Thank you!

Ahhh, so it's the variability thing. I knew you guys would fill me in.

There is, of course, variation in colleges in the UK. Perhaps not so much as here, but it's fairly widespread, nonetheless. And we don't have any private universities at all, so that's kind of a foreign concept to me. I went to a good school although I see in the current rankings it has slipped somewhat from the days when I went there even though the entry standards are still fairly high. It wasn't top tier, but second (or maybe third, depending on your point of view) tier. So my experience there would not directly correspond with the experience here, as it might have done if I'd gone to a lower ranking university. And I'd forgotten that the experience there is variable too.

And of course, I expected the local community college to be pretty easy. That's why I'm going there - to just get this requirement for general ed. credits out of the way with as little expense, time and effort as possible. It's just the level of easiness that has shocked me.

Anyhoo, this has got me thinking. If I ever do have a kid, what do I do about college education for them? I had this plan that I'd get the state prepaid college plan, and encourage them to go off to UF in G.ainesville which is probably the better in-state college (or somewhere similar of their choosing). If they didn't want to go there, fine. If they wanted to go to an out-of-state public school or a private school (whether in-state or out-of-state), they'd be mostly responsible for scolarships, etc, to make up the difference in tuition amounts. [I was also planning on partially funding a 529 plan to help with such differences and/or graduate school, but not telling them about it until the last minute.]

But now I'm thinking this plan might be a crock of shit (ignoring the whole "I might not have a kid" concept). If where you go to school has such a huge impact on your quality of education, should one perhaps be aiming for private schools all along? Or on one of the really good out-of-state public schools?

Edumacation

So, talk to me about the quality of U.S. education, particularly at community colleges.  As you may know, I have to pick up a few general education credits before I can go to acu school, because I didn't do any for my degree. Different country, different system.

Now, way back when, in the dim and distant past, I remember people saying at my university that a British bachelor's degree was equivalent to a U.S. master's degree. Because we just spend three years on one subject, and don't do any general ed. stuff so we go much more in-depth into the subject. At the time, I thought it was probably just us making ourselves feel better, and excusing ourselves for only taking 3 years to get a degree, and not 4, and that probably the extra year in the U.S. made up the difference. Now I'm left wondering if perhaps it was right after all.

I asked a work buddy about the level of academic achievement, and she basically blew off community colleges as not being the real college experience. And sure, I think they probably do a lot more hand-holding and it is probably more of a half-way house experience between high school and university. But, here's the thing that is bothering me - if community college gives you an AA degree, which exempts you from the first two years at university, then you must be going in to the third year at university on the same academic footing as your peers that are doing all four years at the same place. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to transfer because all community college students would flounder once they got into the "big" college. So it must be comparable.

I have to say it, though. This shit is easy.  I am talking maybe O Level standard, for those that know what that is. In other words, what I did at the age of 15 and 16, and certainly not what I would think of as college level. In fact, we are drafting an essay for my English writing class, and it's been through various drafts and peer reviews as well as a language lab review. And I am dumbing it down because everyone seems disturbed that I am critiquing the thing we are writing about. Aren't we supposed to be critiquing? Isn't that what college is about? Otherwise it's a freakin' grade school project.

But, mostly I want to post here about my government class. We did the first exam on Tuesday. 40 multiple choice questions and 10 fill-in-the-blanks. Now, first of all, no college course in my day would have ever, EVER used multiple choice. They were strictly all essay-type questions. An "A" was anything above 70%, to which my US colleagues have said "but how do you differentiate between those that get 70 and those that get 95?" But the point was, nobody got 95. The questions were set up to be really fucking challenging, and if you were getting 95, they probably pulled you out of class and sent you to Oxford at the age of 14 or something. 

So, we do this test. It's on three chapters of the book. It involved regurgitating things we have either read in the book or been told about in class. No original thinking required. No opinions needed. Nothing. Just regurgitation. Not only that, we had an hour and 15 minutes to do 50 questions. I finished in 15 minutes, and spent another 15 painstakingly double-checking my answers just to waste some time. That would hardly ever have happened in my day, as we were always up against a major time crunch in exams.

I get into class this morning, and to my surprise everyone else was grousing about the test. Everyone. There were so many complaints about how hard it was, how it included all these things they didn't know about, how it was so unfair. I didn't quite believe my ears. Que?

The teacher (I hesitate to call them professors, or the classes lectures because...well, they are teachers) handed our tests back so we could discuss them. She said the average score was 61%. Sixty-one! And the scores ranged from 30 to 99. [Bonus points for guessing who got the 99...]

I don't understand. It wasn't a hard test by any stretch of the imagination. Maybe they just all didn't prepare enough (although it's an exam, it goes towards your grade, why wouldn't you prepare?) Maybe they were unprepared for how hard a college level exam was going to be (although the class is a mixture of freshmen and those about to graduate). I just. don't. get. it. 

Is it true that community colleges are just not as good academically as real universities? Is it just pointless to expect any critical thinking to be needed for the first two years? Am I on a different planet from the rest of them? And it shouldn't even be a function of me being super-smart or anything - some of this government shit should have been covered by them in high school - I should therefore be at a disadvantage, and like I said, it was just regurgitating facts which most people of average or above-average intelligence should be able to do with a little bit of studying.  

Example question: How many members* are there in the U.S. Congress? (a) 435, (b) 535, (c) 100, (d) 50. Now, unless you'd covered it a week previously, you might not remember off the top of your head that there are 435 representatives and 100 senators, making a total of 535. You might also forget that "Congress" means both the Senate and the House of Representatives. But it's well within the reach of everyone in the class. [*I may not have this word exactly right, but it was something innocuous like that.]

What am I not seeing here? Is this truly college-level stuff?

Love this!

Treehugger has a post about the Japanese food pyramid here.

I've got to say that it's the first time one of these things has actually made a lot of sense to me, and could actually fit in with the way I eat. In fact, I love it so much that I printed it out and hung it on the wall, and am going to try to follow it. This could be my new healthy eating plan.

A 24-page pdf is here. Page 1 is a better view of the pyramid - or, actually an inverted pyramid that's in the form of a spinning top. Page 2 shows calorie allowances and how you'd vary the serving amounts, but for women aged 18-69 it allows 2200 calories plus or minus 200. I guess the plus or minus depends on height and how active you are. Page 5 shows what constitutes a portion, like half an apple, or that an average size piece of meat or fish is two portions. Sadly, all the text is in Japanese and I don't speak Japanese, but it's very pictorial and the Treehugger page gives a little bit of explanation.

Edited to add: I found an English version here.

Essentially it's saying:

Exercise.
Get most of your liquid from water and tea.
Have 5-7 servings of grains a day - e.g. a slice of bread, a small portion of rice or noodles.
Have 5-6 servings of veggies a day.
Have 3-5 servings of protein a day - e.g. meat, egg, fish, tofu.
Have 1-2 servings of dairy produce a day.
Have 1-2 servings of fruit a day.

Alcohol, sweets and coffee should be had only in moderation.

I mean - yesss! It makes so much sense! We shouldn't be gorging ourselves on fruit because they are high in sugar, so I like how they've separated out the fruit and veggie allowance. I hardly ever manage to have 3 servings of dairy a day, but I can often manage 1 or 2. The protein suggestion is much lower than the US version which was always unattainably high for me and I wasn't sure it was even necessary.

The Czech update

Stephanie says:

Anyway, everything you said that you wish wouldn't happen did. Turbulence? Check. Really hard times on the train? Check. Comfortable bed to sleep in? No check. It's all just Czech! LOL The bed is hard and has this very odd rough terry fitted sheet on it. Very odd.

But, today was our retrieval day!! Everyone else (2 other couples) had to wait an extra day for stims but, ours did so well that she did her retrieval as scheduled. Today, we had to wait 1.5 hours for the wankatorium because some guy from the US whose wife just had her ER couldn't get the job done. He came out of the room sweaty and nervous and was pacing up and down. Oh dear. Eventually, he decided to go back to the hotel to see if that would help. Who knows what happened after that! Anyway, DH had no trouble.

Now, it's just the wait for the fert report which will come in the afternoon here tomorrow.

Hooray! Retrieval already! I hope they get a great fert report.

As for me, just plodding along. Still getting over the cold I caught last week - I seemed to have turned into a snot factory lately, but oh well. I'm slowly adjusting to the new schedule, but haven't done any exercise since I started college, really. I've just been too tired, so that's my big thing for this week - to at least get back to walking and do some cycling even if I don't think I'm up for jogging. And running a half-marathon? Uh, let's just say that's looking highly unlikely at this point.

Good thoughts wanted

I wonder if you could beam some good thoughts for me towards Europe? If you can spare some, that is!

My dear local infertili-buddy Stephanie has just traveled to the Czech Republic to start her DE cycle. I am sending so many positive vibes every day in the hopes that this will finally work! I hope she'll email me updates and let me post them, because I am excited and want everyone to be up-to-date. And who knows, I may even get to babysit one or two times, if I prove myself trustworthy.

My brother has just been made redundant/laid off. It wasn't exactly a bolt from the blue, as we knew his company was in financial trouble, but my bro' is not one to plan ahead. Instead, he lives pretty much from paycheck-to-paycheck and I know he hasn't got anything saved up for a rainy day. He's also lost his car as it was a company car, so he's now stuck without transport and is planning on using his small reduncancy/severance payout to buy a new (well, used - new to him) car. So here's hoping he finds a good job quickly so he doesn't end up defaulting on his mortgage or anything and regretting spending that cash (though I'm no longer up on how the unemployment stuff works in the UK these days, so I don't know if he'll qualify for housing help or anything).

************************************

Did anyone see the SNL clip of Tina Fey doing Pa.lin? She nailed it. Right on, sista!

On politics

Calliope has been encouraging us to talk about politics. I wouldn't normally say much on here because, well, this isn't a politics blog. But I think I will take her lead and run with it, because I think the time has come. 

First of all, the New York Times has been running some amazing opinion pieces lately. Check them out  here here here here here here and finally here. Yes, OK, you might have to register to read all of them, but it's free, and I promise they don't bombard you with email or anything. Otherwise, you should be able to read one or two (maybe even three) without registration. Anyhoo, thank you New York Times and others for questioning the McCain campaign.

So, on to what I think. When you look at the historical roots of the parties, and I'm going to turn to the Republican party in particular, it has many different and sensible ideas that definitely appeal. The desire for a small government, capitalist economic theories, the wish to mostly keep the government from interfering with business, the desire to balance the budget. All that is good and are policies that I mostly support. I could have been a Republican at one time. In fact, back in the dim and distant past, I voted for Margaret Thatcher in my very first election that I was eligible to vote in. I am all for fiscal conservatism. However, when I look at the current Republican party, I can't see any of that at all. Bush has run up a giant deficit based on his war spending. There is no fiscally conservative thinking going on at all, as far as I can see, as all his policies seem to be about cutting taxes while at the same time paying out billions and billions of dollars to the military. And McCain seems to want to do exactly the same. I'm sorry, George and John, but the war has to be paid for somehow, and cutting taxes while increasing spending and not worrying about where the money is coming from is just plain wrong. It is setting us up for economic disaster if nobody gets it under control soon.

However, what is much more worrying to me is the way that the Republican party has morphed into a two-issue party (well, maybe a three-issue party - what is it, guns, gays and abortion?). First is abortion and moral values. Since when is it conservative to look into my private life and try to prevent me from having an abortion? It's not. It's intervention by government into my life, which the original conservatives were against. In any case, a ban on abortion will not prevent abortions from happening. We know this is true because they used to happen all the time before they were legalized. And what happened? Women died. Women died going to backstreet abortionists. Isn't the life of a productive member of society more important than any hypothetical need to save the innocent? Nobody wants abortion to happen, ever. But they do. To me, it seems that we need to make contraception readily available to anyone who wants it. We should not be advocating abstinence-only eduction - sure, abstinence should be a part of sex education, but if we want to prevent abortions, we would do much better making sure unwanted pregnancies don't happen in the first place. Including easy access to the "morning after" pill by the way - if there's one thing that repeated IVFs has taught me, it's that while an embryo may be technically alive right after fertilization, if it doesn't implant, it ain't going nowhere. Let's put aside our concerns about "life beginning at conception" and say that if we really want to reduce the rate of abortions, let's let women easily take a pill once they've had unprotected sex or a condom accident or whatever - knowing that, yes, a percentage of viable embryros will be prevented from implanting but also knowing that that is better than an abortion at 8 weeks or whatever. However, even then, accidents happen - no contraceptive method is 100% reliable. I would rather keep women alive than prevent safe, legal access to abortions. You don't know what it's like to be in that situation until it happens, but we should all have the right to choose, in my view. But, why oh why, has this become a defining issue for the Republican party? It should have nothing to do with a conservative ideology. It's the influence of the evangelical Christians, and sorry, but I thought we were supposed to have a separation of church and state. I'm sure those same people would hate ME to impose my moral/religious values on them - I'd have you all giving up eating meat, for a start and taking on a more Buddhist respect for life. Why should they get to impose their moral/religious values on me? And don't even get me started on capital punishment. So many of these "pro-life" people are pro the death penalty and pro hunting. Why? I have no earthly idea. Until you can show me that 100% of the people on death row are unequivocally guilty AND that the death penalty is a real deterrent, I don't think that we should have it. And in any case, aren't we supposed to be judged at the pearly gates? What gives us the right to enforce the ultimate punishment of taking someone's life away? Personally, I think if you are pro-life, you should be pro-life in all of it's forms, including animals and yes, criminals. 

