Painting Chef - Cheaper Than Therapy

I’m so embarrassed by my love of Facebook. I resisted the whole MySpace thing a few years ago as it felt ambiguously creepy. Maybe it was the lack of user-friendly navigation or perhaps it was the eyeball searing pages with animation and music… I don’t know. But I resisted.

(And by resisted I mean that I made a page and promptly forgot about it as I heckled MySpace from afar until I was put in my place with an email from that Tom guy asking me where I’d been. That crazy Tom. I logged back into my account one last time and I’m pretty sure I closed it.)

After receiving a dozen or so Facebook invitations, I finally checked it out to see what the hoopla was and after determining that it didn’t posses the unidentifiable pedophile aspect that I just couldn’t shake in my opinion of MySpace, I jumped on the bandwagon and was immediately faced with my first big question…

How much information do I post…

This blog has remained blissfully undiscovered by most people that could pick me out of a lineup until recently. And there are still days that I have flashes of OH NO WHAT HAVE I DONE and I go and remove the link to this blog from my Facebook profile only to repost it again hours or days later.

Because I realize that this blog is who I am today. Right this second. And it changes all the time. Most of those people knew me more than 10 years ago and that person wouldn’t even recognize the person (and that doesn’t even have anything to do with her super-sized ass) writing this today. But guess what? I like this person LOADS better than the girl they remember.

I’ve had quite a journey over the past 4 years. (Yes.. this blog’s fourth birthday went unnoticed last month. Oops.) I’ve learned to much about myself and what I want out of life and the kind of person I want to be and the mark I want to leave on this world. My views on religion have changed, my political views have solidified and I’ve grown artistically in ways I never expected.

So I don’t have any intention of hiding that from anyone. But through Facebook I’ve found myself catching up with people who would never expect me to be what I am today. And maybe they don’t even notice the little links in a profile. As a blogger, that’s the first place I look but that’s just me.

This isn’t really even about Facebook. Much like everything else in my life, this post didn’t go where I was initially trying to steer it. I was planning on ridiculing myself for those silly Facebook games and the time suck that they can become. And instead we ended up here. With me shaking my fists in the air and actually saying it out loud… I LIKE the person I became.

How appropriate.

Chemistry is important. It’s a BIG deal, wouldn’t you agree? And there are certain relationships that DEMAND a certain level of chemistry for them to be successful.

Obviously… romantic relationships fall into this category. That one goes without saying. But I would also add hairstylists and aestheticians to that list as well as certain types of doctors.

And then there’s the chemistry I’m talking about today. The chemistry you have with your therapist. I’ve recently fired mine because we had none. This is unfortunate as I’m still obviously in need of therapy. And most likely drugs.

The search for a therapist is so difficult. We all have our certain requirements that we bring into the search. I wanted to see a woman and I didn’t want to see a faith-based counselor. That was pretty much it but you’d be surprised how limiting that can be.

My insurance requires that I choose someone from their list and once I’d filled out my parameters on the search page online… well… pickings were slim. It’s such a leap of faith to pick a therapist from a website. There are no “customer reviews.” There are no ratings. There isn’t even a picture. You get a name, an address and a phone number.

That’s worse than a blind date! At least on a blind date you have someone’s mother’s cousin’s secretary telling you that he has a great personality and his ear hair is not at all noticeable.

Come to think of it… finding the right therapist is very much like dating. Before my first appointment with Dr. Z, I planned my outfit and straightened my hair. I wore my cutest heels and touched up my lip gloss in the car before going into the office. Even when it comes to someone with whom we should WANT to be honest, we still make extra effort to present ourselves in the most positive light.

Sadly, it didn’t work out with Dr. Z. She was condescending and her entire approach to therapy was centered around one phrase… “STOP IT.” Sad? STOP IT. Feeling too overwhelmed by grief and mourning to peel your ass off the couch, quit crying and do some damn laundry? STOP IT. Pissed off about your busted uterus and punk ass ovaries? STOP IT.

Had I known about this approach before hand, Dr. Z. and I would have never wasted our time with each other. And that got me thinking… in this era of Facebook and eHarmony and Match.com and all the social networking available to us… why is there not a website designed to evaluate our therapists?

I know the thought of this is a little ridiculous at first but I’m not kidding or even being slightly sarcastic. I don’t have the time or the energy to keep breaking up with therapists until I find the right one. And if this search is going to even RESEMBLE my dating history, I’ve got a lot of bad therapists in my future that I just don’t have the time for.

This is, for many people, the single most intimate relationship in their lives. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here when I say that often times, our therapists are privy to knowledge that we don’t even share with our spouse or significant others.

We not only allow this virtual stranger access to our innermost neuroses… we INVITE it. Hell, we PAY for it. So shouldn’t we be allowed to screen them in some way? What about therapist speed-dating? Would that work? And is just not showing up for an appointment the equivalent of breaking up with her voice mail? Should I send a letter?

