include a 7:30 am meeting, I might even be cheeky enough to grab another 10 minutes of sleep there once he says goodbye and the door shuts.

M says he's never met anyone that tried to suck more sleep out of a night than me.

This is because as soon as my eyes open, I reach for my phone to tell me what awaits. And as soon as I register to anyone in the outside world that my eyes are open and I am semi-coherent, my day begins, and usually snowballs from there.

I bet this is the case for every one of you, too. The day begins = you're off and running. I just happen to have the luxury of being able to cling to my last moments of sleep to stall that process for just a little more. So I take it.

But I hope that won't always be the case. I hope there will be a time, some time in the near future, that drifting back to sleep won't be an option. Because there will be a mouth to feed, tiny needs to be attended to...

So I better come up with a new plan.

In fact, I need a new plan anyway. The one I have brings me dangerously close to being late - Often - for places I need to be. And task avoidance via sleep only gets you so far.

Luckily, when I attended a conference a few weeks ago, in addition to getting to spend some delicious quality time with my girl Dresden, I actually walked away with some very useful stuff. Including this little gem:
Ok, what is this? You ask. This is your little pocket guide to just a few seconds of peacefulness, mindfulness and meditation you can fit into your day, especially those days when slipping back into the covers are not an option. I got this in a session entitled, "Managing Activist Fatigue," and while it wasn't exactly what I had been hoping for, this was a pretty nice takeaway. Here's how it works:

Sit down. Get comfortable. Calm yourself. Close your eyes. Breathe in slow. Hold it. Breathe out slow.

Take your next breath and as you do, touch your thumb to your index finger. During the hold, think of a time when you were physically tired, like exhausted, but in a good way. Like after a long hike, good run, full day getting shit done....you get the picture. Hold that image and feeling in your mind as you hold your breath. Breathe out.

In the next breath, touch your thumb to your middle finger and envision a moment when you felt unconditionally loved. With your partner, your dog, a friend, a sibling....just any moment where you felt surrounded by love. Hold it. Keep it. Breath out.

Next breath, thumb to ring finger, a time when you performed well - at work, at school, dealing with a situation at home....any time where you looked back on your own behavior and thought, dang, I done good. Hold it. Keep it. Breath out.

Lastly, thumb to pinkie, envision a beautiful place. A place that you've been to or seen that takes your breathe away with its loveliness or grandeur. Try to visualize as much of it as you can in that one breathe. Hold it. Keep it. Breath out.

Ok! Done! Open your eyes. And try to carry that feeling with you for as long as you can during the day. Stop and do it as often as you need it, strengthening the visuals you have or creating new ones each time.

And don't eye roll until you try it! I was mid-roll in the session and then we did it, and dang it if it didn't alleviate at least a little of the tension that had been building leading up to the weekend.

In fact, I did it this morning, right before I posted this post, to convince myself that yes, indeed, I did have a few minutes to blog before running forward in my crazy day.

Take this. Try it. And get on with your crazy days.

424 Posts

That's what I have to show for five years in the blogosphere. Five years! Whoa. I'm an oldster. Don't stare at my gray hairs. I've earned every single one. (But you would tell me if you saw one, right? Because I will dye the shit out of it.)

Does one get presents for a blogoversary? Considering I don't get any for my actual anniversary, I'm guessing odds are slim. But just in case the goddesses (or my husband) are listening....

Could someone clean my bathroom?

That would be so great. M has been giving me some shit about it for a few days now and I'm a little tired of it. Yes, my bathroom is cruddier than yours, I tell him. That's because my bathroom is where everything ends up when we get company and you get thrown out of yours. And I have far more hair. Long, long strands of hair that like to wind and weave their ways into strange places, I know. My bathroom gets far more traffic since its the one connected to our bedroom. It's the deep dark den of a bathroom so of course its not going to shine and sparkle like the spartan room of tile you happen to shower in.

Jeez.

If something's dirty and its bothering me, I clean it. If my bathroom is dirty and bothering M, I think he should clean it, no?

I'm going to remind him today's a special day, not tell him why, and watch him stress just a bit.

**
I'm finding it hard to blog today, because these days, I'm eating, sleeping, dreaming advocacy strategies and next steps. Who to see. What to say. How to follow up. I've got my game face on and even when I'm on the couch chilling with M. watching F*nding B*gfoot, I'm kind of not really 100% there. I'm thinking about my day job. So, in line with my current frame of mind I'm presenting to you both a timeline and a statistical overview of our five years together:

February 28th through the yeeeeears (minus the Kenny Rodgers song that's now stuck in my head):

• 2007 - opening day
• 2008 - two canceled cycles and one fresh IVF down, I was in the midst of our first frozen embryo transfer and feeling lucky (wasn't, but I think I might been on an uber exercise kick back then. Maybe a few pounds lighter. Go me.)
• 2009 - still in that funky place of grief, processing that between this year and the last I was pregnant and then I wasn't. I'm intermittently disconsolate and ridiculously upbeat. Here, I'm looking to the future, with a balloon up in my cooch (post-surgery)
• 2010 - looks like I skipped a celebration this year. 2010 kicked our asses all over the place. Don't feel like you have to click on this one. It's kind of a downer.
• 2011 - Seeing half of Ween. The Gener. Feeling older, feeling wiser. Not a bad thing.
• 2012 - It seems I am kvetching about a dirty bathroom.
• 2013 - ???????
  

**
5 years of www.themaybebaby.com in numbers:

1825 days
424 posts
4 canceled cycles (2 due to donor eggs issues, 1 with eggs didn't make the thaw, and one when we realized my lining wasn't going to magically grow 4 more mm in a night)
2 fresh IVFs with donor eggs
2 FETs with donor eggs
1 pregnancy
almost 22 weeks of bliss
2 beautiful babies not here
100+ amazing people encountered, including over a dozen that have turned into real life friends.
4 offers of compassionate surrogacy
1 potential baby mama in the works....

Yes, friends, we've cleared another hurdle. Our potential gestational surrogate passed our clinic's medical record review. (woo hoo! cue streamers and balloons. This is kind of a big deal) Now we are scheduling a marathon day of exams for her, for us, for us together. Whew. forward motion. It's a beautiful thing. And a lovely gift for my five year blogoversary.

I suppose the bathroom can wait.

So hey, thanks for being here. Thank you for reading. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and opinions. I see this as my safe place. I hope you do too.