Gone, Baby, Gone

So for 10 years, exactly one third of my life, I have lived with James. And now he’s gone to Canada for two weeks.

My Jimbob in Canadia Land without me. And me at home by myself.

It’s time to get my brave on.

Sure I haven’t been on my own for ten years… but how hard can it be? Okay, a lot has changed. Ten years ago Sex and the City was still really really cool.

Now all I have to do is harness my 2002-Sex-and-the-City-chi. You know, back when Carrie was still just dating Big and being a Miss independent writer and doing pretty much whatever she wanted.

That gives me something to do over the next two weeks. Find re-runs on Foxtel. And Charlie’s Angels, too. They get their brave on all the time.

I might even enjoy it. Instead of just trying to pass each day, waiting until 12 November. I am used to that. it’s a habit. Looking ahead to the next pregnancy test date and just trying to get through the days in between. Just. Getting. Through.

Surely I can Carrie it up for two weeks?

Game face, Taylor. Game face.

Back to worrying about James. Three flights to Toronto. That triples the chance of the plane crashing. I need to google stats on plane crashes.

*googling*

Ho-ly shit. Those stats are fine.

But…

Apparently you are statistically more likely to die on your way to the airport than in a plane crash.

Great. He’s going to die in a car crash. Now I have to go turn the radio on for the traffic report to see if there have been any crashes on the Calder.

Fuck you, google. Just. Fuck you.

Now find me a good Cosmopolitan recipe.

James Isn’t A Cross-Dresser. I’m Just Milking Stuff For All It’s Worth.

James is off to Canada tomorrow. This conversation happened last night:

Me: Are there any clothes you need washed to take to Canada?

James: if there are I’ll get them organised in the morning.

Me: Well no, they need overnight to dry.

James: they’ll be fine.

Me: do you have that corporate thing where they pay your laundry expenses?

James: yep.

Me: So could you just take your dirty clothes over there and they’ll wash them on the company tab for you?

James: Prefer not to.

  Me: Also, could you take some of mine? It’s just I have a lambswool knit jumper that’s really hard to hand-wash. And the dress I wore to the races.

James: No.

Me: Okay they would think you’re a cross-dresser, but for all the effort it would save me, it’s a small price to pay.

James: I can’t hear you.

Me: yes you can. You’re sitting right there.

*silence*

Me: I’m going to go and pack your suitcase for you now.

It Wasn’t Me That Farted.

I had to go and pick up some more hormones. As you do.

And it’s not been a good day. Too. Many. Hormones.

So I’m riding along in the taxi. And we go past a certain factory that makes frozen chips and meals. Let’s call it SchmaCain.

And it stinks.

I mean *really* stinks. Like they have a thousand cows out the back and they’re busy squeezing all of the methane out of them.

And the taxi driver looks sideways at me.

I can tell.

He doesn’t come past here often.

And he thinks the smell was me.

Me: *in a loud sing-song voice* hey, that SchmaCain factory sure smells bad, doesn’t it?

Taxi driver: Sure it does.

*awkward silence*

Me: I mean, the poor residents. It must be like living in fart country out here.

Taxi driver: Mmmm.

Me: hey, I bet lots of people fart in taxis and pretend it wasn’t them.

Taxi driver: um, actually… that’s never happened to me.

Me: Oh. How long have you been driving taxis?

Taxi driver: 25 years.

Me: Oh.

*awkward silence*

Me: I think it’s from all the potatoes.

Taxi driver: maybe.

Me: They must go through a lot of potatoes.

Taxi driver: Betcha.

Me: It really smells like someone farted.

Taxi driver: Sure does.

Me: But it’s the factory.

Taxi driver: yeah. The factory. Smells bad.

Me: *sigh*

And so the moral of the story is to not be so OCD about convincing taxi drivers that you didn’t fart.

Maybe instead I could have explained to him all about the hormones and fertility treatment. Maybe *that* would have gone better. Okay. Done. The next taxi driver that thinks I farted is going to sit there and listen to a long story all about my ovaries and follicles and internal scans.

