baybeasts

I’ve been counting down the days. Including today, there are only 33 days until I don’t have to make the journey into work. (bean has only 6!)

I have mixed feelings. Mostly I can’t wait. I am really looking forward to being able to focus all my energy at home, instead of having it pulled every which way. But I have done a pretty good job of making myself indispensible at work, and yesterday my manager and I looked at each other grey-faced as we realised how much I have to do to make my leaving ok and how little time there is to do it in.

I have such a strange relationship with work. I love my job - it is rewarding and interesting and I have really fantastic colleagues. And I love my home life - my gorgeous girlfriend, our warm house and chaotic garden, and the two tiny people who are about to join us in it. But I hate the pull between the two. I often wish I could just be doing one or the other, because I always feel like I am not doing either of them justice.

So, time off feels like a little oasis. Naive? Of course. I expect I will work harder over the next year than I have ever worked in my life!

context: bean and i have returned to the long-term parking at the airport after a trip to visit relatives to find that our car battery has gone flat. i flag down a middle-aged couple in a mercedes to give us a jump-start.

man (to his wife): when i say, just press the accelerator pedal a little, ok?
woman: um, is it the long thin one, dear?

*****

context: bean has told a paediatrician at her work that we are expecting two babies.

bean: it’ll be great - a bit like twins! they’ll be able to share clothes and toys and stuff.
paediatrician: oh, no, they won’t be able to share toys if you have a boy and girl! a little girl won’t want to play with trucks!

*****

context: sorenson is writing a report for work about the progress the government has made against its vision statement. because it is published in the budget papers, the report has been reviewed by the department that manages the state’s finances.

executive from finance department: now, we understand that the government has said that indigenous disadvantage is an issue that needs attention, but given that the indigenous population is statistically insignificant in terms of the state’s population, why is there so much emphasis on outcomes for indigenous people in the report?

*****

to each of these, bean and i could only say, what the fuck? and laugh hysterically of course.

after a hellish week at work, we’re off to brisbane. hooray! it’s a funny thing - when we first arranged this trip i was reluctant. i knew that this would be a really busy time at work (it’s turned out to be even worse than i feared), and i resented having to take leave. i also resented not being able to stop off in sydney and visit my family.

but over the last week or so i have really started to look forward to this trip. i love bean’s family - it will be amusing and (mostly) relaxing to hang out with them. and i can’t wait to show off bean’s bump to them all. hopefully b1 will behave and kick a few of them! also, brisbane is beginning to feel like a second home, and so i am finding myself looking forward to that sense of place - the smell of the air, the big green leaves on the plants, the wide lazy streets.

i’ve been slack with blogging because, well, there’s not much to say. i’m knitting madly (current projects: a very cute tiny vest and a funky striped jumpsuit); b1 is kicky and gorgeous and every day i smile at hir profile which i have put on my computer desktop as the background; bean is obsessed with nappies (they probably deserve a blog post of their own); the lawn is lovely when it’s mowed; bean has a new haircut and it is really funky and sexy (and is making me think again about cutting mine); i’ve had a small promotion at work but it’s only an acting position which is annoying, and i’m tired of applying for jobs but it’s really time to get paid more; i don’t think that starbuck is dead (it was too sudden and there was too much other mystical stuff around it - shell come back somehow for sure); um, i can’t really think of anything else.

what a boring blog post. but i thought maybe some newsiness would be appreciated by some of our readers. i’ll try to get back to my usual literary standard soon. (and i’m sorry for not talking about the elephant in the room. i just can’t bring myself to.)

oh, and it’s lovely being linked to - hello to those of you who found us via the twinkle, lesbian family.org, and babes in blogland. welcome!

