Brevet

We have family in Las Vegas, Lake Chelan-Washington, and on the Big Island of Hawaii and we try to visit all of them as often as possible.  We also try to take vacations on our own every now and again.  The plan that we have tried to work with over the last several years is that we would try to do one of each, every year….which sounds fair, until you realize that you’re visiting each parent every three years and that isn’t so great.  We’ve never really solved this as it seems unworkable to take more than a couple of vacations a year (max) and visiting family isn’t quite the same as having good relationship bonding time at a new locale.

One way that we’ve tried to mitigate the problem is to carve out extra time on our own on some of these family vacations.  When we went to visit my mom in Las Vegas a couple of years ago, we also spent a couple of nights at THE Hotel at Mandalay Bay.  We both still speak longingly about the spa facilities there and pine for a Eucalyptus Steam on a tough day.  Our best vacation was probably Hawaii in 2005 where we spent the first two days in Honolulu at the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Waikiki for two very full days before popping over to the Big Island for Thanksgiving and an island tour.  That resort was amazing - we saw tropical penguins, the USS Arizona memorial, the Dole Plantation, rode on a submarine, and had our first and only tableside caesar salad that was just out of this world.  The room was perched right over the beach and the view right outside our balcony could have been from a movie.  We still talk about that trip, too, though we only had a couple of days to pack in the action before we switched gears to family time (also good, just different).

So we’re pretty lucky that our families live in places that give us this kind of opportunity to kill two birds with one stone…and we’re due for another Hawaii trip this Thanksgiving so I started up the research machine to see what we could do.  Thanksgiving is usually a pretty optimal time to vacation because there are two “holidays” that week, so if you cough up 3 vacation days you end up with 9 straight days off (including the surrounding weekends).  Last time we went from the Saturday before Thanksgiving to the Saturday after….spent the first two nights in Honolulu then 5 nights in Hilo.  I started working off of that same template, but with the hope that we might swap it up to more like 3 + 4, so we don’t feel quite so rushed on the couples end. 

We had already kind of “done” Oahu so I started looking at Maui.  Kauai is supposed to be beautiful, too, but in doing some research some of what I was reading indicated that Maui was not only the “best” island in the Hawaiian Islands, but one of the very best in the world.  I read some at Travel and Leisure’s website and both Frommers and Fodors and concluded that the best place in Maui to stay was Wailea as it seemed to have the best hotels, the best beaches, the best shopping.  There’s probably other great parts, it’s just that I like to have a lot to do on vacation and  like to stay someplace nice if I can swing it.

The “three jewels” of Wailea are The Fairmont Kea Lani, The Four Seasons Maui, and The Grand Wailea.  They are all in a row sharing the same stretch of beach and each have disney-esque pools, amenities, waterslides, flowing rivers through the property, spas, etc.   It just sounds out of this world.  Of course all of this comes at a price….

Mind you, when we booked in Oahu our hotel was 500/night.  We didn’t end up having to pay that, but we were willing to do so if it meant staying someplace nice.  So it’s not like I’m not familiar with the extreme cost of doing business in Hawaii when I say that I found the price of hotels in Maui kind of shocking.  At the Hilton Hawaiian Village we wanted to have something facing the ocean (in Hawaii it seemed important) and we wanted to be in the concierge tower as it was supposed to be a little quieter and the service a little better (and it was….it’s a gigantic hotel and it never felt like it to us.  We were well taken care of).  At the big three you can get a garden view room (a nice way of saying the room is faced the opposite way that you really want) it’s 595/465/640 at the three hotels.  An ocean view room would be 725/600/860.  

So….obviously this gave me pause.  How do I feel about taking a vacation someplace that is that expensive?  On the one hand, people do.  When I read forums about it, people are writing about their week or two weeks they stay at Resort X.  Maybe if you want to vacation in someplace like Maui, that’s just the price you have to pay….or maybe I’m just picking too nice of hotels.  Maybe there are hotels in Maui that are acceptably nice that wouldn’t be quite so expensive.  I looked and there is a Marriott that’s a little older but in that general area that came it about 425 for Ocean View, so there’s that. 

