Life Planning and Flamingo Stationery

It takes this amount of persistence to keep a day to day life together, imagine the persistence, tenacity and continuous self loathing it takes to keep a life plan on track with this amount of natural born skill and ability in time management?   The answer… a lot.  And to those people, I shout you a world of accolades.  I wish you all of the paper certificates, fake gold medals, encouragement ribbons and fancy embroidered patches that the world has.

Me… I need a little more external motivation, fake alarm setting, list making and personal reminders to keep a life plan heading in the right direction.  My fitness plan gets side tracked by a bread roll, my career plan changes on the whim of a plastic dinosaur, my real estate plan stalled by a pretty brooch (or thirty) and it seems my baby plan and my love life have fallen victim to the shitty world of circumstance. 

While the fitness, career and real estate plans of my happily ever after have fallen aside as victims of distraction and the will power of a squirrel in a nut factory, my love life and my baby plans have been victims of circumstance.  Well, at least they have lately.  It’s no secret that I’ve been making plans to have a baby.  I made a plan to have a baby solo.  I ‘came out’ in October last year at a tea party for the thirty-five closest women in my life to tell them that I was done with waiting and that I was going to try and have a baby all by myself.  

While Eric Carmen sings with the pent up pain and self pitying sadness with which that phrase now denotes, that is all completely absent in my decision to try and be a solo parent.  I say try, because at this point in time, ten months post my public intention to get pregnant, I am still not pregnant.  I was, for eight weeks.  Then I wasn’t.  I tried again and I’m still not. After four IUI attempts, three negative results and a miscarriage my plan to have a baby is just like Olaf, frozen.

It’s also no secret that I am fat.  The people in my life hate it when I was that word like that.  Like it’s some giant secret that’s hidden from them and from me.  It’s not.  I look in the mirror at least once a day.  It’s not a nasty word when I say it.  I am allowed.  I am fat.  It’s only awful when it’s spat at you by an ignorant skinny bitch who’s skim latte lays in the bottom of her cup rather than in her face.  

It’s been proven that being fat makes it more difficult to get pregnant.  Not impossible, just harder and when you’re trying to get pregnant by jamming your gunt with needles and shooting in one vial of sperm in blind faith, the chances are somewhat smaller.  So the options are limited.  Out of all of the plans that I have in my life, real estate mogul, building an educational mental health focused empire, being in the Guiness Book of World Records for my combined brooch and shoe collection, having a family is not one I’m prepared to compromise on unless I’ve done everything I can to make it work.

So childless, dogless, broochless and on the couch with a self indulgent and downright anti-social fish named Eric, I’m about to begin a new plan.  Plan G.  A through F were shit, so this is where we are, G.  G involves a little bit of surgery, a lot of sweating, very little eating and the melting of a fat filled gunt to a wrinkly-skinned one.  I’m very aware that by Easter I’m going to have tuck my wrinkly-skinned gunt into my shape wear like I’m folding a fitted sheet, but it will increase my chances of having a baby.

The problem with Plan G is that I’m concerned I won’t have enough flamingo themed post it notes to keep track of my daily life.  The appointments, the gym visits, the scheduled Ninja Warrior viewing and craft activities to avoid shopping will all need to be scheduled in that Kikki K diary to keep me moving in a forward direction.  This plan can not go the way of my ukulele career.  It may not work, and all of this may not bring me the family I wanted but it won’t be because I didn’t try.  It won’t be because I didn’t work hard enough.  It will be because I’ve run out of money and effective life organising stationery.  

Nothing yet may have worked out the way I had planned but clearly planning is just another word for good intentions.  It is what it is and I will dot point my way through all that is coming and all that will be but it will be done on fancy stationery.  As for that love life plan… fuck it.  I’ll be too busy creating wall paper out of post its.