Beautiful September 28, 2007

Surprise, surprise; all that worrying about the ultrasound for nothing. I have three mature follicles ripe and ready for IUI on Saturday. The doctor’s exact words were “beautiful.”  And that was about all he had to say; he was in and out of the room in about 5 minutes flat.  Okay, then.

I gave myself my shot last night; they time it much more loosely than the last clinic; it just had to be between 6 and 8.  It went easier this time around, probably because we had somewhere to be and I didn’t have time to screw around, I just had to do it and go. 

So hopefully this cycle will be successful and I can put my time as an “infertile” behind me.  I was thinking about that term yesterday, and I realized that throughout this whole process, I’ve never really applied that label to myself.  I was thinking about a post to ask how other “infertiles” deal with it when someone you know announces her pregnancy.

And as I was mentally composing the post; I realized that I had included myself under that label for the first time.  Sure, we’re fertility challenged, I’ve always thought, but we’re not like those other couples.  We don’t have massively dismal medical histories with complications on both sides, we’re just straight low sperm.  And yet, here we are months later, still not pregnant all the same. Just like those “infertiles”.  And while I hope like hell this cycle is successful, I’m starting to face the fact that we may never get pregnant, and will indeed, be infertile. 

Okay, I’ve typed it so many times this post that “infertile” is going the way of “tartlet” and has started to loose all meaning.

So to circle back to my original point, I guess I have two questions for any readers out there having trouble conceiving.  1. Do you consider yourself infertile, or tell yourself you’re just having a little trouble?  and 2. How do you deal with it when a friend or acquaintance turns up pregnant?  Because I have one friend who recently announced an upcoming birth, and another one who I suspect might be. 

The one who might be is just far more awkward, she lives here in town and we see each other quite a bit so I’ll have a front row seat to the whole event.  And she knows that we are having trouble, so I’m sure she feels awkward and weird about telling me too.   I mean, I irrationally think pissy, petty things when I see a stranger who is pregnant (and do not even get me started on Nicole Richie’s anorexic spawn) so I don’t know how I’m going to keep it from continually eating at me.

So really, if any of you out there reading have been through this, please delurk and leave a comment sharing your experiences.

Ringtone II September 27, 2007

Wee! So last night, I discovered a whole bunch more ringtones on the Samsung site.  They have a way better selection of polyphonic tones than at&t-including David Hasselhoff’s “Get In My Car.”  Dudes! They have The Hoff! That is some selection right there!

The other thing that cracks me up is that they specify the artists, and in some cases, have multiple artists’ versions of the same song.  Like they sound any different when rendered in polyphonic tones.  Is anyone looking for “Take My Breathe Away” really going to only want it if it’s the Jessica Simpson version?

So anyway, I found a TON of good ones and now I need to narrow down the list.

• Breakfast at Tiffanys-Eh, this was early in the alphabetical list, and I was being very open minded, I’ve always liked the song, but don’t love it.
• Runaway Train-Soul Asylum, just always loved, but kind of a downer for a ringtone.
• Anna Begins-Speaking of downer, I spent angst filled, depressing weeks in the dark during college listening to my Crows CD on repeat. Especially Anna Begins; so melancholy; so emo! I still love the entire CD. Although, maybe a little too morose to reflect my current mood as a ringtone.
• Call Me When You’re Sober-although, as my friends and I are getting up there now, the number of drunk dials I get is going down exponentially.
• I Believe In a Thing Called Love-So peppy and fun!  I don’t know if this is just a retro-sounding song that came out a couple years ago, or an actual oldie that was temporarily revived (was it on the Starsky and Hutch soundtrack or something?), but either way I heard it first and fleetingly a couple years ago, but it didn’t get much airplay so I get a little giddy whenever I do hear it. It just makes you want to rock out and headbang alone in your car…
• Never There-CAKE! Woo. And it’s phone related-so cute, right? For a ringtone? Cake and Offspring were the soundtrack of my grad school years; I wish they had “Get a Job” as a ringtone-I love that song (because at the time, I had a boyfriend, but I kind of hated him-long story-so I’d blast that and feel better about life. “My friend’s got a boyfriend and she hates that dick; she tells me every day…”)
• Suddenly I See-Again, just peppy and fun and I lurve Ugly Betty.  But it is a little overplayed.