I was still mulling this over when I realized I should price airfare.  I know at least one of the Hawaii airlines (Aloha?) that went out of business so that’s not going to help the prices and I need to know how much “extra” the cost is if I add in the leg between Maui and Hilo.  I punched in my Saturday to Saturday dates (not counting the extra hop) and airfare came out to 1300 roundtrip.   Each. 

I did a spit take with my coke zero and came to the conclusion that we’re not going to Hawaii.  There’s just no way!  I mean, if family wants to be visited they’re just going to have to move someplace cheaper….

Then I calmed down and started digging into the numbers a little.  It turned out that those two Saturdays were by far the most expensive days to fly in that two week block of time (650 each person/leg)  If we wanted to fly on, say, Tuesday to Tuesday, it’s less than half of the cost (300 each person/leg).  Perhaps the thing to do would be to fly into Hilo on Tuesday and see family the first four days, then go and stay at a resort for Saturday/Sunday/Monday and then fly home.  It’s not as good of a maximization of vacation time, but way cheaper.  Still expensive, but not “Maui expensive” to coin a phrase.  Oh, and it’s an extra 100 each to fly between the islands.

Still, though, with the extra puddle jump and my inability to grasp at what level I should be exploring Maui, I had the revelation that the Big Island has the whole Kona side that we didn’t even explore on the last trip.  If I could find a resort on that side of the island that we could enjoy, it would save 200 bucks and some travel time right off of the bat….and would bail me out of the Maui conundrum.

A little research later and I found out that the Kohala Coast near Kona is a very nice place to stay.  The beaches aren’t quite as nice as Maui, but still nice.  The best and 2nd best hotels were familiar names (The Four Seasons and Fairmont Orchid) with familiar prices (775/400 for garden view; 1155/679 ocean view).  However, in this case there was a third option that had some appeal to it.  There is a Hilton Waikoloa Village  that, gosh, seems a lot like the Hilton Hawaiian Village we stayed at in 2005….that we loved.

It’s gigantic (62 acres), which is nice for me because there’s always at least one day we really just want to stay on property and it gives us the advantage of having plenty to do near our our temporary home.  You can swim with dolphins on property or snorkel in their own lagoon.  There’s tons of restaurants and shopping and a world class sports club and spa (Kohala Sports Club) on propperty where you can work out and take a steam even if you’re not going to do the whole massage thing (which I also love, but they can get expensive).  So there’s a lot going on and best of all, the pricing is way more reasonable - 323 for ocean view on the executive/concierge floor.  For the price at the other hotels I looked at we could get literally get a suite here or else save hundreds of dollars over all of the other choices I was able to find.

I would still like to go to Maui, of course, and I’m sure we will, eventually.  Just need to talk it over with Amy to see where we go from here.

Tags: Family, Oh the Places I've Gone! // 4 Comments »

It’s been about a month since I tried my hand at this.  Most days I would at least consider feeding the blog - emptying my mind of what was going on inside me.  Each day, though, I would look into the void and I saw nothing but darkness.  I could not quite grasp how I was to feel about this situation.  It was as if I was on a road that had dropped into a valley –  and as I look ahead to see the road rise up and over the hill, I have no idea what I will see when I get there.

Does my road lead to a family with children?  Dare I still hope for this?  I am optimistic by nature, but it was easier assuming success at the beginning of the journey than where we are now, about half way to the end.  Is it safer not to hope, for fear of having it crushed or is that counter-productive?

I feel I should prepare for the possibility/probability of a life without children.  How do I do that, though?  If this were something less important, it would be easy to embrace the upside of the “life without children” possibility.  I would “spin” the positive aspects in my head and to Amy:  “We would be able to afford to travel as much as we would like.  We could afford nicer cars…”  I might come to believe that this version of our life would be equally good - just different than originally planned.  That however it worked out, we would be equally comfortable with the outcome. 

