Weekend roundup

I know it is Monday, but I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving (at least those of you in the US). We spent a nice weekend with my dad. Here are a few highlights/thoughts from my weekend and getting back.

I love Black Friday shopping. I know it is psycho, but I love it. My sisters and I left at 4 for Walmart. I ended leaving them there to head to Best Buy b/c Walmart was too crazy, no one knew what was going on and where the line was for electronics. Some people knew they were not in line but planned to rush the counter anyway at 5am. There was something in particular that I wanted and both Walmart and BB had a good deal. So I was able to buy it at BB with no hassle!

There is one woman at Walmart who is emblematic of why Black Friday is so insane. While I was eager to head to the stores early in the morning, I was willing to wait my place in line and treat other people with respect. As I was walking back down the parking lot to my car, I saw the woman in the car next to mine load up her trunk from the shopping cart. Then she left the cart directly behind my car! Not only did she not think to put the cart back in the corral area, she wasn't even considerate enough to put it outside the path of my car.

On the way down there, we drove one of my nieces, who is 7. She felt special b/c she got to ride with us and it was fun. I did try to teach her to crochet on the trip down, but she was not getting the hang of it. I hope I have more time to give her another lesson.

Another rude person story. We forgot to mail our credit card bill on time, so we decided that paying to mail it overnight would be better than paying the late fees. The post office was already closed when we got there so we stood in line to use the automated machine. One woman had a stack of Christmas cards to mail. Not a problem, I thought, she could buy a book of stamps and then put them on the envelopes while the next person used the machine. Except she was sending them international and we waited while she individually punched out postage for about 30 letters. At one point, the machine kicked her off, having reached a limit. She just started again without thinking of the line of people behind her.

My RE's office is in a center for women's health. Now I know women's health is a wide area and there are lots of reasons women could go there. But why does their postcard have to include a big picture of a pregnant woman?

We postponed IUI this cycle b/c ovulation would have coincided with our trip to a different city over Thanksgiving break. So of course, what do we see on almost every billboard in this city? Ads for a fertility clinic. If we had known, maybe we could have arranged to have the IUI done there.

No title

Here is the dilemma with blogging. You start out because you want to write out your thoughts and work through some issues. You find a great community of similar minded people, or people experiencing a similar journey, and get a lot of support. That's been my experience so far (hugs to all my bloggy friends). It sounds great. It is great.

But there is always the tricky issue of how much to share. I want to be completely honest. This blog is many things, all of which require a great deal of openness and honesty. A way for me to express my feelings. A way to offer support to others going through this IF journey to know you are not alone. A way to get advice on what I should do. But I still have to wonder where to draw that line with sharing too much. It gets complicated now that I have a few people IRL reading this. And the added difficulty is that I am not on this journey alone. Sharing myself and my journey means I'm sharing someone else's too.

Not to mention that there are some things I don't even want to admit to myself. I don't even want to give this post a title for fear that I have name it.

My top five

Mrs. Gamgee asked which of my posts I was drawn to or might consider my top 5. Here are some that I really liked:

Throwing out the calendar
???
Achieving a goal (also my very first post)
Child-free
IRL

Creme de la creme

Thanks to all for your many words of encouragement to my last post. It means a lot that I have so many people supporting me. I know I'm not in this alone (well DH is also here supporting me, but that is different). Thanks.

Now I want to ask you for something else. I want to participate in Creme de la Creme and put my best post on the list. But I need your help figuring out what my best post is. So I want to ask my readers: what do you think is my best? Is there a particular post that drew you in and made you keep coming back?

If you don't know what Creme de la Creme is, you can find info here.

Down

I've been down these past few days. First my friend Ella had her beautiful baby a few days ago. I am so jealous. Ella is great and I'm happy for her, but it just reminds me of how long we've been at this so far. See, Ella and I met on ivillage before we even started TTC. I connected with her b/c we are both in academia and were trying to work out when to start trying with the academic calendar. We had both planned to start in one month and then threw caution the wind on the same weekend a month early. But from there are stories diverged, although neither has been easy. One of the things that made my niece's birth hard was the knowledge that if we had been successful our first month, we could have had a baby at the same time. That was how long we've been trying. And now, here is someone who started TTC the same time we did, who even had difficulty on the journey to pregnancy, and now she has her cute little baby. I feel like I've been lapped again.

Also, as the Christmas season is getting closer and decorations are going up (not in our house as I believe in giving Thanksgiving its due, but you can't escape Christmas in stores), I remember how optimistic I was last Christmas. We trade off spending Christmas with each other's parents, so last year I knew we would be spending this year at home b/c his parents live nearby. This will be our first Christmas as adults where we wake up in our own bed. And I was so sure that it would be our first Christmas with a baby. I thought everything would be different this year.

Last night I went to my church's women's council meeting for the first time. I should have known to avoid it when I'm feeling down, but a friend has been encouraging me to go for a while. But as she was introducing me to people, the first question everyone asked was how many kids I had, or if my kids went to the parish school.

Surprise

Last night, my family threw me a surprise party! DH and I went over to my ILs house for dinner. And my sister and her family were there hiding to surprise me! It was a great time with cake and presents. Most of all the surprise was fantastic and I've always wanted a surprise party.

This party was also a chance to see my MIL with my nieces and nephews again. More importantly for this post, my youngest nephew. I know that some people lavish their attention on a pet to make up for not being able to have a baby. Or lavish attention on nieces and nephews (my personal method). I'm starting to wonder if my MIL is thinking of my youngest nephew as the closest thing she may get to a grandchild.

See, DH is an only child. So if we don't have any kids, they don't have any grandkids. But my sister and her family live nearby all of us and we get together relatively often. The older nieces and nephew have had enough time with my mom to develop a close relationship with her. But not the youngest. He knows my ILs much better, just because he sees her more. And my MIL and FIL eat it up. Now they are even keeping a few small toys in their house for when he comes to visit.

Timing

It figures, right? Just as I was hoping there is a way AF would be a day or two late and thus let me do IUI right after Thanksgiving weekend, the witch shows up 2 days early! Which means I the earliest I would ovulate would be the day before Thanksgiving, when I'm supposed to be driving to another state, and the most likely day I would ovulate would be Thanksgiving itself, when my dr's office would be closed anyway.

So no clo.mid and no IUI for me this cycle. I'm still hoping there is a way I can get a good Christmas present in there.