The crash

It seemed that yesterday, within minutes of posting here, I crashed with exhaustion. I soldiered on and tried to do the homework that I had to get done before Thursday's classes. But here I am at work, spent, walking around in a fog of numbed tiredness, and wondering how on earth I'm going to get anything done today. I'm stressed again about the ridiculous schedule, having been here for 2 hours and only having done 20 minutes of useful work. Ugh.

The trash and the easy

I got through my work day OK yesterday. It took me 11 and a half hours, but I got everything done that I needed to, billed enough, fulfilled all my requirements and still managed to get home while it was light. I was quite proud of myself. It's only one day down, but it was a big one.

Then last night, I got out my lunch container, got my snack ready, got my school bag, had things organized just so, and went to bed.  And as I was lying there, for some reason I started thinking about my parking decal.  Y'see, I'd picked up the parking decal on Friday, but hadn't put it on the car immediately. And I lay there, and thought I'd have to remember to stick in on the back window in the morning before setting off, and then it slowly dawned on me that I didn't know where the parking decal was.  I'd done some cleaning up on Sunday night and figured I must have moved it somewhere.  I got out of bed, I checked around everywhere I might have put it, and nothing.  I even snuck out to the car in my nightie to see if I'd left it in the passenger seat footwell.  Nowhere.  And then I looked across to the curb where the trash was sitting ready for pickup, and I knew.  Somehow I'd thrown the darn thing away. Thank the lord trash pickup is on Tuesday morning and not Monday as it'd have been gone if that was the case.

Yes, people, I went and got the trash out of the trash can, took it back into the kitchen and mooched around in the smelly leavings for my parking decal. Lovely. I found it, wrapped up in its receipt, no worse for wear, but ewww.

But you don't want to hear that - you want to hear how my day was.  I have successfully completed my first day at community college, and boy, is it ever going to be a walk in the park. They give you points towards your grade just for showing up! He, he, if only we'd had that in my day, I might have got better grades. 

Anyhoo, for four of my classes there is nobody else above the age of 20, apart from the professor.  The other one has a woman who may or may not be somewhere near my age, it's hard to tell. I have nothing in common with these kids but at least everyone was well behaved and seemed to want to be there, so that's good.  I didn't even speak to anyone all morning, but then shared a couple of words with my neighbors in my afternoon classes.  Along the lines of "I have those shoes, they're really cute".  But it was communication, so it was a start. I liked two of the professors, two were OK, and one is an irascible old hippie that annoyed me but I'm sure we'll get along just fine if I play along with him. At least none of them mumbled or bored me to tears straight out of the starting gate.

I now have some reading to do, and an assignment to post on the web-component part of one of my classes.  It's 150 words or thereabouts introducing myself.  And I get points for it.  It kind of makes me want to insist that everybody who never finished their degree or wants a new career get along to their local community college right now, this minute, and sign up (provided you can find the time for a class, that is), because, really, if you've been out in the real world for a while this stuff should be easy peasy. Now, OK, I'm not doing college-level algebra, which I would struggle at, but you can get a LOT of credits out of easy classes.

The quiet

The hush has turned into the quiet. The calm before the proverbial storm. Tomorrow I start my new schedule, and I'm nervous. It didn't help that I just watched 30 Days - the Morgan Spurlock series, and watched the one where he tries to live on minimum wage for 30 days. I, of course, will be on far more than minimum wage. I shouldn't be worrying about making ends meet. And yet I am. Cutting down to 3 days a week from 5 is a big drop in income, especially when there's a mortgage to pay and prices are rising everywhere.

In order to work enough hours to keep my health insurance, I have to do three 12-hour days. Frankly, my brain gets fried after 8 these days as my job is brain intensive and boring at the same time. I can do the occasional 12-hour day, and used to do them quite a lot in the past - until they made me sick, that is. These days, I am fairly useless the day after a 12-hour shift. But that is what I'll have to do. Hopefully only having to do them on Monday, Wednesday and Friday will be OK. Hopefully. I worry that I am stressing myself out over the health insurance business, and that I have backed myself into an unsustainable corner in order to keep coverage through work. Actually, this semester should be fairly "easy" once I am in the swing of things, but once I change schedule in January and have to go to college on Saturdays and on Wednesday nights (in addition to Tuesday and Thursday), I am not sure how I'm going to manage.

But! I will do it. I hope I will be energized by the change, and that it will seem easy.

I foolishly wasted a large sum of money yesterday on a new iPod. It was my treat to myself with my last full-time paycheck. I got the 8GB nano - I've been limping along with an old 1GB nano, but that only takes a small percentage of the songs in my iTunes and it was bugging me. And, you know, being a college kid now, and all, I have an image to keep up! Har har. I also splurged on some new running gear. I am bad. I should not be splurging on anything right now. Oh well. I have some savings in reserve, so I know I can meet the credit card bill with that should I have to, and the money situation should ease after the beginning of October, because I will stop paying my flex spending account money for the IVFs, so that's a big chunk of change I can use to mop up any shortfall. At least until such time as I have to cut my hours at work, which hopefully won't be until January 2010 when I start my second year at acu school.

Sorry, this is just droning drivel and rambling. Here I am, Sunday night, nervous. I'd normally be lolling about, drinking wine and watching a movie, wishing that the weekend wasn't over. But I have been cleaning the kitchen and generally being fidgety, trying to think of things I can do now, knowing that I won't have time to do anything much during the week.

Oh, and the Crinone experiment has been a miserable failure. Still nothing. After those bad cramps on Wednesday, I thought for sure Aunt Flo was on her way, but I guess not. I do have another 7 Crinones left, but I'm not sure if it's even worth trying again, or what to do. I may have a couple of BCP somewhere that I could perhaps combine with the Crinone, but what if it was about to start and then I just extend it unnecessarily? Bah. I think today is day 61 of this cycle. I must have a cyst or something.

ETA: Monday morning at 9am, and cycle day 1 arrives. Finally! On day 62. A week after stopping the Crinone.

There's a kind of hush...

I feel like I am waiting. I feel like I have exhaled a huge breath, and I'm in that time period, waiting before inhaling the next breath. It's like one part of my life is over, and the next part of my life will begin shortly. It's not so much as waiting to exhale, as I've done that. But waiting to inhale.

Nothing has happened so far since stopping the Crinone, apart from the cramps and other unpleasantness. But I feel like this will really put my IVF and TTC days behind me. Even if I do a few home insems just for the heck of it, I am not going to expend much energy on it. I am not going to become obsessed about it. I am not going to take drugs and mess with my system. I am going to let what happens, happen. And if I do decide to do a donor embryo cycle or something in a few years, I'm not going to do many. It'll be a one or two shot deal, not a long drawn out process.

I am starting classes next week, and going to a part-time status at work. Next week! I am finally taking the step that will lead me to ending one career and starting a new one. And it's such a radically different step that I feel it will be almost as if I have lived two completely separate lives.

I am rapidly approaching 40. In fact, I will turn 40 in 6 weeks. I am quietly pleased at this. I mean, not pleased that my fertility has been used up, but pleased that I am feeling more relaxed about this whole "life" business and like I truly am an adult now. Of course, I felt at 25 I was truly an adult now, then felt the same at 30, and again at 35. Each age brings new awareness and new maturity, so I suppose it will keep on keeping on. I am planning a few things to mark turning 40 and making this big shift in life (in addition to the whole radical career change, because, you know, that's not enough!). One of those things involves running a half-marathon - I don't know if I can, and I don't know if I will, but the training is going well so far.

I feel at peace with the world. Sure, I've made mistakes in life, but they have been a great learning experience. Sure, I wish I could have had kids. Maybe I still will, but I'm so grateful that I can see being happy without them.

At the same time, I am jittery and excited and nervous about all these changes. It's a good excitement, though, but also comes with a sense of unreality. I keep telling myself that it's up to me to walk into that college classroom on Tuesday morning. Nothing happens unless I take that step. I often had that feeling with IVFs too. Doing that first injection was a big step, with every cycle, really, and so often I thought how there was no-one to hold my hand, no parent (or nurse) to remind me and scold me and tell me not to forget. No-one to propel me to do it except for me. It's all up to me, to take that big step into the brand new world.

Ow

I ended up doing 7 nights of Crinone, and then stopped. And now? I am cramping, feeling like I've got a couple of giant ovarian cysts that are about to burst, and generally feeling miserable. Owie. Roll on new cycle to end this post-IVF misery. It's been about 8 weeks, in my calculation. Bleh.

If I could have had this pain yesterday when I was lolling on the sofa all day, that would have been one thing, but to have it today when I am back at work and trying to catch up is not so much fun.

