All about me

Thanks to No Baby Ruth for tagging me!

1) What is your dream occupation?

This is a hard one. I don't know if I have a "dream" job. While I was in grad school and planning my wedding, I thought "if this whole PhD thing doesn't work out, I should be a wedding planner." Now my fantasy is to open a shop about my favorite things: cupcakes, coffee, and crochet. It would be part coffee house, part yarn store, and part bakery. But given that I am not the most outgoing person, I don't think retail is for me. I guess I will stick to research.

(2) What is the best dish that you can cook?

My signature dish is an apple pie. I also really like my lasagne. And I love making cupcakes.

(3) Have you ever been mentioned in the newspaper? What for?

In high school I had a starring role in a school play. More recently, I have been quoted a couple of times about research in my area.

(4) What’s the worst and/or most memorable job you’ve ever had?

I've not really had bad jobs, but a few memorable ones. I went to a prestigious college for undergrad and had a job opening the university president's mail. He had some very interesting mail. I also worked at an internet company way back when internet companies were still new. I won't say which one, but will give a hint that registered voters in California may be interested in my experience there.

(5) When you were a teenager, at what age did you envision yourself getting married? How old were you in reality when you got married?

I don't remember thinking of a specific age when I was that young. I do remember I went off to grad school the same year my younger sister graduated high school and started undergrad. She is Mormon and I remember asking her if she planned on going on a mission. She said she only would if she wasn't married by the time she graduated. I was shocked by that b/c here I was several years older and the thought that I may be married in the same time frame was not on my radar screen. But yet, 4 years later I was.

(6) What’s your most hated household chore? What’s your favorite?

I hate doing the dishes. I don't even like loading or unloading the dishwasher. I do like dusting and vacuuming is not so bad.

(7) What’s your earliest memory?

My older sister and I used to wake up really early in the morning, eat an entire bar of cream cheese, and then go back to bed like nothing happened. And my house was broken into when I was very young. My Big Bird piggy bank was stolen, but the dollar bill that was inside it was left behind because we lost the stopper.

Clueless

Remember my book club friend who can't stop talking about her baby? Well now she is pregnant and can't stop talking about that either. But now I realize how totally clueless she is. Another member of the book is also pregnant, expecting twins (through IVF). She was not there tonight, but came up in conversation in a way that made it seem like this first woman was also expecting twins. Her reply, "no, I like them one at a time." I would have been fine with that, but then she went on to reveal that her sister is struggling with infertility and would gladly take twins if she could. WTF? This woman who drives me crazy with her baby talk has an infertile sister? Does she have no clue what her sister is going through?

Ugh. I told my hubby as soon as I came home and he reminded me to think of her sister. Can you imagine what it is like to be her sister and hear about this all the time?

In other news, I'm worried about having enough meds for Thursday. I had a really busy day and forgot to order more and since my dose was increased, I am currently set to be half a vial short on Thursday. I'm not sure if they have one day shipping or not. Oops.

Update

I had my first monitoring appointment of this cycle. No follicles above 10 on either side. She did have some trouble finding one of my ovaries, so I'm not sure what that was about. My dosage is going up to 150 and I go back on Friday.

Farm visit

I've mentioned before that we joined a CSA this year. The farm from which we get our produce invited us all to visit this past Saturday. A neighboring farm also has a sorghum mill and invited us, so it made a nice day trip. We took our niece and nephew, ages 8 and 3 with us while their parents stayed behind and took the older children to various soccer tournaments. My nephew had never been to a farm before and has never seen many farm animals in person (or at least he can't remember ever seeing them). So he was quite excited to see the horses up close and cows from further away.

This is a Mennonite farm, so there was no electricity. We made sure the kids understood how the mill worked, from watching the horse drawn mill grind the cane and following the liquid through each step until we tasted sorghum on fresh biscuits at the end. They seemed to have fun. At the end while we were eating the biscuits, a young Mennonite woman was talking to me and then asked if these were my daughters. I smiled and said they were my niece and nephew. But inside I had two thoughts. First, I know my nephew has very curly hair, but he does not look feminine at all. Second, I wondered if this is how it would be once we had children, either by getting pregnant or adopting. My niece and nephew look like me to some extent since they are blood relatives. But they are mixed race so the resemblance is not obvious at first glance. I love my nieces and nephews immensely, but obviously they are not my children. But it seemed so natural to have them along and have others assume we are a family.

Today was also a long day. I was out by 7 to volunteer at a Habitat for Humanity build. Fun but very tiring. I'm going to bed early tomorrow.

CD2

Well, AF is here for sure. I had my baseline monitoring today and there is a small cyst, but not big enough to stop the cycle. My initial dose is doubling from the last cycle and my next appointment is on Monday.

Shopping therapy

There has been more spotting, some red, but no real flow. This is normal pre-AF stuff for me, so I am calling it done now.

We went for some shopping therapy today to make me feel better. I found some great outfits at AT Loft and some things that are different from what I normally wear, but look great. So I'm pretty excited to wear them. Now if only the weather would cooperate and realize it is no longer summer. We are expecting another week of 90 degrees and above.

Spotting

Well, spotting has started. So I'm thinking this is it for this this round. Going to order more meds. I'm OK I guess.