I came very, very close to having a total meltdown last night in class. I felt like throwing my empanada dough across the kitchen, and just barely restrained myself. I did start swearing loudly and felt heaving sobs starting and my eyes welling with tears of frustration and anger. I am pretty sure I freaked my kitchen partner out a bit, though she was very calm on the surface. I managed to calm myself before any tears streaked their way down my face or I really started screaming.
First of all, I am not happy with this class or the chef teaching it. We are not following the syllabus at all, the teacher just flies by the seat of his pants and has very little plan of what we are going to do, other than giving us five recipes and telling us to cook them. I could do that at home. So, last night he gave us 5 Latin American recipes, two of which involved making dough and something to go inside them. The were LONG recipes that took a long time to make. This would be fine if he had any concept of how long these recipes would take us to do. I think he only has a concept of how long it would take him to make them. So, not even halfway through the class he nixed one of our recipes, which was fine. But, then even with the remaining four recipes we were rushing, rushing (or at least I was – a lot of the people in this class are programmed with “slow” and “molasses” modes) and it was obvious to me that we were either going to run over our 11:00 pm ending time or no one was going to finish all the dishes. In fact, both of those things happened.
At about 10:15 this was becoming very clear to me since it takes at least a half hour to clean that kitchen up and no one was near done. I asked the chef, because M. had to come pick me up, if I should have him come later. He was sure we would finish by 11:00. At this point I was still trying to roll out my empanada dough with a vodka bottle because there was one rolling pin for 10 people in that kitchen. Then I was filling them and hurriedly sealing them and stuffing them in the oven, the ugly shit that they were since I was trying so hard to get it done quickly. So then I look over at our table after the empanadas were in the oven and I see two of the ingredients that I was supposed to put inside – chopped green olives and chopped hard boiled eggs – still sitting undisturbed on my cutting board. That’s when the meltdown started.
I swore first and then told my partner that the empanadas were “fucking ugly as shit” (what do I care, my parents aren’t going to read this blog…) and that I left the two ingredients out. This is when I almost threw the dough across the kitchen. Instead my partner tried nicely to calm me down a little and told me that they would still taste good. I had to keep cleaning and pretend not to be crying to get a hold on myself. I narrowly avoided the heaving sobs but managed to pull myself together enough to (along with my partner) get the rest of the dishes, minus any garnish, out for tasting. I was somewhat gratified when the chef said that my empanadas were “almost perfect” even though they were missing two ingredients and they were not pretty when I put them in the oven.
Thank God we have just four more meetings of this class. Even that seems like too much, but maybe I can hold the bile down long enough not to get kicked out of school just before graduating.
I think part of this is really being burnt out on this program, three nights a week from 6 – 11 will do that to you, especially when the classes consistently run over until 11:30 and you have to be at work at 8 am the following morning. But, part of it is also just me being generally stressed trying to do too much and worrying about my health and what is going to happen with the upcoming potential surgery and definite fertility treatments. And also not knowing what I am going to do with my life when/if I really do quit my job in mid-December. Am I really going to start my own business? It’s exciting but scary, especially since it is difficult to make any concrete plans when you are dealing with fertility treatments.
This coming Monday I go back to my Ob/Gyn so that they can do another ultrasound to see if they still see the hydrosalpinx that they thought were going to necessitate the removal of my fallopian tubes. If they do, I will be having surgery on December 11. If they don’t, we will probably proceed with IVF sometime in the December/January/February time frame.
We are in the process of changing health insurance plans to one that does cover IVF. We are so fortunate that this very expensive treatment is covered by our (future) insurance. Even our current insurance covers the fertility drugs – oral and injectable, which is great because if the timing works out, we could start that part of it before our new insurance kicks in January 1, 2008. The new insurance will cover three IVF attempts in full. But, three strikes and you are out – forever. I feel very, very lucky that we have this insurance when a lot of people have to pay for this out of pocket. But, I am still afraid of what will happen – what if I don’t get pregnant in those three tries? It happens. At the end of the day, though, if I don’t get pregnant, at least we haven’t spent $50,000 on those three attempts and we can figure out what our next step is without worrying about that first expense. Any additional treatments or adoption will still be extraordinarily expensive and really stressful and potentially emotionally devastating, but at least we would be starting from $0, or close to it, rather than -$50,000…
If I am this stressed, emotional and angry without fertility drugs, I am scared to see what I am like with them.