Nothing much to see

Bleu wanted pictures, but there's nothing much to see. Here's one from the front porch showing some street flooding. Which isn't as impressive as it might appear on first glance, because that street always floods.  And an arty photo through the window, trying to show the rain and the palm tree being blown around. 

Srsly?

OK, 7am update - still raining, pool hasn't flooded yet, house doesn't appear to have sprung a leak.

But the people at work are frickin' morons. So, background: after the first major hurricane that blew through our area in 2004, they grouped people into teams based on where they live. After a storm, the team captain is supposed to call everyone to check that they're OK. Equally, we can call the team captain if we need help, and the team captain will try to do something for us (I think they get given some amount of petty cash prior to us closing the office). Or something. Nice in theory, and in the other two storms I got a call after the storms, was asked if I was OK and needed any assistance, said I was fine, caught up a bit on gossip of who had suffered damage. Everything was peachy. We also have a special 1-800 number from my employer to call into where they leave recorded emergency announcements.

Except this time we have a new office manager lady who is very keen but new to the area so she doesn't really know what she's doing. For one thing, I don't think she's quite grasped the team concept, that it's supposed to be people who live close to one another so there's a chance of physically reaching someone who needs help, even if the roads are hard to get through due to fallen trees. However, she didn't check the map when she assigned this year's teams. In other words, a person who lives 3 streets away from me (but in a different city) is not in my team this year. But then again, my team captain lives 4 streets further away from me, in that city and not in mine.  So that doesn't make much sense.  

They closed the office early and she told everyone to check the 1-800 number at 6.30am for information about which offices were going to be open or not. Well, obviously, you can't have 500+ people across the state calling a single 1-800 number at the same time, so she would have been much better telling people to call after 6.30. But I assumed people were sensible enough to figure that out for themselves. Besides, sometimes my employer doesn't update the message at exactly the time they had planned to.  

Anyhoo, the higherups had a telephone conference scheduled for 8.30pm, at which time the office manager confidently told me that they'd make a decision on office closings.  Uh, no they won't, I thought, because they won't have enough information yet.  They'll only make that decision in the morning, at 6am before posting the emergency message. What happens? My team captain calls at 9.30pm to tell me they hadn't made a decision and to call the 1-800 number at 6.30am. Riiight, says I, so we're at exactly the same situation we were in last time instructions were given out so why did you need to call? "I know" she says "but I was told I had to call you".  Dumb.

This morning at 3am after the storm work me up and I looked at the storm track/amount of rainfall going on I figured that there was no way they were going to open the office this morning because the state would be advising people to stay off the roads. I turned my alarm off and went back to bed (I have a secondary alarm that goes off at 7.30 that I figured I'd use to drag myself up and call the 1-800 number). And then I figured I'd probably loll in bed some more for half the morning. What happens? The phone goes at 7am, it's my team captain calling, waking me from a deep slumber and telling me that they couldn't get the message on the emergency system for some reason so everyone's been calling since 6.30 and not getting through.  So she was told to call and tell me that there was no message but to stay put until 10am and call then to check if the office was going to open this afternoon.  Aaarrrgh.  I fucking knew that already, and she had to call to wake me up??? Srsly?

Bet ya can't tell I get grumpy when I am woken up...

More Fay

Hey, it's a good old-fashioned deluge! I woke up due to torrential rain, peered outside, worried about flooding, and then came to the puter to check the doppler, only to find that the heavy band that I'm currently is has really only just begun. I'd probably have done better not to check the internet because I'd probably have otherwise just gone back to sleep easily thinking that the strong squall couldn't last that long.  But apparently now 8-10" of rain is expected.  That's a lot of water. Not exactly sure where that is going to go, except to swill about around all our doors and cause problems. And I especially expect my pool will flood - the water level was nice and low, but if I was sensible, I'd probably have drained more out. Except I don't know how to drain it out, so it's kind of a moot point. Ah well. Maybe if it looks like it is about to really overflow I'll go out in the crazy downpour and try to mess with the valves. Maybe not, though. Don't want to put myself in danger.  Thank goodness the winds are not bad and it never turned into a hurricane. So far.

Fay III

Guess who gets to go home at 3.30pm today due to the storm? Yay! It's quite unusual for my employer not to keep us in work until there are actual hurricane conditions about 5 miles away, so I guess they got tired of listening to complaints from everyone over the last few years and decided to be a bit nicer to us.

The track swung a bit more east, but it looks like it will still miss me, although the winds extend out 105 miles from the center so it could be blustery. It'd be soo nice if the office is closed tomorrow, but I can't sleep in as we have to call in the morning to check on which offices are open and which are closed.

Snow day!

Fay II

Hoorah! The storm track has swung west. I may be lucky yet.

Fay

Oh, hey, lookie that. I'm in the "cone of death" as we like to affectionately call it* for a storm that looks like it is growing into a hurricane - first time this year. So I guess I'll have to start preparing and getting things together. I'm actually pretty far out from the predicted center, and on the other side of the state from the projected path, so it'll probably completely miss me. It should completely miss me. But you know, can't be too careful. We down here in this neck of the woods all know how rapidly the track of storms can shift because we remember Hurricane Charley.

So today's grand plan will involve putting the patio umbrella down, and moving the plastic pink flamingoes indoors. Can't have the flamingoes hurt, now can we? Oh, and laying in some appropriate supplies, like beer.

Nothing too strenuous, as it probably won't come here. But, I'm keeping an eye out.

*real name - forecast track cone

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ETA: Um, so, yeah, hurricane preparations. I just made out like a bandit at Ann Taylor Loft. I got 2 pairs of pants, a jacket, a cardigan, and 4 tops for $138, which would have cost $408 if I'd paid full price. AND I got 2x $25 savings vouchers that I can use to get $25 off the next $50 I spend there. Twice. Umm, yesh, well, I will get serious about the storm at some point!

Shameful

Do you ever get that shameful feeling where you know you have just done something bad or stupid, and you hang your head? And you know that you are blushing every time you think about it? And cringe about it all the time. And you get a queasy feeling in the pit of your stomach?

But do you get it when you can't think of anything you have actually done recently that you are ashamed of? For the last couple of days, last night especially, I have been feeling ashamed. And I don't know what of. It's driving me nuts. I keep thinking that I'm going to suddenly be confronted with a loved one's birthday that I forgot at the conscious level of my mind but deep down somewhere, I knew. Or remember that I owe someone a ton of money that I forgot about. Or I'm going to find a nest of rats in the attic because I'm a terrible housekeeper and didn't know that you're supposed to, I don't know, disinfect the a/c outlet pipe. Or find out that the little misunderstanding in Georgia is all my fault. Or something.

Nuts, I tell ya.

Or maybe I am ashamed for even thinking about trying to do a few insems just in case my eggs have some life in them, and am embarrassed about wasting the money. I mean, it's only money, right? Other people buy expensive shoes or handbags - who should really care how I spend mine?

Or maybe I am ashamed that I am not gung-ho about spending a small fortune on solar panels to save the planet just because, well, it's a small fortune and I might not get all of it back when I sell the house?

Cuckoo. That's me.

Weight lifting

I suddenly feel great about deciding not to attempt an insem next month. I guess it was weighing me down more than I realized, because now I decided not to do it, it's like a burden has been lifted from my shoulders. Phew. I will, however, buy some trusty OPKs and see if my cycle sorts itself out.

Getting with the program

I did finally start the Crinone last night. I might do 8 nights and then see if that's enough to get things moving. I have (had) 14 in total, but it'd be nice not to have to use it all up and be able to donate that last box of 6 to someone else.

Then I think I will skip trying to do a home insem next month. I feel like I should let my body rest and recover from all the IVFs for a bit longer, and I should see if I can ovulate within a normal time frame before plunking down money on some sperm. We'll see. I'll probably change my mind on that several times between now and then.

The plan, Stan

I really was going to start the Crinone on Friday. And I never did. Then Saturday was going to be the day. Then yesterday, I really really was going to start it. And I got into bed, realized I had forgotten it, and thought, eff it, there's always tomorrow. I am so ambivalent about this. On the one hand, I really wanted to be off all medications. Completely and totally. I wanted to put my TTC days behind me and let my body cycle in its own way, naturally. I wanted to not really care about it all. And on the other hand, I kind of want to give my man-in-a-can plan a go, because who knows? It could work, and the younger I am, the better. Having said that, I am well aware that it is most likely not going to work, and fretting over missing a month of potentially fertile time seems a bit pointless so why even bother to get things going again. And yet, if I don't end this cycle at some point, what is going to happen?

Bleh. Indecision and apathy, all rolled into one. Maybe I'll start the Crinone tonight. Maybe.

