The Onion: George Clooney still looking good.

Back in December, one of my favorite sources of hard-hitting journalism, The Onion, reported some news that still makes me giddy:

Sources: George Clooney Looking Good

HOLLYWOOD—Clooney, whose steely gaze has captivated millions around the globe, has attained the highest possible scores in every known measure of attractiveness.

How in the name of all that is holy did I miss this article when it first came out? No matter. From what I understand, this news is still true. He is still looking good. And no one can tell me differently. I mean, did you see the article in the March 3rd issue of TIME magazine? I did, on one of my rare lunch hours at the gym. I almost fell off the Stairmaster. (The online version of the article has a video. And pictures. Lots, and lots of pictures. Oh. My. God.)

And yes, I did hear that my spiritual soulmate is engaged. Thanks for rubbing it in. But can you blame him? Me being already married and a mommy and all? Now excuse me while I go cry myself to sleep.

PowerPoint breakup.

Wish I'd thought of this back when I was dating. Although once I did create a line chart showing my then-boyfriend (now husband) how the possibility of me saying "yes" to a marriage proposal decreased precipitously the longer he waited.

The unfairness doctrine.

One of the most frequent, and most heartbreaking, complaints you'll hear from anyone suffering from infertility goes something like this: "It's not fair that [insert name here] gets to have children, and I don't."

And by "[insert name here]," I don't mean that we begrudge our families or friends their pregnancies, even though there's always a pang when you hear on the day of a negative pregnancy test that your cousin-in-law, say, is pregnant with her third.

I'm talking about the people who abuse or neglect their kids. Who abuse or neglect themselves, when they have kids. Here, a certain fallen pop star is often mentioned. Example: After the failure of our most recent, and final, attempt to get pregnant, I whined to Dr. R something along the lines of, "It's not fair that Britney Spears gets to have two kids, and I don't." He chuckled sympathetically. "A lot of my patients are mad at Britney right now," he said.

Every day, it seems like I read or hear about some horrible thing some parent has done to their child. Just today, I read a news story about a Dallas woman who threw her two sons off a freeway overpass. Miraculously, they all survived, but I can't tell you how many similar stories I've read recently where the poor kids didn't. In fact, I could make a weekly feature of candidates for "World's Worst Parents." It's enough to make me start a self-imposed news embargo.

I'll tell you this now: I haven't met ONE infertile couple that wouldn't make great parents. These are the people who really want to have a child. They want to shower a child with love and affection. And for those of you who are going to say, "Well, you/they can adopt": yes, infertile people can adopt. But that doesn't take away the pain of infertility. And it doesn't take away the pain of hearing about people who abuse their kids, when you want one so, so badly.

It just doesn't seem fair, and I still haven't heard anything to make me feel better about it.

Cinequest 18: A conversation with Michael Arndt.

I can't believe it's taken me three days to post this, but that's life with a full-time job and a toddler. Anyway, Friday came close to my idea of a perfect day: I spent it talking about movies at Cinequest's Day of the Writer event. If they had tossed in free martinis and a shoulder rub, I would have achieved Nirvana.

The mega-fabulous Jens Michael Hussey, Cinequest's Director of PR, invited me to lunch with some of the speakers. (Full disclosure: I used to volunteer for Cinequest in the PR department. So it wasn't just my wit and charm that got me invited.) Jens, bless his heart, introduced me to the day's guest of honor: Michael Arndt, who won the Academy Award in 2006 for Best Original Screenplay for "Little Miss Sunshine" and is now working at Pixar on "Toy Story 3."

I'd like to report that success has gone to his head and made him an insufferably arrogant Hollywood a-hole, but I can't. He's really nice, friendly, humble guy. When I told him how much I'd enjoyed "Little Miss Sunshine," his response was, "I was really lucky." Then he went on to talk about the great cast and crew. Then he graciously inscribed the copy of Little Miss Sunshine: The Shooting Script that I'd tucked into my purse. Basically, I wanted to hug him.

Later in the afternoon, Arndt did an interview with Richard Walter (who chairs UCLA's graduate screenwriting program) at the San Jose Repertory Theater and received Cinequest's Maverick Spirit Award. Here are my notes, as least as far as I can decipher:

On how he started out: "I originally wanted to go to film school. I ended up working as a script reader for studios like Fox and Columbia...I wrote a bunch of edgy, dark scripts that didn't go anywhere. Then I decided to do the exact opposite: a script where people would go insane with happiness."

