Hot Damn!

It’s a good day to be Andie!

First of all, I’m bleeding! From my . . .ok, you know where. 4 days after popping my last prov.era, the red tide rolled in. I called Nurse T and she had me come in to pick up my nuva.ring (hope hope hoping that it is less disasterous than the devil’s pills), get my new calendar and get some instruction on where to do injections.

After the absorption issues of the cancelled cycle, I will be doing all IM injections in my deltoid which ought to really f**king hurt after 12-14 days of multiple injections. But, no one every said this process was going to be anything but stressful and sometimes painful. So, sign me up! Since it will be almost impossible for me to give myself injections in the deltoid, La has been steeling herself to do the shots for me. Luckily, we are starting the protocol with only one injection per day in the evening, which means we can go over to my parent’s house for shot #1 and my dad can give the shot/show La how to do it (for reference, my dad was a home care pharmacist for many years and regularly gave injections to patients) – we were fully expecting to have to build this into an early morning, and I was not happy about it.

The full protocol detail is available on the IVF Timeline Page, for those who are into that kind of thang.

 

Wanna hear some other REALLY exciting news? 

Ok, but you have to keep it a secret if we are friend IRL or on FB, ok? So shhhh . . . .

 

We are getting this bulldog puppy!

Are we crazy? Foolish? Stupid? Yes, probably a little of all of them. So let me tell the story, so at least you understand WHY we are making somewhat questionable but undeniably adorable life choices.

Since Ed died in December, and even before, we had decided we would be a two dog house. Two dogs is one more dog than a lot of people have, after all. But slowly, over the last two months or so, we have let the idea of getting another bulldog creep in. Bulldogs are magical. For those among you who are uninitiated, they are truly uniquely special dogs. I want it to be known that I am a tried and true “dog person” who grew up with 2-3 dogs at any one time in my house. All kinds of dogs – mutts, a golden retriever, dalmation, keeshond. I loved all of them. When I bought my first house, I promptly adopted a pup from the local shelter, a dog who I refer to as my ‘soul dog’ and who I love beyond measure. He is a spaniel and he is delightful and I adore him. Even having said ALL of that, I have to admit that bulldogs are just really special creatures. I think of them as the unicorn of the dog world.

So, we’ve been talking about getting another bully. The problem is, bulldogs cost as much as a fairly nice used car. And they are nearly impossible to find in shelters, unless they are sick or have some horrific birth defect from bad breeding practices. People just don’t give bulldogs away. So, you kind of either pay up front (for a healthy, well bred bully) or you pay at the end of their lives when they are sick or congenitally deformed because of bad breeding. We have looked and found the occasional bulldog for adoption and every single one of them would end up costing more than a puppy to treat their current health problems. (I grew up adopting pets from shelters and have a lot of guilt about paying for dogs, but I also feel like my heart has been won by bulldogs and so I’m not really sure how to handle the disconnect, therefore I spend a lot of time justifying my decision . . .if you want to judge me, that’s cool but could you do it silently? I already have a complex about it, ok?)

We do not have the money to buy a bulldog right now. In addition to fertility expenses (the bulk of which we are not paying, thanks to my very lovely and generous parents) we are trying to pay off some things before we have a kid to raise. But, I had mentioned to La that maybe after we did our taxes and saw what kind of refund we got, we could put a portion of it towards a bulldog savings plan. While this is a very reasonable and responsible plan, we made the mistake of torturing ourselves by looking at available bulldog puppies every night. Really? How did I ever think that was a good idea?

On Wednesday, La was hanging out with our buddy H (I have mentioned her before – she of the massive slot winnings in both Central City and Las Vegas) and mentioned that we were considering getting a new puppy sometime in the future. They came to visit me at work and, independently of La, I also mentioned that we had been looking at puppies and had, in fact, found one we thought was especially adorable. H said “pull up the website! let me see her!” So I did. La said, “I keep telling Andie to get the puppy for me for our anniversary! I told her she just needs to find the money and get her!” I laughed and said, “well, I’m not sure where I’m going to ‘find’ the money, and I don’t have it now!” And then, out of nowhere, H says, “I have money.” 

Now, let’s clarify: I appreciate people sharing money AND it makes me feel squirmy and nervous. So neither La nor I had any plans to say, “ok, sure, you can buy us a dog!” H persisted – “let’s call and see when you can go visit her!” and I said, “No. You can’t buy us a DOG!” “What if I just helped you buy the dog? You pay what you were planning to put into the bulldog savings fund, and I will help with the rest.” And before we could say much, she was on the phone with the breeder. And then, almost immediately, she was putting down a deposit on the puppy.

