A first in mispellings

My married last name is hard for people to pronounce and spell.  Apparently there are too many consonants clustered together in the middle and it confuses people.  This is similar to, but different from, my maiden name which consisted of too many vowels (or sometimes vowels).  I have spent my entire life using an automatic "first name, spelled, last name, spelled" convention when asked my name for registrations or appointments.  With my married name I have even developed two ways of spelling it - one for civilians and one using the military's phonetic alphabet depending on who my audience is.  Civilians seem to be more comfortable with "T as in Tom" whereas military folks prefer "T as in Tango".  My aim is to get my name spelled right, so I'll accommodate whomever is on the other side of the desk or telephone. Despite my attempts at getting my name spelled correctly, it still sometimes happens that the email or snail mail is addressed with an incorrectly spelled surname.  There are usually three or four different ways people misspell my last name, but yesterday I encountered a first.

I called a dentist's office to make an appointment and as I was a new patient, I needed to give my information to the receptionist.  First name, spelled, last name, spelled.  She read them both back to me and I agreed that she had them spelled correctly.  At the end of the phone call she said I would be receiving a confirmation email shortly.  About 10 minutes later an email from that office appeared in my inbox.  I opened it and began to laugh.

[Since I don't want to use my real last name here, I'm going to use a fake one to ease the telling of the story.]

My last name is Schwartz.  S-C-H-W-A-R-T-Z.

The name on the email was S-C-H-U-U-A-R-T-Z.  

Read the spellings out loud.  How could she have made that mistake?  I was baffled for a second until I realized what had happened. On the second spelling, consider referring to the middle of the word as a "double u".  Of all of the letters in my name that I usually clarify when spelling it out (S, C, T, Z), W isn't one of them.  And, of course, when the receptionist read my last name back to me she used the same language I had, "S as in Sam, C as in Charlie, H, double-u, etc."  I didn't (and couldn't) hear that she had typed out two separate Us instead of one single W.  

 

I laughed for a good five minutes.  Later in the evening I showed Zac the email and asked him if he had ever had his last name misspelled in this way.  He had not.  He laughed as well.  But looking at it now, I can't understand how she would have that I thought I meant two Us in a row.  If someone's last name is Little, I can't imagine they spell it out, L-I-double T-L-E.  That seems clunky and odd.  I'll just chalk this one up as a bizarre misspelling.  But it's a funny one.

Sorry for the silence

I promise I've got some decent blog posts in me that will be popping up in the next few weeks.  I keep meaning to sit down and take some time to catch people up on our goings on, but it seems like blogging keeps getting pushed to the back burner.  You have my word that I'll make it up to you.  Maybe I'll even be able to produce more than two entries per month going forward. [gasp!]  It's sort of my mid-year's resolution.

Questioning my feelings

As I have been going through the last three-plus years, I have stayed away from books about infertility.  I haven't browsed or joined any chat rooms devoted to the subject.  I haven't joined a support group or made any other major attempt at reaching out to anyone else going through this.  I have asked a trio of friends who have gone through infertility a couple of specific questions about their process, but they were usually technical in nature and once the questions were answered they respected my need to discontinue the conversation.  As a result, I have really no frame of reference of what other women have gone through when they have faced infertility and I sometimes wonder if what I'm feeling is normal.  Not enough that I care to ask anyone, but I still wonder.

One of the things that has been eating at me lately is how to determine what emotions are "real" and which emotions are simply highly evolved coping mechanisms, developed over years of unsuccessful treatments.  I was going to say I'm not sure which of my feelings are "genuine" but I believe that all of my emotions are genuine.  I just don't know if I'm protecting myself or if I've really changed how I feel.  Here is a concrete example to illustrate my ramblings . . .

At this point in my life, I am no longer certain whether I want to have to children, or if I simply want to prove to myself (and others) that I'm not broken.  It's like when a child begs and pleads for a toy insistently and when the parent finally relents the child realizes that they really have no interest in the toy.  They thought they wanted it, and having it withheld from them increased it's allure and desirability, but in the end they didn't really want the toy.  In truth, they just didn't like being told no.  In some ways that's how I feel about having a baby now.  I'm not certain that I really want one, or if I simply don't like being told no.

