I've been having some mild cramping this morning.  Actually, it's so mild, I wouldn't even call it cramping.  I also had what I think was a bit of spotting, but it was so faint it could have just been my imagination.  Today is day 21 of this cycle.  I guess.  Does this mean my period is going to start?  Or maybe this is the beginning of 4-5 days of spotting before my cycle starts.  Or, I suppose it could be implantation, but I seriously doubt that.  It feels more like PMS.

I have to admit that I think my chances of getting pregnant without donor eggs or embryos are pretty low.  To be honest, if someone asked me if I thought I would ever get pregnant with my own eggs, I would have to say no.  I really, really don't think it will happen without help.  I'm not sure it will happen WITH help.  Sometimes I feel like I'm being pessimistic, but as we approach the end of the 18th month of trying, I'm starting to think that I'm just being realistic.

I've stopped ovulation testing.  I'm pretty much out of test strips and I don't want to buy more.  It seems somewhat pointless - regardless of when or whether I ovulate, I'm not going to get pregnant the old-fashioned way.  And testing was driving me crazy, what with having to remember to stop drinking, hold my pee all afternoon, and all that.

My husband is talking about taking bereavement leave next week.  I don't know if he's thinking about flying back to England for the funeral or just taking the time off and being at home.  He's not in a good frame of mind for working right now, though.  He doesn't seem upset, just sad.  And angry with his family for not getting along better.

A beautiful weekend, then sadness

I found out this morning that my husband's beloved grandmother had passed away.  Unfortunately, I had to be the one to tell him, because I found out from a social media post from his father, who hadn't gotten around to informing his own son.  I hate being the bearer of bad news.  I've never had a grandparent of my own who I really loved (three died before I was born, the fourth was loved but could also be mean and made my family's life really, really difficult), so I have a hard time understanding the loss of a grandparent.  I feel so bad for my husband today. 

But we did have a beautiful weekend this past weekend.  We drove from our home in California up to Washington state, pausing to camp near Mt. Shasta in the rain.  We visited my brother east of Seattle, then took a ferry to the San Juan Islands to visit my husband's father (the son of the grandmother who just passed).  It was incredibly beautiful.  We didn't manage to see any whales, but we did see a bald eagle, which was cool.  The island that his father lives on was pretty great.  The towns of Friday Harbor and Roche Harbor were ridiculously cute, the food was fantastic (I LOVE seafood), and I needed the time away.  Unfortunately, we had to get up at 5 almost every day due to logistical issues with transportation, but it was still so nice to get away, and the pacific northwest is a place that I love (and would love to live, if I could talk my husband into it).

I took yesterday off from work to stay home and put in garden beds.  I only got one built, but it was huge!  4 feet wide, 8 feet long, made of 2x12 redwood lumber.  The 8-foot-long pieces were super heavy and really awkward to carry by myself.  Now I just need to get my husband to help me fill it with soil and we'll be able to grow tomatoes!  I'm planning to build another garden bed, but it may not be ready in time for the summer growing season.  As long as I have tomatoes, though, I'm happy.

On the fertility front, nothing is happening.  As usual.  My period should start next week, at which point I need to call to confirm my HSG for the following week.  I'm hoping that my period actually starts normally, instead of having days and days of spotting with maybe a day or two of regular bleeding.  I guess we'll see.

I've been nominated!

Thank you to Sweeping Up The Broken Pieces for nominating me for the Real Neat Blog award!  How exciting!  Luckily, it doesn't involved placing widgets or anything on my blog, because I have no clue how to do that and my head might explode.

Here are my questions (with answers, of course!):

1. What is your favorite memory from high school?

Hmmm, this is a toughie.  I didn't love high school, but I didn't hate it.  It just kind of... was.  Oh!  I know!  We had two teachers, Mr. Newborn (who I had for AP English) and Mr. Holmes (who I had previously had for Geometry).  They were constantly pranking each other, and it was so great hearing about all the pranks.  My senior year, Mr. Newborn decorated his classroom Christmas tree with bubble lights and bragged in class that his tree was prettier than Mr. Holmes' tree.  Quite a few students had Mr. Holmes for AP Calculus (I was not lucky enough - I had Mr. Takagishi, who was teaching it for the first time and hadn't quite gotten the hang of it yet) and word got back to him about the tree and he went over the top, decorating his classroom with everything imaginable and making bubble lights a small, insignificant part of the decor.  Of course, Mr. Newborn heard about this and wrote a long letter using quite a few big words about how the spirit of the season was lost, printed it up on a giant piece of fluorescent orange paper, and taped it to Mr Holmes' door for everyone to see.  

2. Who is your favorite athlete?

I'm not really all that into sports, but I do appreciate women athletes who inspire me.  Beth Rodden, Lynn Hill, Mia Hamm, Venus and Serena Williams.  As a child, I really loved Nadia Comaneci.

