Out, damned egg! Out I say!

The More You Love Someone, The More You Want to Kill Him

I was looking forward to a quiet night at home last night. The mister and I hadn't really slept much the night before so all I wanted to do after work was go straight home, put on my lounge clothes (aka soft purple pjs), watch Dancing with the Stars, and go to bed.

Nice plan, eh?

I was half-way into said purple pjs when it happened. Dog #2 was on top of the bed, rolling around, scratching her back. Dog #1 decided to jump up on the bed. It probably wouldn't have been a big deal but she jumped right on the other dogs belly.

Have I mentioned how lately the stress level has been really high in my house in general? There's the long work hours, the lack of sleep and just a lot of stress. Dogs are sensitive and our dogs are really tuned into us. Dog #2 hasn't been eating well unless we put her in her crate (it's her safe place).

Back to our story. On a normal night there might have been a snap or something. This was no normal night. The dogs went at it like it was the Rumble in the Jumble. They haven't fought like that in years. Every time it happens it freaks the hell out of us. I was half naked and screaming for the mister to help. It took what seemed like an hour to break them up. It was probably a good 5-10 minutes. It was awful.

When we finally separated them there was some blood. Not as much as you might expect but some. I took Dog #1 into the bathroom with me and the mister stayed with Dog#2. Pippi was justifiably freaked out of her little kitten mind.

Then we traded dogs so we could each access both. Dog#2 had a bloody eye. That really scared me.

So I asked the mister if I should take her to the emergency vet. He did what he typically does in situation like this and it PISSES ME OFF. He said "I don't know."

I don't know why this is his standard response. I don't know why it pushes all of my buttons. But it does. I really need for him not to shut down. I need for him to participate in these decisions. I don't want to be one of those dog owners who goes running to the vet for the slightest thing. I worry this means I'll be one of those annoying parents who is always on the phone with the pediatrician and bothering the crap out of them.

Mostly I really worry that my dogs (or even worse, my future kids) will really need help and I won't get it for them.

So "I don't know" drives me batshit.

Long story somewhat shorter, I call the emergency vet. They give me a thing to do. I do it and am still worried and load up the dog in the car and drive the all too familiar path. Oh, I did get dressed again btw. I thought it would be pretty bad to show up half naked.

Dog#2 did not actually tear her cornea like we'd suspected. She did have a pretty deep puncture wound in one paw. She totally freaked out at the vet. She's usually super calm there because she spent so much time there 4 years ago. She's on antibiotics and will be fine.

Dog#1 had me worried this morning. She's limping pretty badly on her front paws. So I took her to the regular vet. I didn't bother to even ask the mister. She'll be fine and it was totally worth $42 to get that kind of peace of mind.

We're all a little freaked out. We're all drained and exhausted. The dogs will be separated for today and the next few days. Long time readers (and friends) might remember we had to keep them completely separated for more than a year when we were doing some intensive training with them. I sooooo can not deal with that now. We can't go through that again.

Up Next: More Garden State Craziness

I got this pain in my heart, that's all

This is so not the post I wanted to write but I am just heartsick.

I'm tired of the fighting between friends. I'm tired of people saying mean things to people I care about. Or even just to people I don't know at all but who are close to people I care about.

I hated junior high. The lyrics from this song are so appropriate today for a lot of reasons. If you don't know this song, you really should. It's by the amazing Ben Folds back when he was with the full five. Nothing reminds me of home like Ben. We walked the same streets, knew a lot of the same people and have the same cultural references. It's like he writes songs JUST FOR ME.

I suppose that's one more thing that makes me crazy, right? When you think the songs are meant for you?

Why am I heartsick today? I was trying to plan something nice for another friend. How hard could that be right? Turns out a friend thinks I betrayed her. I read the post a while back where she talked about it. I've been so busy I haven't even had a chance to comment. In all honesty I wasn't sure what to say because I thought she was talking about another friend. I sure as hell didn't think she was talking about me.

But she was. She thinks I hurt her. She thinks I did something I'd never do. It just makes me so very sad.

I know there had been problems between some of my blogging friends. I tried to be Switzerland. I don't want to choose sides, especially when I think it really isn't any of my business.

This has always been a place of great support for me. I've always tried to support my infertile sisters (and brothers).  I don't have time or energy for hating of any kind (except perhaps those lying celebrities and annoying SILS, but that is different). I am generally out of the loop when there's insider stuff going on in the blogosphere. Just like I was out of the loop in junior high. Guess some things haven't changed at all.

So now I head into the holiday season with a heavy heart. Maybe a little more BFF is in order:

Underground, underground
Everything's happy underground
You been kicked around
Did life bring you down here
Everything's heavy underground

Stone cold sober as a matter of fact

I was going to attempt a humorous post, singing a little Elton John all the while.

