My Weblog

Not Pregnant

Well, I got my period. So that's that.

It's Tough Being A Child Actor

No period yet. That's my update on the Baby Game.

Bruno and I were surfing the internet a couple of nights ago and came across a couple of pictures of him on someone's website. I have decided to post them below, because frankly, they are funny! When Bruno was a kid, he was an extra on "The Wonder Years". For two seasons he played "student #8". He could be found in the background of most of the school scenes and was even in the opening credits of the episode with Margaret Farquare (I butchered that spelling!). But remember her? She was the strange girl with three ponytails. Anyhow, the opening credits showed the highschool yearbook photos and Bruno's picture was front and center. When we first started dating, he showed me the yearbook page. His mom had kept it. How cute, huh? He was even in some Fred Savage movie about a kid who goes to the video game championship. I don't remember the name of the movie, but rest assured that it was up for an Oscar that year!

Now, as you can imagine, living with a former child actor is not easy! After his Wonder Years glory, work was few and far between and so he turned to a life of drugs and crime. It was a rough time for his family. Every few weeks they would have to go searching the neighborhood for little Bruno, making sure that he wasn't dead in the gutter or holding up a liquor store. He eventually cleaned up, but sometimes his ego can get a little out of hand! Like last night, we were going to a lecture at the DIA and he pushed a bunch of people out the way and shouted, "Don't you know who I am???" I call these outbursts "child-actor flashbacks". It's really difficult at times. When he is feeling down, he sits at his desk and signs pictures of himself. Lately he's taken to blogging about "the good old days". He keeps calling Fred Savage but Fred won't take his calls anymore. Frankly, I'm starting to get worried. The other night in his sleep he was humming the theme song to VH1's Flashback 80's. He's waiting for them to call and ask him to be a guest host...

O.K., I exaggerate... But, he really was an extra and so I like to tease him relentlessly! Anyhow, here is a picture of my Bruno. He's the dark kid with the bushy hair. Isn't he cute? He insists that the camera loved him. G-d he's a riot!

Click on the image to enlarge.

Here's another pic. He's the kid in the gray shirt. Hot!

These images came from: http://www.brimstone.com/~etphone/wonder_years/index.html

Sick, Sick, Sick...

It's the weekend, the only real time that Bruno and I have together, and I'm stuck at home with the flu! Bruno stayed home yesterday so that we could go to Greenfield Village together (something that we've been wanting to do for a while now) but I could barely even make it to Target to buy a much needed blanket. Thankfully, I did make it since I ended up on the couch or in bed all day and that blanket kept the chills at bay.

Usually when we go to Target I want to spend hours on end looking at all of the new and exciting things that have recently come in. I'm a sucker for Target! I'll admit it! I love the fancy stores too (like Nordie's, Neiman's, Sak's, etc.) but at Target I can actually buy stuff. Those other stores are like porn. They turn me on but leave me feeling alone and frustrated! Sorry, that was a tangent... So, back at Target. I had made a list of items that we needed (like a thousand roll pack of toilet paper) and had managed to cross every item off in less than half an hour. It was unheard of! The final item that I needed was cold and flu medicine. While I was trying to figure out which one I wanted, Bruno asked me if we needed anything else. Big pause from me while I contemplate this... I'm thinking, we're only two aisles away from the pregnancy tests... Should I get one? I blame my weakened flu state for the decision that I made. Yes! We should buy a pregnancy test!

I shouldn't have bought the damn test. I knew it. I've been down this road before and it only ends in false hope and then eventually tears and fake smiles. You would think that I've learned, but I'm an eternal optimist, or sucker depending on how you look at it.

When I got home I took the test. I should preface this by saying that my next period is either due tomorrow or on Thursday, depending on whether my cycle will be 25 or 28 days this month. It fluctuates, I think to add an extra element of suspense to the Baby Game. Of course the test was negative, but I have to wonder if it was a true negative or a false negative. I could have taken the test too early. Maybe I don't have enough of the pregnancy hormone flowing through my body yet. Maybe my urine was diluted with water since I didn't use my first urine of the day.

I hate the pregnancy test racket! It's all false hope, with the pregnancy test pimps (you know who you are "First Response"!) promising results 5 days earlier! It's just a way for them to prey on desperate women and make money off of it. I've said this every time I took one of their tests. It's not shocking or new to me. It just makes me so angry. And yes, maybe my anger is misguided, but I'm the one now out ten bucks and still not sure whether or not I'm with child.

Perhaps the bigger issue here is that Bruno and I had a small window to get pregnant within, and this was our last chance for a while. He's starting grad school next September and we had to time the birth so that it occurred before we had to move out of state. If I got pregnant this month, we would have given birth in or around July and then we would move a few weeks later. As it stands, I can't have a delivery date that coincides with a major out of state move. So, if this round doesn't take, we are done for now. We haven't talked about what would happen if I didn't get pregnant before the cut off. We've just been hoping that it would happen. But in a few days, that discussion will become imminent.

So, I'm so frustrated and sick on top of it all. I can't believe that it probably isn't going to happen right now. We are planning on going back to California for the holidays and I'm dreading seeing my nieces and nephews. I thought that I would be pregnant when we went home.

I'm going to take a shower and then climb back in bed. I know that I'm probably putting the cart before the horse by being depressed now, when I don't know anything for sure. But it feels like I'm just being a sucker by maintaining hope that I could still be pregnant.

Side Note: For the two years that I've been writing my column, I have covered "How to Avoid the Flu" each year at this time. Each year, I get the damn flu. I am very against the flu shot because of all the toxic crap that's in it. I also think that the "fear" that each year we will have a flu epidemic that rivals the flu of 1918 is just bogus hype and a conspiracy by the flu shot manufacturers and the CDC to get us to buy their damn shots. I'm not lying, even if I do sound kind of nuts. But regardless, since I formed this opinion, I have avoided getting a flu shot. And I write this with kleenex stuck up my nose and bubbles girgling in my ears. I guess since I'm not in any threat of dying from the mass amounts of mucous in my body, that I should still be happy that I didn't get the flu shot. I guess...

You'll Laugh, You'll Cry

Round 5 of the Baby Game is coming to a close on Monday (or Wednesday depending on my cycle length this month) and I'm filled with so many emotions that I can't even begin to sort them all out. Last night my mom called and we had a nice (and rather strange) conversation about the trials and tribulations of couple trying to conceive. Mom has birthed two babies in her lifetime, me and my younger brother Stumpy. (That's not his real name, but due to a tragic skill saw accident, that's his new name.) Anyhow, I came to be during a playful weekend in the snow during the winter of '74. I wasn't planned and the end result was a shotgun wedding. Two years later, my parents decided that I was such a pleasure that they wanted to add one more bundle of joy to their little family. Imagine moms surprise when, expecting to get knocked up on the first try, she was left holding a negative pregnancy test. Three months of "marital relations" ensued before she finally succeeded.

Last night, during our lovely conversation, mom recounted a heart warming little story with me. I'll spare you the details, but apparently my mother wore out my father in the bedroom trying to bring little Stumpy into this world. He actually yelled at her one night, screaming, "But we did it last night!"

While that story is a frightening bit of insight into my parents now defunct marriage, I did laugh uncontrollably when my mother shared it with me. It helps to know that Bruno and I are not alone in our frustrations, fears and hopes. I've always been close with my mother, but this new twist in life has brought us even closer.

Mom and I haven't had much time to talk lately. It's hard with the 3-hour time difference, but last night we really got to catch up. I poured my heart and soul out to her last night and then we laughed and it felt really good. I shared a fair amount of my gripes with her and, in recounting them, realized the humor in our situation. It's not all funny, but I choose to focus on the funny side because that makes it bearable. So, I will now share with you some of the highlights of the Baby Game. Think of it as a comedy sitcom episode where the network wants one extra show so the producers string together a series of their favorite clips and then market the hell out of it. You know, like a cheap imitation of the real thing...

Pre-Conception Doctor's Visit
While in California this summer I met with my doctor to discuss my soon to be pregnant state. This is what she told me: I am a bit old to be trying for my first kid and it will be much harder for me get pregnant. I'm 30. And apparently old. While I was busy focusing on my career and establishing myself as an adult, my ovaries were shriveling up and dying. My eggs are now few and far between. I squandered my fertile years on responsibility.