We spent the rest of the evening with H making sure she was REALLY ok with this, and her assuring us she absolutely was. It is incredibly generous and 100% unnecessary. And, its really nice.  We will still be paying for the bulk of the dog with some of our tax money, but this makes it possible for us to get *this* particular puppy, and to get her now (well, on April 12th when she’s ready to go home.) 

It will still be another year, at least, before we have a baby. The soonest a FET would happen is middle-July, which puts a due date in April of 2015. In between now and the end of July there is a lot of waiting, and the can’t-get-pregnant-get-a-dog method of wading through infertility is a tried and true one. Plus, ohmigodlookather!

So, that’s the news from this corner of the world. And, one more puppy picture for good measure:

Ascent from Squalor

Yesterday I woke up and La, like always, asked me what my day looked like. I grabbed my phone and opened my calendar and saw nothing. And then I remembered that there was nothing scheduled because I had been keeping the day open for egg retrieval. Which is not to say I didn’t have anything to do at work, just that I didn’t have any meetings or deadlines or phone calls or webinars. “You should take the day off.” She said, when I told her about my absence of meetings and the reason why. I sat in bed and thought . . .and thought . . .and thought, “yeah. I should.”

Knowing that my boss/our executive director is A) super woo woo and B) very supportive of self care, I sent her an e-mail and told her that I was taking the day off, in part to grieve the absence of what should have happened, and also, just because. Her response was, as I expected, 100% supportive and well wishing. So, with 0 guilt, I played hooky.

I realized staying home from work when you are not sick is *the best.* (I realize this is obvious, perhaps, but really hadn’t occured to me because, you know, I don’t usually just take days off.) I was up already, and the coffee was made, so I put on a sweater and grabbed the latest issue of Bitch: A Feminist Response to Pop Culture, and sat outside in the almost-spring sun with my dogs. This is something I have not done in a very, very long time. And it was luxurious and lovely.

Then, I got up and put on a peppy playlist, and got down to cleaning. For the record, I did this joyfully and of my own volition, not out of guilt for taking the day off. I really genuinely enjoy cleaning, when I am allowed to do it on my own terms. And our house was in desperate need of some love. After weeks of La being in rehearsals and shows, me working extra hours, IVF taking up brain and counter space, and my recent ennui, the cleanliness of our abode had suffered. We had managed to maintain the bare minimum so as to avoid descending into total squalor, but it wasn’t a pretty sight.

So, I did ALL the laundry (you know, the rugs and the towels and the sheets and the things that get left for last when you are just trying to keep yourself in clean underpants), scrubbed the stove and the sink, reorganized the shelves and scrubbed them off, dusted all the things – including the lovely baby-wish alter that we created and which has slowly collected dust and debris and generally not been well loved as it should have – and generally got our domestic lives in better working order.

Cleaning is one of the things I have always done to manage my anxiety, and it felt particularly good to take control in this way when, in so many other places in my life, I am most certainly NOT in control. Plus, there is a peace and contentment that can only really come from having a clean house. I feel really good about the use of my time.

After the cleaning was done, I headed down to the best local metaphysical bookstore to get my woo on. Inspired by some QT spent resurrecting the baby making alter, and my super woo boss who gave us all little peridot stones to celebrate the equinox on tuesday, I thought I should get some new items. I ended up with a tiny and perfect Quan Yin statue, since she is the boddhisatva of compassion and mother hood, a bunch of stones (carnelian, jade, moonstone, rose quartz), new silk bags for my tarot cards (very much needed as they’ve been slip sliding all around in my drawer) and two little stone-on-string necklaces – one for La and one for me. I spent more than I maybe ‘should’ have, but I don’t feel guilty. It feels just as important as the ultrasounds and medications.

My final stop was the IVF 102 lecture at our clinic, with one of the embryologists explaining in much more detail the process of retreival, fertilization (including ICSI) and growing the embryos. It was so fascinating! We watched a video of ICSI, and he talked in depth about how the embryos grow. They also spent some time explaining their program – a lot of which I knew, and some that I didn’t. Our clinic is now majority FETs (frozen embryo transfers) with CCS/PGD (chromosome and/or genetic biopsying of the embryos) (simply because more people are opting for it – we did, reasoning there was no reason to spend that much money without doing CCS.) And, because of this, they are also majority ESET (elective single embryo transfer) They credit this for their very high SART data (for both live births and pregnancies) – which is one of the reasons we chose them. La came with me and, for the first time ever at the clinic, we were unabashedly homosexual together, which is usually not possible because heterosexist assumptions, and our brazenly capitalizing on them for our own benefit.

