Today on Oh Well...: It's a PITY PARTY!!!!!

So when you're already feeling suicidal, it's not a great idea to read the journal from when you lost the baby. FYI.

Oh, I'm sure I won't do it. I'm sure my inner voice of guilt will prevent me from checking out, you know, because of Bubba. But oh, why didn't I do it then? What in god's name kept me from chucking it all then? I cannot believe the pain of that. I mean, I remember it, but to see it all in such stark realness, such present-tense agony, is shocking even to me. Please don't try to encourage me by telling me that if I made it through that, I can make it through anything. I am deeply immersed in my own little pity party right now, so don't ruin it!

I have been working with my therapist for two years to try to change my "life sucks" viewpoint, and I've even felt at times that I've been getting there, but tonight I look at my life and think about what a fucking mess it is. What a fucked-up, pitiful conglomeration of tragedy, boredom and pettiness. What, exactly, is the goddamn point?

I am an unfortunate combination of selfishness and bad luck. I don't get what I want. Period. That's the major life-lesson for Depressionista. I wanted a husband who loved me; I got one who yelled at me today for leaving one dirty dish in the sink. I wanted a job that was fufilling; I got one where I have to write meaningless promotional material for the institution that killed my baby. I wanted a baby and my baby died. I wanted to experience motherhood and motherhood has been one fucked-up mental challenge from the day I got pregnant with Bubba. I want to kill myself; I can't, because I've already procreated and I can't do that to him, sweet little innocent Bubba. He's going to have to suffer from all of my mental shit and all of J.'s stupidity and moodiness. I can't even fully enjoy my depression because it feels so self-centered.

I'm sure my depression/suicidalness is wearing on everyone. In fact, I'm sure that before long, even my closest friends will stop feeling concern because they know I won't do it. Sometimes I feel like I should just do a half-hearted attempt, you know, just for the attention. Just to up the ante a little bit. Keep 'em coming back for more. Maybe get a break for awhile. Maybe get to leave my fucked-up mess of a life for a few days. Then come back to one that's even more fucked-up messy. Because everything I do just makes it that way--more messy, more ugly, more painful.

I'm closing comments here because I don't feel like I deserve people's compassion right now.

Breaking News: Reports Confirm Virus Unable to Thwart Girl's Night

When Depressionista woke up from her four-hour nap on Saturday, she wasn't sure she even wanted to know if LilCherie had called or not.

"I pretty much figured Girls' Night was a lost cause," Depressionista said. "When my husband told me she'd called, I hesitated to even call back. I just didn't want the dream to die. But I knew that somehow, I had to find the courage to do it."

The call started out as most calls do--an exchange of pleasantries, updates on what each woman was doing at the moment. Neither seemed ready to broach the topic of whether or not the sinister virus at LilCherie's home had indeed ended what little hope was left for a Girls' Night that evening.

"I didn't want to ask, because I was afraid to hear the answer," Depressionista said. "I thought LilCherie sounded rather perky, but she often enjoys spending time with her family so I figured maybe she was okay with no Girls' Night. But then she asked me if J. had told me anything about their call earlier, and that's when I started to think maybe, just maybe..."

At 4:26 p.m., LilCherie confirmed that Girls' Night was a go. According to LilCherie, the D-Man was still feverish but his symptoms were being well-managed with ibuprofen, and Big R had recovered enough to be able to handle the next 17 hours on his own.

"I just couldn't believe it," Depressionista said. "I was so excited I squealed. After I calmed down, I got myself together and quickly got into gear to begin the preparations for the evening. I still had a shower to take, coffee to make, and also had to put in some kid duty to limit any guilt later on. I was so happy I even let J. take a nap while I waited for LilCherie to get here!"

LilCherie arrived at approximately 6 p.m. The two women laughed easily as they played with Depressionista's son while her husband finished his slumber. It was as if there had never even been a question about whether or not the evening would happen.

"I can't believe we did it," Depressionista said.

"Yep," LilCherie replied. "We pulled off another Girls' Night."

Their shared laughter floated through the air like bubbles in the wind as they reminisced about all the times it almost didn't happen. There were the Girls' Nights after sinus surgery, strep throat and a tonsillectomy; the blizzard a couple years ago that Depressionista weathered on the way to LilCherie's; and of course, who could forget the ice storm last November that LilCherie and PioneerGirl drove through to attend the Girls' Night Christmas 2007 Extravaganza?

"You know, we really shouldn't even worry," Depressionista said. "We're like the postal service. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays us from the swift completion of our appointed rounds."

"Amen," LilCherie replied. "Amen."

In the Shadow of Sinister Virus, Two Women Struggle to Save Girls' Night

When LilCherie's husband, Big R, came home Tuesday night, March 11, she thought nothing of his slightly nasal voice, sniffles here and there and his general malaise.