I left her office feeling as if I was on the verge of menopause and that osteoporosis should be my major concern now- not starting a family. When I stepped off the elevator into the lobby, I tripped and swore that I heard the brittle bones of my ankle snapping. I caught my reflection in the pharmacy window and wondered if I was starting to shrink. When I couldn't remember where I parked my car, I was sure that it was senility settling in.

Fertility Supplements
Because of my geriatric state, the good doc gave me some fertility supplements to fool my reproductive system into believing it was young again. On the airplane trip back to Michigan, I guarded these precious dolls with my life. They sat nestled in my carry-on bag under the seat in front of me and every few minutes I would glance at them and make sure that they were safe. Bruno caught me looking a couple of times and squeezed my hand to assure me that we were in this together. I was so certain of the magical powers that these pills had, that I believed if I opened up one of the bottles a fertile light would shine out of the top and all who made contact with the light would become pregnant before they got off the plane.

When I got home, I looked at the ingredients listed for each supplement. One word? DISGUSTING! Apparently, in order for me to get pregnant, it's necessary for me to ingest, "Bovine ovary, bovine uterus, bovine pituitary and bovine thyroid." If I do ever give birth to a baby, it better be human! And you better believe that I am going to remind him/her on a daily basis that mommy ate cow organs just so that he/she could come live with us. This is like Survivor: Conception Island.

The Pregnancy Test
When we first started "making baby" as my husband says, I was armed with a survivalist-type stockpile of ovulation predictor kits and pregnancy tests. Every morning I got to pee on a stick. It didn't help me get pregnant, but it did make me feel like I was doing everything possible to get there. The first morning that I took a pregnancy test, I went into the bathroom, unwrapped the foil and got to work. I sat there for a few minutes staring at the test when, low and behold, two lines formed. I almost had a heart attack. My pulse was racing, sweat had broken out on my forehead and I was trying to savor the wonderful moment when I first found out that I was pregnant. To be absolutely certain that I had read the test right, I pulled out the instructions to compare my results with the handy "your pregnant" illustration. That's when all of my excitement came to a crashing halt. I wasn't pregnant. I took the wrong damn test. And for that matter, I wasn't even ovulating either. Not that I was supposed to be, but I had inadvertently taken the ovulation predictor test. That was a dark day.

Positive Affirmations
I called the good doc a few weeks ago to find out if I should try to schedule an appointment with a local doctor to find out why I wasn't getting pregnant. She told me to wait until December, when I will be in California again, to meet with her if I'm still not pregnant. "This is absolutely normal at your age," she says. And then she gives me a word of professional advice: "You need to say positive affirmations every day." She went to 7 years of college for this?

So now every night when I go to bed, I repeat the following affirmations:

Your uterus is fertile. Your eggs are strong. Bruno's sperm is virile.

F-ing lame if you ask me. And it's probably that bad attitude that is resulting in my lack of conception, month after month.

And finally....

You’re Trying Too Hard
This is my personal favorite, as I hear it on a regular basis from my landlord/gal pal. Apparently, if I didn't care so much I would be pregnant by now. I am trying too hard. Should I be trying less hard? Like not have sex? I don't get it, but this is from a woman who got pregnant at 37 on her first try. And she didn't even really want a baby. She's happy that she did it now, but she could have cared less either way. She did it for her husband. So maybe, if I didn't give a sh*t, I would already have 5 kids. If there is any truth in this theory, it explains a lot about the state of the world today.

So there you have it. A nice, packaged-to-fit-in-a-half-hour-time-slot version of The Baby Game. Thank you for playing. Door prizes will be handed out as you leave. For the women, I have a lifetime supply of ovulation predictors. You can use them to determine your most fertile days, or to make Christmas ornaments. Either way, it's hours of endless fun. For the men, I have a lifetime supply of condoms. I have no use for them. Have guilt free sex into the wee hours or make balloon animals for your kid’s birthday party. You'll see that they come in a variety of colors and textures. Go crazy!

House Warming

After great amounts of frustration and perseverance, I have finally found a new home for this blog. Previously, it had been on blogger and then livejournal before eventually ending up here, on typepad. Much like my own life, my blog has moved around a lot, looking for just the perfect fit. My blog has found that while I'm still looking. One out of two aint bad!