I guess I’m just not that into her…

Can we talk for a moment about how Aaron Spelling must be rolling over in his grave? TORI! Why can’t you STOP THE INSANITY!?!? First the remake of 90210 which I will not lie, I watch. Okay, I TiVo it and watch it at a later date because Patrick refuses to partake. (I think its because his love for the original is so strong and true. Yup.. that’s what it is alright, he’s just a purist.)

And I suppose it’s grown on me enough to stick with it but mainly that is because of Kelly and (ugh) Brenda and now DONNA MARTIN (graduates)! Not to mention the absolute train wreck that Jackie Taylor turned out to be. She should totally sue her plastic surgeon.

(Or maybe Ann Gillespie should sue. Yes. That’s the actress who played Jackie Taylor. And no, I didn’t google her, I just knew that one. Did you know that she is also now a Reverend for some church? And that this ends your random actress lesson for today?)

But a Melrose Place remake? Really? Starring Ashley Simpson? REALLY? Please Tori; tell me you had no part in this. Blame your crazy ass mom who I can only picture as Loni Anderson and not actual Candy Spelling thanks to your HILARIOUS show on VH1 that was too short lived. (Was that on VH1? I may have to google that one.)

Or blame your brother Randy. YES! Because he did that reality show with Brody Jenner. Which means he could have been affected in some small way by Spencer from The Hills. And a Melrose Place remake starring Ashley Simpson? Has Spencer fucking Pratt written all over it. If Heidi shows up in that shit, we’ll know for sure.

The world makes sense again. Thank god.

But Spencer will NEVER be the new Michael Mancini.

As the weeks leading up to my first appointment with my new Reproductive Endocrinologist (that’s RE for those of you not well schooled in the infertility abbreviations) I am getting really excited. And nervous. And scared. And… well probably other things too but those are kind of the big three.

Things seem more real this time around. I kind of have this gut feeling that this is actually going to work. I’m going to be pregnant this year. The whole thing is surprisingly calming. I cannot wait to meet this RE and talk to her about what we’ve been through and how ready we are to get this show on the road.

I think a major factor in this whole change of heart about being a mother has been losing my grandmother. (I won’t lie, that is not getting any easier to live with. As a matter of fact, each day is harder than the one before and every night this week I’ve laid in bed listening to my heart shatter a little bit at a time because I miss her so desperately. People keep telling me that eventually it will not hurt so much but I kind of have my doubts.)

My infertility, in its previous incarnations (i.e. Crazy Psycho Clomid Wife Who Throws Frozen Poultry in the General Direction of Her Husband’s Skull and Obsessive Pee-Stick Lady Who Can Find a Positive Pregnancy Test Result at the Bottom of a Cereal Box if She Squints Hard Enough) was focused on one thing and only one thing… getting pregnant.

And yes, I totally realize that I JUST said I would be pregnant this year. I do believe that. But I also don’t think I see NOT getting pregnant as a massive FAIL anymore.

Where previously the goal was PREGNANCY, now the goal is MOTHERHOOD. Our child is out there, waiting on us. Of this I am certain. There are so many fuzzy and floaty things rumbling around in my head about spirits and how maybe there will be a tiny piece of my grandmother in our baby and that is why she had to leave. I don’t know. It’s all a little… out there. And while I am so unsure of what my personal religious/spiritual beliefs are, I do know this one thing to be true and that is nothing ever happens without reason.

So at night, while I’m trying to sleep and all I can think about is sadness and how our child, whoever that may be and however they may come to us, will never have the chance to meet my grandmother; maybe they’re hanging out together in some spiritual realm or place or whatever getting to know each other.

Whether that is true or not, who knows. But it helps me make it through the day without a complete and total meltdown. Well… that and the wine. The wine helps a lot too…

A while back I made the comment that I was trying to spend some time with extended family members outside of funeral homes. This past weekend I was finally able to do just that.

Somehow, the entire thing was planned over Facebook as every one of us (with the exception of my mother) is a member. Mom? She just showed up when and where I told her to. That’s just how she rolls…

This has happened more frequently with me, planning entire events over email or Facebook and I’m not totally sure how I feel about it. It worked and it was convenient but is it less personal? I don’t know. I DO know that my once lovely handwriting now sucks because I type everything. Sadness.

Regardless, I have all these wonderful woman who are my cousins. Funny, intelligent, beautiful women and we really had a wonderful time. We went out to lunch and ended up sitting and chatting for hours. It was nice that, even though we really haven’t spent much time together in the past 15 years or so (wow… that’s terrible…) we still had some idea what was going on in each others’ lives and so the conversation flowed easily.

From lunch we went to Bath Junkie and had a blast mixing scents and scrubs and lotions of our very own. I may be addicted to that place…

What we did wasn’t really the point though. It was that we did it. And I truly hope that everyone enjoyed it as much as I did. Mom and I agreed ahead of time it would be a good plan to avoid any discussions of politics (due to our rampant liberalism and their collective conservatism.) She also mentioned that I may want to keep my personal views on religion to myself since we were trying to build relationships and not prayer requests for heathen and lost souls. I agreed and we had a blast.

Here’s hoping that family get-togethers become a somewhat regular thing. I genuinely LIKE these people. Being related is just icing on the cake, right?