Evacuation over. All is well.

Well, I feel kind of dumb. I arrived at daycare and hurried into the office. Everyone was working calmly. "Is everything OK?" I asked. "Yes," they said. I couldn't even tell if they knew what I was talking about.

As it turned out, everything was OK. The kids were OK, the teachers were OK, the staff was OK. No one cried or anything, not even the adults. In fact, they were all back in their rooms within an hour.

Now, I would have known this if I had been receiving my email, but my ISP's email servers chose today to crash. Here is the email I should have received, if my soon-to-be-ex ISP didn't suck:

We got the all clear. The suspicious backpack has been removed. We're back in our classrooms safe and sound.

So we had our toddler parent meeting as scheduled. We talked about tantrums, and watched videos of our kids playing. And that was that.

Evacuation.

Here's an email you never want to get from the director of your child's daycare center:

[The center which houses the daycare center] has evacuated us due to a suspicious backpack left between A and B wings. We are all safe and happy and hanging out by the Theater just off the big parking lot. If we are not there, we are in the big auditorium that borders that same parking lot. This is probably nothing to worry about, but better to be absolutely safe. We are fine with the children. We have water and crackers and bottles for the babies.

As you might guess...I'm headed over there. I'm having all sorts of visions of fire engines and police cars and news vans. I'm trying not to be too freaked out. Of all the things.

And the winner is...

Yes, I watched the Emmys last night, and somehow managed to keep from gouging out my own eyes.

This morning, I had much better news: the winners of the 2007 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. Hard to pick a favorite, and sadly, there's no Sex Writing category, but this one comes close:

He held her desperately in his arms and stroked her silken hair, and as he drew her full red lips to his, he ravenously smothered her with lots of smooches.

Thank you, Bill Kerschbaum of Ann Arbor, Michigan. You made my day.

The doctor is in.

New doctor, new meds, new injections, new procedures. All in the last two weeks.

Once again, my body seems to defy its chronological age, responding to the new drugs like a hen on steroids. It peaked yesterday (the big day). I walked around feeling like someone was stabbing me in my lower abs with ice picks. It was all I could do to stand upright. Not that I'm complaining.

Yesterday we went to the birthday party for one of the kids from Cami's playgroup. I walked in and saw immediately that the birthday boy's mom was pregnant with #2. I'm happy for them. I certainly don't expect other people to stop expanding their families just because we don't seem to be able to. I just wish some of it would rub off on me.

Vote for The Mind Reels

I thought I was done with cliques and popularity contests when I graduated from high school. Silly me. I didn't yet know about the Greek system. Or the corporate world. And just when I thought I had those milieus figured out, the Internet came along.

Please help me find a seat at the online version of the cool kids' table by voting for me in the blogger's choice awards:



Caveat: I'm nominated in the Hottest Mommy Blogger award not because I think I'm hot (I know what I look like when I wake up in the morning, and it's not Angelina Jolie), but because:

1. I didn't think I'd have a snowball's chance in hell of winning the Best Parenting Blog, what with Finslippy and all.
2. I write about sex. A lot.
   
3. The cool kids in high school (or college, for that matter) would never in a million years have expected me to become a sex writer.

So here it is, in a nutshell: You can help me overcome years of bowl haircuts, glasses, braces, being the smart girl, having a Farrah Fawcett hairstyle, and being an overweight co-ed with a Dorothy Hamill 'do. And give me something to talk about at the next reunion.

Next up: My nominations for the world's worst parents, and my return to Human Pinchushion status.

Another milestone reached (Silicon Valley edition).

The scene: The curb outside my son's daycare. I was about to start my ignition when my son piped up from the back seat. "Apple! Apple!" he said. I looked in the direction he was pointing. No apple. Only car.

And then I saw it.

The white Apple Computer sticker in the rear window of the car in front of us.

Toddler developmental milestone reached: Logo Recognition.

I didn't know whether to be proud ("My son can recognize corporate logos. Can yours? No? Oh, I'm soorrrrryyyy..."), or deeply frightened. Because other than a single iPod, we don't own a single Apple product.

A sex writer's top 15 first-date tips for guys.

A male friend recently asked me for some "first-date advice." I haven't had a first date in about six years, but that didn't stop me. Here's what I told him:

1. Remember these words: "Swiss boarding school." Deport yourself at all times as if you attended an elite Swiss boarding school that emphasized manners and deportment. You don't have to bow or address her as "Milady," you just have to pay attention to #2.