On the idea for "Little Miss Sunshine": "I happened to see a beauty contest on TV with little girls. I thought, what if one of the contestants was this fat little girl?"

On how his life has changed since winning an Oscar: "'Little Miss Sunshine' didn't get made for a long time. By the time it won the Oscar, I was working on staff at Pixar. I went back to work the next day [after the Academy Awards] and it was like, 'That's nice.' At Pixar, no one gives a shit if you won an Oscar. It's Pixar. But it's like working at Disneyland. I was so used to working alone."

On his writing habits: "Now that I'm working at Pixar, I go into an office in the morning and write all day. But when I'm home in Brooklyn, I wake up around 11, go get coffee, goof around, and when there's nothing else to do, I'll start writing. I can work about four or five hours before I'm ready to jump out the window. I'm not someone who believes you have to write every day. A lot of writing is sitting in a room solving problems and coming up with ideas. It's subterranean work."

On how he wrote "Little Miss Sunshine": "I resisted it. I thought it was too small. Then I saw an anime feature called 'My Neighbors the Yamadas." I realized that every family has a story. I wrote 'Little Miss Sunshine in Three Days.' [Three days? Three days? I almost feel out of my chair.] But I had spent five years thinking about the story. So I would just wake up and start writing."

On why "Little Miss Sunshine" worked while his previous scripts didn't: "Previously, I'd start with an idea of a story and the characters were just to fit that idea. But with 'Little Miss Sunshine,' I saw the characters first, and the story evolved. Once they start talking to each other, I just started hearing their voices in your head. And that tells you what they'll do."

On writing comedy: "In comedy, you set up absurd situations, and the more rational the character acts, the funnier it is. Like when the emcee asks Olive where her grandfather is, and she says 'In the trunk'...If you have a distinctive voice, you'll succeed in comedy. Diablo Cody [the screenwriter for "Juno"] has work for the next three years. With comedy, the writer is in control. Action movie writers are a dime a dozen. Comedies are also cheaper to make!"

And speaking of Diablo Cody: "I'm last year's Diablo Cody. It's amazing that the Academy has honored first-time writers two years in a row, and it's exciting that a low-budget, female-centric story can do so well. I'm a great fan of movies from the 1930s and 1940s, which had strong women. Female energy is great comic material. Comedy has become a boy's club, but in 'Juno,' the male characters are peripheral. The main relationships are among the women, and I hope that's a game-changer."

On the character of Duane: "Duane was especially close to me, probably because I read too much Nietzche when I was young. I thought it would be great to have a character take a vow of silence until he achieves a goal. Duane wants to take off and transcend his situation. He's a prisoner in his own home. I'm in love with characters who have a lunar sense of alienation."

On "Little Miss Sunshine"'s alternate ending, available on the DVD, where the family steals the trophy and hightails it out of the pageant: "That came from the mind of Abigail Breslin. It was shot in one take, because that's all we had money for. The original ending hadn't been working. I had eight different drafts of it." But the ending that they finally used "was an example of finally trusting your instincts. The meaning of the story was revealed in the climax. In this case, procrastination really was my friend."

On determination: "I didn't give up. I wrote 10 screenplays, and none of them went anywhere. I didn't have a Plan B. In the end, writing has to be its own reward. Writing is taking an active stance toward life. By writing, you're finding out how you think."

Why doesn't he write novels? "Good novelists see more deeply into life. Screenwriting is about action. Film can't compete with fiction's sense of interiority. Fiction seems like the deep end of the pool, and I'm a shallow guy." [Editor's note: Hardly. I've met shallow guys, and Michael, you are no shallow guy.]

But of all the things Arndt talked about, what really stuck with me were his comments about authenticity in writing. "Emotion is the final frontier," he said. "Honest emotion is the best special effect." (Think about that next time you're forced to watch "Transformers: The IMAX Experience.")

When they stopped the Q&A to give Arndt the Cinequest Maverick Spirit Award, I couldn't believe that 90 minutes had passed.

But I can't forget to tell you the joke with which Richard Walter ended the event.

"How many screenwriters does it take to screw in a light bulb?"
"Change??"

Bye bye, meds.

I got rid of my extra meds this morning. And as soon as I'd done it, my eyes welled up with tears. That surprised me.

But here's the thing: I didn't get rid of all of them. I still have one partially used Follistim pen in the fridge. But what am I thinking? That I'm going to randomly inject myself in the first half of my cycle, just to see what happens? Yeah, that would be safe.

Oh, the stories we tell ourselves.

Clearly, I'm still holding on to...something.