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As for the guy from yesterday, why yes, it is bad for certain of you to wonder if I could have got his number. Why would I go around getting phone numbers from random guys? Especially as said guy was not a good-looking studly specimen under any form of imagination I could have employed, and was certainly not within an age bracket of, oooh, plus or minus 20 years from my age. So, quit it, will ya? Perhaps it would have helped if I'd said "an old geezer was walking towards me on the other side of the street...?"

Lightning strikes

I nearly got zapped today. I was just coming out of the library when a very loud rumble of thunder happened almost overhead, and it started raining. Thanking my lucky stars that the car was parked close by, I kept going, though I didn't have an umbrella with me so I was getting a bit wet. And almost as I got to the entrance to the parking garage, a small bolt of lightning hit the ground on the other side of the street from me. A guy was walking towards me, on the same side of the street as the lightning hit on (with his umbrella up) and he just seemed frozen on the spot with fright. Then, half a second later, there came a loud clap of thunder from above, at which point the guy somewhat overdramatically chucked his umbrella by upending it and getting it as far away from himself as he could, and ran across the street to where I was, going "oh my god, oh my god". To which I asked if the lightning had hit him (though I was fairly sure it didn't, as I could see it went straight to the ground), and if he was OK. He was OK, but shaken up and kept saying "that landed two feet in front of me!" Then he sprinted off saying he was getting outta here, man. Leaving his umbrella on the sidewalk, which I eyed covetously for a moment before I decided it'd be better if I too got off the street and got into my car.

What I suspect happened is that the lightning actually struck the top of the building on that side of the street, and the building wasn't properly earthed, as it kind of looked to me that the lightning was coming out of a metal fixture on the side of the building. Which is why it only seemed like a small streak and not a major strike. But still. It certainly makes for a quick burst of adrenalin, I can tell ya.

And thank goodness I didn't ride the bike to the library! At least once you're in a car, you're safe (Faraday cage, and all that) - although I'm not sure I necessarily want to test out whether my hybrid's electronics will stand up to being fried, though.

Say what now?

Y'all are scaring me with tales of buckets of blood. Why so much? Is it a function of a long cycle*, so that the sooner I get it over with the better? Or is it a function of making your body restart itself so that I should delay in the hope that my body will sort itself out?

*For the avoidance of doubt - still talking menstrual cycles, not bicycles.  My bicycle has a puncture so I haven't ridden it this week. Must get it fixed tomorrow. Heh. Both my cycles need fixing.

Still nothing

on the cycling news, that is. I think I'm going to use some leftover Crinone so I can jumpstart things and get moving on my man-in-a-can plan, Stan. Otherwise we could still be here at Christmas, still waiting.

Mullings

Warning: wine-fuelled mullings ahead.

Although I promised myself faithfully that I would, under no circumstances, decide what my reproductive future would hold until December at the very earliest, it doesn't stop me mulling things over.  Right now, a donor embryo program is seeming like my best bet because of...well, because of cost.  And epigenetics.  And I feel like I went into this craziness hoping for pregnancy and childbirth as well as the whole kid-raising thing, so it would be nice to have that after all. And why spring for the extra cash for donor eggs when I've stopped caring about genetics so much?  But I warn you, this could all change.  Last week I thought living childfree was the best option. The week before that, adoption was the most wonderful thing in the world.

This is why I have given myself six months.  Because I know that inevitably I will swing wildly between options until I finally settle on one.

But, with all of these options, there is inevitably going to be a waiting period.  And I'm not even sure I should launch into planned parenthood while going to acu school in another city.  Many people have told me it would be craziness.  So even if I finally decide on an option, there may be a 2-year wait.  Or a 3-year wait.  Or something.

Oh, and I didn't tell you that my part-time work schedule got approved, but they talked me into doing an obscene amount of hours on the basis that they would keep paying for benefits if I worked enough hours to qualify.  And somehow I agreed. And now I am going to end up with more cash than I initially thought I'd have.  For a while at least, until I really can't cope with that many hours at work (may be January when my schedule changes, maybe the following January when my schedule changes again).

So, I'm thinking...time's a wasting.  Eggs are going nowhere, and I'm still under 40 so maybe one will be good.  I'll have some disposable cash because I won't be paying for health insurance. Everybody will think I'm a complete nutjob but why the fuck not try a few home insems using a man-in-a-can while I'm waiting. Unless I hook up with a hot guy and try au naturel, which could happen as I am inexplicably finding about 50% more of the male population hot than I ever used to.  We'll see. Perhaps I am just randy.  Perhaps baby-crazed. But I think I might do a few home insems just because I've never tried 'em before.  And before my anonymous commenter chooses to tell me IN ALL CAPS that my eggs are CRAP and I'm wasting my time...I know.  I know.  But really, all I know is that my eggs are 99% crap. There's a part of me that still hopes for a miracle.  And I know the timing won't be perfect, but hey, if it happened it'd be such a fucking miracle I'd move heaven and earth to make it work.  So what if I do a home insem, say every other month?  Just to keep me in the swing of things?  It's like playing the $100 a shot slot machine at the casino, or the lottery.  You know you don't really have a hope, but you get a bit of heady excitement and throw caution to the wind anyway.

I wasn't going to reveal any of this, based on my previous anonymous commenter's disapproval. But eff you.  And wine loosens my tongue (fingers).  So that's what I'm thinking.  In fact, I'd probably start the sperm ordering process now if my cycle wasn't so effed.  But as I now have no hope of knowing when the next cycle will start, or when I'll ovulate following that, I figure I have plenty of time before I need to take action, so maybe we'll do it in October. Or I might drag out the leftover progesterone and make my cycle start again just to get moving. One or the other.

No cycling news

No, no, this isn't about me cycling to work. But I realized that there was nothing going on, cycling-wise, as in no period, throughout all of July. Which is kind of unusual for me. Not that I can remember exactly when my last AF after the IVF was (although I suppose if I had the energy I could work forwards from whatever the date of the last ER was and figure it out) - I think it's been about 37 or 38 days. But much as I might like to forget IVF, it's another reminder that IVF is still effing things up for me. Including getting me denied for individual health insurance.

Hey ho. IVF - the gift that just never freakin' stops.

The American health system sucks ass

Thank you all for your support yesterday! I'm really happy that the blog seems to have got off to a flying start. Now I just have to keep up my end, eh.

I got a check in the mail yesterday, which was a partial refund for money that I paid for my HSG in January. I frankly don't understand anything to do with that HSG anymore. If I ever did. See, I knew my insurance wouldn't cover it, and I thought that the first time I had an HSG (back in the dark ages - you know, when I was still optimistic) that I had paid full whack for it. So I asked to just pay the full amount this time. Which I thought I did. But it seems that the hospital went and charged my old insurance for it, seeing as they had my insurance on file from my laparoscopy. Now, if they'd told me they'd try to seek insurance reimbursement anyway, I'd have happily given them my current card and told them to have at it. But they didn't, and I didn't. Needless to say, the old insurance company turned it down. Not surprising, really, seeing as my company switched insurance about a year prior to me having this procedure done. Then I get a letter in the mail asking for $1400+ to pay the balance of the HSG. Which as I'd already forked over about $750 kind of pissed me off, so I ignored it.

Then I received a notice that my application for charity help with my hospital bill had been denied. Nice of them to tell me, really, seeing as I never even applied for charity help. The words "insurance scam" were starting to ring in my head at this point, and I seriously considered filing a complaint against the hospital for being jackasses. The next thing to happen was a bill for $734, so I thought I may as well just pay them some money to shut them up, as I was sick and tired of dealing with the never-ending HSG at this point, so I paid them $234. I did fully intend to pay the remaining $500, but figured I'd spread it out over a few paychecks. A couple of weeks later, just as I was getting ready to send a check for $250, I get a phone call from them, threatening to send me to collections and demanding payment. Fine, says I, have the money. The girl on the phone volunteered that I could post-date the payment up to 30 days if I needed to, as long as I gave her the bank details so they could take it as an electronic check. Well, I'm not going to pass up an opportunity to hang on to my cash for as long as possible so I said to post-date it to the next date I was going to get paid. Two weeks went by, they took the $500. I thought it was finally the end of the matter.

But, oh no, it is not called the never-ending HSG for nothing. I then got a bill for $75 from some doctor I've never even heard of, for apparently looking at the x-ray films. Which I thought the RE had done while I was in the room. But hey! Someone wants more money from me! What a surprising situation. By now I'm heartily sick of all this, seeing as this HSG was for my FET. Which was two failed IVFs ago. So it's not something I necessarily enjoy being reminded of. So I paid up. I thought this, THIS finally has to be the end of it.

Nope. Got a check in the mail for $250 for overpayment. I mean, I'm happy to have a check in my hand, but am at a loss as to why they felt the need to hound me for money, only to turn around and give some of it back. It just seems a crazy business to have all these people chasing this money and then having more people paying it back again. What an inexplicably inefficient system.

