July 31, 2006

First Comes Love, Then Comes...

My best friend just called to tell me she had a little girl. It's always going to be an odd sensation when I hear that people I know are pregnant or have had a baby. I am very, very happy for my friend, but there's a part of me that feels sad. I'm not sure why. I will have a baby of my own in literally weeks, but I can't help but feel disappointed. I wish I knew where these feelings come from. I guess they're left over from my infertility. My brain has not made the transition yet. I doubt it ever will.

I wasn't nervous about labor until she called me last night to tell me her water broke. She was sitting in the hospital with her husband. She is the first friend ever to call me to let me know she was in labor and I guess it brought a personal experience to light for me. I know it sounds stupid, but I hadn't really pictured myself in labor until last night. My friend's call made the upcoming event come alive. I was suddenly nervous and scared. Maybe I was feeling that way for her, since she told me that she was very nervous.

To hear her calm, excited voice today makes me feel somewhat better. Maybe it's my hormones or maybe it's something else, but I am confused by own emotions. If only my brain could figure things out...

July 20, 2006

End of Infertility

We started our childbirth classes on Tuesday (very, very boring, by the way) and I was surrounded by nine other couples that are expecting babies in the upcoming weeks/months. As I sat there with my husband, I found myself feeling angry, bitter, and even jealous. Why? Because they are having a baby.

Yes, I'm pregnant. I'll be having a baby in a couple monhs, too, but I can't seem to always convince my brain of that. I started to analyze all of them—which ones were wearing wedding rings, how long they probably have been together, how can someone so obese get pregnant—and I had to keep telling myself that I shouldn't think that way. Why do I feel like that? Why does my mind always revert back to those feelings? I began resenting those other couples for getting pregnant. Or maybe I was resenting them because getting pregnant was easy for them and not for me.

I know it's not fair. It's not right. It doesn't even make sense. But it's how I feel without inhibition.

Most people think pregnancy is the end of fertility, but it isn't. I think even when I have my own baby that I will still feel the effects of infertility. At least I know my mind will.

July 11, 2006

Laugh for the Day

“If God dwells inside us like some people say, I sure hope He likes enchiladas, because that's what He's getting”
--Jack Handy

July 10, 2006

What I Had for Lunch

I had an upsetting dream last night and it may be because of a previous post. Perhaps I've stirred up something that I had successfully banished to the inner recesses of my subconscious. That's the place where I send a lot of my troubling thoughts, like a hostage to a dingy basement. I send them there with a humph! and then I don't have to deal with them until they sneak into my conscious when I am sleeping and defenseless.

Perhaps I have unleashed a monster by posting what I thought to be resolved issues. I really thought that my hatred had been somehow dealt with (okay, okay, maybe I just managed to move it to another, less revealing location). But could it be that I still harbor all those feelings? I even mentioned how I don't think about her...which is true...but my anger has managed to slip into my dreams and I simply don't like it. So the thoughts I don't have consciously are just hiding behind the corners of my mind, waiting to spring at me and scare me like a cheap Hollywood horror flick? (Although Moulin Rouge was pretty damn scary. Who wears that much makeup if he isn't going to kill you?)

Of course, as you all know, there's not much we could do about what we dream about. If that were the case, I would be dreaming about Christian Bale and daisies and sex and chocolate cake, although maybe not all at the same time. (But at the same time does sound interesting. Hmmmm...)

I guess I'll have to go back to writing about useless, emotionless topics like what I had for lunch. :)

July 06, 2006

Anonymity

I started a web page back in 1995 when I was in high school. It started as basically an experiment, but I found myself wildly entertained by maintaining it. I enjoyed learning HTML and would post my feelings and thoughts on the page. It was, I guess, a precursor to a blog. It probably didn't get much traffic (like this site?) but I sent the address to my friends and they would occasionally stop by to see my latest updates.

I maintained the same page and things were going well until about 2000 when I started posting angry feelings about someone I didn't like. I felt angry, bitter, and betrayed in many ways. I decided to vent my feelings on my web page. I didn't care if anyone saw what I had to say. I mentioned something about her needing lithium (one of my best lines, if you ask me) and she saw it when she Googled herself and found the link. Oh, yeah, I used her entire name, so it came up as one of the top hits.

So, needless to say, the shit hit the fan. They supposedly didn't know I felt like that and said how my feelings were embarrassing to the family, etc. At first I refused to remove the comments, but eventually I did remove them and deserted the page in the process. I maintained that I had a right to say what I did and that my feelings did not or would not change, but I would remove the content from my page to avoid the hassle.

So here I am now, with a whole new (and as far as I know) undiscovered forum for my thoughts, although I don't feel a need to write about her anymore. I still don't like her, but I just pretend she doesn't exist and have gotten through a lot of feelings by removing myself in so many ways. I want to keep my anonymity so a few people can't find it. Or find it easily.

It's kind of like a web page protection program.

July 05, 2006

A Happy Fourth

Well, I had a nice fourth, although I'm dog-tired and having a hard time getting back into the swing of things. Dan and I went to my grandmother's and saw my whole family. My niece counted up the family and concluded that my kid born in October will be the thirtieth kid born from the union of my grandparents. Talk about procreation.

Some highlights/events:

Fish died. Sure, my Grandmother won't be winning any awards for creative pet naming (she also had a dog named Puppy), but Fish itself probably could have won some awards. It was the oldest fish I've ever heard of. No one is quite exact on his age, although I do have pictures of him from 1988. One of my uncles bought Fish back in the '80s and the estimates are that he was around 23 years old. The funny part is that he is now frozen in my uncle's freezer because he intends to take Fish to an expert who could date him. There was also some mention of Ripley's... Fish lived his grand life in a little fish tank in my grandmother's kitchen. She fed him the same time every day ("he gets mad at me if I don't feed him on time," she would say) and he grew so big he could basically just float up and down because he didn't have room to swim. My grandmother claims he had a stroke a few years back (he was swimming weird, his fin was screwed up, and his eye was droopy), but she dropped an aspirin in the water and then he was good as new. I think she was more torn up over Fish than she would be about one of her grandchildren, but I guess Fish was easier to like anyway.

My uncles/cousins put on one of the best fireworks displays I've ever seen. They are hardcore fireworks fans (yeah, yeah, they're also Italian) spending lots of money on fireworks that I'm not sure are legal. Probably not, but I believe they found some kind of loophole with a permit or something like that. I think what makes their fireworks even better is that you're so dangerously close. There's nothing like the risk of third-degree burns and falling debris to make a fourth come alive.