Really? Two months?

1.  I've been crazy busy.  It's surprising how stressful and busy I still am even though I have a student teacher this semester.  Of course, if he could handle the full workload of a teacher, I would be a lot less stressed.

2.  I really need to make an appointment for my "annual" exam.  It's been a year and a half since our failed IVF, and that's the last time I was probed and prodded.  My original OB/GYN sucked ass, and then I was at the RE's office, so I need a new doctor to go to.  I have one in mind that a friend recommended a long time ago; I just haven't gotten off my ass to make the call.

3.  My period is slightly out of whack.  It seems to be a couple days late (so I start on day 30) for one month, and then start on day 26 for several months, and repeat.  This most recent month was a day 30/early 31 start.  After six months of starting on day 26, day 30 feels very late.  I had all sorts of thoughts running through my mind.  At first, surprisingly, it was "shit, if I'm pregnant, everything sucks; I have to get rid of my girl room; we can't travel as much; etc."  Then a couple days later, with still no sign of a period "maybe this is it; we can make it work even though my mind has completely switched over to being GOOD with not having kids; and now we will fit in with everyone else."  The next night, my period came.  I think the bitch was just fucking with me.  "Oh, you think you are all well-adjusted?  Let's see what kind of a mind-fuck I can cause by being a few days later than expected."

4.  My friend that I threw the shower for had her baby girl.  And things have instantly changed between us.  I knew change was inevitable, but I didn't think it would be so sudden.  As one of her closest friends, D and I were okayed to come over within a couple days of the birth, so we did, but were pretty quickly rushed out of the house.  It's a 45 minute drive to their house from ours, and we were inside for less than 20 minutes.  It just felt kind of shitty, especially knowing that there were other friends (who are currently baby-crazy) that were there for much, much longer.  And now every other day is a post by someone other than the new parents gushing about the baby.  I think I'd be okay if it was the parents doing it, but all the fans make me want to puke.  I think we'd be more accepted to hang out with if we gushed over the baby, but I just can't do that anymore.  I still like babies and think they are adorable, but I've trained my brain to focus on the not-so-cute aspects of it, like the bags under the new parents' eyes, or the posts about not getting any sleep because the baby cried all night.

5.  Future trips are being talked about.  We are going to D.C. again because my dad's Vietnam company's reunion is there this year, and they like the kids to come.  The last one we want to was in Branson, and the guys rode go-carts, and were ramming each other trying to pass.  It was hilarious until my dad got kicked off the track for the day.  His friends were trying to talk him in to getting back in line, but he didn't want to cause any trouble.  I told him that it was teenage boys running the track, so if he took off his hat, they'd never know he was the same guy.  So he got back in line, and rode the go-carts exactly the same way he did to cause his getting kicked off!  Now that he needs a cane to walk around much, I mentioned all the walking that D.C. required, and he said that a bunch of the guys are going to rent scooters.  So I am fully expecting them to drive them exactly the same way they drove the go-carts, and I really need to see that in person.  So saving has begun for that trip.  And since a family function doesn't count as our "no kids summer trip," we are planning something else.  We have a few ideas, but nothing set yet.  It will really depend on money after D.C.

I survived!

I hosted the baby shower with no issues.  I even started my period two hours before the first guests arrived.  I got a tiny bit sad during the gift opening (I refrained from oohing and aahing over every cute baby item, thinking that if I started letting myself gush over how cute things are, that might break down the wall of emotion), and I left the room to go sit with a different group of friends when the conversation turned to exchanging ultrasound and cervix and labor stories.  Even though I actually could have contributed some ultrasound experiences, I really didn't want to talk about infertility struggles.

Later, I asked my husband if he got sad at all (since the shower was co-ed, he was there during the gift opening too), and he said a little during the gifts, thinking "we'll never need that...or that...or that" but then he thought of what we do have, and then he was better.  Aw!

