Just Waiting...

Well we FINALLY were able to get the SA done this Thursday. YEAH!!! But now I'm just waiting for the results. I can never tell if the labs are slow or if it's our less than sensational nurse who never calls with results. Hopefully we'll know soon, that and I'm going to call Monday regardless.

It's been a rough week and I'm so thankful that it's Saturday. I was on another trip but this time I could sleep in my own bed. I just had to get up each day around 4 and drive 1 1/2 hrs to the clinic. Which was totally fine but I burned the candle at both ends and ended up with a nasty cold (that Hammer gave me). I swear I had a low grade fever because my basal temp was 98.9 on Thursday morning. I'm never even remotely that high. The worst part is that I can't take any time off so I had to go to work sick. Because I'm in a union if I accrue comp-time and then take sick time at any point during that week they will only pay out my time straight i.e. no time and a half. Because our new union contract will be freezing our sick time, vacation time and personal time accrual for the next two years; comp-time becomes even more precious. If we finally have a baby I need all the time I can get but it comes at the worst time because I won't be able to recoup any time until 2011. All this to save our state some money but the kicker is that I'm 100% federally funded so none of my saved salary or benefits are allowed to be used for my state's budget. Basically I get the shaft for nothing. Which is why I went to work sick this week but enough about my job (at least I have one). Anyway nothing heals you like 10 hours of sweet solid sleep.

I also tried a neti pot for the first time. It was...different. But also very effective. The first few tries I kept thinking I was doing it wrong because the water was not coming out the other nostril but then I realized it was because I was so horribly stuffed up. The worst part is that feeling of water too far up your nose. I hate when you are swimming and the water gets up to high in your sinuses and it hurts; that's what it's like. But now I can actually breathe out of my nose so it was worth it. (If you watched the video on the neti pot; the lady is so stoic and calm while she does it. The face I was making the whole time was NOT stoic and calm. In fact it was down-right hilarious. Also I'm not sure what is up with the exercises in the video but I did do some "Ah this water up my nose thing is uncomfortable" dance a few times; I suppose it was the same thing.)

As another fun way to pass time I'll also share our most recent house project: Installing bamboo floors. It was crazy timing when they ended up being installed. It was delayed a week because of my uncle's passing, then it overlapped with Easter, and when it was all done this Wednesday, both Hammer and I were too sick to move everything out of the kitchen and back into the living room. But either way it looks awesome. We had a buddy of ours who does home remodeling put them in for us. The timing was perfect because he had literally just been laid off from his job the week before we were scheduled to have him install them. So it totally helped him and his family out.

Here is the before chaos.

Here is the half way done point with our poor dog in the shot who is trying to figure out what the heck is happening to his home.

And here is the completed project.

And just because I can't resist here is close up picture of our dog...I mean the floors but isn't our dog cute too?

A Weekend of Me

I know it sounds selfish but I really needed a weekend to take care of myself. After my week of being knocked around at work and out of sorts from my travel I realized one thing: Very few people were looking out for my well being. So I needed to make sure that I was being taken care of. So that meant going to bed early on Friday so I could get some good rest. Then on Saturday I set up a session at Dream Dinners. If you've never heard of it, you go there and package meals that can be frozen and then later pulled out and defrosted for dinner. It's so great to have when things are really really busy.

After that I got my hair cut and colored. It looks so cute! And then it was off to dinner with our friends. Sunday was relaxing. We went to church, hung out with friends afterwards and then just did laundry and watched a movie before heading to bed. I hope everyone had a relaxing weekend too!

Next steps

n our fertility front I got our IVF consult appointment set up for next Thursday (Feb 12) so we'll be getting info on our IVF plan, tests etc. I'm excited to finally get things started even though there will be the delay with all my travels but there is nothing I can do about that part so I'm not going to let that bother me.

Actually being out of the office might be the best thing to happen right now. I apparently do not work in the healthiest building, which is quite ironic because it's the state health department. We have heating issues, cooling issues, cockroaches the size of my Dove soap bars (seriously I've not only seen them, I've killed them), asbestos etc. The list goes on and it's not pretty.

So they had a town hall meeting about the building renovations that have been going on for the last year. They have been mostly renovating the connecting building. While it's not my specific building they are connected by walkways. My cube is right next to the walkway door and I can hear and smell all the construction going on. So after I (and two other coworkers) tested positive for carbon monoxide (CO) and our building came back CO free, I started to get suspicious. We began talking about these strange symptoms we've all been having every afternoon - itchy eyes, cloudy head, dizziness, headaches. Many people have developed asthma, pneumonia and bronchitis. I remember a couple of months ago thinking that it was strange for me to feel so yucky at work but then perk up an hour or two after I went home - apparently where the air was cleaner. And I was not the only one. So I talked with my mom, who is an RN, about my test results and she said that the tests only look to see if something is preventing oxygen from binding to my red blood cells and not specifically for CO. So basically it could be any dangerous gas that is doing this. At the town hall meeting they told us that when they did air quality test during welding that the levels were in the unsafe zone.

