A Summary of 2005 - my life

Lets see...

January - Nagging contractors to move into our new home...
February - 1st to be exact- moving into our new home... actually hubs moving us into our new home... in laws finding a sex book... Can only imagine what they think... Going off birth control, quitting caffeine. Only a few more weeks and we'll be ttc.
March - off birth control and starting to try. BFN. Anniversary of Dad's death.
April - Fertility monitor - BFN... start of a new cycle... Fertility monitor, Fertility friend, BBT, charting... Hub's aunt and uncle- pregnant... and good cousin and wife - pregnant...
May - continues the cycle. Hubs bday - what I thought was a period, family and friends visiting, temps still up wtf? Take a hpt and hmmm that looks positive. Beta of 245 bleeding stops.
June - Beta of 535... bleeding starts back up. Repeat beta 248. Rhogam... Doctor saying - looks like things have passed... repeat beta - 271... D/C scheduled day before my birthday... wake up to nope it was ectopic... Methotrexate... this sucks.
July - on hiatus... told my mom and in laws of what occurred and how scared this made us... Hubs idiot cousin's wife announces she's pregnant (the chain smoking fiend)
August - Fertility monitor, BBT, make hubs take a day off to procreate - make into stud muffin. BFN...
September - 1 year anniversary... FM, BBT, bleeding... + with a beta of 17 then 20... then 14... Fucking chemicals on our anniversary? Hubs good cousin is killed in a tragic accident... Hubs idiot cousin arrested.
October - Doctors visit - endo biopsy next cycle... Hub's aunt has baby boy - Preston
November - Endo biopsy... 3 days later bleeding... Diagnosis - Luteal phase defect... also a Beta of 7! Fucking chemicals... start clomid... ovulate on cd 20... progesterone started... Good cousin's wife has Baby Girl Riley...
December - BFN... Clomid again... switch around to cd 3-7 for it though... O early on CD 14 (Christmas eve or there abouts...) Idiot cousin in jail... Christmas - a kitchen aid mixer... DVD's I don't like... and waiting patiently for a positive...

This would be my synopsis of my life thus far this past year... boy I hope the year 2006 has much more positive things...

Doe a deer a female deer...

So the real question is was it a doe or a buck that I hit on my way to work Tuesday night? Truthfully I have no clue. I think I stunned the damn thing which put a dent in my passenger front door. Fortunately I only have a 100 dollar deductible which is good and fortunately we decided that we would trade my vehicle in and get a new one once we got to the dealership. Dan is thrilled because he picked the color - Silver... can we all go "Yawn..." Seriously black was the other option - totally should have picked black, but we have a sunroof... I love sunroofs...

So our new vehicle is basically just a newer version of our old vehicle... a 2005 Hyundai Santa Fe... upgraded from a 2002 Hyundai Santa Fe. The purchase of the first Santa Fe was done after I wrecked my 1996 Mercury Tracer - that had a sunroof! My dad and I shopped around and after test driving, researching on consumer reports we chose the Santa Fe. We were both thrilled. So saying goodbye to my old car was very bittersweet. Especially since Dad's name is still on the old vehicle and that meant dragging out the old death certificate. I know my dad isn't connected to my car... even though he did put a dent in it... but as the months pass I feel him slipping away a bit. I think of him daily - love seeing pictures of him, love remembering him, but other's don't necessarily feel that way. My mom feels she has to erect this shrine at his grave. I don't. He's in my heart. I don't need to visit a grave where the shell of his body is kept. She doesn't totally get that because she feels closer to him when she's there.

This holiday season is always rough for my mom. This year has been no different. Usually we hear a rant about what my dad would have done or should have done that he didn't do. (Sad part of this is this is no different than if he was alive) and then at some point Mom will cry about Dad. She misses him - even though she tries to act tough she misses him just as much as I do... probably more. Christmas my mom will be visiting my jack ass of a brother... and also my husband will be spending time with her. I have to work. So I will be driving 3 hours to go to work... work 12 hours... then drive 3 hours back. May not make a lot of sense, but it's what I'm going to have to do. I'd rather spend it with my mom. I'm not lamenting the fact I don't get to spend Christmas with my in laws... as truthfully I hate going to the "garage" for the family functions at Grandma's... it's a tradition I could do without... just my thoughts of course.

So... that's my news... another car bites the dust due to a deer... and we're currently on cd 13... which means I've got the weird ovulatory pain from the clomid and probably will ovulate sometime next week... I'm having a terrible time temping right now and to be honest I have no idea why. Thank god for a clear blue fertility monitor as otherwise I'd have no clue.

My dog... the Coach lover apparently...

I just discovered something... something awful. Something very expensive to replace... Lola our 9-10 month old mini dachshund just chewed part of my Coach purse... Damn dog... I love her, but this rates right up there with Ernie chewing the cord for the laptop and the multiple pairs of pants that Chance chewed the crotch out of...

Dogs... what are you going to do with them? Apparently still love them and care about them while saying "Bad dog" to them.

She spit it out when she looked at me which would have been hillarious if it was someone else's purse!!!! Fortunately my humor has returned - it got lost on Sunday with the whole misadventure and missing of the TSO concert... So now I am scouring ebay in the hopes of finding a deal a Coach for Christmas... just a simple black station bag... love that purse... damnit...

Love the dog too... Lola's priceless... the purse isn't...

At least I have my priorities straight!

Cue the laughter... and hand me some Kleenex...

Have I told anyone about my absolute love of the Trans Siberian Orchestra? Well if you haven't listened to them then you need to. For the last 4 years I have gone to a concert during the Christmas season and seriously even when in the pissiest of moods it has turned my frown to a smile - reminded me why I'm a total pollyanna and why I think that ultimately there are good people in the world. This year the concert was on Sunday. My husband arranged to have the night off from work - after going to his awful Christmas party I seriously needed this concert. So Tuesday around noon found us driving across the state with our 3 dogs back to our house, where he asked... What time is the concert? My response 8 pm I think. I grabbed the tickets out and our tickets said... 2:30 pm. I had bought tickets to the matinee concert rather than the night's performance. This wouldn't have been a big deal if we had realized this at 8 a.m. rather than at noon and weren't 2 hours away from the arena with 3 dogs in the car. I started crying, threw my sunglasses and started mentally beating myself up.

Now... I know I could have spent an extra 90 dollars to go to this concert, and if the tears would have really flowed once we got home - I'm pretty sure Dan would have made the call and gotten us front row tickets. However my own guilt about being the cause of missing the concert, combined with my period showing up really just sent me into a tail spin. I would have had instant gratification by seeing the concert, but horrible guilt over making that big a dent in our checkbook... Yes we could afford it, but there are other things we need more then spending 90 bucks on concert tickets when I had already spent that money on them in the first place. So we didn't go. I spent the night curled up in the fetal position with a puppy dog on all sides of me and the blanket pulled up over my head. (This is how I cope when depressed!) Dan didn't know what to do to make it better and to him (aka Mr. Tightwad) spending the extra 90 dollars was not ever an option.

So today found me going to my customer service class... Which was 3 hours of my life that I will never get back... And I learned the 3 A's... Acknowledge, Apologize, Amend... And never use these two words... "Can't" and "policy" if someone wants to smoke - which is against policy for patient's to leave to go smoke... We need to say... "We are very concerned for your safety and if you leave unsupervised bad things could happen and we don't want that." Whatever...

I also emailed my doctor for my new clomid script... I am thinking of taking it on days 3-7 so this will all start tomorrow... The nurse asked me to mail a copy of my chart to them... I started laughing hearing the message... He didn't even want to look at them a couple months ago when I brought them in concerned about a luteal phase defect, but now when he doesn't even tell me that I should chart he wants to look at it... So I'm emailing the website that has all my charts and telling him to have at 7 cycles of charts...

And here's 2 icing on the cake tidbits... First - one of my bf called crying - she wants to leave her husband and wanted me to come up with 1 good reason for her to stay with him... I admit I couldn't do it... He treats her like a slave - she works 80-90 hours a week asks him to clean the house and the house is trashed... He can't make it in on time to work... He just can't seem to grow up. I told her she would have to look hard at herself, their relationship and talk with him... I know total cop out... But I can't tell her what to do all I can do is support her in whatever she decides.