A year ago I would have been a mess even attending a baby shower, so I'm definitely proud of the progress I've made that I could not only attend one, but actually host it.  This isn't to say that the next time I'm invited to a baby shower that I will definitely go, but I'm not a definite no anymore. 

wish me luck

Today is the day that I host a baby shower.  Yikes. 

Although I am PMSing, and cried a little last night because I felt fat because the band shirt my husband bought me at Warped Tour is too small (even though it's because it's the wrong size...stupid women shirt sizes, I just wish it would have fit), I handled shopping in the baby department Thursday evening very well.  Instead of gushing over how cute everything was, I kept thinking "jesus, this stuff is pricey, and you have to buy more like every few months."  So hopefully, that logic continues today.  We'll see what kind of shape I am in at 7:30 after everyone leaves.

second annual no kids summer trip

This year we drove to Ohio to visit Cedar Point and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.

Sunday we drove 13 hours, Monday we got up bright and early for our one hour early entry into the park since we stayed at a Cedar Point resort (the cheaper off-site one), so that was awesome.  The park is so nice and clean and it has lots of trees so you aren't just baking in the sun all day.  The rides are awesome.  My favorite is Millenium Force.  D's favorite is Top Thrill Dragster.  Tuesday, we did the same thing, but rode everything we missed the first day, and rode our favorites again.  Wednesday, we slept in a little and then drove to Cleveland, had lunch, strolled through the museum, went inside Johnny Cash's tour bus (by far my favorite part of the museum), had dinner and drove back to Sandusky to sleep and pack.  Then on Thursday, we drove 13 hours home, and then Friday, I had to get up early for a work meeting.  So I have sat around doing mostly nothing for the weekend.

Noticeable childfree things: parents at an amusement park with their kids do not look happy most of the time, parents with young children don't get to ride rides together: they have to take turns.  So we definitely saw benefits to our childfree living.

Summertime

School was out on May 24th, but then I had to help write new curriculum (mentally draining) every day until June 22nd.  So now my summer has officially begun.  I kicked it off with a visit from my parents and my nephew for my birthday weekend.  I am now a perfect square (36 for you non-mathy people).  It was a pretty good time.  We grilled out a lot.  I got the game Mad Gab from my sister and her husband, some money from my parents, and a citrus juicer from my husband. 

So far I have made fresh-squeezed lemonade twice.  It is so good I don't think I can ever use a mix to make lemonade again.  I've made mojitos twice as well.  I have made those a lot over the past few years, and I have to admit that mine are the best I've ever tasted.  Every time I get one at a restaurant or bar, I think "mind are better."  The trick that I learned from a Cuban lady is to steep the mint.  The juicer just makes the job of making mojitos so much faster, and I need fewer limes to get the same amount of juice.  Next up, I want to try the recipe that came with the juicer for citrus mint iced tea. 

Tomorrow night I get to see one of my favorite bands, the Get Up Kids.  In a couple weeks, I get to see another awesome band, HelloGoodbye.  Later this month, D and I will be going to Cedar Point and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  We will drive there in one day, go to the park two days, and drive to the hall of fame the third day, and then drive home in one day.  Then I have a meeting the next day for work, and then one more week of freedom before going back for good. 

I love summer.

Also, I'm thinking about another tattoo.  Last summer, after our failed IVF and beginning the new path of childfree living, I spent a bit of time tending to our garden and various plants.  I noticed this wicked stem growing out of our day lilies, but it looked different.  D and I joked that it was a triffid (from Day of the Triffids), but I let it go to see what it became.  It turned out to be an asiatic lily, starts out orange, and then goes pink.  Orange represents happiness, optimism, imagination, and hope.  Pink represents long-lasting love, healing, and romance.  The lily can represent fertility and death.  That seems appropriate.  ;)  I don't know how the plant got into our flower bed, especially since asiatic lilies grow from bulbs.  But I love it.  So anyway, I want the asiatic lily to be my next tattoo.  Maybe, since the flower has "freckles", I will have the artist put our little embryos as two of the freckles.  It depends how big it is though, I guess.  I'm thinking upper quadrant of my back, but I'm still in the "thinking about it" phase. 

showers

My best friend (aside from my sister) is pregnant, due in September.  Because we are so close, I volunteered to throw her a baby shower.  Luckily, she isn't very girly, so it will be a co-ed shower, so no typical "smell the diaper" game, just a cookout where people brings gifts as well as their own booze.  I was doing pretty good, planning the date and time and invitations.  But yesterday, as I looked at the paper invitations for the older crowd who don't do email, it hit me that I will never have someone planning this kind of thing for me.  So I had a good cry last night, got out all of that, and then when my cats came to cuddle with me, and I got to sit in my bed and read into the wee hours of the morning, I was hit again by how good my life is.  It may be different from what I thought it was going to be, but I still love it.  Even if I won't ever get to register for (and have a party to receive) gifts again.  :)

busy busy busy

End of the school year is always crazy, so there's that. 

D and I went to DC last weekend, and packed in a LOT of activities and a TON of walking. 

My sister and her husband moved across the country to our city, and are currently staying with us until they have had a couple paychecks and can find a place to live.

Throw in some mother-in-law drama and you have my last two weeks.

confirmation

I know I've been enjoying life and my job more this school year, but tonight I got confirmation from the students. 

For the past 10-ish years, I've been a judge for the boy beauty pageant at my school (it's a fundraiser for charity).  It's always a good time.  Last year, in the midst of infertility treatments, I know I was probably mostly a shell of my usual self, going through the motions, still bonding with some kids, but definitely not loving my job (or anything else, really).  They introduce the judges individually, and last year (two months after the failed IVF), when they said my name, it was almost complete silence, maybe some polite applause.  I joked with my friend next to me that I must have been a bitch that year since I had no fans.  I think I was right, because this year, when they said my name, there was a lot more shouting and applause, and some of the kids shouting my nickname, so that felt really good.  It told me that I am back on track to being my normal self and my normal teacher self that connects with the kids and that they like.

So yay! 

too loyal?

The dentist I have been going to for 12 years (always went to my six month check-ups) was the one my first husband went to all through high school and into adulthood.  When we moved to this city (where his parents lived), he wanted to keep going to him, so I went to him too.  My now-husband hasn't been to the dentist in YEARS, and I've been trying to get him to go since we got married (didn't want to nag him before that!), but with his work schedule, it would be very hard to go to the dentist I had been going to.  It was about a 40 minute drive to get to the dentist's office from our house or from work, so with the cleaning, etc, plus the drive both ways, we're looking at almost a two-hour time commitment.  So I started doing a little research and chose a new dentist for both of us to go to that is very close to our house.  I had my first appointment with them today, and apparently, my former dentist wasn't quite as thorough as he should have been. 

I've always been very prone to tartar build-up, so my previous dentist told me to use tartar control mouthwash, before and after I brush, twice a day, and I do religiously, and it has reduced the amount of scraping that they had to do at each visit.  And at every visit, the dentist would look over my teeth, and comment on the bone loss, and always say it was due to having braces.  I trusted his judgement.  Well, today, the hygienist was measuring "pockets" of space between my gums and teeth, and apparently, it's quite bad.  So my bone loss is actually periodontal disease, caused by tartar build-up under my gums.  It builds up, creating a space between the gums and the teeth, resulting in bone loss.  The hygienist asked if my gums were sort after a cleaning from them cleaning up under the gums, and sadly, the answer is no, so I've probably never had the proper cleaning my teeth and gums have needed.

So now the fix is to have some ultra-cleaning sessions, and then have a cleaning every three months instead of every six.  The ultra-cleaning sessions will be an hour and a half each, once for each side of my mouth.  It's supposed to be pretty aggressive and I need to be numbed for it.  The hope is that once that is done, my gums will fill in the pockets and the more frequent cleanings will prevent them from forming again.  If they don't, the ultra-cleanings will need to be done every five years or so.

