CD1

You know what happens when AF is missing for 99 days?

You forget to carry the necessary items for dealing with her. While you're at work.

To be honest, when I started spotting yesterday, I thought it was my ute playing tricks on me. I had "spotted" once or twice over the last 99 days or so, but nothing else would be there the next time I took a trip to the bathroom, so I assumed (and what does assuming do kids?) that it would be the same this time as well. Oh my, was I wrong.

It started when I arrived home to an empty house last night. Mr. Joe was working his second job at Marshall's (pronounced Mar- SHALL's as in "SHALL we dance?" Makes it sound fancy), and I was by myself and super hungry. I made a box of Rice-a-Roni and ate it. The whole thing. Immediately feeling horrified with myself for being so gluttonous, I ate some BBQ chips.

I know that makes no sense, I was RAVENOUS and crazy. It made sense in my fat kid head.

After my pig-out, I decided to watch Joannie Rochette's short program skate from the other night. Do you know who I'm talking about? She's the Canadian figure skater whose mother died suddenly on Sunday. I began to sob before she even started to skate. I had to stop this madness! To get out of this funk, I decided against the episode of 16 and Pregnant I had saved and watched Mantracker instead. Mantracker is a sort or game show where this guy, "The Mantracker", hunts down a team of two people each week. The team has to make it a couple of miles through the Canadian wilderness to a finish line in two days. It's a little lame, but Mr. Joe and I like it. In this particular episode, a brother and sister team had to make it through some stupid mountain range or something. I was UGLY CRYING at that point.

Let me catch you up on somethings at this point: My oldest brother passed away on 10/31/2009. He had cancer, and was 46 years old. I haven't really said much about it here because it is still way too raw to discuss. One day I will share more about him, but for now I just need you to know this one thing. . .

We never planned to go backpacking through the woods while some crazy Canadian man (on a horse!) chased after us. NOT ONCE did we ever discuss it. For some reason though, I was BESIDE MYSELF with sadness over the fact that we could never be on Mantracker together. In the middle of my ugly cry, I got a text message from Mr. Joe asking if I was hungry and if I wanted him to stop for food on the way home. I confessed that I didn't need any more food that night since I consumed a whole box of garlic and chicken flavored rice all by my lonesome, and asked if maybe he could bring me home some Diet Coke. I managed to calm myself down enough to look somewhat collected when he came home, but when he was without my diet coke, I started all over again.

You would think after all of that, I would have figured out that I was actually going to bleed. Poor Mr. Joe! He had no idea what the hell happened to me.

The question I have now is - what should I do? The fact that I have finally started my period on my own makes me wonder what the next step should be. Do you think I should chart and see if I O on my own this time? Or should I chart and take clomid (against Dr. H's orders)? Should I still go to my RE appointment on Wednesday? Personally, I think that I should at least have one cycle charted before I go to an RE. Don't they expect that of you anyway? What would you do?
AND ALSO: Is there anyone lurking out there that could maybe follow me so I can have an even 10 followers?

The Next Step

Finally heard from Dr. H . . . and she seems to think I need to be shuffled off to the fertility clinic. I haven't seen the actual results of the SA, but she says that they were "on the low side". I made her read them to me over the phone, but she was reading them off really fast and I became sick of asking her to repeat herself. Basically, there is normally 2 -5 mL of "sample", we only had 1mL. However, normal range for number of swimmers per mL is 20 million, and we had 40 million. And they were all great shape - but they weren't swimming as well because its thicker than normal. I don't know how "off" it is exactly, but listening to the numbers, it didn't sound that far below normal. Some numbers were better than normal.

Dr. H seems to think its time to try IVF. Like, she actually said, "There's things they can do, like invitro fertilization to make sure that you get a fertilized egg in there." It was at this point in our phone conversation that I saw stars.

Let's review, shall we?

