Forget Percoset, prescribe me Prozac

Today's money goal: NO books and NO magazines for at least one month, starting today.
Next week's money goal: split tax refund deposit between savings accounts.

Speaking of which, was anyone else's refund abnormally large this year? It's kind of hard to compare because both our incomes increased year-over-year, and we got married, but it seems like a lot to me. We did owe extra state taxes, though. (You know what I miss about Texas? No state income tax.)

Next month's money goal: build a bumper in my checking account so that it doesn't drop to alarming single digits between paychecks. (Harder to do when you get paid once a week, instead of twice-monthly like normal professional people.)

Mental-health goal: stop freaking out about the HSG. I will be calm. Calm. Calm does not include biting finger-nails to below the quick, or being unable to sleep... Whatever they find in there, we can work it out. Answers are better than no answers. No matter what happens, we will someday, eventually, have our babies. We have time.

Don and I were discussing the possibility that we could end up having to do IVF, depending on what turns out to be the problem, and how often IVF leads to multiples. Twins are fine, but his take on triplets: "It just doesn't seem like a good idea to have more babies than the number of breasts you have, you know?" Surprisingly, my idea to grow a third boob to support a potential triplet was not well-received.

Totally gratuitous photo of our farmers' market booty. Strawberries already, and spinach! (Sorry, Becca, I'm sure Spring will come to where you are, someday...)

There is a FREAKING HUGE RAINBOW outside my window right now. It looks so close, like it ends right at the top of our street. Actually, there are two, but the second really isn't trying as hard and so is barely visible.



WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?


I mean, besides the fact that it's been sunny--no, raining--no, sunny!-- NO, RAINING! all damn day, (twice, I dragged the lawn chair thingie out so that I could read in the sun; both times it started raining within ten minutes) and right now it's both at the same time? Still, it's so pretty that I sort of want to go outside and gawk, even though the view from the window is just fine.

Inch by Inch...

The much-anticipated HSG (uterus + dye + X-ray test) is going to be done next week, rather than in late May or June. I am exited to be getting this under way, already, and am enjoying the contrast to the usual waiting, waiting, waiting. Now I just don't know what to hope for, in terms of results.



On the one hand, I'd love a nice, healthy, normal (albeit leaning towards the left) uterus. On the other, that would still leave me without a diagnosis, or answers of any kind re: the recurring miscarriages. But, a badly malformed, unfixable uterus would be even worse, and pretty much put an end to our baby dreams. I guess what we need is either a slightly messed-up thingie, or else a perfect one, plus answers coming from elsewhere, like the testing they're about to do on Don. Although that could be bad, too, depending on what comes up. Please, let us have a fixable problem!

Change-monger

Don and I were watching a really interesting Discovery-Channel type thing the other night, about how for the last 10,000 years the planet has been between ice ages. Apparently, everything that humanity has accomplished in that time, we owe to this warming trend. It does sort of explain things, considering that we've been around maybe 200,000 years as humans, and yet only got around to, say, agriculture, permanent civilization or the Internet in the last 10K. It'd be like waking up and just lolling around all day on the sofa, then at 11:30pm, opening the front door and taking off sprinting down the street because it finally got warm enough to go outside... Fascinating stuff. Then I realized (and this is where I switch from my out-of-character talk about interesting scientific stuff back to the usual navel-gazing) that I have this sort of disturbing tendency to root for disaster. "Wow, another ice age. That would be awesome!" So New York would be crushed by a sheet of ice 2 miles thick... OK, whatever. Same with the "economic crisis"; I keep secretly wondering exactly how bad it's going to get, but in an almost gleeful kind of way. I don't even know why, except that it's been a long time coming, and a correction of some kind is much-needed, even if it's just that credit becomes less easily available...

Weird, I know.

Falling for dogs that aren't your own

Good news, part A: I have normal chromosomes. (Insert major sigh of relief here!)

Good news, part B: Don's insurance seems to cover paternal karyotyping.

Irksome news: My RE office has misplaced Don's insurance information, so I have to bring it to them again. Just as I did two weeks ago! This is not helping with that recurring feeling I have of being on a repeating loop of time.

I'm not that worried about Don's genetic material, for various reasons that I won't put here. The next logical step in the Neverending Fertility Quest is (of course) the Uterus Exam, the timing of which is a fragile thing: depending on my cycle, my work schedule, and the doctor's schedule. I think we're looking at the end of May, maybe? I ovulated freakishly late this month, so I have no idea when to expect my period... The challenge right now is remaining un-pregnant until all these tests can be done. Now that we've gotten pregnant on the first or second try three times in a row, we take it a bit more seriously than before. . .