So, I expect that the look and feel of this new home might change over time. I get bored easily and like to rearrange the furniture with the changing of the seasons. So if you trip over a chair that wasn't there yesterday, chalk it up to my wacky hijinks but please don't curse me (or at least be creative with your abuse of the english language). Change is a good thing and, once you get over the initial stages of grief (denial, anger, etc.) take comfort in the fact that acceptance will finally settle in. It will be ok. You'll see. Now buck up camper, and help me move this couch!

Change Is Good... Right???

Last week I was complaining about writing my columns and saying that I wasn't sure I wanted to do it anymore. I believe my exact words were, "Something has to change." Well, something changed, but not in a way that I anticipated. I found out that one of my columns is going to be syndicated starting in January. It will be featured in 50 magazines across the US. I didn't exactly see that coming. How do you walk away from that? I guess you don't.

First Day of Preschool

I spent the entire day yesterday sitting on the couch with ibook on my lap. I worked on my website's banner for so long that when I finally got up for dinner, everything that I looked at appeared to take on a transparent quality. It was kind of ironic because I was trying to make the background of my image transparent and failing miserably. I had been working so furiously on my project that my elevated heart rate was kind of freaking me out. I kept thinking, "Xanax, Valium! I need to calm down!" Then I remembered that when I was at Trader Joe's earlier in the week I had picked up a couple bottles of wine and we actually had one left! Yippeee! So Bruno and I ate crappy store bought pizza and drank some fabulous wine and I finally started to relax. After that, we worked together on my banner and I have to say... It kicks ass! I love it so much and I can't believe that I actually did the majority of it myself. Bruno "drew" some stuff for me in Illustrator and I nearly had a coronary, I was so excited. I just kept saying to him, "I knew that I married an artist for a reason!" And then I offered to have "marital relations" with him right then and there, but he's got a sore throat and wasn't really feeling it. He took a rain check, which was fine with me. Frankly, it was a heartfelt but empty gesture on my part. I really just wanted to keep working. Of course, since he's an artist he understood that I didn't want to stop when I was on a roll. Buddha love him!

So, I've mentioned that I haven't really had an opportunity to meet people here in the fabulous state of Michigan since we first arrived, way back in December. Bruno and I had a heart to heart about this on Friday and I finally broke down and confessed that it's been so long since I've "socialized", so to speak, that I'm scared to get out there. I am filled with so much anxiety at the thought of meeting new people that I've actually opted to stay home alone rather than push through it. I've had some issues with anxiety in the past and at times it can become paralyzing. Once I force myself to deal with it, I know that I'll be fine. But that fear is overwhelming! It is so silly because I'm not afraid of public speaking at all- just intimate one on one or small group type gatherings. We've had a few people from his school over for dinner and that seems to go fine, but I always feel like I'm on the outside looking in. Not that his friends aren't nice, just that they all are so entrenched in the art world that they don't tend to veer from the subject to often. I appreciate art, but I certainly am not up to their level of enthusiasm (or knowledge) so I tend to keep quiet most of the time. My world is a different one: I'm not in school, I'm much older than most of Bruno's fellow students, I'm established in my career, and Bruno and I are trying to start our family. I just don't have much in common with most of the people that he knows. (There is one exception: a friend of Bruno's that has a child and just graduated from school last semester. She's great and I have a bit more in common with her. I won't mention her name because I'm a freak about privacy...)

That was a very long winded introduction to explain that, finally, I am going to break the long standing fear and go out tonight. I saw an ad in the local paper for a knitting group that meets once a week at a local coffee shop. I knit, but only know one stitch. These women will blow me away with one hand tied behind their backs (funny- not really possible), but I don't care. I could use it as an excuse to not go, but I'm not going to. Admittedly, I'm scared and have even decided several times today not to go. However, when I reminded Bruno last night that I was going, he was so excited for me that he jumped up and gave me a hug. Then he carried on like a father dropping his toddler off at preschool for the first time. I'm pretty sure that he will sit outside the window of the coffee shop just to make sure that the others are playing nice with me. Just kidding. He's just so happy that I'm doing something for myself. So each time I think of some excuse why I can't go, I envision the proud look on his face from last night and chuck the excuse in the trash. If he wasn't so supportive, I would probably sit at home until the ambulance has to rush me to the old folks home when I'm 90. When we were talking about it last night, he asked me what I was going to wear. A funny question, especially coming from him, but he was probably trying to be supportive. He asked if I was going to dress up and I said yes. "I just feel that I look my very best when I'm wearing my wedding dress, so that's what I'll wear." Although, I'll probably end up opting for a sweater and my green pants- comfort clothes.

