No Pity. No Shame. No Silence.

No Pity. No Shame. No Silence.

I don't have a story of my own. What I have is a story that my mother told me, and one that I had to read between the lines to really get.

It started (for me) when I woke up one morning, home on a Christmas Break from college, and my mother was sitting on my bed. Still loggy from sleep, I was catapulted into wakefulness by Mom's comment: "I'm so glad you know more about sex than I did."

My immediate panic was, of course, that my mother might know I was *having* sex! But no, apparently, she'd noticed when the Joy of Sex had disappeared from her bookshelf for months at a time. And that was ok, because while she/we were still at the awkward stage of *talking* about sex with her teens (me and Dru), we were at least getting our information from somewhere.

Unlike Mom.

See, Mom's a couple of years older than Dad, and we knew she graduated from college, went off on an adventure to California and substitute-taught while working on her tan, and then she came back to Colorado, met Dad, married him and the rest was far more interesting to us kids because we became the main attraction.

What I didn't know was why Mom left California - she'd sort of painted it as the ideal life - a few days teaching, a whole lot of sun and sand. I'd never really thought too much about it, but I certainly wouldn't have left without a reason.

Mom's was a doozy.

She's never said the word rape, but 'I didn't know how to say no' said enough.

An acquaintance at a party offered to take her home, and then... didn't. It was just the once, but it was enough, and Mom got pregnant. Poppa threatened to disown her, and she stayed with her aunt in Northern CA until the baby was born. The child, a girl, was adopted, and Mom went back to Colorado.

Day 2 of the new gal

Tired and headachey today, but *so* much less stress.

The new gal, K, is just crackerjack - she knows what she's doing with Macs, she's already planning on revamping the backup system (yay!) and she really only needs to get used to our quirky little doings: hidden labs in the basement, weird budget juggling, impatient and high-maintenance doctors. My open ticket list is down and continuing to disappear (or at least reduce itself to a normal level) and she seems to be settling into her office nicely.

They even cleaned a couple years of grime off the windows, so you can see across the street.

My guilt for needing a couple of days off next week is vanishing rather rapidly. Yay!

I'm still busy as all get out, and I see my desk at the U for maybe an hour a day if I'm lucky. So list mail isn't getting read, and I've a backlog of fannish reading once I have a few days.

Mom *was* planning on coming up with the bed frame/dresser they've been promising me, but it wouldn't fit in the Jeep, and what with that and a couple of other things, she's putting off the trip until Dad can come along (and they can shove all the stuff they're giving me and Dru into a trailer.) She would have been here next week, in the middle of, well. I would have been busy and hurty and just not good.

And I still don't have any idea what the fuck is happening for my birthday. I was thinking party, and a big one, as this is 30, but then Mom was coming, and now not, and the whole weekend was up in the air, and now it's only a week and a half away. Poop.

I don't really have a good place for a nice party anyway. There's room for me and a couple of other people in my condo, but more than four? Claustrophobia-city. I could reserve the cabana, but seeing the pool and not getting to dive in is no fun. There's the park and reservable picnic benches, but the weather's even been fickle latey. Plus, I was maybe thinking high tea for a theme, (if not an I'm-not-moving! theme) and tea and picnic don't exactly mix. Double poop.

Maybe I can still have high tea. I think it's too late to make reservations for the Queen Anne Tearoom, but there must be some other place that would do.

Egg Stuff

And oh yeah, had another ultrasound today. This was, I think my 5th, and I'm scheduled for another on Thursday.

I think I'm perfecting the art of small talk over my draped knees while the doc pokes a phallic wand into my vagina and takes pictures. It's really quite funny and interesting -  the clinic has a little screen set up so the patient can see the same picture the doc can, and with my insatiable curiosity, I ask enough questions that I'm beginning to recognize my uterus and ovaries without much help. Even the right ovary, which I've decided isn't so much shy as coy.

My ovaries are swelling up nicely. So nicely, in fact, that the extraction may be Saturday! Dru can't watch me on the weekend, as he has work. I've already asked Kris to take Monday off to Misha-sit, but that may be a bust. Argh! I won't know anything until the next ultrasound anyway.

I've been starting to feel the side-effects of the medication, finally: a bit of bloating, some sluggishness and headaches so far. I console myself with the thought of the iPod I'm getting myself for my birthday. I'd really like a Vespa, but they aren't paying me *that* much :)