you know your life continues down surreal (or perhaps pointless) lane when you fall asleep reading the IUI instructions included in the REI¹ welcome packet interspersed with reading the instructions to the one-step ovulation predictor kit, even though you’ve been using the clear blue easy fertility monitor for nearly a year now.

and it’s further evidence of insanity when you find yourself telling your husband that HE needs to figure out whether frozen or fresh sperm are preferable for IUI, given the results of his semen analysis.

TMI? probably. but i’ve just finished my cycle of clomid for the month and my hormones are raging and my moods are swinging and it’s getting to the point where i’m just gonna steal the first baby that comes to my door on halloween.

no, i’m kidding. i’ll take the second one. the first ones are always the greediest.
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¹ for those not in the know, REI in this context is not the recreation sports equipment store, but rather Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility.

i’m about to start a digression here about whether or not having had 3 miscarriages qualifies as infertility, but that’s just going to be a long, drawn-out mess and i have things to do today. like sit by pool and talk about adoption with my aunt. so toodles!

well. this is interesting. awaiting my return from chicago was a form letter from the pentagon’s “comprehensive review working group” alerting me to my requested participation in the 2010 Department of Defense (DoD) Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Survey of military spouses.

aside from the amusement of a survey being called “don’t ask, don’t tell” (they didn’t prepare me for that contradiction in my MPH studies, that’s for sure), i am curious to see what sorts of questions they’re going to ask – as well as if there’s any sort of push polling going on. apparently the DoD is trying to “assess the impacts, if any, a change in the law … might have on military family readiness and military community life.”

from where i sit, getting rid of DADT, removing any mention of homosexuality from the UCMJ, allowing gay families (geez, there’s got to be a better term for family units where the central adults are the same sex… oh, wait… “families”?) the same benefits as straight families, and no longer treating a large portion of the military population as typhoid marys could only be a good thing. but maybe i’m queer that way.

to anyone who actually liked inception:

you’re all sheeple. it’s a boring, derivative pantsload of crap. the wizard of oz is better. the nightwatch series, for all its messiness, is better. the action sequences were done decades ago in nearly every bond flick. dicaprio reprises his shutter island role. ellen page does a commendable job with the material, but chris nolan still can’t write women to save his life.

and i want to nom on some joseph gordon-levitt.

update 3 august at dinner on sunday night i was informed by a friend that the bond-ish-ness was intentional, and that nolan meant it to be his audition reel to direct the next bond gig. that makes me feel slightly less antagonistic toward inception, but not a whole lot.

for the last two years or so, i’ve been paying half-attention to the bicycle-vs-car debate that’s been going on in the DC area. with several friends who bike around the metro area, i would like it if cyclists didn’t have to take their life into their hands every time they got on their bikes. as a driver, i would like it if the cyclists out there obeyed the traffic laws when they’re on the streets.

today, i think they should all go to hell.

this morning, a little before nine, i was driving up arizona ave from canal road towards macarthur boulevard. for about a half-block, the road is one lane uphill, two lanes downhill. as the line of cars made its way uphill, an impatient cyclist split the lanes, trying to pass the cars on the right (no shoulder, mind you). stymied by the large SUV in front of me, he proceeded to yell at and pound on it, as though the driver of the SUV were at fault. then he swings out into the left turn lane that diverges, and pulls the same shit with the cars in that lane.

if that asshole ever gets hit by a car, i won’t be crying.

however. not a half-block later, as i’m driving across macarthur, i see the following: in the downhill lane, there’s a cyclist waiting for a break in the traffic to make a left turn. he’s got his arm out, signaling. he’s at a full stop, while cars move around him. then, an impatient driver who was behind him waiting to make the same left turn swings out around him, and makes the left turn inches from his front wheel.

if that asshole ever wraps his car around a tree, i’m going to be crying for the tree.

so. right now, i have no sympathy for anyone in the bicycles-vs-cars debate. we’re all assholes, and we all deserve what’s coming to us.

he’s at the specialist vet (they’re unfortunately the really expensive ones), laid up with fluid around his heart and lungs. no theories as to why, yet. we’re scared and worried for the little guy.

holy shit life has become a comedy of errors.

