Tids 'n' Bits

Life's been kinda hectic for the last couple of months.

At the end of April I finally miscarried. It was awful and no one warned me how awful it was going to be at all. Cramps were waking me up through all of the early morning hours, but just enough to be able to get right back to sleep. Around 7am they got worse and I was driftingly sort-kinda asleep until 9am when they started to be much more frequent and far more painful. It took me almost an hour of heavy bleeding and intense pain for me to realize that I wasn't just having cramps, I was in labor and jesus christ did it hurt. I don't know that you can explain that pain to someone who hasn't experienced it; it's like menstrual cramps that are worse than anything you've had coupled with the sense that yes, this may be just the thing that drives you totally mad. It continued like that for another 10 hours of going back and forth between the toilet and my bed, breathing nice big cleansing breaths, rocking, fidgeting, digging my fingernails into my thighs, screaming occasionally, you know, laboring. It got bad enough that I went to the hospital around 8 that evening, but not before passing two "somethings" that each felt about the size of a clementine. They did blood work and an ultrasound at the hospital and by that time the contractions were slowing down and I was in loads less pain. The ultrasound showed that I had passed the gestational sac and the placenta and there was just blood left over, so that was good, it really was over, no more god-forsaken contractions. It was draining and I came out of it totally exhausted. The one thing that's different between miscarriage and birth, besides the pushing, is that there's no pay-off; there's no baby at the end as a reward for all of that effort and pain. Somehow I just know that it would've been totally worth it if I could've had one. I spent two nights in the hospital because my PT/INR, which measures how much of my blood thinner is present, was too high and coupled with the bleeding, they just wanted to keep an eye on me. Three weeks later they went in and laparoscopically tied my tubed, or sutured my tubes or whatever it is they did. I spent about a week afterwards feeling generally crappy, but I'm back to my normal crappy now, so I'm pleased.

Two weeks later, I started school back at good ol' Temple University. The put me through hell to get registered and I wasn't actually registered until the day before classes were to start, but it all turned out fine so there was really no harm besides a stressed-out Rachel. I'm really enjoying my first class: Effective Teaching: Theory and Practice. We've gotten just that: a nice balance of theory and practice on the most effective strategies to use for both classroom management and instruction. It's a small class of about 11 people and the instructor, a former high school principal, is really good. So that's going along well, two evenings a week for about 2 hours we get together, talk about teaching, each give a mini-lesson, deal with any new theory, and break. I'm really enjoying it. It is nice, however, that it will be over in a few weeks and my second summer course has been converted to an online course, so I won't have to drive the hour back and forth from school each time and I might actually have time for a vacation in there somewhere!

Around the time school started, or maybe just before, I decided to get serious about losing some weight. I've been on long-term prednisone treatment and besides keeping the disease in some kind of check, it also causes pretty steady weight gain. So, I set about dealing with that. I got a membership to the YMCA and started the Body-for-Life diet. So far, no big results that I can see, but I've only been on the diet for two weeks and working out for a month. I have been able to go up a notch in my belt, so that's gratifying. So, we'll see. I'm hoping that if I stick with it I could lose 35-40 lbs in the next 10-12 weeks and gain some lean muscle mass, which I think will help me to move better and look better than I do right now.

Anyway, that's it for me right now. I'm going to go back to reading "IT" by Stephen King, one of my favorites.

Worries

At 7am I am usually far from awake. Well, not far really. I wake up, go to the bathroom, if I have a headache, which is about half the time, I take some Excedrin, and I go back to sleep for another three or four hours. I rarely “wake up,” I just sleep walk.

Today, however, I got back to bed and somehow the fact that I’m going to have to student teach in a few months just flitted into my conscious mind. I batted it away and groggily attempted to snatch back the sleep that was trying to slip away. No such luck. Try as I might, thoughts of this new undertaking persisted. How am I ever going to do this? Are there lesson planning resources out there for the new textbook? Do I even remember how to write a lesson plan? Revolution? Constitution? Civil War? Reconstruction? Who was President in 1836? What does the 23^rd Amendment say? In what year did Texas join the Union? How am I ever going to do this???