I just can’t spin it, though.  I am well aware that I really want this thing - this thing that may well not happen.  I can’t talk myself into believing that I don’t care.  I care and the dread of the possibility of failure hangs on me like wet clothes, chilling me to the bone.

The process starts anew this week.  We write the big check today and FSH starts on Friday.

Tags: Fertility Efforts, IVF // Add Comment »

And……we’re back.  After a bit of a self-imposed hiatus trying to wrap our heads around exactly where we are and what we’re supposed to do in light of the (perhaps) expected and (certainly) disappointing negative results of the first IVF cycle.

We went on vacation.  We talked to family.  We talked to each other.  We saw a couple of movies.  We talked some more.  I think we had to talk until we could figure out how we were supposed to even “feel” about where we are in our lives with all of this going on.  To try to determine to what lengths we were willing to go to in order to expand our family by one (or more). 

It was good and healthy and difficult to talk about sometimes - exploring the limits and how we would or could handle the worst case scenario - that we crap out (using my gambling metaphor again).  I think we came through this failure stronger, though…we both refuse to let this define us.  We are not going to spend the rest of our days trying to find the missing piece for happiness - we’re already happy. 

I think we would make great parents, and Amy in particular would be a great mother, but if it’s not in the cards then we’ll be ok.  We’ve got a great relationship and we would just end up having a lot more money to take vacations, etc. as the years go by.  That’s not what we want, of course, and I think it would be sad to have to face that reality, but face it we would.  From reading a few of Amy’s IVF blogs that she forwards to me, not all relationships survive this kind of trauma, but neither of us are concerned about us, and that’s a pretty good place to be and a good thing to realize as we are facing our last best chance at my future nobel prize winning, football star son.

Tags: Fertility Efforts, IVF // Add Comment »

We had our follow up appointment with Dr. Rosen today.  As we waited and prepared for this post-failed-first IVF appointment, we reasoned that we were just going to be told the process for the “frozen transfer” since we were well aware of the the two frozen embryos we still have in reserve. 

Interestingly, he took a slightly different tack today, instead making the case for going straight back into another fresh cycle.  Here’s the thinking:  if you might want to have a  second child (assuming you didn’t get a multiple), doing the frozen transfer now would use up any embryos you have.  If the frozen transfer is successful, then Amy will be pregnant for 9 months, then wouldn’t be up for IVF with a newborn…it’s probably a 2-3 years before we’re even having the conversation. 

In 2-3 years, though, Amy will be pushing 39 and while there is already a bit of an issue with ovarian reserve, it stands to get significantly more serious in these next few years making it increasingly unlikely that there would be another trip down this road.  So choosing to do the frozen transfer now (and assuming success) instead of another fresh cycle is choosing the strong likelihood of only one child. 

We are not greedy - I think all along we would have been ecstatic to know we could have even a single child.  Assuming the first child, though, I imagine we would want a second if there was a way and I didn’t expect to have to face the decision today of exactly how big of a family we really want.  We’re supposed to get back to him soon.

Tags: Fertility Efforts, IVF // 1 Comment »

I think I’ve come to terms with the fact that it was always unlikely that we were going to be successful on the first go-round through the IVF process.  As you go through it, though, and overcome so many hurdles of the different appointments and master the drug regimen, you’re not thinking that the odds are against you.  As you pass each landmark, the hope grows until it feels like you will be rewarded for doing everything correctly.  You kind of expect that it will work out, to a certain extent. 

By the end of the first week of The Wait, and Amy started testing regularly with the home kits, it was hard for me to figure out what to do with that information.  I had reason to doubt it for most of the early ones, but as negative after negative mounted, most of my hope had been extinguished - say around day 11 or so.  There was still a glimmer of hope and part of me thought that we would, or at least could, hit a homer in the bottom of the ninth and all the worrying would have been for nothing…but that’s not the way it worked out.

So, I can’t say I wasn’t prepared for the confirming blood test that we are negative - certainly I saw the headlights coming our way - but I wasn’t prepared to feel like I felt yesterday.  I felt a genuine sense of loss - and not about the money either, in spite of wife’s gallows humor. 

When they gave us the picture of the embryos it made everything so much more real to me.  I have a friend who went through IVF and ended up with twins.  On the first page of the twins baby book is her picture of them when they were embryos still.  I kind of figured it was just one of the upsides of going through the process that we get our “first picture” at a much earlier age, so to speak.  Anyway, let me tell you that it makes it so much worse now.  What happened to them?  Why didn’t they stay where the doctor put them?  I just don’t understand what went wrong.

I’m already better than I was yesterday as I reeled trying to understand emotions foreign to me.  I sense that I’m already turning the corner a bit, as is my way.  We have an appointment already scheduled for next Friday, May 30th with Dr. Rosen - I imagine to plan the attack for the next run.  I’m not quite, quite ready to go there yet, though.  Not quite ready to let go of the place we were just a week or so ago.  I was so ready for it to have finally worked out for us.  So ready to name our child(ren), and make sure they were going to get a good education, and have a home that was prepared for them, that I’m not quite ready to set it all aside again and turn this all back into a chemistry experiment again.  I will.  Soon.  But not today.

Tags: Fertility Efforts, IVF // 5 Comments »

In the past few weeks I have read “The Perks of being a Wallflower,” by Stephen Chbosky,  “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World,” by Haruki Murakami and “Water for Elephants” by Sara Gruen.  As I have mentioned before, I am not very comfortable offering any kind of critical review of authors that are so talented.  I want to memorialize my reading them, though, so here are my impressions.

I read “Water for Elephants” first and had been looking forward to it for longer than any other book in my reading list.  When I started school, I realized I had to set aside reading for pleasure since I had so much other reading already.  When my wife talked me into dropping my environmental science class (I didn’t really need it anyway), a lot of time opened up for me and this was the first book I chose.  Amazon had it at 4.4 stars and  it came up as a “recommended” book when I bought “The Time Traveler’s Wife” by Audrey Niffenegger, a book I really, really liked from last year.

Anyway, so I was looking forward to it.  It was told from perspective of a 90 plus year old man.  That was kind of new….and I like new.  It was told in a flashback from the time he worked on a circus in the depression.  Well, I don’t think I’ve read about life in a circus before either…though I enjoyed Carnivale on HBO.  Anyway, also new!  Aside from the two time frames that flip back and forth, the book has a further “envelope” of foreshadowing that leads the book off.  A tragedy or disaster that happens that you know is going to be coming for the rest of the book, creating tension as you think you see it coming.  Anyway, couple the cleverness of the time shifts and the foreshadowing with learning about the very interesting life in a small time circus and that would have been enough for me.  The relationships were just ok - perhaps a little simple, but there are a couple of very clever turns at the end of the book that made it all quite satisfying.  It lived up to the hype.

Next I turned to the “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World” by Haruki Murakami.  I read another of his books last year called “The Wind-up Bird Chronicle” and I was looking forward to seeing what else he had done.  He’s apparently HUGE in Japan and I’m becoming a pretty big fan as well.  “The Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World” is really two stories.  The stories flip back and forth each chapter (odd and even).  You would think it would make them hard to follow, but they are very different stories, so it wasn’t.  Ultimately, it’s a bit of cleverness that makes you realize that these two stories and worlds are connected and that was cool.  You figure this out about 3/4 of the way through the book…and then the last 1/4 of the book is, upon reflection, kind of a mess.  Stylistically, though, Murakami creates such an interesting world and populates it with such unique characters that it’s hard to mind too much that you just don’t see the point of a lot of it - the ride is so much fun.  The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was largely the same - there were some very interesting and compelling plot-lines….for a while…and then they almost become de-emphasized as they become increasingly arcane and subservient to the characters and the world and the tone of it all….and all of those are brilliant, but the plot?  If I tried to explain it, (either of the two Murakami books I read) it would make it seem like less of a work than I thought it to be. 

