Awkwardly Social

You know all of those sayings, “Everything happens for a reason,” “Third times a charm,” “Go fuck yourself, you self righteous pig?”  Oh, that last one’s just me.  Not really a saying.

It would be so much easier if I didn’t keep insisting on talking about this.  If I just kept my mouth shut, but there I go again, feeling my feelings all over the internet.

Here’s where I start to sound insane, that is, if you didn’t think I already sounded insane.

I’ve been taking pregnancy tests for the last three days.  And getting very, very faint positive results.  And today, I have my period!  Or whatever that cramping, bleeding not pregnant thing is.  That.  I have that.  And VERY faint positive pregnancy test.  That my friends, is the very definition of a Chemical Pregnancy!  I blame all those Diet Cokes I used to drink.  And am drinking right now.  Because if I’m gonna have my period, I might as well have a little caffeinated aspartame to go along with it.  Tonight there will be tequila!  Or at least wine.  And xanax.  And cigarettes. And IV drugs.  Or you know, early bedtime and chocolate.

Oh, you guys.   I just…  FUCK.

After much hemming, hawing, and generalized anxiety, I was finally convinced to go to a damned vagina specialist.  This after my internist referred me to imaging for an ultrasound of my ovaries, and my boyfriend decided that would be dumb, because there was a possibility she would just refer me to an OB/GYN anyway.  So, I made him ask our other doctor what I should do.  He said, “Get thee to a gyno, STAT!”  And gave me the name of a woman who I immediately googled.

She is awesome.  Full stop.  She got a BA, became a doula, then decided to go to Med School.  She does acupuncture and hypnosis.  She looks like Callie from Grey’s Anatomy.  She’s pretty much my dream lady to look at my vagina.  And she couldn’t be better with the dildo cam.

So, my uterus, according to Callie, OBGYN, is perfect.  My ovaries look completely normal.  But my cervix is weird.  Puffy.  Basically, my cervix looks fat.  Poor cervix.  I know exactly how it feels.  Technically she said, “It’s a little thick.”  Which, ladies, am I right?  Means it looks fat.

So, we’re waiting to see what gore I produce this month and going from there.

One less thing to obsess about, one more thing to obsess about.

Also, I’m starting prenatal vitamins on her recommendation.  You know, just in case.

Not quite for the reason I had originally hoped, but I have to go in for an ultra sound of my pelvic region.  You know, to rule out CANCER.  Or whatever it is they rule out with a machine like that.  I’m secretly hoping it’s an alien in there.  And that it won’t cause me much trouble, will slowly start providing me with extra income (Hello, I’m willing to sell those photos of my alien baby, bitches!) and eventually will die of a broken heart, wither up in there and disappear, sort of like Yoda.  Barring that, I’m mostly just hoping it isn’t cancer.

Because, fuck cancer.

I don’t really get the chemical reason for it, and believe me, I’m almost positive this is somehow related to ovulation or bleeding or girl parts and being a woman, but once a month I flip out and am convinced that Seth is lying to me and that he was seeing a slew of other women while we were ‘courting’ (also, ‘courting, WTF?! WHO AM I!?!) and that these women are still lurking around the periphery so that if I slip up and don’t deliver the awesome Seth’s just going to go, ‘meh, she was fine, but this chick is AWESOME!’ and then I’ll be left dressed all in black listening to my old “sad songs” mix on my iTunes and Lula won’t even look at me.

And instead of duifully noting what day it is on the calendar every month and resisting the urge to imagine Seth with other women, I start to spiral out of control.  And then?  I go ahead and start flipping out via insane e-mails to Seth and tell him that if he likes all of these other women (fictional! mostly, I mean there were a couple of whores (they weren’t whores!) that were in his life and that he did it with, but I basically have them made up!  in my head!  because he was a human that had sex before me!  and was not celibate in the months leading up to our ‘courtship’ WTF! and also, I wasn’t celibate either and there’s that COURTSHIP word again!  I hate myself!) and Seth calmly talks me down and tries to gently tell me that I’m crazy and that just because he has had sex with other women, and that I am not the only woman he has ever loved, doesn’t make what we have right now completely special.

