Jude:

for reals
i should be a doctor
i watched et.
umm
er
maybe i shouldn't be a doctor

This is giving me the giggles.

I stumbled across a story about how Barack Obama has a paternal aunt who is living illegally in the US in public housing in Boston. And there is a photo of where she was living. Here is the photo.

What's funny is that I used to see a family in that very same building in the D Street projects for YEARS. One of my first EI cases in Boston was in this building with a family I loooooooved, and I saw that child from 2004 until she turned 3, and her younger brother until I left the agency and moved. I used to sit in the courtyard of that building and wait for them, or hang out with the family, all the time. Week after week. For years.

How funny to see that front door again in presidential "news."

The tattoo artist in this clip was my first crush. Fourth grade. Until pretty much forever. I saw him at a wedding several years ago for an elementary school friend of ours and we just were having a wacky good time when I finally said, "You know, I had a hard core crush on you in elementary school." He was super flattered and we continued to have a good time.

How can you not crush on this guy??!?!?

You don't blog enough about trendy Interweb stuff like Twitter and Facebook, even though I know you're all up in the Facebook. So, blog about social networking and the "new media".

It's true. I'm all up in the Facebook. Not necessarily in the vampire/werewolf/pirate/green patch/oregon train/whatever sense but in the networking. I am all about the social networking. Actually, I like to collect friends. There, I said it. :) (Don't you want to be my friend?) I like the social networking but it doesn't allow for interpersonal connection, and I think it's lacking because of that. It doesn't "do it" for me like some other things have because of that.

I was talking to someone a while back about the internet in the 90s and how it helped bring together a whole group of people that I would have otherwise NEVER been exposed to. I mean, I know one of the foremost Klingon speakers in the world. WTF? How did THAT happen? And so many more. And a lot of them have continued to be in my life via LiveJournal and I am happy for that, especially where I don't have the time or mental energy for real-time chatting anymore. How I used to do that is beyond me. But I loved the sense of community, the exchange of ideas, the bringing together of differences. So I tend to stick to things that continue that: LiveJournal, forums, stuff like that.

That doesn't mean I don't like to hoard friends on networking sites. I was a beta tester for Friendster back in the day and I do enjoy a little Facebook. But I'm terrified of MySpace. (Go fig.) And I got a Twitter invite once but haven't looked into it. I don't really know what it's about.

I probably didn't answer this at all. Although I know I'm much less likely to run into famous Klingon speakers anymore.

Here are some eggs for Calliope. She has her Egg Retrieval on Saturday and the IVP is here to motivate those ovaries!!

Somehow I think some people, especially my smurfbrother, would get a little chuckle out of THIS.

You do realize, of course, that in my stint as a social worker I have seen children named: Priest, Klord (pronounced Kay-lord), Princess Jlo, Aarryanna, Aarika, and Soltravius.

When I was about 17w pregnant, a girl online who was 19w pregnant that I was chatty with because she'd lost a twin too went to her big anatomy scan at 19w to learn that her baby had recently died. She had had a perfect amniocentesis just 3 weeks before. Talk about scary!

Then earlier this week, a girl online who is due pretty much right when I am due was having weird feelings that she described as "pressure in her bowels." She went to get checked out and learned that her cervix was totally open and her bag of water was starting to come out! So she went to the hospital where they completely confined her to bed with her head down and her feet up, hoping she can make it to some sort of viability. So basically for the last four days I have been paranoid of any sort of bodily function.

This morning I read a post from another woman who had lost a twin early on. She was in her 19th week and just delivered her stillborn son. I'm guessing incompetent cervix, but oh my god, how awful!

I know that these are rare instances but after seeing so many in such a short time I am starting to wonder how ANYONE can successfully have a baby. I guess part of me always thinks that since I already lost one baby that we are kind of a shoo-in to have the other... but those other two women I was buddying around with know otherwise.

I have never been a paranoid person but this stuff majorly scares me. I try nightly to tell myself that my body knows what to do but how would I know? It's never done this before and it's already let me down once before. So scary.

Oh, I am so excited!!

One of my online buddies from the charting website I use just got the best news last night. We have been chatting and sharing stories for months and months and months when we were both trying to get knocked up on injectibles and IUI with the same doctor at the same clinic. Well, we had our third (last) cycles at the same time, and I got pregnant and she didn't.

She and her husband just completed their first round of IVF and they are PREGNANT!! I am so happy I could just jump up and down for her. Oh my goodness, what a wonderful Christmas gift for them! (I hope they have a calmer pregnancy journey than we have had.)

I don't think she reads this journal at all, but CONGRATULATIONS, SHELL!!!