Spinning Around

Housekeeping first, apologies for jumping to B.Beta too soon, it’s been a nightmare, including me being unable to leave comments unless anon, thankfully that’s now fixed. Don’t know why I did it, started exploring ways to ‘tart up’ my blog and ended up moving the whole thing. Then I find, 'it' wasn’t ready yet, all kinds of problems and they reckon they’re working through them. So for now I’m going to hang on ...

The last week has rushed by at warp-speed.

Wedding Anniversary – our 4th, next day Mr. S's. Birthday. Two dinners out.

New job. Nothing to get smarmy about, my boss got a promotion and dragged me along for the ride. Frankly, this area of my life has really had so little focus for the last four years I’m amazed I’m still employed.

Going to this play. Yes Part 1. was 4 hours, Part 2. week later another 4 hours. Vomit, blood, p***, c** and poohs. Yeah think that covers the graphic content.

Then Cirque.Du.Soleil with Mr. S’s parents.

In between I’ve been on the phone whenever I can, trying to get things moving. That is – ringing during working hours, leaving messages, getting rung back and having to run around the floor looking for a vacant meeting room since workstations have nil privacy.

A Conference Day moved at the last minute, meant I had to cancel my appointment with my RE [SCREAM].This in turn has delayed kicking things off for our donor cycle. It’s petrifying. I get scared that our donor will get cold feet. But, everytime I check in she reassures me that she expected delays due to us being interstate, and is excited for when we can get going. Okay breath.

So now I have our RE appointment for Tuesday 9am and nothing is going to stop that going ahead.

Last night, Mr. S and I were having a drink and I mentioned that I’d booked us in for a catch up with some friends in a couple weeks. We’ve got a dinner booking at a great Vietnamese Restaurant. Among them a couple we love, but who are so hard to pin down, we rarely see.

These days apparently they are too busy with their two kids to - answer or return phone calls. Ahem, too busy? ... I know, I know, but if you’re a SAHM teaching the odd class of yoga ...

Of the three couples, they have their kids, other two of us are dealing with IF.

Mr. S asks me casually ‘how old is their youngest again’, Ummm let’s see ... well the oldest is at school, they announced their pregnancy sometime after our wedding – then it clicked ... wait a minute - they had OUR Honeymoon Baby!

Cat out of the bag

Ahem ... well we have found an egg donor angel. Actually she found us.

Yep that’s the big secret, and it feels like we’ve hit the jackpot in so many ways.

I didn’t want to say anything too soon, for fear of the same outcome as last time.

So, here’s how it works in Oz. The waiting lists at clinics are more than 2 years long, so you are encouraged to find your own donor – family, friends being the first ports of call. If that fails a lot of people will advertise – put themselves ‘out there’. Alternatively you can go overseas and pay for an anonymous donor.

Payment for donor eggs is illegal here, so there are no commercial operators with young donors on the books. Since this is a purely altruistic gift, women that want payment will go to the US.

Soooo, when our friend initially offered to be our donor, I started trawling the internet and eventually came upon a members-only forum specifically for donor’s and recipients. I thought this would be a great thing for us if we started cycling. Yaaawwwn.

The forum also runs a section for it’s members to write a story about themselves, an ad. if you like. Any women considering donating can go there and see if they either connect or are touched by someone’s story. Why not? I thought and so Mr S. and I sat down and wrote our story together.

A few days after our ‘last ever’ cycle [that failed], we were lucky enough to be contacted by an amazing woman. She had read our story and followed my posts and felt she connected with us. She had read a story about egg donation while waiting in her doctors' reception with her son, and had decided to look into it. Like many women, she had no idea until that point that IF couples needed donor eggs.

This was some weeks ago. Since then we have spent a lot of time on messenger getting to know each other. We've swapped fli.ckr accounts, and learnt about each others lives.

Thoughtout this time several other women contacted me to offer to be our donor (far out!), not really knowing what to do I thanked them all, but let them know we had received a serious offer. Each one of them told me to contact them back if it didn’t work out. Can you even believe this?

