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.