So now I have to decide and I don’t know what to pick! Never There is my number one, followed by Thing Called Love and Suddenly, and I still want Anna Begins.  Maybe I will buy all and rotate every couple of weeks according to mood; I know I could set different ones as different caller ID ringtones, but that’s a lot of work.  Salsera and Maybelle-the only peeps I know in real life who read this-you may request a personalized tone if you wish (but you must find and pick it out!).
 

Ovaries: Darned if they do; darned if they don’t September 26, 2007

So I have one more day to wait to see what my ovaries are doing and either do a happy dance or weep bitter tears of “I knew it!” when the cycle gets cancelled because I made 20 eggs.  And really, when you’re worried about wild egg production and multiple births, you should clearly not stop to watch “John and Kate, Plus 8.”  Have you seen these people?  I found them last night; apparently they had a couple of specials on Discovery Health and now they have a whole reality series.  They had twins on chlomid and then got pregnant again on chlomid 3 years later with SIX kids.  SIX. So now they have EIGHT.

Unreal.  Even though I have a feeling (from what I can find) that the sextuplets weren’t IUI, but rather the result of just taking chlomid and doing it at home without monitoring, it still scares the bejesus out of me.  Logically, were I to get into a situation with high order multiples, I would selectively reduce.  Emotionally? I can’t imagine how you would even begin to make the decisions involved in that-which one/ones do we keep? Boy or girl?, etc.  Like most people taking fertility drugs, I’m just taking the leap and hoping like hell I’m in the 90% percentile that doesn’t end up with twins or more.

Since I’m being monitored, the chances of this happening are much lower, but still possible (one recent sextuplet case was IUI with a different stimulant, folistim, and the docs just wildly miscounted the follicles at the ultrasound).  Ack, but even if it prevents a high order accident, I will be crushed if this cycle gets cancelled and we’re out another month.  The clock is ticking, for Miguel especially, and neither one of us is long on patience.  We started this whole process seeing the doctor in MAY and hoped I’d be pregnant by summer’s end.  We’re now staring down October.

On the opposite end of the overproduction/cancellation fear is that I’ll only ovulate a couple eggs and we’ll have another failed IUI.  It’s such a fine line of gambles and risks and numbers.  I want as many eggs possible, without getting cancelled.  Is that so much to ask?

Call Me September 25, 2007

Okay, so I finally went ring tone shopping and it was a sad disappointment.  For starters selection in the polyphonic (meaning not the actual vocals/music, but the chimey version of a song) categories is pretty thin.  Then add to that I am old, and don’t recognize songs by 50 Cent or Fall Out Boy, and my options are severely limited. (Although Fall Out Boy has one called “Homesick at Spacecamp” which is hilarious, a couple of their other tracks are similarly intriguingly titled; I may have to check out their actual CD, b/c I only know that one song they play on the local pop station. Because I am an old old lady.)

Anywho, I went through pretty much all the categories except for Urban, Reggaeton (the hell?) and Gospel-including Musicals, Classical and Oldies.  Nothing really grabbed me. I want something cute and fun, not cheesey and overused, not instantly recognizable to most people and that means something to me. I don’t want to just pick a song just because I like to sing along to it; I want sort of a private joke like “I Wanna Talk About Me” used to be.  People hear your ring tone and it says something about you, even if it’s “I can’t be arsed to look for a cool ring tone so I use whatever the phone was set on when I got it,” so I want to pick something good.

