Halloween Memories

Happy Halloween everyone out there in blogland! I'm happy to say that my psychological evaluation went smoothly and the therapist said she could see no warning signs for my mental preparedness for the donation process. The tongue thing didn't phase her, I guess.

Its crazy, but about 2 minutes after I got off the phone with her, another call came in from Santa Rosa, CA. The fertility clinic that handles all the medical aspects told me to start birth control AS SOON AS I COULD. They faxed the prescription into Walgreen's and I went to pick it up, in less than an hour. Crazy, I didn't even have to pay for it.

So now I'm back on the pill (had to say goodbye to my beloved Nuvaring- boo) for two months, while the intended mama's and my cycle get on the same track. Then I will start with the big guns (injectable hormones). But, WOW I didn't really think it would happen this fast. Hopefully, my retrieval falls near the end of December, so I will get to see New York City at Christmas time. I would really love that. I loved being in Boston during the Holidays, and I can only imagine what the Big Apple is like.

But back to the current Holiday: Halloween.

My most lovable memories of today revolve around Halloween in rural Vermont. You've all heard the stories about New England in the fall: the maple trees in full color, the covered bridges, the apple cider and donuts, the white steepled churches...and its all true. Its so amazing you think its fake, like Disneyland. Living in a Autumn postcard casts a spell on you, and when you are a kid, by the time Halloween rolls around, you can hardly contain your excitement.

New England's historic splendor also contributes to full-On Halloween drama: I mean, witches were burned here, Sleepy Hollow is a REAL town, just around the corner, the graveyards have been around since the revolutionary war, and they are the essence of creepy.

Me, being the somewhat twisted, creative, hippy loner child I was, used to sit in the graveyards and write down all the names and ages of the people who were buried there. Then I would imagine what their lives were like, and how they died. I really used to enjoy being in a graveyard alone. Morbid, huh?

After moving west to Durango, I was appalled by the lack of character in the graveyards, the fact that there WASN'T a local haunted house, that they didn't sell cider by the side of the road. I remember Halloween being the most eventful and exciting night of the year. There were pumpkin patch bonfires, apple bobbing contests at every school and church event, and ONE AMAZING haunted house, which the local college and high school students collaborated on every year.

As far as trick-or-treating went, that its self was a huge deal too. All the 100+ year old Victorian and Colonial houses looked scary enough during the DAYTIME, let alone lit up with jack-o-lanterns and candles. Even at age 11, my friends and I would skip some houses, because everyone in town KNEW there was a witch living there.

We mapped out our plan for getting as MUCH candy as we possibly could, with our parents help. in the East the towns are dense little communities, and dispersed no more than 10 miles away from each other, so we planned to hit at least 3 towns, riding in the back of my parent's hatch back, for quick exiting purposes when the houses became too far apart to walk between. It was kind of a pain if your costume was too elaborate. One year I was Medusa, for which I made paper mache' snakes coming out of a hat. By the end of the night, those snakes were only ratty pieces of green paper on wires. My friend was the "shower" from the Halloween dance in The Karate Kid, and she pretty much ditched her costume after the first couple houses.
We each had a normal trick-o-treat bag, but in the car were garbage bags where we would drop off our booty after each town, and start fresh with an empty bag. Yes, we were GLUTTONS.

Since candy was strictly forbidden during the non-holiday times in our house, we lived it up from October to early January. The Halloween gorgefest was the best, all of us sorting through our pile of goodies, trading each other for the undesirables. After all the good stuff was gone, my sister and I bartered for the nasty candies, and if that negotiation failed, we spent the rest of the year playing poker with snickers as the ante.

Another method of getting the candy we wanted was playing Foosball for it. My dad had found the top of a Foosball table(no legs) at the local landfill, so we put it on the floor, playing on our knees. My sister, being the natural athlete, usually kicked my ass. One time after she won 5 games in a row, and I snatched the Foosball and chucked it right at her face. It hit her in the forehead, making her scream. My mother promptly threw out all the candy after that incident.

But damn, those were some good times.

Bad timing

LB was really clingy last night. She did NOT want to lie down in her bed. I swear when I gave her the over-the-crib hug, she did not let go until I felt her grip release because she was slowly passing out. Awww. Poor bubbo.