2. Chivalry is not dead. Open doors for her. Pull out her chair. Help her on and off with her coat. Don't make a big deal of it, just do it. This tells her that your mother brought you up well and that you know how to treat a woman.

3. A tip for the Internet age: Don't email (or IM, or text message) back and forth for months without asking her out. Once you've established some basic rapport, seal the deal. Suggest meeting in person with a specific time and place. "Wanna meet for coffee sometime?" is lame. "Would you like to meet at the Savoy Cafe in North Beach on Saturday afternoon?" shows that you have some class. This benefits you, too: you won't waste weeks developing a deep online connection, only to discover that you have the chemistry of two Pet Rocks when you meet in person. (You do remember Pet Rocks, don't you?)

4. Don't call her on a Friday to see if she wants to "hang out" on Saturday. That's just disrespectful. She has a life. Give her some advance notice. A week is nice, but don't call her any later than Wednesday for a weekend date.

5. If you're meeting for dinner, MAKE A RESERVATION. A guy once asked me to the symphony, but neglected to make dinner reservations and so we did the Bataan Death March around the San Francisco Civic Center looking for a place to eat. I failed to see this as the first of many red flags, and my relationship with Evil Neal is now the stuff of legend.

6. Offer to pick her up (Evil Neal had me meet him at the local Starbucks for our second date, lame-o), and make sure to walk her to her car.

7. Pay for her. I'm a raving feminist, but this is the way it is. You ask her out, you pay. Even if she asks you you, you pay. Whether it's coffee or dinner, YOU pay. Comprendez-vous? If she's got any class at all, she'll reach for her purse (if she doesn't, that says something right there). But don't let her pay. Don't expect anything in return, although it's nice if she offers to pay for coffee or a drink later, if there is a later.

8. Treat waiters and other service people with extreme politeness. Nothing will turn a date off sooner than someone who's an asshole to the waiter.

9. Ask her questions about herself without turning it into an interrogation. I don't need to belabor this. You know how to carry on a conversation with another adult.

10. On the flip side, some women--especially those with training as journalists, not that I'm mentioning any names--are very good at drawing people out. Do not, under any circumstances, violate Cynthia's 20-Question Rule, wherein she asks you 20 questions before you've asked her a single one. Yes, this has happened to me. I counted. By the time our appetizers arrived, I could have written his biography.

11. Relax, and be yourself. Do not try to impress her or be someone you're not. Even if it's not a love match, it's nice to make a friend because it is a very small world. My husband tried way to hard to impress me on our first date, and I almost sprinted out of the cafe. Obviously, I gave him another chance, but that's another story.

12. Do not under any circumstances complain about your ex(es), unless you happen to find yourself talking about relationships and you can turn it into the world's funniest story without revealing the slightest trace of bitterness.

13. Relax, and be yourself.

14. A hug is perfectly OK at the end of a nice evening. So is a quick kiss if you can tell that there's mutual attraction. Note: on my second date with the man who is now my husband, I totally thought we were going to play tonsil hockey (the bottle of wine may have helped), so I went and brushed my teeth. He could tell, and gave me a hug instead. By being non-sluttish, he actually created intrigue. Nice strategy, and too bad he's forgotten.

14a. As for anything else...well, obviously one hopes for that, but perhaps not after a first date, even if you bought her a really, really nice dinner. I would worry a bit about anyone who jumps in bed with you too soon ("you" being generic because of course, you're irresistible). No matter what a woman says, assume that she will expect a relationship after you have sex.

15. Last but not least, relax, and be yourself.

I hope this helps my friend, who is inexplicably single despite his keen wit and well-developed biceps. I hope it helps you, or someone you know. Because even if you're one of my six married female readers...well, sometimes our hubbies need a reminder. Or 15.

Next up (eventually): A sex writer's top 10 first-date tips for gals. (You want sex tips? Buy the book.)

And now, because I can't get enough relationship angst, I'm off to watch "Tell Me You Love Me" on HBO.

Modesty prevails.

If my son wanders into my room while I'm getting dressed, he rushes to the corner of the bed where I hang my PJs, pulls them off the bedpost and hands them to me, as if to say, "Woman, for God's sake, put some clothes on!"

Of course, maybe he's just trying to be helpful.

I'm not sure where he got this. My husband and I, while not exhibitionists, certainly aren't overly modest. Once you've gone through the experience of giving birth, and nearly everyone has either handled or seen every part of your body, you pretty much give up on keeping it all under wraps.

All aboard.

Some of my readers (OK, one of them) have been complaining about my lack of blog posting lately. Sorry. I haven't had much to report except for this:

My nice Pottery Barn coffee table has suddenly morphed into a train table.

Where there once were magazines and coasters, there is now a figure-eight track, complete with a bridge, a water tower and a train station with clanging bell. Oh, and several (hopefully) lead-free train cars. (Don't get me started on the whole recall disaster. I'm still recovering from having to throw out my son's lead-tainted vinyl bibs.)

My son is all about trains right now. He can play with trains for hours, meticulously moving them around and around the track. I'm not kidding. I didn't think a toddler could be so focused.

The only problem is that he falls apart when the train cars derail, as they inevitably do, because he insists on linking them altogether in a mile-long caravan. "Oh NO," he wails, when the cars jump the tracks.

"It happens," my husband tells him, but I don't think you can expect a not-quite-two-year-old to achieve such a Zen state of mind. Not when it comes to trains.

Beauty backlash.

A doctor told me today that I have beautiful ovaries.

I was not an attractive child. For at least part of my pre-pubescence, I had horn-rimmed glasses, braces and a bowl haircut. It was the 60s and early 70s, but still.

When my mom told me that beauty is on the inside, I'm not sure that my ovaries are what she meant.

Salt on the wound.

When I went to pick up Cami from daycare today, I noticed that one of the other moms was obviously pregnant. Cami's teacher then rattled off the names of all the other moms in his class who are pregnant with #2.

Shoot me. Just shoot me now, I wanted to scream. I have failed as a woman. Instead, I just stood there and smiled, hoping that she didn't notice my moist eyes.

I suppose this kind of thing is inevitable, but did I have to confront it today?

In other news, here's a great article from the New York Times about the discrimination workers face when they have to take care of a sick child or other family member. A subject I'll address more, when I'm not so tired.

A short hiatus.

I haven't blogged for a week. I'm in wait mode. And you never know who might be reading and what the ramifications will be. That's the chance you take when you write, whether it's on the Internet, or in print.

I write this blog because it helps me deal. It lets me share this experience without having to repeat the details over and over to my friends, even those who care. And it gives me a place to forget about doctors and shots for a while and write about movies.

A therapist recently shared with me a study that found that women with infertility experience depression and anxiety on par with people with cancer and HIV. This made me feel better (hey! all things considered, I'm keeping my shit together pretty well!), and yet worse.

But I know that one of the few good things to come out of all this--other than my son, one of the greatest blessings of my life--is the support I've received from total strangers I've met over the Internet. So if I can help one other woman feel not so alone, writing this blog is worth it.

About the new kid in town.

My friend Peggy described Sparky as my "late transfer in."

"It's like the guy who joins your classroom after the semester has started because his family just moved to town," she said.

I'm just hoping the new guy will end up being class valedictorian, prom king and the quarterback of the football team.

My life is turning into the mid-life version of a John Hughes movie. Fabulous.

An interesting turn of events.

So I'm driving to work this morning when Dr. P calls. And believe me, whenever your IVF clinic comes up on your caller ID, you take the call.

"Is this a good time to talk?" he asked, ever polite.

"Sure!" I said. I would hang up on George Clooney, my spiritual soulmate*, to talk to Dr. P.

He gives me an update on the seven 4-cell embryos we had left over after our embryo transfer. (No, they didn't let us take them home in a doggie bag. At Dr. P's suggestion, we left them in the lab to see what would happen.)

"One of your embryos developed into a blastocyst," he tells me. At this point my mind goes all fuzzy, because I thought the chances of this happening were somewhere between slim and none. He continues: "This gives you three options. First, you could let it expire in the lab. [I know that sounds kind of brutal. Those weren't his exact words, but as close as I can remember. Like I said, my mind got all fuzzy.] Second, you could freeze it for future use. Third, you could come in and we could transfer it."

As usual when processing a critical decision, my mind goes blank. "What would you do if you were me?"

"I would choose option three." I realize that this is what I was hoping he'd say.

"When would I come in?"

"Now!" He says, laughing.

What seems like a very stupid question enters my mind, but I have to ask it. "Will transferring this one hurt the other four?"

"Not at all," he says.

So I make a u-turn and drive back to the clinic. All goes well. Dr. P addresses my concern that the five embryos will be jostling each other like some sort of uterine mosh pit. "The relation of the embryos to the uterus at this point is like 5 ants to a football field," he tells me. As the daughter of a couple who had season tickets to every sports team in San Diego, I get this.

And now I have five embryos racing toward the end zone in the fertility equivalent of a Hail Mary: the four transferred Friday, and today's blastocyst, who I have named "Sparky" because of its sheer pluck. According to a chart I found on IVF-infertility.com, at my age, Sparky has about a 7.5% chance of being born. And if we make it that far, let's not talk about the chances of twins (or more). An article about multiples that appeared in yesterday's San Jose Mercury News gave me pause, let me just say.

Luckily, I'm not a math person, and I dropped my college statistics class. I get analogies (ants on a football field). I have to ignore statistics.

* Second only to my dear husband, of course.

Movie Review: The Holiday

After a steady diet of heavy, meaningful movies like "Little Children" and "Volver," I decided I needed more lighthearted fare. So I NetFlixed "The Holiday." The previews made it look like fun, mindless entertainment: Two women swap houses for the Christmas holiday. One (Cameron Diaz) gets a charming English cottage; the other (Kate Winslet) gets an incredible L.A. mansion. And the movie has a solid cast: Kate Winslet, mega-biscuit Jude Law, Jack Black, Edward Burns and semi-biscuit Rufus Sewell. And Cameron Diaz. Who destroys the film.

You know, I've never felt that strongly one way or another about Miss Diaz. She's always seemed kind of innocuous, like a big Labrador Retriever puppy: cute, gangly, and fun to hang out with. She upstaged Julia Roberts in "My Best Friend's Wedding." She did more-than-solid comedic work in "There's Something About Mary." And, most notably, she was great in "Being John Malkovich"--in part for her completely willingness to let herself be made up to look totally frumpy. (We won't mention the "Charlie's Angels" films. I won't even link to them. Sure, I've only seen bits of those travesties, but I resent the moments of my life that I lost watching them.)

So imagine my surprise and disappointment to see her suck absolutely all of the life out of "The Holiday." She didn't deliver a single believable line reading. Not one. Maybe it wasn't her fault: she was totally miscast as Amanda, the uptight owner of a movie trailer production company.

Fortunately, her scenes are saved by the fact that she gets to play most of them opposite the utterly tasty Jude Law, who--in addition to being photographed mostly in golden tones that filled me with rather unholy emotions--manages to make you believe that 1) he's in love with the annoying Amanda and 2) he's a nice guy, despite what you've read in the tabloids about his fondness for his kids' nannies.

For example. His character Graham (Iris' brother) tells us that he cries at the drop of a hat...whereas Amanda can't cry at all. Oooh. Irony. Whatever. I cried when I saw Diaz wearing a bra in one of her sex scenes with Law. Who wears a bra when they're in bed with Jude Law? Even Kate Winslet let us see her boobs in "Little Children," because she knows that women don't have sex wearing underwire. (The following photo isn't that scene. But it shows Jude being all sheepish and adorable and hoping that we'll remember him for his other, better movies.)


(Photo courtesy of 楊曼妮的閒晃世界Mani Yang's lounging world. Some rights reserved.)

Luckily, the movie has Kate Winslet, who seems as incapable of turning in a bad performance as Diaz seems unable to stop mugging. As Iris, the lovesick writer of a wedding column for the Daily Telegraph, Winslet easily has you rooting for her to dump Jasper (Rufus Sewell), the object of her unrequited love, in favor of Miles, played by the strangely subdued Jack Black. Black plays his scenes as if he can't quite believe the script isn't giving him a chance to improvise.

For my tastes, director Nancy Meyers (of "Something's Gotta Give" and "What Women Want") should have cut down the subplot about Iris befriending an aging old-studio Hollywood screenwriter (Eli Wallach), but she seems to want to use this B-story to comment on "what's happened to the movies." Her own being Exhibit A.

Seriously. What happened to the romantic comedy genre? Is it just totally dead? I think it's been replaced by movies like Judd Apatow's truly funny "Knocked Up," which, in all its R-rated glory, manages to convey how relationships really are: messy, off-color and full of all sorts of unacceptable emotions and bodily fluids.

In "The Holiday," Nancy Meyers doesn't seem to want her characters to get their hands (or their emotions) dirty. The movie may be glossy fun, but it's deeply dishonest. It left me feeling like I'd just eaten a Safeway peach: beautiful on the outside, but tasteless and dry once you bite into it.

Transfer Day.

Today was embryo transfer day. I'm not saying how many we transferred. I'm just that superstitious. But we did well. Or, more accurately, our little cells did well.

Now comes the two-week wait, or the 2WW as it's known on the Babycenter.com boards. Also known as the most agonizing period in a couple's life.

What I wouldn't give for a nice glass of wine right now.

And in other good news...

Cami is saying more and more words. The latest: "Hello." Only the way he says it, it sounds like "Huh-doh."

He's becoming a little person.

Good news.

Just got off the phone with Dr. P. He's a pretty calm person, but he sounded almost buoyant as he gave me the fertilization report: of my 15 little eggs, they did ICSI on 13. And of those 13, 11 fertilized. Eleven. That's practically a litter.

Now I have to sit here and pray that those little cells keep dividing and dividing for Friday's big transfer. (Don't worry. We won't transfer all 11. How many we do transfer...well, that decision is like playing the lottery.)

It's so hard to keep my hopes under control. Especially when it's something that's totally, completely, out of my control.

A few good eggs.

Egg retrieval this morning. 15 eggs. 8-15 is average, so I did pretty well for an old broad. Doctors and nurses were congratulating us in the hallway. Their optimism almost scares me.

The procedure itself was a non-issue. But then, having gone through it twice already, I knew what to expect. And after a Valium and a shot of Demerol...well, let's just say that I'm still feeling good, five hours later.

The clinic has a monitor mounted right above the table, so I got to watch as they aspirated each follicle. This took my mind off the fact that there was a needle poking around inside me, which wasn't the most comfortable thing in the world, let me tell you. But not a whimper out of me.

So now the waiting begins. First I have to wait for the fertilization report, which I'll get tomorrow. Then, after the embryo transfer on (probably) Friday, I get to wait two long agonizing weeks for the pregnancy test.

For now, I'm ensconced on the couch, watching movies. First up was "Catch and Release," which really was a lot better than I expected. And I'm thinking a nap is very much in order.

Welcome to my pharmacy. I mean, my life.

Here's a glimpse into my life over the 11 days. If you're afraid of needles, avert your eyes.


I'll walk you through it. From left to right:

• Menopur. Or human menopausal gonadotropin (hMG), which is extracted from the urine of postmenopausal women. (Who are these women donating their urine? The mind reels.) Menopur is stimulates the development of multiple eggs. We won't go there right now. Anyway, every night, my husband mixed this up and injected it into my hip. You can see the needle in the center of the photo. This one hurt like a motherf$#$&*(#$. Good times.
  
• Diazepam, better known as Valium. Yeah, baby! I get to take one tonight, to help me sleep, and then I have to take one tomorrow morning at 7:30am to relax me for my egg retrieval. If you call me at about 8am, you'll get to talk to one happy camper.
  
• Leuprolide Acetate, a.k.a. Lupron. I already talked about this one in an earlier post. That little needle with the orange cap is what I use to inject it. Twice a day, morning and night.
  
• Gonal-f. That's the white and red needle in the front that looks like a pen. In fact, it's called the Gonal-f RFF Pen. Which be all James Bond and stuff (you know, in the event that James had to suddenly help Pussy Galore produce multiple eggs), except that I had to keep it in the refrigerator. So there was no chance of me pulling it out my purse and trying to write a check with a fertility medication worth several thousand big ones. Instead, I got to screw a needle onto it and inject myself twice a day. (That's five injections a day, for those of you keeping score.)
• Doxycycline. That's the prescription bottle back near the alcohol prep pads. An antibiotic that both hubby and I get to take twice a day to prevent any infections that might screw up the proceedings.
  
• Novarel. Are you tired yet? I am. Novarel is human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG). Hubby injected this one into my hip last night at precisely 9pm. My caffeine- and alcohol-drinking days are officially over, at least for a while. Novarel induces ovulation in about 40 hours, which is why my egg retrieval is at 9am tomorrow, 36 hours later. Don't want my docs going in there and finding empty follicles. Not at these prices.

In the back is the sharps container. I love having something that says "biohazard" in my kitchen. So appropriate.

I think that's it. And I haven't even touched on the side effects, the most irritating of which is that I now have the water retention of a camel, which is a great thing to have during bikini season. But it's temporary, and I can live with that.