Still Not Pregnant

In case you were wondering.

Drat

My first thought, as I climbed into the car, was "I should go across the street and buy a boat hook." This is because there was a marine supply place right over there, and my boat hook is broken. But I'd forgotten my wallet at home, so I couldn't shop my way out of it this time.

So it turns out that there are three broad categories of infertility: hormonal, structural, and idiopathic, i.e. unexplained. Guess which one I am?

I have always been difficult to explain, it could be argued.

There are things I can do. I was given packets of information. But first I decided to take a five minute self-pity break in the parking lot. A cool summer rain fell on the roof of the car. Thoughts included:

1. It's not fair. I'd be a great mom. All these other people have kids without even trying. Some of them don't even want them.
2. Come on. You never wanted kids anyway.
3. Shots. Schedules. Appointments. Ultrasounds. I don't want to do any of this.
4. But the world is so interesting. It would be fun to show it to someone for the first time.
5. Why does everyone else get to do this, and not me?
6. I can have a different kind of life.
7. When L dies, and my parents die, I'll be all alone.
8. Now I can afford a bigger boat. And international travel. It can be a different kind of life.
9. This is all my fault. I waited too long.
10. I started at 36, though. That seems like a reasonable time. Lots of people started at 36.
11. I always thought I wasn't going to be able to do this.
12. I should have eaten lunch before going to this appointment.
13. I should give away all the old baby stuff of mine that I saved.
14. I'm sad.
15. I wish I didn't have a houseguest coming today.
16. I'm sadder than I thought I'd be.

A Man Would Never Do This

Is what my reproductive endocrinologist remarked as she maneuvered some complicated bit of imaging equipment around in my most secret depths. I had been promised that the procedure would involve "some discomfort," which is doctor speak for "excruciating pain." But in truth, it wasn't that bad. Or else it was, but my habitual cramps are so bad anyway that I couldn't really tell the difference.

I have since concluded that I'm just badass.

"Am I dribbling? I am, aren't I. I'm sorry," I said as the imaging equipment water worked its way out into the world from wherever it had been moments before.

"We're gynecologists," my doctor reassured me. "We don't care. If your water breaks, that's what it will feel like."

"Well, even so," I said. "I'm a lady. I don't want to be rude."

The good news, I guess, is that everything in there looks "beautiful." By which I mean not encrusted with scar tissue or grown over with kudzu vines or whatever it is that they thought could have happened. So far the only thing wrong with me, if "wrong" is a word people are allowed to use in this context, is an FSH reading of 13. The upper level of normal is 10. It's been explained to me that this is my body trying to overcompensate for not having enough eggs. My hormones are being type A. Which should surprise no one.

Next your would-be father has to go in and get tests of his own, which I won't describe in detail, but suffice it to say, his won't involve "some discomfort." And then we have to go in and be told what to do next.

Today in the news there's a story about a 26 year old woman who left her 6 week old baby by the side of the road, and then I guess thought better of it and called the police and now she's going to prison. They posted a picture of the baby, and he's a wobbly little guy in socks and a striped onesie. I'm sure I'm not the first aging Type A high achieving infertile woman to think some variation on ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME, SHE HAS A BABY AND SHE DOESN'T EVEN WANT ONE. But I've never claimed to be all that innovative. My skills lie in interpretation of classic themes.

Dye

What up, imaginary baby.

I'm sitting out in the garden for a minute while your dog guards the fence. I have jet lag, but the air is soft, and the rhododendron in the garden is so heavy with pink blooms that it's slumping over like an exhausted, bejeweled showgirl. A hefty one.

That was a terrible metaphor, I'm sorry. It's the jet lag. I already mentioned the jet lag.

Today I met with a very lovely doctor who, wouldn't you know, was in med school at the very hospital where I was treated for my exotic brain parasite all those years ago. Who knew? But I wasn't seeing her for brain things - I was seeing her for you things. Innards were probed. Blood was drawn. Tests are underway. Tomorrow I will go and have some sort of dye or something injected into my uterus so that they can see if there's anything structurally wrong. They told me what I basically already know - 1) I'm barren, clinically speaking. 2) It's either from hormones, structure, or no reason at all. 3) Addressing these questions can be expensive.

Yay.

On a related note, the boat went in the water today, and I have to drop off the sails tomorrow so she can be commissioned. But I digress.