Thanks to all of you who sent chicken well wishes, Rose appears to be doing much better and, as of this morning, was released from crate-rest back into the loving aggressive arms of her flock. We still don’t know what her prognosis is, but are hopeful it is not chicken cancer virus paralysis.

And, finally, I am officially the single occupant of my office, at least until we re-hire Crazy Eyes’ position. I am thoroughly enjoying the lack of awkward shared space.

For the Data Nerds and Well, F**K.

(I started this post on Friday and my computer died in the middle. I was too forlorn to give any f**ks at that point, so I just cut my losses.)

For those of you playing along at home, here’s today’s numbers:

E2: 155.97

FSH: 4.48

Follicle Counts: 10 on each side, ranging from 6mm to 11mm on both sides.

BUT THIS DOESN’T MATTER. Or, it does, but it will be your last report for a bit.

Like most human beings, I am fairly confident in my ability to make shitty things happen by casually thinking about them. I am less sure of being able to make good things happen by consciously focus on them. Because of this, I do my best to just not think about possible outcomes and stay focused on factual data in front of me, so terrified am I of ruining something by pausing to consider a less than ideal outcome. I tell you this because, you guys, I did a REALLY GOOD JOB of not thinking about the possible bad things that could happen during this IVF process. I mean, sure, I considered a few things but I really didn’t dwell on them.

When Nurse T called me this afternoon, I knew it wasn’t good news. You can just tell, amiright? I knew she didn’t want to say whatever she had to say. So I listened carefully, waiting for the bomb to drop, as she explained that they looked at both the ultrasounds and hormone levels to assess what was going on. My follicles, she said, were numerous and seemed to be getting bigger at each ultrasound. But my estrogen, although doubling between Tuesday and Thursday, had failed to go up for Friday’s check. It had, in fact, gone down.

(I’m picking back up on Tuesday morning now.)

Estrogen going down, albeit only by a point, is not good news. It indicates that the follicles might be arresting. They tested my FSH as well (knowing this, I have a feeling that they suspected this might be a concern earlier than Friday) and found it very, very low. The conclusion? My body was not properly absorbing the foll.stim and meno.pur. The decision? To cancel the cycle and restart with a different protocol.

Delays suck, sure. There has already been so much waiting. And, of course, there is that same grief of the projected future. No more 2015 Aquarius. No more being pregnant by July. But, too, there is the disappointment that, once again, my body has failed to do what it should have done. Even in the face of powerful stimulation drugs and needles, my ovaries still can’t perform like they should.

Today, I am much more able to see the bigger picture. After Nurse T gave me the news, I immediately asked for the plan. What’s next? Not knowing, she told me she’d have the doctor call me or she would set up an appointment ASAP. About 20 minutes later, Dr. Awesome called and explained that, while she was also disappointed, she felt confident that continuing with stims at this point would lead to decreased quality eggs and/or fewer eggs and possibly lower quality embryos. And of course, it is far less heartbreaking to quit 6 days into stims than to have a shitty retreival or a failed transfer.

So, looking at the forest – this is a good decision. But down on the ground, it still feels crummy.

I started prov.era on Friday night – a godsend as far as I’m concerned – which means I should get a period by Tuesday or Wednesday of next week (assuming I respond to the pro.vera similar to how I have before.) Then back on birth control – although, after I mentioned feeling like a demon harpy on pills, Dr. Awesome decided to let me use a nuvar.ing instead – for probably three-ish weeks. And then stims again. This time, we will be using a longer needle, likely some different meds, and I will be getting the shots in the deltoid muscle. Which means a couple of things:

1) La now has no choice about giving me shots. I can’t do them myself in that location. She has approximately 5 weeks to deal with this new reality.

2) The stim phase is gonna hurt. real bad. (I’m not just guessing on this. Dr. Awesome told me it would.)

So, that all sucks, but again – short term suck, longer term better outcomes. I should have a new calendar and details on protocol when I get my period. Once again, I request bloody thoughts and prayers.