But if it's this bad with the meds, wait until I start giving away and selling the baby gear.

The ethics of eggs.

Came across this article, "Trading on the Female Body," in the newsletter of the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network. It covers a panel of speakers last November that called "for a moratorium on the exploitation of women through the trading of human eggs." They want "to raise awareness and promote safe research and regulation of this industry."

The issues the panel raised were real, and a little scary. I still don't know how I feel about egg donation. Even though I strongly believe that being a mom or dad is ultimately about parenting rather than DNA...I seem to have this primal instinct to want to bear my "own" children (even though now I'm apparently too old to bear more than one). My thinking is somewhat influenced by this article, "Your Gamete, Myself," by Peggy Orenstein, which appeared in the New York Times last year.

Of course, if I didn't have my son, I'd probably be giving egg donation much more serious consideration. I would want to have the experience of pregnancy (but is that only because I've been pregnant?).

This is much too much to think about on a Saturday morning, before coffee. Which, of course, I'm not supposed to be drinking, if I want to get pregnant again.

Brenda Strong rocks. (Family Matters conference report, Part I.)

If I were a real reporter, I would have been fired by now, because I'm just now getting to talking about the American Fertility Association's Family Matters conference, which happened a week ago in San Francisco. Even by blogosphere standards, my sense of "news" seems to, well, suck. Just keep in mind that I'm the person who bought a book on procrastination, but finally had to sell it on Amazon because I never got around to reading it.

So anyway.

Let me just start by saying that Brenda Strong (a.k.a. Mary-Alice Young, the narrator of "Desperate Housewives") is my new hero. At Family Matters, she led a session on "Yoga for Fertility." (That's also the name of her DVD, which I did regularly before getting pregnant with my son. I'm not saying there's a connection...I'm just saying.) Anyway, she actually got a room full of men and women dressed in street clothes doing yoga. I did feel much better afterwards (no word yet on whether I got pregnant). I guess that's why the AFA made her their national spokesperson.

Why is she my new hero? Basically, she's the grown-up version of the girl I would have been afraid to talk to in high school. She's very tall, slender(without being anorexic), beautiful, poised, smart, and really, really nice. She was down to earth and funny about her secondary infertility problems. When I stopped her after her session to tell her I had her DVD, I thought she was going to hug me. She has incredible blue eyes and looks directly at you, talking to you as though she's known you forever. And her story--what little of it she was able to share with me--was remarkably similar to mine. Infertility, it seems, is an equal opportunity condition.

Later, in the conference exhibit hall, I saw her sitting at a table, talking to anyone who approached. This being San Francisco, people were too cool to swarm her. I was going to ask to take a picture with her for this blog, but I chickened out. No idea why. I've asked to have my picture taken with other celebrities (Harry Belafonte, Peta Wilson, Alec Baldwin), but with Brenda, I lost my nerve. Given the setting, it just didn't seem right, I guess.

So Brenda, if you're out there, thanks for coming to San Francisco, and thanks for talking to us (and to me). And thanks for being the spokesperson for the AFA. We need someone like you.

When toddlers get hold of your credit cards.

My son sent me a bouquet of roses yesterday (with a little help from Dad).

I really am lucky to have two such thoughtful males in my life, even if one of them doesn't quite get the concept of Valentine's Day yet. However, he did seem to like (for about 3 minutes) his Valentine's Day card, which featured a picture of Thomas the Tank Engine and made a very annoying "peep peep" noise when he opened it again and again and again.

In blog-related matters, yes, I'm really behind in my posting. I sent to the American Fertility Association's Family Matters conference on Sunday. Lots of news from that. Most notably, I found myself on all fours in a room with Brenda Strong. (Calm down. We were doing yoga.) Story to come, but let me just say that she is my new girl-crush.

Family Matters conference in San Francisco

The American Fertility Association brings its "Family Matters" conference to San Francisco, February 10. Looks like an interesting agenda. I've been to a similar conference before (at Stanford) and found it to be really helpful. For a day, at least, I felt a little less alone.

Oh, and Brenda Strong of "Desperate Housewives" fame is giving a keynote. I did her Yoga for Fertility DVD a lot before I got pregnant with my son. I just couldn't get over the fact that I'm doing yoga to the voice of Mary Alice Young.

Heath Ledger, R.I.P.

I don't know why the news of Heath Ledger's death at the age of 28 is making me so sad.

Maybe it's because he had a daughter about my son's age. Maybe because he was such an incredible actor. Maybe because he seemed like a decent person. His daughter should have had the chance to grow up with him in her life.

