You’ve heard the term bad things happen in threes, but have you ever heard the term three on a match? During the Crimean War, there was supposedly a superstition among soldiers that if three soldiers lit their cigarette from the same match one of them would die, or the last to light the match would be shot. The belief was that when the first solider lit his cigarette, the enemy would see the light; when the second soldier lit his cigarette, the enemy would take aim. When the third soldier lit his cigarette from the same match, the enemy would fire. Since then the superstition has been coined ‘three on a match’ or ‘unlucky third light’.

I also realize that the number three (tres, trois, dreis) can signify worldly phenomena. Like:

• 3 stars in Orion’s belt
• 3 parts to the personality: Id, ego, and super-ego
• 3 parts to the atom: protons, neutrons, and electrons
• 3 great pyramids at Giza
• 3 trimesters in a pregnancy

My trifecta of recent events, that all happened within three hours, would not make the cover of TIME. It most certainly would not be discussed among war veterans (well maybe if act 2 took a violent turn), but it is…certifiably bizarre. And I mean bizarre like the language Gwyneth Paltrow used to announce her “conscious uncoupling” from Chris Marten.

So I’ll take a cue from you Gwynnie, here is how the shit went down.

ACT 1 – Thursday, 2:45pm

I arrived at Quest Labs in downtown SF, and was told by a medical student that she would be drawing my blood and sending the HCG level results to my fertility clinic. Yes, it was all riding on this. She selected a vein that was barely visible, and because I hate, hate, hate needles  (even after two rounds of IVF) – I made a fist and looked away. After she swabbed my skin, I told myself ‘it won’t hurt’, ‘it won’t hurt’. I felt the initial pinch (when you should be home free) then the most gawdawful, holymotherofjoseph, limb-incinerating pain deep in my arm. Then her voice filling the room, “OHMYGOD, the needle popped out!! You pulled back!” She yelled again toward the hallway that “I pulled back”. Which was nearly impossible given the angle as she drove the needle in fishing for a vein. Then she ran out of the room for help while my blood pooled out over the armrest.

But it was not my fault.

ACT II – Thursday, approx. 3:20pm

“Hey lady, spare some change?” I am asked this all the time walking in San Francisco. Maybe it’s the blonde hair, my odd empathetic people-pleasing vibe I give off when I’m not consciously hiding it under my gruff ex-New Yorker face. I have no idea why this bum at this time, on this day, chose to hit me up for money. Because after the bloodbath, I wasn’t quite wearing the look of sunshine and charity. I looked at the ground as I passed him, said “sorry”, and it struck a chord so deep, he reached out and smacked me in the arm. In my same heavily bandaged arm.

And my reaction looked a bit like this:

ACT III – Thursday, 4:08pm

I needed an upswing. A moodlift. So I ordered a smoothie and boarded the 4:10 bus. I was literally going to leave this gruesome day behind me. I took a seat smack dab in the middle by the window with my book, and out of nowhere came muffled screams and commotion overhead. People ducking. Intense flapping. I looked up to see the tack-sharp talons of a pigeon splayed out over my head. This couldn’t be real. But the full-throttle flapping of the wings, like a furious helicopter descending down, down, into my hair. I was Fabio on a roller coaster with an urban bird going ballistic in my well-conditioned hair.

I instinctively ducked my head, and buried it into the muscle guy next to me. The bird fell into my computer bag, and then I dumped it on my feet. With no assailant in sight, everyone fanned their faces and used their hands to smooth over the wrinkles in their clothing, until I yelled, “the bird is under the seat.”

Terror struck again, and people ducked as if it were flying into their hair suddenly. Then the muscle guy stood up, opened the side door of the bus, and shooed the thing out.

I looked up at the side windows, just slightly cracked at the top. A total mystery where the bird entered in from or where it had been hiding.

As we rode across the East Bay Bridge, the top of my hair in tangled knots, I began laughing hysterically. I laughed so hard under my tossed mop that I started crying. Tears of wacky laughter. I’d become delirious after the head raping. Because the odds. THE ODDS! What are the chances of a bird attack INSIDE a bus? It had to be lower than 30%. And that was the percentage the hospital quoted for a successful IVF.