Finally, I read a short book entitled “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky.  Amazon readers have it at 4.5 stars which is quite good.  I can’t remember what led me to this book, but I’m awfully glad I read it.  A little bit like “The Curious Incident of the Dog at Midnight” as it’s told from the perspective of someone that seems just a little affected.  He may not always understand some of the things that are happening, but we as readers do.  He’s a freshman just starting high school and he’s a pretty isolated guy, though since it’s from his perspective, it’s hard to be sure of why.  The story as it unfolds is told in the form of letters that he writes recounting his freshman year in high school.  The things he learns about himself and we learn about him made this a facinating read.  You grow to care very deeply for Charley and you feel his pain and his small joys even while you realize that you cannot entirely identify with him.  By the end of the story you understand.  Everything.  Charley still feels very real to me and I’m a little sad that I don’t get to read how his sophomore year went. I’m definitely going to see if Chbosky was able to do anything else interesting.

I’m trying to decide what’s next for me.  I have ”A Spot of Bother” on my bedstand but have heard good things about “A Thousand Splendid Suns.”  We’ll see.
 

Tags: Books, Media // 5 Comments »

Today is T minus 4 days until we get the official blood test to tell us if all of this effort is going to pay off for us.  The wait has been a little harder on Team Jensen than I thought it would be, but perhaps I was being naive.  It has certainly been a little less zen-like and a little more filled with the anxiety of what might (or might not) be. 

We still don’t know anything, of course.  Amy has done a couple of store-bought pregnancy tests because the waiting was just too hard.  Those were negative.   Every day, Amy comments on or I ask about the myriad of physical aches and pains she has.  We both wonder if they might be indicators of pregnancy, but neither of us knows the answer.  We just don’t know anything.

We are emotionally steeling ourselves for bad news so if it comes on Tuesday it doesn’t overwhelm us.   Yet we continue to hope, looking for some morsel of information that would tell us that this is breaking the right way for us.

Tags: Fertility Efforts, IVF // 1 Comment »

I have read that this “two week wait” from the time that you find you “could” be pregnant until the time you can actually test it is the hardest part of the process.  I think people go a little crazy being trapped in their own minds with no new data to process.  They want it so badly, but there is nothing left that they can actually “do” so they just spin around agonizing about what might or might not be.

However, anyone who knows me knows that I have spent my life agonizing about minutia, living in my head working out every possible pathway from where I am now to where I would like to be.  There’s just something about being caught unprepared for any eventuality that makes me sick with worry.  I’m not bragging…I know this is a tragic flaw in my makeup.  I envy those carefree souls that don’t worry quite like I do.

Anyway, I say all of that to say that this whole “2 week wait” thing is very old hat for me.  I am a seasoned veteran at worrying about things like this and have already turned the corner and achieved peace with where we are in the process.  I have rationalized how this is actually easier than watching my wife suffer through the drugs of the previous few weeks and much less complicated.  We’re down to just one shot a day that I have responsibility for giving and Amy just has to take a pill or two.  See how at peace I am?  I’m not even positive what pill she’s taking or how often. 

It was so very hectic and difficult as the egg retrieval day approached and then the transfer day was such an emotional culmination to everything that, again, this feels almost like a calm time.  The storm has passed and Amy is doing great.  Our fifth wedding anniversary is tomorrow and I feel like we have a pretty good shot that this will work out.  At the very least, I get to spend all of the time up until the pregnancy test believing that we “might” already be pregnant and I like that feeling too much to start worrying about what I can not control.

Tags: Fertility Efforts, IVF // 3 Comments »

Amy did an excellent write-up of her day already so if you have read her account then this may not add much, but I didn’t want to skip such an important day just because it had already been recounted.  Here is the Partners Perspective, for what that is worth.

