No News

I didn’t hear anything about the job today. I sent an email to the HR rep but never got a response. I hope that’s not bad news.

We won’t be moving to my dad’s. He dropped a bomb on us. In order to move there we have to get rid of our animals. As I said he can be very controlling. His reasoning: he doesn’t believe in house cats and he doesn’t think beagles make good house dogs. It has nothing to do with the fact that he doesn’t want dogs in the house at all. If we had different dogs he would let us keep them in the house. He offered to put up a hot wire to keep them in. As if we would leave them outside all the time. Oh well… Something has to work out for us eventually.

Digging Out

of the funk I’ve been in for the past week and a half. We have both been applying to jobs all over the country. We know we’re not going to end up homeless. We have options. There is an unoccupied house on my father’s property that we have been offered. It is not a prime location for jobs since it’s in the middle of nowhere (no really, the GPS doesn’t even know it exists and the closest town has a population of 400). He has offered to let us live there for free. We will only have to pay for satellite and internet (too far out to get cable) all other utilities will be covered. He has also offered us garden space and help with food costs. That will allow us to build up the savings that we ate through this past year. If one of us finds a job we will start TTC. Not unless one of us finds a job. I will be keeping my health insurance. I’m too much of a klutz to go without health insurance. I also plan to keep going to acupuncture. I’m going to drop it down to once a month right before ovulation. I’ve come so far with my cycle to stop. Last month was a 29 day cycle with very strong ovulation signs (and confirmation with the monitor) on day 14. It was perfect! We thought of isemming but I ovulated on Christmas Eve so timing with the holiday and family visits and shipping hassles made it impossible. I’m glad we didn’t since I got laid off though.

We have decided to take my dad up on his offer if we have not found jobs in the next month. The earliest we will move is Feb 28th. We don’t really want to move to this house for many reasons. My dad can be a bit controlling. He likes to have a say in what we do. We don’t want him to try to keep us up there instead of finding jobs in our fields in a city. Everyone up there smokes (except my dad) and it really bothers R’s asthma. Everyone up there drinks in excess and we rarely drink. The drinking usually lead to tons of drama that we really don’t want. There are plusses though. Saving Money! More time with my family that I love most of the time. My sister also has a house on the farm. A roof over our heads while we look for jobs. Fresh food from the garden (and meat from the farm). 450 acres to roam.

Hopefully we’ll both find jobs very soon and it won’t be a problem at all.

Postponed Indefinitely

I was laid off this morning. I don’t know when we’ll be able to do an insem. I only have health insurance for another month.

The job market her sucks (not that it is that much better anywhere else) so we will probably be moving. The job search starts today. I have 3 weeks of sev erence pay. Let’s hope the job search is short and prolific.

Good Riddance 2008

You will not be reading a happy go lucky retrospective of 2008 here. Fuck you 2008! I hate my job but have stayed because my wife hasn’t been able to find a job. We’re in a city we don’t like (we’re closer to my family though but that’s too much drama sometimes). We have no friends here and miss all of our friends in PA terribly. I had surgery and am still struggling to get back to normal (it’s getting better but I still feel like an 80 year old woman when I get out of bed. My 91 year old grandmother is more agile than I am first thing in the morning). We did get married but then Pro p 8 fucked that all up so now we’re in marriage limbo.

Last night we toasted to 2009 and vowed that it would be the best year of our lives so far. It has to come true because it can’t get any worse…

Back to Work

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.

Still here, still bored

I am still off of work. I now have a fiberglass cast (right after the surgery I had a splint and ace bandage). Actually, I’m on my second cast. One week after my surgery I fell trying to get in my house. I put weight on my ankle that wasn’t supposed to have any weight put on it for 6 weeks. They did x-rays and I didn’t screw up the repair so all was good. I got a cast that day. 2 weeks later I got a new cast. I get another cast Monday and will have that one until Oct 29th. I get a walking boot on the 29th and am not sure how long I will have to wear that. I was supposed to go back to work 2 weeks after my surgery but the fall changed that. My doctor didn’t want to risk me falling again so I haven’t been released to return to work. I don’t really have any pain, other than the pain from nerve damage. They irritated the nerves that run to my 4th and 5th toes and now I’m hypersensitive to touch (even a breeze is painful). My tailbone is also bruised from the fall so that makes sitting all day a literal pain in the ass.