Moving on to moral values. This is another hot button issue for me. Since when is it moral to deny two loving people the right to marry one another? I find it more moral to want to help the poor by providing a social safety net like unemployment payments, free access to healthcare for those who can't otherwise afford it, a basic retirement pension, and free education. Since when are those not moral values? Why has the term "moral values" been co-opted to mean hatred? And besides, none of us know - TRULY know - what God's plan is for the world. I believe that God (universe, whatever) had a hand in making every single one of us. If God made people gay, then he/she/it must have a good reason for it.

The environment is another huge issue for me. We are at a tipping point in society, I think. We can invent our way out of trouble, find better renewable energy sources and stop polluting the fuck out of the planet, or we can cling to the old ways and just try to drill more. And have you even seen the charts showing how much extra oil we'll get by drilling more? It's a marginal difference, at best. I really think that we are going to be facing serious issues with global warming, sea level rises, limited access to clean water, food shortages, etc. These are fundamental issues affecting the safety and security of our country and they MUST be addressed. We have reached crisis point and while initially McCain was paying lip service to environmental considerations, those seem to have gone completely out of the window lately.

And foreign policy? Since when has the school bully done well in the popularity stakes? We are essentially the school bully of the world, and nothing Palin or McCain is saying is easing my mind about whether they are going to try more diplomacy than Bush did. I find it a much more worrying time for national security than in the past - if most other countries in the world hate us, it seems to me that our national security is under much more threat than if we were thoughtful, considerate neighbors who were setting a good example in the diplomatic world. Being cowboys or moose-hunters does us no good at all.

I could go on, but this post is long enough already. The McCain campaign is spreading lies about the Obama campaign, and getting away with it.  They should be called to task. Oh, and since when does being supposedly ethical make you a maverick or a reformer? Aren't they effectively saying that the rest of their party are all unethical sleazebags?  Frankly, the only one that can bring change and reform is Obama, and this country needs him. Needs. We HAVE to vote him in, people. I truly believe that the safety and security of the country, and perhaps even the world, depend on voting in Obama. I dread to think what wars could be fought over access to the last remaining oil and food supplies if we haven't managed to change by then.

I truly hope that America does not fall for the McCain bullshit, simply because they agree that abortion should not be happening. Something as important as electing the president of the United States should not come down solely to reproductive issues.

Sniffle

Stress + new schedule + too much caffeine + hanging out with college kids + not enough sleep + whirlwind trip to Boston + recirculating air on planes + meeting a bunch of people from all over the world = Sarah comes down with a stinking cold.

Achoo.

Note to Community College professor

Dear Professor:

You must forgive my ingrained English politeness. I am still learning how you do things in your country. However, when you are telling us about the devolution of power from the federal to state governments but actually say "de-evolution" five times, you're wrong. And when I come up at the end of the class and politely say "did you mean to say de-evolution instead of devolution as written? Surely de-evolution would mean a return to a less complex, or less organized form, whereas devolution is a backwards shifting and return of power to the more local from the more central? Or do you mean that there actually is some change in complexity? I just want to clarify that I understand the concept, because the two words mean different things to me." I am not in fact asking you a question. I am saying "you are saying the wrong word, you dumb bitch, but I'm trying to save you from embarrassment by not pointing that out to the rest of the class and trying to be polite by phrasing it as a question." 

If I actually didn't understand the concept, I'd put my hand up in class and say "I don't understand." I don't need a detailed explanation of the concept, nor how the word you used is just a difference in pronunciation and means the same thing. In fact, the concept of devolution as a political term I believe comes from my own fair country, and I could probably teach you a thing or two about it. Nor do I need you to tell me to look up the pronunciation in the dictionary, although, for the record, I did, and I was right that there is no suggestion to pronounce "devolution" as "de-evolution."

M-kay?

Thanks so much.

Yours, etc.

Drunken ass display

Hey, I just went to Boston for 17 hours. Plus 6 hours flying time. That's some crazy shit right there. That we can actually go so far for such a short amount of time. That it's no big deal to just burn up a shit load of fossil fuels to attend one function.

But I'm back. I didn't catch anyone's eye. I did dance with a couple of different cute guys and tried flirting but got nowhere. Except very drunk. I managed not to toss my cookies, though, AND didn't have any drunken blackouts, so it's mostly good. [Note how low my standards are for figuring out how drunk I was: no blackout = not exceptionally drunk.]