The second tidbit is that in a previous post a couple months ago I mentioned Dan's cousin who had been charged with csc... the jury is finally in and he's getting a year in jail. I am ecstatic about this as we (meaning both Dan and I) were fearful that he would just get probation. I think that Dan's family is of course going to take this news hard, but for the child this occurred to I am so very thankful that he received punishment as her innocence will never be given back and I'd like him to pay for the rest of his life for that. This also pushes back the timeline of when we have to tell the in laws that we can't be around him at all - ever, under no circumstances as they haven't quite gotten to that point yet...

So that's the scoop from here...

Unhelpful advice...

The one thing on this earth I thought I could count on was my mom's thoughts on this whole infertility thing. I was SOOOO wrong... yesterday after I peed on the holy hpt and came up big fat negative... I hid my hpt in my suitcase and came out of the bedroom. Somehow or other things turned to the topic of trying to have a baby and my mom said the 2 words no infertile ever wants to hear. "Just relax." I blew a gasket... I said "Mom that is terribly unhelpful - do you want to know what just relaxing got us... it got us an ectopic and 2 miscarriages... so just relaxing is not going to work. We've moved on from just relaxing to lets use modern science to knock us the hell up. So you have just said the most hurtful thing you could have possibly said to me. Just relax." My husband after this little diatribe came into the bedroom I had come back to and thrown the covers over my head and said... "You know she loves you right?" I said YES I KNOW THAT... but she needs to understand that that comment is not appropriate. He of course hugs me and says I know that - she doesn't totally understand it.

So tonight while baking cookies... I explained it to her. I explained why this was not helpful... I also explained that as long as I can laugh through my tears I'm okay. I'm not obsessed by this... (okay maybe a touch) but I'm able to look past this and see a bright side... there are bright sides to everything... I will live through this even though truthfully it doesn't feel like I will... and my puppy dogs and husband will live through this though all 4 of them have gotten on my last nerve lately... we're a team - granted a screwed up team... and we can count on one another...

So never tell someone to "Just relax." Cause next time... I'm probably going to have to throw something... and I've got a pretty good aim.

Creeping out...

Hmmm 6 days can change a lot of things... no early positive on an hpt for me... and no late positive for me on a hpt... so we've stopped the progesterone and we're just waiting for the period to show up. I can't say that I'm happy about this. Hope was briefly there, and now it's gone. Not much else to say other than thank god I don't have to go to my husband's family's house when the idiot pregnant woman who is still with her pedophile husband is there... Got to find a bright side to everything... right now that's all I got.

Oh yes I do have one more bright side... I'm going to the TSO conert tomorrow night... thank heaven!

Creeping in?

I'm 9 dpo today... and I'm still taking my temps, etc which of course are still high (thank you Mr. Progesterone). And that niggling little creature called Hope is starting to creep in. You know that annoying little voice in your head saying "It's a beautiful chart, could that be an implantation dip?" is becoming quite repetitive. My husband of course says this... "I'll believe we're pregnant when we actually see an ultrasound with something where it's supposed to be and frankly a heartbeat would be nice as well." Got to love his cynicism... I'm sad that it's come to that... that hope isn't automatically there... if and when we see a second line on an hpt - we both think - call get a blood test... get another one in 48 hours... then wait for the results to... double (stop laughing we've had them double once out of the 3 times and that was with the ectopic)... then wait for an u/s so we can know what to do... (Yeah I haven't ever reached u/s point so I'm not sure what to do about that.)

So hope or pessimism... I haven't figured out which little voice I'm going to listen to... I just pray that I make it through the holidays and hopefully get an early Christmas gift with a picture of a beating heart in my uterus rather than my fallopian tubes... excuse me while I go have that fantasy...

Also how do I explain to the nurses if no when I get a positive? When they ask for lmp I'd have to say 11/6, but I ovulated late... so should I just do the math and give them an adjusted date? decisions decisions... maybe I'll just run it by the nurse... God Hope can be so awful sometime... I'm already thinking about calling a nurse and I don't have a positive to show for it... this could be a rotten Christmas... will keep you posted.