The old dentist wanted to give me a gum graft to fix my slightly receding gumline on my front bottom teeth.  When I mentioned that to the hygienist, she said that receding gums is a symptom of the periodontal disease, and a gum graft is really only for looks.  So nice that my old dentist wanted to treat a symptom and not the underlying cause.  I really wish I had started looking for a new dentist a long time ago, but he was so nice, and I felt bad leaving his practice for no better reason than "it's kind of a far drive."

I'm not looking forward to the ultra cleanings, but I am looking forward to having a dentist that wants to fix the problems and not just cosmetically make things look good.

only slightly bitter and not at all sad

So my best friend, aside from my sister, is now four months pregnant. She had a miscarriage a year and a half ago after getting pregnant rather quickly, so understandably has been rather paranoid this time. So far everything is going well. They felt comfortable enough to announce it to everyone this week. A lot of our friends use another blogging/networking site, so they each made a post there, and everyone made their congratulations. All expected. What I didn't expect was the girls only post that my friend made telling about the miscarriage (very few people knew about that) and that they had been trying for a year this time to get pregnant again. Again, all things that I knew. What bothered me was the ridiculous amount of support and "I'm sorry that you had to go through that" comments. When I made posts when D and I were trying and going through tests, I got very little support. D and I talked after I read through them all, and made the point that everyone loves the happy ending. So with my friend saying "hey, we struggled, but now we are having a baby" everyone can respond with "oh, that's terrible, but there's going to be a baby!! so happy for you...." With D and me, there's no happy ending in most people's opinions, just the terrible part, so they have nothing to say. Fuck 'em. We're making our own happy ending. And as D put it, "without the poop and the puke." Sort of unrelated, I was noticing the difference between men and women and baby talk. I was sitting at the table by the front door of the school (making sure people check in at the office, you know, protecting the school), and there was a conversation taking place behind me among two women and one man. They were talking about a student at first. But then one of the women started talking about her baby to the other woman, who has a baby about the same age (part of the baby boom of pregnancies last school year), and the guy goes "baby talk...I'm out." and just walked away. The women just laughed it off. My thought was "what the hell? If I did that, I'd probably be labeled a total bitch."

spring cleaning

I finally reached my breaking point with the piles in our bedroom. D still has his, but I wanted to fix mine. I filled two trash bags with things to donate, which was the majority of the pile. I'd decide that something didn't fit quite right or whatever and throw it on the donate pile. Problem is that the donate pile was taking over the room. So that is fixed. My other big project this weekend is sewing. I have material to make three dresses for work, two of which I'm going to use a pattern. The third, I love the material, but have a different vision for what the final dress should look like and it doesn't match the patterns I have. So that one I am saving for last, and will see if I can create what I have in my head. I am off to cut material now!

hope flicker

My period was late this month. It's been pretty regular my entire history of having periods, right on the dot of 28 days or earlier, never late. The only time it's been late was once on clomid, when I had a uterine polyp (three weeks late), and the month after IVF, it came on day 29. In the past year, it's been on day 26 or 27, so this month, day 26 came and went, day 27 came and went, day 28 came and went. By day 28, I started having the split-personality conversation in my head....

sane me: it's coming. I can feel it. should be any day now.

crazy me: what if this is it? we could be pregnant at the same time as our friend who is 3 months now!

sane me: don't be stupid. sure there's a teeny tiny chance that pregnancy could be achieved, but be realistic. it's not happening.

crazy me: but it could!!

sane me: shut it.

Day 29 came, I went to work, got home, got ready to work out, and then my period finally came.

I wasn't sad though, so apparently, in the pie chart that is my brain, "sane me" is definitely more than half.

meaningless cliches

I know these things are meant to comfort or show support (for infertility/wanting to be a parent) but the following phrases really bug me:

1) where there's a will, there's a way

2) if you really want to be a parent, you will find a way to do it

3) you deserve to be a parent, so it will happen


I don't care what kind of willpower you have, sometimes it just won't happen. And just because I don't want to adopt doesn't mean that I didn't "want it enough." And that deserving thing really pisses me off. So I'm not deserving of a baby, but the stupid teenage girls that can't graduate high school in six years are?

anniversary

We are quickly approaching the anniversary of the results of our one failed IVF cycle. The 15th was embryo transfer day, the 23rd, we got the positive beta, and two days later found out the numbers were falling.

We still have the picture of the two transferred embryos hanging on the fridge. It's time to take it down, but I don't want to throw it away. That picture and the one baby shirt we bought (this totally awesome star wars shirt, it's a layered look shirt, thermal long sleeves, millenium falcon t-shirt) when we first started trying are the only things we have to remind us of what we almost had. Maybe it's my pack rat tendencies, but I have a hard time throwing away things that are meaningful to me. I still have the cards that the elementary kids made me when I student taught for one semester (I was originally certified K-12 for math only, so my school had us student-teach one semester in an elementary setting for a couple hours a day, and one semester at the secondary level all day). I'm never going to see those kids again, but the cards are so sweet, and I can still remember most of them. Obviously, our possible babies mean a lot more to me.

So I'm trying to come up with something to do with the picture and the shirt, something to symbolize that we are moving on, but not throwing/giving them away. I couldn't bear to see someone else's baby wearing OUR babies' shirt. I'm leaning toward keepsake box kind of thing, something that we can put the shirt and picture in, and set it on the mantle. It's still a big part of what we wanted from our lives, but we are both getting to a place where we are okay with not getting it. But because it's still a big part of our lives, I want to keep it. Kind of like storing it away in my heart/head, but symbolically.

What do you think?

real nice, bro

My brother calls my sister and I "sis" and we both hate it. We always joke about calling him "bro" to see what he would do, but he'd probably like it, so we don't.

Anyway, he made this post on Facebook this morning:
We're EXPECTING AGAIN!I know, I know, it's crazy isn't it? I can't believe it myself. I wasn't going to put it on here yet, but decided to make it official. I mean who would have guessed that we are expecting AGAIN!!Yup it's official.. We are expecting freezing TEMPS today and AGAIN tomorrow!! **Re-post if you have any sense of humor*......

I've posted before about what crappy parents he and his wife are (my parents, the nephew's grandparents, have basically taken over raising him), so reading this made my stomach clench up. My husband said it made him "want to puke." My brother and I are not close, at all, but I think it's really shitty of him to joke about having another baby (even if it is a repost) when he knows that D and I cannot have kids, and our sister has been trying for almost two years with no luck.

I'm not sure how to approach this with him, or if I even should. I can't really say "look, you're a shitty, hands-off parent, and as an infertile, I don't think it's funny for you to say you are expecting another baby, when you can't even raise the one you have."

updated travel plans

Okay, I already posted about our upcoming DC trip. Since then, I have talked to my sister, who still currently lives in Phoenix, and one of our favorite authors (Kim Harrison) is releasing the 9th book of her Hollows series, and so is doing a signing tour. There isn't a stop near me closer than two hours away, and those are on school nights, BUT she is going to be in Tuscon on my sister's birthday weekend.

So D and I are going to fly to Phoenix Thursday night, hang with my sister and her husband on Friday, then sister road trip to Tuscon while the boys hang out on Saturday, we meet Kim Harrison (!!!), then drive back to do something fun for my sister's birthday that night. Fly home sunday evening.

So far on the itinerary is the Heart Attack Grill (D's choice: we ate there last time we visited and it is DELICIOUS), some authentic Mexican food (since we forgot to add this last time), and a "d box" movie experience.

I'm excited for this trip too. And I love that we can afford a somewhat spontaneous trip. And the only reason that we CAN afford it is because we don't have kids. If we had even one kid, all that money would be gone to pay for daycare. So yay!