It had been getting increasingly tough for Amy last week. It seems like the drugs were having an increasingly deleterious effect on her as the days wore on with her being increasingly fatigued and crampy. She had also started having some unrelated back problems that made everything worse.

By Thursday mid-day, they finally gave the word to do the trigger shot that night at 7:30 p.m., with the retrieval scheduled for Saturday at 7:30 a.m.  I have a Stats class I have been taking on Tuesday and Thursday nights and I’m usually home by 7:30 p.m., but it ran a little long this time and I didn’t get home until 7:40 p.m. Unfortunately, I had brought her instructional paperwork with me to work that day so I had it in my backpack at the time she had to do the shot. She was understandably upset about it, but her experience from doing the other shots put her in good stead and she was able to do it without the “manual.”  We talked about it and I acknowledged my clear error and the fact that if I was in her shoes, I would have been beside myself with both fear and annoyance. I understood her feelings and she saw that I understood and so it passed. Still, though, I don’t know how I could have lived with being the reason why this didn’t happen if she hadn’t been able to figure out the trigger shot on her own. She’s very resourceful.

By Friday, Amy was…how do I characterize this?……really, really having a hard time of it.   Really.  She was exhausted, and her back kept her in constant pain, and she had cramping that she couldn’t relieve.  She had to go to the bathroom frequently.   She seemed a tiny bit ”out” of it and the spot where she had injected herself with the HCG was red and inflamed.  By Friday afternoon, I was offering to come pick her up from work just to get her home. She ended up taking BART into North Berkeley and I picked her up from there around 3:30. 

She pretty much went to bed at 5 and slept more or less through the night.  I watched some Friday Night Lights (I’ve been watchng season 1 on dvd since I missed it the first time through. Great show.) and then read a little before going to sleep. Or at least I tried to. I kept waking up, fully awake at 11:30, 1, 1:30, 3:30, 4:15.  I finally just got up and made coffee.   I don’t know why I was so antsy - it’s not like I was the one having surgery. 

We had an uneventful drive into the city since it was the crack of dawn on a Saturday.  We arrived at UCSF at about 6:45 a.m. and our normal parking garage was closed so we parked on the street. I had some quarters in the car, but not nearly enough for what we would need. I started pumping what I had into the meter before I noticed that there’s nothing on the meter display. Amy reads that it’s only enforced from 9 to 6 so apparently it’s not even “on” yet. I made a note that I would have to get back out there by 9 to feed the rest of my quarters in, and probably get change somewhere to get more quarters.

The whole Women’s Health wing of the hospital is apparently shut down, too. Even the security guard isn’t at his little desk down the hall. He is an absolutely gigantic man, so perhaps he just makes the desk look little.  I’m 6′4″, 240 and he dwarfs me, which makes me feel uncomfortably since I am so rarely dwarfed. Anyway, after we have stared into the automatic doors for a minute (10 minutes before our appointment!) someone comes by and opens the door for us. It’s clearly not his job and we didn’t even do that “tapping on the glass with your keys” thing to get his attention but he came by and figured out how to get the door opened. We thanked him and hustled upstairs like we’re running late only to find the floor pretty much deserted.

The nurse showed up a few minutes after us, but still before 7. She was very helpful with Amy getting her set up in the gown, and IV dripping. She has a real career ahead of her in the service industry if she ever wants to forego this whole nursing thing. She did the warm blanket trick with Amy that Linda had done with me back on my big day. Amy seemed to appreciate it as much as I did, too. The Anesthesiologist came by to ask the usual questions regarding past times that Amy had been put under and whether she had had any problems. He explained how she wouldn’t be put “all the way” under unless it became necessary to do so - like if there was excessive bleeding or something like that. It hadn’t happened yet to him, but wanted to let her know the deal in case she woke up with a breathing tube down her throat.

He then gave her a shot of something like valium and then a shot of something like morphine, and told me to kiss my wife.  This confused me until I realized that they were taking her immediately in to the Operating Room, so I did as I was told and went to take a seat in the waiting room. After I had been there for a few minutes another lady came by to ask if I was going to be producing a sample. I knew the deal so I said yes and she escorted me down a hall and into a small, well-appointed closet, approximately 4×10.

I took a quick look around, saw that they had a small leather loveseat along the 4 foot section on the left with a towel down and a couple of Playboys on it. I kind of pointed at the Playboys and gave a “I guess that figures” laugh.  The lady said something to me like, “I don’t know what those are doing here” (Really?) and then quickly explains the procedure. Here’s the cup. Here’s your label for the cup. Hit the blue button when you’re done. Ugggh.

Anyway, I hadn’t seen a Playboy in years so I thumbed through it. It’s definitely not quite the same as when I was younger. The women are all girls now, and all look too much the same. It’s not unlike on E! when you find that Hef has 7 girlfriends that all look pretty much the same as the girls in the magazine - very blond and very thin.  I bet they were already pretty before they had been told to change how they look to be a star.  It made me kind of sad.  Anyway….there was also a baseball preview which I was sorely tempted to read but I didn’t want to take too long and this wasn’t very productive so far…

Skipping ahead ten minutes or so, I pushed the button and waited patiently to give the lady my labelled cup. She showed up very quickly (I hope she wasn’t waiting right outside the door) and I tried to hand it to her. She pointed to the counter telling me to just leave it there.  I guess there are special gloves that she puts on before she pick it up?  Anyway, I imagine it’s her job to sanitize the room between “uses.” Just another in a long line of jobs I’m glad I don’t have. A little perspective for when I get down about being a middle-manager.

I went and sat down and read for just a few minutes when the anesthesiologist stopped by to tell me that it was over already. She did good, had woken up and, outside of a few hickups (literal, not figurative) she was doing fine. The first nurse popped out a few minutes after that and I got to see her. She was already doing fine. Seemed really alert and was enjoying apple juice and graham crackers. Apple juice must be the universal drink for nurses to give post-op patients.

Not much to report after that. We waited until our Nurse (I really should have written a few names down so I wouldn’t have to reference all of these people by their title) was satisfied that she could get up and around. It was very quiet in that pre/post- op room - Amy was the only IVF procedure of the day, though they had beds to have three “Pre” and three “post” and one in each of the attached OR’s. The OR’s are special ones that attach directly the the fertility lab where the embryologist works and the whole thing is temperature and germ controlled, which I remember from our original orientation.

We were out of there by 9:30 a.m. and headed home. There was no traffic in the city or very much on the freeways. Amy was pretty tired all day and the rest of the day was uneventful. The next day the nurse called in the morning with the news. They had been able to extract 16 eggs from the follicles. Of those, 9 had been mature enough to be fertilized (by ICSI), and 6 of those had divided after 24 hours and were now embryos. She scheduled us for the transfer on Tuesday, May 6th at 11:45.

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I was listening to the Bob Edwards (radio) show yesterday on the way home from work.  He has an hour long interview program on XM’s pseudo NPR channel (channel 133).  Bob Edwards lends credibility to the NPR concept on XM because he was the voice of NPR’s Morning Edition or All Things Considered for almost 25 years before being forced out a few years back).

I’m lucky enough that they play the same interview from both 7am - 8am and 5pm - 6pm so I can usually catch most of it between the two legs of my commute if it’s a good one.  Yesterday, he interviewed David Mamet (most memorably to me from writing Glengarry Glen Ross) and I tuned in just as he was talking about America’s love affair with “Vacuous Summer Movies.”  He talked about how no one really mistakes them for high art, but that we love them because it’s like going to the County Fair, perhaps when you’re a kid.  You get to see the shiny-coated animals (the stars), and ride the rides (the action), and eat the cotton candy (which does not provide sustenance, but we still really like the way it tastes). 