Eggs
As bean mentioned in the last post, pick-up went very well indeed. It was much less stressful for me, as we worded the anaesthetist up before-hand – bean doesn’t want to be awake during the procedure, please, so no wriggling please. The first drug they give her must be something really good – last time she was cracking jokes about how spunky I looked in my scrubs and funny blue showercap; this time she was demanding that somebody in the theatre tell her a dirty joke. The theatre staff are used to it, I guess, and always play along good-humouredly. The recovery nurses were not so lovely – after telling me that I couldn’t stay by bean’s side because they needed more room, they proceeded to use that room to discuss the merits of the new patient trolley she was on, using their feet to shift her sleeping body up and down as they raised and lowered the trolley.

Also unimpressive are the lectures we keep getting from the nurses and scientists when we ask for detailed information about our embryos. It’s like pulling hen’s teeth. They hate to give away anything, usually because ‘you shouldn’t get too invested in the cell numbers/number of embryos/whatever because things might change.’ Well, der! They keep talking to us as if we are completely uninformed about IVF, and the best solution to that is to keep us as uninformed as possible. In fact, we are very well informed, and like to know everything. After all, these are our embryos, this is bean’s body, and the outcome of all of this is the stuff of our life. Not to mention the obscene amount of money we are paying them. So we keep pushing, and luckily for us Dr David understands where we are coming from and supports us by pushing as well, so eventually we found out that we have seven four celled, grade 1 and 2 embryos (one of which is hopefully blissfully cosy inside bean right now), which means that we have six very good frozen embryos plus a couple of not so great ones. This takes a great deal of pressure off us, because if this one doesn’t work, we’ve still got another six good chances.

Daffodils
Last Friday was Daffodil Day. A mate of mine at work was keen to get involved, and so we plotted fundraising activities, primarily selling bunches of daffodils and cupcakes. As the Cancer Council had run out of pre-ordered daffodils, we managed to find a way to get into the wholesale markets (thanks Russell!) to buy them ourselves. It was magic. It was a rainy morning, still pitch dark when we arrived at 4.30am. The flowers were all in a huge shed that smelt of florists. There were masses of all kinds of flowers at ridiculous prices, and people wandering around in fluorescent vests piling huge bunches of them onto big trolleys. We bought 130 bunches of ten daffodils each, and I bought several bunches of poppies and tulips for home. That day, my lounge room was filled with daffodils. I will update this post with a photo soon.

Doctors
I think we mentioned that Dr David is leaving our IVF company to set up his own, smaller, friendlier clinic. We are terribly sad about this. This might sound a bit odd, but I keep having faint echoes of the kind of feeling you get when someone breaks up with you – a sort of sick, betrayed feeling mixed with hopeless affection. We will miss him a lot – the warm smile; the way he worked out really quickly that we were well informed and then adjusted his language accordingly; the way he listened to what we wanted and went along with it if he could; his badgering of the nurses and scientists to give us information; his unfailing politeness; and the way that, when we gave him home grown vegies, he would always manage to remember and report back every single meal that they were used in. We have an appointment with another doctor, should we need her; and if the worst happened and we needed to do another stim cycle we would consider going to his new clinic, but the chances are that we won’t see him again, for the wrong reasons (the right reason would have been because bean was pregnant). And I’m sad.

Nine months ago, when I took this job, I promised myself that in nine months time I would start looking for another job. The problem is that now that I am here, I don’t want to leave, but I still want to make that next step up to better work, better pay and better status. I have had two really great opportunities in the last month, but for different reasons I have missed out on both of them. This is upsetting me much more than it should. After all, I have a great job – it is interesting (mostly), the colleagues are great, there are chances for me to do meaningful work that requires careful thinking and writing, and the pay is pretty good. But still I can’t let go of that idea that by now I should be moving forward faster than I am.

I have two choices – I can stay here and make the best of the work that I have, or I can start applying for jobs elsewhere. It is completely clear to me that I will choose the former. I am just too comfortable here to leave, especially with the added burden of IVF stress. But in order to make this work I need a radical shift in attitude and behaviour. It is time to get really serious about my work – to be self-motivated and productive instead of noodling around waiting to be told what to do. There is only one good reason for doing this. It is not out of any sense of responsibility to my employer – I feel very little, especially in the face of repeated rejection for better jobs. It is because I feel so goddamn miserable when I am so bored.

