Illiterati

All Right, Move Along, Nothing to See Here

I sometimes find myself in a difficult position with this blog because of the fact that I am not, like most folks on the internets, blogging anonymously, and there have been times when I've been reluctant to make my private business public.  Like today.

But I suppose it's no secret that a woman in her mid-30s who's been married more than 12 years to The Best Man in the World (tm) is having trouble getting knocked up.  We are now in the midst of IVF#4, after having completed 15 IUIs before that (insurance insisted if they were going to pay for IVF, which, thank God, they are, through this next one anyway).  However, things are looking pretty grim in the ol' Illiterati household for IVF#4, with a measly 4 follicles developing.  I was given this news after a probing that Sen. Santorum would probably need to outlaw if he knew about it.  Unfortunately he has been able to reproduce with little difficulty, as has Britney Spears, to my eternal chagrin, so I doubt he's ever heard of it.

The Nice Nurse said that she needed to check with the RE to see what my protocol is going to be for the next few days.  I could wait or I could have the Nice Nurse call me later.  Unfortunately, the RE is pregnant, and after my bad news I had ZERO desire to sit for half an hour to talk to her.  The RE is competent, lovely, and personable, and if she hadn't spent most of April looking at my ladyparts, I would invite her to dinner.  It's not her fault. 

I saw her on my way out, her belly billowing before her, gave her a wan smile, and slithered back to my car to rage. 

I haven't written on this topic before partly because I figure it's nothing new on the internets, where infertility blogs abound, and partly because we've been dealing with this topic for nearly nine years now and have reached the somewhat Zenlike stage at which we've realized that neither we nor our doctors are really in control of the situation.  In the early stages, I joined chat groups where people either had success or eventually dropped out; searched medical articles for the latest treatments; and otherwise obsessed about the unfairness of it all.  But after a miscarriage on our first IUI and so many other, less painful disappointments, I kind of sat back, relied on my hopeful side, and waited for an answer.

Well, boys and girls, here it comes.  Cross your fingers for IVF#4.  It may not be the last, depending on how many limbs I'm willing to part with in the future, but it's certainly our best hope so far. 

Meanwhile every pregnant teenager on the planet seems to be hanging out at the mall these days.  My RE is knocked up, my little sister announced pg #2 this weekend.  Zen is fading.  I'm ready to kick some existential ass.

In the meantime, I'll be in the kitchen, eating chocolate, if anyone needs me.

Encounters with Famous Men (and Women): Frank McCourt

News comes today that the sublime David Mitchell is in fine form to win this year's Booker Prize, though as often happens the consideration he's getting seems to be more for his previous book, Cloud Atlas, than the nominated book, Black Swan Green.  Still, as readers of this blog already know, I am a huge Mitchell fan and couldn't be more thrilled for him.  I hope he gets it.  The Booker frontrunner is notorious for losing in the final hour, but I hope this time is the exception.

Thinking of the time I met David Mitchell and wussed out of actually speaking to him about anything meaningful reminds me of all the other famous people I've met and wussed out of speaking to.  To whit, I have met, and wussed out of speaking to, all of the following people:

John F. Kennedy, Jr.
Ethel Kennedy
Diane Sawyer
Ethan Hawke
Muriel Hemingway
W.S. Merwin
Jonathan Lethem
Jonathan Franzen
John Burnham Schwartz
John Lithgow
Jane Hamilton

etc. etc.  You get the idea.  This does not even count the semester I spent in Marilynne Robinson's workshop and could barely muster the courage to get her to sign my copy of Housekeeping, even though she'd seen me every week for three and a half months.  I am--unbelievable, I know--a shy person, and confronted with my literary or cultural betters often revert to form, which in my case is sixth grade when the slam book kids said I was stacked, but only worth looking at if you put a bag over my head.

But then there are the few times I've mustered the courage and taken the leap, and been pleasantly rewarded.  I once, for example, gave Bob Dole the once-over during his 1988 Presidential campaign.  Another time I cornered Sharon Olds and told her how much I love her poems.  And there was that wild night with Keith and Mick...

I plan on writing about a few of these.  First, here is my one and only encounter with Frank McCourt, whom I met at a writers' conference a few years back:

Me (lamenting that current crop of students seems oblivious to the finer points of punctuation):  They use so many exclamation points, I think I'm in a Samuel L. Jackson movie.

Frank McCourt:  But sometimes you need an exclamation point.  Sometimes an exclamation point is the only thing that works

Me:  But surely we can almost always cut them out.

Frank McCourt:  Not necessarily.  For instance, how would you punctuate "Oh, shit"?

Me:  I see your point.

(Later there were some excellent dirty limericks, but I can't remember them well enough to reproduce them here, alas for all of you.)

Next up: Why I adore Anne Lamott.

For Another Take on Vacation Fun...

...I give you the Portrait of the Blogger as a Dumb Ass.

One Book

From Dan Wickett at the Emerging Writers' Network come this little ditty.  What are my answers, Alex?

One book that changed your life.

 

Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson, changed the kind of writer I wanted to become.  Quiet, powerful, fascinating writing.  I liked Gilead, but this is her masterpiece.

 

One book that you've read more than once.

 

An unfair question, given the number of books I've read over and over, but the worst offender has to be The Outsiders--I practically lived on it in 8th grade.  I always had a penchant for melodrama; this cemented it.

 

One book you'd want on a desert island.   

 

You've got to be kidding--one?  I suppose, if pressed, I would choose Pride and Prejudice for the illusion of social interaction, and because, let's face it, I am a girl.  A big girl.

One book that made you laugh.

 

George Saunders's Pastoralia is the funniest book in the world. Period.

 

One book that made you cry.

 

Hmm.  Again, just one?  I weep openly at the end of Tobias Wolff's "Bullet in the Brain," which is not a book, but I don't care--this is my quiz.

 

One book that you wish had been written.

 

I am still in mourning that Alice Munro is supposedly giving up.  I would like someone to talk some sense into her. 

 

One book that you wish had never been written.

 

The Lovely Bones. Many of you already know my feelings on this one.  I read it, I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, until the incredibly stupid ending.  Then I threw it across the room.  I can't believe it's being made into a movie.  This strikes me as a very bad idea.

 

One book you're currently reading.

 

Paula Morris's Hibiscus Coast, about art forgers in Auckland.  Not surprising considering she's a good friend, but now that I have ended the Summer of Hell I'm enjoying a good fast read.

 

One book you've been meaning to read?
Jose Saramago's Blindness.  I'm trying to read more foreign writers and writers in translation.

And I'll add one more of my own:
One book you wish you had written.
Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell, fills me with writerly envy.

Here's hoping you've all got some good books on your nightstand. 
 

 

Vacation By the Numbers

1. Number of Books Read at the Beach: 3
A Novel to Be Named Later by Anonymous, which I was reading for work; On Agate Hill by Lee Smith, which I was reviewing; and High Fidelity by Nick Hornby, which I read on the way back because I finished the other two and Circle Jerker wasn't reading this one at the moment I ran out of material.

2. Number of Sunburns Received: 3
My Scotch complexion burns like a frog in a hot pot of water: slowly at first, then up in flames.

3. Number of Actual Days Off Work: 0
Next time I take my computer to the beach, Circle Jerker has permission to put me on Xanax.

4. Number of Times I Dropped My Six-Month-Old Niece on Her Head: 1
Well not dropped, exactly, but I was holding her on the table and she was sitting up, and when I went to grab something out of her mouth, she toppled over.  So I ain't winning Aunt of the Year; I wasn't going to anyway.

5. Number of Krispy Kremes Eaten: ?
What is this, the Inquisition?