Anyway, while I love artfully made movies (enjoyed “There will be Blood,” “Atonement,” and “No Country for Old Men” each recently), each spring I get Excited about the not necessarily artful “Summer Movies” as they approach -  just as if the fair was coming to town - and I get to be a kid again.  Since I have been so busy with school these past four months, I am considering it my mission this Summer to force feed myself the entertainment that only Summer Movies can provide - all of it. 

I also plan to see each of these as close to the Premiere Date as possible.  I have a freakish idiosyncracy that denies me enjoyment of a movie commensurate with the amount that I know about it in advance….and it is really hard not to know something about big movies once they’re released.  So here they are in order:

5/2 -  Iron Man - based on a comic, which often (X-Men, Spiderman), but not always (Fantastic Four), translates well to Summer movies.

5/9 - Speed Racer - Wachowksi Brothers first movie since Matrix trilogy.

5/22 -  Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark when I was 13 without having any idea what it was about before I saw it is still my all-time favorite movie experience.  If it is even as good as Temple of Doom, I’ll be ecstatic

6/13 - The Incredible Hulk - Comic connection again, plus it has Ed Norton, even if he won’t promote it.  I may be the only person I know that enjoyed the Ang Lee “Hulk”

6/13 - The Happening - I haven’t given up on M. Night Shyamalan even if others have.

6/20 - Get Smart/The Love Guru - Honestly, I’m skeptical about each of these.  Get Smart was wonderful when I was a kid and I love Steve Carrell in The Office…but the director is Peter Segal of Nutty Professor 2, Anger Management, The Longest Yard (the bad one with Adam Sandler) “fame” and Steve Carrell couldn’t save Evan Almighty from last summer.  I’m more hopeful about “Love Guru” in that I read that Michael Myers has been working on this character for a while, much as he did for Austin Powers in getting ready for that film.  Mike Myers tragic flaw is that he doesn’t know when to let a franchise go before he kills it (Wayne’s World3, Shrek3, Austin Powers3), but I am cautiously optimistic about his chances at fresh comedy for this one.

6/27 - Wall-E - Pixar has earned our respect

6/27 - Wanted - comic connection, plus Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman.  How much do you want to bet that Morgan Freeman plays an authority figure?

7/2 - Hancock - Will Smith as some kind of Superhero with issues.  Will Smith is usually a pretty good script picker (a skill that they don’t seem to teach in acting school, apparently)

7/11 - Hellboy 2 - comic connection, plus it’s directed by Guillermo Del Toro (Pan’s Labryinth, Devil’s Backbone, Blade 2, plus the original Hellboy which I didn’t love, but liked quite a bit)

7/18 - The Dark Knight - comic connection, plus sequel of the wonderful Batman Begins, plus it was Heath Ledger’s last movie and he’s supposed to be out of this world as the Joker, PLUS it was directed by Christopher Nolan of Memento fame (as well as the aforementioned Batman Begins)

7/25 - X-Files - I didn’t even realize they were making another one.  I was a huge fan of the series - TEN YEARS AGO.  I hope they took this long because they were working on a great script.

8/1 - Mummy 3 - I had no idea they were making another one of these either.  I love, love, loved the Original - I must have seen it a hundred times by now.

8/8 - Pineapple Express - Seth Rogan stars in and wrote it. I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt right now because he was so good in Knocked Up and Superbad (which he also wrote). 

8/15 - Tropic Thunder - Ben Stiller wrote and directed it, plus it has Jack Black, Robert Downey, Jr., Nick Nolte, Tom Cruise, Tobey Maguire.  It’s supposed to be some kind of genre bending action/comedy.  I don’t expect much, but if it works it could be cool.

All I’m hoping is that some small percentage of them enter the Pantheon of great summer movies that will remain emminently re-watchable for years to come like these past exemplar movies/franchises:

Star Wars
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Terminator
Ghostbusters
Back to the Future
Mission Impossible
Men in Black
Austin Powers
The Matrix
The Mummy
X-Men
Spiderman
The Bourne movies
Pirates of the Carribean
Batman
Superman

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