This weekend Mr. S. and I flew interstate and we all met. Our donor, her partner and son. I’m going to think of a special name for them soon.

So here we are in the IF version of internet dating.

Was it nerve-wracking? Yes. Several times I got paranoid we were going to be cancelled at the last minute (for no good reason). How to explain how it felt to make my initial phone call to work out a meeting place, and hearing her voice for the first time. Walking towards them to meet for the first time and wondering if we would get on.

And yet, who could predict that we would meet people that not only wanted to do this for us, but that we liked and got along with really well. We’re blown away – is it possible for me to say that they’re people like us and list the reasons why – without sounding like an egotist? Because of course I’m talking about all our good points!!!

We have sat down and talked through all the scenarios we could think of. Everything that will come up in the mandatory counselling sessions we will do.

Now all I have to do is make it happen. We’re hoping we will be cycling with a view to a December transfer.

Here’s something you maybe curious about (I know I would be), do we look alike? Actually we’re almost exactly the same height and build and close to same complexion – she’s has slightly lighter hair.

I still can’t believe it’s happened.

But it’s made me think about all the different emotions I’ve felt on this IF ride. How that over the years I’ve come to believe that all the horrible things that happened to us was purely Random Bad Luck. So maybe now we’re experiencing what it feels like to have Random Good Luck?

I know this is only the start of another journey and that there are no guarantees, but far out, this is an amazing place to be.

Witchy Witch

Big secret has to stay secret … for approximately 12 or 13 more days. Horse before cart and all that ... Shhhhh.

But in the meantime, Monys 100 things post reminded me of something, and must have resonated in a few others, since they commented on it.

Most people (women) at some point in their lives have visited a clairvoyant, tarot card reader ... energy healer ... snake oil charmer.

I always avoided them like the plague ... not sure if I was purely sceptical or too scared to believe they could actually have extraordinary visions.

Except for one time, many years ago a girl I worked with had gone to the, you know, ‘Absolute Best’ in Sydney. Everyone in the office was regaled with the wonderful stories about how her life was going to unfold - wealth, travel abroad, marriage, children ... blah blah. I mean she was already dating a guitarist from a major band, so we were entranced with her everyday-life stories anyway.

Extraordinarily she convinced both myself and my extremely gothic friend to book in and go.

I don’t think either of us had ever done this before, so it was a bit of an adventure. It took some weeks before our appointment, she was ‘that good’.

We walked into her office and her overweight daughter gave us the once over – cursory look to me and bug eyes at my friend.

My turn first. She looked at me in the chest area and pronounced that I’d arrived at myself. I’d traversed all childhood insecurities and was now at the point of being a pretty complete person.

Single at the time, finding out if I’d stay that way was a priority.

‘I see you meeting someone creative – maybe a writer’

Funny, Mr. Sparkle is a writer ...

I’ve really got to find the piece of paper I wrote everything down on. There was a whole bunch of other stuff, maybe me in an import business of my own, cottage by the sea. She gave me names of people that were/should be significant in my life. Most of it didn't make sense, or has never happened.

Anyway, towards the end, she said to me

‘I don’t know if you will have children’

Absolutely stunned, I think I blinked, then gulped, and muttered something like ... ‘well I don’t know if I want any’. I mean I was around 24 or 25 at the time.

Now I wonder, was she for real? Did she really have a true sense of this thing about me. I mean, I am one of the few people I know that have ever been told that. How many times have I heard 'I'm going to have a girl and a boy'? In fact I was so gobsmacked (even at that age), that I don’t think I have ever even told anyone, lest it be true, not even my gothic friend as we left and compared our readings.

Can you imagine how many times these words and that reading have replayed over in my mind in the last 4 years?

I’ve never been to another.

Hold that thought

Quick post.

Stuff is happening, yeah stuff is happening, yay stuff is happening, teehee.

Nup, there's no doom 'n gloom in The City, just positive steps.

BUT, not jinxing anything, so not talking about it ... yet!