Your would-be father has already said that if I want to quit, I can. My feeling is, I'll get the tests. Right? If there's an easy fix - not easy, but you know, if it's a matter of hormone alchemy, or someone left a sofa blocking my cervix and we need to move it an inch to the left, then so be it. If it's no reason at all, then.... well.

What then?

Honestly, I don't know. It's a hard thing to commit to, given how ambivalent I've been up to this point. It's a hard, hard thing.

The new patient info they gave me included lots of references for social workers and so forth, all of which seemed to assume that this was a very upsetting process. I've been given to understand that I could be feeling angry, or depressed, and that my relationship is probably hanging by a thread. But it's not, imaginary baby. We're having fun. I work hard, and he works hard, and my days are full. I was just in Europe for three weeks, and the boat went in the water today. In twenty minutes I have to be on the phone with LA.

I'd like to have you along for these things, of course. But you know... they're happening to *me.* Right now. This is *my* life, that I'm living. I've worked hard to make it this way.

So. Tomorrow, dye. I could get an infection, so I have to take antibiotics tonight, and tomorrow, and then a fistful of ibuprofen right beforehand to guard against "discomfort." That's a word I have heard a lot, in my medical life - discomfort. Ha.

Anyway. I'll let you know if they found the couch.

Mother's Day

What up, imaginary baby.

I'm sitting at the breakfast table, which in the last 36 hours has become coated in a thin layer of yellow pollen. You don't notice at first, until you actually put your hand on the table, and it comes up yellow. Such is the hallmark of spring in this tiny town in upstate New York, where I live on occasion.

If you ever want to confront how truly selfish and self-absorbed you can be, try throwing an afternoon party for all your friends who had babies since the last time you saw them, and do it while you're having your period after two years of total baby-having failure. You might discover that you are not as nice as you thought you were. Or would wish to be. Or something. Fortunately, you can fill your mouth with cake.

It might be a struggle to find things to say to these friends. After you exclaim over their babies hair/smallness/largeness/adorableness, they usually want to talk to you about epidurals. Epidurals are something I prefer not to talk about. In fact, they are something I prefer not to think about.

You might discover that you have nothing to talk about but your work. You can list your various accomplishments - this book is coming out now, and then that one is coming out later, and you're working on that other one - but they're bored, and so you gloss over it. You can't blame them. Babies are absorbing. And do they really want to hear about how you get to go to Paris for your book release? They surely do not. No one does. Even you find it kind of embarrassing to mention. Your privileges are many, but it's tacky to acknowledge them.

It's Mother's Day, and much will be made at your baby party of the people present who are mothers for the first time. You have spent much of the past two years caring for/nagging/supporting and otherwise mothering a teenager to whom you are related by marriage, but there is no such thing as Half-Sister-in-Law Day. You played Santa for your cousin's kids while their dad was deployed overseas, and they love you and you love them, but there's no First Cousin Once Removed Day, either. For women, motherhood is where it's at. Therein lies the value.

One of the attendees at your afternoon baby party might ask you in hushed tones if you're still trying, and you'll say yes, but it's been two years and no dice, not even a positive test. Not once. And she'll tell you about her friend who had to use both a donor egg and donor sperm, and she's due any day now.

You will find that discomfiting. Even vaguely eugenicist. Who would go to all that trouble and expense, when there are already extant children who desperately need a home? You reflect that you would become a foster parent before doing that.

Foster parenting actually seems like a pretty decent idea, if your mothering drive ever becomes intrusive. You could do some good in the world. It would probably be awful much of the time, but then, so is real parenting.

So here we are, at our polleny table, feeling disappointed in ourselves. We're not the women we thought we were, I guess. But that, of itself, is a big part of existing. Learning that what we think about ourselves isn't necessarily the truth.

Secret Recipe

I was standing in the kitchen of a friend's sublet apartment, attending a small book party. I was talking with my friend T, the guest of honor's wife.

T is one of the best people I know. She never seems shaken by anything, she is always positive, she is the only person on the planet who can wear a white tube top and look elegant while doing so instead of skanky, and she is beautiful. She has the kind of beauty that used to be found on tropical islands when they were colonial sugar strongholds. T is tan and blonde. She is also very, very fertile.

"Do you want my secret recipe?" She asked me. We were catching up, and between all the work news (all I have to talk about is work, imaginary baby, though I also talk a lot about your dog) I had mentioned that it was now two years into my halfhearted attempts to conjure you.

"Please!" I said. "Heck. Why not?"

She looked left. She looked right.

"Are you sure?" she whispered.

Were we being spied upon? We weren't. "Yes." I said, wondering if my friend was luring me into some kind of Faustian bargain that, because of her innate goodness (lies all this time?) I would never see coming. "Tell me."

"I can't," she said. "I'll write it down."

I blinked. "Okay," I said.

Before she left, she hunted down a pen and the back of an envelope. I looked over her shoulder with interest. "It took me six months," she said. "Which I realize is nothing! But nothing happened until I did this."

Here's what she wrote.

1. Vitamin D
2. Preseed
3. Fertility 5

"I had a Vitamin D deficiency," she explained. "But you can take supplements."

"Um," I said. "What does this mean?" I pointed to #3.

"Five pounds. You have to gain a little weight."

"Ah ha!" I crowed. You, imaginary baby, have been privy to this semester's pimiento cheese gain, so I'm all set there, I'm pretty sure. "I've done that. I'm squishy."

"K, come on," she said. "You look amazing."

By the way, imaginary baby, if you wind up existing, and you wind up being female, you should know this how women talk to each other. One self-deprecates, and one effusively praises. It takes practice, but you'll figure it out.

"Okay," I said. "And what's this mean?" I pointed to #2.

Poor T's face turned a delicate, ladylike shade of violet, and she waved her hands and said "Look it up on the internet." Then she hugged me goodbye, and we promised to see much more of each other this summer, and she whispered that she hoped I would have good news soon.

#2, if you care to know, is a brand of lube available at your finer local drugstores. I learned this by asking the internet, where the answer was provided on a series of bulletin boards in which people - women, I assume - use a complex rubric to discuss with strangers their marriages, their hormone levels, and how many miscarriages they've had.

I'm not so sure about #2. But I will admit to popping a Vitamin D supplement this morning.

You never know.

The Last of the Mohicans

I was sitting on the back porch of our house with an older writer friend, and I was deep in a vin triste.

A vin triste, imaginary baby, is a French name for this thing that happens when you've read "A Farewell to Arms" too many times. Suffice it to say, there was wine and I was emotional. I thought I was anxious about my job. A stranger walked by outside our protective hemlock hedge, and your dog barked at him.

"Shut up!" the stranger snapped at my dog.

"No, YOU SHUT UP!" I screamed at him. Nobody insults your dog for doing his job. Not while I'm drunk on the back porch. He went away, and your dog resumed his patrol of the fence, and I felt foolish.

"Is this because you haven't been able to get pregnant yet?" my friend asked gently.

I looked at her, blinked once, realized she was right, and blew my nose on my shirt.

She was very patient.

"You know what you need to do," she said after refilling my glass. Which, by the way, is only one path out of a vin triste. You can either sober up (recommended), drink past it (not recommended), or give in to the self-pity and weep (utterly not recommended). All options are equally bad. This is why Hemingway is dangerous to read.

I took a ragged breath, tossed back some more rose, and said "What."

"You have to watch The Last of the Mohicans," she said sagely.

"You mean the Daniel Day-Lewis film?" I asked.

"Yep," said my famous older novelist friend. "I've had two friends, both of them trying to get pregnant. They watched The Last of the Mohicans, and bam. Just like that."

"You're kidding," I said.

"Nope," she said. "It works."

I don't have any siblings, imaginary baby. When I outlive my parents, and when I outlive my husband, my family will come to an end. Unless my novelist friend's idea works.

I, Chinoochtuk. The last of the Mohicans.

Social Media

Hey there imaginary baby,

So, out here they have this thing called the internet, where some people live. It's very noisy and distracting, which is a surprise given how little real content or aesthetic experiences are available there. But the rent is cheap.

It can be easy to keep track of people there, though, which has both its good sides and its bad sides. There will be people in your life about whom you care, but who for whatever reason you are unlikely to ever see again. Or at least, not see that often. It can be nice to have a way to keep tabs on those people. It's like seeing people in the school cafeteria. You don't say hi to everybody. Some special few you greet with a hug. Some people you wish would be hit by a truck. But most of them fall somewhere in between, people about whom it's nice to know that they're basically doing okay.

Lots of science has recently proven, however, that all our desire to demonstrate our essential okayness can be hugely depressing. Partly because in any given life an inevitable period of majorly Not Okay will fall. I'm not even all that old, and yet some major Not Okay has befallen me already. And people I know, too - death. Illness. Financial loss. Fear. There's bad stuff. It does occur.