I was also awakened by her random high pitched cries throughout the night. Luckily, she's been able to go back to sleep on her own, but it still shakes me to hear her. I think she knows that we're moving again, plus the weekend with daddy totally messed with her daily routine.

So by 5 am, I was completely resistant to getting up. I DID manage to lurch to my feet at about 5:30, and pissily shove the workout dvd in the player. Called JL, check. My workout was pretty half-assed I must say, I was so NOT perky this morning.

To top it off, I bit my tongue last night, which has developed into a huge achy spot. There is definitely some pain when I talk, and to make it worse, I either sound like I have a lisp or I just came back from having my teeth drilled.

The cherry on TOP of this situation is that today I have my "Psychological Evaluation" over the phone with a therapist in California....for my egg donation. So she will either be unable to understand me or I will have to stop talking every two minutes to swallow drool and cringe in pain.

So, I may still be rejected, due to disfunctional tongue syndrome. Wish me luck :)

Graduated

So I've advanced from Pilates for Dummies to Crunch Gym's Burn and Firm Pilates. And DAMN. I started it last Friday and hurt till yesterday. Now I think the vicious cycle has started all over again. But its a good pain, ya know? It makes it worth it to get up before dawn (which really isn't all that hard in the winter, anyway).



I was really sweatin' this morning, panting too. Actually, it was the whole stinky nine yards, now that I've upgraded to putting on shoes (another reason why I like pilates) during the standing workout. This DVD is more of a typical class you would take at the gym, complete with those hot girls who wear matching spandex shorts and sports bras, and the one gay guy in the back. The instructor however was not as annoying as she looks on the cover (which I really can't stand).



Also in workout news, I've ordered 4 NEW DVDs off of Half.com, and I'm psyched about them. Three of them are the Island Girl Series: Hula Workouts. and the other one is the infamous Carmen Electra's Striperobics. The Hula ones look like an absolute blast, and I can't wait to share them with the rest of the tree. I think after a few weeks of psyching myself up, I can pop the Striperobics in the player, and maybe actually follow along it. People have told me that for the untalented, clumsy bunch of us, its a tough workout, and its been a lonnnnngggg time since I was doing high school musicals.



If anyone is looking to buy a workout tape/dvd, believe me, this website really is awesome. You can preview clips of EVERY video on there, which is great because lets be honest, there are some bad ones out there. I even saw "Line Dancing Aerobics" when I was shopping, ye gads.

But I also saw Donna's Old School Dance Party (see right) which looks like a total hoot, especially cause its got live ,music (the Sugarhill Gang) in the background, while people are dancing in the front. I also noticed one very tense looking white girl (think Celine Dion doing aerobics) hiding behind Donna and her Crew, which is a fricken RIOT. I think I might ebay it, hell it looks fun. Check out the clip. WORD.

The unexpected

The insane month of October continues to throw curve balls at us. Here's the latest one.

About 7 months ago, I accompanied my close friend to Miami, FL to be her companion while she went through the final stage of egg donation. She decided to donate her eggs after struggling with fertility for about 3 years. After finally conceiving twins (born only two weeks after LB), she registered with an egg donation consulting firm and received almost immediately.

She asked me go with her, and through this I started to learn more about the donation process: the medication, the injections, the meticulous tracking of the cycles, the ultrasounds, all of it. After we returned from Miami, I started to get curious about my own DNA.

I was torn about donating for a long time. I figured there are so many children out there waiting to be adopted that going out of my way to assist someone in conceiving seemed selfish and unnecessary. The couples who choose egg donation want to experience pregnancy and birth, and I think those are the exact reasons they decide not to adopt. Having gone through pregnancy and birth myself, I can understand where someone might be coming from. That doesn't excuse the fact that there are more and more children born every day that need to be adopted. I think it also takes a very special and incredible person to be an adoptive parent, and not everyone can rise to that occasion.

If someone has the made the decision to have a child through egg donation, then they are prepared to sacrifice a huge amount of time, money, emotional and physical stress. Even after going through all this.....

