burnt toast life

gettin’ weird

Ever have one of those weeks where you think to yourself, “Where am I and what happened to my life?” That’s how I’m feeling right about now.

First – the new job. Without giving away too many specifics, I will tell you that I’m working for a pretty big cigar retailer as their first official full time copywriter. Me, a girl who has had approximately two puffs of a cigar in her entire life is now tasked with speaking eloquently about a topic that has a shocking number of insanely knowledgeable devotees. Intimidating? Yeah, a little. And lest you think I’m sitting there filling out new hire paperwork and smiling sweetly, the answer is no, I was thrown right into the mix with a gigantic amount of copy to write on my very first day. My motto of the week? Fake it ’til you make it, baby, and hope like hell that these cigar dudes don’t see right through me. I can’t help but compare it to a fertile Myrtle introduced to an infertility blog with no compass, attempting to decipher “ZOMG the bitch got a BFP after my BFN on an HPT on 9dp5dFET after an IUI, good CM, primo SA and so now I hope AF doesn’t come before the beta!” That’s me, at work, except it’s all like puro and figurado and ligero and I just look at them like, “Whaaaaa?”

Granted, my employer knew my level of interest/exposure to cigars (um, NONE) prior to hiring me, so they must have just liked something about my writing. Or, they made a terrible mistake. Hopefully not the latter. So far it’s been fun, and everyone clearly loves working there, and I feel important and respected with less than a week under my belt. So it’s not bad, it’s just… different. Just wait, in 6 months I’ll be this kickass cigar smoker with a terribly refined palate. And if you’re a true friend, then right now you’re saying, “No, Amanda, in 6 months you’ll be pregnant and not smoking cigars at all.” Right?!!

Next – I got my period today! And a week early by my count. Which is good, because I was about to bust out the zipper on my fat jeans (you may recall that I’ve done this once before) and have been crying at Zillow commercials for the past few days. Good to know it’s for a reason and not because I’m going cuckoo for cocoa puffs. Aaaanyway, the first thing I wanted to do when AF showed up was call the doctor, because seriously, doesn’t everyone call the doctor when they get their period? I texted Eric and said, “We need to talk about my period,” to which he was understandably confused, but yeah I just felt like more action was necessary. I have spent the entirety of 2013 calling people to announce the advent of my period. Literally, since January. I’ve either been pregnant or getting ready to get implanted. This is my first break all year… it was weird to accept. But I did sit down with me and ask, very gently, if I even wanted to call New Hope. And the answer was no, I’m not ready. I know we had already decided to wait, but I was secretly worried that when the time came, I wouldn’t want to wait. The truth is that I do need to wait, and I want to wait. So it’s alllll good.

And of course a tiny annoying voice kept saying, “Maybe you’ll conceive on your own this month,” and of course I was like, “Shut up, stupid tiny voice, what makes this month different from the freaking two and a half years preceding our IVF cycle?” It’s not. I mean, the difference is that I’ve been pregnant. So now I think my subconscious got cocky, and she’s like, “Girl, we got this.” But we don’t. I got pregnant from pre-fertilized embryos, not from a glass of wine and an OPK. It’s just insane to think it could happen. But damn, that would make things so much easier.

Which brings me to my next weird moment. Today I was perusing my new benefits package when I came across a line that made my little heart stop with hope. Under Infertility Services it said “covered in full after deductible.” Which is totally too good to be true, and which isn’t true at all, it turns out. I went running in to Eric squealing like we hit the Powerball until I saw the next line, which said Assisted Fertilization: not covered. Why are those two things separated out? Could it be any more unclear? I’m assuming it just means they cover the testing and not the treatment, because they are total and complete assholes, but did they really have to get my hopes up like that? I guess I will have to ask to confirm (hello, awkward conversation with HR department at a new company).

One thing that is surprisingly covered, however, is infertility drugs. They give you up to $2,500 for your lifetime. Of course we’ve already spent more than that, but there’s more to come, and that’s pretty good. Better than what I had before ($0), so no complaints here. Why are they covering drugs and not treatment? Because they suck. Insurance companies: blah.

That’s all for now, dear friends. I no longer have time (or, ahem, permission) to sit there catching up on blogs and Facebooking all day, so I’m frantically trying to catch up on all my feeds at night while still doing the cooking, general household maintenance, and oh yeah, working later in the evening. Phew. Is it Friday yet?

Twenty-nine

I’m 29 today (shout out to all my Taurus peeps!) Strangely enough, 29 is a lucky number for me. I’ve been keeping track of all the 29 occurrences in my life, and I figured today was as good a day as any to post them.

