I'm calmer now

Feeling a little better today. Less postal worker psycho, more Saturday coffeeshop zen. Ahhhh... So I guess this is the perfect time to blather on about a highly emotional issue: Mommyhood.

Two years ago, I got the referral to an RE and made the trek to Skokie. Travelling by CTA to Skokie, it turns out, is just a teensy bit easier than my morning commute. For starters, I didn't have to employ the services of a shaman to divine when the next bus would arrive. Apparently, the Yellow Line has a timetable. An actual timetable. That they follow.

Secondly, I learned that there are roads in Skokie that us here city folk would actually classify as Highways: Two lanes and a posted speed limit that everyone (bus drivers included) ignore. Impressive.

And then the RE: I liked her, both professionally and personally. She was nice to me, and even though I waited for it, and prepared for it, and steeled myself for it (it being her Professional Evaluation of My Fat), it never came. Clearly, she was a subpar medical professional, because, well, you know? I mean, the Almighty Spaghetti Noodle took ovulation away from fat asses for a reason, right? Its just not right for us to... dear Noodly Goodness... reproduce. Consider this my public service announcement of the day: If you are fat, then don't you dare email me for her name or phone number, because His Holy Carbohydrate don't like no fat.

But, that lecture never came... from this RE, anyway. From my doctor - yes. From an endocrinologist - yes. From a second RE (I changed REs for a reason I'll go into in another post - nothing to do with the Skokie RE) - yes. But not from the Skokie RE. She saw me as a human, which had me spinning in circles. I wanted to ask her if she perchance needed her eyesight examined, or perhaps hadn't been fully indoctrinated in the Creed of Fat. But, as I said, I changed REs before I had that opportunity.

And hey Internet, since I'm feeling all free and cool and I'm going to hang at my pool today (after I WORK, because I haven't had a day off in months), I'm going to tell you a few hints about upcoming posts. Because I swear I'll post more regularly. I swear it.

Coming up:

1. Sperm donors can be scary people... But their jizz is mighty pricey.
2. Sometimes my hyper-analytical, uber-inquisitive, intrusively interrogating personality can facilitate good decision-making. Other times, I'm all Fuck it.
3. You can conceive 20 quasi-hoomans at one time, give birth to one nine months later and one in ten years, and have strangers birth and parent the rest fifteen years later. Or next month.
4. In re: 1,2,3 above: Welcome to Reproductive Ethics 101.
5. Two years into this saga, and I've FINALLY got a fertility plan. YAY ME!

Blogging = Bullying?

Yes, I've been a bad bad blogger. I know. I have quite a few posts that I haven't published, so I promise I'll try to get those up here.

But today my feathers got all ruffled and six hours later I am STILL all of a tither so what better medium through which to vent my spleen than my blog? So I'm breaking my dry spell with a rant. Sorry.

Here's the poop:

I came into work today same as any other Thursday. Well, truth be told I came in EARLY, which is actually very different from any other day. The first ominous sign my day would be odd was the flashing voice mail light on my phone. When there are messages at 7:30AM, it's never going to be an easy day.

Then, as I listened to several messages about how I had to log in to this professional listserv to which everyone in my niche industry subscribes, and that if I didn't log in IMMEDIATELY then small children would catch scabies all throughout the world... I thought to myself, Sheesh, what could possibly be so awful as to cause a scabies pandemic?

And Internet, when you find yourself wondering about stuff like that, then, please, be kind to yourself. Turn right around, go back home and hide in your kitchen cabinet. And make sure its the one under the sink, so that you can drink water when you get thirsty. Because you just KNOW its all going downhill from there and it's going to be one hell of a long, dry day....

And so now I'm trying to find a way to summarize all the catty, stoopid bullshit, and I just can't seem to do so without the use of scathing invective, the not-so-occasional obscenity, and nausea-inducing graphic imagery. I'm sorry, Internet, but you may not want to read any further.

Here's what I'm thinking, which is a little convoluted (so pay attention and take notes, or at least Read Recite and Review or Stop Drop and Roll if that's more your gig), but I can't seem to type a linear narrative:

It wasn't that some skanky ass hobag had disagreed with an article I wrote. No, that wasn't it. I like healthy, professional debate. And it wasn't that this festering genital wart has a gossip blog and she blogged about my article, or even that she used my name. Oh, no, it wasn't that either.

It was the fact that she put her edited post on the listserv that got me. ON. THE. LISTSERV. THE LISTSERV THAT !EVERYONE! !IN! !MY! !PROFESSIONAL! !COMMUNITY! !GETS! *Pound fist on table* Granted, she deleted the openly hostile bits, but it was still, basically, an exercise in trashing me in front of MY. PROFESSIONAL. COMMUNITY. *fist* *table* *fist* *table*

I think you may be wondering why this smegma-covered ASSHAT would do such a thing. You may think I know her, right? That I know her, and perhaps I threw her puppy out a window? Because in order to be such a BITCH (and yes, I'm using that awful B-word), you'd have to have had your puppy thrown out a window. Right? Or maybe I sneezed at her? Because that would be gross, to sneeze at someone, and then at least she could be miffed that I spread my germs all over her, right?

Wrong.

I've never met her. I have never seen her. I don't know this woman. At all.

So then why did Smegma post this nastiness on the listserv? Why did she attack me in her blog? Well, it's elementary, dear Watson. And pathetic: She did it to increase traffic to her blog.

Let me say that again:

She trashed me in front of my professional community because she wanted to drive traffic to her blog.

According to SiteMeter, she gets, on average, 20 hits a day. But when she posted to the listserv (yesterday), she got 80 and today she got more than 80.

Real nice, hobag. Thanks a lot, Smegma. From this point forward, I'll be thinking of you whenever I wipe my ass. When my toilet gets clogged, I'll remember your name. When I smell the dreaded Stranger Fart on the CTA, hey, isn't that JUST LIKE SMEGMA? And, of course, when I see a particularly nasty insect splattered across my windshield, that, too, will be the catalyst for a long journey down memory lane - a journey that ends in your name.

Oh, and Internet: You may be thinking that such a catty, sniveling, cowardly narcissist would have a secure job, a great reputation, and not have to worry about generating business, right? I mean, if you are a CONSULTANT to the NICHE industry for which the listserv was created, well, then you'd never ever ever post such inflammatory, insulting material ATTACKING A MEMBER OF YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE, right?

Nope. She's a consultant (and apparently a fucking stoopid consultant, at that). In my industry. The industry for which the listserv was created. To put it another way: Her CLIENTS read that listserv. So I'm not replying to her post or her blog. Nope. I'm going to let her sink her own goddamn ship.

Because apparently inquiring minds want to know

And thus continues my story...

My PCP did, eventually, give me a referral for an RE. But wow, did she make me fight for it.

First, she told me no. After a long argument, the gist of which was she had other patients and Dr. D's greatest wish in the universe was to attend to them. Dr. D huffed sarcastically, the weight of the world upon her tormented soul (or at least the weight of my foot firmly on her ass), and filled out a form just to get rid of me. Dr. D said that the insurance company would never approve a referral to an RE, but since I had barricaded myself in her office, she'd tie up the fax lines with the goal of hastening my departure.

I called Dr. D a week later: Nope, hadn't heard back.

I called again a week after that: Nope, nothing.

At this point, I began to wonder if my referral had, in fact, zipped along the phone lines to BCBS HQ. I called them.

Turns out that there were a series of questions I needed to answer, and they had faxed them to Dr. D THE DAY AFTER I was in her office. I answered their questions, and called Dr. D to answer them again.

Surprise suprise (and Dr. D told me she was surprised): I got the referral.

More on this later.