California Dreaming

Last night I had a dream that I was holding a fat baby girl with black hair and dark eyes.  I knew it was my job to watch her but I kept setting her down and then wandering away from her.  I was in a big building with lots of stairs and winding hallways and every time I would set the baby down I would find myself lost and I would have to run all over trying to get back to her.  At one point in my dream I fell asleep holding the baby only to wake up and find her across the room in her mother's arms.  In my dream I cried with happiness and relief.

***

Last week I was on a plane to California and I met a man and woman who were fascinated with my experience as a surrogate mother.  We talked for nearly two hours and as the plane was about to land they gave me their business cards.  It turns out that the man is involved with producing reality shows and documentaries for channels like A&E and Discovery.  The woman is the vice president of programming for a major network.  They talked to me about getting more of my story and asked if I would be interested in getting some of it, as they put it, "on the record".  The second I got off the plane I googled them and they really were who they claimed to be.  We've been emailing a few times since then.

***

In California I met my new intended parents face to face for the first time.  My intended mother brought me a pair of earrings that were in the shape of a Chinese symbol for good luck in pregnancy.  They took me out for sushi and I tried almost everything they put in front of me.  I tried octopus and it was good but the more I chewed it the tougher it got.  I ended up sort of swallowing it whole.  It will probably be in my stomach for the next seven years.  I also had barracuda which I didn't even know you could eat.  A barracuda can kill a person right?  And I ate one so I think that makes me like, a beast slayer or something.  The only thing I couldn't bring myself to try was the sea urchin because it looked like a piece of tongue.  I'm adventurous but not that adventurous.

***

On Thursday I went to my embryo transfer.  There was good news regarding the number and stage of the embryos we were able to transfer.  The doctor seemed hopeful about our chances.  When you have an embryo transfer you have to do it with a full bladder.  Afterwards you have to lay on the table with your head down low and your feet up in the air for half an hour.  A nurse offered to bring me a bedpan but I pictured myself trying to pee in it and having the pee run up (down?) my back.  I chose to hold it.  After my half hour was up and ran (gently) to the bathroom and peed like crazy (but gently).

***

After my transfer I was stuck in my hotel room for a few days on bedrest.  The hotel was nice but it was in a sketchy neighborhood.  If I looked out the window and down the block a bit there was a strip club.  If I looked the other way there was a pot shop.  Next door to me was a business that installed car stereo systems and spinning rims and, judging by the blaring and beeping and honking that went on all day long, car alarms.  But otherwise than the ... interesting neighborhood the hotel was nice and it was quiet at night.  Well, mostly.  There was one night where a couple came crashing out of the elevators at 3 AM and then went to the room next to me and had loud, enthusiastic sex.  For 45 seconds.  I was embarrassed for all of us.

***

Being on bedrest means lots of room service.  The food at my hotel was really good and I ate a lot of it.  I always had a twinge of anxiety when ordering room service though because a good third of the time the room service people brought food to my room they called me "sir".  I guess I should have taken part in a little more waxing before I went to California.  Or answered my door topless.

***

I came home on Monday and started doing pregnancy tests.  All negative.  I kept hoping because I've been having pregnancy symptoms.  My breasts are large and sore.  I've been feeling nauseated in the morning and evening.  I'm craving pasta and bloody marys.  (Of course I don't drink bloody marys, I just crave them.)  Everything looked so good at the transfer.  Everything was "right".  I felt like this was going to work.

Then last night I had the dream and I woke up certain that it was a sign that I was pregnant so I took another test.

Negative.

So now we wait until Monday when I get the official results from a blood test.  We'll see I guess.

Three years ago today I didn't understand Dooce.
Five years ago today Joseph was dramatic.

I dream of beet preserves

I don't know how much I'm going to be able to blog for the next few weeks or so. You see, I've taken up canning. That is to say that I bought a couple of books about canning and I'm going to spend the next few weeks reading them and wishing I had the time/equipment/talent needed to actually can something.