Please raise your glasses...

I'd like to announce a little venture I've been working on, so I hope you'll join me in this party to celebrate the launch of my new blog.

It's not going to be a replacement blog, so don't worry about missing any of my daily prattle here. But this is my private blog for spewing out my innermost thoughts, that I don't necessarily want the world to find by googling for something unconnected to infertility. The new blog is a product review site which I started because, well for one, I'm always googling for product reviews for things I'm thinking of buying, and secondly because with the income taking a dive shortly as I go off to school I want a site that will generate some good traffic. Ahem.

Anyway...

I'd like to introduce The Green Frugalista

*Do you want to go green but are scared off by the high price of organic items?
*Would you like to buy more eco-friendly products but don't think you have the time to drive to five different specialty stores to find everything?
*Are you hoping to be more of a tree hugger but don't have the time or the energy to make everything yourself?

Don't worry, the green frugalista is doing the hard work for you, driving around (in my Prius of course) checking out products that you can actually afford and find in your local stores.

Check back regularly for product reviews, shopping commentaries and more.

Woo-hooo! I hope everyone mingles nicely and enjoys the champagne and nibbles. Don't spill anything, please. But please do take a look around and let me know what you think. I've got a few reviews up, and will be adding them on a daily basis (at least for now while I'm building the site up). If you have any products that you think are worth reviewing, or want to do a guest review you can either comment over there, or comment in this post. I'm trying to make it all about green products that the average gal can buy easily, so there won't be any $90 moisturizer reviews. The products may still not be totally frugal because I'm not that interested in making stuff myself, but hopefully they will be things that an average busy working person can use and enjoy.

And if you think it sucks ass, well, you can say that too!

P.S. I hope you love the header too. It is by Calliope so if you like it, check out her "header art" page and order one yourself. You'll see that my new yoga girl has made it over here too.

Infertility is like losing weight

Stephanie emailed me another great analogy yesterday that I'd like to share with you (with her permission). And then I might stop bashing Saturday's commenter. Or I might not.

Stephanie said:

It's always hard to know what the right thing is to do. Sometimes I think of it like trying on clothes while losing weight. You know, like shopping in your own closet?

I have this pair of jeans that just don't fit. I've lost nearly 30 lbs and they still just don't fit. They're better but, still just not right. I have a pair of shorts that I've been hanging onto, however. I tried them at 10lbs and no luck. 20 was better but, not quite. 27 was that magic number and, out of the blue, I decided to try them on and they zipped and buttoned and looked perfect.

I guess that different IF options are like those clothes- you just have to keep trying them on until you either give them away or they fit just right. I guess you just never know exactly when that will happen. And, no matter how much thought or work you put into it, when it fits just right, it always seems a bit like a surprise.

YES!!! I mean, not only YESSSSS for Steph losing nearly 30 lbs, but I think it's so apt. It's like accepting that I need to move on from my own eggs is those size 8 pairs of pants that clutter up my closet (donor eggs being the jeans, adoption being the shorts, and donor embryo being the work pants). I want to get into them. I know I should be able to get into them. But I can't magically put them on without being ready for it - without having done the work and lost the weight. And I don't know which pair of pants will fit me best once I finally DO lose the weight, but I know that one or all of them eventually will. However, even if they do all fit, I may decide that they are not ME any more, and may give them all away to go out and buy new things.

Saturday's commenter is essentially saying to me "Sarah, you are FUCKING FAT. You should be wearing size 8 pants. In fact, you should have been wearing size 8 pants 2 years ago. You should NEVER have gained this weight, and I don't know WHY you aren't wearing size 8 pants, because I AM. You are FUCKING LAME. You should have known that there was never any hope of not gaining weight by repeatedly stuffing pizza in your piehole, you FAT FUCK. "

Instead, Saturday's commenter could have been more helpful and said something like "Sarah, I know you're not happy at that weight. I don't know if it'd help you or not, but I did Weight Watchers, and it was awesome for me. I feel so much better and am just so content with life now. I really want that for you too, because I just know you'd be happier. If you lost the weight, you'd fit back in those size 8's that you've hung on to. But I know that WW doesn't work for everyone - my friend did hypnosis and learned to hate pizza. I have another friend that had a gastric bypass, though that might be a bit drastic for you. But, you know, whatever works. In any case, I'm going to be cheering you on all the way until you get there too - or until you realize that you're wonderful just the way you are and stop wanting to lose the weight."

See the difference, commenter?

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By the way, you are all invited to a launch party tomorrow for a new little venture of mine. Get your little black dresses and high heels ready. Champagne will be served.

Infertility is like math

You know, Saturday's nice little comment got me thinking more about a theory I have been formulating. I call it the "infertility is like math" theory. Or "infertility is like maths" if you speak the Queen's English.

See, I'm a nerd. I have a degree in physics. Yup, told you...nerd. But what I noticed in high school and college is that in math (and physics and electronics - probably all of the "hard" sciences) most people eventually hit a wall. Like that wall in marathon running. Oooh, wait, maybe I should have an offshoot theory of "infertility is like marathon running".

Anyway, the math wall. You would be going along, going to classes, understanding all the concepts, getting your homework done, being as happy as you can be with math. And then a new topic would come along and you'd have no clue. No freakin' clue. And you'd look around yourself surreptitiously, to check out the looks on everyone else's faces but somehow they seemed to all be understanding it and yet you were inexplicably floundering at that point. You'd hit a big nasty brick wall in your understanding of math. Somehow, you were pushing through this fog in your brain and the teacher was doing an impression of Charlie Brown's teacher saying "Waaaah wah wah wah-wah" without any of it making any sense to you.

Pretty much all of my friends hit that wall before me, and all at different times. And, being as I was a nerd, they came to me and asked me to explain. We'd work on the problem together. I'd try and think up different ways of explaining it. Sometimes my friends "got it" fairly easily, sometimes they didn't. Sometimes they never did, and math became a looong hard slog until they could finally quit it with relief. And eventually, I too hit a math wall. I remember it distinctly. I even remember the lecture theater I was in at the time and how many people were there (maybe 2nd year undergraduate?). It was volume differential equations. I had no problem with ordinary differential equations, but somehow adding another dimension just made my brain go splat. And suddenly I was like "OH! This is how all my friends felt at various points when they would come to me and say how much they hated maths".

But the thing is, although I might have secretly wondered if my friends weren't as smart as me if they hit the wall over something "easy" like fractions, I never voiced that out loud to them. I worked with them and tried to explain. Most of the time, I knew my friends were smart, because I knew they could breeze through French class with ease, or English, or any number of things. It was just math. So I knew this was just something where my brain was wired a bit differently than theirs.

So this brings me to infertility. I have a friend at work who hit the "infertility wall" - the point at which she didn't or wouldn't or couldn't go any further - at OPKs. She just couldn't bring herself to use an OPK because it felt wrong, it felt like too much intervention. It wasn't something that she felt comfortable doing. And it took her 3 years to conceive, but eventually she did conceive and now has a healthy boy. I suppose if things had never picked up for her, she might have been able to sit back and deeply examine her feelings and finally do something more about it. Or she might not have. She might have decided that having children was not meant for her. Personally, of course, I didn't quite understand what the big deal was about an OPK but, well, it's her life. That was her wall.

My own "infertility wall" has been moving away from using my own eggs. I just wasn't able to understand it, emotionally. I wasn't happy and wasn't comfortable. But due to some serious hard work, I AM now ready. The sensations have felt the same as hitting that math wall, though. I have looked around and seen other women "understanding" it easily. They "got the concept" of giving up on the genetic connection much easier than me. I wondered what they had that I didn't. But in the end, it just all comes down to different wiring, brain or heart or history. Who am I to judge someone's path if they gave up on their own eggs before even one round of Clomid and moved on to adoption? That's obviously the best path for them, and good luck to 'em. Maybe Clomid was their "wall" and although it was something that scared me at the time, it was merely a small hurdle to me.

So I guess what I'm saying is that 99% of the women out there DO intuitively get that everyone's "infertility wall" is in a different place. There comes a point to all of us (if we don't get lucky and finally get knocked up) where we have to do some serious thinking about the next step. I suppose a lot of people don't even come across a wall. They come to a fork in the road, and just decide to go down one path or another without too much pain. Perhaps it's just a hurdle that they have to jump, like filling that first Clomid prescription was for me. Perhaps they just see the sunshine and pretty views that are open to them down one path and they don't even realize that the other path goes into a dark place and has a big ole wall blocking its way or they see that wall and just think that sunshine and pretty views are so much more inviting and don't even think too hard about the wall. But that 99% of women don't judge other women for where their wall is, or how high the wall is, or how hard it is to get around. At least, they don't judge them "out loud", which is almost as good. It's the other 1% like that commenter that feel the need to not only secretly think how dumb we must be for hitting a wall at a place that they didn't, but to try to shout at us "just get over the freakin' wall already and get on with it". They're like an army drill sergeant yelling at a squaddie rather than someone that'll take time to explain how to get over the wall, or someone who will patiently wait with you while you figure it out for yourself, even if it's now gone dark and everyone else has completed the obstacle course and gone home.

