I woke up bright and bleary this morning (we shall not discuss the leaking, mmkay?) just in time to take Alex to the doctor. He has a rash. No, not a gross grody one, simple childhood excema.

This is not the interesting part of the story.

After we left, cortisone prescription in hand, I decided to reward myself for shoving stuff up my cooter with some Dunkin’ Donuts. Dunkin’ Donuts is possibly my favorite thing on the planet and for no apparent reason, we haven’t had it in ages. Probably because coffee makes me nauseous.

This is also not the interesting part of the story.

As I whipped my car around to the main street, where glorious Dunkin’ Donuts is located, I noticed that the KFC was out of business. This isn’t terribly surprising, as St. Charles isn’t known for loving fried chicken. Sadly.

Again, not very interesting.

When I pulled up to the stop sign, a two or three year old girl nearly darted in front of my car. I stopped, put the car in park and looked around for her parents. Not an intersection one would like a wee child roaming around in as it’s pretty fucking dangerous.

This is the interesting part of the story.

I saw another woman in a car trying to talk to this child, so I hopped out of my car to make sure that the child remained at least out of the road. Good, I thought, that lady must have that child. What was she THINKING letting a kiddo roam about here?

“Is this your child?” I bellowed to her.

“Nope.” She said as she joined me and Alex in the abandoned parking lot.

Years of little boys has made me perpetually nervous of little girls, but I looked at this one in her pretty Sunday dress and she melted my blackened heart a bit.

“Hola bebe,” I said to her, saying the first and last of my entire Spanish vocabulary that’s suitable for kids. I can say “You have small balls,” “More cheese, please,” and my favorite “Fuck your fucking mother, asshole” but save from screaming out colors at her (Rojo! VERDE!) my conversational Spanish is pathetic.

The lady and I looked at each other and looked around noticing a decided lack of concerned parents running out toward this child. I cannot stress enough how this is NOT the place a child should walk ALONE.

“We should call the police,” she suggested. I agreed, sadly. I’d wanted to just return this obviously well-loved child to her home and have my bagel and coffee without a side of remorse. I knew the police would probably give her to DCFS to sort out who she is.

We all sat down on the pavement waiting for the police to come. “GATO!” I nearly shrieked, remembering the word for cat. This kid–even at 2–was bound to think I was the Village Idiot. “Gato,” she replied, looking around for a cat.

Sure enough, the police showed up (there’s not much to do out here but bust underage smokers) and took my new wee friend to DCFS where they could locate her family for her. I felt terrible leaving her, maybe it’s the added progesterone, maybe it’s that I’m getting soft in my old age, or maybe I just felt maternal toward a child that was not my own. My heart is sad for her, and I hope that her family does report her missing and isn’t afraid of being deported in the process.

*sighs*

What’s the weirdest thing YOU’VE found on the side of the road?

The last time I was pregnant with a viable baby–Alex (a.k.a.The Deer Hunter)–I’ve mentioned that I worried a fair bit. But I think that “worried a bit” doesn’t quite do justice for how much I fucking worried. For someone who never worries about her kids after they’re born, I like to imagine I get my worrying out before they’re born.

Either that, or pregnancy makes me totally nuts (which is my story and I’m sticking to it. I’m quite frankly terrified of pregnant women. This makes it really hard when I am the pregnant one, as you can imagine. Who wants to be afraid of themselves?).

I’d gone into this last pregnancy with the singular stipulation that I wasn’t going to worry. Let go and let God. Thy will be done. Or whatever. Either way, I wasn’t going to waste valuable ‘eatin’ time’ worrying about my unborn fetus. Whether it lived or died, I wasn’t going to worry until I knew I needed to. How do you prepare yourself for a bad outcome anyway?

(Conversely, I’d gone into Alex’s pregnancy promising myself that I wouldn’t get as fat as I had with Ben. 60 pounds later–on a diet of egg whites and tofu–I’m still puzzling that one out. I’m starting to think that maybe I should go into these things without any sort of expectations. Seems futile).

And I did so well for a couple of weeks without worrying. I did so incredibly well. I all but ignored my pregnancy, choosing to focus on other such pressing issues as What I Am Craving At The Moment and How Nauseous Is Enough. I didn’t go in for early monitoring because, why bother? It’s going to stick or it’s not.

But somehow, when I saw that blob with a pixelated heart a-beating away in it’s chest, I started to really care. And when I really care, I really worry. Especially when the spotting continues like it did last night.

