Lost: one lazy night in

<-- Last year I went to Tasmania to work for a week. I drove down the middle, which I hadn't done before, and came across this cemetery - the cemetery of Tasmania's first female prison. It was filled with headstones for babies - strange, as there were no men in the prison. Except the warders, of course.


I've locked myself out of the house.

Damn!

Everytime I do this I vow I'm going to have another key cut and bury it in the bush somewhere. Have I done that? Of course not. The first time, I climbed in through the bathroom window. The second time, I'd left the kitchen window open. No luck with either tonight.

I had planned to lounge about, finish my novel - The Jane Austen Book Club, which isn't grabbing me as much as i thought it might. I keep getting the characters mixed up. But Lovergirl isn't home until about 9pm tonight; she's running a group for parents of teenagers with e*a*t*i*n*g d*i*s*o*r*d*e*r*s, or some such. So I can't get in 'til then.

(That strange arrangement above is an experiment to try and stop people finding this site if they are looking for information on e*****ing dis*****ers. This burnt-out past-caring person is not the place to come: move on, move on if you found this site while searching for sympathy and strategies to cope.)

Luckily the study is separate from the house, and doesn't even have a lock. So (bright side) I can legitimately entertain myself by blog surfing for hours...

And I thought I could update you on a few things.

Baby efforts

For those who read this blog solely to keep abreast of our family planning (another phrase that could be dangerous in the hands of a search engine), I know I've been slack. Here's the latest. We're doing IVF this month. This'll be Lovergirl's second attempt. It's been much harder this month; I'm really getting tired. Tired of driving to Brisbane, back and forth, leaving the bush house after work, getting up there at 8, seeing the clinic at 7am then driving back in time for a late start to work the next day. Tired of missing out on social occasions, of not really living here because we can't plan ahead in case it clashes with a test or an ovulation or a count of follicles. Tired of haemorrhaging money on doctors, naturopaths, supplements, acupuncturists, Chinese herbalists. Tired of talking about temperatures and wee-sticks and ferning patterns on home-kit microscopes. Tired of taking drugs and snorting drugs and injecting drugs. And really really really tired of having my future on hold, of not planning anything because this may come off.

For people who have my phone number: I do not want to talk about this. That's why I blog it.

Some things that would be worse than not getting pregnant:

• Getting pregnant then having a miscarriage at eight months
• Having cancer in your sternum, so your bones start crumbling away (Lovergirl's friend M)
• Living in a refugee detention centre
• Being sentenced to death or a hundred lashes for being gay
• Watching your family's arms get hacked off in Uganda or Rwanda or the Sudan

So you see I can keep my little problem in perspective. Nice middle class girl in bush idyll, suddenly surprised by not getting everything I want.

20 Year Reunion

I'm not going. IVF is this week so I had to cancel my ticket (and my plane ticket - that was an expensive non-attendance). I'm surprisingly disappointed. I haven't kept in touch with anyone but I'm curious to see how they turned out. I particularly wanted to see my little crowd, Heather and Heidi and Milly. And I was really hoping that Kathryn and Leeza are now fat with eight kids each, or some other appropriate comeuppance. And there's something universal about school reunions, I was discovering. Anxiety, fear, wanting to impress, re-evaluating one's life, trying to see oneself as others see...

Is that Rabbie Burns? Something like:

O what a gift that God should gi'e us

To see ourselves as others see us

Anyway, I was curious to find out what others had done with their lives and how they felt about coming to a reunion.

James, who was going off to be a fighter pilot with the RAAF.

The astonishingly smart but unfortunately complexioned Heinrich, who I imagine has blossomed into a wealthy, handsome neurosurgeon.

Long-legged school captain Kathryn and her best friend Leeza, who, unfairly, were not only gorgeous but smart and excellent at netball, swimming and cross-country running.

Jayne, who was one of the quiet kids, not in my friendship circle at all, but at the ten year reunion had become a completely gorgeous dyke; I gaped in a foolish fashion and couldn't talk to her. (Jayne and I were girls least likely to become lesbians. Jody, Milly's best friend, also came out but that was entirely predictable and no-one batted an eyelid.)

And surely at least one or two of the boys, statistically speaking, must be big ole poofters? Who? Who?

Anyway, I'm not going. So that was a waste of two weeks of intense self-denial. I'll stick with the PhD though - might as well.