So the ones that jumped out at me:

• Puff the Magic Dragon-kind of cute and whimsical, but what if people assume that means I like to, you know, puff the magic dragon? 
• The Chicken Dance-I have a thing for the chicken dance right now; I don’t know why, I can’t explain it.  It’s just so gleeful. But Cheesy.  Which is what I was trying to avoid.
• Crazy Bitch-I have never heard this song by Buck Cherry (to my knowledge), but it’s definitely got a catchy title.  Would be posery to pick a song that I didn’t know?
• Morning Wood-this would fall under the classical category; you’ve heard it before I’m sure over fairy tale forest scenes in Disney movies with birds chirping and shit. Obvious appeal is that when people ask me what my ring tone is, I can giggle like a 12 year old when I say “morning wood.”
• I Walk the Line & All Mixed Up-lot of diversity here, from Johnny Cash to 311, but I’ve lumped them together because they both sound like freaking polkas when rendered in polyphonic ringtones.  Speaking of Johnny Cash, I wish Ring of Fire was available.
• Hell-by Squirrel Nut Zippers-you know that kind of swingy song that goes “In the afterlife, something something something because tomorrow there’ll be hell to pay…” Zippy, catchy, barely recognizable, and metaphorical for how I feel most days.

All the rest are crap by Fergie and Pussycat Dolls, or swishy, angsty love songs by Lifehouse and crap. As I’m neither a skanky ho, nor involved in swishy, angsty love affair, none of those are appropriate.

I’m strongly leaning towards Hell, unless something new becomes available asap.

Sybil September 21, 2007

It’s Friday and I am cashed out. How sad is it that by 7am I am plotting my Friday evening something like this: acupuncture, dinner, walk dog, kiss husband, bed.  I have not been getting enough sleep this week. I think it’s a festive combo of having my thoughts on this current cycle, some library books I’m reluctant to put down at lights out and a bad, crying in my sleep nightmare Monday night that makes lights out even less attractive.

It’s so stupid that this nightmare in particular should keep me up, but I am ridiculous and full of irrational fears.  Basically in the dream, a creepy, mean little girl ghost was terrorizing us in our house.  Which was made all the more vivid by the fact that it was actually very visually in our house-you know how sometimes in your dream, you’re in your “house” but it’s nothing like your real life house so you can dismiss the rest of the dream as totally ridiculous as well?  Well, totally the opposite of that. And she had a creepy baby brother ghost with her and it was all very much like a cheesy crap Lifetime “scary” movie where the barren woman gets haunted by a creepy kid only to discover a creepy kid died in her house under mysterious circumstances and it was all an accident and the kid just wants to be forgiven. Which I haven’t watched such a crap fest in years, and have not even recently seen a commercial for one, so I don’t even know how this penetrated my subconscious (except maybe I’m equating myself with the barren woman?).

In my logical, rational, real life head, I don’t believe in the existence of ghosts.  I roll my eyes at people who earnestly tell me about the family ghost that turned on the tv or moved the pictures around and one time, they woke up and dead grandma was standing at the foot of the bed or something.  I’m a pretty cynical person and I operate on a “I’ll believe it when I see it” system (see also: agnostic).  That being said, on the ghost front, I do not have any interest in confronted with proof that I’m wrong.

On a good night, when I’m home alone, or sometimes just when I’m up kind of late, even with Miguel sleeping in the bed beside me, I’ll hear a creek or a noise, and lay there wide eyed in the dark, straining to hear the sounds of a psycho killer approaching our ostensibly slumbering, vulnerable forms.  I think maybe I watch too much CSI and Law and Order.  So you pile in a new fear of not wanting to look too closely into dark corners for fear that there is a creepy little girl ghost standing right there, and you have a recipe for a hard time turning off the light and dozing off.

I’ve camped out in the guest room the last couple nights b/c I’ve gone to bed late and wanted to read for a while before bed.  Last night, I seriously considered going back to crawl into bed with Miguel, just like a little kid who had a nightmare. If it hadn’t meant rousing the dog from her pup bed and dragging her along, I totally would have done it.  (Yes, I have a dog, which adds a whole level of irrational to the psycho killer stalker paranoia; as Miguel keeps trying to reassure me, she would warn us if there was an intruder…as she barely cocks an eye when you get of bed and practically step on her late at night, I have my doubts).

So I read until pretty late last night and then when I finally turned the lights out, my mind kept wandering back to scary dream.  So I started thinking of other things, like this cycle and the fact that it feels like my ovaries are literally twitching and I’m worried we’ll overshoot and get cancelled, and the fact that I have a new employee starting in a week and all I have to do to get ready for him and what it will be like managing someone new, etc.

Which leads me (FINALLY!) to the title of this post, because as my brain was on the hamster wheel, I noticed that I was kind of thinking in the “voice” of the character of the book I’d just read.  Like I was writing a book in my head.  Which led me to think about the fact that I tend to do this a lot; after reading Bridget Jones for the billionth time, I find myself thinking that “I’d quite fancy a fag right now; that would be brilliant. But n.v.g. as am trying to be super committed non-smoking type person.”  I do the same thing after talking to/hanging out with Salsera for a while; I’m suddenly all about the “y’alls” and “I’m fucking this cat.”  So then I was thinking, “Damn, I am weird. I have multiple personalities.” 

Like Sybil, geddit? That’s your payoff for reading through this ramble. You’re welcome.

And Also… September 19, 2007

I need a new ringtone.  On my old phone, it was Toby Keith’s “I wanna talk about me,” but it was the ringtone version, not actually him singing.  Not everyone could identify it by hearing it, so it was considerably less obnoxious than it sounds.  Now, I’ve since tried to download it again to new phone, but only the real, actual him singing version is available.  And it is just plain embarrassing when it rings in public.  So I need something new.

If you’re out there reading, time to delurk and give suggestions. I want something cute, but not overused/annoying.

Here We Go Again September 19, 2007

I started my chlomid for IUI cycle #2 yesterday.  A week from Thursday (day 12), I will have the ultrasound to see what my follicles are doing; assuming all is good, the IUI will be the following Saturday. Lucky Miguel; no time off work to whack, that should make him happy.  I feel cautiously optimistic about this cycle; the doctor is much more reassuring, Miguel is taking better care of himself and I’m doing everything I can with the acupuncture.

The second acupuncture session was not as relaxing as the first…I even brought soothing music to block out the ambient noise, but I never did doze off or fully relax.  For starters, my left (and only the left) earbud kept sliding out for no g.d. good reason except that earbuds suck a fatty.  And then it was that same frustrating cycle of when you’re trying to fall asleep at night when you know you have to be up early, but the more you will yourself to go to sleep, the more you can’t help the panicked, “oh my god, 6 more hours to sleep! Go to sleep! Oh my god, 5 hours, 39 minutes more to sleep! I have got to fall asleep!” spiral of doom. I think I shouldn’t have had a caffeinated soda that afternoon.  I’ll give it another shot this week, and see how I feel after.

In work news, I finally have an offer out to a new assistant.  I’m supposed to hear today if he accepts our offer.  I really hope he does.  I’ve been hiring to fill this position since March. I’ve been through two rounds of applicants, and this is it from this round.  I do not want to have to repost the job again.  For starters, thinking about the flood of illiterate, ridiculous applications I’ll have to wade through makes me want to cry.  Secondly, I don’t want to give the ex-assistant the satisfaction of knowing that we still haven’t filled her position.  So, fingers crossed. 

In life news, Miguel and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary last weekend. Our present to ourselves was a driver for the night to take us downtown to Mortons.  We had an excellent dinner and then strolled around downtown, popping in and out of various bars until our driver came to pick us up.  Judging by the haphazard trail of clothes, shoes and jewelry strewn all over the bedroom (because we were drunk, not ripping each others clothes off, pervs!), we had a lot a fun.

Mystery Smell September 14, 2007

Miguel and I now have a new running fight, over a phantom smell in our kitchen.  He keeps insisting that something smells bad in our fridge.  Occasionally, he is right.  When I have cabbage slaw, or fish, or chopped onions in there, sometimes not even Tupperware can contain the aroma.  But once I get rid of the offending item, the smell goes away.  And every Monday night, prior to garbage day Tuesday, I dutifully go through and remove everything that’s been in there past its prime. It’s not like I’ve got putrid moldy Tupperware in there.