 

In Other News:

• One of our chickens, Rose, developed a significant limp on Saturday morning (prompting La to meodramaticly cry, “What else can go wrong?”) and we ended up having to take her to the chicken doctor. Chicken doctor told us that its either A) a pulled muscle and inflammation in the joint or B) a terrible chicken cancer virus that causes paralysis. With that hopeful outlook, we are currently giving her some medication, keeping her separate from the flock, and assessing. She has been putting more weight on it each day, so we are hopeful its option A. Its hard to be a farmer.
• I made it through the big event, and am almost finished with having Crazy Eyes as a coworker. Ultimately, like it often does, the pressure of a huge event put some of the bullshit behind us. So, while I can’t say I’ll miss working with her, per se, I do wish her well and feel less resentful about the whole thing.

So, its back to waiting. Time for a new timeline to imagine living in to. But, it’s ok.

For the data nerds and Slow and Steady? Stims Day #6

Alright, number-hungry friends, here’s the latest:

If you recall, after the labs on Tuesday, I increased my follis.tim from 50IU to 75IU. Note bene: Initially I was told to give both the menop.ur and follis.tim instramuscularly. Due to the very tiny amount of follis.tim that I am on and the size of the syringes I was sent, this was virtually impossible to accomplish, and so I was told to take it subcutaneously using the pen instead. Today, my nurse sent over some TB syringes (much smaller size but can still fit an IM needle) which I will now be using to inject the follis.tim intramuscularly.

E2: 116

Follicles: at least 10 measurable (they only report the biggest 10, I learned. There were at least 15 on the right this morning that the u/s tech measured.) on each ovary

LEFT= 5, 3@6, 3@7, 2@8, 9

RIGHT= 6, 2@7, 3@8, 3@9, 10

So . . .they are growing, but they are growing very s l o o o w l y.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, given my PCOS. I’m already at higher risk for OHSS, and it is clear that I have a lot of follicles getting bigger. My estrdiol is still pretty low, all things considered, and that’s not a bad thing necessarily either. 

BUT but but . . .of course I am nervous we are going too slow. Nurse T says its a careful balancing act, and that they try to be careful because they have seen cases where folks started off slow (like me) and then all of a sudden their E2 levels rocketed up and it was bad news.  

So, we are staying the course – 75 IU of meno.pur and 75IU of follistim – however, I will now be able to give the follist.im IM, which will make a difference (as I understand it, medications injected IM are absorbed more efficiently. I’m also a big girl in every sense of the word and it has definitely occured to me that that teeny tiny bit of medication could easily get lost in my big old thigh skin, but less so in my big thigh muscle?) 

I go back tomorrow, and anticipate I’ll be going in every day until egg retrieval. She did say that at this point, it looks like we are either on track for Wednesday (their original prediction) or a day later. In any case, AWESOME. Crazy Eyes/My organization’s big event is Monday and I was having nightmares of having to miss it for ER. Although I was also sort of hoping it would happen Tuesday so I could legit miss CE’s going away celebrations. Ah well. I have intentionally kept every other day next week as open as I can in anticipation of things not going quite as predicted. 

And now, for your viewing pleasure: Lily the Bulldog in a turtle costume (cause slow and steady . . .get it? get it?) – fast forward to 2 minutes when it gets good.

For the Data Nerds: U/S and B/W Stim day 4

Because I google this stuff all the time, I would like to add my voice to the cacaphony:

Stim Day 4 = 75IU Menop.ur in AM, 50 IU folli.stim in the PM on 3/8, 3/9, and 3/10; 75 IU menopur in AM on 3/11

e2: 72.19

Progesterone: less than .21

LH: 1.64

Follicles:

LEFT: 4, 5, 2@6, 3@7, 3@8

RIGHT: 2@6, 4@7, 3@8, 9

From the nurse: LOTS of follicles, but E2 is kind of low. Will increase follis.tim to 75IU and re-check on Thursday.

Stim Day 2 and I am surprisingly calm

Ok ok! The IVF train has officially left the station!

On Friday I had my baseline ultrasound and suppression check. No cysts, and hormone levels looked ‘good.’ I got the official green light phone call from my nurse. She said, ‘are you ready? Your body sure is!” which, I’ll be honest, kind of creeped me out a little. But, whatever.

Saturday morning was shot #1. La’s mom was in town this weekend to see La’s show (she comes out everytime La is in a show which is just ridiculously adorable and sweet) and we had Liam overnight on Friday, so it was a full house for shot #1. I definitely got the weird anxiety/adreneline shakes while I was getting everything ready and did it all kinds of out of order, but in the end, I got the vial of menop.ur mixed with the dilutant and into my thigh.

