Just what the doctor ordered (by mistake ...)

The first time I experienced a medical error it was the result of the computer program designed to reduce them -- I kid you not.

I was about three months post-partum and suffering my third bout of mastitis. (The first one required antibiotics and the second miraculously went away on its own.)

I suppose I should have known when the doctors' office ordered a two-day supply (in powdered form) instead of five-day pill form (the usual dose for Zithromax) I should have spoken up. When the infection came back after the weekend with a vengence -- changing the shape of my upper torso into a scene from a sci-fi movie -- I got my own sneek peek into the future of healthcare now that the "infallable computer" is on the job.

Where am I going with this?

Since writing a list of things I hate, I have apparently unleashed a demon in my soul. The inner depression that was hiding behind the random anonymity of the internets, feigning happy well-adjustment, has been momentarily (I hope) embolded by choking on something that must have been a Lamisil tablet (because that little fugus freak from the commercials is the cartoon form my demon takes in my spinning mind).

So let me tell you that what's really bugging me starting in aisle 6 of the pharmacy that has no VOWELS in its name:

Why, oh why, anacronymic excuse for a store must you put the over-the-counter home tests in a locked cage? I know the sign says that in doing so you are keeping theft at bay and the prices down, but really your prices are higher than other places that DON'T make a person locate some pimply-faced community college freshman (who obviously believes he belongs at Yale -- not to mention far, far, far away from this inner-city legal pharmaceutical peddler) so he can call over a loud speaker for some other (equally tactless) person to come to the cashiers' station and help this obviously pathetic secondary infertile procure an EPT. ... Pleaaaase?

I know I've been grammar and punctuationally challeged since I learned to read and write, but the one thing I've never done before is suffer from having too many periods. So there you have it. We've been trying to make a sibling for Ittybit for nearly a year. Nothing. Nada. Nil.

This is one of those things I hadn't planned to tell you, all six of you who read these ramblings, but it feels so good to get it off my chest. Finally. Which leads me to something else I need to say:

People, some of whom I love (pronounced LUUUUUV), who think it's funny to push the issue of procreation are driving me to drink. Some of these folks have been at it since Ittybit was born. At first, when we were planning on life with only one pea pod, I'd just answer that somehow we'd managed to make one better than we deserved and we weren't the tempting-fate types. But now the jokes just seem altogether unkind.

Let me offer some advice for talking to people about their plans for parenthood: Don't Do it. EVER. Please? Don't ask someone in a flippant way if they're going to make a brother for another. If you are close enough you won't have to ask, otherwise it can be hurtful. So leave well enough alone. I'm trying not to hold it against you, but truly and deeply, my heart feels like it's breaking each time I literally piss away another $5.