BUT. I have to tell you about this super embarrassing thing because I am either cracking up at my own drunken idiocy or burning in shame and I have to spill. So, I drag myself out of bed this morning, pretty much still drunk from last night, shower, dress, and go off in search of fried eggs, toast and coffee for breakfast. I accomplish that, and feeling somewhat revived I arrive back in my hotel room. I put the light on because it's dark in there, put some extra makeup on, grab my stuff, put it in my bag. And then I thought before checking out I'd try to have a second poop of the day. See, when I've drunk a lot, it, uh, loosens things up in there and I often end up not feeling really good until I've had a second poop. I walk into the bathroom, put the light back on and sit on the can without closing the door because after all I'm on my own in the room. I'd been sitting there a while kind of zoning out waiting to see if anything would happen when I decide to glance to my left, and get a straight view into offices across the street where there's a guy sitting at his desk in one office, and a meeting of three guys in the next office. Yes, clearly I'd opened the curtains before going out to breakfast and had totally forgotten about it, and what with the lights being on in the room I have been putting on a show for the world. I have never shut a door so fast in my entire life! Thank god I hadn't actually achieved any crapping as that would have been more embarrassing to have the whole butt wiping scene played out to an audience.

I slunk out of the bathroom, turned off the lights and went to investigate after a short while, and all the guys were studiously working away staring intently at their computer screens. Who knows, they might not have seen me, but I'm sure my face remained beet red for a while thereafter. There was a sheer curtain in front of the window, and I did notice as I was waiting for a cab that at least the sheer curtain on the ground floor was fairly non seethrough when looking from the outside, even onto a brightly lit reception area, so there's hope. But jeez, I am lame sometimes.

***********************************
In response to poster #1 from yesterday: note I said "your average fertile". I truly don't think that most, average fertiles have the same awestruck amount of gratefulness at the simple act of being a parent as infertiles do. I'm not saying that they are ungrateful. The vast majority are grateful for their kids, obviously. But there's degrees and gradations in everything. I have a friend IRL who is going through tertiary infertility (is that even a term?) and she has said that after going through this and talking to me over the years she truly never appreciated how mind-bendingly lucky she was before. And that's the key, I think, the realization that it is an utterly amazing, miraculous, mind-blowing thing to be able to parent which most people don't have until they have stared down the barrel of the gun of not having this thing that most of us think of as our right, as easy, as something we have to conciously avoid and be on our guard against until we're ready.

& of course thanks for the kind words to all.

Shuffling off this infertile coil

So, as I was driving home yesterday I had the radio tuned to NPR and I caught the tail end of an interview with some woman, and they were discussing how her life had gone to shit when in one month her health had failed and she had to pay $600 a month more for medication and the bank told her they'd made a mistake with her tax/insurance escrow and she'd have to pay $800 a month more for that as well. And they talked a bit about the shitness of life, but then she said, in an amazed voice "but you know, I'm a MOM and that's all that matters. I have my daughters. And I'm a MOM. I am SO grateful for that every day."

And I should have realized from all the gratefulness, but my first thought was "shut up, you fertile bitch about your effing motherhood." It's amazing how my mind goes there. Even though I tell myself I am all evolved and "at peace", the bitterness is often right there, beneath the surface, waiting to bubble up. Clearly I need to do some more work!

Then of course, I was quickly proven wrong about the "fertile bitch" part of it, because it turns out this woman adopted two special needs children from foster care, and is now running a campaign to get more funding for foster/adopt programs.  I should have realized that your average fertile would never be that grateful about the simple fact of being a mom. I felt ashamed at myself for a nanosecond, and then I thought "you know, that could be ME." I could be a mom. Me. I could still do it. And every day when I think I am DONE and I will never go through all the hell again, whether it be a DE cycle or an adoption process, and I'm going to become the crazy cat lady, there's a part of me that thinks how much it will be worth it in the end to finally become a mom.

So, yesterday I had been thinking that perhaps I should end this blog. Because where do you take a blog after infertility? Most women morph into mommy bloggers.  And that's cute, and they get to keep at least a portion of their readership who want to keep up with the exploits of little Jimmy. But time after time I see the women like me (maybe), who fail at treatment and decide enough is enough, ending their blogs because they just don't know what to say anymore, or how to connect.  I mean, seriously, who is interested in what we do? I thought I might have to take up a hobby, like knitting or something, just to have something to write about.  And then after I thought "hey, I can still become a mom" I remembered that my reproductive shit is really only on hiatus at the moment.  I guess I'll keep on keeping on for now.