And yet he continues to insist it smells, and begins a whole smell spiral of doom, moaning that we have a house that smells.  And he gets pissed at me for not being able to smell it.  And I get pissed at him right back, because, um NO.  I do the vast majority of the “real” cleaning in our house.  Miguel will run the vacuum and pick up clutter (read: shove out of site somewhere, then be unable to recall touching an object I’m looking for which I will then find 3 months later shoved in the entertainment center, where I know g.d. well I did not put it. Ahem, but that’s another rant…), but when it comes to the deep regular cleaning needed-that is all me.  He would use the same towel for a month as it develops an ever stronger mildew smell and gets so stiff it holds its shape after use, if I left him to his own devices and didn’t change and wash the towels regularly.  Ditto the bed sheets.  And I will not even get into the horror that is “his” bathroom.  One time I let it go, but finally had to clean it for company coming and felt like I had walked into a particularly groady seedy gas station bathroom.  So I take extreme offense to him insinuating that I can’t identify something smelly/dirty.

Last night, after another round of this, I waited a couple hours and then deliberately pulled the fridge open very quickly and stuck my face in for a big whiff.  Nothing. I really can not smell anything in particular.  He’s so adamant that there is an aroma permeating the fridge and kitchen though, that I’m starting to doubt myself.  Maybe years of smoking have dulled my sense of smell. But I’m not smoking now, and I never really was a  pack a day habit or anything (more like a pack a week), so I can’t see it having such a long term detrimental effect.  So clearly, the problem must be him.  I’ve decided he must have some kind of olfactory disorder that causes him to have an uber-sensitive sniffer.  It’s like his superhero power.  He could be “The Nez,” or maybe “The Stench,” I can’t decide.  But either way, his costume would look like this:

Pincushion September 11, 2007

I had my first acupuncture appointment on Friday. It was fine. I’m going to go back for more at least.  I was a little taken aback by the setup when I first arrived.  The doctor is a board certified oncologist, who was also trained in acupuncture and uses Chinese medicine as a supplement to western medicine in treating his cancer patients and people with other ailments. 

It looks like in this office he also provides chemo to his cancer patients.  So the office space was basically two open rooms, with recliners separated by curtains.  One space looked like it was dedicated to chemo and then the other room was dedicated to acupuncture.  They sat me in one of the cubicles and gave me a portable dvd player and headset to watch a “So you’re new to acupuncture” video.  Then the doctor came in for the consult which frankly did not sit well with me.  I mean, there was a guy right on the other side of the curtain hanging out, I could hear him moving around and he’d clearly be able to hear me giving my entire personal and medical history.  So in keeping with my plan to be more assertive instead of seething internally with confusion and anger, I asked politely to move someplace more private. 

I’m glad I did.  Especially after I told him about our previous spontaneous pregnancy and subsequent miscarriage, and he asked me how old my son was and I had to be all “MISCARRIAGE, I HAD A MISS.CARIAGE.”  (Little bit of a language barrier.) Imagine shouting down the curtain walls with that. 

Anyway, the way they diagnose you with acupuncture is to take your pulse for a bit and then look at your tongue; I guess they tell a lot from looking at your tongue (still need to google this to figure out why that is).  From that, he was able to tell me that I have “bad liver energy” and he was able to tell me things like I tend to be hot at night, I’m thirsty/have dry mouth a lot, I have a LOT of breast tenderness with my cycle, etc.  All true.  He explained a bit about Chinese medicine and aligning the sort of spiritual paths of the body and how he uses it in conjunction with western medicine which all seemed to make sense to me.  He also said that he would normally recommend Chinese herbs as well for the tension I have a tendency towards but that the fertility doc, while all for the acupuncture, is distrustful of the herbs for woman who are cycling.  Which I totally agree with.  So many herbal supplements end up having detrimental effects that I would be more stressed out taking them while trying to get pregnant.