Well guess what was going on right behind the walkway door near my cube - yep, welding. I remember smelling welding fumes and on those days I had MAJOR headaches, cloudy mind and dizziness. But we are like frogs in a pot of slowly heating water, oblivious to the chemical toxins that have been increasing all around us. These symptoms are subtle but signs of major danger and they mostly have left us thinking it was just due to stress or fatigue - we never thought of oxygen loss from dangerous chemicals, till now. The constructions foremen kept telling us at the meeting that the construction was isolated from the working staff but today I took pictures of the gaps between the floor and door and around the door frame etc. I can feel air blowing through the cracks and I could SEE the construction workers on the other side. Gases can certainly get through. Armed with incriminating photos and test results they had nothing to say but confirm that something was getting through and making us sick. I spent an hour with our union person providing all my evidence and even pulled up information on symptoms related to welding fume inhalation, which is VERY scary. Guess what one of the side effects are? Delayed conception and early miscarriage in women. Great.

I have to think of this as being a good thing that we are holding them accountable to getting the fumes out of our area so that when I do IVF I won't be exposed to that stuff. But just to be safe I'm going to be taking a lot of time off around then to get any of that stuff out of my system.

Umm....

So what does it mean when your blog traffic tracker shows someone found your blog searching for "monologue of an evil woman boss" Thoughts?

I clicked on the phrase and google showed that mine is the 2nd top hit for this phrase!

1. Short monologues for women
2. Inner Monologue of an Average (Infertile) Woman
3. Monologues: S
4. The Five Most Powerful Pre-Murder Monologues In Film...
5. Villainous Company: Best Movie Monologues

nice...

Fresh Look

Well I'm home sick from work today so I've been playing around with new layouts. I thought this one looked pretty and calming. Let me know what you all think.

I spent the last three days in a clinic with sick kids so I shouldn't be surprised that last night I started to not feel good. I went to bed at 8 pm but woke only to find that I was feeling worse. My throat kills, muscle aches, congestion etc. I had to take the company car back into work because another coworker is taking it out today so I had to go in. I had originally arranged for my supervisor to drop me off at home but I don't want to pass along what I've got since it's in the early stages. So I gave my mom a call at 8 am and wouldn't you know she was passing through downtown at that very moment. So a hitched a ride with her and now I'm on the couch, laptop in tow and puppy passed out on my lap.

I hope this won't throw off my ovulation. The most I'm going to do this month is POAS to make sure we time ovulation but otherwise I'm taking off December. Speaking of which I think it's time to check...

....Ahhh, that's better. Results: No "O." Nope, not today. That might actually be a good thing though, maybe it will let me recover from whatever I've contracted.

Back to the scene of the cold crime:
My trip took me to a WIC clinic where I got to see tons of babies. Somehow I managed to make it through without seeing a prominently pregnant women. All the ones I saw were too early or too chubby (sorry!) to tell they were even expecting. That was some spiritual protection. There were several great families that I got to meet. And it was absolutely precious to watch a dad hold his sleeping daughter so lovingly. One family stood out to me though. This poor women, just 29 years old, was taking care of her younger sister's three kids from age 3 months to 4 years in addition to her own 4 year old daughter. The mother was placed in a drug rehab program so her sister was given temporary custody. The 3 month old showed signs of interuterine drug exposure i.e. not wanting to be held, inconsolable, shaking. The saddest part was that, according to her sister, the mom only ever asked about the oldest child. She would not acknowledge her newborn or second youngest child. In fact the sister has had guardianship of the middle child for the past year because he was being neglected. The middle child was so confused he was calling his Aunt "Mom" and cried every time he saw his real mom because he didn't know who she was. It was so heartbreaking.

I have to admit for a moment I struggled. Who wouldn't seeing the faces of those children. But I forced myself to focus on our path. I turned my thoughts to what our future was; success with IVF or adoption (or maybe both). I tried to think about if we adopted a little baby it might save them from a sad story such as the family I saw. Or maybe we were meant to go through IVF to have twins. I'm so impatient to know what our plan is and maybe that's my problem that I need to work on. Patience.

"I've got your back"

I have the best manager ever.