Thankfully, this morning has brought no blood AND a call from my doctor with the news that I have low progesterone. So, for the next 5-6 weeks, I will be shoving sexy little suppositories into my love hole. My hoo-haa. That should be AWESOME. I will be beating men away from me with sticks. STICKS, I tell you.

So, the State Of What’s Up Down There is now at a blissful peace. I can only hope it remains that way for the next 30 odd weeks.

And if (when?) this Sausagebryo is born, I shall ground him or her for scaring me so very much. I’m thinking for the next 16 years or so.

I’m still spotting, more than I was before.

I don’t even know where to begin to explain how I feel now. I feel fucked.

After a grueling morning of appointments then ultrasounds scheduled in completely separate cities we now know two things:

1) My cervix is closed

2) The Sausagebryo has a heart rate of 122. The US chick said it looked a little small, but it’s pixelated heart was merrily beating away.

Thank you to everyone who rooted for me throughout this. I couldn’t have done it without knowing The Internet was marching behind me. Seriously.

Now I need a nap.

I have an appointment tomorrow morning with the OB. The same one I saw last time I was in the office for my miscarriage. The same one who broke my water with Alex.

Since the initial spotting, I’ve felt not much at all. No more spotting. My uterus feels non-specifically weird. Could be the Crohn’s. Could be the start of the miscarriage.

But I’ve given up completely. I hold out absolutely no more hope at all. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t blindly hope for the best anymore. I’m tapped out of hope, of well-wishes, of happiness. I’ve been struggling mightily before now, and now that this is following a familiar path, I’m just at a loss.

And I’m just so tired of this; so weary of it all.

If this is the beginning of the end like I’m pretty sure it is, I’m done with the idea of a third child. I simply cannot do this to myself again. I can’t go through the worrying, the anguish, the stress again.

I’ve planned what I will do when this fails: I’m leaving town for awhile. By myself. I will tell no one where I’m going, and I will be alone for a couple of days. I’ve not had a chance to properly mourn anything at all; not my beloved Steph, not my two previous miscarriages, nothing. I’ve been too busy being forced to be something for someone else.

I can’t help but feel that tonight is the last time that the Sausagebryo and I will be together. And I want to tell it how sorry I am. I’d really have liked a third child. Even if it meant a mini-van and more stretch marks. I’m so sorry ickle one. I’m just so sorry.

I’d say I was comfortably numb, but there’s nothing comfortable about it.

I’m spotting.

I’m extending my middle finger to The Universe right now.

I will be going to the doctor tomorrow morning to follow up on all of this. While the spotting has stopped for now, I have little faith that things will be well. It’s either self-preservation or just “knowing something isn’t right,” but either way, I’m resigned to losing this pregnancy.

And I literally do not know what I’m going to do.

Like me or not, I’ve never been known as a hateable person. Sure, the random person now and again decides that they hate me, but usually there’s a reason. Even Molly, the man-hands girl who had The Sex with my boyfriend had been nursing a long-time grudge waaay back from when I’d dared go to homecoming with a guy she was stalking er, trying to date.

That said, I was hated from the moment Amanda laid eyes on me.

It was an odd situation for sure, I was good friend with her boyfriend Mikey, who hadn’t exactly told me that he was dating anyone, so I literally had no clue why this chick was glaring at me the moment I walked in the room. I’d never been super popular with the ladies, so that maybe wasn’t a huge shock, but she shot me the hairy eyeball for so long that I began to wonder if I had a boogie on my face or she thought I was someone else.

But no. Turns out she was glaring at me because she hated me because I took the male attention away from her (there were a number of dudes there the night I met her, that were my friends). From that point forward, she was my own personal enemy. I was strangely flattered.

That is, until she set about ruining my life.

While it sounds dramatic and all, she didn’t try and kill me or anything, she just waged war on me. At any opportunity to make me look bad, she took it and ran with it. It was always about one-upping me with whatever was going on, whether or not I was even trying to compete with her. She was dying to get me gone.

Things came to a head when I was about 6 months pregnant with Ben. Faithful readers (that I pay heavily) will remember that I was unmarried, 20 years old, and unhappy as hell with my Baby Daddy Nat.

So Nat had a lady admirer, Megan, who I’d always kinda poked fun at. She was a nice enough girl, I suppose, incredibly irritating, and known to get drunk and command that everyone near her listen to her talk about her horribly abusive childhood and how she’d sometimes “cry in the shower.” It wasn’t so much a cry for help as it was a cry for the party to pay attention to her.

But for some reason, Megan thought Nat (who is not an attractive man. What was I thinking? I WASN’T.) was just the bees knees, and at any party we’d go to, she’d glom onto him and hang around him all night. I thought it was hilarious: this chick was obviously annoying, pathetic and stupid, but I never raised a stink about it. Why would he go for her?