But we often only want to share those bad things with people who make us feel safe enough. It's hug-level friend news, not cafeteria news. So we keep it hidden. And to those of us at cafeteria level, it looks like nothing bad is happening.

A few women I know were ambivalent around the same time I was. And now, all three of them have extant babies. Chub-faced pictures fill my feed. And for some others, the chub-faces have started to subside into kid-faces.

I think we've missed it, imaginary baby. And I don't want it getting all over the cafeteria, but it's starting to make me really sad.

Chub

I've put on weight.

I'm not sure how much, because fortunately the scale here isn't working. It isn't all *that* bad, as all my clothes still fit, with the sole exception of this one sheath dress that was really, really tight to begin with, and which works better with foundation garments anyway, and the last time I tried I could still get the zipper up, I just couldn't sit down, and it was kind of riding up on my hips in a not so flattering way, which suggests that there is some extra weight in my ass region.

Where I've really noticed, however, is in the boobs. I was never a chesty person, to put it lightly. In fact, I did one of those DNA tests a few years ago, the most hilarious part of which was that the test would tell you what color eyes and hair you had (because, why not?). Among those salient and easily confirmed details I was also informed I had smaller than average breasts. Thanks for the tip, I thought.

But in the last year or so, that hasn't been as much the case. I cleave now. I've had to acquire new technologies, in sizes heretofore unimagined. At different moments, they ache.

They're aching right now.

I don't know if this is due to this brain tumor situation, which changes hormones in there, or what. That seems like a reasonable explanation. Or perhaps it's just the vagaries of age. Do other women wait until their late 30s to grow breasts? Maybe not. But here they are. I can move them around, fluff them up, make them pretty.

I'm due again on Sunday. Are my newly plush breasts a clue? Or a coincidence?

I guess we'll find out soon enough.

Hurry

Your dog is sick.

I have spent the last several weeks coaxing him to eat. He's always been weird about food. I've never met another dog who could probably pass the marshmallow test, if it were sufficiently explained to him. I also believe that he speaks English, which means it *could* be explained to him. He's a smart dog. But he's almost eleven, as I am almost thirty-eight. We're not what we once were.

This week was spent in a blur of vet appointments, blood tests, x-rays, and worry. The good news is, we've ruled out anything serious. It's quite possible, imaginary baby, that your dog merely is suffering from acid reflux. We are giving him Pepcid, and it may be my imagination, but it seems to me his appetite is coming back a little.

Last night he begged for pizza crust. I gave it to him, because I am weak.

But before we knew that it was probably not serious I indulged in some seriously catastrophic thinking. I was at the hair dresser, getting shampooed, when I realized that if your dog were seriously sick, then he might die before you get here. I discovered that I had built an elaborate fantasy life about the blossoming relationship between you and your dog. He's always been very serious about babies, and takes great responsibility on himself. In my mind's eye, I have seen him guarding you carefully while you slept. Him getting agitated while you cried. Him not letting me or your would-be father get too near you. You being taught, first things first, to be gentle to your dog. I was prepared to have to explain to you that all dogs get old some day. I imagined you inconsolable, and barely comprehending, a four year old abandoned to grief over the loss of your dog.

Tears started dribbling into my ears as I slowly realized that no, I might have to bear the loss of your dog myself, without you. If I'm not putting up a front for you, then what will save me from my miserable sadness when we finally lose your dog?

You have work to do, imaginary baby. He's getting better this time, but he's eleven.

You have to hurry. Come exist in time to meet your dog.

Seriously?

Seriously, imaginary baby? You mean to tell me that Sarah Jessica Parker is 37 in this season of Sex and the City? The short one, where they shoot around her being pregnant?

Well that's just great. Just fucking terrific.

For one thing, I have no idea if I look as old as she does in this season. Not that she looks bad. I mean. Does she? She looks like she's had some lip work. At least.

One thing you should know about us, imaginary baby, is that we are not a plastic surgery family. Whatever nose you draw is the nose you draw, and you just have to grow some character to go with it, okay?

Also, I should mention that I, at this very moment, am 37. Oh yes. For another three weeks I am. Threeeeeee whole weeks. And then I get a whole fistful of 38, right in the face.