Lately, I've been grieving over the deaths of strangers more acutely, but this death, of such a talented person, at such a young age, really gets to me.

Caffeine and miscarraige linked. Time to go cold turkey.

Well, here's some more news with which I could torture myself, were I so inclined. A new Kaiser Permanente study published today in the Amerian Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology says that "high doses" of caffeine during pregnancy can increase your chances of miscarriage:

Women who consumed 200 mg or more of caffeine per day (two or more cups of regular coffee or five 12-ounce cans of caffeinated soda) had twice the miscarriage risk as women who consumed no caffeine.

The increased risk of miscarriage appeared to be due to the caffeine itself, rather than other possible chemicals in coffee because caffeine intake from non-coffee sources such as caffeinated soda, tea and hot chocolate showed a similar increased risk of miscarriage.

In a word: crap. Let the inventory begin. I've been allowing myself that one small (often decaf) cappuccino in the morning, because I'm zombie-like without it, and with it, I find myself just a leeettle bit more focused. I maybe have a cup of tea in the afternoon; somewhere I heard that that was probably OK. I don't drink diet sodas (OK, well maybe a sip off my husband's here and there...but wait...I had a few slugs off a flat diet Pepsi yesterday afternoon while I was getting ready for a dinner party...).

Is this what's keeping me from getting pregnant? Did this cause my miscarriage in October 2007, and my two miscarriages in early 2004?

Oh, probably not. My advanced maternal age (love that term) is more probably the culprit. In an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, Dr. Aaron Caughey, a perinatologist at USCF, reminds us that the majority of miscarriages (up to 80%) are "due to chromosomal abnormalities that have nothing to do with the mother's behavior. The last thing women who have had miscarriages need to do is blame themselves, he said."

Oh, but we're so good at it.

Decaf it is.

Mini-Mini-Movie Review: Transformers

Worst. Movie. Ever.

No, I did not rent this turkey on purpose. I gave my husband his own NetFlix queue, and "Transformers" is how he repays me. He now owes me a month of foreign films and chick flicks.

For a much more cogent review, head over to Great White Snark.

Mini-Movie Review: Syriana

Well, it's official. I can no longer see any movie where a child is harmed. I mean, I knew that something bad happened to a kid in "Syriana," but I figured I could handle it. I couldn't.

Let's just say that my son will never be allowed to attend pool parties at the homes of Saudi Arabian princes. (Fortunately, there isn't much chance of that happening.)

Anyway, back to the movie. It deserves a long, more thoughtful review than the one I'm about to give it. It's an ambitious work of storytelling, weaving together multiple threads in a tale about the CIA, oil, Islamist terrorists and Saudi Arabian princes. And of course, all the bad things that the United States government is doing in the Middle East, all in the name of oil. It really makes you want to go out and buy the first Prius you see. The director is Stephen Gaghan, who also helmed the very fine "Traffic." Ensemble casts and dense plot lines seem to be his stock in trade.

"Syriana" probably could have been a very satisfying six-hour miniseries. I'm embarrassed to say that found myself struggling to follow it, and I'm usually a pretty careful viewer. I would watch it again...but there's that "bad things happen to kid(s)" problem.

Of course, my inability to completely follow the plot may have been due to the fact that I was mightily distracted by George Clooney. I usually am, but in this film, I was a bit discomfited (and impressed) by his 35-pound weight gain. He certainly deserved the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his subtle, heartbreaking performance as CIA operative Bob Barnes. I would have also given him the Directing Oscar for the stunningly great "Good Night, and Good Luck," but then, I'd give him an Oscar just for being George Clooney.

See "Syriana," and let me know what you think. But if you're a parent, you might just want to skip the pool party sequence. (Note: Big spoiler ahead.)

Not to mention the convoy-in-the-desert scene at the end of the film. What is it with these directors? Don't they have kids? And why does the death of the prince's two small children, whose seem to function as collateral damage, seem to hold less cinematic weight (their death comes almost at the end of the movie) than the death of the son of Matt Damon's character?

Wait, I think I can answer that. I just don't want to.

(Photo courtesy of spcoon.)

Mini-Movie Review: Sin City

My husband rented "Sin City" on NetFlix. I'll sum it up in one word: Vile. And that's just the writing.

This movie is Exhibit A in why the NC-17 rating should be applied more liberally to violent movies. It seems that because this movie was "cartoonish," the gore and sadism was OK.