And then I cry.  And tell him that he should just leave me now to get it over with.

And he tells me that I should take a xanax and tells me things like if I needed anything he would do it for me, like if I needed a toothpick and I’m a 1,000 miles away, that he’ll come and bring me that toothpick.  And I laugh because WTF?  Who needs a toothpick and thinks, hey, my boyfriend who is a 1,000 miles away should bring me that toothpick and if he doesn’t, he doesn’t love me WAAAAA.

So if this crazy feeling is what love is like?  I’m so totally fucked.  If it’s not and it’s actually  some kind of crazy PMS/atavistic cavewoman thing to keep me paranoid and controlling about my boyfriend then sign me up for more drugs!  I love drugs!  I especially love drugs that make me not crazy!

Generally, I’m able to wind it all up in a couple of hours of panic usually right about the time I’m re-reading a particularly dramatic e-mail in the chain, and I get embarrassed for myself.   Which is always better than feeling sorry for yourself.

I’m a lunatic.

I’m really regular.  I know my cycle like the days of the week.  Wednesday comes after Tuesday and Sunday is at the end of the week.  And I ovulate on the 24th and there’s a week of irritation and all the other bleeding stuff is right.  on. schedule.  Give or take a day.  Except the time I used the morning after pill and that made my period come a whole 2 weeks early, which was a totally welcome surprise, given that I was so not ready to have a baby.

Last night, over a glass of wine, Seth and I were doing our disgustingly loving daily check in, in our cozy booth at Dusty’s when Seth said, “Hey, it’s the 10th, no period?”  And I replied, “No.  No sign.”

“So, you’re pregnant?”

And I replied that I was 90% sure I wasn’t pregnant, 10% unsure with a side of sort of hopeful that I had accidentally mistaken my normal PMS for pre-pregnancy irritation and I was unintentionally knocked up.  And he hugged me and said all the perfect things about the possibility that I might be pregnant and we walked home and I started my period.

Just. like. clockwork.

So, to be clear, we aren’t trying to have a baby.  But we aren’t trying not to.  And this was the first month in my entire life that I was actually a little sad to get my period right on schedule.  But I have to say, when Seth said I’m the most regular woman he’s ever been with (and then he clarified by saying,”You know, ‘period-wise’ because you aren’t ‘regular…’”), I got a little proud.  Which is crazy, because who gets proud about their period being regular, like I somehow have control over it?  I do, that’s who.

General wisdom is that most women can find an uncanny resemblance to their fathers in the men they’ve dated.  I’m sure that’s true.  Louie is an only child who loves nerdery in all its forms, tells punny jokes and gives the silent treatment like nobody’s business.  Hi, that’s my father.  Awesome.  But what about the guy that you rebelled with, your dad’s opposite?  Because that dude is popping up like crazy.

I didn’t realize until I took his shirt off that, aside from having a normal sized nose, he was him.  He was the boy I lost my virginity to.  It creeped me out a little.  I could have used a little warning.

He didn’t kiss me or touch me the way Bob did, so his flat stomach and boyish hips were where the similarities ended, but I couldn’t help thinking I had come all this way, weathered all these years, fucked all these dudes, and here I was back at square one.  What was the take-away lesson the universe wanted shoved down my craw?  I still don’t know.  Maybe that every once in a while your past is shoved in your face and you wind up kissing it in a stairwell?

It always makes me a little sad to think about Bob and what I did to him.  The revenge I took.  I really did love him.  I really did trust him and need him in my life.  But I also really needed him to step up and love me back, and if he did, he never let on.

I’m pretty sure my parents thought he was responsible for my wild behavior.  Little did they know my pot-smoking love interest was the least of their worries.  Well, not the least, he was responsible for the gigantic party I threw at my house during Spring Break while my parents were away.  But if he had his way, I would have never done crystal meth and been a nice little stoner chick who gave good head.  He didn’t have his way.  I did crystal meth and I’ve had a couple of dudes tell me I don’t give head for shit.  (Thanks for the honesty!  fuckers.) But that whole week, despite the fact that he stayed at my house, he wouldn’t sleep in the same bed with me.  I was tweaking and he was stoned and the two do not mix.  I don’t think he even wanted to kiss me.  He never understood meth, and he certainly never understood why I would want to stay up all night when we could get stoned and cuddle in my sister’s king sized bed.

When I came home from college for Christmas break, my best friend and Bob were the only two people I wanted to see.  I wanted Bob to kiss me and touch my ear.  He had a thing about ears.  He loved to have your ear lobe between his fingers.  I loved the way he kissed me.  He’s the reason I like to have one hand on my neck under my hair and the other at the small of my back pulling me close when I’m being kissed.  Does everyone like it that way?  If so, why don’t more dudes know this?  I actually had someone kind of lightly put their hand on my shoulder while they were kissing me.  And it kind of creeped me out.  If your tongue is in my mouth, why does it feel like I am getting a polite hug from my grandma’s best friend?

The boy that had Bob’s 19 year old body pulled me back in time.  And I thought about how horrible it felt to lose my virginity with a Rush record playing in the background.  Having Rush play felt even worse than the fact that I was on a dirty couch in the living room of a two room trailer while my best friend and her boyfriend were screwing in the other room that didn’t even have a door.  Welcome to my psyche, it is a white trash romantic.  I don’t know what music I hoped would be playing, but I certainly didn’t want it to be Rush.  And I was way too into grunge to have it be something like Boyz to Men, but can’t a girl get a little Smashing Pumpkins or even Nirvana?  (God, reading those band names and thinking about how bad that first time was makes me chuckle.)

I wonder if I’ll ever see Bob again.  I hope I get the chance.  I google stalked him and I know where he’s living and who he’s married to.  I don’t know what I’d say to him if I do get to see him, except maybe, “Thank you.” Thank you for not blowing my mind with the hot, hot sex our first time. Lowered expectations have certainly been a help.  But also, I want to thank him for setting the bar for fun so incredibly high.  He always made me want to jump off a cliff without knowing what’s below, and that’s something I’ve been missing the past few years.  I just kind of hope I don’t break my hip.  I’m a lot older than I used to be.

I know it’s bad form to point out the fact that your blog post has no focus and the ending doesn’t tie up the beginning.  It’s the first rule of Fight Club, but god.  I don’t know what I’m doing here and I have cramps.  So, don’t fuck with me.  Oops, I meant, don’t judge me.  These pretzels are making me thirsty! 

One of the pretty party attendees is an actress.  She, like many people in my life, is named Jennie.  Not to be confused with Jennie.

I sort of feel bad for stealing her hilarious story, especially since I don’t really remember it that well because I was on glass number 3 (red plastic cup, actually, but that has no bearing on this story, for some reason my inner-fact-checker had to point that out, carry on)  of Sangria when she was telling the story.

She is an actress, and makes her living doing commercials.  I believe she has been in a herpes commercial and a big name auto supply store commercial recently.  I haven’t seen either because of the glorious Tivo, but I’ve had her act them out for me so I can assure you that she’s awesome in them.  Anyway, she was telling us about a recent audition she had for Always Maxi-pads.  And here’s the kicker.  SHE HAD TO SING A SONG!  Isn’t that awesome?!  She didn’t get the part, but she did remember the song.  It went something like, “I love chocolate, I love pads….”  Ok.  I have no idea what the lyrics actually were, but I’m hoping Geof (her boyfriend) will read this and either write the real lyrics in the comments section or at least e-mail them to me, because I can’t get my rendition out of my head and that doesn’t go over so well when I sing it in line at Starbucks.

la la la! I love chocolate, I love pads, I like greasy food, and some pads!