Tonight, however, on the eve of what is supposed to be Girls' Night with her friend Depressionista, she looks back with the knowledge that only time could bring.

"I was so naive," she said, shaking her head. "I thought it was just a little cold. Little did I know that it would become a full-fledged, weekend-plan-threatening flu."

By Wednesday morning, Big R's condition had worsened to the point that he had to call in sick to work. When Thursday morning arrived with little improvement in her husband's condition, LilCherie began to worry about the days ahead.

"Depressionista and I had planned to get together tomorrow night for Girls' Night. When Big R called in sick again on Thursday, I started getting a bad feeling about it," LilCherie said. "I still didn't want to say anything to Depressionista. I didn't want to worry her needlessly."

Things seemed to be looking up by this morning. Big R had started to feel a little better the night before and was able to go to work. The D-Man, the couple's son, was just as chipper as ever--in fact, he'd even gotten sent to the principal's office the day before for an unusual display of rebelliousness.

A phone call at 3:45 p.m. this afternoon, however, shattered the fragile bubble of LilCherie's optimism. It was a call from the D-Man's school, and it would change the odds for a successful Girls' Night that weekend dramatically.

"The school nurse said he was crying, and that he said he didn't feel good and he 'hurt all over,'" LilCherie recalled. "I knew right then that the D-Man had it. It was a nightmare. I just couldn't believe this was happening--not to us."

Soon after the call, LilCherie decided it was time to break the news to Depressionista.

"I was so glad I got her voicemail," LilCherie said. "I didn't want to hear the anguish in her voice when I told her that the probability of Girls' Night had just gone way down. On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being Girls' Night not happening at all, I probably started out the week at a 9. After Big R got sick it went down a few points, but it was up again this morning. When I got that call from the D-Man's school, though, it went all the way down to 3 or 4."

The D-Man came home with a fever and the chills, but after just one dose of ibuprofen he was almost back to normal by bedtime. That, coupled with the fact that LilCherie thought she was getting the virus Thursday but felt better by Friday, made it difficult to predict how the weekend might go. Complicating matters even further, she had her period, which made accurate interpretation of her body's signals almost impossible.

Riddled with uncertainty, LilCherie and Depressionista spoke to each other on the phone late this evening, trying to reassure one another in the face of the unknown.

"He seemed a lot better after he got some ibuprofen," LilCherie told her. "I'm not sure what will happen. I think we should PBE it [Play It By Ear]." She hung up the phone with a look of resolve and resignation.

"She took it well," LilCherie said. "I expected her to demand me to rate the chances of a Girls' Night from 1 to 10, but she didn't. In fact, she reassured me that whatever happened, it would be okay. Somehow, I'm at peace with it all. If Girls' Night is meant to happen tomorrow night--if it really is God's will--it will happen."

Check back for updates on this developing story.

Ripped From the Headlines...

Click on the photos for more....

Something that made me laugh:













Wow....that tour seemed like SO much longer
than three hours, man...What did you say Gilligan?

Something that made me feel old:

Tom Hulce today....

....and back in the Oh Yeah,
You Can Rock Me Amadeus days.

The straight poop

Hi everyone! I've been meaning to post for days but every time I get on the computer I end up getting completely absorbed in other people's blogs or weird stuff like this or this. Thanks, Cobblestone, for checking in, because it lit the small fire under my ass that was necessary to get me to write. For future reference: If you don't see me around for awhile that probably means that things are actually semi-okay in my life, because always seem to blog out my pain more than my happiness. Which is something I want to change...we'll see!

Also, thanks everyone for your thoughtful comments on my last post, and when I'm a little more somber, I'd like to delve into that discussion again. It's a good one, I think.

All kinds of things have been swirling around in my head to share with you. And then I forget them when I sit down to write, so forgive me if this feels very scattered.

Current Events
The hubbub about Gov. Spitzer. If he was using federal money to get off, okay, that's a problem. But from the little I've seen and read, the tone is one of shock and outrage that he slept with a prostitute. What? A man cheating on his wife? A politician involved with prostitutes? Is this even news anymore?

Today on "The Today Show," I caught a bit of Meredith Vieira interviewing Dr. Laura Schlesinger, along with two other "experts," about the scandal. Dr. Laura was vigorously supporting her stance that if women don't make their men "feel important and valued," they should not be surprised when their man "looks elsewhere to fill those needs." Hmmm. My first thought on this was to imagine what it must be like to live with the kind of man who would go to a prostitute to "fill his needs." My second thought was...is this 1958???

One of the other "experts" (I would include a name here but for the life of me I can't find a damn thing on The Today Show website) talked about Spitzer's "high cheekbones and large forehead" or something being a sign of high testosterone which makes him more susceptible to infidelity. So...it's either his wife or his hormones. It couldn't be that he's just an asshole now, could it? What a joke.

The lady who power-washed her two-year-old at the car wash. Sickening. I have spent the last several days trying to dodge this horrifying footage.