Me, yes, I've been beating my head against the wall for a long time. But I had to beat my head against it enough times just to be sure it wasn't going to crumble and fall and let me get through it instead of having to go a different way.

More excited about a handbag than I have a right to be...

I love all my peeps. You know who you are. My FF peeps, and my IVFC NY Clinic peeps, and my Cyclesista peeps, and my N54 peeps. Those of you that have supported me without judging how slow I am on the emotional stuff. Mwah. Big smoochies to you.

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I totally blew the detox yesterday, drank far too much diet coke and alcohol and now I'm in pain. But I've got to tell you about my shopping exploits. I bought a handbag and wallet at...wait for it...Walmart. For $22 for the pair. And I am so freakin' excited about them you'd think they were from Prada or something. I've been thinking about the logistics of having a school bag and a handbag, and switching between the two. I don't want to carry both a handbag and a school bag on school days, I don't want to carry a school bag on work days so putting everything in the school bag wouldn't work, nor do I want to carry business cards and lipstick and other work-related stuff like my swipey security card to school. Especially if I'm bicycling there, as I don't want to lug around too much needless weight. And I don't know about you, but if I have to transfer individual items between bags, something gets left behind on a routine basis. I'm just crap like that. So I knew if I tried to just transfer the important items I'd end up without a phone for the day, or without my wallet, or something. So I've been vaguely thinking about a wristlet or small bag that I could put the essentials in and then transfer that between the handbag and the school bag. I was in Walmart anyway, so I thought I'd take a mosey over to their wallets and bags, and see if I could find something not too hideous and cheap-looking. I almost, almost bought a bag that was crap but might have worked when I spotted a line of handbags which included a matching wristlet. I almost squealed right there in the store. And the interior of the bag is sectioned off so that when you take the wristlet out, everything doesn't fall into a jumbled heap at the bottom. My wallet wouldn't fit in the wristlet so I ended up looking for another one, and found one that was big enough to do the job, but small enough to work in the wristlet.

So...tada! My wallet, keys, phone, blackberry and vehicle registration stuff all fit in the wristlet, sort of. The blackberry hangs out of a pocket but it's secure enough if it's in another bag, and I can jettison the blackberry and just take the wristlet for nights out or running quick errands at the weekend. It's the perfect thing. Squeeeee!

Marginalizing other choices

Gosh.  Sometimes I wonder what people think they will achieve with a comment that just bashes the blog writer's head in.  I just got a comment on an old post.  And by old, I mean, December 2006, old.  I wonder if the poster thinks that she'll knock some sense into me?  I'll post it:

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "At the crossroads of indecision":

NO, "so many women" DO NOT fail donor egg. If you had decided to NOT bankrupt yourself any longer and take your remaining funds to CCRM and do a donor egg cycle, you would be changing diapers right now, instead of reading this post (years after posting).

Sarah, you continued to go down a path that was CLEARLY fruitless in this obsessive quest for genetic offspring. Well, there you have it - zero.

You could have said, hey, I failed 2 IVFs with bad quality eggs/embryos. You could have just been thankful to have the technology to have KNOWN it was time to move onto donor egg and fulfill yourself instead of beating your own head against a brick wall and then sobbing when the wall didn't move for you.

Sheesh! You now have exactly what you set out to have - NOTHING! For Pete's Sake, go the donor egg route and realize your dream of becoming a mom. Isn't that what's paramount?!

Obviously this is someone that "knows" me in the sense of having chatted with me on some board or other.  I assume.  Unless she has just found the blog and thinks she can sum me up in an instant.  But doesn't know me at all in the sense that I have explained time and time again that:

a) I had to come to the ability to accept and want being a mother to a child that was not genetically related to me in my own way and time.  I don't think it was an obsessive quest, but even if it was, what's it to you?

b) I'm not bankrupt - just because I am now choosing to spend my money on acupuncture school and not an immediate donor egg cycle doesn't mean that I couldn't do a donor egg cycle right now if I so chose.

c) I'm not left with nothing.  Through this journey I have had some very deep and painful experiences, yes.  But I've also had profound insights into my own character and have opened my heart.  I think I've become a better person because of it.  I'm radically changing my profession and my entire life because of it.  I would certainly never judge someone that took a different path from what I would do, or what I think they should do. Unlike this commenter.

d) Is becoming a mother what's paramount?  I'm not sure that it is.  I think being the best mother possible is what's paramount.  And if I was honest enough with myself to realize that in December 2006 I would always have thought of donor egg or adoption as "second best" and would always have mourned that hypothetical genetic offspring, then I think that I took the best option available to me at that time.  I'd rather have spent longer getting here, knowing that NOW I am truly fully open to doing a donor egg cycle or adopting than to inflict on my child any slight perceived bias that I might think somewhere in the hidden, dark recesses of my brain that that was not really my child.

e) It never was 100% clear that I could NEVER succeed with an IVF with my own eggs.  I'm still under 40.  I'm still not 100% clear that if I started trying naturally tomorrow and kept trying for the next 3 years that it would be utterly impossible for me to conceive my own genetic child.  Obviously, I'm (probably) not going to do another IVF with my own eggs, but is it 100% clear that there's NO hope of a normal egg?  Not to me it isn't.

f) I don't regret any of my IVF cycles.

In my view, there are far too many women in the IF community that think like this commenter. Even one person with this type of view is too many. Yes, I would have saved money in the long run by not doing so many IVFs.  But if that wasn't the right choice for me, isn't it up to me to decide what IS the right choice?  There are plenty of women out there (and I may be one of them) that decide not to continue with treatment.  That decide that being childfree/childless is a viable option, and one that they are going to go with. Yet there are segments of the IF community (and it seems to be particularly women who have chosen to use donor eggs) that marginalize and put down women who choose not to continue treatment.  PJ at coming2terms has been discussing this recently - how women that are childless are made to feel invisible in this society. 

I know quite a few women who chose to use donor eggs, and who are very happy with their choice. They wish that I could have the happiness that they now have, yet they don't judge that I have not taken that step yet, and may never take that step.  I appreciate every single one of them that has offered me their views on how it has worked out for them.  They truly have helped me move on to being ready to do that myself.  Yet there always seem to be one or two that DO judge, and think that bashing me over the head is a much better way to convince me to do what they did.  And I'm not sure why they can't realize that some of us will get there at our own pace, and will make decisions based on what is right for us at the time, thankyouverymuch. Please, grow some empathy, darlin'.

Aww, I missed it!

100,006.  Damn that game of Sudoku that took me longer than I expected!  Oh well.  It's still pretty darn cool, if I do say so myself.  And thank you Elizabeth for being #100,000!  I feel all warm and fuzzy...

99,975

Oh so close.  Thanks Bleu! :)

99,920

Just saying.

Ooh!

I just noticed my page counter is at 99,841. Nearly at 100,000!

Yet more detox news

So, I know you're all like, totally dying to hear how the detox/weight loss thing is going. I mean, nothing interesting going on the rest of the blogosphere, right? Like, waiting for beta results or twins in the NICU or anything. Nope, you want to hear about my fatness, I am sure.

Well, I stopped the detox on Saturday and as of Wednesday morning I had gained half a pound back. I was fairly angelic with the food choices, I have to say - tons of fresh veggies sauteed in mostly water with a little oil (and a lot of chilli, cilantro and lime juice) with some protein such as tofu or seitan, with protein shakes for breakfast. By yesterday morning it was up to a pound back, as I started having more bad foods. By this morning, after a baaaad day involving cookies, ice cream, pizza and beer, I was back up 2.5 pounds. Some of today's gain I am sure is just water weight from extra salt consumption and the like. But anyway, I am going back on the detox for 4 days. I figure 8 days on, 6 days off, 4 days on, 4 days off, 2 days on and then just try to do it as often as possible on weekends is a good compromise between actually being able to eat occasionally and easy weight loss. We'll see.