3. When did you know your husband/wife/significant other was “the one?”

I'm not really sure, actually.  When I met him, I knew he was special.  When he actually talked about his feelings and didn't act all macho, I knew I wanted to keep him around.

4. How best do you relax after a stressful day?

With a glass of wine!  Honestly, I kind of enjoy cleaning and organizing my house, at least when the end is in sight.  When everything is where it's supposed to be and I have a glass of wine and a good show to watch or book to read, I'm happy.

5. If you could star in any TV show which show would it be?

How can I choose, there are so many!  Assuming we can choose shows that have already ended, I would pick Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, any of the newer Star Treks, or Gilmore Girls. 

6. If you auditioned on American Idol what song would you sing?

 Honestly, I have no idea. 

7. What is your favorite comfort food?

Matzo ball soup would be at the top of my list for sure.  It's what I want every time I feel sick.

I'm not going to nominate anyone at the moment, mostly because I don't know who to nominate. 

Aaaarrrgghh

I'm writing this post on my phone.  Huh, that's not something I ever thought I'd say.  Anyway,  I'm at one of my favorite coffee shops,  which is pretty much the only good thing about my situation.

I was already having kind of a crappy day.  I saw two pregnancy announcements on Facebook today,  both for friends having their third child.  There was another third child announcement earlier this week too.  So I'm pretty grumpy.  We leave for Washington tomorrow,  and we haven't prepared at all,  since my husband's usual strategy is to wait until the last minute.  I hate waiting until the last minute since I inevitably forget something,  usually something important.  Considering I'm legally blind without corrective lenses,  that's a chance i just can't take.

Anyway,  due to my husband getting sick,  we had a motorcycle downtown where he works and we needed to drive the car in for work today.  I don't have parking,  so we came up with a plan that involved him dropping me off with my bicycle and parking the car at his hospital.  I would then bike to the hospital after work,  load up the bike (which is not easy) and then drive home in rush hour traffic while he left earlier with the motorcycle.  I wasn't thrilled. My main objective in any workday is to avoid traffic,  and this plan ensured i would end up in the worst of it.

Everything was going swimmingly until i finally got on the freeway and i noticed smoke coming out of the front of the car.  I managed to get off the freeway quickly and ended up in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant in a really bad part of town.  The manager of the restaurant came out and took a look and pronounced my radiator cracked.

So now I'm sitting at a coffee shop in a marginally better part of town,  having had the car towed to my favorite mechanic,  waiting for the hubs to show up with my in - laws' truck.

The funny part of the whole story is that i bought an heirloom tomato last night, intending to make a fabulous salad tonight.  I've been looking forward to that salad all day, and i had this funny feeling that something was going to prevent me from having it.  I thought it would probably our dog breaking out of her crate and going on a rampage in the kitchen.  Instead I've got some major car repairs to pay for.

So the moral of the story is that i really want to create an app that removes pregnancy announcements from social media feeds.  Bet you didn't see that one coming.

Waiting, hoping (and pictures!)

This month seems like a waste.  The hubs has been sick the last two days, complete with projectile vomiting and a fever, and I'm probably going to ovulate in the next few days, so I doubt this month will be the month.  I'm still tentatively scheduled for an HSG on June 12th, assuming my period starts when I think it will.  So now I just wait it out and hope what few eggs I have left haven't all shriveled up and died by the time we get to do anything.

We're settling in to our house pretty well.  We still have a LOT more to do, but at the moment it's livable.  The commute isn't too bad, either.  I'm not a fan of commutes that take longer than 5-10 minutes by car (which is why I was living in a not-so-nice neighborhood before), but 25 minutes without traffic isn't all that bad.

In the meantime, while we wait, we have gone on something of a spending spree.  While we have spent a lot of money lately on things like fixing up our old house, medical bills, and moving expenses, we haven't spend much on ourselves.  So we bought a VW camper van!  Woohoo!  I'm hoping this means that we'll get to go camping a LOT more.  I also finally replaced my bike that was stolen in January.  That bike, which I loved, was 10 years old.  Things have changed a lot in 10 years, it seems.  My new bike is super fancy and I can't wait to take it our for a spin.  I probably would have already if my husband wasn't sick and we weren't planning to leave for Washington state tomorrow.

And I finally, finally, finally got a new phone.  My old phone had gotten to the point where certain apps (my bank's app, starbucks, etc) wouldn't work anymore at all.  The camera was so sluggish that I couldn't take pictures, and they looked really weird when I did manage to get something.  The phone body was literally coming apart, and even though I kept it plugged in all day at work, if I didn't plug it in at night it would be dead by morning.  The guys at Best Buy couldn't believe it was still working considering it's age (3 years!).  So it was definitely time.  I upgraded to a Samsung Galaxy S3.  Probably ancient technology for most people, but so new and exciting for me!  I can take pictures again!  And just to show you, I'll add a bunch of gratuitous kitty and puppy pictures to this post:

First up, we have Boss.  This is how he always looks.  I often call him Mr. Grumpy Pants.  Every time I try to do anything in any sort of reclined position, this is what happens about five minutes later. 