I don't know where this food preservation fetish came from all of the sudden but it's out of control. I think about it all day long. Once I get going I start going off into other tangents too. What about cheese making? Or honey harvesting? Or raising my own chickens and goats?

I daydream about moving to a hobby farm and living off of food we've grown and harvested ourselves. I know that it's pretty unlikely to ever come true since I can't even keep a houseplant alive for more than a week. If I moved my family to a farm we would all be dead of hunger and boredom within a month.

So I'll just imagine for now. I'll read my canning books and order cheese making kits shop at the farmer's market and I'll be happy. For now

Disney overload

You know how you can tell that you've stayed up too late looking at Disney World pictures on Flickr? You have dreams about looking at Disney World pictures on Flickr.

It was a pretty Disney-ish weekend for me all around. On Saturday Jesse and I took the kids to see Wall-E. It was Elle's first movie in a movie theater and she did really well. I was a little worried when we started to walk into the theater and Elle shrieked in terror because the room was so big and dark. Opps, guess I forgot to warn her about that part. Once we explained that it was just like watching a big tv screen she was cool. It's all good in Elle's book if tv is involved. We all really liked the movie a lot and I would recommend it to anyone (even if it did make Joseph cry twice). It's really good.

On Sunday Elle and I went to my parent's house and my dad and I worked for hours on Disney autograph books for the kids. Yes, I know you can just buy them but ours are going to be special and the kids are going to love them. At leas they better because we spent a lot of time on them. Ok, confession. As we were putting the book together my dad and I kept saying things like "Let's use this picture of Jasmine! She'll like that!" and "Sleeping Beauty will like it if we use a picture of her in this dress!" If you ever encounter someone talking like that, don't even bother trying to get them help. They're too far gone.

I was looking through some stuff on my computer and I came across a ton of Disney pictures that I totally forgot I had taken. I'm going to be throwing them up on Flickr so if you're the sort of person who likes to kill time looking at other people's vacation pictures then you can check it out. In the meantime here's a picture I took of Expedition Everest as it was still being built.

Totally random crap that you just can't wait to hear about

How many tea parties do you have every day? Elle and I have about 14. We sip our tea and then say "Oh! It's still hot!" Then we eat "chicken" and proclaim it to be "spicy". Then we eat "corn" and say it's "delicious". And it just never gets old. EVER!

Day 13 of WiiFit: I haven't lost any weight, my thighs and chest hurts and yoga often leaves me feeling like I'm going to hurl. Hooray for fitness!

This morning I was sitting on the toilet doing what one does while sitting on the toilet when I realized the bathroom window was open. How did I realize that? A big gust of wind came along and blew the curtain aside leaving me and all my pants-around-the-ankles glory exposed to the 3 roofers working on the house next door. I hope they enjoyed the show. And by "show" I mean the slapstick comedy that occurred when I sprang up from the toilet, lunged towards the window, tripped over my own pants and nearly crashed through the screen. All without actually managing to close the curtain so that it was just me and my naked ass pressed up against the window.

The other night I had a dream that I was visiting Pioneer Woman. It started out great. She made a bunch of great food for me to eat. Then it took a turn. I spilled a bunch of food on myself and had to go take a bath to clean up. As I was bathing all the cowboys came in and started laughing at me. I woke up feeling depressed but soothed myself by eating some chocolate sheet cake.

I wonder why I'm not losing any weight?

Elle is playing with Play-Doh right now and she's mixing up colors and it is KILLING ME because I am far to anal retentive and I prefer that the Play-Doh in my house not be mixed up. It's taking everything I've got in me right now to not go and knock her off her little chair so that I stop the maddness. YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW!

Please, please, please enter my contest. No one has so far and that is the sort of thing that has the potential to damage my very fragile self-esteem. And then I'll be forced to eat more chocolate cake. Yes, forced. So please, if you won't do it for me and you won't do it for yourself (because for some reason you don't want to win a fabulous prize) then do it for the poor chocolate sheet cakes of the world. Because without your help? I'm totally going to eat them all.

Warning: Disturbing Penis Dream Ahead

For me being pregnant means a lot of things. It means morning sickness and mood swings and bizarre cravings. It also means strange and vivid dreams nearly every night. Most of the times I enjoy the dreams because they're usually good dreams and they're so realistic that they're kind of fun. It's fun to wake up from a dream that felt so real that you're almost not sure if it really happened or not. The dream I had last night though was so strange and disturbing that I just can't seem to get it out of my head. I've been thinking about it all day long so I just had to share it.

As a side note I would like to point out that I hate hearing about other people's dreams. I just don't think it's that entertaining to hear a 20 minute story about something that only happened in your mind. So I won't be offended if no one reads this. I just want everyone to know that if they do chose to skip this entry they'll be missing out on a description of a living, detachable penis. Oh, and I would also like to apologize in advance to Jesse for telling this story.

Ok. Here goes. In my dream I find myself standing over Jesse who's alseep in bed. Since he's laying there naked and all I decide I'll just, um .... remove his penis. I pull on it and it just pops off, sort of like Barbie's legs do when you pull on them too hard. I walk around with the penis in my hand and I use it for various things like killing a spider and dusting the tv. (That's how you know it's a dream, I never dust.)

At some point I decide to go outside, still holding the penis of course. I'm sitting on the front steps when all of the sudden a bunch of kids go running by yelling for me to look out for the bear. I look over my shoulder and realize that there's a huge brown bear running towards me. I run towards the house and decide to throw the penis at the bear to distract it. I watch from the porch as the bear walks over to sniff the penis. To my suprise the penis comes to life, moving and hissing like a snake. (I won't describe this further because even thinking about it horrifies me now.)

I run inside to find Jesse awake and looking out the window and smiling as the bear rips apart his snakepenis. "Oh Jesse!" I cry "I'm so sorry! Now we won't be able to have any more children! I'm sorry I didn't think about that before I threw it!"

Jesse just smiled and said it was no big deal. The last thing I remember before I woke up was that I felt so relieved that Jesse wasn't mad that I let a bear eat his living, detachable penis.

So. Uh. That's it then.

Not much new

There's not really much going on around here these days. The most exciting thing I can think of to tell you is that I had a dream last night that I went fishing with Simon from American Idol. He had to bait my hook for me because I didn't know how to do it. Then later we ate the fish we caught and he let me be a guest judge on American Idol. That's pretty ironic since in real life last night I was just laughed at for not knowing how American Idol worked. Anyway, that's the most interesting thing I could think of to tell you so if you're going to read further you might want to bring along something to entertain yourself.

I managed to somehow miss an appointment with Joseph's pychatrist last week. Those appointments are impossible to get too. I was just kicking myself. I'll make another one today while we're there for speech and OT but who knows how long it will be before I can get him in. Augh, not my best mom moment.

I also managed to miss a call from the surrogacy agency yetsterday. I'm not sure how that happened since I watch my cell like a hawk and I've got my ring tone tunred up to "earsplitting". Maybe this is the big call? Probably not. This wait is really starting to drag on. Sigh.

I accidently took some nighttime cold medicine this morning. That's why I'm not more interesting today. That's also why this lame entry took me nearly half an hour to type. But that's not your fault so I'll let you go now.

Can't sleep

I can't sleep. I think it's because I'm still haunted by the dream I had last night. I dreamt that Jesse's cousin Joe (who is all of 15) was getting married. The girl he was marrying was Irish and wanted a traditional Irish wedding. I guess that involved Jesse's uncle Bill dressing up like a leperchuen. Now that might not mean a lot to those of you who don't know Bill but I don't hink I'll ever be able to see him wearing green again without snickering. We won't even go into the little jig that people at the wedding had to do.

Good Night!

I'm writing this from y parents house where Joseph and I slept last night. I use the term "slept" very loosely since Joseph spent most of the night flipping around, throwing various limbs over me and making loud noises with his mouth and nose. I spent most of the night gritting my teeth and getting leg cramps.

Anyway, we slept here because last night I found a few mites in my bedroom and some on the frame of Joseph's door. I made Jesse spray the whole house with bug spray, wash all the bedding and decontaminate the AC. I figured it might be best if Joseph and I weren't around to breath in the bug spray all night long. Jesse chose to sleep at home though. I'm sure he's fine.

Despite the lack of sleep Joseph seems to be doing ok. I have to take him to therapy in a little bit where I'm sure he will have a complete and total meltdown. It's what he does. After therapy I'll drive him around until he falls alseep then I'll take him home so we can both catch a little shut-eye.

My hope is to try to avoid dreaming about the baby again. For the past two night I've dreamed about the baby and each time it was the ugliest flippin' thing you've ever seen. In my dream last night the baby was about 3 months old and needed glasses. For some reason we picked out tinted lenses for her. Her head was too big to fit any of the frames so we had to just kind of stick the lenses to her face. It was ugly. But she could talk so I guess it all evened out.

Creepy

I had a dream last night that the baby was born 2 months early. She had three legs and her face was all squished in. I couldn't get her to nurse at all and I wanted to take her to a doctor but we couldn't afford to because Jesse quit his job. He spent all our money of a bunch of those little rides that are at the mall that you put a quarter into and they kind of shake around for a minute. He thought we could travel around like we were in a carnival or something. It was just bizzare and upsetting. I ket crying because I couldn't get the baby to eat but no one seemed to think it was that big of a deal. I must have some nursing anxiety that I need to work through or something.

What the?

Another actual conversation between me and Joseph, this time upon me walking into his room and discovering his underwear hanging off his ceiling fan.

Me: Joseph, why is your underwear hanging off your fan?
Joseph: Well, I was excited to watch tv so I started jumping around and I jumped so high my underwear got snagged on the ceiling fan and when I came back down it just flew off. So now it's stuck there.

That's the whole thing. What else could I really say?

I had a dream last night that the baby was born 3 weeks early and it was just tiny, tiny, tiny. It was also a girl. That's the second time I've dreamed that. Before I was so sure that it was a boy that whenever I dreamed about it I dreamt it was a boy. Now I wonder if I'm wrong. Joseph has also started refering to the baby as "she" when he always used to say "he". I'm very curious to see what the ultra-sound I'm having on the 31st will say.

Dreams

I have been having some really odd dreams lately. Bad, bad nightmares that wake me up and bizzare, vivid dreams that seem to make no sense of all. Last night I had a dream that I could feel the baby moving and when I looked down I realized that my belly had turned clear and I could see into it to watch the baby. I could see him turning around and kicking his legs. It felt so real and then I woke up because Joseph was poking me in the stomach. He was dreaming and talking about Velma and getting into the tv. Oh well, it was fun to think for a minute that it was the baby that I felt and not a crazy 4 year old with a Velma fixation.

Chili dogs is good medicine!

I am feeling so much better today than I was yesterday. I was feeling a little queasy when I woke up but that went away pretty quickly and I was able to eat. (Turkey jerky from the St Joe Meat Market, the breakfast of champions!)

Lat night I did a bunch of Reiki on Jesse. I worked on his lower back and his leg. He has some problem in his lower back that makes his right leg tingle sometimes. I think it's nerve related. Then I worked on his gross hand bump/growth thing. (shudder) It is my fondest hope that that thing goes away today and I won't have to work on it again. I swear I felt it moving when I had my hand on it last night.

I had my first baby dream last night. The baby was a boy and he had brown hair and very fat legs. He could also talk and roll over when he was just born so take from that what you will. Also in my dream the hospital was closed when I gave birth so I had to go to a gym instead. They gave me a fouton though so that was nice. The nuses also told me I could have all the chili dogs and Cherry Dr Pepper (is that even real?) that I wanted. Oh man, a chili dog sounds good right now....