I hope that doesn’t give me bad fertility karma.

The Scan. It Was A Gold Star Effort.

So I had my 12 day scan today.

My mother-in-law is visiting, so she came with me and wrote down all the numbers of the follicle sizes as the radiographer read them out.

The numbers started out bad…

And then got hilarious.

Radiographer: Left ovary, 11 by 4, 7 by 7.

Mardi: Got it.

Me: Oh.

Radiographer: Right ovary, 14 by 9.

Me: that’s more like it.

Radiographer: Wait on, there’s an even bigger one here…

*silent counting by radiographer*  

Radiographer: 27 by 23.

Mardi: you go girl!

Me: *blush* awww, shucks.

Mardi: I’m proud of you.

Me: *scuffing my toes on the end of the table* Thanks. I do what I can.

Sometimes, it’s the little things that count. Like growing a fuck-off gigantor follicle. In your face, infertility. In your face.

James. Asking The Hard Hitting Questions.

I had a little bit of a sad face teary session.

But I am refusing to use that sad face little emoticon.

Because James cheered me up.

Or just confused me.

*brief cuddle*

*silence*

*break apart*

James: Someone should get a sex addict and someone doing IVF in a UFC style cage. And see what happens.

Me: I totally don’t know what to say to that.

See? It makes you wonder.

As you were.

Even The F^%$ing Dog Is Depressed.

We just took Bobcat Goldthwait to the vet. Turns out he has a little kitty cold. There’s $95 I’ll never see again.

Frankie is recovering though. He dropped a lot of condition over the past few weeks. Turned out he had a bout of depression from not being allowed inside while Bobcat got used to his new home.

Yep. Even the fucking dog is depressed.

Meanwhile I’m getting more and more angry/happy/sad/happy/back to angry again thanks to taking hormones in the lead-up to my scan.

So the cat has a cold, the dog is recovering from depression and I’m hormonal.

And James?

James is going to Canada.

Can’t blame him.

But he flies out in ten days.

We will bring him down by then. Mark my words. It could be a tumour. It could be a stroke. Hell it could be syphilis. But probably a stroke. Bobcat, Frankie and I will bring him down to our level.

Yes, I’m Flipping You The Bird. It’s A Long Story.

I decided to make honeycomb. And fucked it all up. Which isn’t like me, normally I’m pretty good at cooking stuff. Not meth. I mean cooking stuff like apple pie and cheesecake.

But not honeycomb. No, not honeycomb.

I measured 1 cup of castor sugar and dropped the cupful into the saucepan to put the castor sugar away, come back and take the cup out and use it to measure the golden syrup.

Instead I had the biggest of all brain farts, and used a spoon to measure the golden syrup.

Leaving the cup in there.

To melt and burn and stink my kitchen out.

This is what your plastic measuring cup looks like if you’re a blind person trying to make honeycomb instead of just forking out $4.95 at the shop:

Honeycomb is easy to make, they say. Well *they* can fuck off.

So now I’m operating without a cup measure. I can use 2 ½ cups instead. Or 3 1/3 cups. Or 4 ¼ cups. Okay now I’m just showing off my maths skills.

I added in the bi-carb soda to make it froth and bubble, and froth and bubble it did.

Right up to the fingers on my right hand. Luckily only the middle one touched the mixture. Which attached itself to my fingertip and burned and melted it like the bad witch in the Wizard of Oz. After I finished cursing, I took some time out to run about yelling ‘I’m melting…’

This is the result and it looks like I’m flipping the bird but I did that to get a good angle:

And that picture doesn’t even do it justice. It was redder and sorer and more blistered than that. Promise.

On the bright side, I feel a bit like Dumbledore, with his burned hand. Alright his was cursed, not burned, but it’s very similar I tell you. And I didn’t even get to destroy a part of you-know-who’s soul, either. I just made honeycomb. Which burned again. And stank the whole house out this time.

So I’m giving you the one-fingered-salute, honeycomb.

And heading to the shop. To just buy the f^%$ing stuff like a normal person.

Normal Programming Will Resume Tomorrow. Same Bat Time. Same Bat Channel.

*Sorry. Busy turning 30. Back tomorrow. Promise.*

Channel Max. You Are My Sunshine, My Only sunshine…

Getting ready to go out to dinner, and pay TV’s Max music channel is playing… well, because I can’t read the theme on the screen, it’s a guessing game as to what ties the songs together.

We have INXS Never Tear Us Apart.

Then an awesome 80s song that is definitely Whitney Houston.

Then a Jon Lennon song… Starting Over.

Not The Beatles. Just Lennon.

Aahhhh. I get it. It’s all songs by people who are dead.

Creepy.

Then, halfway through Michael Jackson’s Thriller, James says it’s time to go.

Disappointing, but I figure that was the end of it as no-one can be higher than either Lennon or Jackson. But James disagrees.

Really? Who? That Beastie Boy  that just died? Bob Dylan? Tom Jones? George Harrison? He was just as good as Lennon anyway. Just as good, dammit.

No. Elvis, apparently. Yup. Pretty much the most famous singer ever to die. One to you, James. One to you.

P.S – Apparently, Bob Dylan isn’t even dead. I checked on Wikipedia, too. He’s still alive. He is pretty damn old though.

P.P.S – Ho-ly shite, guys. Tom Jones is still alive too. He’s gotta be, like, at least 125. And if he or Dylan die soon then I’ll feel like I’ve jinxed them. Sorry Tom. Sorry Bob. Fingers crossed for you, guys.

The Day The Rowing Machine Turned On Me. Along With Everything Else.

Another bad day.

I think its come about because I read a heap of blogs on fertility which are normally awesome but which overwhelmed me and make me wonder why I bother trying at all. Best to give it all up, really.

My head is a pretty dark place, sometimes.

So I went to the rowing machine, strapped my feet in tight as they would go, and did a solid hour to work out all the badness.

And it totally worked.   

Until I finished and found that both my feet were stuck in the footholds.

And not. Coming. Out.

The Velcro straps would not tear apart. That shit is strong when you try to make it do something it doesn’t want to. My fingers scrabbled at the straps with increasing panic. I could be stuck in the garage listening to talk back until James got home at 5.10.

So I gave up.

And I sat there and cried.

Because I’m not pregnant. And because I want to be. And because all the hormones are vicious little bitches.

Then the radio turned to a screeching beeping alarm.

What, I’ve set fire to the garage?

Thanks, anxiety. I’d wondered where you’d got to.

But no. The magic of daylight savings had somehow made my ipod dock turn its alarm on full volume and this was that opportune moment for it to go off.

It sounded a lot like a fire alarm, and I was a bit desperate to not have the neighbours come over to check if everything’s alright and find me sitting in my garage, stuck in my rowing machine, puffy eyed and runny nosed and panicked.

No amount of wriggling would work. No matter how much my little fingers worked at the Velcro, no joy. I even considered flipping over onto my stomach with the machine on my back and dragging myself by my arms over to the alarm to turn it off, in some kind of parody of Misery.  

Then I had the bright idea to undo my shoelaces and pull my feet out, leaving the shoes stuck.

Bingo.

And then for some unknown reason, that awesome 90s song by Mr Big about ‘I’m the one who wants to be with you’ came into my head.

And I started crying again.

Because I have my very own Mr big. My Jimbob.

Who is not crazy and irrational and psychotic with hormones.

And who, every time this happens (the crying, not getting stuck in the rowing machine) says pretty much the same thing as Mr Big.

‘Come on baby, come on over, let me be the one to hold you. I’m the one who wants to be with you.’

Because sometimes, and not just when I manage to MacGyver my way out of a rowing machine… I just kind of need that a bit.