  • May 29th, 2010 was my wedding day. It was an awesome day. Everything went perfectly, we got just the right amount of drunk (fun, dancing drunk but not fall over and throw up drunk) and best of all, I finally got to marry to the love of my live. Now he’s stuck with me…forever.
just the right amount of wine

just the right amount of wine

  •  May 29th, 2010 was also, coincidentally, the day Hollywood Video officially went out of business. Who cares? Well, without Hollywood Video, Eric and I may never have met. He was my manager (but don’t judge – we didn’t start dating until long after I’d left the company).
  • Eric was 29 when we got married.
  • Warren G. Harding was the 29th president of the United States. (Oh, and my last name is Harding).
  • My grandmother was 29 when she had her first child, which, as you can imagine, was lot less common back in that time. She was told she’d never be able to have children. She had six. (Interestingly, I also have six. Frozen… in a freezer).

Of course, each birthday is bittersweet as I creep closer to the end of my fertile days. Does that sound depressing? Yes, I’m still young. But still, I want to have more than one child. I want to have more than two. How many, I’m not really sure, but I come from a big family and I’ve always wanted a big family. Each year that I don’t get started makes me so anxious.

But enough about that because it’s my birthday, y’all. I had a fun day of shopping with my mom and I came home to flowers and a cupcake (red velvet with ivory frosting to mimic our wedding cake) from my hubs, so you know, I took a leeeetle tiny break from the diet today. And my tummy was so mad. But it was worth it.

So 29 is here, and I’m ready, because 29 will be full of luck and love. And hopefully, you know, a baby.

ten years ago today

hopeTen years ago today I was 18. I had just ended a three year relationship with the boy I was convinced I would marry. We had broken up many months before, but were still “hanging out,” and my heart gave him a March 1st deadline that I surprisingly managed to stick with. It’s like there was a before and after, and once the calendar struck March I shut off my feelings like a faucet. I wish I still had that kind of power over my emotions.

Ten years ago today I had a horrific fight with my parents. I can’t remember exactly what I had to do – I think I was supposed to drive my sister somewhere and didn’t want to. I remember my mom screaming at me on the phone. I remember throwing the phone at my sister’s head (probably aiming for it) and slamming her bedroom door open so hard that it left a door handle-shaped impression in the drywall. My mom had taken away my car until further notice and I. was. PISSED.

So you see, Eric and I are a product of circumstance. He really was at the right place at the right time. I had met him about a year earlier when he started working at the (now out-of-business) Hollywood Video where I worked. That was my very first job. We only worked together for a few months before I left to become a barista at Wegmans, but I still stopped by to rent movies and hang out with my former coworkers. It just so happens that not long before this colossal fight, I had stopped in to find him red-eyed and delirious, working 14 hour shifts because someone had quit. Sympathetic, I brought him a double mocha from work and he gave me his number in case I “wanted to watch a movie or something sometime.”

I had his number handy on that night of rebellion. I was feeling young, I was feeling reckless. Screw my ex-boyfriend who stopped loving me! Screw my parents for taking away my car! Screw the whole messed up world for messing up my life! I dialed the number and asked if he would come pick me up and rescue me from my parents. It was so out of character for me; I knew him, but barely. I remember standing at the end of the driveway when he pulled up in his beat-up red pickup truck and took me back to his house. I remember feeling vindicated.

We watched a movie. We got drunk on rum and coke that we drank out of mason jars. I remember it was one of those nights that I never wanted to end. I remember when his hand kept creeping closer and closer to mine. I saw it coming, but I pretended to ignore it. I distinctly remember when he finally kissed me. I didn’t go home that night.

The next three months we were inseparable. I forgot what it felt like to not have him around. We hung out every day for every hour that we possibly could. I was smitten. I was falling hard.

But then there was drama… always drama! He stopped taking my calls. He started getting distant. We went back and forth for a while. I didn’t let him go without a fight.

It’s been ten years… I could write for days about all the things we went through. We were always extreme – so happy, so sad, so angry, so euphoric. We had no even keel, no happy medium. We were passionate in every moment.

The highlights: We got engaged in 2004, set a wedding date in 2005. Called it off. Got back together. We got engaged again in 2006, set a wedding date in 2007. Called it off. Got back together. We got engaged in 2009 with a triumphant rally of “third time’s the charm!” We wanted to be married, but the timing was never right. Too much crap kept getting in the way.

