Show and Tell

My show and tell this week is a little silly. I am letting you in on one of my minor addictions.

I am showing y’all my favorite NASCAR driver. I bet y’all did not know that I am a NASCAR fan. (Despite the fact I was born and raised in Northern Virginia.) Hubby and I followed NASCAR for years, and we always rooted for Jeff Burton.

We started watching NASCAR when we lived in Mississippi because we were homesick for Virginia. Several of the races are in Virginia. We wanted to choose a Virginia driver. (Did I mention we were homesick.) Jeff Burton is from South Boston, Virginia. Perfect. And I he was doing all right in the points that year (1994). This year, Jeff Burton is kicking ass, at least in the points standings. He could really use another win, but so could everyone else. Jeff B. does well at Dover, so he could get a win this week.

What is really fun about it now is that my parents are into it. They read St Dale by Sharyn McCrumb, and they have been hooked ever since. We even took them to a race at Martinsville. Martinsville is our favorite track, so it was a great day.

Whe Hubby's Away...

Hubby goes and visits his mother this weekend, and frankly, I could not be happier for the break. I have a full weekend doing all the things he does not want to do with me. I plan on taking dogs to play group (or “Yappy Hour” as the dog park calls it.) I have a hair appointment this morning as well. This afternoon I plan on going to the Lebanese festival for lunch. I may go by Lowes and pick up some paint. This evening I may go see a movie, either by myself or with a friend. We will see what works out. I may also clean. The house is a mess, and I do better if the house is clean.

Sunday I plan on doing my grocery shopping and going to meeting. I may finish painting the red room yellow while listening to the NASCAR race. Hopefully Hubby will not mind moving furniture when he gets back. I can let that go for right now, though.

Hubby has been grumpy the past day or so. His mother has a lot of health problems and she is not doing well right now. I think it is hard for Hubby to see that because he cannot do anything about it. Even if we were still in Tappahannock, we would not be able to do anything. I hope he will feel better after the visit I do not know what to tell him. His mother has to live her life, and she is not going to change easily. I understand that, and I get to listen to all of her health problems. She talks about her health issues more freely with me than with Wade. I think it has something to do with me being a nurse.

In other news,
I finally made an appointment with an IF MD. I see him on June 18. Hopefully we can talk DI and maybe attempt a cycle during the next few months. I also have a GYN appointment next week. And I made an eye appointment. Gotta take care of my vision.

I had to declare my specialties at work. I decided to do eyes, GYN, and general. I love doing eyes because it is so different. There is a lot going on under the anatomy. I also feel pulled to GYN surgery. I know this puts me right in the middle of IF/pg loss, but I really feel drawn to it. Fortunately we just do GYN. OB has a separate OR on the L and D floor. So just GYN surgery: hysteroscopies, D&Cs, ablations, hysterectomies (laparoscopic and open, vaginal and abdominal), exploratory laps, and any other procedure dealing with the girly parts. I am a little girly myself, so I think it works.

(And how cool is it that my blog was mentioned on Stirrup Queens. I feel so special, and all the comments are wonderful!)

Feeling it

I have really been feeling the infertility thing lately. After the baby at meeting on Sunday, I went to a baseball game with friends. Our friends brought along their 11 month old. Of course, they spent a little time talking about how much he is walking and what his first words were. Yet another reminder that I am not part of the mommy club.

It did not help that I have a hard time relating to them right now anyway. I do not have a lot in common with this couple. Hubby has more in common with them than I do. Hubby met the wife through his last job. Hubby and the wife are both lawyers. The husband is planning on going to law school and is currently working as a paralegal. It is worlds away from what I do, and who I am. I am not a mommy and I am not a lawyer. I work in the OR as an RN. I enjoy what I do, but I understand that not everyone wants to hear about the details from the surgery I circulated yesterday.

The wife is really nice, and I think really wants to make friends with me, but I was not in the mood to be very accommodating. I smiled, I was polite, and I enjoyed the game. Hubby and the wife talked shop. I think she had a good time, but I was really going because Hubby wanted to go. It was a beautiful day for a game, and we had seats right behind home plate. It was very nice to sit outside and enjoy the weather.

Show and Tell

This is a chicken I picked up on vacation a couple of years ago. We were vacationing in Tuscon, AZ, and we took a day trip to Tombstone. I found this chicken in one of the gift shops up there. They had a whole lot of these, in different shapes and sizes. Apparently, they are made by the local Navajo Indian tribe. I thought that was really neat. Something about the chicken just spoke to me. Looking at this little chicken reminds me of the great time we had in Arizona. And now I have a small piece of Navajo art in Virginia.