But I am pretty pissed off at the world right now. The universe is toying with my dear friend  Pamplemousse and that pisses me off. She just got back from a trip to my favorite country and stayed in my very favorite hotel in the entire world. Life should be good, right? Most people would get a second line on a hpt and start jumping up and down with joy. We're not most people. I'm hoping she gets unequivocal good news soon. It's way past time for her happy ending. Please go give Pamp your support as she waits out this limbo.

As for me, the bitch is back. I don't need no stinkin' lab results. HSG to be scheduled first thing in the morning.

Thinking of my SoCal friends

I just wanted to let all my SoCal friends know how much I'm thinking of them right now. It's scary, scary times down there. May the winds change and the rains come. Please let us know how we can help. You are all so much on my mind.

If you haven't heard, there are horrible, horrible fires going on all through Southern California.

Care to guess what's going on here?

That's a big fat nothing.

Today was CD 52. A whole deck of cards. No period in sight. I'm so not digging this.

I did see the lovely lady acupuncturist last week and I asked her to do some magic. Apparently she's not as good a magician as I'd like, though I must admit the extra needles she put in for my wrist pain were quite lovely.

She thinks my feedback loops are all messed up. I hope that's what it is. She also, in a very thoughtful way, asked how patient did I want to be with this crappy situation. She said I was probably the most patient person she'd ever worked with so it was hard for her to even speak that word.

And I just don't have an answer. How ironic is it that the cycle I decide to do as natural as possible is the one that just won't freaking start? Is it a hint? Or just a bitch of a coincidence?

I'm going to give it a few more days then call in the calvary. The rest of my weekend you ask? I'm now sick, thanks to the mister. He tried hard not to give me his cold but he has officially failed.

And how do you know if you're the bitterest of the infertiles? One possibility is when you're at a fondue birthday party (which was really so very much fun---melted cheese and a lot of things and melted chocolate and others) and the people next to you start talking about ivf and you just walk away. Because one of them actually thinks it will work and the other's wife recently had success. You realize you have absolutely nothing in common with them except perhaps some lingo.

That'd be the mister night before last. He really is the King of Bitter Infertiles. He realized he should have worn his Extra Bitter shirt but wore another chocolate swag shirt instead. He's going to wear that Extra Bitter shirt out before long.

More Fun with Numbers

I do appreciate the helpful comments telling me I shouldn't worry about the long cycles. And I didn't worry at all the first cycle after the FET, when I had a 46 day cycle.

And I didn't worry two much the second time my cycle went that long. Or even at the beginning of this cycle.

But, people. this is my THIRD long cycle in a row. It's not looking good for the home team.

I called the nice needle lady and I'll see her on Thursday. I'm debating calling the clinic and seeing if I should go on bcp just so I can better schedule everything for my cycle.

In other news, my RSI aka carpal tunnel is acting up a bit. Like a big bit. So I'm typing with my wrist brace on and sleeping with a different brace. I think last week's work really took a heavy toll.

I had a fun weekend though. The mister and I had a date night on Friday (saw Across the Universe and have been singing Beatles songs ever since), did some shopping on Saturday and went to a free bluegrass concert with several hundred thousand of our closest friends. It's a super cool event that is just so very San Francisco. A local investor who loves the banjo and decided to put on a show for the city. It gets bigger and bigger every year.  It's totally free with amazing music, stupendous weather and even the Blue Angels fly by to see what's going on. Many of the bands are from the Great State of North Carolina so you know that makes me feel all warm and tingly.

Life is pretty damn good here.

Not Digging the Digits

I have this thing about numbers. I have favorite numbers and numbers that I just don't like. I've written about it before but just to remind y'all, I tend to like even numbers. Really even numbers like multiples of 4 or 12 (I know 12 isn't a totally even number but it's a super nice one). I love 2 because it's prime, and prime numbers are cool and all but except for 2 they're all odd.

There's a new number in my life that I'm hating: 46. Now some of you might think 46 is just the ticket for someone still trying to build her family. 46 is highly desirable when it comes to chromosomes. 46 is not so desirable when it comes to cycle lengths.

I promise I haven't been holding on on y'all about the scheduling of my hsg. Today is freakin' CD44 and all of my cycles since the last failed one (ED#1) have been 46 days long. Dr. Africa didn't think that was caused by being on lupron for such a long time. She just thinks that's the way it is now. I'm not so sure. Before lupron I never had a cycle that long; after it  I've had three in row that were each 46 days.

I'm a little pissed and more than a little freaked out. Is this the not-so-fabulous Ms Menopause coming into my life at the tender age of 42? She is most definitely not welcome here.

I don't know what to do about this so feel free to leave some assvice below or email it to me. I'm planning on starting acupuncture again because that can't hurt. I suppose I should consider going on the pill so I can at least be somewhat regular for my upcoming cycle but I'm not sure I want to add more synthetic hormones to the mix.

