A Numbers Game

No more politics after 10PM. That is my new resolution. Especially no fivethirtyeight, dammit! (Having said that, it’s an amazing site. If you don’t know it yet you should). With its fucking Mr. Bubbles graph (what the hell does that thing mean, anyway?), micro-dissected poll numbers, and charts within charts about charts, the damn website makes my brain implode. I scan it up and down, backwards and forwards, straining my eyes and furrowing my brow, trying to make sense of it all, trying to ascertain if all the charts add up to the same or different, good or ill, momentous or terrifying things. But only one thing can I glean: Obama’s numbers are great, but not as great as I want them to be. Not as great as we need them to be. Not as great as they must be!! McCain has gained a point this week. If he gains six more we’re cooked.

Speaking of cooked. I am a bundle of nerves on another front. You would think that getting my pregnancy test results would calm me down some — maybe even make me elated –but that would only be true if I were some other, far less neurotic and more well adjusted person. Because those results were on Monday, people. And today is Wednesday. And I have completely convinced myself that I am no longer pregnant. I would say “with child,” just for variety’s sake, but I think we can all agree, even those un-neurotics among us, that, if anything, I am only “with” a little cellular presence, at this point. Anyway. I have — full disclosure — taken not one but two more pregnancy tests since Monday. One last night and one tonight. I am happy to report that they have both been positive, but I worry about the color of the pink line. No, really! At work we talk about colored diamonds in terms of the following factors: fanciness, vividness, and intensity. I feel my pregnancy tests lack vividity. The pink is not fancy. It is definitely not intense. It is the color of a weak republican state. Dammit! Does this mean that my bun in the oven is not cooking correctly? Can you judge these things by a generic brand pregnancy test? (Yes, I am too cheap to buy the good ones. You would be too if you knew you’d be doing this every night for another week!) In just this one area I wish the state would go RED!

I called the nurse at my fertility place today and asked her if she didn’t think I should come in sooner than next Monday, the time currently scheduled, for my next blood test.

“I don’t feel pregnant,” I said. “I’m not sick to my stomach at all!”

“Some women are without any symptoms.”

“But isn’t it possible it’s just… gone away?”

“Possible. Unlikely. Your numbers were excellent. Are you having any bleeding or cramping?”

“No.”

“I think you’re fine.”

“But don’t you think I should at least check?”

“Nope! See you Monday!”

Damn her and her little twirping voice. She doesn’t know what I suffer.

The problem is I had “good numbers.” HCG numbers, that is. And progesterone, and estrogen. I really don’t know what all that means, except that I’ve been shuffled way down to the bottom of the priorities list at my doctor’s office. I tried to look it up online, but couldn’t make heads nor tails of it. AGH! The fucking numbers are killing me. If I were sleeping, which I’m not, really, (as the only real pregnancy symptom I seem to be displaying is an utterly unprecedented propensity to lie awake for prodigious chunks of time in the middle of the night), I’d be dreaming of charts, and graphs, and HCG numbers and poll numbers and turnout numbers and progesterone numbers and electoral numbers and…well, you get the idea. More like a nightmare!

I guess I’d better stock up on pregnancy tests. Because next Monday is the new last Monday. Who cares that I got pregnant. Will it last the week? Will my HCG continue to rise? Will the Brownshirts’ chances continue to fall?

It’s gonna be a long six days.