At least in this episode Carrie has a giant hormone zit as a plot point. Speaking as someone with at least three on her very own face right this moment. To tell you the truth, I still feel kind of duped that there was never a window of lifetime of perfect skin. The pimples aren't as bad as when I was a teenager, but they do bubble up now and again, like middle aged lava. And I'm starting to see the faint hints of where the WASP mouth-pursing lines are going to etch.

Sarah Jessica Parker has three kids, I just learned from the internet. The one she had at 37 - which will soon be younger than me, as you've probably gathered - and then twins that she had via surrogate at 44.

Yeah.

Your would-be father and I were talking about surrogacy last night, because one of the many things that has stopped me in this long, winding slog towards considering you is - now, this is going to sound really selfish - I have always hated the idea of being pregnant. I mean, sure, Sarah Jessica Parker looks cute in those pictures on the internet. Cindy Crawford. Natalie Portman. You can get your body back, I guess. If you're rich and have a trainer. And it's not like my body is so marvelous I can bear to sully it. It's just.... I like it okay. That's it. And the idea of having a live animal growing inside me grosses me out.

No offense.

But surrogacy when you don't have a medical reason seems so... it just seems kind of.... wrong.

Exploitative and wrong.

I'm due one week from today. And this is your last shot while I'm still 37. So you'd better get your act together if you want to slip in under the wire.

Okay

Not this time.

Not this time.

Well

It's not looking good. I don't want to bog you down with a lot of TMI, but I'm due today, and I'm willing to bet you're not in the cards this time.

Is it my fault? I'm too anxious, aren't I. Too anxious. Too old. In the darkest, blackest corner of my irrational heart, I fear that it's because I'm not nice enough. Not warm. Too self-interested. That on some level, I don't deserve to have you.

Timing

Lessee. I'm due on Sunday. In theory, this magic pee stick will give me the goods up to five days before Sunday.

That's....Tuesday. Yesterday. Depending on how you count. But today is already basically over. Right? Sure. So. I'm going to give it a shot tomorrow. And if it's no dice tomorrow, I'll wait til Sunday and see where we are.

Imaginary baby, you aren't going to like this, but I'm having a rum and soda with lime. It's good Barbados rum, white rum, and the limes are small key limes. I'm also full of Mexican food. So full my stomach is sort of sticking out. I'm having a Mexican food baby.

A lot of crazy stuff unfolded today, none of which will mean much to you, though it suggests that if you do wind up existing, and appearing in the fall, there's a good chance you'll be born in a new state that we never planned on living in. I know! It's weird. I was kind of hoping we could swing it for you to show up in Massachusetts. I have sentimental reasons that any reasonable person could easily dismiss.

Rum was part of the triangle trade, which brought wealth to New England and misery to untold numbers of African slaves. There's a whole world out here, with all these preexisting conditions. It's exhausting, thinking about explaining everything when I understand so little of it myself.

FYI

If you do wind up existing, I'm betting fully 30% of your DNA will consist of Lay's Kettle Cooked Low Fat Jalapeno Cheddar potato chips.

Super Powers

A little over a year ago, I developed super powers. Specifically, I had spidey smell.

It happened while I was riding the T in Boston, something I did all the time. The T doesn't generally have much of a specific smell. It's not like the New York subway, which reeks of hot old asphalt. Boston is just sort of there. Train. People. Wet coats. That's it.

But this time, it was different. Every human who came near to me was packed in a thoroughly detailed set of layered smells. My eyes crept to their corners to look at a man who, I was 95% certain, had had a chicken parm sandwich for lunch four hours ago. A woman on the other side of me had a drinking problem, and her preferred poison was gin. This person was wearing musky perfume with top notes of sandalwood and lime. That person hadn't brushed his teeth that morning. I was riding the Blue Line, and I'd started at the end with a nearly empty train at Wonderland, and has more and more people piled on I had to swallow back the rise of bile from too many smells. I pulled my scarf over my nose, which helped a little, but even my scarf was too detailed. It smelled like me, my hair in particular, but also with the faintest remnant of dry cleaning fluid.

When I arrived at the dinner party, I knew at the bottom of the stairwell what was being served.

"This is weird," I announced to my friends. "I don't know what's going on."