In other news I survived my hellish travel week. I made all my flights, no thanks to the security folks at O'Hare (but a big thank you to the nice guy from my home state who let me go before him). I found a fabulous boutique hotel in Chicago where they upgraded me to a king suite even though I paid less than 1/3 of the lowest published rate (yay for H0twire). I paid considerably more in The Valley for a characterless chain hotel room with a much less comfy bed. I spent a good hour on The 405 trying to go 15 miles and remembering my former SoCal life and not missing it a whit. I also quickly realized how very thankful I am not to travel for work very often these days. I have no idea how I survived so many years of spending more nights in hotel rooms than my own and knowing some flight attendants better than my friends.  I'm glad I did it and glad I'll never have to  do that again.

Work was good but I'm completely drained by the long days and lack of sleep all week. I really really really want to cut my hours back soon but I just don't see that happening until November or so. I read an interesting article about how many women would love the opportunity of part-time work and I do think I fit into that category. I just can't fit what I want to fit into my days. I want to be able to go to acupuncture and pilates and yoga and not cancel my dentist and doctor's appointments. I suppose cutting back to 40 hours would allow me that, but how the hell did that get to be part-time these days?

Perhaps this rant means that CD1 is just around the corner. Now that would be good news.

Weekend Update

This time last year I was still going to the clinic way too often for repeat betas, and not the fun kind. I'd been given special permission from Dr Local to leave the 510 and we took a road trip down south (he still hadn't given me clearance to fly which probably turned out to be a good thing). It's really hard to believe that was a year ago.

It also seems like this cycle that recently got extended (I decided to no longer say canceled because that seems much more negative, it's still happening just in a little bit) really started about a year ago because I started planning for it even back then.

I thought about writing the obligatory post about how this day can be hard or how next year it will all be better but so many others have done that so much better.

In the last few months I've seen several of my friends become mom's through adoption, donor eggs, and even (*gasp*) s-e-x. There have been some really tough times including bedrests, long hospital bedrests and other scary hospital things. There have also been a couple of heartbreaking losses. I am thinking of all of you so much on this day.

I'm also thinking of a certain red-headed momma who is a great mother and how bittersweet this day must be because she lost her own mother so many years ago.

But mostly I'm hunkering down with the mister. We watched all four of our Netflix movies over the weekend (we joined such a long time ago we were grandfathered in at that level). We finally called out own mother's and told them how much we loved them. We went shopping in The City and lunched in an Italian cafe and enjoyed the beautiful weather. We also split a strawberry Nutella crepe in the cutest tiny French bistro you've ever seen. We ordered in chicken wonton soup and dumplings to help us fight colds. We took our dogs out for a long walk and enjoyed even more of the beautiful weather.

And, because we are truly evil, we came up for a game plan to defeat the in-laws we'll have to deal with later this summer. The mister is having a very tough time these days. The cycle extension bothered him a lot more than me and he's not looking forward several days with a minimum of 12 kids aged 1 to 15. So I devised a plan of attack: make them jealous.

Every time someone brings up kids we'll just bring up something from our recent travels. Oh, your baby is walking? Yah, I remember how cool it was to feed that baby elephant in Thailand on it's first birthday. You can't wait for school to start and get the kids back on schedule? Yah, we're still trying to decide where to go for two months. Argentina? Mexico? Tango lessons? Cooking? Oh, that minivan sure holds a lot of people. No, we'd hate to trade our Mini for anything. Look after your brats because you want anyone else to parent them while you act foot loose and fancy free? Nooooooo, I really don't think so. That's what you wanted (or didn't want in the case of the bil). Oh, we'll just head back to our quiet b&b room while y'all deal with all your younguns.

You get the picture. Y'all know we'll be crying on the inside. But, boy, will they all be jealous of our spontaneous, globe-trotting, expensive-toys, quiet life.

It started out like so many other days recently. The mister and I got up and planned to day the dogs for a nice long walk. Then I was going to have a leisurely breakfast and wait for him to have his weekly chiropractic.

The first thing that went wrong was the mister slicing his thumb open when he was cutting up an old credit card. I'm not sure why it was imperative to activate his new credit card and cut up the old one before our walk (or more importantly, before our much needed coffee) but it was. Using new scissors that are super sharp. And not paying enough attention. Let's just say there was a lot of blood. And he was more interested in washing it off than applying pressure.

Once I forced him to apply some gauze pads the bleeding stopped. A band-aid was applied but it wasn't one of the cool Harry Potter glow-in-the-dark ones. He likes to save those for me.

We skipped the walk in favor of bagels and lattes. He really needed to eat. We had a nice conversation about the mayor from across the bridge who's been in the news so much lately. I got to continue that particular conversation with a cool woman who was hanging out in the bagel shop. I think it's all people are talking about here.

