The Toasted Tomato

I’ve just emerged from the basement with a linty piece of Scotch tape on the bottom of my foot and, though it’s annoying in a way that only Scotch tape on skin can be, I’m too tired to peel it off. I’m only up here because I need to get another pen, since the ink finally died on my old one, and then it’s back to the basement I go, where I’ll likely just get more tape stuck on various parts of my body. See, it’s there that presents await to be wrapped.

While I would consider myself a passionate Christmas enthusiast, wrapping presents is without a doubt my least favorite pastime of the season. It has largely to do with the fact that I am notoriously bad at it.

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My friend Dustie’s husband texted me last Friday in a panic.

“Call her,” he said. “She couldn’t find anything that fit for the Christmas party tonight. She’s at Kmart now trying to find something that will work.”

I dialed her and she picked up, sounding cheerful.

“I know what’s going on,” I said.

She immediately dropped the happy act. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she said, near tears.

I tried to talk her down, assuring her she is one of the biggest fashionistas I know and that if anyone could rock a last-minute dress, she could.

Then I put down the phone and shook my head. See, the reason Dustie was having trouble finding a dress was because she had just given birth to her gorgeous baby three short weeks before. The dresses were too tight because her body was still trying to reconfigure after this monumental change.

But despite this very important fact, Dustie was frustrated and upset and feeling … ugly.

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If the words “turkey baster” have taken on new meaning in the Baker/Kaprowy household this year, so has “rollercoaster,” a ride that started getting very bumpy last month after I underwent intra-uterine insemination.

This was the latest step in our efforts to get pregnant.

Seven days after the procedure, in which a turkey baster-like piece of equipment was used to give my husband’s swimmers a head start in getting to my egg, it was time to turn to First Response to take a test.

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I can say with absolute certainty that the words “turkey baster” have taken on a whole new meaning this holiday season in the Baker/Kaprowy home. For it turns out, in addition to helping you roast a succulent bird, the device can also help you get pregnant.

I learned this interesting fact during one of my many trips to the gynecologist recently. After going over test results, my doc finally laid it on the line: If my husband and I were going to have a baby before I turn 50, we were going to need a little help.

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Da-da-da-DA-da, boogie-woogie-woo, ching ching ching!

“Need technical support? Go to http://www.suckstobeyou.com, where you’ll find a wealth of information at your fingertips!”

If you’re at all familiar with this greasy voice and inexplicably bad music, you too must be a customer of this cable TV and Internet provider. For the past several years, we unfortunately have been and so I’ve gotten intimately acquainted with the on-hold soundtrack I’m forced to listen to as I wait to tell someone I once again can’t get on the Web.

The on-hold soundtrack is an interesting phenomenon, one that never ceases to fascinate me. Airlines have always been famous for these, with wait times generally so long you could have actually taken and returned from your trip before anyone ever answers. Of course, actually getting to the point where you are on hold is generally a bit of a process since airline websites are known for either hiding their cache of phone numbers in an obscure spot or, when customers click on “Contact us,” the website directs them to a snail mail address, which, sadly, is of no use to anyone.

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“Tock, tock, tock, tock” was the sound that droned on in the living room last night as Gabrielle Baker stared at the metronome, her face showing all the vengeful ways she would like to make it stop.

“OK, let’s try again,” I said, and she sighed dramatically.

“I hate this,” she seethed, her voice a small whisper.

“I know,” I said. “But it works.”

About six weeks ago, my stepdaughter Gabrielle tried out for and earned a place in her school’s talent show by playing a slightly shaky rendition of “You belong with me” by Taylor Swift on the violin. Thrilled to have made the cut, she bounced through the door a few nights later and informed us of the news.

“It’s going to be perfect,” she said.

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It’s 2:25 and I am sitting in my car plucking away at my laptop. Beside me is the home of Vern and Gail White, who have a cottagey sign at the end of their driveway that cheerfully says, “The Whites, Vern and Gail.” Just before 3, the people with the faded, plastic jungle gym in their front lawn will get into their car and head to work, as they do every day. Right around then it will be time to pack up the laptop and listen to the rest of the drivers turn on their engines. Then I’ll do the same.

I know all of this and plenty more mundane minutia on Walnut Hill Lane because I am here nearly every afternoon waiting in the Science Hill School pickup line.

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In some ways, it’s a good thing that Build-A-Bear didn’t exist when I was a kid as I’m not sure I would have otherwise survived to adulthood. One step into that store, with all its animals and especially all its outfits, would have surely stopped my 7-year-old heart.

I thought of this last weekend as I took my stepdaughter Gabrielle and lovely friend Lexie to the store, monitoring their vital signs as we crossed the threshold. Soon, their eyes were disturbingly glazed, and they were walking around like zombies, bumping into bins and racks like pinballs bouncing off the bumpers.

For those of you who have never been inside a Build-A-Bear store, let me fill you in on their concept. As its name implies, the purpose is to build a stuffed animal, a process that starts by choosing a limp, empty animal shell from a line of bins and then getting it pumped with stuffing — or life, as the case may be — using a powerful injection tool.

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I am sitting here today feeling, at once, like I need to scream, but I don’t know what I’m angry about. Within the next few hours, I will probably start feeling like the kitchen isn’t clean enough, but when I clean it, no matter how hard I scrub, I won’t feel satisfaction, I’ll just decide the bathrooms need to be cleaned too. Then tonight I will go to sleep and at 3 a.m. I will wake up and feel that achy restlessness that usually just comes from drinking too much coffee — except I don’t drink coffee.

This is my life on Clomid, the fertility drug I’ve been on for the past two months.

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Around noon today, three preteen girls and I sat in the front foyer looking rather woozy. Before us lay a gargantuan piece of plastic that, unfortunately, was useless until it was inflated.

“Oh, nuts,” Gabrielle said, after a mighty bout of exhaling. “I got my gum on it. Sorry, guys.”

The “it” in question was the air nozzle on an inflatable pool that was attached to the end of a Slip ‘N Slide. The day before, we’d bought the classic summertime water toy in an effort to stretch the very last days of summer holidays to their fullest potential.

“OK, girls, switch,” I said, wearily picking off the gum. “I’m going to get some Triscuits. I think I’m going to pass out.”

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