And on the Interesting News front, my sister is finally coming to claim her dog. You know, the dog we agreed to watch from August to October, and have had ever since? The dog that Don has completely fallen in love with and doesn't want to give back? This is going to be painful. (For him.) It should be noted, though, that Don is kind of easy when it comes to dogs. He falls in love with every dog that he spends time with, and that loves him back. I'm sure he'll get over it, right?

Right?

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Two days ago was the anniversary of our first miscarriage. I can't believe it has been one year, already, since this. On a brighter note, it was also the 7-year anniversary of Alice's adoption from the animal shelter.

Tax Day

Public Service Announcement: the people working in banks are not tax experts. We are not CPAs. We have never taken a single class or lesson in tax preparation, because that's not even close to our job; we know enough to file our own taxes and that's about it. It is not even legal for us to offer tax advice without being certified to do so. Thank you.


Don and I filed our taxes last night, which was weird: April 14th is so early for us. There's nothing like the promise of a juicy rebate check to get us to fall in line. Tonight will be the first April 15th in quite some time that didn't feature (literally) 11th-hour preparations... I'm not sure what to do with the evening now. Not to mention that it was our first time that we could claim "married, filing jointly" instead of "single": how utterly romantical. To honor, to cherish, and to share a single 1040 form...


No interesting results from all those blood tests yet. The four that were being re-run came back normal, but the one that is new and exiting (genetic karyotype thingie) won't have results for awhile yet. I probably won't be able to do the HSG until May, as my coworker's heart surgery seems to outrank my exploratory procedure. (What, there's something more important in this world than my uterus? Surely not!) So, the whole fertility thing is going kind of slowly. Sometimes I feel fine about that, rational, but sometimes I just feel frantic as I feel the weeks slipping by, still undiagnosed and nonpregnant. I wonder how old I'll be when (if?) I finally have a baby in my arms... something I thought would have happened quite some time ago now. Anyways....

I love that Googling "washing mildewed towels" nets 11,700 hits, and that wikiHow has an entry specifically for it. It makes me feel less alone in the world to know that so many other people have forgotten the towels in the wash.

Bits of thoughts

Blood tests: annoying.
Having to fast for said tests: more annoying.
Having the blood tests take three times longer than expected, done by an incompetent student nurse with no people skills to speak of, thereby making me stumble into work late and dizzy with hunger, as my get-breakfast-after-fasting-and-bloodletting time had disappeared: really freaking annoying.

Next time, I am going to show up as early as possible, pack a snack, and request the good nurse. Live and learn and all that.

We watched Walk the Line on cable last night. It didn't suck, but why on earth did the directors decide to let the actors sing, instead of dubbing in the original voices of Johnny Cash and June Carter? Their incredible sound was kind of the whole point, and without it, the movie is kind of flat.

Everything is lovely here. Beautiful, cool-rainy-breezy weather, flowers everywhere, trees budding. Saturday held the first farmers' market of the year, and it was like a festival. I think Virginia is taunting me for thinking of leaving for the land of Oppressive Heat.

House of the Absent-minded

Alice loves coffee, especially mochas. Naturally, the caffeine and chocolate isn't good for her little doggie system--and, you know, Hey! I was drinking that, damn dog!-- so I quite often stash my coffee cup on the windowsill, or the mantel*, or on top of the piano... anywhere that's too high for our quasi-suicidal puppy to reach. Because Don and I each have the attention span of a ... wait, what was I saying? Anyways, the cups stay there more often than not, while we wander around thinking, "what the hell did I do with my latte?", while it grows cold and occasionally moldy on the windowsill. Naturally, doing the dishes requires going from room to room collecting whatever dish-wear has accumulated in that room (and DON'T suggest that all of your dishes are in the kitchen. Who do you think you are, Martha frickin' Stewart? Tell me there aren't any forks under your sofa and I will declare you either neurotically clean, or having no dogs in the house.), but it's not that natural to remember to check atop the piano or mantel shelf for mugs, so sometimes they stay there for some time, sadly. The funny thing is that we were both raised in tidy, normal households, in which coffee mugs made a neat rotation from kitchen to dining room and back, with no interesting day-trips to, say, the ironing board.