Mrs. Joe: Not really charting, but definitely not ovulating, as today is CD98 (NINETY EIGHT FRIENDS) and I have peed on every last thing I could to determine my KU status. Additionally, I may or may not have a family history of fertility "issues", depending on who you ask. I am clearly not functioning properly, yet I have been given no medication thus far to correct these issues.

Mr. Joe: Has swimmers - lots of them, they can swim straight, but some can't make it through. Also, he hates the invasiveness of this "infertility" garbage (where as I, Queen of TMI, do not).

Don't you think we could just try Clomid ONE TIME before calling in the fertility big guns? I realize I do not have a medical degree. What I do have a degree in though, is internet research. And by 'internet research", I mean TTC blog stalking. If you have a TTC blog, specifically an IF/TTC blog, I most likely have read it, analyzed it, and googled the things I didn't understand (oh the abbreviations! They're like a secret language!!). The usual course of action is:

Clomid and charting for a cycle or 4
IUI and then . . .
IVF

I realize I may be overreacting here, but I have never really charted or used a fertility monitor, or ANYTHING like that in the past. I just wasn't getting my period. I feel like we didn't really get a chance to conceive without a whole big song and dance. The RE's office called me this morning and I have an appointment next Wednesday, but I don't know if I'm going to go through with it yet. It don't want to be laughed out of there. I guess we shall see.

*ETA: I started spotting today. Secretly, I was hoping to get to CD100 because I'm a weirdo like that and it's a nice round number. Maybe I will chart tomorrow and O on my own this cycle!

TTC news of the day

In TTC news:
I was supposed to hear back from Dr. H on Saturday to discuss the results of the SA. I waited and waited and waited allll day. We were working on our kitchen remodel and I obsessively checked my phone every 5 minutes to see if I was getting a call. As is the case whenever I am waiting for Dr. H to call, I left my phone in the car by accident and before I could run out and retrieve it, she called. She called at 4:55 on a Saturday. Who does that? Of course, she doesn't leave any info in her voicemail and just says that she'll call back on Monday. I was already freaking out because my mother and I had an interesting discussion at WalMart earlier in the day, so this just threw me over the edge. I was a Nervous Nancy the rest of the night.

That earlier discussion we had was about my mothers TTC woes.
For background:I have four siblings. Two of them are 20 years older than me and are from my father's previous marriage to a crazy lady. Yes, I know it's not nice to refer to my brother's mother as a crazy lady, but trust me friends - she has more than a touch of the Crazy. The other 2, my sister and brother, are from my mother and father. My parents are in their 60s. My youngest sibling is 20. We always joke that he was an accident, because who is able to just have a baby at 42?
So, that being said, my mother and I were strolling through WalMart on Saturday, stalling for time because we were sick of watching my father and Mr. Joe hang cabinets. back in the day, I used to love going through the baby section, and look at all of the cute baby things that they have. I would always drag my mother through, because she is more willing to look with me than Mr. Joe is. Nowadays, I'm so impatient that it just frustrates me to wander through. I haven't really told anyone about our hangups yet, so when my mom started heading in that direction I followed after her biting my tongue the whole way.
"You know," she started, "I really want you to have a girl first. You should start having babies soon if you want them to be spoiled before I retire. Maybe you should just have twins to get it over with in one shot!" I cringed - at the rate we're going, I'm going to be retired before we have kids. Enough was enough. I "outed" myself (what is with all this drama? I outed myself? I am such a queen lol).



Turns out friends, IT TOOK FOUR YEARS TO CONCEIVE ME. My mother was on clomid 4EVA to get to me, and my sister was a product of clomid + injections!!!



Oh, hello, pertinent information, nice to see you here. You're a little late.



"Mom!" I asked, "Why did you not TELL me this?? Why did you not share this important information in my formative early years??"



"I thought I was just old and that's why I couldn't get knocked up."



She was 31 people. I am 27. Do you think 4 years is a big difference? Tell me that I am overreacting here and there's no need to freak out. I may or may not be freaking out a little right now. EEEEEEEk!