This is Max in his new favorite spot, wedged between my dresser and the bedroom window.  My husband says he gets the award for best otter impression:

A view of our dogs from the top of the stairs.  This room is turning into the dog room.  I'm not entirely happy about that.

Nymeria actually using a cat bed!  She really, really loves the brown dresser in the back corner.  That dresser is going to go into the "nursery" as soon as we get around to moving it.  She won't be happy.

Nymeria yawning really big!

Max by my pillow, Nymeria by the foot of the bed, and if you look close you can see D's head in the top left corner.  As you can see, they leave plenty of space for me.

The dogs grudgingly sharing their bed.  I think it might be time to get a second one.

Meh

I called the Reproductive Health Clinic this morning to get things rolling on our next step.  The nurse who answered read the doctor's notes and tentatively scheduled me for an HSG on June 12th, with tentative plans to begin a medicated cycle the following month - July.  Which is OVER A YEAR since we first saw a doctor about our problems conceiving.  We're both getting really impatient.  An hour or so after making the phone call, I finally got an email from my doctor about medicated cycles, which said nothing about an HSG, and telling me to talk to a nurse about injections and medication amounts.  So I emailed back asking if he still wanted me to get an HSG, and I don't expect to hear back for at least a few more days.

We've been having all kinds of problems with our water pressure upstairs, to the point where I dread taking a shower now.  In the master bathroom, there is pretty much no water pressure at all.  The first plumber I talked to suggested the shower head might be clogged, especially if the house was old, but I took the shower head off and turned the water on and it was still just a trickle.  The second bathroom has plenty of pressure when the water is cold, but as I turn it to hot, it barely gets warm before it's turned all the way, and then all of a sudden it's super hot with no pressure at all.  The first plumber that was assigned to us by our home warranty company called me to tell me they'd be there the next day (which was Wednesday).  I stayed home all day waiting, and when no one showed up, I finally called them.  They first insisted they didn't have an appointment for me, then demanded to know who made the appointment.  I told them that they did, at which point they informed me that my appointment was actually the following Wednesday, and made me feel stupid for assuming they would even be in my town that day, even though I confirmed the date twice when they called to make the appointment.  So I spent a whole day at home and still can't really take a shower.  I'm beginning to really despise service people.  I looked them up on yelp and they got TERRIBLE reviews, mostly for not showing up, or disappearing mid-job, so maybe we dodged a bullet there.

My husband was kind enough to call the warranty company back and they're sending out a different plumber tomorrow.  But I had already called another plumber and scheduled them to come Sunday, and now I can't remember who I called!  I feel so bad. 

Everyone is pregnant

Yesterday morning, I received an email from a very good friend of mine, inviting a group of women (including my sister) to go hiking over memorial day weekend.  Luckily, I will be out of town, because she mentioned that it would be an easy hike because half of the invitees are pregnant.  Obviously, my sister is one of the pregnant ones, and obviously, I am not.  I know my friend isn't pregnant, and another mutual friend is probably not pregnant (since I think she's done having kids), so the other mutual friend is pregnant, as well as other woman whom I haven't met (although I know her husband).  The two pregnant women who are not my sister were married sometime in the last few years.  They are younger than me.  They are PREGNANT.  Everyone in the group will be pregnant or already has kids.  Thank goodness I already had a reason to decline, since I didn't want to seem petty, but I really don't see how I could spend time with a group of women when that many of them are pregnant.  Ugh.

And then last night I went to my weekly game night.  I'm generally the only woman there, and another friend who got married a few months before me comes occasionally but not every week.  He was there last night, and happily announced his wife's pregnancy.

I am getting frustrated with the timing of things as well.  I just checked, and we sent in our donor embryo application a month ago.  I was so excited that we were doing something!  And here it is, a month later, and nothing has really happened. 

I survived the weekend

I was planning to write an entire post about my weekend, but I just got off the phone with the clinic and I'm getting really irritated.  Because we've decided to try at least one medicated IUI cycle before trying IVF with donated embryos, apparently we'll have a different case coordinator.  And the previous case coordinator didn't pass on all of my paperwork to the new case coordinator, and so she called to tell me that I was going to have to get all this testing done.  Tests that I've ALREADY had done.  She also kept explaining what a saline sonogram was for, which I obviously know since I've had two surgeries to remove fibroids.  I don't understand the point of providing my medical history if no one is going to look at it.

But anyway.  I made it through mother's day without having to see my mother, or any mothers, really.  Which was awesome.  My husband and I moved a ton of furniture around, and I carried lots and lots of boxes upstairs.  I also cleared enough space in the garage to have our bicycles easily accessible, and to fit our motorcycles in.

Does life ever get back to "normal"?

I just about ripped someone's head off yesterday.  Between not having internet (even though we've had people out to install it three times - today will be the fourth (and hopefully last) time), being billed for the wrong procedure for my January surgery, not hearing from the fertility clinic, and dealing with everything that comes with moving, I'm running out of patience.

So yesterday, I called Kaiser billing and was told (by a customer service representative, NOT a medical professional) that if I had fibroids removed, I definitely had a laparoscopy.  I wanted to reach through the phone and shake the guy and shout, "you know there's a natural opening to the uterus right?  It isn't necessary to cut through my abdomen to get there!  I had the exact same procedure in October, and I wasn't billed for a laparoscopy then!"  But I refrained, and just repeated that I did not, in fact, have a laparoscopy, and I knew I didn't have one by the simple fact that there was no incision.  OMG.  This is getting ridiculous.

I called the fertility clinic again yesterday, and talked to a different person.  Instead of being snippy, this person transferred me to the case manager, who basically said that no one had even tried to get the doctor's notes so they could call me.  I wonder what would have happened if I hadn't kept pushing - my file would have languished in limbo forever?  It's not like I'm not offering to pay them thousands and thousands of dollars for their help.  I don't get it.  Supposedly, she was going to email me yesterday afternoon or tomorrow morning.  It's still early this morning, but I haven't received anything.

Negative

After the shortest period ever, I decided to take a pregnancy test just in case.  It was negative.  Of course.  I'm not sure what to think about my "period".  It lasted, at most, a few hours.  I'm calling the clinic today to find out just when someone will call me about an appointment.  I'm getting quite irritated.  Why can't I just find a doctor who will work with me???

And Mother's Day is this weekend.  Luckily, I have an out-of-town wedding Saturday evening, and even though we'll be back Sunday late morning, at the moment we're not planning to do anything.  Not surprisingly, I'm not really feeling like celebrating.  My sister is doing something with my mom on Saturday, since she didn't start planning early enough to get a reservation for Sunday.  My sister and I are both pretty low-key people, and neither of us would necessarily want to go out for a fancy Mother's Day meal (not that I'm a mother, but she is).  Our mother, on the other hand, always wants a nice meal at an expensive place, regardless of what anyone else wants.  Now that my sister is a mother, you would think my mom would take that into consideration, but she really doesn't care what my sister wants.  She only sees what she wants, and what her children aren't doing for her that they "should" be doing.

I've sort of been avoiding calling her, partly because I don't want to get suckered into driving out there for Mother's Day (and we NEVER spend time with D's mom for Mother's Day - that would really make my mother angry, because as far as she's concerned, she's more important than D's mother), and partly because we're planning to visit my brother for Memorial Day weekend and my mother wants to get a ride with us.  My husband has flat-out said that a 14-hour drive with my mother is NOT happening, but my mother is not taking no for an answer.  She insisted I think about it and let her know, and obviously my answer has not changed (still no!) but I don't want to argue about it anymore.

Ugh. 

We moved!

Moving sucks.  It really, really sucks.  My husband's brothers did not show up to help, and we really needed the help (I was not surprised).  We were supposed to be out by 3, and we left with the final load at 2:40.  We're not even close to being finished with unpacking in the new house, but it feels really good to be all in one place.

I thought I started my period yesterday.  I had plenty of cramping, and a bit of blood.  Then the bleeding stopped, but the cramping didn't.  This morning, there was a lot more cramping and a tiny bit of blood, and this afternoon has been pretty quiet on the camping front, with no blood (the cramping died down a LOT after I took four ibuprofin and had a bowel movement).  So did I get my period?  It seems like it, I guess.  But who knows?  I'm tired of this whole situation.  No one has called me from the doctor's office to schedule my saline sonogram.  I don't even know what to tell them about when my period started.  I'm incredibly overwhelmed right now.

My husband is being difficult too.  He got home last night, and I informed him that the internet company never showed up to do the install, and I called them and rescheduled for Saturday.  I also told him I couldn't find the dog beds we wanted, so I got a different one, and only one, so the dogs could try it.  He was extremely angry about the internet, even though I'm the one who was supposed to be working from home and he only uses it for video games.  He was also annoyed about the dog bed, I have no idea why.  He spent most of the evening in a bad mood.  I went to bed early, without him.  I don't know why every day I'm always so happy and excited to see him, and then he's always in a bad mood and drags me down with him.

As you can see, the dogs like the bed a lot: