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.

just a quickie

i wanted to give a superfast update. i feel like the count is ON finally for the next cycle we can try. i'm 3 days into my 2ww, so the iui is less than a month away. i'll be picking up the clo.mid this weekend, so i feel like the ball is rolling.

cl doesn't know what he'll do when he gets back from the army. he gets back in november, which is a tough time for a teacher to return. i just want him to do something. if we pretend that i might possibly (ptu! ptu! ptu!) be preg at that time, having him home and underemployed means he can make me food and keep the apt clean :). somehow i don't think he'll find that plan very exciting. and, to be honest, i'm not sure i'd like him home all the time either.

OH, i just remembered i wanted to make a confession to the blog world, because it's just too embarrasing to confess this IRL. anyway, i was doing prenatals today and there was this 34wks preg lady with prob a 5yo girl and a 3yo girl. i asked if she knew what she was having, and she said 'a girl' in a dissapointed affect, so i thought maybe she was upset because she wanted a boy. so i went on for a while about how cute they'd all be, and how she'd have clothes already etc. etc. kind of on a 3 girls isn't all bad type of tangent. she kept looking at me all cockeyed and strange. so then my preceptor enters the room and asks if she's getting counseling and how she's holding up emotionally, and it became clear to me that the woman had made an adoption plan for her baby. i felt, just, 40 different kinds of stupid. none of our patients that i've worked with at the clinic so far have made an adoption plan to date (and many are in very difficult situations), so i just assumed, i guess. after we were done that prenatal i set up a code phrase with my preceptor so that if she ever hears me shoving my foot down my throat or my head up my a$$ i have the potential to stop before i dig in even deeper.

where it at?

i completed my first week of women's health clinicals in bmore. most of my patients have been pregnant more times in their short lives than i ever will be or ever hope to be. fertile people, those teenagers. my preceptor told me about a patient she had who had sex in the 10day window between getting the first depo shot and having it take effect...yup, she got pregnant. carried that baby through 2 additional depo shots too, until, at 24 wks, she realized she was pregnant. well, not exactly that. my preceptor said she came in and said 'there's something moving in my stomach.' there sure as shit was, too.

my other clinical is pediatric orthopedics. its a tough rotation to have in the summer. basically, if you break your limb badly enough, you have to pin it in place and then cast it. and if you are casted in the summer, you can't do anything. and with pins in there, you really can't do anything; can't risk it getting wet, can't risk the limb swelling, nothing. so, most of our patients are not too happy with us.

my sister just sent me this newsweek 'my turn' article about a woman who formula feeds her babe because bf didn't work for her. i thought it interesting, because she talked about all the implicit and explicit judgement she got for her choice.

my poor hubby is feeling SO SAD. he is really depressed about the wait, and the m/c, and our lack of progress on the fertility/child having front. we are definitly at a stand still. our situation prevents us from moving forward in an adoption plan, and we have to take next month off from ttc. so he is really bumming. i am not bumming too bad yet, because i have a healthy dose of fear as i wait for my period this month. the longer it takes, the worse it will be, and i'm good and scared now. i don't even want a bfp right now because i'm afraid it will be a chemical. i'm too scared to be depressed right now, so i guess that's a good thing?

the well and the light house

i'm sure everyone knows this by now but possibly the greatest song of the year is 'the well and the light house' by arcade fire. i've been listening to it on repeat for the last 2 hrs and i'm doing just great...though i think maybe that banging sound is my upstairs neighbor trying to stomp through their floor to crush my speakers. whatever. i'm sure they'll thank me later. if not initially, it'll grow on you a la 'co-stanza!'

if ugly AF doesn't rear her ugly head tomorrow i'm going to be hella pissed. the neg hpt at 12dpo pretty much means that even a positive later on isn't a great sign. i won't get through another chemical pregnancy without some more significant chemicals for myself. plus, i need to get this cycle started so i can get the next one started, so i can enact the GREAT MECHANICS of MODERN MEDICINE the following cycle. so lets get going already. i spent the entire day poking at coochies and maneuvering (sp?) pregnant women's bellies and dopplering fetal heart tones which i think is scientifically proven to start my menses a-flowin. i hope so anyway.

i actually had a great time at my women's health rotation today. my preceptor is one of the best i've had this program so far. while i can locate a cervix, i can't do much with it once i find it. the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak.

speaking of weak flesh, my exercise has reached a new nadir: abysmal. i'm ashamed.
le sigh.