If you haven't heard, said mayor just admitted to an affair. With someone who worked for him. With someone who worked for him who is married to someone else who worked for him. And that someone else was a really close friend.

Now I generally think we shouldn't be so concerned with our politician's sex lives unless they involve minors. Or subordinates. Or best friend's wives. He would be in a whole heap of trouble if he worked for the private sector. I do have a big problem with sexual harassment and I think when one person has power over the other that's a bad situation. But mostly I feel sorry for the best friend who everybody says is such a good guy. And I question the wife's motives for telling her husband at such a late date.

I digress.

So the dogs and I had our walk and I decided to go and meet the mister near the end of his appointment. I used to see our chiro as well but the yodeling job messed up my schedule.

I had a sinking feeling she was going to be pregnant as I walked up the stairs. I don't know why but it just hit me from the blue.

Then I thought to myself. Don't be silly, Self. She's turning 40 this week. We're scheduled to go to her party. She just barely got married last year. If anything she might need a nudge to see a specialist and she might want a recommendation.

I should have listened to my gut. Yup, she's pregnant. Very early. The mister just found out today. She's taking an early maternity leave because she's feeling so poorly. I wanted to be happy for her. Truly I did. It just felt like such a sucker-punch.

The worst part was the look on the mister's face as he walked out. It hit him hard. We truly don't wish infertility on anyone else and certainly not her. But we've been trying so long and been through so much. I hate that infertility even makes me sad when it's someone else's good news. It is good news. I want to be able to celebrate it. Damn this infertility.

But I couldn't be happy when my man was in tears by the time we got to the car. I drove him to work knowing he was going to continue to have a hard day. It hurts me so deeply to see him hurt so.

I started the recipe testing for his birthday cupcakes. I made 4 dozen Chocolate Stout with Espresso Cream Cheese. I took them to his work for their Friday Happy Hour and everyone loved them. At least the day ended really well.

Bitter Ramblings

So I wrote up this long, oh-so-amusing (at least to me) post but somehow it got lost. Woe is me.

I got a reminder call yesterday from Dr. Endo's nice nurse. My appointment to check all things thyroid is tomorrow afternoon. One hitch: I had yet to have my thyroid retested.

Oh, sure she'd given me a standing order which I put somewhere very very safe so I could easily find it. She'd given me an appointment card as well but it never made it into my calendar. You know how that goes.

After turning the spare room nearly upside down, I found it and called the lab. They told me the doc could get the results in time so I rushed right over. They were efficient, taking a few vials of blood and not even leaving a bruise.

I know I'm being more than a bit passive aggressive about the whole thing. I know my meds are off. I'm jittery most of the night and not sleeping well. I know I should be all over this. But now that the cycle is indefinitely postponed I've got plenty of time. At least it feels that way.

I haven't been having the best of weeks. I need a bit more structure to my days. I'm waiting to hear back about a really cool project that might start as early as next week (the decider is on vacation this week).

I figured today I'd put the spare room back to order and even organize the closet. It was stuffed full of all kinds of crap in preparation for Initial Girl's visit. I made good progress for quite some time. Then I came across something I hadn't opened in a couple of years: my very professional laptop bag I use when traveling for work.

It turns out the last time I used it was October/November of 2004. How do I know? When I was pulling out various ethernet cables (how very quaint) and business cards I found a photograph. From my first trip to Garden State.

It's a picture of a lovely 6-celled embryo. From my first ivf back when I had something to transfer. Back when I still had a glimmer of hope.

Monday was the anniversary of my bfn from Cape Town. I didn't realize it until I read about the worst day of the year. Yup, January 24th last year was pretty crappy. Of course my year, like way too many of my friends, got crappier.

I was talking to a friend from my RESOLVE group yesterday. I'd given her some tips on decorating her daughter's first birthday cake just before leaving for Thailand. The last time I cycled with my own eggs we were cycle buddies. She was talking about how 2007 was going to be the year for the mister and me. I wish I could believe that but I just don't.

I'm just so tired of all of this. I'm tired of talking about it with anyone. Especially other infertiles, it seems. I know as a good infertile I should be working the next plan but I'm just going through the motions. We haven't committed to any particular course of action and nothing is going on. I'm just so tired of saying there is no news. There is never any news.

I wasn't having a great day before I saw that picture but it sure didn't help. I've got a couple of hours to pull myself a bit more together before the mister gets home. I think I can do that. At least my boys in blue are playing tonight so I can rechannel my energies into yelling at the tv instead of just feeling sad and empty. If I were feeling more optimistic, even about my team, I might be planning a trip to Atlanta for the first weekend in April. But I'm feeling so sorry for myself I'm sure I'd be a bad luck charm (much like the last time I attended the Final Four).

Good grief, I need to shake this. Maybe I'll make some cupcakes. They make everything better, right?