Hold on now, you may be saying. What about your 20 year old brother? Surely he must have been an IVF baby if there was work put into you and your sister? I said the same thing, friends! Apparently, not though. At 43, my mother was able to conceive naturally, without so much as an OPK to predict when to try. Weird huh?

McFatty Monday - In which I sanction Time Travel for this one time:

If there is one thing on Earth that I hate more than anything, it is stories/movies/ideas involving time travel. I ABHOR it. Especially when it happens without people knowing about it - like in Freaky Friday or 13 Going on 30. Time travel is one of the only things that gives me the creeps.

That, and orange cheese - but that's a post for another day.

Anyway, even though I cannot stand traveling through time, If I had the opportunity to hop in a Delorian and rewind to the weekend, I would do it in a heartbeat. The fate of my Monday morning would depend on it!! I would have traveled back, and after arguing with myself for going back on our agreement that we hate time travel and would NEVER EVER do it, I would smack the mini Reece's Peanut Butter cups (all 30 of them) out of my hand and force myself to take Harry for a walk instead. Then I would burn down the Taco Bell by the movie theater, so that I would not go there for my lunch break on Sunday. These actions would have saved me from the 2lb gain I experienced OVERNIGHT.

Would it be a little sick to say I think I can see the two pounds? My rolls look . . . rollier.

And since I would already be on a roll (no pun intended) with all the going back in time business, I would hop back in the Delorian and go back to about 2005, when the dumbass doctor I was seeing suggested that I go on seasonale (now seasonique) because it would "make my periods more manageable". I would punch him in the face, and tell past Mrs. Joe (who would be as equally pissed as the first past Mrs. Joe for time traveling, because this hatred runs deep people) that by "more manageable" the doctor really means "non existent". With that, I would hop back in my time machine and set a course for the present. I would probably end up in another dimension and be trapped for all of eternity because that is the kind of crazy shit that happens when you time travel and thus WHY I HATE IT SO.

So today's McFatty Monday is not going so well. For the sake of ending up in another dimension, let's just forget that I participate in McFatty Mondays for this one time and I'll be back with more encouraging results next week. Happy Monday McFatties!

Painting, Prom, and I'm PR . . .

. . .etty sick of all this snow!!! HAHAHA! One of Mr. Joe's cousins gets to go to Disney World for work and I am stuck here in this crappy call center with all this crappy cold weather. Oh, the injustice of it all!!! Hopefully, my days in the call center are numbered - more on that later.

First, the painting: Mr. Joe has been hard at work while I was watching the Olympics busy doing other things, and we no longer have the hideous green bathroom which I wanted to show you all before we changed it. I'm sorry that you have to miss out on it, but imagine the color that Tinker Bell wears (kind of like the color of pixie dust) and you should have a good idea of what it looked like in there - like she exploded in our bathroom. The bathroom is not 100% finished yet, so I don't have any pictures. I know, I know, you are super disappointed. Mr. Joe is not too crazy about the color (he picked it out this time so I'm off the hook), called Cayman Blue by Behr- but as he says, it is way better than what we had (AMEN).

In addition to the bathroom, we also painted the hallway with a color called Butter Rum and I have pictures:

Initially, I picked this color because I love butter and rum. It just so happens that I really like how the color goes with the kitchen. I think we're coming close to the homeish feeling I'm looking for. My parents are coming over tomorrow to help finish up our kitchen remodel, so we are almost done. I cannot wait until I have the cabinets up and the island my brother made before he passed away in. Then we can get started on the rest of the house. Rest assured, that will involve my asking you what you think of our ideas and a desperate plea for design advice. You are in for a treat, my friends!