There was a time in my life where I was certain that I wanted children.  I looked forward to the challenges, victories and defeats of child rearing.  But over the last six months or so, maybe even year, I feel like a tide is turning.  I've been reading lots of articles about the challenges of work-life balance for parents, but mothers in particular and I think about how much I'm looking forward to developing my career when Zac retires.  A couple of weeks ago, as I read up on how much it costs to raise a child, I could feel myself dreading cutting back on contributing to my retirement account in order to fund diapers and college funds.  I was getting ready for bed the other night and sadly recognized that if I had a child, my sleep patterns would not be my own, possibly for a long, long time.  I was on a terribly turbulent flight last week and I thought to myself, "This would utterly suck if I had a kid in tow."  (The feeling was reinforced when I was running down an airport hallway trying to make the third leg of a flight, exhausted from hours of traveling and weighted down by a heavy backpack.)

I was surrounded by kids last week at Zac's cousin's wedding.  Almost a dozen kids belonging to Zac's various cousins - infants up to 10 years old.  And while I enjoyed the kids, at no point did I have any sort of yearning to have one.  I felt no sense of loss.  No feeling of missing something.  Instead I was grateful that Zac and I were able to stay later into the evening, free from a responsibility of getting kids back to the hotel to get to bed at a somewhat normal time.

I find myself more and more happy that I don't have a child, and dreading the idea of having one.  However, I can not for the life of me figure out if 1). It's because I really, truly, no longer want to have children, or 2.) I've developed such a strong defense mechanism against the disappointment that I've convinced myself that I feel this way.  Am I continuing with fertility treatments because I am that petulant child that hates to be told no?  Or do I really still want to have kids?  

I don't have the luxury of time to take a break for a couple of years to reexamine what I truly want.  I'll be 36 soon, and perhaps the one and only thing that I am certain of is that I do not want to be 40 and having a child.  If we get pregnant, I am sure I'll come around to the idea of being a mother.  I just hope that's what I want.

Proud that MN is my home

As I have moved around to different parts of the United States, I am frequently reminded of how much I miss Minnesota and how proud I am to have been raised there.  Today was another one of those days where I burst with Minnesota pride.

For those that don't know, Minnesota's Senate passed a bill today that will legalize gay marriage.  Our House passed it last week.  Now it is on to Gov. Dayton's office where he says he will sign it into law, maybe as early as Thursday.  

I have friends who are gay.  Dear, dear friends whom I love with all of my heart.  Some of them have been in committed relationships twice as long as I have been with my husband.  Some of them have children. And now they will have the opportunity to enjoy the legal protections that Zac and I share.  They will be able to celebrate in front of their families and friends and have an officiant say, "By the power invested in me by the State of Minnesota" and know that our state does, indeed, recognize them - their relationship, their family, their commitment, their love.

One of my friends, who has been in a committed relationship with her partner for more than a decade, posted this exchange she had with her eight-year-old son the other day:

Son: "What's the American dream mom?"
Mom: "Well, it means different things to different people but usually to have a home and a good job and be happy."
Son: "Seriously, it should be to have a great family like ours. Not to have money or anything. That way you can be rich with love."

That sums it up pretty well.

Congratulations, Minnesota.  I am so proud of you.  

Location matters

Once upon a time I worked at Barnes & Noble.  I was assigned to Department 3 and Juvie (a.k.a. the kids' section).  Our "departments" were arbitrary divisions of the books and merchandise that roughly matched the layout of the carpet and shelving fixtures in the store.  I became most familiar with the books that were housed in Department 3 and Juvie, as that is where I'd spend most of my hours helping customers, shelving and organizing.  [I loved that job.  *sigh*]

The Juvie area of responsibility didn't only include books for children.  It also included books for adult customers on pregnancy, baby names, parenting and education.  The fertility books, however, were kept in Department 3, about 60 feet away in the middle of the Health section surrounded by books on other afflictions and diseases like asthma, heart disease, AIDS, diabetes, etc.  The miscarriage books were kept there too.  The label on the shelf even read "Infertility/Miscarriage".

On a number of occasions I would find a female customer standing in the pregnancy aisle, with a sad, defeated look on her face.  I would approach her and ask brightly, in my best customer-service voice, "May I help you find something?" even though based on her body language and expression I had a good guess what her answer would be.  Usually there was a pause, they would look at the carpet, they would look up, almost embarrassed and ask quietly, "Where are the books on miscarriage?"  Sometimes the answer was, "I can't find any books here on infertility."  I would give them an empathetic nod (though knowing what I know now, it should have been sympathetic) and lead them back to the Health section.  I can understand why their first inclination was to look in the pregnancy section for books on fertility and miscarriage.  After all, you can't have a pregnancy (or a miscarriage) without being fertile first.  

As I would leave them to browse the titles and continue with my workday I would briefly think about how difficult those few minutes must have been for those customers.  Standing in front of all of those pregnancy and parenting books with happy babies and children and bright colors plastered all over the covers.  Searching for answers to their own struggle while being bombarded by hundreds of books that reminded them of what they were striving for or had lost.  Part of me didn't like the idea of putting the fertility/miscarriage books in with the other disease topics.  I don't think that heart disease and diabetes carry the same complicated mix of grief, shame and anger that infertility and miscarriage do.  To catalog them the same way seems cruel.  But it was still a better choice than to locate those books with pregnancy and parenting.  That would have been cruelest of all.

I thought about those customers, and the location of those books, the other day while I was visiting the fertility clinic.  About four months ago the fertility clinic moved and it is now located in the large Naval hospital here in San Diego.  It is on the same floor and in the same wing as the Fetal Assessment Unit (FAU), the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) and Labor and Delivery (L&D).  More specifically, the infertility clinic now shares the same space as the FAU.  It's an odd choice for cohabitation - pregnant women and others who hope to be.  The waiting room usually contains women who are visibly pregnant, often times with their doting spouse, and a handful of us infertile women, alone.  I don't blame our spouses for not coming with us - after all, there isn't much for them to do or see and our appointments only last 10-15 minutes.  

The cohabitation of infertility and FAU doesn't bother me, though I often wonder if the pregnant patients are as aware of us as we are of them. I don't begrudge or resent the presence of the women who are expecting, but then again I've come to a certain peace with my infertility.  I have to imagine, however, that that isn't the case for all of the infertile women who come through that office.  I know that there are infertility patients that are in the throws of despair and depression, grief and confusion, hurt and bitterness.  To be sitting there, facing all of those happy soon-to-be mommies, must be incredibly hard for them.  

My guess is the hospital didn't think much of the emotional impact of locating the infertility clinic with the FAU.  Instead, I wager the powers-that-be wanted to have all of the sonogram and ultrasound machines in one area in the interest of convenience and efficiency.  It's too bad.  I think the infertility clinic should have been put in Department 3.

Family visitors

The spring of 2012 was chock full of visitors.  Every other week we had family coming to stay with us.  This spring, however, we haven't had any company until last week when Megan, Paul and Lincoln came to visit.

It was their first time visiting us in San Diego, and Lincoln's first time on an airplane.  He had expressed some anxiety about flying, but he seemed to come through the experience just fine.  When they arrived it was 55 and cloudy for a few days, hardly what they were expecting coming to San Diego, but at least it wasn't as cold and yucky as it was back in MN.  We found some activities to keep us busy the first couple of days they were here, but once Monday rolled around we started sight-seeing in earnest.  Monday we spent at the San Diego Zoo.  Tuesday we spent at SeaWorld.  Wednesday was at the Safari Park.  Thursday was a drive up to Long Beach to tour the USS Iowa.  Friday was a boat ride around the harbor and swimming in the ocean at a Coronado beach.  It certainly wasn't the most restful vacation they had ever been on, but they were able to see and do a number of things that were on their wish list.

Lincoln seemed to have a grand time with all of the activities.  He's five and a half and was pretty well behaved considering that 1.) he had no other children to play with, 2.) we did a lot of physical activity and he was often exhausted, 3.) his Central Daylight Time waking schedule conflicted with our Pacific Daylight Time waking schedule for the first few days, and, 4.) he must have been experiencing sensory overload with all of the new things to do and see.  There were a couple of meltdowns, but mostly he was curious, excited, happy and fun to be around.

Since we don't have kids, and Jasper stayed back in MN with the grandparents, Lincoln didn't have any other kids to play with.  This meant that much of the trip was playing with him and keeping him entertained.  I never knew that our Uno deck would come in so handy.  Luckily my parents taught Lincoln how to play Crazy Eights quite a while ago.  This made introducing him to Uno really easy.  He loved the drama of the "Draw 2", "Reverse" and "Skip" cards.  I was pleased to have something in the house that entertained him, seeing as our home is basically devoid of anything fun for kids.