And with that I was very definitely awake.

I got up, put on some clothes, and made an attempt to dig in to my teaching resources. I say attempted because it look like I didn’t save as many of my resources from my last stint student teaching as I thought I did. Also “attempted” because right now my hips suck and somehow I pulled a muscle in my back while sleeping two nights ago, so I couldn’t get down on the floor to really get easy access to all of my books and notebooks and I quickly got out of breath and dizzy, standing half bent over, trying to sift through my papers. So I really didn’t get anywhere with that little adventure. And some of you will look at that and say, “Adventure, really? She got up, looked in a bookshelf, and didn’t find anything.” Those of you who suffer from similar chronic illnesses will know exactly what I mean when I call it an adventure, when I say that it took me a half an hour of sitting on the couch, taking deep breaths and just being still, to recover from my little adventure.

Sometimes I think I’m crazy to think that I can get through this whole teacher certification process when I have trouble getting through a load of laundry. I’ve been feeling especially discouraged lately because physically I just haven’t been able to cut it. Starting in early February, the joints in my legs started flaring up pretty badly. It’s mostly my hips, but when you throw one joint out of alignment, the rest soon fall out, too. So far every joint in both legs, plus my right shoulder, elbow, and wrist (from using my arms to lift myself out of a seated position) have been in major amounts of pain. And now I’ve got a pulled muscle in my back to deal with, in addition to the pain in my hips, so it’s doubly hard to do something as simple as walk to the kitchen. And I think that I’m going to be able to work a seven-hour day, five days a week? Stand in front of a class? It’s going to take some serious adaptations -lots of breaks to sit down and rest, lots of naps after school, lots of devices that I haven’t thought up yet. It’s scary. It’s exciting. If I succeed…I can’t even imagine how good it would feel to succeed in this endeavor. I’ll have proven to myself that I can accomplish a task that’s truly difficult – something that I don’t know that I’ve ever really done.

That’s not to say that I haven’t been successful when I’ve tried to do things in the past, it’s just to say that nothing that I’ve accomplished up to this point has really felt all that difficult, academically at least. Part of that is that I tend to only continue with things that come to me naturally. School has always been one of those things; with a minimal amount of effort I’m able to get pretty good results. I don’t have to break my back - it just comes. Student teaching is not like that at all. It’s a real challenge. The sheer amount of work involved floors me; putting in a full day of teaching and then going home only to face several more hours of reading, researching, and lesson planning. Then there’s the creativity aspect, one that puts forth another real challenge for me. Trying to come up with lessons that conform to the university’s teaching standards, while being interesting, stimulating and challenging for twelve and thirteen year olds is a tall task. Trying to balance that and my personal life? Hard. Trying to balance that, my personal life, and major chronic illnesses? I’m hoping that it’s not simply too much.

Enough worrying for today. The sun is shining, it’s supposed to get up into the high 70’s, the Little Man is home from school this week for Spring Break and we’re going to plant some seeds for our vegetable garden, and I have a whole month to worry about school before school starts, so enough worrying for today!

On Choice

Well I must say it’s been quite a week.

I’d been feeling…well, off, I guess. Just strange. Even for someone with as many issues as I do. Lots of little things that all added up to one big one. After two years without a period, I had several days of menstrual-like cramping mid-January, followed by nothing, no period, not even spotting. Usually a night owl, I found myself tired enough to go to bed at ten o’clock in the evening. The skin on my face, usually clear of acne despite the telangectasia that marks it with tiny red dots, had started breaking out. My breasts were sore like they’d never been. I’d thrown up two nights in a row.

It took me two months to add all of these things together and reach a conclusion greater than the usual “I’m sick.” And still, as I peed on that pink and white stick, I thought that there was no chance that I was going to see that second little pink line. And then, there they were, two parallel pink lines, sure as day.

