Floaters and sinkers

I went to my gynecologist Friday for my annual checkup -- something I actually love doing (despite the pap smear) because I love my usual nurse practitioner so much. And also, I admit, because not every day starts with people telling me several times, in delighted voices, that something about me is perfect--who can resist an ego boost like that? Yes, doctors get rather excited about me... it's cute. And I got to tell my NP's adorable new student about Essure. And now I know I'm okay for the year.

So, point #1 -- go to your gynecologist, unless you are a man, in which case you still need an annual checkup from someone but it's not a gynecologist. If you get a clean bill of health you'll feel great, and if you don't, then you're much better off knowing the whatever-it-is you'll find out.

The rest of this post is for a very funny handout I picked up at the gyno's about bacteria, your butt, floaters vs sinkers, and why you want your logs to be spongy (their phrasing, not mine). It may help to imagine it printed on bright orange paper. In fact, through the miracle of HTML I can remove your need to imagine.

( GOT YOUR HEAD UP YOUR BUTT? )

Sadly, mine are sinkers. Plunk. Must... try... harder... must... make... spongy... logs....

Five personal things

I have been feeling good lately in a very specific way: people's reactions to me. Positive or not, they've just been feeling appropriate somehow, as if the vibes I'm giving off have indeed been in line with the way I am, or the things I would choose to project if I could, or something.

HLM and I broke a several-weekend binge of isolation by having several people over last night to play Programmer's Nightmare, and I made cinnamon rolls from scratch so that people would have nice memories of the evening even if they happened to hate the game. It was a satisfying evening, and 3 out of 5 people actually liked bending their minds around the nightmare, so I think we'll be bringing it to TBC's game nights from now on.

Then today I turned several pieces of wood white. Little bits of closet. A mediocre but acceptable Sunday.

Oh, and that pain I was feeling in my stomach around 7:30, the one that went away briefly when I ate an apple with cashew butter and then returned, and then went away again when I ate a turkey hot dog...? Finally figured out what that was. I'm usually in remarkably good touch with that feeling, but I guess when the wires go down they go down, dawg.

Lastly, speaking of down dogs (snerk), my yoga studio just started doing "pose of the month" again after a winter break, and I just found out that the pose for April is... handstands! Yay! That coincides nicely with my current interest in them.

A delay

I forgot to mention that this spring's planned egg donation just got postponed indefinitely, again. This time E wanted to know at what time I would want to "move on", that is, be unwilling to donate again, and that he assumed it would be a matter of when I figured my egg quality had deteriorated too much.

Yes and no.

It would also be nice to tell my reproductive system enough, I'm all done with you, you can sleep now.

I'm also not so sure about creating a second child that would be so much younger than the first (Birdie, my first genetic progeny, is turning 5 later this year, so we're talking a minimum of a 6-year gap), and in a family that seems less financially stable than it once did.

In short, I'm a lot less attached to the two-child plan than I used to be. Having just one genetic child is so satisfying, do I have to go for another when I'm 29 or 30 or 31, with all those needles, and knowing this time that some of the drugs (lupron especially) are dangerous and being used off-label...? However, I haven't said no. If Sheehy's book is to be believed, I will probably be in some weird turning-30 stage and could easily feel like doing something crazy. And it was always the plan.

Sorry for not making it down to Philadelphia, in any case, miyyu.