For months, though, anytime Nat would see Amanda, she would tell him about how much better off he’d be with Megan, how Megan liked him, and she’d make sure to arrange any time that the two of them could be together without me. Hoping for some sort of reaction other than laughter (the girl was REALLY annoying) Nat would always tell me about this, and become sort of annoyed when I didn’t get jealous.

The one night that he cheated on me–while I was pregnant with Ben–it had been carefully orchestrated by Amanda. Now, of COURSE it was Nat’s fault. Of COURSE it was. But, Amanda was most pleased by this, after nursing such a high resentment towards me for years and years.

Finally after months and years of plotting, that stupid bitch had gotten under my skin.

I still see her now and again out and about, and she’s still equally pathetic and sad (she dated pretty much all the guys in one group of friends-my friend group–and they all dumped her). I’m sure if you were to confront her she’d deny any sort of anger, any sort of hatred.

But she’d be lying.

Stupid assed-bitch.

*claps hands happily*

Your enemy stories?

Happy Father’s Day to the man (Mr. Aunt Becky) I didn’t know I could hope to marry. Sure, you dragged me, kicking and screaming to the alter by my hair, but you know now how lovingly I look at you as I grab your hand, shove your wedding ring in your face and say, “You see THIS RING? It means I OWN YOU.” See, it’s because I love you so very much that I perform such acts of idiocy.

You’re a good guy, The Daver, you always are. No matter how many orphans (or cute cuddly kittens) I rescue from burning buildings (current tally: 0. But I have faith that I’ll do some rescuing soon), you will always be my better half. I can’t top you on that one, even if I can possibly beat your ass. You wouldn’t hurt a PREGNANT LADY would you, Daver? I didn’t think so.

You told me this morning that Ben was going to be a great dad, as he played with his doll Seth the same way you were playing with Alex. And you’re right, Ben will be a great dad. He learned it all from you. Those boys are fortunate to have you, and maybe they won’t always recognize it or think you’re especially “cool” but in their hearts they always will. They’ll always know that the lasting damage was caused by seeing their mother breastfeed, not by you spraying them with the hose.

I love you, and I’m happy to have you in my life. Even if you never change the toilet paper roll. Or manage to place your laundry IN the basket (It PUTS THE LAUNDRY IN THE BASKET). Or notice when I get my hairs did. Because maybe *I* won’t notice when I dump 5 gallons of bleach onto YOUR CLOTHES.

I’m just sayin’.

So, Happy Father’s day to all of you dudes. Your wives (and Aunt Becky, in a purely platonic way) love you.

My old friend Morning Sickness, more medically termed “Nausea/Vomiting of Pregnancy,” (which I like it better, actually, because since when does Morning Sickness occur only in the morning? NOT OFTEN) has reared it’s ugly head once again.

While this makes me happy, because it means I’m still with Sausagebryo, I’m having a touch of a hard time trying to make it better.

Any suggestions for good remedies?

Aunt Becky: “I *so* don’t get this song.”

The Daver: “Wait, isn’t this ‘America’?”

Aunt Becky: “Yeah, I think so. Or maybe it’s ‘Chicago.’ The 70’s had a lot of bands named after cities. Either way, what the fuck do they mean-’25-06-24?’That makes no sense.”

The Daver: “What are you *talking* about? It’s ’25 or 6 to 4′!”

Aunt Becky: “….”

The Daver: “You know, like 3:35 or 3:26 AM?”

Aunt Becky: “…..”

Aunt Becky: “It is not! There is no way!”

The Daver: “What the hell did you think it meant?”

Aunt Becky: “I don’t know!..maybe a combination to a lock or something? No, I refuse to believe this song is about a time of day.”

The Daver: “And a locker combination makes more sense to you?”

Aunt Becky: “No! That’s why I *said* that I don’t get this song, dumbass!”

The Daver: “It’s about smoking dope, Becky.”

Aunt Becky: “I refuse to believe that in all my years being a pothead that I never could figure out that this is a drug song. I have a sixth *sense* about this crap! I mean “Lake Shore Drive? LSD? GET IT?”

The Daver: “Are you still bitter that you couldn’t do the “Dark Side of the Moon” “Wizard of Oz” thing?

Aunt Becky: I cannot discuss this with you. You wouldn’t understand. Goody-goody.

The Daver: “FINE.”

…..

…..

(three days later)

…….

Aunt Becky: Is it really 25 or 6 to 4?