I have only recently gotten into chickens. I am not sure why. Chickens strike me as cute and funny for some reason. They are not the brightest animals in the barn, but that is all right. I am a few cards shy of a whole deck, myself.
I try to not think too much about it and just enjoy the chickens for what they are.

Meeting Baby

Sunday meeting is usually pretty restful. Quaker meetings are usually silent, and the comments people are moved to make are thought provoking. For me, none of that happened this week because there was an infant at meeting today. The child did what any infant would do and babbled and silently played the whole time. It brought back everything I was trying to avoid, and reminded me of what I do not have. It was painful. I could feel myself tensing up and I had to remind myself to relax. Once or twice during the meeting I just wanted to leave. But the time during meeting is my personal time, and I did not want to leave, so I stuck it out.

As I was sitting, I realized that I am not without hope. Hubby and I are likely to try DIUI, probably within the next six months. My time will come, I hope. Though the child I bear will not be of Hubby's line. That made me sad. It also reminded me I need to make a GYN appointment this week for my yearly exam. Living in a new area, and I have to find new docs. Gotta start somewhere.

Had to share my feelings...

Show and Tell coming soon...

Settling in

Not much to say right now. Work is going fine. I have moved on to my neuro rotation now. I find I miss the pathophysiology I saw with general, eyes, and GYN. Eventually I will be back there, I think. I have about a month left of my orientation. I think it will be nice to be able to settle into a specialty and get to know the surgeons and procedures.

The move went smoothly and we are settling into the new house well. I want to paint a room and rearrange some furniture this weekend. I think Hubby may be willing to help me. We have this horribly red room. The red is almost orange, and the color is just awful. I just want to put up a primer coat of paint so that we can use it. Eventually I will get around to painting the room a color I like, but I have to get rid of that red first.

Dogs are doing well. Gertrude and I have had one obedience class. I think it went well. She was a lot better behaved than many of the other dog there. I think we do a lot of training with our dogs, in general. Gertrude was also older than many of the other dogs, so she was a lot calmer. I think the class will be good for both Gertrude and I. Oscar may benefit, as well because he is getting some training, too.

Show and Tell

I feel like I do not know what bring to Show and Tell, so I am posting some pictures of my current family.

I have two big dogs, and both have hearts that are just as big as they are. I got my first Dane the year I entered nursing school. Gertrude is in the first picture. She takes herself very seriously. She almost does not think she is a dog. I think it must be like pet, like owner. I have a tendency to take myself too seriously, too. She is my dog, and my baby. She is also the smaller of the two. I love her to pieces.

The picture on the bottom shows both my boys. Hubby was trying to sleep, and Oscar wanted to sleep on the same spot on the couch. Oscar does think he is a lap dog and is constantly trying to get in your lap. He is not at all discouraged by the fact he does not fit. Oscar loves everyone. He thinks everyone wants to come and see him and fuss over him. It does not help that many people want to do just that. Oscar is still intact, but he is the biggest teddy bear you will come across. No major problems with aggression at all. I think Hubby enjoys having another set of balls around the house, so we never got him neutered.

Hubby and I have been married for about 12 years now. We dated for four years before we married, so we have known each other a long time. Hubby helps keep me sane. I tend toward crazy sometimes, and Hubby keeps me in line. We support each other. I supported Hubby when he went to law school, he supported me when I did nursing school. I love the fact that we respect each other's individuality. We are married, but we are still our own person within the marriage. I think that is pretty special.

New house, mixed feelings

We have finally moved. We moved over Mother’s day weekend, so I got to miss all of that mommy stuff. I finally unpacked my china this past weekend. It felt really good. The sink in the new house has a garbage disposal. It has been years since I had a garbage disposal. I love it! There are a couple of problems with the new house, though. The house does not have a fence, and the colors on the interior of the house are too dark. I like the colors, but the tones are too dark for my taste. We also have this horridly red room. This red is just terrible. It is almost orange. I may have to paint over it really soon. (At least a primer coat.) Until I can paint it, I think I am trying to avoid it the best I can. Hubby is working on the fence, He finally called for an estimate today, and hopefully someone will come out to give us an estimate by the end of the week.

I feel really disconnected from infertility stuff lately. I think it is because we are not pursuing anything right now. I have been reading some other IF blogs, and many of them deal with IVF. I do not think we are going to do IVF, so I have a hard time relating to that. The child-free blogs I sort of identify with because we do not have children, and there is not really a possibility of children right now. We are not doing donor eggs, and the donor sperm blogs are not easy to find. (I know they are out there, but I have not come across many of them.)