You know what's funny? There's that stereotypical, close friendship between women and gay men (or at least, a certain kind of gay man and certain kind of woman); Will and Grace, Bridget Jones and Tom, etc. It is commonplace in popular media, and perhaps, for all I know, real life. Why isn't there a similar stereotype for lesbians and men? Men in general don't seem particularly enamoured with (real) lesbians. I wonder why the difference?

I forgot to mention that I saw one of my ovaries during the ultrasound on Thursday, which was awesome. The other one seemed to be hiding or something. I hope it exists, at least, but I'm not too worried on that score, seeing that we conceive easily. And apparently my uterus is leaning to the left. Dr B's take on it: "Whether it's a perfectly normal uterus that happens to be left-lying, or whether it's that way because or a deformity is still up in the air until the HSG." Thanks, doc. It occurred to me that I've been worrying that they'll not find anything wrong with me (diagnosis: unexplained infertility), but what if they find something that's not fixable? That would be even worse. Like if it turns out that the ol' uterus is so jacked up that even surgery wouldn't help; it would mean that we'd never be able to maintain a pregnancy. I got one of the girls at work to promise she'd consider surrogacy, but somehow I don't think Don will go for the idea.

Speaking of work, the past week was unutterably bad. I kind of thought that since I'd come out in the open about my ambivalence towards the job, it would suddenly turn OK for awhile, like when you are thinking about breaking up with someone and they get much nicer all of a sudden; or the way your hair always looks amazing the day you're scheduled for a haircut. Instead, I had the worst week ever, and am even more ambivalent than before. (Although I still can't stomach the idea of losing my health benefits. Gaah.)

Somehow or another, Spring has arrived with me barely noticing. Too caught up in my own crap, I guess. It just doesn't seem right... this time last year, I was all exited about Spring-- the daffodils, the rain, the dogwoods-- and being pregnant (for the FIRST time!) and thinking how great it was going to be, to be pregnant all summer. Now it's the same season, but I'm all cynical and pragmatic. I want to be that naive, hopeful girl I was only a year ago, wide-eyed and appreciative of the beauty surrounding her.


*We don't have a fireplace, but we do have a fireplace mantel. Go figure.

(none)

I have started and left unfinished many entries in the past week-- I think I have thinker's block. Of course part of it was that my RE appointment was today, and all I could do was whine about the waiting. Also, it's hard to follow up after a post like the previous, you know?

Thoughts about the RE appointment.

1. Why are so many REs and obstetricians men? I would love to think that thousands of male doctors just really, really want to help us women/ couples get pregnant and deliver our babies, or that they just find the whole reproductive process incredibly interesting, but I can't help but feel that the money is a major factor. There seems to be a lot more money in these fields than, say, pediatrics or family medicine. This clinic is downright posh, part of a spanking-new medical complex, and filled with luxe touches. I wish it was a sign of their success, but insurance companies have to pay for unsucessful treatments, too.

2. I like old-fashioned hospital gowns that are actually made of cloth and have sleeves and tie in the back. So much better than either the paper gowns or the kind where you have to snap the sleeves together.

3. I have a bad feeling that the next test (the HSG) is going to be scheduled for the exact day that I'm supposed to attend a training conference thingie. The clinic only does these procedures on Wednesday mornings, apparently, and the only week it can be done is the week after one's period started. That translates to one day out of the entire month in which this procedure can be done, and--if I can hazard a guess as to when my period will come-- that is one day of work I can't miss. What the hell.

4. The good doctor has prescribed me Valium and Percocet to take before the HSG. He is apparently reccommending them because of my reaction to the Pap smear/ vaginal exam. I have previously been under the impression that this is an uncomfortable-bordering-on-painful experience for any woman, but now I'm thinking maybe not? It's not as though we really discuss these things. Given my oversensitivity to drugs of any kind, how am I going to handle both of these at once, and on a work day? Oy vey.

Thoughts on work/ Things that are good about my job:

The hours. Always home before 5:30, never have to be there earlier than 8. It would be hard to go back to a retail-type job after that.

The pay. Not that I'm making tons of money or anything, just that I'm priced out of entry-level for most types of work. The only way to maintain what I earn is to stay in the same field and utilize my experience, but that wouldn't be any better than just staying here.

The benefits. Of which I am partaking liberally at the moment.

Not that any of that changes what I said previously--that it is making me unhappy and nuts-- but it makes it harder to just chuck it all and get a job making espresso drinks somewhere, or working retail, or waiting tables. In a way, it was all easier when I was making ten dollars an hour and not worrying about health insurance.