So this blog entry is a way of publicly stating my intentions to actually put some effort into work. I’ll start by making a list of things that I can do with little boxes next to the items so I can tick them off when they are done - always very satisfying. I’ll report back with my progress in several weeks.

Update

I wrote a list, and so far I’ve managed to tick off two things. It’s a start. Two hours until I can go home…

work is NUTS! i will never skite about being a cruisy public servant again. hence the lack of blogging. but there is hopefully some good worky news to post in the next couple of weeks…

the lawn has ‘taken’ - that is, it is green-ish and getting longer. phew - that’s the scary thing about instant lawn, that it may just turn up its toes and die on you, making a mockery of the expensive convenience of instant lawn.

the winter vegies are finally in - carrots, onions, silverbeet, broccoli, peas and beans, and an experimental crop of potatoes (i think it will be too cold but you never know until you try!). i’ve also planted a mess of flower seeds - pansies, lobelia, columbines, calendula and marigolds, scabiosa, and goodness knows what else. i am hoping for a flowerful spring this year - which reminds me, must get more bulbs (tulips!).

i finished an exquisite baby jumper with a shawl collar in mottled maroons and blacks - it is so beautiful i get all squishy when i look at it. i am now working on very dinky orange and cream stay-on booties for my pregnant boss at work (soooo many pregnant women at work!) because she is very cool and i want to give her something nice.

after looking up the definition in the dictionary i’ve decided we are definitely not bourgeois. well, i hope not anyway. might post more on this later. you know, we make a lot of our own stuff. and stuff. ah shit…

and we are feeling a lot better than we were a week ago. chins up, looking forward! here we go again.

wow. time flies in blog land. i am feeling pressure to write, because i haven’t written anything for about two weeks, but i can’t think of anything interesting to write about. life is just happening around me, without much time for reflection or insight or wittiness.

the last few days have mostly comprised of bean weeing on sticks, and the two of us peering at them in all possible lights, searching for a line to indicate that she is about to ovulate. lines have now appeared and been confirmed, and our first frozen embryo transfer will be this saturday (yay for dr david and his superior knowledge of bean’s retroverted uterus!).

i wish i was more hopeful. or at least a bit superstitious about easter weekend and fertility festivals and rabbits and stuff, but mostly i am just dreading another two week wait.

there also maybe some exciting job-related news, but it is too soon to go public…just keep your fingers crossed for me, because if it works out it could be a Very Good Thing.

i think it’s probably stubbie’s turn to post. i just haven’t been able to think of anything really exciting, funny or interesting to write about. so i’ll do a list (how i love a list!) of the things that have been preoccupying me the last week or so.

i just spent about two hours of taxpayer’s money painstakingly tweaking the xml files for this blog. i don’t know xml. i really ought to learn, because trial and error is really only fun for a little while. and really, the results are patchy at best - i managed to move some stuff around and add in the odd page, but it’s not like i’ve revolutionised the design!

last night bean and i decided that the word to describe the way we are feeling at the moment is ‘malaise’. the biggest surprise for me is how much it is affecting my relationship to my job. i love my job - i get paid a very reasonable amount of money to think about interesting things and talk to interesting people. but the last few weeks i am feeling a distinct lack of, well, i hate to use the word motivation but there it is, i am lacking motivation. it’s not like i have nothing to do - it’s just that i can’t be arsed doing it. i’m not even going to tell you what i do instead - i don’t want to upset the hard-working tax payers among you (including bean). (hint: see previous paragraph.)

i am just waiting for it all to come crashing down. with any luck, there will be other things to distract me if and when it does. more likely, i will accomplish a lot of work in a short time and no one will be any the wiser (except for you, dear reader).