Seriously, Universe? SERIOUSLY?

I'm not entirely certain, and definitely need more research, but empirical evidence seems to suggest:

I spent at least a few former lives getting my kicks by strangling kittens and in front of wheelchair-bound children while simultaneously spitting on the American flag, frying up California Condor egg omlettes and possibly sporting a Nazi tattoo.

Or seven.

Far-fetched? Perhaps, but it's the only explanation I can come up with as to why Fate keeps kicking me in the stomach. I'm usually a fairly ardent supporter of the idea that what doesn't kill us makes us stronger, and things happen for a reason and yadda yadda yadda...but geez-oh-pete, can I have a little breathing room please?

So, my friend J, who agreed to be my known donor for the Imp, has bailed on me.

Sunday night, no less, after last Friday...which was pretty much one of the most soul-destroying days I've ever experienced as a teacher. So, I'm bracing myself to charge right back into the fray that is my school and J messages me up with: "we need to talk."

And, you know? I asked him to be my donor 7 months ago. Went over every detail of it with him, what would be required, how we would do it, what to expect and what sort of agreement as to his part in the Imp's life we would have. And literally, every time I talk to him, I'm like: "PLEASE do not answer me until you are 100% sure. Our relationship will not change if you say no, I will not be angry or upset with you if you say no...but I need you to be absolutely sure before you give me an answer." And after about five months of talking and considering, he says yes. Utterly, completely yes. "Are you SURE?" says I. "Do you understand what this will entail, and why your part will be, and are you okay with it?" Yes, says he. "Take another month or so to really consider it...take a look at this Known Donor questionnaire, take a look at this contract and REALLY be sure," says I.

See where this is going?

So, yeah, the 'we need to talk' turns into he's not emotionally ready to do this, and maybe if I ask him in a year, etc. etc. etc.

Oh, and apparently, he only said yes as a reflex, 'cause a couple of friends of his utterly cut him out of their lives right after he met me (five years ago) and he was afraid I'd do the same if he said no.

And let me say right here, that I'm not upset that he said no. I told him from the start that I wouldn't be, and I meant that. I'm not stupid...getting into a known donor situation with a donor who's not 100% on board with the idea and in agreement with the way things will be is a recipe for disaster. Better he tell me this now, rather than start to have second thoughts when I'm waiting to ovulate or, God forbid, when I'm pregnant. I'm okay with him saying no.

I'm not sure I'm okay with him saying no after I've spent months BEGGING him not to give me an answer unless it's a final one, and flat out telling him that I'd rather he say no or ask for more time to think, because it would kill me if he said yes and then changed his mind. If that makes sense.

I'm also really pissed that he compared me to those other friends who ditched him. Like, that's all the respect you have for me and my investment in our relationship after five years? To say that you're afraid to say something that'll upset me 'cause you think I'll do the same thing? We live on opposite sides of the country...if I didn't want him in my life, it'd be pretty damn easy to ditch him, and it's quite difficult to maintain the closeness we have.

I'm not real happy that the day after he told me this, he greets me with an abortion joke, either.

Just, I dunno. I know that this is literally NOTHING compared to what other women go through to have their babies. I feel really selfish and whiny when I read some of the other blogs I go to. But, we can't help what we feel.

And right now, I feel like throwing a tantrum worthy of a five year old at the way the Universe keeps throwing monkey wrenches into my plans here.

But I'm trying to keep my self-pity to my blog, here, instead of making my family and friends deal with my angst. It's just soooo frustrating. So I guess now I go back to the sperm banks. Midwest is who I was going with before, so I think I'll stick with them. I'd intended to do at-home insemination, but at this point, I'm wondering if I might as well just go for broke with doctor's IUI.

Random acts of bloggish levity:

How awesome does Iron Man 2 look? I love RDJ...man's frickin' brilliant. And I wouldn't kick him out of bed for eating crackers.

I was gonna make a joke about these childhood beauty pageants....but seems like shooting fish in a barrel. No sport to it. God, Imp, if you decide to be a girl PLEASE do not be into that crap. Like, for reals. Mommy couldn't take it.

Again, because I know she drops by here sometimes...Tammy, your comments always brighten my day and make me feel so much better, and I continue to be amazed at the generosity of your spirit. I am sooooooooooo happy that things are looking like they're going to be going your way and that you're soon going to have your FET. If anyone ever deserved a happy ending, it's you and I am praying so, so hard that things work out this time.