I can’t even start to relate the sheer number of emotions that ran through my head. I kept looking at myself in the mirror and telling myself that I should really wipe the grin off of my face because this was not good news. Scleroderma and pregnancy do not mix well. Pulmonary hypertension and pregnancy is frequently a killer cocktail – frequently being one-third to one-half of the time. The probability of this pregnancy ending in my death, the baby’s death, or both was astronomical, but there I was, grinning like an idiot in my bathroom mirror.

After I got over my initial reaction, I was just freaked out. I spent the day and the rest of the week reading everything that I could find about pulmonary hypertension and pregnancy: studies, statistics, other women’s stories. BF and I talked about it. Though there wasn’t really a lot to talk about, we talked anyway. About what a huge risk it would be to try to carry out the pregnancy. About how really truly sick I would get. About how poorly I had responded to these same hormones when we had done IVF and I ended up on a ventilator with acute respiratory distress syndrome. About how hard it would be to terminate. About how hard it would be to deal with the death of the baby, of me. It was an incredibly hard decision, but after talking it over, reading all of the literature, speaking to my doctors, we were resolved that the best decision for us was to terminate. This would not be our only shot at having a child that is biologically ours; our six frozen embryos are just waiting for the time to be right. It was going to be hard, but I really felt like this was the best option.

Let me say now that I thought long and hard about writing these words here, and I almost didn’t, but I feel like it’s important for people to hear stories like mine, and important for me to have a place to tell my story. Maybe it’ll help someone to understand a bit better how real decisions like these are, how hard they are, but how necessary it is for women to have the option to make them. I’ve always been pro-choice on the issue of abortion, but I had resolved that I would do all that I could to never have to make that choice. Now, I’m glad that I had the choice, that I wasn’t forced to carry out a pregnancy that could’ve killed or crippled me, that’s could’ve devastated my family. I feel the need to tell this story because though I believe my reasons to be valid there are those who don’t, and there are those that believe that these may be valid reasons, but that women with other reasons, things at stake that are less than death, ought not be afforded the same choice. Honestly, I think that’s bullshit, choice is choice and anything less than choice for every woman is unacceptable. I think my favorite singer/songwriter Ani DiFranco put it beautifully:

"… if you don't like abortion
don't have an abortion
teach your children
how they can avoid them
but don't treat all women
like they are your children

compassion has many faces
many names
and if men can kill
and be decorated instead of blamed
when a woman called upon to mother
can choose to refrain

and contrary to eons
of oldtime religion
your body is your only true cominion
nature is not here to serve you
or at any cost to preserve you
that's just some preacherman's oldtime opinion

life is sacred
life is all so profane
a woman's life
it must be hers to name
let an amendment
put this brutal game to rest
trust women will still take you to their breast
trust women will always do their best
trust that our differences make us stronger, not less"

I’ll stop ranting now. It’s just the first time I’ve had a connection this close to this particular issue and it gets to me that there are actually people out there fighting for me to not have this right.

Once I was sure, though melancholy, about my decision, it ended up being made for me. I went for and ultrasound this morning to determine how far along I was. After searching for it for what seemed like an eternity, they determined that I was about ten weeks along, but they were unable to detect the fetal heartbeat. My body, it seems, had made it’s own decision about how safe this pregnancy was and ended it. I feel only relief and validation. This was not meant to be and that’s okay. We’ll have babies when the time is right. In the next nine months, instead of dealing with what would surely have been a difficult pregnancy and, if I beat all the odds, recovery, I will be completing student teaching and finally become a certified teacher. I will have accomplished a major goal and will go on to new motherhood satisfied with my personal and professional accomplishments. I will be ready and healthy (hoping and praying). I will be all the more grateful for my life and for that of my child given what I’ve gone through and given up to get there.

Best Vacation Ever

I just had the best vacation ever and fell in love with Puerto Rico.