Stephanie was asking on Saturday what was up with the home insem plan. And, well, it's on hold. But I realized that what was really going through the back of my mind was that I have all these hopes that I'll get to acupuncture school and meet a nice guy and have an opportunity to try naturally. And there's a part of me that wants to at least wait until I get there to check out my options before going down the man-in-a-can route. I hadn't even realized that before, so I think that I am going to wait until at least January.

But hey, I appear to be ovulating, I'm going to be going to a function tonight where there is going to be an open bar and LOTS of drinking so you never know. ;) Don't hold any collective breath, though, as I am hopeless at flirting. Hopeless I tell ya.

Ick

I deleted my adsense unit.

It had political ads. For the R-side. Ick.

Given that I only write drivel these days, and hardly get any clicks at all from this site anyway, it didn't seem worth it any more.

I either need to get myself a new theme - hey, maybe I should just ramble on about books - or just quit writing drivel. But we all know the drivel ain't going away...

Monday ass

The media sucks ass too, you know. Gripe of the day follows: I pretty much don't follow sports. I'll watch the (soccer) World Cup if England are playing. I might catch a bit of Wimbledon or the US Open. The Tour de France might catch my eye. And that's about it, honestly. I didn't watch any of the Olympics. That's not to say I won't go to a sporting event and enjoy it, but watching it on TV leaves me cold. But there is one thing that I find pretty damn amazing and inspiring, and that's the Paralympics. Man, the obstacles some of those people have overcome just puts the rest of us to shame, quite frankly. So I was quite looking forward to a bit of Paralympic coverage, and can I find any? I cannot (I don't have cable, so maybe it's on ESPN or something but that doesn't help me). I can't even find any on CNN.com or anything like that, so I am reduced to catching the occasional snippet of information from the BBC website, which won't play any videos for me because of whatever deal the Olympics/Paralympics have sown up for coverage in different regions of the world. And the US is leading the medals tables, so you'd think CNN.com would have a teeny snippet or something. Nope, nothing. Gah.

OK, so the books - yes, they were both annoying, in different ways. The "Starbucks" book had a lot of namedropping, of pretty much every famous person who ever went to one of the author's dad's parties. It was kind of dull in that regard. Also, the author is utterly amazed that people respect one another in some walks of life. Where has he been his entire life? It made me feel sad for him that he'd gone through so much of life just following what he was supposed to do, and being a general ass about things. The "Bitter" book was annoying in that she's such an obnoxious bitch for 3/4's of the book. I only kept going at that point because I was waiting for her to get her comeuppance. But it was at least quite funny. However, I'm glad both of them in the end became better people, so it was worth it for that.

Ahem...I read another book on Sunday called Neither Here Nor There. By Bill Bryson. Who makes me laugh out loud. So that was the best book of the weekend. I did do most of my homework, promise!

In which I suck ass

So, in order to catch up at work, I needed to do about 4 hours on Saturday to make up for Labor Day, otherwise I will be down on my hours for the week and not be paid enough (or have worked enough hours to qualify for health insurance). I also have a mountain of college homework to get through. And then I thought I'd do about 4 hours work on Sunday, so I could get ahead of the game as I'm going to be doing a bit of traveling this week and will again get down on my hours for the week.

I'd planned to meet up for lunch with Steph, and so I thought I'd bounce out of bed early, do a couple of hours work, go out for lunch, get back, immediately do some more work, do a spot of laundry, and then spend the evening doing homework. Not exactly a wild Saturday night, but then again, I haven't had a wild Saturday night for a very long time, so it's not exactly an issue chez moi.

And of course I totally forgot that I suck ass.

I had way too much caffeine on Friday. I have simply got to get the caffeine intake under control, but it's the only way I'm getting through the week at the moment. So I couldn't get to sleep on Friday night.

Hence, no bouncing out of bed with the dawn on Saturday morning. Instead, while I was trying to get an extra hour's sleep, the cat turned into the whiniest cat ever known to man, and managed to piss me off the entire morning instead of letting me snooze.  So I was grumpy AND late. Then I realized that I needed to get some errands done that couldn't wait until Sunday, so I ended up doing those, and not working at all in the morning.  Right-o, thought I, no problem, I'll just work when I get back.

Except we went book shopping and I spent a fortune.  Despite having sworn off buying books and claiming to be a model library-using citizen.  Nope, I splashed out. I have to get the spending under control. And I'd started reading one of them in the store, and it was calling to me the entire time I was driving home. So what did I do when I got home? Did I start anything useful? No, I started reading the damn book.