Counteracting the Poison

'Cause yseterday just made me so angry.

Dear Universe,

Thank you for all the good things I have in my life right now. Thank you for the three boys that stopped the inane cheering during that fight in my room yesterday and dove in to restrain the two fighters while screaming, "man, get off my teacher!" after they saw the one hit me.

Thank you for last weekend, and the opportunity to hang out with my kid sister while she picked out her gorgeous wedding dress. Thank you for giving her a perfect mate in my future-brother-in-law.

Thank you for my grandfather's recent report of good health and for letting me have my two remaining grandparents in my life a little longer.

Thank you for the boy at the end of such a nasty day yesterday, who came to ask me such a minor thing as using my computer to look up a bus route for a friend of his in the high school, and his exclamation of "See, I told you, Ms. E's the best person on this hallway, man. She always has your back!" Such things are just what I need after days like that.

Thank you for my beautiful boy, Marley, and his unrestrained enthusiasm every time he sees me. Nothing quite like walking into an apartment and being greeted like you've returned from the dead.

Thank you for finally, finally seeing fit to give Tammy W. some real hope that she'll have her peanut in her arms soon, and thank you for her husband's recoveries and continued strength. Theirs is one story that truly deserves a happy ending and I'm glad it looks like they're gonna get it.

Thank you for my Mom. No elaboration necessary, just thank you for my awesome mother.

And silly as it sounds, thank you for decent Chinese food just a couple blocks away.

Some days it just doesn't pay to chew through the restraints

Heyas,

So, I'm not feeling particularly clever or sarcastic today...just bloody fucking tired. Today, two of my boys got into a fight in my classroom. full on kicking, punching, choking, trying to KILL each other. And I go and try to break it up, get between them and separate them, and the kid I'm holding back suddenly turns around and fucking punches me in the stomach to get me to let go so he can go back at the other kid. Punches me. Deliberately. Hard enough that I couldn't breathe properly for about five minutes after the fight ended and the offenders were sent to the office.

And then you know what? The office fucking sends the kid BACK to my classroom, unescorted, to get his things so he can go home for his three day suspension.

Three. Fucking. Days. He HIT me and they give him what is essentially a paid three day vacation.

And then, in the next period, I hear yelling in the hallway during class...so I go out to see what's going on and it's two more of my kids (didn't have me that period) going at it, yelling at each other and cussing. So I clear the hall and write them up for detention and all of a sudden, several of my students come up and tell me that the girl who was yelling has a knife in her bag.

And I know the girl...she's not a bad kid. She has a hideous home life and she makes bad choices, but she's not a bad kid. But I can't ignore that possibility, so I have to pass the information on to the office.

And they search her bag and find a knife. So she's expelled.

And here's the thing that gets me. The boy who punched me, I'm sorry to say, is going to be dead or in jail by the time he's twenty, unless there's some kind of miracle worked in his life. He does not care about anyone or anything. He was *grinning* at me while another teacher hauled him out of my room. He knew exactly what he had done and that he had hurt me and he was PROUD of it.

There have been exactly five kids in seven years of teaching that I have looked at and said, this is just a bad kid. Five. This one is going to be the sixth, I'm pretty sure. I can't help him...whatever he needs to get his life on track, I don't have it. And he got a three day suspension for deliberately striking me.

The girl? I'm not defending her having a weapon in school. There was no excuse for it. But I know that girl. She wouldn't have used it on anyone. It was there for show, or because she wanted to look tough, or even because she had it in her bag for some stupid reason and forgot to take it out. She wouldn't have hurt anyone with it. She is a child that can be helped. I was one of the teachers she tried for, came to for help, talked to, and TRUSTED. I could have helped her, I WAS helping her overcome the bad things in her life...and she's getting expelled. She'll probably be tossed into an even more hardcore school than ours and fall through the cracks.

And I had to be the one to report it and start the ball rolling. So, I get the sociopath who struck me back in my classroom in three days and that poor girl gets tossed aside into the cesspool that is "the system" in my city.

There are days when I absolutely fucking HATE my job.

And the Downside of Returning to My Home State....

Is the fact that it has been something like five years since I had to drive in any serious snow.

And wow...I remember now how much fun it's NOT. Seriously. I've had fun--it was nothing like that. Not even a major snow, either...barely three inches. *sigh* Gone are the days when I charged merrily through winding country roads covered with ice in my trusty '72 Dodge (great car--in horrible shape by the time she got to me, but a trusty engine and if I had ever gotten into a tangle with a Honda, the Honda was going DOWN!!!), unconcerned with my ability to stay safely on the road.

Granted, I nearly slid off the road into a fifty foot ravine that one time, but I avoided it.

Point is, we have our first serious snowfall and not only does my school district not call off or call a delay (when EVERYONE else in the county was either on a delay or closed altogether I might add), but I'm stuck out in one of the neighborhoods where the main roads are clear, but everything else is treacherous.

I have to drive over a lot of "everything else" to get to school. I think I left permanent finger-tip impressions in the steering wheel.

Driving over icy, snow covered roads? SO not like riding a bicycle, at least for this Elf. Quite the nerve-wracking trip.

Apart from the snow, 'tis been a harrowing few days. My heating sort-of went out (I say sort of, because the heat worked just fine...just the regulator broke. So, I could run the heat full blast until the apartment got to oven-like temperatures and then turn it off until it got too cold, then start the process over again. Not a big deal during the evening, but after I actually went to bed, it was bloody annoying!) and more importantly, my poor Marley had a couple of his seizures.

I've mentioned Marley's bum liver before. Basically, his liver doesn't filter his blood properly and so when he gets large amounts of protein in his diet, toxins build up in his system to the point where he has full-on grand mal seizures that seem to last forever (in actuality, only a minute or two...but damn it scares me). Any road, I'm careful about his diet, but while I was home with my mother and her husband, Mom and I went out to see a movie, leaving Marley and our family dog in the care of my stepfather.

And I say this with all kindness, but my stepfather, although a very nice guy, is not the most observant person in the world. And my Marley is MUCH taller and more limber than our old Golden Retriever and so, while my stepfather was watching the news, Marley snuck into the kitchen and managed to get into the retriever's kibble.

And the cat food.

Which is basically pure protein, you understand.

He felt terrible about it when he heard me come in and start cussing a blue streak andrealized what had happened, and I tried not to be angry over what was an honest mistake...but at the same time, it's not like that stuff just gives Marley the runs. It could KILL him if he got enough of it over a short enough period of time. And I had been going to put Marley in his crate while we were out so stepfather wouldn't have to worry about watching my special-needs dog (which I'll admit, can be quite trying sometimes), but he insisted that he'd rather have Marley out so my baby could run and play with the other animals, and he promised he'd watch Marley extra-close. And he didn't.

So yeah, little pissed about that.

Was even more pissed when the night after, when Marley and I had gone home, I get woken up in the wee small hours of the morning by my 75 pound dog seizing in the bed with me. In a way, I'm DAMN lucky the heat was wonky, 'cause I had turned it off before I went to bed, and the apartment had cooled sufficiently that I had burrowed under my comforter rather than resting my arms on top of it as I usually do. 'Cause Marley's jaw locked and he sank his teeth right into where my arm was. As it is, the comforter was thick enough that I just got a couple of bruises. If he'd gotten flesh, I've no doubt that I'd have at least needed stitches.

Horrible as the seizures are, I've at least gotten used to dealing with them, so I recovered from the surprise of being woken in such a way quickly...but he had a total of three seizures over the course of two hours (the first two being so close together that I didn't have time to move him from the bed, and of course, he loses bowel and bladder control during them. That was fun.).

The third seizure was at about three in the morning, and then I spent the rest of the night snapping to look at him everytime he moved or breathed loudly, so needless to say, I was wrecked when I had to get up for school at six. Marley, though, recovered fairly quickly after the third and was pretty much back to normal by the time I had to leave. He's doing fine now, but I'm switching him abck to his vegetable-based home made diet for a few days just to be sure.

Oy.

So, one would think that after those events, life would just settle down for a bit, yeah?

*falls over laughing*

Oh no, you know how things work for this Elf.

This morning, my door stopped working.

Yes, you read that correctly. My door stopped working.

My door. My front door.

Stopped.

Working.

I wake up, I take Marley out for his morning pee, I take him back in, I check my email. With about ten minutes before I leave, I go to turn the car on to defrost it, turn the knob....

And nothing happens. The door will not open. It's not that the deadbolt is thrown...the door simply will not open. The handle turns, but it will not let me out. And I get this crazy idea that maybe condensation or something has frozen the door shut ('cause it's damn cold outside, and what? Like I know how stuff like that works?!) and so I start pulling in earnest, trying to force the door. And nothing happens.

I'm trapped in my apartment.

Talk about being beside myself with WTF?!?!?!?! Who the hell gets stuck in an apartment because the door breaks?

I do, apparently.

So yeah, I'm standing there contemplating the horror of having to call into work and be like "My door's broken, I can't get out, so I'm gonna be late" when my more sensible side sighs heavily and is all, "You know what you gotta do, right?"

So yeah, long story short, I had to kick out the screen in my bedroom (literally kick it out, 'cause that bastard was bolted to the frame!) and crawl through the window to get to work today.

And maintenance had to crawl through the front window to get in to fix my broken door.

And SERIOUSLY!!!!! Who has stuff like this happen to them?!?!?!

Things this Elf is looking forward to: this upcoming snowstorm, if it gets me off school tomorrow :)
Things currently annoying the crap out of her: take your pick. Still pretty incredulously pissed about the door.
Pretty boy of the moment: Eh, still stuck on Jude Law as Watson...I need to go see that film again.

Epic New Year's FAIL that's kinda not

Heyas,

Let me preface this by stating, in case I have not before--I honestly don't remember, that I am not yet even thirty. Granted, at twenty eight, I'm way closer to thirty than twenty...but still, I'm in my twenties at least for another one and a half years or so.

So, according to my sisters, there is dreadful, epic, dsigraceful New Year's fail in the fact that I spent New Year's Eve at my mother's, curled up on a twin mattress with Marley, watching the Twilight Zone marathon.

Incidentally? Sharing a twin mattress with Marley is no easy feat. He only weighs about 75 pounds (I say "only" 'cause my old vet warned me he might possibly go to 85 or 90 when he was full grown), but he's over five feet tall when he puts his paws on one's shoulders and gets on his hind feet.

Any road, no drinking, no partying, just me and my dog and some cherry Dr. Pepper and Rod Serling.

And it was pretty effin' brilliant.

'Cept when those Sarah McLachlan ASPCA commercials kept coming on. Gah! It makes me want to run down to the pound and adopt every single freakin' furry there. Wow.

Ahem.

So yeah, another year bites the dust and Twenty Ten rolls around. May the best that we've seen be the worst that we see.

Incidentally, how much of a sci-fi geek does it make me that I love how futuristic "Twenty Ten" sounds over "Two Thousand and Ten"? Granted, the fact that I basically sat through at least 18 hours of a 46 hour Twilight Zone marathon should probably put paid to any lingering doubts that I am a science-fiction freak.

Not much else going on. I went to see Sherlock Holmes on Christmas and was utterly enchanted. And not just by Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law (though admittedly, they make for very fine eye candy). I see where a lot of the complaints I've read from fans of the original stories come from, but quite honestly, I'll forgive Guy Ritchie his flair for the overly dramatic (and damned annoying love of the damned annoying suuuuuuupppppeerrrrrr sloooooooooooooooow motion action) because he gave me a supremely competent and slightly badass Watson.

Ever read any of the original Sherlock Holmes novels and short stories? They're excellent (some of the VERY little Victorian literature I avidly enjoy) and there have been decent film and television adaptations, but over the years Watson just became a PARODY on the screen.

Yeah, I'm lookin' at YOU, Nigel Bruce *spits*

Ahem.

Any road, Watson-of-the-Books is a staunch ex-Army surgeon, an excellent shot, and while not as brilliant as Holmes, certainly no dullard. He's my favorite character in the stories.

Watson-of-the-Screen? *facepalm* There have been good protrayals, but over the years, the character tended to get slotted into the "bumbling sidekick" role...little more than comic relief, and so thick as to make you sit there and be like, "THIS is who the most brilliant detective in the world hangs out with? I think not!"

Jude Law's Watson?

Oh. Hell. YEAH!

Now THAT is how I always pictured the good Doctor.

And yes, the fact that Jude Law is ridiculously pretty is probably responsible for about 45% of that oh-hell-yeah.

All right, 50%.

65% at the outside.

I highly reccommend the film, and plan to see it multiple times more as soon as I get back to a city with a decent theater.

'Cause yeah, the theater in my mother's town? Probably hasn't seen a vacuum since the Nixon administration.

Things this Elf is looking forward to: Life in general...2010 is gonna be a good year
Things currently annoying the crap out of her: her darling cat, who is suddenly ALWAYS on the wrong side of a closed door and very vocal about it
Pretty Boy of the moment: Ummmm...did the above post not answer that?