So all that dispensed with, we returned to my recliner.  They put my feet up and placed a pillow under each arm.  He started with the top of my foot, and up my leg, placing 4 or 5 needles, each time feeling for a tender spot in the area he was working on before placing the needle. And there almost always was one; not something you’d notice generally, but there were definitely thumbprint sized areas where it felt a little hurty in each part of the body he worked on.  He put three more needles in the right arm, and then one on the top of each ear cartilage and one in the shell of each ear.  That is the only one that really hurt and made me jump; the other ones I barely felt.  He put about 4 or 5 in my belly, 2 in my left wrist and 4 or 5 down my leg.  He gave me some breathing exercises to do and told me to relax for 45 minutes.  They also covered me with an aluminum blanket to keep me warm, without weighing on the needles.

Then, he moved on to crochety would not shut up old lady.  This is where I again did not enjoy the curtained cubicle set up. I’m trying to relax and she’s two cubes over using her outside voice to talk about her cab ride there, the candy she brought the doctor (made by a friend, but she’s the investor/money person behind the candy, she’d rather invest in a friend than a billionaire oil company, don’t you know? The world is going to hell in a handbasket, blah blah blah…) and then her laundry lists of aches, pains and complaints.  Again; the opposite of relaxing, because not only is this litany distracting, it’s pissing me off that it is cutting into my relaxation time, so its this viscous cycle of not relaxing.

Finally he finished with her, and all was quiet again. I did manage to doze off; unfortunately, this caused me to do the involuntary leg jerk which hurt like hell.  The needles really didn’t hurt, unless you tried to move or even shift slightly, then it was a relentless, sharp, achy pain until you could shift back to where you were before.  So I was awake and wondering how much longer I had to go when the timer finally went off.  All the needles were plucked out, and the stick swiped with alcohol, no bleeding.

I definitely did feel very relaxed and centered after it.  Even if it’s just a placebo effect of the forced down time and relaxation, I think it’s a good thing.  The breathing exercises are also helping to follow another piece of advice I got from the new fertility doctor which is to limit the amount of time every day you spend thinking about fertility issues.  So now, when my mind starts to go there, I do the breathing exercises and think about something else.  With the yoga classes I’ve added to the routine, I will be a model of zen calm within weeks!

It’s called “Staggering,” people September 10, 2007

Is it not commonly accepted gym etiquette that you do not walk into a classroom and position yourself directly in front of someone who was there before you?  Are people that clueless?  This makes me freaking crazy and I’m running into it with increasing frequency at new gym.

At old gym, this would happen occasionally, but class sizes were such that I could pick up my step or mat, and move it huffily a foot or so to the right or left, with some pointed dirty looks.  If the offender noticed and apologized, I’d fakely wave them off all “Oh, that’s okay, I just like to be able to see the mirror,” like I’m the weird one with the problem and it was totally okay to just move over. Which it WASN’T, because I was perfectly positioned under a fan and not on a crack in the mirror.  (What? If you’re on a crack then you look all fun house and split in half.)

At new gym, there is no respect for personal space.  Part of it, I guess, is because classes are so full, but still, it is possible to evenly space yourselves in a full classroom, all it takes is a little common courtesy for the people around you.  At both classes I took this weekend, kick boxing and yoga, I ended up wanting to do physical harm to a classmate.  At kickboxing, this woman migrated from the back row, until she was breathing down my fucking neck, less than a foot away from me.  Back the fuck up, lady. I know I haven’t moved; I’m still lined up on the same mirror panel in the front, and with the same equipment pile on the side.  Scoot back into that big empty space you left back there before I purposely aim my next back kick at you.  And also, she was all flaily and sucky and couldn’t stay on the beat, which is very distracting to have in your peripheral vision.

At Sunday’s yoga class, a woman came and plopped her mat down directly in front of mine.  I was like, “Come. On. Bitch. I am here to relax and now all I can think about is drilling hate lasers into the back of your stupid, in my way, head.” I already had people on my left and right, and it was physically impossible for me to move my mat more than an inch or so to either side.  Which I tried to do, hoping this lady would take the hint, as she was clear on both sides, and scoot, but no dice. She steadfastly ignored me.  I don’t know, maybe I was in her usual spot. This is the first time I’d gone to the Sunday class.  But you know what, if you’re going to be a spot nazi and get all pissed off is someone takes your spot? Get there earlier, so no one can beat you to it. God.

Namaste.