Zac spent most of the visit convincing Lincoln that he, Zac, was a pirate.  Of course Megan, Paul and I played along.  Lincoln kept insisting that Zac wasn't a pirate, but often times he looked like he wasn't entirely convinced.  Zac would talk about his pirate life, he'd speak like a pirate, and he showed Lincoln all of his challenge coins, which we all referred to as his pirate booty.

These are some challenge coins.  They're about the size of a fifty cent piece.  They are given out by commands, or at events or by individuals.  But to a five year old they look like they belong in a pirate's treasure chest. 

When it was time for Lincoln to leave, Zac gave Lincoln his own piece of booty - a challenge coin that Zac had purchased that had a skull and crossbones on it.  Lincoln thought it was awesome but came away even more confused as to whether Zac was really a pirate or not.  Maybe we're bad people for messing with Lincoln, but I think we did it with enough of a wink and a nod that he knew we weren't entirely serious.

Overall, it was a great visit.  I do wish there had been more time to simply hang out and not do anything and just "visit", but we did it to ourselves by over-scheduling the trip.  Maybe next time we'll make sure to keep a couple of days void of plans.  But any time you get to see family is time well spent.

Shiny new toy

Look at what we purchased yesterday!  

(It's a Ford C-Max.  No one paid me to promote the car in my blog.  I just figured people would want to know what it is.)

Yet another white hybrid vehicle for our household. This brings our vehicle ownership up to three. The black pickup truck you see in the photo was purchased by Zac back in 2003.  It has long since been paid for and it's great to have around for those times you need a truck.  However, like all pickups, it gets atrocious gas mileage.  We drive it as little as possible.  (Another reason we hang on to the truck?  That pickup is Zac's true love.  He's loved her longer than he's loved me.  If there ever comes a time that we have to part ways with her, it will be Zac's decision. I dare not get between my husband and his truck.)

Back in 2007, Zac and I purchased our first car together.  I had wanted a hybrid and I was able to convince Zac to agree to an Escape hybrid.  (He wasn't going to support getting a Prius.  He was too macho for a Prius.)  I used the Escape while Zac finished his time in El Salvador.  Then we moved to Hawaii.  Since I began working from home at that time, Zac would commute to work every day with the Escape, leaving me with the truck.  Each evening Zac and I would discuss who had to drive where the next day.  We'd figure out who had to drive more miles the following day and whoever was going to drive more got the Escape.  Usually this meant I had the truck.  In Hawaii it wasn't that big of a deal, because we only lived six miles from base.  Actually, I'd guess that 75% of our driving in Hawaii was within a 10 mile radius of home.  So even if I had to go to a doctor's appointment in Hawaii, driving the truck wasn't that big of a deal because it was so close.

San Diego is a whole different story.  It's a huge metropolitan area and things are really spread out.  (It's a lot easier to spread out when you have a whole continent to work with, as opposed to a small island.)  We live about 20 miles from Zac's job and from where I volunteer.  There are days in San Diego that we put 40-50 miles on both vehicles.  It's not that big of a deal for the Escape, but it is a really big deal for the pickup.  Guzzle, guzzle, guzzle.  $$$$.  This month has really driven the point home that while I work from home, I spend a lot of time (usually at least two days a week) volunteering in one way or another outside the house.  Plus there are errands to run, doctor's appointments to go to, etc.  Those miles were adding up when I had to drive the truck.  

The insanity of March really highlighted the fact that we needed a second fuel-efficient car.  I've had a ton of meetings, trainings, volunteer sessions, etc. this month.  (Happily April is pretty vacant of responsibilities besides working.)  Zac and I had been researching cars online for a couple of months and we finally decided to make the purchase this weekend.  I'm not a fan of having a car payment again, but I am happy that we won't have to continue to pay out the nose to fuel up a truck that gets 14 miles to the gallon.  And, frankly, I was growing tired of feeling guilty when I did drive the truck.  Even though Zac and I both knew that I had things to do and places to be, I didn't like constantly obsessing about how far I had driven on any given day.  Now that we have this new hybrid, Zac will use it to commute to work, leaving me with the Escape.  Now when I run errands or have to go volunteer I won't have to stress out as much about leaving the house.  I'm glad that Zac and I are conscious of our gas consumption, both for the planet and for our pocketbooks.  Now we just need to get rid of that toxic new car smell.  Ick.