Ohming time

I did it! I went along to the Buddhist center. And I might even go back again. It was not entirely what I expected, though. See, the last time I went to a Buddhist center, oh, maybe 9 or 10 years ago, it was to a meditation class. And the monk led us nicely through meditating. It was all very lovely and ohm-inducing. This one, however, was not a class. I mean, it wasn't billed as a class so I'm not sure what I was expecting. They had an orientation for beginners at 7, which I expected to be sort of class-like, then the main meditation started at 7.30. Except the orientation didn't do much other than confuse me, and we were expected to follow along with chants from a book and then basically meditate on our own for an hour. Well, by "on our own" I mean in a room with other people but with no instruction.

It was the chants that really got me. They were written out in Tibetan script, and then phonetically, and then in English. So we were supposed to chant in Tibetan, following the phonetic instruction, while thinking about the meaning. Umm, sorry, but I can't chant in Tibetan and follow the English version at the same time. Maybe one day I will be able to, but there was no meditating on the deeper meaning going on in my head. It was more along the lines of "Om Mani Peme Hung - wait a minute, is this the same as Om Mani Padme Hum but written differently? Om Mani Peme Padme Hu...oh, out of time. Om Mani Peeme Hong....uh, nope." But the more confusing part was that we chanted three times, and then people seemed to speed chant it many more times - I wasn't sure how many it was supposed to be or what was going on at this point. So I just focused on saying it slowly and correctly while the large older gentlemen next to me was going (at a thousand miles per second)..."Um-a-num-a-num-anumanumanumanum..." with his mala clicking around at lightening speed. Or at least, that's how it sounded.

So I didn't reach enlightenment. My legs fell asleep during the meditation and then really effing hurt when I moved. I was not very successful at quieting my mind. That's OK. Nobody is going to do terribly well the first time out. I will try again, most probably. I liked the place - it had a nice calming vibe with lots of pretty hangings and buddha images. The nun in residence was very cute and smiley. I liked that we prayed for world peace and for the health of the Dalai Lama. It didn't feel intrusive onto any theories I might have about God and who or what he/she/it/om is. And I did learn how to say Padmasambhava so I'm sure that'll be useful in the future.

Ohmmmmm

OK, so as part of my brave new world, I have decided to go along to my local Buddhist center tonight for their meditation practice. It's something I have vaguely wanted to do for a while but have always been too much of a lame ass to go. But no more lameness! I am going! I am going to become more involved in community things and not hide myself away from the world in a fit of infertility-induced self pity.

And by writing it here, I'm putting the intention out there so I can't back out.

Brave new world

Going to college now is a lot different than it was 21 years ago when I first went to college. For a start, there was no need last time for professors to lay down the law on cellphones and other communicators in class. Or to state that no texting was allowed. We didn't have such gadgets available to us - cellphones were still yuppie toys the size of a small brick that were carried by the rich. It was a rare person that had a PC in their room - most of us were either too poor or too worried about them getting stolen to have them. There was no information available on the internet about the professors, what the syllabus was, what the textbooks are. I think my college may have had a webpage. A single page. Which gave the address and contact details and a bit of blurb. I certainly didn't research anything online. There was nothing specifying what font your assignments had to be in - the professors were lucky to get them typed. All mine were handwritten. Hehehe, at least I'm not 80, or you'd be subjected to tales of me having to walk barefoot in the snow uphill there and back to get to college.

When it came time to get textbooks, you got your list in the first week and all trooped off to the campus bookstore and were duly price gouged. Now I have found out the textbooks in advance for most of the classes, and have been busy googling. I found one, new, for $26.39 instead of the list price of $106, so I have already snapped it up. I haven't been so lucky with the others, but I am finding them for an average of $75-$80 when most of them are listed at $120 or so. It's also so much easier to buy books second hand, as you're not confined to a noticeboard on campus, hoping that nobody else beat you to that one posted copy of one of your books.

Much of the difference, I am sure, is due to the fact that I will be attending a community college for a semester, rather than the giant university I was used to. The classes are limited to either 28 or 37 people, depending on the subject. There are strict attendence rules. It's like going to a high school in many respects, rather than what I would classify as the university experience. Certainly there will be no getting away with sleeping at the back of a giant auditorium packed with 200 or so fellow classmates.

Of course, I am a lot different too. I will be the nerdy mature student sitting in the front row. At least, while I'm at the community college - I expect everyone will be the same when I get to acu school and we'll all be interested and excited about learning. The community college work load doesn't scare me (although the acu school one does). However, it is nice to start a semester actually intending to do all the work rather than try to skate through doing the absolute minimum possible so as not to cut into my drinking and partying time.

But all of this brave new world is not helping me to feel less cut off from my old world. I am not doing much infertility blogging these days - either reading or writing. I do have a post brewing about my next step, but it will percolate for a while longer. But essentially I often feel like the failure that dropped out off the end of the world. There's no happy baby story at the end of the day for people to relate to - although I know that my story isn't entirely over yet. I am not even doing much with my other little "hobbies" like researching my perfume addiction or hanging out on immigration boards. People accuse me of being addicted to the immigration boards if I go to post to try to help out someone who is still waiting for that elusive green card. I haven't even been to the diet board in a while as I've been doing the "stuffing my face" thing followed by the detox thing. Ahh well, I guess I'll figure all this out as I go along. Any suggestions for new interests, though? It's got to be something cheap. But it'd be nice if it had a community I could chat with.

Futureproofing

Behold, my efforts at being self-sufficient!

Bwahaha, like that's ever going to happen. But I did decide to plant two fruit trees, a mango and an avocado. No doubt I will have moved before they produce fruit but hey, maybe it'll be a selling point for the house - that it comes with the possibility of some fruit. And yes, I know the mango is very close to the fence, but there's not many other places for it, and besides, it's supposed to be a small variety that can be pruned to shape. And it's the neighbor's fence.  But I might move it in the next day or two as it's not right.

Once I buy a machete so I can get into the coconuts that already grow in the yard, I'll be set. Errr, mango and coconut guacamole, anyone?

Oh God, I just had to chew...

I couldn't keep it up any more. I just couldn't puree one more cup of soup, so I am breaking the detox. I am trying to still eat super healthily, and in fact, my dinner was just vegetables, herbs and spices so it's exactly what I would have made into soup, but you know, I got to use my teeth. Protein tomorrow, yay! I am planning on picking it back up again next weekend to try to keep the weight loss going. And then I'll transition back to 1700 calories a day, which will probably seem like having a Thanksgiving meal every day after this fast.

I tested my cholesterol this morning, thinking that I'd go book a physical with my doctor if it was good. But annoyingly it was sky high. In fact, it was 100 points higher than the last time I tested. 100 points! I am more and more convinced that IVF meds cause my cholesterol to spike. What's worrying is that it's been over a month since I actually took any meds so I dread to think what it must have been right after the IVF. I must get it down, so I must step up the exercise and start adding some cholesterol lowering foods. You'd have thought that 8.5 days on nothing but fruit and veggies would have dropped it down, but maybe it hasn't been long enough. Sigh. I guess if it doesn't drop soon I will have to go to the doc, but I know I can get it low again and I really don't want to have to take cholesterol drugs or have that as a preexisting condition. Although it may already be classed as a preexisting condition because of last year's spike. Double sigh.

7 days, 7 pounds

Well, I lasted a whole week on the detox! And I am down 7 pounds. Wow, wow, wow. I never thought I would last this long, never thought the weight would come off that quickly and never thought that I would actually not be hungry. And I totally never thought that not only would I have the willpower to do it, it wouldn't even need all that much willpower in the first place.

I am following this plan. Kinda, sorta. Loosely. Trust me, I was very skeptical of the detox. A bunch of women at work got into it last summer, and I scoffed and said that they would never keep the weight off. But most of them have, surprisingly. Well, at least a good portion of it. And then a few of them started up again this summer and I got suckered in.

The author expects you to do colonics, and follow this regimen of green drinks and berry drinks, with fresh veggie juice for lunch, and soup for dinner. But I have been doing my own thing, pureeing fruit and fruit juice along with a "greens" powder so I have one mixed, juice, and I make enough of it to have it several times in the day. But it's a filling juice, because it has lots of pulp and spirulina and other good stuff in it. Most mornings I have had a fiber drink in the mornings as one of my juices. And then I've been having soup twice a day but no veggie juice. And no colonics or enemas or any of the many other things she recommends. But it seems to be working. The key is to take in 8oz of something that gives you nutrients, like a juice/greens powder mix or a soup, every 2 hours. Religiously. Not letting yourself go much longer than 2 hours so you don't get starving hungry is crucial. And usually I try to have 8oz juice then 8oz herbal tea then 8oz water, at least in the morning. By mid afternoon I am down to less volume as I might cut out a water drink, or a tea, or whatever. But I am basically drinking all day. No protein, no salt, no dairy, no chewing. There's also a specific plan for breaking the detox, including when to introduce protein and other things.

