jaysaint Getting it all down on paper…

So, definitely not implantation bleeding.

But I’m not down. Because now I am armed with information about my wandering uterus, and I will just have to tell my husband that his presence is required nigh-on nightly if that’s what it takes. I feel he will rally to the cause. My doctor gave us three months and we’re going to make the most of them.

I’m in those last few days of the month when I will shortly know whether or not our effort to get pregnant has paid off. I don’t feel any different, although I hear many women don’t for a few weeks.

I had a bit of spotting yesterday. Which is right on target datewise to be implantation. Or, just the harbinger of my period. Could be either.

I think I’ve not been too focused on waiting, but then I dream about it. In my dreams I always find out that I’m not pregnant.

Jodi is now much closer to New York than to Florida. Their train is late, which means it will be nearer to 1 than 10 when they get into town. I can’t wait to see them, and yet those extra three hours are a blessing. I’m burning through work with much haste.

This afternoon I was eating shrimp skewers in the Canyon Ranch test kitchen. This evening I was cleaning cat barf out of the bathtub.

I’m happy to be home. I missed Damon and the cats too, even though they’re barfy.

Did I mention in a previous post the itty bitty teeny tiny airplane I flew up on? The emergency exit was IN THE ROOF. So Liz (one of my fellow editors) and I, being the two fliers, requested that we not be made to honor our reservations on the flying death bucket for our return. So we shared a limo with another editor and had a lovely, girly ride back together.

So now I’m fast and furious trying to plow through emails and put together a big content feed. I’m managing so far to cling to the meditation, breathing and mantras I learned over the past week so as not to allow my shoulders to creep up over my ears.

I can’t begin to describe this trip. Let me just toss out a few details.

— My hotel suite at Cranwell is much bigger than my apartment. I have four sinks, two full baths, a sitting room, a deck and an assortment of robes in various sizes. I wish you were all here.
— When I check in yesterday I found a silver platter of chocolate-covered strawberries and grapes and a bottle of wine in my room. Tonight, about 30 seconds after I walked in my door (no idea how they knew), a cute boy was at my door with a new platter with cookies, strawberries, shortbread and grapes and a little bottle of Grand Marnier. I had a moment of thinking, “I wonder what he’d do if I said, ‘Why don’t you come on in and share this with me?” How funny/cliche would that be?
— Last night we had dinner at Blantyre, which I will have to describe in more detail later because it was so stunning. But I will mention that we had one attendant per person as we ate.
— My goody bags overfloweth

What I was thinking tonight as I laid in my whirlpool bath is that I can see how journalists can get into trouble on a beat like this. From time to time you hear about someone who gets into a ton of trouble, be it job trouble, money trouble, ethical trouble when s/he surrenders to the pull of trying to live like the people s/he covers. Blantyre was a dream. A total dream. A place most people never get to see (it’s very private). But the manager was so charming, so wonderful, so friendly and fun to be around and she kept saying, “I hope you will come back and visit us.” And it starts to feel like it really would be a terrible shame if I didn’t.

Now there are two ways I can do that. The first is to pay for it. But rooms at Blantyre start at about $600/night, and of course I saw far more lovely rooms that I would like to try that clocked in at about $1250/night. And that’s before I eat in the crazy expensive restaurant or partake of the spa amenities.

The other is to just call up the manager and say, “My husband and I would like to come see you.” I have no doubt she would throw wide the doors and comp us to a pull-out-the-stops weekend. But, see, then I’m in a pay-for-play where I have, at least tacitly, promised to put Blantyre in the magazine or on the web site. And that is the kind of thing that gets you fired, not to mention evil and wrong.

You may ask: How is that different from what you’re doing now? Which is valid. When I worked at CNN we were vigilant to never take anything that rose above the level of a tchotchke. But at a women’s mag that covers, for example, beauty products, there is a need to try a lot of product. And there is a very clear understanding all around that people are free to send us products (or we may request them) and that we may or may not try them, and we may or may not write about them, and we may or may not praise them. I haven’t made any promises of coverage for this trip, and won’t cover some of the things that I’ve seen that I didn’t love. This trip was arranged and is paid by the Massachusetts Department of Tourism. They take the approach that this stuff is great and that if we see it, we’ll love at least some of it and give it some attention. But we definitively don’t have to do anything. Now, of course, if we consistently accept trips and then do nothing we will stop getting invitations. Which is really fine because if we’re doing nothing consistently then it means we’re not seeing stuff we can use. And then it’s a waste of time anyway.

I’m making it sound like I’ll get a lot of trips, which is not true. I’ll be lucky to do something like this every few years, I think. But the beauty editor gets crazy invites all the time. I only got this one because she couldn’t go. Maybe I’ll save her some of the cookies

———————————————————————————On the nightstand: The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin