Slacking

Clearly we've been slacking at the Village - well, we haven't been able to slack in real life. So, unfortunately, we've had to slack in blogland.

Not much to report here. E's job is still crap. I'm finally settling into mine, which means busy BUSY! We did have a very nice long weekend. We spent some time wine tasting in the Traverse area for a bachelorette party. We then spent the remaining day and a half at my mom's house at the lake. E's dad joined us as did my sister and her kids. It's nice to get in touch with family.

This week is short, and we're feeling the pinch. E's brother, sister-in-law, niece, and dad are coming Friday and with a few nighttime obligations, readying the house has been a bit stressful. They are just going to have to see how messy we really are! (Sorry guys!)

Other than that, we're staying alive. We miss reading everyone- I'm really looking forward to getting caught up next week. Oh, that reminds me, E is 30 on Monday!!! Feel free to drop by and drop her a happy b-day!

MIA

Well I heard you all were notified that I was out of reach for my girl for a week. This doesn't just mean she couldn't reach out and touch me she could hardly catch me on the phone. I would estimate that I worked 110 hours in 7 days. That is 6 days with more than 12 hours. The week is a crazy one but it is the only time we have to do anything like it for work.

The week went well. The foundation raised lots of money and the attendees had a great time. I had some run-ins with board members and some are even calling for me to be fired. This is really hard to take after a week of so much work. So, I am home safely but still recovering from the week. Thanks for supporting my girl while I was gone. Co-dependancy can really bite you in the butt sometimes but most the time we just love being together.

I'm afraid the rate of posts may slow down as we have a jam packed summer and are still on a break from baby making. Now that Sara is working she will likely have less time during the day to write updates as well. We will certainly keep on posting, it just may be a bit more spiratic due to our schedules!

Have a great Memorial Day!

7 down, 1 to go

E comes home tomorrow. Yahoo!! At that point, we will also be able to fix the screwy widget that says we will be testing in a year. Please disregard for the time being; E's the official administrator for the site and has not been keeping up on her duties. (She's totally forgiven. I think she's probably worked over 100 hours a week, and I'm not exaggerating.)

I've had a nice weekend so far. Last night, I watched E's softball team lose pretty badly. They were on a winning streak - I dare say last night's opponents were in the wrong league. After the game, we went to the sponsoring bar and I had a few beers and made some plans for tonight, which I needed: it's nice to have something to look forward to. This morning, I completely indulged in a surprise from E. She purchased (including a tip) a spa treatment as a "congrats on your first week". I had a mud treatment (never had one before, and my skin is silky smooth!) followed by a massage... aaaahhhhhhhhhh.......... Since then, I've been to the farmer's market in preparation for feeding two again (I can't wait!), and G and I went to the dog park so that she could take a nice swim.

I was particularly worried about not having anything to do this weekend. Between the spa and some friends from the team (who we know through my grad program), I've been busy busy and able to keep my mind of E's absence.

Nice weekend!

Doing Fine

Not too much to report... I've survived the first few days of AF, and I am also happy to report that E's week away is more than 50% over. Work is going ok too... and, we're working on getting a new deck this month. We've got a friend re-building, so we're looking forward to using it this summer. That brings me to my next point, E and I are taking June off, and may be off baby for the summer... we'll see.

back tomorrow!

Still Negative

The HPT is still negative. Alas. Expecting AF any day now.

In other news, I started my new job today. The morning, I spent with HR. The afternoon, on the phone with IT. So, the most productive thing I accomplished was setting up my voicemail, but it was a good day nonetheless.

E is in Atlanta through Sunday. I bumped my start date up a week to coincide with her being gone as I historically don't do well the week of this conference. (2-3 days w/o my wife is my max. Call me a baby, codependent - I don't care. I married her because I like being with her!) I figured that having something basically all-consuming, such as starting a new job, would be a good distraction from her absence. Getting the dog taken care of all by myself while also setting a new routine might be a challenge, but I'm 20% done already! (I have my MBA, I have to use percentages in order to make good use of my graduate degree.)

Speaking of said dog, the barking must cease. We're off for another walk.

7 Ducklings

We had quite the surprise yesterday afternoon. Sitting on our deck (which is currently under major construction, so we were crowded with the grill into one 4x4 area, not important to the story, but true nonetheless). We heard commotion in our landscaping neighbor's (LN) yard. Max, the old golden retriever was barking, and there was incessant duck quacking. E and I decided that LN had disturbed a duck nest while repairing his siding.

A few moments later, LN yelled "Max, no! Leave that duck alone!" and the duck flew into the yard adjacent ours, where Family Without Social Graces (FWSG) lives. They may be a topic of a future post... Anyways, we were keeping our eye on her while Gladys went to the other side of the yard in search of some water. E went to help her (i.e. turn on the hose) and then was shocked as 7 little chirping ducklings were about 4 feet from her. She grabbed Gladys just before she saw them. Perhaps I hsould mention that we have a 6' privacy fence on top of a 5' chain link fence surrounding our yard. No idea how they got in! (Although, plenty of bunnies find their way in as well, so....)

Those poor babies were separated from their mother who was quacking up a storm calling to her ducklings. They were trying to follow her sound, but were perplexed by how to get back out of the yard. They found a hole in the fence in another corner, but only two of the seven went through. The other five stayed in our yard. So, as E held Gladys, I corralled them back to the corner and basically scared the crap out of them, while they clamored to escape through the fence.

Since the five ducklings landed in their window well, the neighbors in the yellow house came outside as well. Good thing too! They found the other two ducklings in the street. 30+ minutes after it all began, the quacking died down as the mama led her ducklings back to the lake. (We live about 4 blocks from it.) AND we had an impromptu neighborhood block party.

I love happy endings.

11 DPO

Negative test this morning. No surprise there. We're really not expecting success this month - which has made for a very easy TWW.

Today, we are headed out of town to take Gladys hiking with us. E ships out tomorrow for a week, so we have to get in some quality time today.

I was a lush in my former life

It's true... E and I enjoy the adult beverage more than "on occasion"... especially in the summertime. As such, TTC - and the TWW in particular, would feel even more torturous if I wasn't able to, at least, feel like I was joining in the fun around me.

For those of you interested, here is our no-fail recipe:

3 limes (we use the biggest we can find, so if you have small ones, you may want to double)
1/2 c. sugar
1 package fresh mint (~.75 oz)
3/4 bottle soda water (~24 oz)

Put the mint at the bottom of the pitcher and crush w/ wooden spoon. Juice limes into pitcher. Add sugar & stir. Add soda just before serving. Pour over ice. Enjoy. (For those of you who need your booze, use 1/2 bottle soda & one cup of clear rum. For those of you looking to cut calories, use S.plenda instead of sugar.) Makes 4-6 servings.

I can't think of a title for today's post

We're surviving the TWW just fine... Strangely, it's kind of been pretty easy b/c I don't think we have too much hope this time around (we're not hopeless or anything... it's just that expectations aren't running super-high.)

My temp has risen again and is seemingly staying elevated, although, it's not as high as it has been in recent months. Not sure why that is. Not sure why any of it is, really. So, we're sticking with believing that I ovulated on CD 13, which would be a first in my lifetime. BFD (Before Fertility Drugs), I ovulated around CD19, if at all, so.... anyways, we'll test at the end of this upcoming weekend unless AF makes an appearance before then.

We've been enjoying our TWW, actually. Not so much because it's the TWW, but because we've been quite busy this week. E's preparing for her annual conference and I've been trying to get all my ducks in a row before starting my new job next week. We also had a social-packed weekend: E's softball game (I'm the newly appointed O-fficial scorekeeper!) on Friday night, and then a small Cinco de Mayo dinner party. Yesterday we dragged a bit, but we did manage to send gifts to those whose weddings we cannot attend as well as fit in a long game of tennis. We finished off the weekend w/ a large pitcher of non-alcoholic mojitos ( YUMMY!!) and a good game of dominoes. Ahhh, the weekend.

The shady adventures of the reproductive system

Are we 3dop today? Who knows. We definitely are CD15 and 2dphmdiyi (that is 2 days past hail mary do it yourself insem).

Here is the low-down dirty on the dirty. Yesterday the E2 dropped to 74. Today the BBT had a severe drop to 97.06. What does this mean. Nobody knows. The NP is perplexed. Are we in a TWW...in some sense yes but in most forms of logic...not a chance.

THIS PROCESS IS SO SHADY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pass the non-alcoholic wine, please

I had a blood draw this morning. It seems my E2 is dropping. NP thinks it's dropping a bit fast but says if I ovulated, I did so a couple of days ago- as we suspected. We feel like this round is a bonus round, so it's ok that there is more uncertainty this time. (Of course I say that now, but in 10 days, we're going to be dying for a +hpt, regardless of the last minute entry into the race.)

In the meantime, we've found a decent non alcoholic red "wine", that isn't terribly sweet and sticky. Retailing for $3.99 a bottle, Inglenook's "cabernet" isn't too pricey either. Hon, pour me another?

Surprise DIY

We were supposed to be taking a month off due to aforementioned cyst... but yesterday, I just couldn't deny what I was feeling. It was a little sensation on my left side. It didn't last long, but as I sat there I thought, "did I just ovulate?" We hadn't been using OPKs, so we didn't really know what was going on, but still... hmmm...

I thought very little of it. Then, this morning, E took my temp. Sure enough: it spiked. Of course, we had also had a few drinks and E overslept so my temp was taken late... easy enough to explain away... I called the Dr.

I went in this afternoon, and my E2 is quite high... high enough that I'm either about to ovulate or that I just did (184)... seemingly not very helpful.. but on a month w/o drugs, and in a situation where I haven't ovulated without drugs in a long, LONG time... this is a very positive sign. With all of the IF, I've felt -as so many have - betrayed by my very own body. My body that is supposed to be able to make babies, hasn't worked yet. Not once. Now, though, it's showing some promise.

So, we promptly checked our last ICI out and did the deed at home. Tomorrow, I get another E2. If it's higher, we'll do an IUI. If it drops, we threw some swimmers at it, and we've officially begun the unplanned TWW.

We're not hanging a ton of hope on this month, and we're not looking to give up the drugs. I am happy, though, that my body might just work on its own. Maybe it's all the exercise. Maybe it's all the weight I've lost since grad school ended (35+). I don't know, but it's motivating to keep going, to feel like I might not be as defective as I feel. If my body works on it's own, then it will REALLY work with the help of modern medicine- and maybe it just needed some time to dry out.

Bring on the TWW.