Last night was folli.stim injection #1, a slightly more horrowing experience. La and her mom had left for the show already so I was alone, which wouldn’t have been a huge deal, except that the process was significantly more complicated than the morning shot. The only available folli.stim (according to my nurse, anyway) is in the subcutaneous injection pen, so that’s what I have. But, they want me to take it intramuscularly. So, my nurse instructed me to dial up my dose in the pen, then ‘inject’ the pen into an IM needle. So that’s what I did. She warned me it would be a ‘very small’ amount. And it was. It was, in fact, such a tiny amount that I felt fairly certain it got lost in the needle and didn’t get into my thigh. I ended up sticking myself three times in an attempt to get it in there and I’m still not sure it worked.

This morning, I started full on bleeding. Is this supposed to happen? I don’t know. When I think about it from the BCP perspective, it makes perfect sense to get a period now. But my entire understanding of cycles and what is ‘normal’ has gone out the window. 

But I don’t think either of these things qualify as ’emergencies’ so I have decided not to call the emergency nurse line. Is that silly? I did send an e-mail to my nurse tonight, and expect she’ll get back to me tomorrow first thing. For tonight’s follis.tim injection, after trying the process again of injecting from pen into IM needle and seeing *nothing* emerge from the needle when depressing the plunger down with all the might I could, I decided to just use the pen to inject the dose subcutaneously. My logic is that they would likely prefer the medication to get to me in a less desirable way than not at all. 

So . . .that’s the IVF story so far. It already feels like NBD, which in and of itself feels weird. I have started to entertain those worst case scenario IVF thoughts that, until now, seemed to feel very foreign. Things like, what if none of the eggs are mature? what if they don’t fertilize? what if they stop growing? what if they don’t freeze or thaw? what if this doesn’t work?

I know it does me no good to dwell on these kinds of questions, and so I haven’t really engaged with them. But I’ve found them popping up every now and again, so I suppose I might as well acknowledge them.

The work conflict with Crazy Eyes has continued to wreck some general havoc on my work life. Crazy Eyes basically doesn’t acknowledge me and has found ways to make me feel generally unhuman in our interactions. I’ve put my head down and gotten to work, trying to not engage in her triangulation with other staff. I imagine it will remain awkward and uncomfortable until she leaves, but that’s really only this work week and a few days the next, and I’ll have lots of things to think about that are not her in that time too.

Ugh. what a boooooring post. Sorry y’all.

You should go watch Cosmos. That’s what I’m doing. It is way more interesting than me.

Not Unscathed.

As you all saw, I popped my final BCP last night. Just in time to begin learning how to kind of handle myself on them too. Bummer!

And, while I think I did a pretty good job managing things on the devil’s pills, I can no longer say that my logesterol rampage was without casualties. Ooops.

To be fair, there was the comcast lady first. I called to activate our new modem (which we only needed because the old one – rented – had just stopped working.) I’m technologically saavy enough to know how to make a modem work and really all I needed was for the company to do their magic thing. Of course (with good reason) the customer service people generally assume that all callers have the lowest level of ability – which is probably usually a good assumption. But I was enraged by the rote and step by step process. So enraged that the original customer service agent actually stopped working with me and transferred me to someone else. I mean, like, my voice was shaking and I probably had some steam exiting my ears or something equally absurd. Once the call was over, I laid down on the couch and WEPT about what a bad person I was for being such a bitch to the customer service agent. It was bad.

But not as bad as yesterday. Because unlike the faceless call center employee, this transgression came at work. 

I feel like I need to provide some context. Namely, the interaction occured with CrazyEyes, my office-mate, with whom I have a love/hate relationship. CrazyEyes coordinates the youth advocacy program and she is definitely good at what she does. She is also a funny, goofy person. AND she communicates and works in ways so vastly different from me that her best practices are, in fact, my kryptonite and vice versa. Arguably, we are good at our respective positions because we are so different. But it can make working together really fucking difficult.

So, CrazyEyes has a big event coming up in two weeks (it is, in fact, two days before my scheduled egg retrieval. Talk about stressful) which the entire staff is supporting. I am doing day of registration and logistics, because I am good at that shit. I have been asking for certain information for a while and not getting it, which has been frustrating. But I have done okay with the information procured from my other colleagues.

CrazyEyes is leaving her position. In fact, her last day is the day after the big event. She is moving to Canada to get married (surprisingly, a heterosexual union) to her Canadian fiancee. CrazyEyes has been in the LDR for the last year and has done a lot of travelling to Canada during that time (sometimes I’m unclear how she does so with her vacation time but . . .none of my business.) last week, CrazyEyes went to Canada for the week. The WHOLE week. 

