Sunday, September 30, 2007

not that bright...but very warm

so, all this past week i've suddenly been feeling HOT. not hawt, but HOT. like, so warm that i stop what i'm doing and think 'geez louise, i'm hot. is it hot in here?' i didn't put 2 and 2 together until last night when i was just sitting around and found myself sweating that i realized, omigod, i'm having hot flashes! for some reason that really cracks me up. i guess i realized i have a side effect from clo.mid after all...and i really hope they have some good new drugs by the time i get to menopause.

Thursday, September 27, 2007




not much going on here. progres was made on travelgate 2007. the jist of it is: my sister is having the first grandbabies (plural. she's having twins) of the family in dec. she's planning to have family come out and help for the first few months. my mom definitly wants to come out and help...but she refuses to pick travel dates. i guess she has to keep her busy social schedule open, or desires to retain the ability to stay all 3 mos (oops!) without having to pay pesky airline rescheduling fees or whatever. but i need to have firm dates so i can plan, and so we can not overlap (because, god bless mom and all that, but the last thing my poor sis needs so soon after delivering twins is to have an apt full of relatives along with the two crying babies). j and i took the extraordinary step yesterday of employing none other than the secret jedi mind trick to get her to pick travel dates. now, the dark force was strong within her so we were only able to pin her down to one date: she will leave by mid dec, enabling me to travel out there mid dec. but the one date is alot better than we had before, which was none. we worked so hard at our telepathy that i think i levitated my book bag in the process, quite by accident.

in follicle news: none so far. still in the clo*mid fields, nothing to see here. hopefully more exciting news next week.

Monday, September 24, 2007

slightly more human



um...this was me and my sister any time we took a car trip together (which was often) for about the first 10-12yrs of our lives. god help our parents. and to think...neither of them wanted any more children, yet both of them remarried. i guess the experience of raising us was just so...erm...fufilling that they didn't want any other children :).

well, i was feeling somewhat less than human these last few days (or were it years? primus? anyone?) but sweet lil LJ cheered me up over dinner. the very boozy 'dc tap water' drink helped as well. i like how they made the drink green, but i'm hoping the bar version has less arsenic and lead than actual dc tap water, which i try not to ever drink unless i'm feeling low on my elemental metals. i think lj and i will both be going in for good old fashioned wandings next week (is that what the kids are calling it these days?) so wish us luck and cross your fingers, if not your legs for us.

Friday, September 21, 2007

freaking finally!



YAY! cd1 over here. it sucks, but at least i can move on to the next frikking cycle. i think that is the *last* time i will try clo.mid+timed intercourse, given the resulting 36 day cycle. thanks geohde for the warning that something like this might be headed my way.

love to all y'all. sniff!

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

dpo14--bfn

and that's all the news thats (UN)fit to print

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

isn't waiting fun? (updated 6p, still waiting)

today i woke up feeling very AF crampy...but with a temp well above coverline. yesterday my temp was *just* above coverline, so i figured it was on its way down. i even picked up next month's clo.mid and adjusted my scan appt given what was surely to be cd 1 (today). but today my temp is much higher.

so, i'll wait, trying not to cling too tightly to hope with the last vestiges of my quickly fleeting sanity. i don't have the optimism to pee on devil sticks all day. plus, my uterus feels to me like AF is imminent. if no AF tomorrow and elevated temp, i'll test then.

my uterus does most things wrong, but i'll say this for myself: i do NOT have a luteal phase defect, that's for damn sure.
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MEH.

i wish that frikking AF would start so we could get the ball rolling on the next cycle. limboland sucks my entire a$$. i've been crampy all day and keep rushing to the bathroom to see if AF started, but the b*tch has not shown up yet. i guess its the hope that she won't show that makes all this exquisitely worse.

i think today i'm not fit for human consumption so its a good thing i'm just here with the cats. as long as i feed them, they don't care if i do it while i'm half crazy or the whole way there. they *are* pretty whiny right now, which is a mite irritating, but then so am i, so i probably shouldn't cast dispersions.
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blogging, a bit like masturbating at times. got to be able to respect yourself in the morning.

Monday, September 17, 2007

pee sticks = 1; me = 0



ah well; 12dpo and a pee stick as vast and white and empty as siberian plains in january. i even held it up to a bright light and squinted at it, but alas, no.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

L'Shana Tova Everyone!

and a happy, healthy, and fruitful year to all. the rabbi gave a very interesting speech (i know, how often does that happen, right?) about how today's torah portion was about sarah and the haftorah portion is about hannah. both are women who were childless, and who were given children late in their lives, after they had nearly given up. the rabbi's focus was on birth/rebirth but also the question of 'when is it too late?' sarah had her child in her 90's. what does it mean when you get what you most desperately wanted, but so much later that it doesn't even mean the same thing anymore as it once did?