While it's pretty trite to say that there should be less violence in movies, I'm going to go one step further. There should be more sex in movies. (More good sex, that is.) And less violence.

Self-Flagellation, Chapter Oh-I've-Lost-Count.

Watch your mother-in-law and spouse interact with other people's babies. Think about how they deserve to have lots of children to love. Think about how you have failed to give this to them. Wallow in self-pity and regret. Drink. Weep.

Unsolicited advice.

I have received much unsolicited "advice" while on this "journey." Now here's my turn to give some that fits into the category of Obvious Things to Do When Undergoing Infertility Treatment.

Make sure that you and your partner/spouse/whatever are on the same page.

See? Told you it was obvious.

I'm just saying.

Well, we gave it the old college try.

Got some news over the weekend that only my employer will be happy about.

I would call it a day, but thanks to my insurance company, I have enough meds for another go. Whether I want to put myself through this again is another question.

Ironically, the "When-are-you-going-to-have-another-one?" questions have been coming fast and furious over the last few days. Even one of my son's teachers asked me this morning. I had to take some deep breaths. I knew she meant well. She loves my son.

People assume that if you have one child, having #2 will be no problem. As if even having the first one was a walk in the park.

Once more, with feeling.

I really hate that I can't write about what's going on right now. But as a friend recently told me, there's sometimes such a thing as sharing too much.

And now, a word from the grammar police.

This has nothing to do with any of my so-called themes, but I don't care. While there are many things that annoy me (like insurance companies), almost nothing irritates me as much as the misuse of the apostrophe.

Thanks to my friend Mark for sending me this cartoon.

Why I hate insurance companies.

So this infertility thing is stressful enough without having to deal with insurance companies. Today was a perfect example.

I happen to have pretty darn good coverage for infertility through my husband's employer. But when one of my many doctors prescribes infertility-related medication, United Healthcare makes us go through a mail-order outfit called Pharmacare. Usually, this works pretty well. At least it did this summer. My IVF clinic faxed in my prescription, and Pharmacare shipped me a huge box of meds. Once they even shipped them overnight mail to the Tahoe area (long story). This coverage isn't trivial: the meds for an IVF cycle can total thousands of dollars, and I have the credit card balance to prove it.

But when the process goes wrong, it goes very, very wrong. Take what happened today.

It all started Monday, as we headed into what I think is going to be our last ride on the infertility merry-go-round. (I was hoping for a miracle "natural" pregnancy after last month's miscarriage, but that was not to be.) I saw Dr. R, and he prescribed letrozole to start Tuesday, and Menopur to start Friday, with a possible Ganirelex chaser.

I knew that there was no way Pharmacare could get me the letrozole by Tuesday, so I went to my local pharmacy. But I had Dr. R's office fax the Rx for the Menopur to Pharmacare.

Tuesday, I got a call from Pharmacare saying that they couldn't fill my order because I still had a balance from this summer that United Healthcare had denied. You heard that right: the insurance company makes me use Pharmacare, and then won't pay them. Only in this case, Pharmacare had it wrong: I logged onto the UHC Web site, and sure enough, United Healthcare had paid Pharmacare. They'd paid late, but they'd paid. I called Pharmacare, talked to two different people, and got everything straightened out, with assurances that I'd receive the Menopur on Friday.

On Thursday, I called Pharmacare to confirm that my meds were on their way. Yes, they'd shipped, the kind gentleman on the phone told me. That day, I did receive a delivery of needles and syringes (to work no less), but I just assumed that the actual meds would follow the next day, because the Kind Gentlemen had confirmed that they had shipped.

Well, Friday (today) arrives, and there was no shipment for me. I called Pharmacare, and after being on hold for an eternity, the representative tells me that my prescription hadn't shipped because of a miscommunication between the billing department and the orders department.

"But I have to take this medication starting today," I pointed out, somewhat sternly.

"I'm so sorry," said the woman, and told me that they could ship it so I could get it on Saturday.

"But my doctor wants me to take it starting today," I repeated. (Those of you familiar with the joys of infertility will understand the importance of timing. My husband and I have had to excuse ourselves from dinner parties to administer shots.)

What could she do? In the end, she arranged to ship it overnight, and I had Dr. R's office call the Menopur prescription into my local pharmacy for pickup today, even though it meant I was going to have to pay more than $1,200 for the meds out of my own pocket. I mean, I did extract a promise from the Pharmacare rep that Pharmacare would reimburse me, but I'm not holding my breath.

At least I get some 1,200 frequent flyer miles. Yeah. That helps.