And you want to know how much I suck ass? Not only did I read the first book, I read a second one. Yes, I stayed up until 1.30am, and spent the entire 10-hour period between 3.30pm and 1.30am reading two entire books.  That have nothing to do with either work or college. Gah. Sometimes being a speedy reader is really bad, because you start thinking, oh hey, it won't take me long to finish this, so you stay up, whereas if I was a sensible person I'd have read one chapter and gone to bed at a reasonable hour.

So now I somehow have to do 4 hours of work today (while pretending that I did it yesterday), and all my homework, AND my cleaning and laundry, and then will have to work next Saturday to catch up. And of course, I'm kind of hungover from the late night, and it's 11am and I haven't done a THING yet.

I. Suck. Ass.

***************************************

In response to Cali's question, the books were:

How Starbucks Saved My Life by Michael Gates Gill, and 

Bitter Is The New Black by Jen Lancaster

Both memoirs by people who get fired from well-paying jobs and end up doing something far less lucrative but more personally rewarding. Yes, there's a bit of a theme going on...

Seems like it might miss us

The path has shifted, thank the lawd. But now it looks like it is headed for N'orleans. Damn, they really don't need another one.

Anyhoo, work is draining the life out of me again. It's really fucking hard to work such long days when you're not used to them.

Anyhoo too, did anyone watch the Daily Show videos on Sarah Palin? They're up on Comedy Central (and also on the Daily Show website and probably lots of other places too ) - the one called Sarah Palin Gender Card is classic.  Oh my god, they're good.  I can't figure out how to link to individual videos on their sites, but oh, they have made my heart smile.

Yikes here comes Ike

The latest predicted path for hurricane Ike is very worrying. I hope it swings around, but right now it looks like it is aiming squarely at my house. I'm not sure the house can survive a category 4 impact. I know it'd probably be fine (fine as in: there'd be damage, but damage that I could cope with/fix) in a category 3, but 4 is much much worse. How does one pack to evacuate knowing that everything that you leave could be gone? What if the roof blows off and the contents are sucked out into the void?  I have no intention of staying, by the way, if a 3 or higher is heading for my house so I'm not so worried about my personal safety. Just my house safety. And the choice of where to go and how far to go. And how the cat is going to deal with it all. And how on earth I'm going to get everything done.

Still, they are predicting that it might lose strength, so that's good.  And it could still shift and not hit around here.  

Please shift, storm, please shift. In the meantime, I have found my insurance policies, and may slowly start putting stuff to evacuate with into my "hurricane box", should it come to that. 

Times like these

Next time I whinge about my new schedule, I will have to remember times like these.  I only actually worked a half day yesterday because I ran out of work. Yup. Rarely, if ever, happens to me, but I guess my boss has been a bit freaked about me working part-time as he gave too much work away to other people. So that means I'm 4 hours down on my pay, and will probably have to make it up on Saturday. Hopefully some new work will come in by then, or I will have wrestled some back off someone else. At least it let me rest and recuperate a bit from my first week.

Today, during my extra long lunch break (1 and 3/4 hours), I zoomed along to the local Obama campaign office to try to score some free tix to an event they have going tonight. Sadly, they'd run out by the time I got there, but at least I (a) have enough time in my schedule to be able to actually contemplate going to an event with the potential veep, and (b) have enough time to go and try to score tickets. Maybe next time the stars will align and I'll actually get in.  But, it was still something I wouldn't have been able to even try to do previously.

Then, my last class of the day was cancelled, so I was able to go to the supermarket on the way home. (Oh.my.freakin'.god. I've never seen a supermarket so empty and calm!) I was in old lady heaven, and was actually able to dawdle along with them, rather than curse that they had the audacity to be out and about at a time when busy people need to get things done. And then I was able to come home, put the groceries away, wipe the kitchen counter, do a quick Swiff* of the floors, check the hurricane forecast and still be sitting down before 5pm.

Nice.

*one of these days I will have to post about my Swiffer love. I seriously think that they may have to pry them out of my cold dead hands one of these days.  As for going green, and not using disposable stuff...ummmm, yeah, please don't ever take my Swiffer away.  Please, God, not the Swiffer.

Bored/work

Homework? Check
House cleaning? Err, not done.
Holiday? Are you freakin' kidding me?