BF and I had been looking to take a Caribbean vacation. Winter was beating down on us and we were both in need of a world without snow – this winter has been especially irritating on the snow front, with the white stuff covering the ground pretty universally since the first big snowstorm of the season in December that dropped something like two feet on us. We had considered several options, but they were all just too costly to be justifiable.

I happened to mention our predicament to my mom in passing when she alerted me to the fact that my uncle (technically my second cousin, but I’ve always called him my uncle) and his family own a home in Rincón, a surf town on the westernmost part of the island. I was really surprised and understandably overjoyed. What had once been an unattainable $3k vacation had just shrunk to $350 plane tickets and a rental car.

So I got in touch with my second cousin, who said he’d be down there until the 13^th of March and that we were welcome anytime before then. So we got our tickets, made all of the necessary arrangements and waited anxiously to leave on February 23^rd. We got a great set of flights that allowed us to take full advantage of all eight days we stayed. We left Philadelphia at 7:00 am and got in to San Juan around 10:30 am then drove the two and a half hours across the island to Rincón, getting to the house at just about 2 in the afternoon. On day seven of our trip we left Rincón and drove back to San Juan, stayed there overnight and got a plane back home at 7 in the evening on day eight.

Rincón was beautiful. The barrio we were staying in, Stella, was a nice quiet little town. Not very touristy at all and everything that we wanted to see was within a few minutes of the place we were staying, the beach was a block from the house, the lighthouse was five minutes away, there was a coral reef that we snorkeled out to right near the lighthouse. On the whole it was just a great place to be, and very tourist-friendly despite not being very tourist-oriented. There are US based chain stores all over the place – Walgreen’s, Burger King, Kmart, Costco – and nearly everyone has at least a workable hold on English for those of us who speak all of ten words of Spanish. A couple of days we just hung out at the beach and snorkeled right there. One day we went out to the reef and got to check that out. I was wowed by all of the sea life that was right there, we didn’t have to take a boat out or anything, but I saw all different kinds of fish of different shapes, sizes and vibrant colors and I even saw a conch-like snail thing swimming around outside of its shell. Another day we took a trip up into the mountains, through the jungle. From the top there was an old castle that we climbed up into where you got a panoramic view of the coast, about 30 miles away. It was breathtaking.

The first day in San Juan, we got some lunch at Señor Frogs, which I suppose might be entertaining on a Friday night when everyone’s drinking, but for a Tuesday afternoon is just obnoxious and over-priced, and then we took a walk around the harbor area and checked out all of the little street vendors that pop-up whenever there are cruise ships in port. We had a nice time that day, but we were really in need of some down time, so we spent most of that evening hanging out at the hotel, watching movies, swimming in the oh-so-chilly rooftop pool, and eating junk food.

The next day we took a taxi up the hill to El Morro, a Spanish fort that was first constructed in the 1500’s. After wandering around the fort for the better part of an hour, we made our way down the hill, stopping at various little historic sites – the governor’s mansion, the Catedral San Juan Bautista – and the little shops that dot the city until we finally made our way to the second fort in Old San Juan, Castillo San Cristobal. San Cristobal was a challenge to get to. Well really, the whole vacation was a challenge. I’ve been having a terrible pain in my ankle for about a month now, we’re thinking that it’s a torn ligament at this point. So walking everywhere was pretty painful. It’s swollen and just generally miserable – great way to spend a vacation! Anyway, San Cristobal is at the top of a great big, very steep hill, but it was worth it. It was beautiful and the views were just amazing. We wrapped up our day with coconut ice that was pretty freaking awesome; I could’ve eaten a dozen, and then headed back to our car and on to the airport.

