just another morning in spring

So it's been weeks since I worked a full 5 days in a row. Weeks, I tell you. There's no school today and it smelled like spring when I opened the front door to let the cats in. I've given up on cutting out coffee and so I am here in the sun with a totally indulgent cup of 2/3 coffee, 1/3 heavy cream. And did I mention the sun? And the lack of school today?

I woke up and walked down here to pick up my milk first thing, because I have been slack this week and didn't pick up on Wednesday, which is my usual pick up day. The whole milk deal is a little shady, which I kind of love. You cannot buy or sell unpasteurized milk in Virginia, so people get around it by purchasing a share in a cow, so the milk is technically theirs and they consume it at their own risk. I do sometimes wonder what part of my cow I own - the tail? The cute nose? Anyway, I'm not one of those Raw Milk Will Save the World people, but I'm pretty happy to have local milk and I'm always after food that's had less shit done to it. And it is good - the real test for what to buy and eat in my mind. Local and organic and unprocessed are fab and all, but really, I'm into food that tastes good. Which this milk does. The poorly lit warehouse and the old soda refrigerators and the sneaky hidden key are all pure entertainment for me - the real deal is that I like this milk better. Now if only I could ride my bike down to the IX to get it....

Yes, it's true. I do not know how to ride a bike. I thought this wasn't news here on teh internets, but the injector has only recently discovered my lack of biking prowess and is threatening to come come south and remedy the problem. Others have tried - valiantly - before, but with no luck. (somewhat embarassing pics here)I'm not so good at the whole practicing thing, you see, and I think that's probably key. Anyway - I do want to know how. It fits in well with everything else about my "Lifestyle." But falling is so scary!

Moving on to other things I cannot do yet - let's talk about ttc, shall we? (That' trying to conceive for those of you just joining us here in Starr Hill.) Here's the lowdown from the RE's visit this week: I will be doing an unmedicated, monitored, home insemed cycle this month. Woo and hoo for the home insems! Go DIY AI go! There's several things going on here so I'll try to be all linear and shit so you can get the full picture and the you can weigh in as you see fit.

From the information gathered during my monitored cycle in January, the RE thinks that I had 2 problems: old Polly and low progesterone. Now we'll all bow our heads a minute to Polly and then move on because that particular problem is gone. Woo! So then the issue becomes the prog. Now, I knew from blood-work with my nurse practitioner that my progesterone was low back last summer and she put me on prometrium (by mouth - whew) for it, but her protocol for the dosage was very different from my RE's protocol and I don't wonder (or rather I do wonder) if hers was not so hot. See, the half-life of prometrium is 12 hours and my NP only had me take it once a day, so I'd imagine the level could float around more than would be ideal. The RE has folks take it 3 times a day, which know knowing the half-life of it (thank you Obsessors) makes far more sense.

Anyway. My RE deals with low prog in one of 2 ways: dose with prometrium or take...... clomid. His thought process is this: The corpus luteum is what produces progesterone after ovulation, so if there is a problem with progesterone, perhaps tweaking the follicle that will become the corpus luteum will make for better progesterone production. Plus the "bonus" of more follicles - i.e. more "targets" for the sperm to hit. He very, very slowly and seriously did the math for me on how the chance of multiples goes up in this scenario and listened patiently when I said in no uncertain terms that I was scared shitless of the mood swings I hear can come with clomid and said femara was a fine choice when I asked about using that instead. The man's a dream. And he delicately pointed out that, in his view, time is not an issue. I'm young and healthy, as they kept telling me before my surgery. All that said, I am going with no meds for this cycle other than a prometrium supplement. Because I like to ramp it up slowly.

As for the home insem part - well, there's some bureaucracy involved here. In the past, sperm that needs washing for an IUI would get sent to Richmond, washed and sent back. But my sperm don't roll like that because they've been Bio-Tranzed. The shipping method my donors (Remember them? You can't beat them with a stick.) and I are using, bio-tranz, only keeps those kids alive for 24 hours. Not enough time to get from the West Coast to Richmond and then here. They'd be dead. Now, the University has been promising my RE a machine for washing sperm here for sometime now. They said October 2007 at the latest, he told me. Then we both looked at the calendar and sighed. Any day now, they keep telling him. He sighed again. So if there's a machine here, I'll wash those prostaglandins right out of my sperm and do an IUI. But I'm not going to count on that, so we'll just all plan on one very last home insem. What do you say?