Dream Deferred


What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

Langston Hughes




what does it mean to find the love of your life...in your 60's? to finally be a parent at 90? to get your PhD in your 70's? those dreams don't have the meaning they once did...once they were sweet and now they are bitter-sweet. but he says that bitter-sweet is basically the defining emotion of being human. and the torah urges us to be less bitter and more sweet when given the option to chose. he also said it's never too late, for anything.

i don't often have any kind of connection, sitting there in temple, reading words someone else has written, praying to a god i'm not always sure is there. but i felt connected today; with the plight of sarah and hannah, with the bitter sweetness of deferred dreams, and with struggling to remain optimistic when pessimistic is the most rational path. (for ex: now in my 2ww...optimisim and pessimism are in a nearly constant battle, with my soul bouncing back and forth between the two like a ping pong ball. it's exhausting really. at least, it seemed to give me permission to be optimistic every now and again if i feel like it :P ).
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and now for something completely different.




yesterday at work at the children's hospital we were SLAMMED. one little girl of about 3 came in with her mom, spanish speaking only. the mom kept saying the child had an animal in her head and pointing at a lump in the back of the scalp. i thought my spanish was off, but the lump did need to be opened and drained. well, guess what came out of the lump? Bot Fly larvae. it looked like the picture but was longer and much more disgusting. child did ok, got the wound packed with gauze and put on an antibiotic. it was definitly something.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

slightly scuffed, semi battered, but we made it

well, the 8 hrs drive with the beasts was not nearly as bad as i thought it would be.

pirate got freaking roofied. one cat tranquilizer pill and that was all she wrote. he fell asleep in charleston and woke up in hyattsville. then he spent an amusing hour or so staggering about, batting at invisible bugs and staring at the tracers. today he's back to his sack of cat self which involves lots of begging for food, begging for attention, and/or swatting at bugs.

getting the benadryl in rocco was a signficant challenge. as LJ so aptly stated, i ended up wearing alot of the syrup, and he foamed at the mouth in a pretty good imitation of scary-rabid-cat. next time i think we will use a chewable, or break apart an adult tablet. he did ok on the actual trip. he slept most of it, waking up every 45mins or so for a minute or two to vociferiously indicate displeasure. that was much better than the way down in which the ratios were reversed: 45minutes of crying followed by a minute or two of sleeping.

my semester has started and i'm doing adults. i much prefer pediatrics, but i have to do 2 semesters of adults in order to graduate, so that's what i'm doing.

the 2ww drags on. i actually had a temp of >98.0F this am. this means i'm catching a cold or i should stop taking my temp until i can POAS. HA! as if i had the willpower to do that! to keep myself sane though, i scheduled my u/s for next month for the next clomid cycle. i think that was exactly the right thing for me to do smack in the middle of 2ww, where the hormones are strong, the tensions run high, and all the follicles are above average.

Sunday, September 9, 2007

i'm leaving...on a jet plane...



ok that's not true. i'm leaving in a packed teeny tiny volkswagen, it just doesn't have the same ring to it, nu? after a month of staying with CL here in chucktown, i'm heading home to DC tomorrow. le sigh. it was fun pretending like we're married folks. unfortunately, my semester has started and he has to go to savannah tomorrw so that's that. to beat traffic on the 660mi trip, i'm leaving yesterday. um, no wait. i'm not leaving until i develop my time/space machine that will somehow enable me to teleport home with all my crap! yeah, that!

and, to add to the fun, i'm taking the cats. taking them down here was an adventure in misery for all involved. pirate did well with the cat tranquilizers and just slept for 10hrs or so. but frigging rocco lost his everloving mind. apparently, the tranquilizers had, like, a reverse effect on him and he spent 12 or so hours howling, screeching, and throwing his body against the side of the carrier. it was so stressful i was sorely tempted to take the cat tranquilizers myself.if they weren't going to work for him, at least they could take the edge off for me a little. we are not trying cat tranquilizers on him again. the vet said we could try children's benadryl, so that's the plan. if it doesn't work i'm dropping him off in virginia and he can find his own damn way home.

i'm in my 2ww. anyone care to hear about my phantom symptoms? ehhh, me either.

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

it started with jo**die fo**ster



maybe this is sleep deprivation, or too much time exposure to news media, but i feel all feminist/radical right now. it started with jo**die fo**ster. i was reading an EW article about her, and it talked about a screening she did of 'the accused' with an audience, in which said audience applauded the rape scene. she also mentioned da*kota fan*ning's upcoming movie in which she acts in a rape scene. then i turned the page of the magazine and the next images were a two page advertisement for the upcoming VMA's. it featured kan*ye we*st, fall out boy and a few other male artists front and center. the only female artist shown was rhianna off to the left corner. and, of course, all throughout the ad were female bodies. female arms draped across male chests. female butts hanging out of hot shorts. female legs spread apart, jutting out of high heeled boots. breasts just hanging. the only thing you didn't see much of were female faces...but the faces weren't the important part, obviously. i know, i know, it isn't mtv's fault exactly. they wouldn't sell sex if sex didn't sell. and, they're selling sex from the male point of view because that is how sex is sold (and consumed) in our culture. and because the artists they are featuring are male, and probably the studio execs that put the show together are male, and the money that finances the projects originates most likely from males. males run the TV networks, they produce the images we all consume, and when they want to sell a show using sex it is the half naked, faceless bodies of women that predominate. one could argue that a story that ends in rape starts with the image of a headless, objectified woman's body.

i dunno. people are the worst.

(that picture is of gloria steinem btw)

Sunday, September 2, 2007

cappucino maker=1 me=0 kitchen=-23



well, i survived. no need to call the fire department. but just to save anyone else the trouble, here is what happens if you try to make cappucino without first properly securing 'the basket' to 'the machine':
at some moment when you least expect it, the basket part will come flying off the bottom of the machine with absolutely astounding velocity, sending steaming hot missilized particles of coffee grounds and boiling water everywhere. it may then be necessary to spend the better part of the next half our de-caffinating the floor, the walls, the new machine, one's eyeballs.

i'm going to try again with the cappucino tomorrow. wearing a helmet and a tyvek suit.

for those of you keeping count, no O yet.

Saturday, September 1, 2007

i'm a poet and i know it

here i sit and think
will i ovulate today?
maybe, maybe not.

one line much blankness
shhh! follies are fast asleep
lazy, lazy egg!!!