We planned to get to the airport early, have a late lunch/early dinner, and jump right on our flight. Didn’t happen quite that easily. The process of returning the car and getting through security went by far quicker than we anticipated and then we found out that our flight had been delayed by an hour, so the two hours we thought we had to kill had just become more like three and a half. To make matters worse, once through the security gates we discovered that there wasn’t really anywhere to sit down and order a meal, there were a couple of sports bars with a selection of appetizers and an express Dominos. So we got pizza and settled in to read our books. It was a relatively uneventful flight. They screwed up the in-flight movie, so instead of watching The King’s Speech, we got to watch Wallstreet: Money Never Sleeps, which was just bad. I also had my first experience sitting next to a nervous flyer, well, not so much nervous as scared. I first became aware of this as she clutched my sun burnt arm and buried her face in her sweatshirt as we took off. Of course this was repeated when we hit turbulence off the New Jersey coast, and as we landed in Philadelphia, I just said screw it and held her hand. I felt bad. I can’t imagine being that legitimately afraid of flying that I would grab a hold of whatever person was closest to me for comfort.

So that was the end of our adventure. BF says that he could spend every vacation there for the rest of his life and I tend to agree. It was an amazing vacation and I can’t wait to go back.

I know. It’s been a while.

I keep sitting down and starting to write, getting halfway through it, getting distracted and then when I come back to it it’s no longer relevant. So, I’m going to try to write what I want in the next half hour before I start dinner, hopefully I will succeed. I’m not even going to look at the date on my last entry and try to catch you up, just a few choice details.

A year of monthly chemo has done amazing things for me. My breathing is better, my joints are better, and everything just feels a hundred times better. My hair is thinner, but what the hell, nothing’s free.

My other major problem this year was the evil g-tube that I was using to clear my stomach so that I didn’t aspirate in my sleep. It was one of the most painful things that I have ever endured. Constantly infected, constantly leaking acid on to my skin, leaving it raw and sore. I dealt with that horror for nine months before I found a doctor that was actually willing to touch it and together we decided that my reflux was no longer bad enough for me to need the tube. So they took it out, leaving a second four-inch scar across my stomach and another healed stoma. So now the pain from that is gone too.

Unfortunately, during my August/September in the hospital, they stopped giving me my anti-depressants and I failed to restart them once I was discharged. Over the following few months I sank further and further into a depression that slowly overtook my life. I was miserable by Christmastime. Burying myself in books and movies, becoming more and more isolated from everyone around me. Things came to a head, I won’t go into the details, but there were plenty of tears. I got myself some emergency psychiatric care and got back on my meds. Now, a month later, I’m really starting to see a difference. It’s becoming easier to motivate myself to do simple household tasks. I’m not sad all of the time. Life is just getting easier.

On the other hand, I’m stuck in a weird place. I’ve been so sick for so long and now I’m feeling so much better. I don’t know how to get back to normal. I’m working at it and just trying to take small steps. Things are changing, slowly. I have a lot to figure out. The last time I felt this well I was 21 years old, now I’m 27. The life around me now is nothing like the life I was living then, everything has changed. So I’m working to figure out who I am now, what I do now. I’m starting by going back to school to finish my teacher certification. It’s only two classes over the summer, but then I’ll be student teaching and taking a teaching seminar in the fall. We’ll see how it goes, hopefully smoothly.

And look at that, it’s exactly thirty minutes later and I’ve finished writing. Hopefully this will become a trend.

Ani DiFranco - Amendment (Live)

In which I feel sorry for myself...

One of the biggest problems that I have is boredom. It's overwhelming at times. Over the last few years I've lost the ability to schedule anything and with that has gone most of the activities that I used to enjoy. I haven't been able to work in...god, it's been years now. I just managed to graduate from college; I'm thankful that I'm able to manage A's despite my frequent absences. Lately I've had a little relief, BF and I built a deck in our backyard. Well, he built most of it, but I was surprised by how much I was able to help and how I didn't feel like crap when we were done. And from time to time I manage to find a craft to fill my time, like knitting or making the little guy a Halloween costume. This week it's been cutting out paper snowflakes. I love it, it's very satisfying even though it makes my hands all creaky and sore. It's hard to keep busy though; I watch a lot of TV and read a lot of books and do a lot of sitting around wishing I felt better and worrying about the future. I heard today that most people with pulmonary fibrosis die within four to ten years of being diagnosed. What a shitty statistic. I wish I hadn't heard it, but now that I have I can't seem to get it out of my head. So I guess I'll go fold some more paper and try to get engrossed in that for a while.