"The success rate varies depending upon age of eggs, retrieval process, quality
of semen, and the overall health of the women involved. In most cases,
younger eggs are selected to increase the probability of success. As
high as 48% of women using donor eggs will experience pregnancy,
however approximately 15-20% of women will lose the pregnancy through miscarriage." http://www.americanpregnancy.org/infertility/donoreggs.html

So its not at all a guarantee. It's a gamble. If I can provide someone with
an incredibly useful tool, especially when my eggs are just going to waste every
month anyway, I think becoming a donor would make me very proud and satisfied.

Another reason I feel justified in becoming a donor is because of the huge amount of women who have put their careers and marriages before having children. Many of the couples who choose egg donation are in their late 30s and 40s. I completely respect the decision to wait, become financially and emotionally secure and then decide to have children.

The feminist in me also says "Hey, guys donate sperm ALL the time, and nobody gives them any crap about giving up a possible child." Plus, an egg is not a child. The donor is not a mother. The family that carries it, raises and nurtures it, are the real parents. I am simply the biological component. I am the blueprint. The parents are going to build the house and live in it.

This is another reason why I would choose to be a donor, but never be a surrogate. The pregnancy stage of the fertility process is one of the most important stages of becoming a mother. That is why I think it takes someone incredibly special to adopt. Its also another reason why I think so many women who decide to give up their babies for adoption, change their mind during those 9 months. Honestly, after carrying a child for that long, thinking about it, and finally giving birth to it, I don't see how someone could give it away. To me, you go through all those things in order to create that maternal instinct, that bond that makes you NEED that baby. If I were a surrogate, I would not be able to separate myself from the baby I was carrying.

For all you mothers who gave your child up for adoption, I don't think you are disgusting or immoral. This is only my individual experience on the subject, and personally, this is why I could never be a surrogate, or give my child up for adoption. It is also the reason why I would feel no connection to my eggs after I donated them.

So that's my big news for the month: I'm going to New York City to donate.

What is your opinion on Egg Donation? Surrogacy? Adoption? Whew, the stuff you get to think about when you have girl parts.

What's your mother's story?

"You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad"- Aldous Huxley

(My mother in a nutshell) For those of you who read my blog, I challenge you to find a quote that describes your own mother, and then tell the world why.

Here's my mom's story:

She left home at 17, trying to escape a family where her own father called her a "Nig*** Lover." After enrolling the in Redlands Community College, she dropped out after only one semester, hitchhiking north till she got to Seattle. There she lived on a houseboat, working at bakeries and fish markets until she met her first husband (I don't remember his name).

He was a Medic in the Vietnam War, and they got married when my mom was 19. He was older however, and wanted to settle down and have kids. She didn't. They divorced.

My mom moved back to California, where she enrolled at Sonoma State. She majored in Women's Studies and taught Outward Bound classes. Watching people have nervous breakdowns in the middle of the woods inspired her to get into social work. She also met my dad at Sonoma State, where he was creating a student-constructed major: Opera Performance.

He was a musician, she was a feminist. They wrote political songs together, the lived in Communes, they fell in love. They got pregnant. Thus, I came into the world.

My mom did lots of jobs in her struggle to support a family, while my father pursued his music career. She drove both school and public transit buses while we lived in L.A. My dad delivered singing telegrams, and sold suits at South Coast Plaza. But my mom never finished her degree, and my dad was working on getting his teaching licence. When an elementary music teaching position opened up, it didn't matter that it was across the country in rural Vermont.

So we left all of our relatives, and relocated from beaches and sunshine to covered bridges and snow drifts. Moving from Los Angeles, California to Shasftsbury, Vermont was basically like moving to the moon. My mom got a job working with families on Welfare, I went to a school where they made me re-learn my entire alphabet and number writing, and forced me to correct my pronunciation of the word "Apricot" and "Caramel."

My dad's teaching position did not last long. We were the California Hippies in Puritan New England, and the school district though my dad's teaching style was "inappropriate." He was fired only 6 months after we moved. I don't think either my mother or my father recovered from this moment in our lives. I really can't talk about it either. Let's just say when you go the school where your dad is one of the most talked-about and despised teachers, your life isn't very pleasant.