There's a mess of us cycling together this time, which has to be worth something. There's me, the injector's best girl KK, Mrs. B, Chips, Tiff, Katie who has no blog (ahem) from FF.... damn. I though there were more of us. Anybody else? Anybody?

almost, as the kids say

Today is a day for remembering, for thinking about loss, for holding hands and sitting with grief. A day for a nod and a bit of a smile to the babies we don't have. Now, as usual, I'm a smidge late, and I can't claim to have suffered from much loss - I've got no dead babies hovering around me, flickering with Might Have Beens. I have only some mourning for the tries that came to nothing, that neither divided nor implanted nor came forth in anyway. But I bow with all compassion to those of you who know more loss than me. I hold your hands and your hearts in mine and I'll sit with you, as I know you'd sit with me.

Cali put out the call and the chorus of the IVP answered with the resounding sound of - well, of hope, if you get right down to it. Here we all are in this ugly fucking boat that's trimmed with Almost and Loss and Might Have Been. But this boat floats on hope and, god damn, the company is good.




It's hard for me to write too much about loss today. Things started out well with coffee being delivered to school and then Sophie and a friend went skateboarding this afternoon, and I heard them through the open front door, laughing that way young girls do. It's warm enough I let my kids at school go outside with their jackets undone. I saw the mountains from the playground. The crocus are up in my neighbor's yard, the all-important sun is out and we are turning the corner to Spring. I feel it.

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I ’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

From my girl Emily, of course.

more, more, more

Ok, so let's make a deal. I'll post more, you won't leave. Deal? Let's spit and shake on it. My grandpa used to actually spit on his hands before he lifted something heavy.

HD had a post recently about writing and doing it more and how she should. And how reading good things makes her

simultaneously like a brilliant writer and someone who attempts to describe magnificent events with words like “nice” and “um, nicer.”

As an aside can we just give it up for her, because that is fucking brilliant. Funny and true. And yes. I read all the time, anything I can get my hands on - good, bad, trashy, fiction, non-fiction, newspapers, magazines, signs. There must be a job somewhere for a Reader. That would be my ideal job, reading all the time. And snacking. Perfect. That was a digression. Anyway, reading good things makes me want to write, but also makes me want to run screaming, because what could even come close to some of the beautiful things that have already been written.

Anyway. I want to write more. Here. Not for any reason (I've no book ambitions, like other folks, who *should* have books, because then I can stay up late reading something good) just because I like to. November was harder and more fun than I expected, and it seems my intrinsic motivation is not so good, so I'll impose some sort of guidelines and some punishments if I fail. Punishments like public humiliation.

So I resolve to write 3 posts a week - kind of like my own personal NoBloWooHa. LB and Cali are nominated to hold me to it, as one lives close enough to kick my ass and the other will hustle up here to take one of my kidneys if I fuck up (and I'll still probably give her dinner). I'll be counting on protection from the rest of y'all if they come after me together.

Anything y'all want to hear about? More food posts, I promise. Fabulous details of having non-sexual objects up my hooha, I promise. Cat pictures, anecdotes about Sophie's tweener angst and greatness, love letters to Virginia - everything you've come to expect. I promise.

Meanwhile, good things and bad things: Share the love - here and here. It's the IVP all call - look up and you'll see our version of the bat signal. Yes, that's a vulva in the sky. Jenny and Ezra have ridden a rough road and have their tiny girl home with them now and Kim miscarried her long-time-coming boy on Saturday. At 11 fucking weeks. Fine, good things and hard and shitty things. Seems like I've written this post before.

I'm off the the RE tomorrow. Woo. CD3 blood work and u/s. So, yes, that was a stupid waste of a last ditch DIY cycle. But on the bright side, I had a nice glass of scotch with my weekly dose of the L-word.