The Odyssey for Loose Clothes

Yesterday the meds made me mad.  As in "crazy."  A little after lunch I decided I could not stand my waist band any more.  I had already deemed this week "knit pants week" because my belly was getting a little too big for my regular clothes.  But wearing the softest, tamest knit pants that most resembled pyjamas, I was still driven to distraction. I announced to my co-workers that I had to go to Filene's Basement on the corner to buy a mumu (or "moo-moo"?) and ran out in the rain.  A few minutes of searching, including searching for a maternity section, revealed nothing that would be better than what I had on.  I left there and walked two blocks to Macy's.  After searching through floor after floor of garments, I had determined that larger women only wear tailored, stiff clothes, and that there is no maternity section in the entire store.  The only things that caught my eye were the pyjamas, and I really didn't think I could wear those to work. And then I realized with increasing panic that I was stuck.  I was in the fourth floor of Macy's, two long blocks from my office, my belly and pelvic area were sore, my back was sore from having modified my posture to "sick and pathetic" mode, and most importantly, I was TIRED.  I didn't know how I was going to get back to my office.  I felt on the verge of tears.  With no other option, I plowed ahead. I finally reached my office and my chair and plopped down.  I said, "that was a huge failure."  My co-worker reassured me, "You're not a huge failure."  No -- the trip was a failure!  "Gaaaah," as Napoleon Dynamite would say. I started to cry.  My other co-worker gave me a half of a Nestle Crunch bar and stood over me with her hand rubbing my shoulder.  My face was in my hands.  She cooed all the right things: "Oh, you've had such a hard time.  You're so uncomfortable.  It's no fair.  You're going through so much -- just let it out."  She is really good at ad-libbing comforting talk because she's a mother herself.  I sobbed and sobbed.  And then they started making me laugh.  And it all got better. Except my waistband situation.   I did a little more work and decided I could not tolerate it any more.  I had to take my clothes off.  So I decided to go home.  I called my husband, who had the car that day, and for some reason at 3:30 he wasn't ready to leave the office.  So I resolved to take a cab.  If I coudn't ambulate 2 blocks from Macy's, I didn't think I could get to the suburbs on mass transit.  I bid everyone adieu and got to the elevator bay before I remembered my uneaten chilli in my desk.  I came back and rescued my lunch.  I went back out to the elevator bay, went downstairs, and tried to get cash from the ATM for a cab.  It was out of money.  I was depleted.  I thought one thing I could do was to sit on a bench downstairs and cry.  But that would get me nowhere.  So I summoned all my strength and went back upstairs to my office and asked my co-worker for some money.  She and my other colleague then fought over who would give me the money.  The first one won. I dragged myself downstairs and caught a cab easily.  Fortunately the cabbie wasn't a talker.  He took me home and asked for the total, "20 Dollars" when we got there.  I said, "I'm sorry I don't have more for a tip."  All I could find was one more dollar.  So I handed him what I thought was $21 and got out of the cab.  As soon as I got out I realized I'd given him $41, which was actually quite a good tip.  I turned around and he was gone.  Sigh.  I trekked up my 15-foot walkway and got to the front door.  I got the door open and dropped my stuff on the ground.   I expected to drag myself up to bed immediately since I could barely keep my eyes open, much less my clothes on.  But out of the corner of my eye I saw the half-made monarch butterfly wings for a costume that I'm making for a friend's kid's school play.  And what happened next proved to me that some of this nonsense is psychosomatic. I dashed out to my studio and proceeded to cut out the wings, which I've already spray painted; sew the edges; and pin them to the wire frame I made over the weekend.  After I got one wing on and the center section padded and wrapped with felt, I remembered that I was deadly tired.  That all took about a half an hour.  So I resumed my tiredness as God clearly intended. I went upstairs, got in my snowflake fleece PJs that I have now officially had for ten years, and went to sleep.  I set my alarm for 6:00 because a good friend was in town and was coming over for dinner at 7:00.   At 6:45 I was awakened by a knock on the door.  I went downstairs and greeted Jeremy (my prom date in a previous life) in my PJs.  I was completely incoherent.  This is what happens when I wake up from a deep sleep.  It took about 15 minutes for me to start making sense and bumping into things.  The only thing I could do was hand him a beer, some chips, and some cheese dip, and beg his indulgence while I remembered things like my name and what year it was. James came home about 20 minutes later and saw us sitting in the living room: this man he'd never met and his wife in her PJs.  He said he paused a second and then thought, "Well, that's my wife."  He told Jeremy later that I don't pull out the snowflake pyjamas for just anyone.   This morning I was forced to put on real clothes again.  I got out the maternity dress that I'd bought at about this time in the last IVF process.  It makes me feel better to remember that I'd outgrown all my clothes that time too.  Reminds me that I'm growing grape-size fluid sacs, not just fat.  It's 50 degrees out today, but I couldn't bear to wear hose or tights.  Rather be cold than have anything around my waist. Then as I was driving in, I decided that my bra was way too tight.  The first thing I did when I got to the office was unhook it.  When I went to the kitchen for something to drink, I held my jacked closed in front of me.  No sense advertising that my undergear has been detatched.  Now that I'm back at my desk, I'm trying to talk myself into keeping the unhooked bra on.  If I take off my bra entirely, what's to stop me from taking off my dress? I'm unfit for society. I was vindicated to tell my officemates that my estrogen had jumped from 230 on Saturday to 475 yesterday.  Anyone can understand that double the estrogen makes people crazy.  I can't wait to see what it is tomorrow. How do people do IVF and keep their jobs in the meantime?  This is ridiculous!  Or at least I am ridiculous!