Now, *I* would not go on vacation for a week if my gigantic event was three weeks away. I also wouldn’t let anyone I supervise do that but . . .whatever. Point being, a lot of stuff got put on hold because she wasn’t around. It made life hard and anxious. Yesterday was her first day back and I was chomping at the bit to get the information I needed.

It was poor timing for me to ask about things while we were waiting for our coffee at SBux. It was poor judgement for me to continue asking her questions after she’d said, “Ugh I just got back. I’ll get it to you when I get it to you.” It was REALLY bad judgement of me to, at some point, say “Sorry you’re stressed out. Maybe you shouldn’t have gone on a week long vacation right before a huge event.”

She reacted in the defensive way I have come to expect, and retaliated in kind – finally saying that she didn’t owe me or anyone else anything and that she could leave her job tomorrow if she wanted to. I ended things before they got really ugly and said I needed to take a walk. 

Which is when she yelled, “yeah. think about all your bad decisions on your WALK!” 

I swear I felt the beast rise up inside of my chest and I was about a millisecond from unleashing some serious verbal wrath when I saw my colleagues out of the corner of my eye and thought better of it. Instead I walked away.

Today we met with our executive director to talk things over. Mostly, I wanted to figure out how to get through the next two weeks. CrazyEyes wanted to rehash all of the ways I hurt her feels (but none of her own bad behaviors.) Knowing that I screwed up, I apologized and said I’d like to move forward. Specifically, I apologized for the specific shitty things I said.

CrazyEyes wanted to not only clarify all of the shitty things I did yesterday, but also the backlog of things I have ever done. Luckily, our ED was having none of this nonsense and, eventually, we were able to work through and get a plan in place. CrazyEyes made sure to get in lots of little digs during her talking times. She also was able to non apologize multiple times.

Please, if you are in a conversation with someone who you’ve had a bad interaction with, either ACTUALLY apologize (ex: I’m sorry I said you were a douchebag) or DON’T apologize (ex: You are still a douchebag.) The non-apology is the most infuriating thing on earth (ex: I’m sorry you’re feelings got hurt when I called you a douchebag.) And fuck your intent, ok? Cause (with some exceptions) no one INTENDS to be a selfish asshole. But we are, all the time. Because that is part of the fun game called human interaction.

So . . .basically: Birth control pills make me a ragey asshole but I still want *some* points because I could have been a full scale harpy you guys, and I wasn’t.

Also, please send many prayers that I will be able to continue sharing an office space with this woman for the next two weeks while also injecting myself twice daily with massive amounts of hormones. (shit.)

The upside to all of this is that I have decided that for Lent, I am giving up needing to be right. 

Let’s get real, its not gonna be an easy one. But what I realized during this interaction was that even though CrazyEyes is totally unable to hear me, respect me, or apologize to me as a human being – I still have to show up as the human being I want to be. I want to apologize and be accountable regardless of whether she is going to smugly smile and not at all engage in the same process.

Clearly I’m really doing well on this. Good thing I don’t have to actually start until tomorrow.

Which reminds me: Happy Mardi Gras/Fat Tuesday/Shrove Tuesday! Eat a donut, pancake, packzi, fashnacht or other pre-lenten pastry!

 

C’est fini!

Little’a’this

Here are some things happening in my life:

 

1. Tonight at 9pm I take my LAST birth control pill! (well, until April when I’ll probably have to take them again to regulate my cycle before the FET. But, whatever. Today I think only of my impending freedom!)
2.  I made this alteration to my desk to make it into a standing desk. You can find it here if you too are interested! I am hoping it will significantly help with my sciatic pain and force me to take breaks instead of sitting and staring at a screen for 8 or 10 or 12 hours at a time. 
3. I did not get the job in Oregon. I had my (fucking difficult!) 15 minute interview last Wednesday and learned that they had received 95 applications, and were doing 25 of these short phone interviews, with the goal of selecting 10 candidates for a second round interview. On Friday evening, I got an e-mail letting me know I wasn’t one of the 10 selected to move on. Rejection stings no matter what, but ultimately, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. La has a bunch of apps out for tenure track positions and really, its her turn to work at a job where she is respected and appreciated and paid well. Plus, I am happy here – at my job, with my work, in my life – and so I don’t know that this job (while awesome) was the one worth dropping all of that for . . .
4. I start stims on Saturday . . .my mother-in-law will be staying at our house this weekend, as will nephew Liam. So, it’ll be a house full of shot supporting fun!

The end.