My friends were privy to the recent medically-necessary removal of my IUD. (I still think it's the best method, shift in position notwithstanding.) They were also mid-baby-creation attempt. They had all the books and everything. I wasn't "trying" at that point. I was winging it. When the IUD came out they asked me what method I would be switching to, and I'd swallowed hard and said "None." The nurse practitioner's eyebrows went up. "I'm married, I'm 36, I have a good job. You know. I'm just going to see what happens." She'd told me to take a vitamin every day and sent me on my way.

"That's him," my friend W said wisely.

"Come on," I said.

W and his wife exchanged a knowing look common among fertile people.

"Totally," said K, W's wife.

What they didn't know is, I'd recently checked myself out with a pee stick, and it had turned up with a "Room for Rent" sign.

"It's not," I insisted. "I checked."

"It's him," W nodded like a wise mage. "He's just hiding."

Well, it wasn't you, as you've probably noticed, because you still don't exist, but I will say that my spidey smell lasted for about a week, and then the world resumed its normal olfactory contours, and my super power hasn't come back since.  I was suspicious. I kept pulling out the neck of my t-shirt and looking down.

The temptation is there, to read the signs. To consult my body like a mystic reading tea leaves. Am I bloated? Is it normal? I get woozy at yoga, have to gulp for air, put my forehead down in child's pose, and stop early. Is it Something? Or have I just not slept enough?

Last night, I lay in a heap on the sofa watching reruns of Sex and the City via my in-law's stolen HBO passwords, shuddering at the fact that I'm now older than all those characters (except Samantha). Around 12:30, I got hungry. Not just hungry, but Hungry. I considered eating a block of cheddar cheese. In a fit of reason, instead I heated up a little vegan barbecue snack pocket thing - only 230 calories, and 10 grams of protein - and scarfed it down while it was still hot enough to singe my fingers.

Is it Something? Or is it nothing?

Ooof

Greetings, imaginary baby, as I lie staring up at the ceiling with a pillow under my ass. Okay, not up at the ceiling exactly, more like at the laptop propped on my legs. I'll spare you the particulars. Suffice it to say, I got a flashy smiley face today (in a related story, 37 year old women can still be relied upon to respond positively to smiley faces), and so.... anyway.

This is too much information for you. I can tell. Sorry.

So. Now what happens?

I guess that's partly up to you, isn't it. Not as a matter of will, which you do not possess, but perhaps as a matter of math. What's your schedule like? What are you up to, in there?

Has it been thirty minutes yet? Okay, I'm getting up. I have a book to write. This is how a lot of our interactions are going to end, I'm afraid.

New Resolve

Greetings, imaginary baby, from my office in a tiny school in rural North Carolina, where I am a writer in residence. It's a drizzly day outside, and my office overlooks what I think are three giant exhaust tubes behind another classroom building. If covered in snow they would look like part of the rebel base on the ice planet Hoth. You don't know about Hoth, but don't worry - I'm guessing, should you turn up, you will be exposed to Hoth probably within the first week of your life. Your mother soothes herself by watching movies she has seen one million times. It's a quirk of her personality that will probably drive you batty, as it drives your would-be father batty. The thing about family life is, you show up with certain buttons pre-installed. That's just how it goes.

We're both having a surprisingly good time in North Carolina. The food is really good, we've both settled into a routine. Your would-be father is getting a lot of work done. My teaching is going well. I even went to yoga last night, and today I feel pleasantly tired and stretched out.

I've bought another supply of plastic sticks. The expensive ones, that give you four days of smiley face. And I've been taking the vitamins.

You should see these horse-pill vitamins they tell you to take. The first one I tried turned my urine florescent green and made my breath smell like a barley field. I reasoned that if I was peeing out green then I probably wasn't actually absorbing any of the vitamins, so what's the point? I quit. They were hard to swallow and gave me a stomachache anyway. I went several months sans vitamins. But, begrudgingly, I have reconsidered. I switched brands. These new ones are wine-colored caplets, and they are partly made of fish (don't tell your father, as we don't eat fish - more on that later), but they change neither my breath nor my effluvia, so I've decided to stick with them. I've actually taken them every day for a whole week. Not bad, huh?

You don't seem impressed. Listen, kid, you have no idea. It's complicated out here. Lots of things to keep track of.

So, I've got the vitamins, I've got the yoga class, I've got lots of sleep, I'm relaxed and also I'm in a place that's not too cold, so I'm shivering less. That's got to be good, right? And now I've got a two month supply of the serious, four-smiley-faces pee sticks.

I'm ready. I think. I think I'm ready.

What do you think? Are you ready?