On the health front, I am finally feeling happy and energetic. I think I got over the crabbiness slump and the headachey period. I can see some rosiness in my cheeks which didn't used to be there and it might be my imagination but I think the dark circles under my eyes are lighter. My fingers and toes no longer ache, but I am still getting a small amount of foot puffiness by the end of the evening. And as for bathroom issues, I am feeling very "light" in that regard. Meaning that although I usually "go" every day, often I still feel kind of blocked up. And sometimes I find that I'm not feeling too "empty" and need to go again 2 hours later because my body didn't do a good job of clearing everything out in one go. Sometimes by the end of the day I feel like my stomach looks like a balloon because I am constipated. Even if I've already pooped twice that day so I am not in fact constipated. So right now I'm only "going" once, and not feeling balloon-like by the end of the day, which is nice.

I think I'm going to stick at it until Monday morning, which will be 10 full days, then I'm going to do 5 days of super healthy food in accordance with the schedule to break the detox (so I can have some protein, and more importantly, can chew some food), then go into another 10 days of detox so I can really try to get 10-15 pounds off before I go back to my sparkpeople plan of eating 1700 ish calories a day.

I'm a student, baby!

I did it! I registered for my classes at the local community college. I stayed up until midnight last night, as that's when registration opened for me. I got my second choice schedule, but that's just fine and dandy as that's what I was aiming for. My first choice of schedule became impossible last week some time, when the 9.30am psychology classes filled up and were no longer available. So I had to shuffle a couple classes and instead of going 9.30 to 6.15 like I originally planned, I will now be going 8 to 4.45. Not being the earliest morning bird, this is a tad worrying, but I'm sure I'll be fine. I am taking 5 classes to get all the credits I need - English composition, speech communication, art appreciation, general psychology and intro. to American government. Suddenly the recent advisor's warning of a heavy course load seem to be ringing true. But seriously, how hard can some of those be? Two of them at least should be easy peasy.

However, by starting earlier it will make cycling to college easier because it'll be cooler earlier in the morning. Yup, cycling. I had originally planned on going Tuesday and Thursday during the day, and then taking one class on Wednesday night. The Wednesday night class was partly because the acupuncture school has me doing late classes three nights a week and I thought it'd be good to ramp myself up into that type of schedule by taking one night class now. But then gas prices kept rising and I thought that in order to save money I really should only take two trips to the college a week instead of three if I could manage it. And that led to a google maps session in order to figure out the shortest driving route, which told me that the community college is only 4.5 miles away. As my office is 4.8 miles away and I cycled several times last winter it suddenly dawned on me that I could really save gas money and get myself fit if I just cycled to college. Oh, and save the environment, blah blah blah.

All of which, naturally, gave rise to a shopping spree. Some of you may remember that a while ago I said I'd found and ordered the perfect eco-friendly school bag. But alas after I ordered it, the company emailed me and said due to an inventory glitch they didn't have the color I wanted and would I very much mind having plain black? To which I said no thanks, because, well, I'm vain. So I have been waiting, half-heartedly thinking it would be much more eco-friendly if I just made do with the bags I already have, half-heartedly looking for another one in other places, and also thinking about the yummy Timbuk2 messenger bags that I had previously spotted. But, after the cycling decision (and also realizing that unless they change the schedule I can't take the train to the acu school but instead will have to drive), I decided that I just had to have a messenger bag. I prefer cycling with a messenger bag than a backpack for some reason. So it was off back to the Timbuk2 site, where they had new colors on the hemp/PET bags, and voila. I spent money in the blink of an eye. I got this cute brown one that so reminds me of an old school satchel, it makes me want to squeal.

Obviously, I then had to fill my new messenger bag, so the back to school sales started calling me. Leading to the purchase of a delightful assortment of pens, highlighters, markers, mechanical pencils (oh I do love me a mechanical pencil), a stand-up pencil case, a ruler, a large notebook and a small notebook and some bicycle safety accessories. And here we are. Due to a forgetful moment when ordering, I got the small size so the bag is actually too small to hold my stuff plus lunch plus a textbook. Let alone 5 textbooks, one for each class I am taking. So I will just have to hope that either none of my professors require textbook toting or that the cafeteria serves dirt cheap and healthy foods. Or that I can figure out how to make reaaaallly flat sandwiches. Or that I somehow figure out how to take along some dried food that can be reconstituted with water from a drinking fountain or something.

More detox

Sigh. I feel really blah about waffling on about my detox. It's like when I was doing IVF I had something to write about that I knew everyone else would be interested in or could relate to. Because we're all IF'ers. But now...blah. I mean, I think about babies and kids and pregnancy many times every day. Many times. Most of the times these days it is just wistful, and doesn't hurt, so I am very lucky for that. I really have retained that amazing peace and calmness that came to me. I am not angry at how this worked out (or rather, didn't) and I don't resent anyone else their ability to become parents. Although I will admit, the resentment factor was tested at Walmart last night, but hey, I pulled through. Nobody got glared at. Nobody went home sulking. But...you don't want to read that, I'm sure. You don't want to hear how I looked at someone else and yes, while I thought "why does she get to have kids and not me?" it was immediately followed by "meh, why do I get to have all the advantages *I* have and not her?"

But anyway. So, this detox can be done for up to 21 days. A friend at work did it for 20 days recently and she is the one that is pushing me along. Another friend did it for 2 weeks. They both lost 10-14 pounds, and more importantly, have kept most of the weight off. But I want to stop, I really do. It's not actually that hard, as I am not that hungry and not craving any particular food but I am so tired of not chewing. I am tired of drinking goopy juices and soups all the freakin' time. But I want to lose the weight. I started this detox being all about getting rid of the toxins and feeling healthy again after my recent bad eating habits, but now it's all about the weight loss. I want to get back on track to where I was before I went to Vegas and did that last IVF. I want to at least get back under 180, which I haven't been for over a year. Probably well over a year. Probably closer to two years, and if we don't count occasional dips into the 170's after hard dieting efforts, we're probably talking about 2.5 years of being mostly above 180. I am tired of it. I don't want to be this weight. I also want to feel amazing and fantastic. My friend J. said that towards the end of the first week on the detox she was like this peaceful, spiritual person who was loving the world, and her skin was glowing and she was feeling so energetic and healthy. I want that. However, she said that during the second week she became really crabby - of course I seem to be moving straight to crabby without passing beatific. Such is life, I suppose.

Nevertheless, as of right now, I am still on the detox. The longing to lose weight is winning out over the longing to stuff food in my gob. It's touch and go, but so far the scale is winning. And I am down 5 lbs as of this morning.

Math, math, hellish math and detoxing

Why is it, when you are detoxing and/or dieting, every single freakin' ad on TV is for food, food, glorious food? Unbelievable. But, I will say that at least that helped me turn the TV back off last night and catch up on some math studying. I worked through all my algebra and arithmetic topics like a good girl, and went to bed feeling quietly confident, having just scored 100% on a practice test. Yay me.

So this morning, bright and early, I went along to the local community college, paid my fee, and sat down to take the placement test. The English tests went well. Except two of the questions were misleading as there was more than one potentially correct answer to both of them. But whatevs. Then up popped the algebra test. Hmmm, I thought, I thought I was supposed to get arithmetic before algebra, but OK, whatevs, maybe arithmetic will be later. I trundled through them, doing well, feeling good. And then that test finished, and the computer told me I was now moving on to college level math. Ruh-roh. See, I didn't study for college level math. I only studied for algebra and arithmetic. Everything I read seemed to imply that only algebra and arithmetic were needed. But nope. I did not get to do the arithmetic test and there it was, the first question on college level math, asking about trigonometry. I mean, really. What IS a sine or a cosine? [No, don't tell me, I don't actually want to know.] I used to know at some point in my life what those things were, but that was over 2 decades ago.

Ah well, c'est la vie. So I took a wild ass guess and kept going. Luckily a lot of the questions could be figured out somehow, even if my methods were not exactly elegant or the proper way to do things. And the final results were: reading comphrehension - 112, sentence structure - 119, algebra - 119, college level math - 63. Ahem. We can tell where I didn't brush up, can't we? And, as an aside, why is it that American tests go over 100? In good old blighty, most test results would be out of 100, no matter how many questions there are, so to make 20 questions add up to 119 is a bit confusing to me. Although I know that it's an adaptive test where they make the questions harder if you do well, and easier if you don't do so well so I guess that's where the extra points come in. Anyhoo. I knew I had to get 83 or above in English to place into the college level classes, so I was pretty safe there, and I that I had to get 72 or above in math but wasn't sure if it was an average result or needed in each subject. And anyway, I'm not even doing any math classes, so I just needed enough of a result to enable me to be awarded credit. So the guy in the test center told me to go to Advising to find out.