Of all the times I could have been assaulted by a homeless guy, of all the times a pigeon could have attacked my hair…yes, both these things happened back-to-back.

But then again, maybe it’s not a weird omen or dark plague. Not like blood on doorposts, the Spanish Flu or an owl hooting 3 times. Maybe it’s the opposite. In a twisted metropolitan way.

I know the big guy upstairs always looks out for me. Maybe he’s shifting the odds in our favor.

If not this time, then sometime down the road.

– Amen

On Tuesday I had a one-night stand. I popped a Valium on my way out of the office, then slid into a flimsy backless gown, and spread my legs on an operating table. They put me in a crinkly yellow mask (a gag!) then bolted my feet into stirrups. Dean held my hand as the director wedged a speculum between my legs, followed by a spindly thin catheter.

Up until entering that dark closet of a room, I was walking through a garden, ready to rave. My arms dangling as I stepped over a mushy soil cement floor. Those crinkly yellow boots of mine–divine! Drop the bass and set the strobe.

But once inside, it was cold and impersonal, in complete opposition to the warmth I felt when Milo was transferred into my body. Back then it was another time, another clinic. They let me look under a trillion-dollar microscope, marvel at the cells’ symmetry, lay back and dream of our journey.

And now because a grading system wasn’t found with our stored embryos, they’ve thawed them at random (not by highest quality). One of them lyced (meaning it burst) and the back-up wasn’t as good of quality. I am enraged at the lack of attention to detail, and yet I am high. But lucent enough to know I had at least 3 B grade embryos (at 6 cells each).

We are another number to this clinic, an escalating percentage, just another man and woman under masks with worried eyes.

And mine were shedding tears.

In this pic, the embryo on the bottom has started to split and morph. You’ll see it isn’t fully contained with a perfect circle like the one on top. So perhaps instead of transferring 2 embryos in, it’s more like 1.5

Last time, they showed me the two dots like tiny dewdrops. My doctor a NASA pilot guiding astronauts into my soft secret crater. They touched down side by side, under my fallopian tubes, within swimming distance to my lining.

This time–I barely saw the slim catheter worming its way in.

When the procedure was over, the director yanked me up by the hand, and led me to the staff locker room. While I changed, the staff impatiently knocked to come in and access their things.

Finally. Finally, when it was over– I stepped out under the pulsing sun in my giant Tom Ford knockoffs. Ready to rave. Ready for anything.

I don’t believe in the Zodiac and horoscopes. Don’t believe everyone born in my moon in my birth month, has a personality and problems just like mine. That would practically mean 1 out of every 12 people are easygoing, creative and flighty.

And yet in uncertain times far beyond my control, I reach for the absurd. Because in the mess of needles, estrogen patches and pills, my stomach has ballooned out with other disgusting side effects I won’t get into. And with my magic Google powers, I’ve found evidence of psychic wisdom from The Onion:

Your Horoscopes – Week Of March 4, 2014

Gemini

The clown car may be an overworked reference, but the doctors can think of no better way to describe the constant stream of clowns issuing from your abdominal cavity.

Holy smokes! What prophetic shit. Just 3 hours before I saw this we had an ultrasound. Yes, my lining is thick, and plump for the embryo taking and there are weird little men doing gymnastics in my uterus.

In another stupid, expanded search, I also learned this about myself:

Everyone loves a Gemini because everyone loves a schizophrenic. You like to think that you are a half-and half mixture of Socrates and Michelangelo, but in reality it’s more like Prince and Bea Arthur. Geminis are pushy and overbearing. They pick fights with small children and moon people at weddings. Geminis use far-fetched analogies to describe philosophical concepts. Geminis are always on some sort of medication. This medication is not always legal. Geminis are frequently abidextrous, which means that they can pick both sides of their noses at the same time. The Gemini is essentially nothing more than a paranoid Aquarius.

I really in all honesty just can’t deny all of this.

I’ll leave you guessing which parts.

If you’d like to see what’s in the stars for you, try this link here.

Good luck, and avidazen good night.