It's nearly 3:00 pm. I want to get a few hours of work into my website today and then I'll hop in the shower. I'll report back tomorrow on how the kitting group went. Shit! I'm scared!

Movin' On Up

I am very excited to say that I have begun working on my new website. It will take a while for me to have it up and running but I am exploring the possibility of embedding livejournal into it. I know virtually nothing about programming and web design on a mac, but I am trudging ahead regardless. I went to two bookstores and the library this weekend in search of computer books and ended up with two books on web design (one for Dreamweaver and one for idiots) and two books on Photoshop. Now that I have the Adobe Creative Suite, I want to dive right in. It kills me that I used to be a computer trainer (in a former life) and now I feel like a moron when it comes to anything beyond Microsoft Office. I can program the hell out of spreadsheet and even set up an Access Database, but show me something as complex as an Indesign file and my mind turns to putty. I used to be in charge of my previous employers intranet site and I thought that I was very tech savvy, but that was on a PC with Frontpage and really, I didn't do any of the complex stuff- that was for the programmers to handle. So now that I'm on a mac, it's like a foreign language and I'm starting from square one. I'm pretty confident in my husband's knowledge though, so hopefully this will all pan out.

My mind has been running on overdrive with all of the exciting possibilities for my website. I've been wanting to do something like this for so long and now that I'm teetering on the brink of a web presence, I'm giddy! The past two nights I've been up well past 2am, my mind racing with ideas for names, headers, categories, etc. I've been dreaming in web design formats- I'm not kidding! This happened when I first got CS2 and had to learn Indesign and then create a newsletter for a client in less than 2 weeks. Almost every night I dreamed that I was inside the program and physically moving images and text around. It was like my own version of a Tron nightmare. Thank god that I don't have any impending deadlines for work right now or else I would be up a creek because I'm so tired!

So, now I'm going to spend the rest of the day working on my site. I don't know what it's going to be called yet. I'm toying with a few names, but I don't think that I will be posting them on this site. I'm really worried about my privacy (from clients mainly). So, if anyone is actually reading this site and really wants to know what my new site will be, email me and I will give you the new info when I have it. I don't know if that is very smart either, but I don't want to lose anyone that may be following this. Do I live in a delusional world or what???

Cheers!

Detroit: Fighting Crime One Stripper At A Time...

Don't you just love a good mystery? Since I am now an official Michigander, I spend each and every morning scrolling through the Detroit news websites. Usually the news consists of stabbings, beatings, murders and Amber Alerts, with the occasional house fire thrown in for good measure. When I first moved here I was riveted by the gore, the unbelievable amount of crime that was occurring just outside my very own front door. I would read a story and then pull up the cross streets on yahoo maps to see just how close I was to flying bullets, swooping knives, and swinging bats of menace. It turns out that most of the time I was within walking distance. Well, at least until I moved to the 'burbs.

Living in Detroit was a complete 180 from where I grew up in the serene suburbs of Orange County. Yeah, we had our periodic butcher knife wielding maniac, but only every few years or so. Most crime consisted of embezzled campaign funds or frat boys raping other frat boys. Your basic white collar crime. But here in the city of motown, crime isn't even blue collar. It's no collar, no shirt, no shoes, no belt- just a rope... It's crazy ass crime! And it's not just the "beat down" residents who are committing these crimes! This crime spree travels all the way to the mayor's front door (and I suspect that once it enters his house, it lounges around the pool, drinks a forty in his study and then does a few lines in the middle of his marital bed).

So, yesterday as I was perusing the daily crime log (aka: The Detroit Free Press), I ran across a story that has everything:

(1) illustrious mayor of Detroit
(1) bullet ridden body of a stripper
(1) elicit sex party at the mayor's mansion where said stripper performed her final pole dance
(2) homicide detectives demoted to street patrol after questioning the mayor's involvement
(1) medical examiner testifying in court that the bullets extracted from the dead stripper's corpse came from a police issue weapon

Ahhh... Me thinks a cover up has occurred...

I just love Detroit!

The Michigan Limbo

It appears that I haven't updated my blog in a while, but that isn't exactly true. I've posted and then subsequently deleted two posts in the last week. This week I've posted nothing because the things that are on my mind and that I really want to talk about are not really appropriate for a live forum... sorta. It wouldn't be hard at all for anyone to figure out who I am because of the name of my blog. And if they did, and this somehow got back to my clients, well... all hell would break loose. I just can't risk that. So, after much contemplation of how to resolve this, I've decided that I am going to have to start a different blog with a name that could never, in a million years, be traced back to me. And since I can't seem to figure out how to customize the look of this site (livejournal apparently confuses me), I'm going to just get my own domain and start anew. I recently had to buy the whole Adobe Creative Suite for my job (I also do some *minor* design stuff) and now that I am getting a bit more savvy (ha!) with the programs I'm itching to build my own site. I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned this or not, but my husband is in art school and so he knows graphic stuff inside and out. Yah for me!

Speaking of my husband... He is in his final year of his undergrad so we will only be living in Michigan through next summer. This is his second art degree (we are ever the over achieving duo!) and then he will be off to grad school. Of course, I'll be going with him. So our time here is limited and then we are off for parts unknown. It's weird living in this strange kind of limbo. Since we moved here, I haven't really met too many people and have really only made one friend. Back home (why do I still refer to California as home? I'm not planning on ever moving back there!)... Back home, Bruno and I had a fairly large circle of friends that we saw almost every day. Both of us are past our days (or should I say nights) of tearing up the night clubs/raves/concerts/etc. in LA, but we had managed to settle into a nice comfortable life with our friends. Rather than painting the town red, we were much more happy to just paint a small corner of Orange red, and only between the hours of 7am and 10:30pm. Those were the hours of the coffee shop where our little microcosm existed. No matter what time it was, as long as that coffee shop was open you had a friend around to talk to. I loved it! I miss it terribly. Of course, you get sick of certain people and little dramas are always playing them selves out around you, but if you can manage to stay uninvolved in the bs, life is good. Since we moved to Michigan, Bruno and i have been on a quest to find *that place* that would feel like our coffee shop at home. Nearly 10 months of searching and we are still empty handed. I don't know why, but we just can't seem to find "our people".

How strange is it that I live in a state where I only know a handful of people and really haven't bonded with any of them? That's not exactly true... When we first moved here we lived in downtown Detroit and rented from a really nice guy. When things got too scary down there and we decided to flee to the suburbs, he set us up in his mother's upstairs flat in a nice, quiet, shady (in the tree sense only) neighborhood. His mom lives downstairs and just about everynight, we meet out in the backyard and commiserate. It's very enjoyable. Reminiscent of the coffee shop scene. Our landlord is twice my age, but can drink me under the table on any given night. That's not what I look for in a friend, but it does add to her allure. She has become my friend over the months that we have lived here, but she is more like a substitute mother than a bosom buddy. Not exactly the same. Her son (our previous landlord) visits often and we have since become friends with him- more so than when we lived in the same building downtown. I like him a lot and could see myself becoming better friends with him, but I don't know if that will happen

Why I'm thinking about all of this today, I don't know. I'm not sad at all. I'm almost resigned to the fact that Michigan didn't pan out for me and hopefully I'll have better luck in the next state that we move to. Our time left here is short (10 more months?) and I don't know what could change in that time. If I ever manage to get pregnant, perhaps I will meet people through parenting type classes or something. Or maybe not. Life is weird. At least I love the beauty of Michigan. If it weren't for the trees and the beautiful old homes, I would really hate this place. But I don't. I love it so much that I would stay if that were a possibility. I don't think that it is though, with grad school looming on the horizon, and frankly, I'm hoping that our next destination will be more our "scene".

I'm making no sense and talking in circles. But I am happy. Don't be confused. I am happy!