Why would I say that? Because when I had to explain to her that on Monday (Nov 17) or Tuesday (Nov 18) I would have to flex my time out in the am for our IUI she didn't question it. Now we have a major two day meeting on that Monday/Tuesday but my body does not check with my work schedule when planning out it's next cycle. It's not like I can control that part. And my manager's mentality towards it all is, "Who am I to deny your schedule for something like this when this could be the month. That is not my role to decide that and I won't live with that on my conscious." - How awesome is she!

The issue came when she had to talk to our supervisor about my 'possible' schedule change. Keep in mind the actual outcome won't be known until my egg check day on Thursday (Nov 13) but due to company policy I had to turn in my flex schedule already. Our supervisor is aware of of my infertility issues and treatment schedule but does not want to approve my flex because of the meeting. But she cannot disapprove it yet because the day is not set yet. My manager told me she is arguing with her that people have missed this meeting before for less important things. Not only that but I'm not missing the whole meeting but only four hours which I intend to make up that work time later in the week.

My manager stressed to me that I should not worry about this and I agreed with her. No one will get in my way and I will do whatever I have to do for my family. Either way I have 'Personal Hours' that I can use if I have to. This is a benefit of being an union employee. The definition of personal hours allows me to use them for whatever I want, whenever I want and without question or ability to disapprove them by my superiors.

So go ahead and disapprove my flex time, I tried to give you a 40 hr work week but you wouldn't work with me. There are bigger things in life than meetings.

Side note: My supervisor also tried to tell me about her "struggles with infertility" but this woman had four boys and her complaint was that she wanted to try to have a girl when she was 39 years old and couldn't. THAT IS NOT INFERTILITY!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So clearly she does not understand what it is to be trying for JUST ONE BABY for almost 2 1/2 years. The whole time she was talking I felt like I was in a Peanuts cartoon, "Wont wont wont wa, wa wont wa wa wont" I can't hear you, la la la la, ridiculous fertile person complaining about not being able to have a baby when you were advanced in years and after already birthing 4 children, la la la la....

You've got to be kidding me, seriously?

Ok so today I had the oddest phone call. I was at work.

[Background on work: I work for the WIC program and I am an administration consultant i.e. all the local WIC projects call me when they have questions that are out of their league etc. I also do many other things but it would take too long and bore the heck out of anyone who bothers to even read this]

So one of my local projects gives me a call and we do the work chat and I answer her questions. Then when that is out of the way we typically chat for a bit on a more personal level i.e. how is your day going, any fun plans this weekend etc. You get the picture.

Not today. Today instead of asking "How's it going up there?" I get; "So, any exciting news you want to share?"

"What do you mean?" I asked, "Things are pretty normal here, just working on some projects, you know."

"No," she says, "Anything exciting about you personally that you want to share."

Now I'm starting to realize what she is getting at and I can't believe this is happening. She is actually suggesting that I may be pregnant and has me cornered. Of course, I've been doing evasive maneuvers in this area for almost three years now so I have a few tricks of my own.

"We'll today is my birthday and I'm going out to dinner tonight" I say as nonchalantly as possible.

"Oh, well, happy birthday but isn't there anything else?"

HOLY CRAP! Could she BE anymore obnoxious? "I'm getting my new bike that I asked my husband for as my birthday present? I'm not sure what else you mean?"

"Oh," she says sounding disappointed, "I thought you might be telling me you were expecting."

I can't believe she did that! I don't think I'm overreacting, she was completely out of line. I quickly diverted the topic off of me and prattled on that I wasn't expecting but my coworker was and that she'd see how cute she looked in November when we all will be getting together. It seemed to work pretty well and we ended up on the subject of vacations.

Ironically, she is going to be in Florida the same week that I will be but fortunately two hours away from us. When she heard this she actually said, "See I knew that you had something to tell me. I'm telepathic you know, seriously. I just thought that it might be something else."

YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME, SERIOUSLY? So a telepathic nosey person gives me a call on my 30th birthday to pester me about being pregnant. Why today? Today I'm trying to forget that I'm 30 and infertile. Maybe evil forces are trying to bring me down or tempt me from trusting in God.

I know what you may be thinking; it's a sign, right? I'm done with signs. I've fallen for them a few times already. For example, a coworker stops at my cube and tells me that she had a dream the other night that I was pregnant but not telling anyone at work. Now at the time I was two days from ovulating so I totally took this as a sign and got my hopes up. If you've read my history you will know that I didn't end up pregnant but instead ended up with another broken heart. So I'm not taking this as a sign.

Ugh, I just realized that today I'm two days from ovulating just like the last time. Maybe that's my sign. When people tell me they think I'm prego and its two days from Oing the month is a bust, HA!

Alright, I think I've defeated the evil temptation of feeling blah on my birthday. I'm off to my birthday dinner. No Martini's for me this year but I can still have fun.