Maybe this is funny only to me.   I guess that’s all that matters.

Dude. My uterus woke me up at three AM last night to tell me that she was unhappy with the state of things. She really wanted to talk about it. She has had enough of being confined to my body, she wants out.

The only thing stopping her from getting out was, well, a thing we sentient beings like to call our bodies. This didn’t stop her from trying to escape. And from talking.

Christ on a cracker, I forgot how bad it can be when one doesn’t exercise. Right now I’m weighing the pain of cramps vs. the pain of exercising and I can’t figure out which I hate worse.

We had our first ‘hot spell’ this weekend and I thought I was going to die. This is stupid because I’m from Arizona, so I know about heat. But because of Arizona’s sneaking heat - boil a live lobster in a pot and it doesn’t know it, but throw a live lobster in a pot of boiling water and it sure as hell knows it - you sort of know it’s getting warmer but it allows you to become accostomed. LA, not so much. One day you’re driving home with your windows open, it’s 78 degrees, the sky is slightly overcast and you’re marvelling at how lucky you are to live in such an awesome city. The next day you get into your car, you’re sweating, it’s 98 degrees and you’re wearing jeans, you know that your house is going to be 102 degrees because you haven’t taken any of the necessary precautions and you know you’re going to have to run your head under the cold water tap in the kitchen sink for any sort of relief. Which is exactly what happened to me on Saturday. And is the exact reason I got my hair cut on Sunday. (Louie says the new haircut makes me look ‘perky’, I say the new haircut makes me look like a soccer mom…)

I spent most of Saturday, sweating, reading, trying to think ‘cool’ thoughts, and wishing Cats and Andrew had their house. Because, while I told Cats I wasn’t comfortable ‘popping by,’ I realized this weekend that during the summer, I would be popping by. Every day. Of course, I’d always brink margarita mix, tequila and my own towell, but I would be there for the sheer pleasure of their pool (and their company… I guess.)

Add to the heat of the weather, the heat of my body getting ready to shed some uterine lining, and I was a sad and cranky mother fucker. I don’t know why my body temp has to rise as my period lurks, but Christ, it was certainly inconvenient this weekend.

My anxiety is wreaking havoc with my sleep schedule. In essence, I now know what it feels like to be an 80 year old woman. I think in large part this has to do with the crazy decrease in running, my impending ‘cycle’ and the move of death.

I can now pinpoint the reason for my constant malaise and ill humor during the late 90’s and early 2000’s. I moved 8 times in roughly 7 years. A move a year is one too many. I cannot handle the stress of looking for a new place, thinking about my credit report and boxing up my possessions. The last part is usually the most difficult, which, considering my credit report… should be really surprising to you. I hate the fact that I am an incurable pack rat, that I have an intense need to keep every slip of paper ever mailed to me, that when I buy something - I save the receipt for decades. It’s so dumb. I even bought a book called, “How to Be Organized In Spite of Yourself.” It didn’t take. Top all this off with the fact that I lost my wallet and my Arizona Driver’s License was in it, and I have no idea if the DMV is actually going to send me a new one to my address in Los Angeles…

I realize this is all very whiny and I should just suck it up and deal, but for the life of me, all I can do is go home, turn on the TiVo and watch Top Chef, Wildfire, and Beautiful People, and that stresses me out because I should be writing my screen play so that one day I will achieve the level of fame and recognition I deserve. (that last part was me joking around)

I haven’t seen myself like this since grad school ended and I had no way to make money. At that point I surfed the internet all day, and beat myself up for not doing an internship that would give me the ’skills’ needed to do a job that I could do with my eyes closed (answer phones and get coffee orders correct). Here’s where the music gets really sad and I curl up in bed and try to figure out why Daphne Zuniga has the same hair she had 10 years ago on Melrose Place.

I’m waiting for my operating instructions, Universe. Give me a damned sign.