G and I are driving my car to STL to attend the memorial service for G’s grandmother. our friend Jesse borrowed G’s car to drive to VT. G’s car was serviced MONDAY by the dealer and we were told it would be fine to drive until a replacement water pump came in. G’s car, with Jesse, is now crapped out on side of interstate in northern MD, 90 miles from dealer, totally dead. Jesse’s cell phone is almost out of juice. We’re at a rest stop in PA trying to coordinate tow, repair at ANOTHER dealer, and payment. best of all: IT’S HAILING, and the windows in G’s car are down.

this spring, j gave me a bunch of vegetable seeds because he knows i like mucking about in the dirt. early this afternoon, g and i planted the first batch – 2 varieties of radish (cherry belle and easter egg blend) and an onion (italian red of florence). in a few weeks, we’ll put in the rest of the veggies – eggplant, cucumber, honeydew, cayenne and jalapeno peppers, orange bell peppers, and tomatillos.

this is the first attempt at a vegetable bed in this location. last year it was mostly overtaken by james’ hops, and the year before that it was a drought-resistant flowerbed (except that it rained a lot that year and killed everything). the year before that, it was home to several exuberant pumpkin vines, courtesy of an insufficiently hot composter. we’re attempting a modified square foot garden (with each grid closer to 2′ than 1′ square) – it will be interesting to see what transpires.

the beds on either side are strawberries (going gangbusters into year 3) and roses (surrounding fred).

so, the interesting thing about repeat miscarriages, it seems, is that there’s not a whole lot to be done if there isn’t some sort of chromosomal or clotting factor issue. when there is such an issue (about a third of the time) there are medical and surgical interventions that can happen. the other two thirds? the medical advice is to keep on truckin’.

or really, keep on fuckin’.

the RE visit today wasn’t too helpful; the resident (who had done a rotation on the psych ward when g was the attending – she recognized him and started to stammer a bit) was scattered and unnecessarily timid. i don’t think a case history should be taken with “um, so you don’t have a history of…?” questions, but maybe that’s just my survey instrument training talking. after 50 minutes of that (and a brief conversation with her attending), she sent us off to the lab, where they promptly relieved me of what felt like half my blood volume. going vasovagal was a distinct possibility. i’d post a photo of the needle site, but you’d just nod at the lovely bruise.

the upshot of all this is that if i don’t get pregnant this cycle, i get to do the clomid challenge next cycle (not as fun as it sounds, but it radically increases the chances of a multiple pregnancy) and have a hysterosalpingogram (i’ll spare the details, mostly because i don’t want to think about them right now – but it’s about as unpleasant as it sounds and will require the heavy painkiller artillery before and after).

w00t.

on tuesday, one of my docs asked me how bad this whole process would have to get before i gave up. i looked at him, and said “hunh? i’ve decided to get pregnant. until someone tells me i’m categorically unable to carry a pregnancy to term, i’m going to do whatever’s necessary. “hard” and “give up” do not compute.”

so, we begin again. with the knowledge now that i’ve a 50% chance of miscarrying – unless the tests tell us otherwise.

in other news, i’m sleeping in a lab tonight to see if the docs can determine a cause of my insomnia.

laloca: a one-woman effort to keep the DC-area medical establishment humming.

i expect great things.

first: i’ve discovered that the content of the internet can be described as an ever-decreasing fractal. it goes something like this:

• most of the content of the internet is porn.
• of the portion of the internet content that is not porn, a proportion equal to (porn)/(total content) is taken up by questionable online vendors.
• of the portion of the internet content that is neither porn nor questionable online vendors, a proportion equal to (porn)/(total content) is stupid emo shit.
• of the portion that is not porn, questionable online vendors, or stupid emo shit, a proportion equal to (porn)/(total content) is devoted to anthropomorphizing cute animals.
• of the portion that is not porn, questionable online vendors, stupid emo shit, or cute animals, a proportion equal to (porn)/(total content) is absorbed by religious and/or political zealotry.

and so on, and so forth.¹ if i could find my notes from my undergrad 4th dimensional math class (primary text: flatland), i could probably even graph it out in something other than an ever-narrowing pie chart.

2. nothing gets my goat like a badly-written survey instrument. if you’re going to ask about sexual behavior and accept the fact that non-monogamy exists, you might want to ensure that your followup questions aren’t written with a monogamy bias so strong that it’s impossible for a multi-partnered person to answer them in a way that won’t give you crap data. yes, i’m looking at you, university of indiana PhD candidate research.²

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¹ these categories are not exhaustive, nor are they necessarily in the right order. i’m open to suggestions.
² honestly, if that’s the type of instrument design that gets approved, i’m glad i never went further in public health academia than an MPH. it seems there’s more rigorous design and pre-testing in the commercial world, where millions of dollars of marketing and r&d money are assigned on the basis of research findings.