Off I went to Advising, where I sat and waited for a while, and then finally got to see someone. Who again didn't understand the concept of me having a bachelor's degree but not having ANY general education credits, nor why I didn't have to do math classes now. So I went through the whole spiel again about how not every country in the world has the same educational system, and that my entire degree is science and math so I am exempted from science and math now. But finally she got it, and said I was good to go, as it was only algebra I had to get 72+ on. So she said I was cleared to sign up for the classes I want, after warning me that I am taking on a VERY heavy class load and that I will struggle. Whatevs. I guess when you're used to dealing with reluctant 18 year olds what seems like a heavy load is different than it appears to a 40-ish year old who has taken bar exams while working full time at a law firm.

So - hoorah for the end of math! Hoorah for the placement test being done! And now it's on to hoping that the classes I want at the time I want them are still available when general registration opens up on Thursday. Right now the degree-seeking students are able to register and people like me can only watch the number of available places in each class tick down slowly. Hopefully it will all be good.

I am still detoxing, by the way. I am down 4.5 lbs. I really, really want to chew something though, so I'm not sure how much longer I will keep it up. I had this initial thought of doing 4 days, Friday-Monday, which I've done, and then maybe keeping it up through the following weekend, to do a total of 10 days if it was going well. I kind of want to do 10 days but then again, I really want to eat real food. So I am mostly taking it hour by hour at the moment. As of right now, I am still on it.

Smoooth

I have found myself, at various points today, rubbing my skin. Like my cheek, or my upper arms. Just aimlessly rubbing because it feels so silky soft and smooth. I guess the detox must be working.

The headache is mostly gone, although small remnants of it are lingering around.

Aargh

I was quite diligent with the math studying yesterday. Although I still wasn't feeling quite prepared enough by the time 10pm rolled around. And just as I was working on some test problems while debating whether to push through for another couple of hours, the infamous detox headache hit. And in seemingly no time at all it developed into a horrible, terrible, no-good, head-pounding, brain-splitting headache.

I went to bed. I tossed and turned. The headache burned. Random thoughts were whirling around my brain, not making any sense but keeping me awake. I debated taking some good old strong painkillers but then I am supposed to be detoxing, so wasn't sure if that was appropriate. In the end I decided I would just wait it out. I downed a ton of water, thinking that maybe it would help flush everything through, and it did seem to help a bit. I eventually dozed off. But then woke up again fairly soon afterwards with my head pounding, and now thirsty. So that's pretty much what I did all night, wake, drink, try to relax, doze, wake, rinse, repeat.

There's no way I can do a college placement test today. I am rapidly running out of time, of course. Bleh. So, I am now aiming for tomorrow morning, and am hoping it will be good enough. And hoping that my brain can cooperate - if it doesn't shape up by tonight, I am seeking help in pharmaceuticals.

Yes, you did all tell me that detoxing while studying math was crazy!

Detox, III

Amazingly enough, I have not fallen off the wagon yet. Of course, it helps that I am not doing an extreme fast, like trying to survive on just water for 3 days. I've tried that before, and crashed and burned spectacularly. Nope, this time I am trying to feed my body with good nutrients about every 2 hours. But it's all fresh juices or pureed drinks or soups - nothing solid, and only fruits or veggies or teas with the occasional herbal supplement like spirulina. No dairy, no other protein sources, no salt, no coffee, none of that nasty stuff.

I feel pretty good, although again my fingers and toes are stiff. My feet are nicely deflated though, and not puffy any more. I had a nap yesterday afternoon, and took a short bike ride. I will try to do some gentle walking today. Or maybe swimming.

This morning, after 2 days, I am down 3.5 lbs. I know it's not going to be a permanent loss, but if I can hang on to half of whatever I lose, I will be happy. I might even keep it going for a few days longer as I'm doing so well on it at the moment.

As for the math, meh, still haven't done any. I did do some English yesterday (it's a math and English test, but I am more confident on the English). So today HAS to be solid math day. I'll start soon. Promise.

Detox, II

So far, so good. The headache yesterday afternoon went away after that extra cup of tea, although it kept trying to come back all evening. I made myself a delicious soup for dinner - I boiled onion, celery, carrot, green bell pepper and a potato for a while, then added a lot of kale, boiled a bit more, then threw in some hot pepper flakes and a giant bunch of coriander. Then pureed. Deelish! I went to bed as it got dark, which was super early but I need the rest.

And didn't study any math. I will, I will, promise! Unless that headache comes back. Actually, no, I must power through. I have GOT to sit that college placement test before Thursday.

This morning I am down 2lbs, which is good, although I am not convinced that yesterday's weight was accurate as it had shot up 1.5lbs since earlier in the week, so it may have been a temporary high blip.

Today my hands are feeling quite stiff and sore, and my feet are swollen and painful. One of the reasons I wanted to do this detox is that lately my feet swell every day and get sore by the end of the day. It really bothers me - not in the sense that I can't stand the pain - it's not that bad, nor are my feet so giant that it's affecting mobility or anything, but more in the sense that this means something bad is going on. Is it the extra weight I'm carrying? Is it something else? I keep reading that edema is a sign of high blood pressure, but I keep checking at those cuffs at places like CVS and it is as normal as ever. Anyway, it concerns me and I need to do something about it. Whenever I finally get to the regular doctor for a checkup, I will mention it if it doesn't stop by then. Usually it is OK in the morning, so it's kind of both annoying and gratifying that this morning my feet are bad. Hopefully this means the detox is doing something.

Detox

3.20pm, day 1: The headache has hit, and I feel slightly nauseated. Bleh. The hunger isn't too bad, as I'm taking some liquids in every 2 hours. But I AM hungry - it's manageable at the moment, although I'm starting to worry about the rest of the day.

Other than that, I feel fairly upbeat and energetic.

So far I've had:

breakfast (8am) - juice drink (ingredients listed in previous post), green tea, water, enzyme tablets
snack (10am) - juice drink, white tea, water
lunch (12pm) - broccoli soup, white tea, water
snack (2pm) - juice drink, raspberry tea, water

I'm now sneaking in a quick extra tea. I might also switch up the juice for the 4pm snack, as I'm getting bored of the juice I made this morning, although there is plenty left. I bought some premade juices, so I might have a Bolthouse Farms Vedge juice instead of the fruity stuff.

Not quite sure how I'm going to study math this evening, but we'll see.

Hello? Is it me you're looking for?

Drove down to the big city last night to drop the relatives off for their flight. Yay! I have my house back again! But I have to say, it was actually nice having them here, and I'll probably miss them. We did do quite a lot of fun stuff. It was way less stress than hosting my dad and his wife, so it was mostly cool. But I do like my alone time so I am looking forward to the weekend.

I had a weird experience driving back though. I was tootling along I-95 on the way home (because I now tootle instead of speed, all in the name of saving gas), at about 9.45pm, when this white minivan went past me, with their interior light on with a woman in the passenger seat banging on the windows at me, and it looked like she was shouting. My heart leaped into my throat, because I immediately thought that perhaps she'd been abducted and was crying out for help. [See? I can do the American fear thing too!]. So I sped up, so I could overtake them, and she was gesticulating again, but she looked pretty happy and had a smile on her face. So then I decided she hadn't been abducted but thought that maybe my lights weren't on or something, or they were a bunch of college kids having fun (she was quite young). So I got all paranoid about the lights, but nope, they were on. I continued on, and they seemed to slow down. But I started getting more and more worried that maybe she really had been abducted and that it might be my duty to try to get her help. So I slowed down, and let them overtake again, phone at the ready to call the cops. This time she was clearly making silly faces at me. I tailed them for a bit, and overtook one last time, trying to appear nonchalant that I just happened to be driving at erratic speeds. She was definitely waving. I have no idea what it was about. Either someone will come up to me today and tell me what a feckin' idiot I am for not recognizing them, or someone will realize that they were waving at the wrong damn car. I have a fairly unusual car - there's maybe 2 or 3 in the local area - so maybe they thought I was a friend of theirs. Freaky, though. But if that was you - hey! hi! great to see you! I nearly called the cops on you, you dolt.

I started my detox this morning. So far, so good, but then I've only missed one meal, AND am allowing myself green or white tea today, so that I can come down from the caffeine high gradually. I might allow myself a cup of green tea tomorrow morning too, I haven't quite decided yet. This morning for breakfast I blended a big juice drink that I will have 3 or 4 times today - I pretty much just put whatever fruits and juices I had left in the fridge into the blender and that was that. Plus a scoop of spirulina. So today I mixed up orange juice, cranberry/pomegranate juice, an apple, a pear and a bunch of cherries. Probably not the most finely balanced or well thought out mixture, but hey, it tasted good!