We actually, really, finally got married in 2010. Our relationship has changed so much since it’s rocky start. I trust him completely. I love him. It sounds so simple, but to me, it’s profound. Over the course of our break-ups I kept trying to love other people because it would be “easier.” I kept trying to take the easy road, but my heart kept sending me back to him. He’s the only person I could never get over.

My friends – and even me at my most self-righteous – would love to tell you it was all his fault. A lot of it was. He had the tendency to be immature, stand-offish, distant, mean and childish. But remember, he was a man in his early 20s. It would be stranger if he wasn’t acting that way. And for all my indignation, I was no angel either. He brought out my most needy, clingy, annoying, controlling, nagging and even obsessive tendencies. We were mutually flawed. What we really needed was time to grow up. Both of us.

It may sound alarming, all those break-ups. All that heartache. I wish I could explain how I “just know” that he’s the one for me. Let’s put it this way – I could have chosen someone more compatible. I could have chosen someone more stable, less dramatic and more even-tempered. I could have. But every single time I did choose that kind of person, Eric stayed in my heart and my heart never felt peaceful. If I let my mind wander, it landed on him.

He’s the one that got away… except I never let him get away.

my favorite picture of us

my favorite picture of us

spoiler alert: we’re not pregnant

I’ve debated a lot over this post. Probably more time than one should devote to thinking about something as inconsequential as a blog post. Here’s why I ultimately decided to do it:

1) It’s what’s going on. The most successful blogs are real, gritty, everyday life, right? So why wouldn’t I put this out there? This is what’s happening in my life.

2) It got harder and harder to post about other stuff. It felt like ignoring the biggest thing – the most important thing – the elephant in the living room.

3) This is like my worst kept secret anyway. I’m mostly open about it with people who I know and even sometimes with people who I don’t know. So organizing my thoughts and putting them all down isn’t going to be some big revelation.

Longwinded preamble aside… Eric and I are have been trying to have a baby for two and a half years but we don’t have one yet. There, I said it. My master plan was to wait until I was pregnant and post a whole long thing about the process leading up to it, but this “side blog” was getting long and frankly unreadable. I wanted to wait until I actually achieved the goal to post anything. Why? Because I don’t want anyone to know if I fail, that’s why.

Confession time: I used to blog about this under a super secret name and not tell anyone about it. This BBT blog is more lifestyle, less specifically allocated, so I’m going to keep things light (not that the situation is light, not in the least). Basically, I want to give an overall view of what’s going on without being too graphic. However, if you do want or need specifics, I have a gold medal in over sharing. If you ask nicely, I’ll quote you medical history and test results all day long. I just don’t think most people reading this particular blog care to know.

In the fall of 2010 we went for fertility testing and figured out the problem. Knowing the problem does not mean that you can afford to treat it, however. Most insurances cover the testing portion, but when it comes to treatment there is little to no coverage. Currently 15 states require providers to cover at least some of the treatment costs, but Pennsylvania isn’t one of them. And so we bid adieu to a potential $15,000 medical bill and decided to keep on tryin’ the old fashioned way (giggity).

So far, clearly, it hasn’t worked. Again, I could write pages and pages on the subject, but I’m just going to gloss over a lot of fine details and say this much: the past 2.5 years have featured plenty of tears, venting sessions, joys, ups, downs, hopes, despair, prayers, selfish tantrums, weird dreams, one ill-advised visit to a psychic, fights, make-ups, fights again, and pretty much every other emotion on the spectrum. We’ve learned an awful lot about each other but we still don’t have a baby.

Fast-forward to a couple of weeks ago. A friend suggested that I research clinical trials as an alternative way to pay for the IVF that we need according to the specialist. Lo and behold, the first result that Google returned sounded promising. New Hope Fertility Clinic in Manhattan is currently running a study comparing 2 different types of IVF (though saying the words “clinical trial” to one particular friend got the immediate response, “But does that mean you’ll grow a mustache?!”) The whole thing sounds legit.  And best of all, minus the cost of testing and some meds, it’s totally and completely free. Free! For those of you who don’t have conception challenges – this is comparable to winning the lottery. At least it feels that way to me.

We aren’t in yet. Our consult is coming up soon and we could still be rejected from the study for any number of reasons. Despite the cliché and despite how much I DETEST this phrase – everything does happen for a reason. So if we don’t make it in, something else will come along. A month ago I wouldn’t have even believed this opportunity existed, so it proves that anything can happen. That’s why when that Ellie Goulding song comes on in the car I totally bust out some crazy vocals. Anyway, I will keep y’all posted on what transpires (nice details only). But I really, really REALLY hope we get in. I really do.