Finally.

All of last week I was waiting...and waiting...and waiting.  I had taken five days of medroxyprogesterone to try to induce a period so that we could start with the fertility drugs.  I took the last pill Tuesday.  Wednesday, no period.  Thursday, no period. Friday, no period.  

Saturday, BF and I were leaving for a trip to Hershey Park, which is about two hours from our home, with the little man, my dad, step-mom, their kids, and my brother.  We had booked our hotel and were going to take part in the park's preview plan; if you have tickets for one day, you can get in the park for free after 7:30 the night before.  We had packed our bags and were stopping for lunch before going to the mall for haircuts and the semi-weekly kid swap.  

As we split a milkshake I said to BF, "Okay.  As long as I don't get my period in the next eighteen hours we're just fine." The I went to the bathroom and...Well, I'm sure you can guess how that story ends.

The way the IVF cycle works, the first day that you have your period before 9 am is day one of the cycle.  Having gotten my period at 3:00 in the afternoon on Saturday, Sunday would have been day one.  I didn't want to mess up this cycle, but I also didn't want to skip Hershey, make the guys skip the preview night, or drive the two hours by myself on Sunday morning after driving an hour back and forth from the doctor's office in downtown Philadelphia. 

Luckily, my awesome IVF nurse had given me her cell phone number and had said to call anytime about anything at all, no matter how small.  This, I figured, more than warranted a call.  She agreed.  She also assured me that waiting until Monday morning to start the cycle wasn't going to ruin anything and that I should go to Hershey and enjoy myself and then get downtown first thing Monday for blood work and an ultrasound. 

So we went to Hershey and had a fabulous time.  I was afraid it would be difficult to keep all eleven of us together, but we managed to keep it together pretty well.  It helped that my step-mom had the baby to contend with and doesn't really like roller coasters or "thrill rides"; she kept an eye on the LM and her own six-year old son most of the time.  It also helped that Hershey is laid out exceptionally well and the lines were incredibly short.  There are eight or nine different areas, each with a big ride or two, a few kiddie rides, and a couple rides that everyone could go on.  We were able to go to an area, split up for a little while so that we “big kids” could go on a roller coaster, my step-mom would take the little guys to ride on a ride they'd enjoy, and then we'd all get back together for a ride or two that we all liked.  

I also got one of those great little scooter-like ride on ECVs.  It was the best.  They have keys, so I could ride it up to the entrance of a ride and take the key with me so that I didn't have to worry about someone taking off with it.  And the lines were so short that I didn't feel like I was standing for too long, although there were still some long walks through queues and up stairs at the water slides.  I was pretty exhausted and achy at the end of the day, but the point is that I managed to get through a twelve-hour day that would have otherwise been impossible.  

Sunday night, we didn't get home until 12:30 and after two weeks of insomnia, I fell asleep minutes after my head hit the pillow, despite being sunburned and unable to lie on my side as I usually do.  Monday morning, LM and I were up and out of the house at 7:30 and got down to UPenn about an hour later.  He was a real trooper and reminded me all morning of exactly why I want another little person running around the house.  He snuggled with me in the waiting room, asked dozens of questions about why we were there, told me about how he was going to help when we have a baby, and how he would like to work at the doctor's office and, the best, told me how much he loves me “a hundred million billion” and will be my friend forever, over and over again.  We had to wait to have an ultrasound and then wait again for blood work and it was 10:30 by the time we got back to the car to leave.  He was sound asleep in the backseat about five minutes into the trip home and slept for more than three hours that afternoon.  Shortly after he got up from his nap, I got a call from my nurse with the good news that I could go ahead and start with 150 I.U. of Gonal-F every day through Wednesday and come back in on Thursday morning for a second blood draw.  She also let me know that I have seventeen antral follicles (which I have since learned bodes very well for the success of the egg retrieval) and that my estradiol and luteinizing hormone levels are 77 and 4.5, respectively (which still means nothing to me).

The first injection was easy.  I don't mind needles and this one is tiny and just a subcutaneous injection.  It's also a cool pre-loaded pen; I just attach a new needle, dial in the right dose, pop the plunger up, stab my belly, and press the plunger all the way in.  Very cool.  This morning, however, I woke up to this fabulous little gem:

I don't have room for two weeks full of bruises that size on my lower belly.  Also, later this week I'll be adding injections of Cetrotide daily and possibly Pergonal. Can you imagine how purple I'm going to be? How many different shades of bruise I'll be representing? I'm hoping that injection #2, which I gave my self this evening, won't prompt such an extreme reaction. On the whole I'm thrilled to be started. I'm not feeling any bad hormonal side effects yet and I'm just happy that we're able to do this and that I'm finally moving forward with the treatment.  The purple…Well, I don’t like it, but it makes my stomach match my heavily-bruised appendages and it certainly won’t kill me.

Well, I'm off to bed. BF is getting antsy.  I'll let everyone know how things are going as they progress and I'm working on a post about the schools that we're looking at for LM.  So think about this one for me - but don't answer until you hear the whole story: what do you think about the child of strictly secularly thinking people attending a parochial school? 

Huzzah!

They didn't total my car! In fact, it's in the shop right now being put back together.

It was so nice to get the call yesterday. And now I have a nice rental car, so I'm not trapped; I can go out during the day and do whatever I want. And I'll have my own car back soon (hopefully).

BF and I had a nice little date last night. Dinner was okay, but the restaurant had let a group of seventy-five women take over the dining room. They were making announcements, giving away prizes, applauding at everything; it put a real damper on our meal (which was otherwise pretty yummy. We complained to the manager about our problem with the large, loud group, and she comped our meal. After dinner, we went to see Iron Man 2, which I thought was pretty good for an action hero movie. It didn't let out until close to midnight, so we just went home and went to bed.

Today, I'm hoping for the energy to get my vegetable plants planted in the garden. It's a nice sunshine-y day and I would really love to be able to get out there and do some work. We have lots of sprouts that need to go into the ground: peas, beans, carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, and hot and bell peppers. I know there are more, I'm just cant remember them.

The best news of the week: BF and I are going to Madison Square Garden to see Pearl Jam. I'm very excited, it's gonna be a blast. This will be the third time I've seen them live and I love the concerts.

Alright, that's enough for now. I'll write again soon.

My Poor Car

Yesterday evening, at ten o'clock, a middle-aged Vietnamese man drove his silver Sienna mini-van into the rear driver's side of my Jetta, crushing a good portion of the rear of my car and completely destroying the rear axle. I was no where near the car at the time of the accident. I was sitting on my couch watching TV and my car was parked, perfectly legally, on the street. We only found out that the car had be hit when we were greeted by a police officer at our door.

I'm pissed...and sad. I loved that car. It was my first real substantial adult purchase. I spent five years paying the damned thing off, and now, almost a year to the day after I've paid it off, this happens. So now they'll say it's totaled, write me a check for somewhere around five thousand dollars, and send me on my way, and I will have to go through the pain in the ass of buying a new used-car for less than half of what I spent for my Jetta. I felt like I had the car thing covered, at least for the foreseeable future. It was nine years old, but it was still in good shape.

So until I find out what the insurance companies have to say about the matter, I'm stuck playing a waiting game. And until this guy accepts liability for the accident, I don't even have a rental to drive because, yes, I am that cheap and wouldn't pay the eight dollars a month to have one covered under my own policy and I have to wait for his insurance carrier.

This Sucks.