Next up: Prom! Mr. Joe's youngest sister is going to prom and asked me to go shopping with her. She's fairly quiet and soft spoken so I was SO EXCITED(!!!!!!) when she asked. It has been approx 500 years since I went to prom. She tried on so many dresses and they all looked great on her, but there was one which I think suited her perfectly. She doesn't know about my blog so I will cut her head off for privacy:

And here's the back:

I love it on her, and so did my MIL and most importantly, SisterJoe loved it too. Should be a no brainer right? Apparently, one of her friends told her she was not allowed to wear blue because her dress is going to be blue, so even though she loved it, she was worried about making one of her friends mad by wearing a blue dress. This friend hasn't even purchased a dress yet! Is this how it is in high school now? I tried to convince her that she should get the dress that she wants, because forbidding your friends to wear the same color as you is just silly. There is no way that this girl would be the ONLY girl with a BLUE dress at prom. You only get one prom!!! She is going to look around a little more and see if she can find a place to try on a dress that she found online, but I hope that she doesn't choose a dress because of what some "friend" thinks. She's such a nice, quiet girl, and she looked beautiful in that dress.

I was so jelly of all the girls trying on their prom dresses! I think I am going to ask one of the boys that I work with at the movie theater if they need a date for their prom. I would make an AWESOME DATE. At least I think so.

It's begining to look alot like . . . .

*ETA* My good work friend, Lisette says that she thinks it will look Christmasy at Christmas time and Watermelony during the summer. Do you agree?
Um, help!!



I am not an interior decorator in any way shape or form. I play one in my mind, though. Ever read MckMama's blog? I love the colors of her home. There's something about her orangey - reddish walls that look so warm and inviting and homeish. I know, homeish is not a word - I'm not a linguist.




I just play one on my blog.




In an effort to give my almost remodeled kitchen a homeish look, Mr. Joe and I decided (read: I bullied Mr. Joe into seeing things my way) decided that we wanted to paint our kitchen a rusty, bricky, red color. We have deep chocolatey brown colored cabinets (thanks Mom and Dad for getting rid of your old kitchen and giving it to us!) and I thought that a rust color would make our kitchen look warm and rich - like melty fondue chocolate.




Question: is it sad that everything reminds me of fatty foods? What kind of freak wants to be reminded of chocolate when they walk into their kitchen while they are actively trying to lose weight?



Answer: a fat kid like myself.




We decided to go with Morocco red by Behr. I set Mr. Joe to work Mr. Joe and I got to it and painted the kitchen. This was the result:

I love it. The picture makes it look rosier than it actually is in person. It looks really warm and inviting homeish, just like we wanted . . .

But there's a little problem.

The kitchen has a window into our living room. We thought this was a great idea, because it keeps the open feel of the floor plan and allows me to watch my stories on tv while I do the dishes.

I should probably tell you that my favorite color is green. One day, before Mr. Joe repaints it, I will show you the hideousness that is our bathroom. Let's just say that you need sunglasses to go in there without going blind. I learned my lesson after that. We painted our living room a greeny, earthy- feeling color that I also loved.

Can you see where this is going?

Here is what my house looks like when you're standing in the living room:

Now, we intend to replace the furniture we have with brown leather stuff and making the room look warmer and homeisher (there I go again!) with other changes. Please be honest with me though (and ignore the three holes from our fire:

Does my house look too Christmasy?

I think Mr. Joe will strangle me if I decide we need to paint again. So maybe by "be honest with me" I meant, "lie through your teeth."

Help!!

Happy Vee day!

Happy Vday fellow McFatties!!

This will be short and sweet since I am home for President's day and I have to paint my kitchen. Sorta - I think I may need some serious interior design help. Anyone out there know how to match colors?

In fatty news, I am down another pound! I didn't get a chance to work out more this past week, but I've made plans with my sister to join a rock climbing gym this week and we are excited. I'm really hoping rock climbing will be the key to getting rid of my fat hammy arms!

Mr. Joe behaved himself for Valentine's day and instead of chocolates as a gift we took a mini vacay to a hotel! We went swimming and had a great time just being together. He is the greatest (for today lol).

Hope everyone has a great week!