Yes, so here I am, at work, on a holiday. Nothing really new there, except this is the first one where I absolutely won't get paid unless I put some hours in. Which makes it a bit miserable really, seeing as most other people are out enjoying themselves. So, I'm bored. Reading about the hurricane and hoping everybody is OK. Trying to get down to some serious work but struggling.

The house behind

When I first moved into my house, there was a giant ficus hedge behind the back fence. It gave a great sense of privacy, that the house was protected from view from the back. And then the first big hurricane of 2004 hit us, and half the hedge ended up in my pool. Somehow it just disappeared - it wasn't even a bunch of denuded sticks, because the branches went too. I suppose the owners must have trimmed it at some point too to remove whatever branches remained.

In a way, it was one of the more disorienting things about that storm, that suddenly this giant hedge was gone. That suddenly there wasn't quite so much privacy in my back yard. But never fear, it started growing again quickly, and pretty soon I couldn't see that house again. In fact, it grew so quickly, it started taking over the world.

And suddenly again, it has half gone. This time due to trimming, but it is equally disorienting. Suddenly there's a house behind me again. There are windows. People can look into my back windows too. I mean, I guess it's nice to see their pretty palm trees, and I know it'll be better if another storm blows through, but I don't like it.  You can see the remaining section on the right in the photo - that giant bushy thing that goes up above the power lines, probably about 16 feet high or so. I expect that that half will be gone by next week. It makes me sad.

Library love

I reached a point yesterday where I suddenly got my energy back.  It was at about 3pm, and the only thing I can think is that the level of caffeine in my bloodstream reached a critical mass and booted out all the tiredness prions.  Or something.  Because I drank a LOT of coffee yesterday. A lot. I think I'm still a bit buzzed today.

It helps that I was able to sleep in a bit this morning, and then hopefully I will get caught up on my homework and will be able to have a nap or two.  I will survive, and all that.

What did you think of Thursday at the convention, eh?  All very inspiring stuff.  But the thing that makes me sad is that this country could still elect John McIdiot. Why??? I will never understand the one-issue Republicans who will stick with voting for assholes just because the party is anti-abortion. I mean, I expect to disagree with people over taxation, social security, education, veterans' health care. I expect to be able to have an intelligent discussion about the issues. I expect that there will be swings in power and that's OK. We all have a right to our own opinions. But I'll never understand why the "morals" voters think that anti-abortion legislation trumps everything.  Why isn't it moral to want to make sure the poor and the elderly are taken care of? To want a government that isn't swayed by lobbyists? To not be being investigated for ethics violations? To not want the planet raped for yet more resources without giving a thought to pollution? To maybe not want to kill prisoners? And McCain's choice of a running mate? What an obvious ploy to get the Hillary voters because clearly all that matters is gender, not experience or vision or...anything really.

Sorry, politics.  This blog is supposed to be about girly-bits.  Speaking of which, I am rapidly going off the idea of doing home insems. They just seem like a completely pointless waste of money. Now that I'm paid by the hour, and I know how many hours it will take to equal one home insem, it's a different equation than when money just rolled in as part of my salary. I wouldn't mind so much if there was a chance it would work, but...meh. I find the whole concept quite underwhelming.

Oh, and hey, I actually come here to post to say how much I love the library. But now have rambled about other things entirely.  So, getting back on track...I love the library! I have started getting DVDs from the library as well as books, which is awesome, as now I don't have to pay Blockbuster for the privilege of watching a movie. And, OK, so the library doesn't have an entire section of this week's latest release, but I have plenty of things to catch up on so I don't mind that there's a bit of a time lag involved before things hit the shelves. But the even better thing is that my DVDs are due back today, and I'm only half way through the "30 Days" series, and haven't watched the movie I got at all (The Good German). So I went to their website, logged in to my account and renewed them for another week without leaving my armchair. They never had that option at the library when I was a kid. Fine, fine, neither the internet nor DVDs were invented when I was a kid, but just saying I like the concept.

Oh good grief

I am unbelievably exhausted. I should be in bed, but am forcing myself to stay awake so I can watch Barack Obama speak at the convention.

Wednesday was hard at work.  It took me 12 and a half hours to get everything done. And then I'm not sleeping well because I'm stressed. Today I staggered around, yawning at every opportunity. But I got through it.  Got through my second days of my new schedule - my second long work day and my second college day. I can't quite bear the thought of another 12-hour day tomorrow, but at least I can rest at the weekend. Somehow, in between all the homework I have to do. Somehow I'll find some rest time.

I tell ya, being old makes it hard to change. And nothing makes you feel quite as old as being in classes with teenagers.

More at some point in the future. If I can find the energy...

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.