Blah

My ex-coworker Christine asked me to make a cake for an engagement party she was hosting. I spent all of last week working on it. It turned out pretty nice - a two-tier silhouette cake. The party was in SF, so on Saturday afternoon, Marc drove me up there - I rode in the passenger seat with the cake on my lap.

Somewhere in Castro Valley, a car next to us on the freeway was wanting to change lanes. I was about to tell Marc to slow down and let them in, when the car decided to just go ahead and start merging into our lane, which caused Marc to have to slam on the brakes. I'm sure you can guess what happened next. The cake slid forward on the base I was carrying, and went flying into the dash.

I FREAKED OUT. The side of the cake that had gone into the dash was the side that had all the decorations. The names that I had carefully written on the cake base were completely obliterated. One quarter of the bottom tier was completely smashed in. I think I was in shock at first, and then I literally started freaking out.

We pulled off the freeway and parked in a McDonald's parking lot. By that point I had turned into a blubbering, inconsolable mess. I don't know if I would have reacted this way normally, but the fact that so many things have happened over these past few months that have just devastated me, well this felt like the straw that broke the camel's back.

I sat there for a while before I regained some semblance of composure, and took a look at the cake. The other side of it was mostly fine, except for the fact that the impact had caused the top layer of the bottom tier to shift slightly, so the walls of the cake weren't perfectly flat. The silhouette figures, even though they had taken the brunt of the impact, were surprisingly mostly intact. So I carefully removed them from that side of the cake, and moved them around to the side that was still intact.

We called Christine, and told her what happened, and asked if she still wanted us to bring it up. It wasn't pretty, and I was mortified by it, but I also hated to have the whole thing go to waste. So we drove up to the city and dropped it off. I didn't charge her, of course.

I'm mostly recovered from the trauma today (I've pretty much realized that "normal" for me these days is vastly different from what normal was for me two years ago). The cake apparently went over well, and no one really noticed the damage, and Christine said the woman that's hosting the bridal shower is interested in having me make a cake for that as well. So I guess that's one bright spot.

In other news, I'm feeling physically much better now. My blood levels are going up, which is good. We ended up having to cancel our planned transfer on the doctor's advice, because they felt it was less than ideal with me being so anemic (of course, right? There's a cosmic monkey wrench with my name on it, I swear). So our transfer won't be until late September. This time we're likely going to transfer three, which is all we got from this cycle (we started out with more eggs, but didn't end up with as many blastocysts, which I have no idea why, other than that my life sucks). We had 8 blasts, 5 of which were affected, because apparently statistics don't apply to us, and we're forever doomed to have more affected embryos than unaffected even though it should be 50/50.

So maybe if we transfer 3, we'll have some luck. My doctor feels the chance of triplets is very, very low, given my history (it's unusual to transfer more than 2 for someone my age, but again, given our history). I can't even put into words how badly I need this to work, because I'm just tired of all the emotional bullshit (and yeah, I won't elaborate on why, but I'm convinced the universe is conspiring to hurt me as much as possible) and I'd like to feel normal again. I've realized that "normal" for me these days is vastly different from what normal was for me 2 years ago.

Anyways. I don't think I've even had a chance to talk about our new border collie puppy. He comes from herding lines, and so far he's pretty awesome. We named him Riker (after Commander Riker from "Star Trek: TNG", because he's "second in command") and he's been a nice bright spot for us. He's a really great dog, and he's picking up on things pretty quickly. Part of it is the fact that he follows whatever Bandit does, so he's picking up on things that way. The two of them play constantly, and I was pleasantly surprised that Bandit was not only very tolerant of him after the first day, but that he also seems to enjoy playing with the puppy. He's been a great big brother so far.

Our Maui trip is also coming up, so I'm really looking forward to that. I'm sad that we're going to miss some of Riker's growing up, but I think it'll be good to get away. And it's Hawaii, so of course that'll be awesome.