Salvia Divinorum becoming illegal, touted as "the new marijuana." Time to stock up, ladies. I don't see a problem with the old marijuana, let alone the new, but if it's good enough to be outlawed, I better get some socked away. I continue to be astounded at how American government continues to focus on issues that are non-issues while ignoring or bungling things that really matter to people, like the economy, war, health care.

I struggle with the reasoning behind taking away every means of mental escape from the masses--except alcohol and TV (neither of which are as fun as pot and hallucinogenics). I don't have a theory about how alcohol has managed to stay under the radar in this age of banning everything fun, but the TV issue is an easy one: it's a great way to force feed fear, which keeps people worrying about things that don't matter so that they won't rise up to change what does matter. Maybe this is why people are so much more violent and angry toward one another now? Heh, that's going to be my theory from now on. "Give us the pot and no one gets hurt!" No wonder we all need Zoloft and Xanax...which are, of course, okay because they help Big Pharma keep turning its wheels.

Here's an idea--why not just have the pharmaceutical companies take over the manufacture and distribution of the MJ, the 'shrooms, the salvia and all the other fun stuff? I'd be willing to pay a little more to have it legally, and besides, in a few years I'm sure psychiatrists would find a way to make it legitimate enough that my insurance company would foot most of the bill. Imagine that--going to the pharmacy and paying your $10 copay for your dime bag! Oh cruel dreams, you taunt me!

Breast Health. First, let me say I'm all for it. Second, I get a little uncomfortable when I hear commercials on TV about vitamins that promote "breast health," or when I see the headline I saw on CNN today, "Keeping your breasts healthy at every age." There is one reason this bothers me, and it's not because I am ashamed of the word or the appendages or anything like that. I am pissed about the double standard. I want to see a commercial for a men's vitamin that promotes "testicular health." I want to see a headline on CNN that says "Keeping your penis health at every age." Why don't we? Aren't men's testicles and peni as important as our breasts?

I think the media in general still trades on the sensationalism of talking about breasts. They've been used to sell everything else, why not use them to sell vitamins and news and cancer research fund drives? Hmm. Maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way. Maybe I should just stand in awe of the power of the female breast--I mean, look how much it can do!!!

A final unrelated note: I was just involved in a shit-standoff in my Safe Haven work bathroom in the basement. I walk into an empty bathroom, empty my bladder and am just about ready to drop my load when another lady walks in and parks herself in the stall next door. I decide to hold off, hoping she's just going to pee and leave, but she pees and then....nothing. Neither of us are making a sound. Finally, I decide to abort mission and suck it back in to hopefully get some privacy elsewhere. I hate that!! Once again, I wish for a ShitStall 3. This leads me (as most things do) to Poop Stories. Since I have some new readers, I'll put out the call again--care to share your all-time favorite poop stories? If so, I'd love to read them!

PostMortem

It's 5:30 a.m., J. and LilCherie is asleep and Bubba is spending the
weekend at my sister's, so I'm up reading blogs. I read this post by charmedgirl and thought, wow, she's really going to try again so soon! Then I realized that it's been six months since she had P@ige, and thought about how six months after I lost my daughter, I had already failed one IUI and seven months later, I would be pregnant with my son.

Then I read this post by C. It's so raw, and so full of longing that it made my heart ache in such a familiar way. Being there came rushing back to me, and made me consider being here.

"We got so lucky with Bubba," I said to J. today in the car on the way to the antique show. "I always feel weird saying we got lucky."

"Me too," J. says. "I always feel like I'm tempting fate to take him away."

"Oh wow," I say. "I always feel like, 'how can I even say I'm lucky when one of my kids is dead?'"

At the antique show, I saw a family Bible inscribed with the names of twins, Louis and Victoria, born on the 25th of a long-ago September. Louis lived 10 days; Victoria lived 15 years. Someone lived long enough after they died to write it in the book.

"Hey, come over here," J. motions to me. I come over to look and he points out a postcard-sized black-and-white postmortem photograph of a little boy, probably about five years old, resplendent in his best knickers and jacket and laid out on the family bed.

The photos "were life-affirming rather than creepy and macabre, as most people think of them today," said Jack Kabrud, director and curator of the Hennepin History Museum. Its exhibit on the topic is called "A Semblance of Life: The Art and Culture of the Post Mortem Photograph," with about 50 photos from the 1850s to as late as the 1940s.

"These photos were the final gift to the survivors," Kabrud said. "It was something they could hold."

The Art of the Postmortem Photo
by Peg Meier
The Minneapolis Star Tribune, Nov. 4, 2005

Later, at home, I walk down the hall and then stop for a moment.
Something's bothering me, what is it? Oh, the door to Bubba's room is closed. How long that door stayed closed, waiting for hope.

I open it part of the way, until it feels less dangerous.