My mom continued to work for Social Services. My dad bounced from one job to the other, working at music stores, trying to fund raise money to make an album, but mostly I remember him being unemployed for long periods of time. My parents fought for almost all of the 7 years we lived in Vermont.

Finally my mother couldn't take it anymore. She was displaced from her friends and family, almost continent away. She lived in bitter cold winters, putridly humid summers, and was working a job that was only making her hate the government even more. She told my Dad that she wanted to move back west, and she wanted to live in Colorado.

So we up and hauled our lives back across the country. I think my mother had such high hopes, like she was leaving all her worries behind us in Cold, Bitter New England. For the next 4 years, we moved from rental to rental, while my mom worked for the Southern Ute Tribe, teaching adult literacy, computer skills, and head start programs. My dad did everything from Factory work, carpet cleaning and lots of temping. He also played gigs whenever he could, recording a few albums, but my mother was still paying most of the bills.

After 20+ years of working for public service, she gave up. She told me one day that it had just drained everything out of her. I think the goodwill she so desperately wanted to share with people back in the 70s had been sucked dry and was replaced by a constant, churning anger.

She was angry at my dad because he had always followed his dream, while she sucked it up and supported her family. She was angry at the government for making her job of helping people almost impossible. She was angry at the families who just didn't seem to care, or make enough effort to satisfy her. She was angry at the economy which forced us to keep moving every year, in order to find affordable housing.

People (including myself) used to be afraid of my mother. She was a fire-breathing, man-hating, liberal feminist who seemed to radiate bitterness. I think some of my friends (and definitely LB's dad) still are.

I love my mother. I respect her more than any other woman out there. What she sacrificed for her family, honestly brings me to tears sometimes. The thought of her amazing idealism shriveling up and dying pains me tremendously. I love her, and am in awe of her. So when she says things like this to me:

"You didn't USED to always have to learn things the hard way"

I can take it with a grain of sand.

I love you mom :)

The Magic of the Pumpkin Hat

Ok, Curmudgfest. You have no idea what an impact your pumpkin hat has had on LB's and my life. Here is a few examples of what happens when I go out in public with Doo Doo Bear sportin' the pumpkin.

• Hey there pumpkin head!
• That is the cutest hat EVER!
• Hey Punkin".
• Watch out! Pumpkin on the loose!
• Aww look at the pumpkin.
• Where did you GET that hat?
• Look at the baby mom, she's wearing a pumpkin hat!
• She is so adorable...etc..etc..you get the point

I get stopped by the usual mamas and grandmamas, but also children of all shapes and sizes, dads, granddads, teenagers, construction workers, bankers, drivers on the road.....It never ends I tell you.

And just so you know, I feel I can take no credit whatsoever. So instead of saying "Thanks", I immediately go directly to "My friend knitted it herself, isn't it awesome?" Because OMG, I have never been stopped by someone oogling my kid as much as this last month.

I even saw your MOTHER yesterday on the street, and let her coo over LB. So Thank you, thank you for your skilled work as a knitter and kind auntie. And also CURSE YOUR magic needles because LB won't part with the hat for more than 2 seconds, and it now takes me over and hour to get my shopping done at Wal-Mart, as well as walk the measly 9 blocks of main street. hehehe. Cheers.

Set Back

As you may have noticed, my Pinon Terrace ticker has changed significantly. That's because I got a call today informing me that the contractors and developers are not going to have the apartments ready for move-in until:

NOVEMBER 30th

Booo HISSS. I hate anticlimax. Build-up and letdown. One more month with my mother :(

Its going to be a long, cold trek with my belongings from Mancos to Durango at the end of November. To my friends who are helping me move....I'm sorry your fingers will be frozen to a point beyond recognition. I'm sorry we will have to brave (most definitely) snow and ice covered roads for 35+ miles.

Believe me, I will make it up to you.

Plus this gives me a whole extra month to plan the housewarming party. Any suggestions for the theme? It will be after Thanksgiving, so I guess no free turkey dinner for all of you. hehe.

I guess I should really just keep my fingers crossed that the date doesn't get pushed back even further into the DEAD of winter.

Please. Please.Please.