I am starting to feel like I am being left behind. I am thirty-four and our family consists of Hubby, me, our two Danes, and two cats. I feel like the stereo typical infertile who takes out all the mothering desires on our animals. Our Danes are our babies right now. That is all I have to mother. I am even taking one of our Danes to an obedience class this week. I want to do agility with her and we need to brush up on our obedience training. I think it is good to have extracurricular activities.

I am tired of waiting. That seems to be all I can do with the IF stuff right now. I am tired of feeling like I am the only married woman without children. I am tired of always getting my period and never being pregnant. I am tired of other people telling me about their children, and all I have to talk about is my dogs. Somehow it is not the same.

I wanted to have children by now. As things stand now, with the best case scenario, I will be a new mother when I am thirty five or thirty six. That is a decade after when I expected to be a mother. It is more difficult to get pregnant the older you get. After thirty five, fertility declines sharply. After 35, you end up in the high risk pregnancy category simply because of age. I feel like I missed my prime fertility years because I was always waiting for something else to happen, or waiting for it to happen naturally. Now I have to wait until the time is right to pursue fertility treatment. (When I think about all the money I wasted on birth control pills…)
Until someday comes, I distract myself the best I can.

Moving On

I am taking some time in the calm before the storm. I cannot believe we will actually be moving next weekend. We started packing today and it started to feel real to me. I get to do a walk through the new house on Monday. I am very excited. I plan on measuring for a fridge while I am there. Hubby promised to replace the fridge I gave up from the Tappahannock house. We close on Wednesday, as far as we know. I think we may end up taking a few loads of more fragile things over on Thursday and Friday. The movers come Saturday at 8 AM. It will be nice not to have to do any of the manual labor on this move.

Hubby surprised me this weekend. Apparently, he mentioned our infertility situation to his dad. Hubby said his dad seemed excited about the possibility of our child, no matter the source. Hubby said his dad may be willing to help us financially, if we need it. I think it made Hubby feel better about our options for starting a family. Right now, Hubby is trying to figure out how much time and energy he wants to put into starting a family. He knows about IVF with ICSI, but he is not sure if he wants to put that much time and energy and money into starting a family. It is also not a sure thing. I think the only reason we would try IVF is if he decides that having his own child is very important to him. He has no problems with adoption, but he deals with social services every day with his job. He says he does not want to deal with them on his off time, too. I am willing to go along with that. I think he knows more about that process than I do. He does guardian ad lidem cases at work. Hubby is also looking at donor insemination. He says he is open to adoption, where the child is not his DNA, so he feels like there should not be an issue with donor insemination for the same reasons. I sort of get the feeling he is still wrestling with the idea. I am trying to give him the space he needs to deal with all of this. We also have a lot of other things going, so it is easy for me not to pester him all the time.

There is hope out there for me. Things seem to be brighter every day.

Musings....

I really do not know what to say this week, so here are a few random thoughts… I apologize for the disjointed composition.

I just finished cleaning my house, and I have to say that I really like my Dyson Vacuum. We have a lot of animals, and this vacuum gets up a whole lot of pet hair. I love the fact that it is easy to use. The user manual shows you how to take the whole thing apart and clean it. Very cool. A vacuum that actually works.

Scrubbing ortho cases is very different than anything I have done before. You have to work differently and think differently. I am trying to get it, because I have to know it, but I think I am a general girl at heart, and miss general surgery. Then there are the power tools. I do not know what to think about that.

I started AF today. Just spotting right now, but I know the full flow is on its way. I may start the Midol tonight so that hopefully I can stay on top of the cramps. I just have a day or two of really bad cramping at the start of the period, but that is all. I did not get as depressed as I usually do around my period. I am not sure why. Maybe it is the fact that we are moving in a week, and that is more on my mind than my fertility, or lack thereof.

I just realized we are moving in a week. I think this means we need to start packing. I saved boxes from when we moved from Tappahannock, but I am afraid we may need more. I guess we will see. We hired movers this time. So all we have to do is pack everything, and they will do the rest. That should be really nice. I may take the dogs to playgroup in the morning so that the movers can get started, at least, without big dogs getting in the way. I am really excited to finally settle.

I realized this week that I love living in the mountains. I love looking up and seeing mountains around me. I think it makes me feel safe. I love the area we are living in. There is stuff to do, things to get involved in. I love it. I am happier out here than I ever was in Tappahannock. It feels good.