About protesting that is. R doesn’t think we have time to protest tomorrow. We are leaving for PA this afternoon. Sunday is our wedding reception with R’s family and all of our PA friends. We didn’t hire caterers and are responsible for feeding 70 people Sunday. Luckily it’s just hors d’oeurves and dessert. R wants spend Saturday afternoon making Italian Wedding Cakes and stuffung Asiago Sausage Mushrooms. Her brother and I want to be in Philadelphia chanting and carrying signs. I say screw it; I don’t care of I have to stay up all night on Saturday prepping and cooking. Her argument is that our reception is a form of protest. I think I’ve almost convinced her that there’s not much we can cook ahead of time and we can get all the prep work done in the morning and late Saturday evening. Most of the things will need to be made Sunday morning or they won’t taste good anyway. Hopefully I’ll be in Philly tomorrow afternoon.
Where are you protesing tomorrow? Find out more here:
I absolutely love acupuncture. I love the feeling that I have for the rest of the day after a session. It is so relaxing. I go every two weeks. If given the choice of a massage or acupuncture, I would definitely pick acupuncture. I also love my acupuncturist. We are very like minded and get along very well. He brought me a photo of his son dressed up for his first Halloween, so cute! He’s done a lot of fertility work and has had a lot of success with P C O S patients. He has been able to regulate my cycles (except for the monster cycle screwed up by my surgery) and I’m ovulating on my own.
He has tweaked my herbs a bit. Increased my dosages of some and decreased others. I also had a western med change today. My TSH has been too high for the past few months and my med dosage was increased. It will be checked again in 6 weeks to see how my levels are.
In more ways than one. 6 family members: 2 humans, 2 dogs, 2 cats. The cats look alike, the dogs look alike, and apparently R & I look so much alike that people think she’s my child. There are 3 females and 3 males in our family. I like things even and symmetrical if I can have it.
We haven’t told our families that we’re TTC. They know that we plan to have children but do not know that we were trying in the past few years and don’t know that we are gearing up to start try in the next few months. My brother knows that we were trying in the past but doesn’t know what we are starting soon. My sister is the only one that knows about the previous tries and the upcoming tries.
There is one real reason we haven’t told anyone. My family has been pressuring us to have children for years. First we told them we needed to graduate first. After graduation we told them I needed to get a job first. When I got a job we told them that we needed to get married first. The pressure has heated up now that we have gotten married. Luckily R was still in school so we had an excuse to wait. R finished her masters last month and the pressure has reached a new level. We were at my dad’s house last night. We were cornered in the kitchen and asked when we were going to give them grandchildren. My stepmom leaned over to our stomachs and talked to our ovaries. They demanded to know who was going to get pregnant first. When we told her that we wanted to wait until R got a job she got out her check book and offered to pay for the DNA. She wanted to know where we were in our cycles to see if we could try this month. My grandmother thinks we should get pregnant at the same time. She also told me that my dad called her crying because he wants to have grandchildren while he’s still young enough to play with them (he’s 52). He told her that all of his kids have graduated from college and he doesn’t think we’re ever going to have kids. My grandmother and stepmom also told us what to look for in a donor: tall, dark hair, green eyes. They all think we should use the same donor for each of us so “the kids would really be siblings”. That bothered me. We aren’t planning on using the same donor and our donors won’t even be the same race. My dad is sad that he only has “granddogs” to drive around on his golf cart. My mom is no better. Everytime she finds out that one of her friends is going to have a grandchild she calls me crying and asks when we’re going to start a family.
They have no idea how difficult this is going to be for us. That’s the main reason we aren’t telling them until we have succeeded. Last night was proof that they would add additional stress to the process. The offer of financial help would be nice but this is something we need to do on our own.
I’m a bit more calm that I was yesterday and not as angry. I am hurt. I wish I could have given more money but we really couldn’t afford it. I wish I could have given my time. I wish I could be surrounded by others that feel the same way I do right now. I live 2,750 miles away from San Francisco City Hall. That’s where I wanted to be last night, on the same steps we walked up to get our marriage license, the same steps we walked down as wife and wife, the same steps where we took wedding photos. I wanted to cry with others instead of crying myself to sleep. My mom called me to see how it would affect us. My brother called me to see if I was OK. My brother-in-law (I guess I’ll have to go back to calling him my brother-out-law…I liked that better anyway) called to tell us that it doesn’t matter what they say, that we’re still married, our wedding was witnessed by our families, we know we’re married and that’s all that matters. It still felt really good to know that someone somewhere that didn’t know us at all knew we were married. They stamped the paperwork, saw our names. We were legal. It meant more to me than I knew at the time. I’m trying to drag myself out of this funk.
I am so glad we were able to get married in CA this summer. We had a beautiful wedding surrounded by our families. Our marriage wasn’t legal in our state of residence on Monday and it’s not legal now. No real change. I’m also glad we ordered multiple copies of our marriage license. I’m glad I was able to legally change my name with our marriage license. I’m glad our future family will share the same last name.
I’m also glad that this week was full of firsts. It was the first time that I have ever voted for a candidate in a general election that won. It was the first time in my lifetime that my home state was blue. It is the first time that my sister voted for a Democrat.
In other, non-depressing news, tomorrow is finally CD1. I was very excited to start spotting this afternoon. It is CD 66 afterall. One more cycle until we try to knock me up.
Tomorrow I head back to work at a job that I despise. I have not been looking forward to this at all. To make matters worse the president of our parent company is visiting from Japan on Tuesday. At least I missed out on all the cleaning (the last time someone visited from Japan they spent $250K cleaning, repainting, resurfacing the parking lot, pressure washing the street and sidewalks in front of the plant, spray-painting the grass green, etc). I did not miss out on the dog and pony show that will be Tuesday. We all dress alike (black company polo, khaki pants, black shoes, white lab coat) and only them men are allowed to speak. I will be a wall dressing. I’ll sit in front of a piece of equipment and pretend to work for 8+ hours. We are only allowed one piece of blank paper and one writing utensil on our desks (along with our computers and phone). Our screen savers must all be the same. Our phones must not ring all day. We are not allowed bathroom breaks or lunch breaks when he is in the building. We are only allowed to leave for the day after he has left the premesis. It is just as ridiculous as it sounds. To make matters worse I’m in more pain than I have been one week after my surgery. I got my last cast off Wednesday and am now in a walking boot. I am not able to bear full weight so I still have my crutches. I will not be permitted to prop my foot up on Tuesday because it wouldn’t be able to fit under the piece of equipment I will be pretending to operate. I can’t wait. I hope I have wonderful elections returns to come home to.
I interviewed for a job a few weeks ago. I haven’t heard anything about it yet, but one can hope.
R is still looking for a job. She has expanded her search area and is now looking throughout the country. I’m willing to follow her anywhere that’s not landlocked or too glaringly red. That’s my rule.
We found a donor that we love. Hopefully we can buy some DNA before he’s sold out. I’m on CD62 and am on serious red alert. I’ve been sleeping in a bra because the girls are full, heavy, and painful. Commercials make me cry and I’m a bitch. I’m not sure what happened to this cycle, but I think the surgery screwed things up. We’re still planning on late Dec/early Jan insem.