soooo negative

took a frer this morning at 12dpo which was astoundingly negative. i actually like that about the better quality preg pee sticks. there's no guessing about whether you see a second line, because it clearly isn't there. (sing along now: just cause you don't see it...LOL)

anyway, i am really ok with it, because i'd rather not be preg than have another m/c. i wasn't really 'supposed' to be pg this month anyway, but, you know, we're addicted to opk sex and we thought we'd try.

off to (ahh the irony) my women't health clinical today.

ever have that 'not so fresh' feeling?

i'm a regular contributor to a child and parenting section of a hippie music board. at least, that is how the board started, as followers of a "hippie" band. hippies procreated, as hippies do (except, obviously, for this one) and thus the child and pregnancy offshoot of that board was started.

except now i'm feeling like i may have lost my place there. c&p doesn't have a charter, like mothering.com does, so i'm not violating the charter when i'm pro-immunization, or not ecstatically (sp?) a lactivist. i don't like finding myself on the "right" of any board. and i don't want the other members of the board to put up with me, if they would really rather just deal with like minded folks. it's not a bad thing. most people use their internet groups to escape. i provide a forum for debate, but the thing is, i'm just trying to relax too. i don't want to debate. maybe i need to find another parenting forum, but i feel sad about it. i like the people, i just don't like where i find myself.

work today was ok. lots of sickies, as per norm. no one too especially sick. i violated about 10,000 HIPPA rules today looking up a patient that i had treated last time i was on shift. sometimes, i leave a shift and never find out what happened to a patient, and rarely, i get really attached to the family or the child in a short time and i want to find out what happened. this poor kid (8yo girl) came in with pallor and abd pain. how many 8yo girls have abd pain? like, most of them. but this was the 1 in 1 million kid who (it turns out) has metastatic cancer. according to the notes i found, the tumor was inoperable, so they are doing chemo. the prognosis for a kid with an inoperable tumor? not great. my heart really goes out to that family...i'm not a praying sort, but they are definitly in my thoughts.

an office space cat. tomorrow i have 8 solid hours of class, and i'm going to spend the 5 min breaks we have shooting nails into my head with a nailgun to break up the monotony. unless any one of YOU have a better idea, nu?

because i love you all, check out this link from the best show on TV. yes, of course,
scrubs!

i was very productive today what with the laundry and the grocery shopping and the what not, but i seem to have just hit an energy black hole. stinky, because i still need to do the studying, and the exercising. my energy juice quit about an hour ago it seems. pity that. help! i need to put the internets DOWN and go do something productive. oooh the sweet siren song of the internets. it calls to me 'keep your little a$$ parked right in that chair and wallow in my forbidden, time sucking fruits.' right into my ear it sings that. hard to resist.

2ww continues. nothing to report. my plan for bfn includes amusement parks and lots of soft cheese, eaten with a listeria spoon. delicious.

tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow (again)

meeting with REI tomorrow at 1030, and i hope to know more about the plan for next month after that.

warm thoughts to LJ.

work was ok today. nothing too crazy. very very busy though.

i got into an interesting discussion today on a message board i belong to. basically, someone wrote that a mom told her she wasn't breastfeeding because her baby was lactose intolerant. a bunch of other people wrote in to say how stupid that was. i wrote that maybe she just said that because she didn't want other people to judge her feeding choices. it was interesting because the strongest lactivist on the board feels that not feeding breastmilk is really subpar care. in her mind, there is no reason really not to breastfeed. but her 5mos old son is circumcised. i can't tell you how many posts i've read that say that circ'ing is essentially child abuse. i don't feel that way, but many people do. to them, to circ "without knowing better" is horrific ignorance. to be educated and circ anyway is criminal. also, the lactivist's son has also recieved no vaxes to date. if you ask me, that is the craziest thing of all. how can an educated person make that decision? but i love and respect the lactivist, among other people that have made vastly different choices for their family than i would make for mine. i guess what i'm saying is, i think the family has to figure out what works best for them. and then when they get judged for it--which they will, by someone--they need to say 'thanks for your opinion, but what we are doing is what works best for our family.' and be sure to have a thick skin.

home, home again

oh dear, what can i say? those folks over at lolcat are still cracking my a$$ up. tee hee.

i am back from 3wks in charleston and 3 days in la visiting my lovely sister and her husband. all told, i had a fabulous time. the only down parts about the LA trip were the OB's office on thursday (though i did get to see the babies on sono) and her not letting me take many pictures (though i did get some). my pecs actually hurt from swinging on the bars and rings they have on the beach at santa monica. and the santa monica pier was hoppin. jt schooled my a$$ in foozball, but i took her back to school in air hockey. i rode the pirate ship ride, and while i was on it i remembered why i don't ride that ride. it is because of all the falling. i actually have a weird memory associated with that ride. i remember me and my sister being on a pirate ship ride at an amusement park when we were both very little, and i remember us
sliding out underneath the lap bar. i remember us huddled together on the floor of the ride between the bottom of the bench of the seat that had held us and the back of the seat in front of us while the ride was still in motion. i had thought of it since then, and in the way that time makes things murky, had assumed it was a dream. but i was talking to jt about it and she assured me it very much happened. she vividly remembers us huddling together on the floor of that ride too. crazy! we are lucky we didn't fall out.

we went to a delicious italian restaurant on sat night, and just before we entered jt went to the "bushes" (actually one very sad, very scraggly weed poking out between the concrete slabs behind the restaurant) to puke. people were going by giving her and me the double stink eye, i guess thinking she was wasted. at one point between retches, her nose running and her eyes streaming with tears, my poor sis calls out to the judgy mcjudgertons 'it's ok, i'm just pregnant!' it was kinda funny actually.

2ww churns on. in the immortal words of radiohead 'just cause you feel it, doesn't mean it's there.' next visit to rei 6/6. i drank wine and coffee because if i abstain, then i definitly won't be pregnant. if i do imbibe, i might possibly be. consult uterinus's law if you don't believe me. plus, since my track record isn't so great, i feel like i can't spend 2 wks out of every month (or however long the cycle is) making big concessions to phantom babies ad infinitum. for an actual baby, with an actual heartbeat, yes. for a maybe baby, no.

have my first clinical rotation tomorrow of the summer semester, in a pediatric orthopedics office. i am excited but nervous, as orthopedics=not my strongest subject. oh well.

lalaland

greetings from la--it isn't nearly as warm as i thought it would be. i brought jeans with me from sc on a lark...fortunately for me because otherwise i'd have to buy some here. i walked for a stretch today on santa monica blvd, where many of the boutiques were selling jeans. unfortunately, i don't have a firstborn to barter with, and the prices were just insane. santa monica blvd is a heady mix of the great unwashed and more trendy stores than you could throw a handful of sand at.

uterninusus law (ah sperm palace jesters, how right you were!) dictated that since weds was my probable O day, something would happen to make sex unlikely. first, cl and i had another stupid fight about him not covering me well enough with a beach towel while i was changing clothes on a public street. (i seem to be describing alot of cl's and my fights during this blog, but rest assured we are actually happily married with only occasional, if daunting, interludes of crazy). anyway, then we went out with a friend of his from work and my dh got Da-Runk. now, being da-runk, while fun, can often pose challenges if baby making sex is to be had. we were able to overcome some of the more immediate challenges, but i just cant help but think of cl's poor spermies, swimming around in circles, looking for the closest bar or maybe just a spot of gatorade. on the other hand, da-runk sex has made a lot of babies for a lot of people. onword then, with the psychosomatic and psycho in general hilarity that is the 2ww.

my sister's 11wk appt was fun yesterday. ucla's power was out, so we were on generator or 'mood' lighting. the sono showed both baby a and baby b were trying to shove their right fists into their brains via their mouths. poor things. they both looked healthy and if anything were maybe even big for dates. so that's encouraging. also my sister hasn't tossed her cookies for 3 days now (as of this post) and that's also encouraging. the bushes outside her work are missing their daily dose of fertilizer. she is having occasional arrythmia's with pregnancy, so she will have to wear a monitor for 24hrs just to make sure it is just pregnancy causing it and not some structural problem with her heart. poor sister!

it was actually very difficult to be in the OB's office, around all the very pregnant preggos. i am greatly relieved that at my rei's office, children under age 12 are not allowed, and neither do you see greatly pregnant women. we were discussing in the car yesterday how hard pregnancy is for women...between trying to achieve it, trying to maintain it, spending 3 months acutely ill, irregular heart beats, whatever. where is the dialogue? maybe it's because it gets all mixed up in the pro-life/pro-choice dialogue. to admit that pregnancy is exceptionally hard maybe gives credence to the pro-choice arguement that women should not have to put themselves and their bodies through that if they don't want. on the other hand, the pro-choice arguement doesn't give enough to women devastated by their m/c's, or even their abortions. not saddened that they had an abortion, but still feeling an acute loss.