R took photos of my incisions (3 not 4 like we thought) when they took the bandages off for the first time. The nurses thought we were strange. I thought about posting them. I decided not to since you really don’t get any warning and some people would be really disgusted. Two of them are tiny (~1 inch) and the other one is close to 4 inches. The big one looks like 2 fat bruised lips stitched together. Once the swelling goes down I think it will be OK. 

It is R’s last week of her master’s program. She has papers, projects, and finals so I try to be as quiet as possible. I think I’m doing well but I’m sure she’d answer differently. She’s still only working part time but has had a few interviews. She recently got a call about a job at the pol.ice dept (not a c o p). FT work would mean health insurance and the ability to return to TTC with her body.

On my side, I’m still doing acupuncture. Things were great for so long and then the surgery screwed everything up. The previous cycle was beautiful. Temps, CM, and the monitor all lined up perfectly. Then came the surgery. I’m pretty sure I was going to ovulate on the day of my surgery or the day after. I had highs on the monitor for a few days, my temp dropped the morning of surgery, copious amounts of CM, everything. Then nothing. CM was gone and I never got a peak on the monitor (although it was amusing making excuses to stay on the bedside toilet until R could come with the monitor-I thought that was easier than just asking for a urine sample or waiting on her arrival to go to the bathroom after I had been pumped full of IV fluids all night). My temps were screwy in the hospital because they don’t let you sleep more than 3 consecutive hours. First someone would come in to check BP and O2 sats. Then, just as I would fall back asleep, someone else was in to check my blood sugar. They kept checking it since I was on the met and didn’t believe me when I told them I wasn’t a diabetic (just like the nurse that didn’t believe me the at my pre-op appointment when I told her that there was no way I was pregnant even though I was sexually active and didn’t use birth control..but that’s another story).  Finally a NP from my dr’s office set them straight and they stopped pricking my fingers! I think the stress of my surgery scared my O away. Here I am, on CD 46 and no signs of AF. I haven’t needed the pro ges ter one to have a cycle since I started the acu but I’m contemplating starting it so we can get on to another cycle. The earliest we will have an insem with my body is Dec.

Home again

We’re back from the hospital. My ankle surgery went well. I think I overheard the nurses saying that I had 4 incisions instead of the planned 2. It was supposed to be outpatient but they kept me overnight because they didn’t think I’d be able to make it through the first night without morp.hine. I did. I’ve been pretty good about my pain meds. I don’t like the way they make me feel so I’m sticking to ice and elevation for pain management. R has moved out of our room for the time being. Taking her bedside table out gave me more room to make it to the bathroom safely. She also moved a recliner into the bedroom so I can have a change of scenery. I like sitting much more than hanging out in bed.

I feel disgusting. We’re going to venture out on Monday after my acupuncture appointment and pay some poor soul to wash my nasty hair. I had a bit of a sponge bath today. I have vowed to wash and get dressed and put on a bra every day so I don’t feel like such a slob. 

I really need a time consuming hobby. Any suggestions?

Happy (Belated) Birthday to Me

Yesterday I turned 29. A woman at work asked me if I was turning 29 for the first time. It made me laugh. I don’t generally get too hung up about my age. In college I was always older than my classmates. There were a few of us “nontraditional” students so I was never the lone one old enough to buy beer. I’m not scared or worried about getting older. What does bother me is that I’m not where I thouight I’d be at 29. I thought I’d be a few years into my career, living in our own home with our family. I’m not as financially stable as I’d like to be and I’m not a mother. I never thought I’d be married though. More because it wasn’t legal, not because I didn’t think I’d find anyone. I skipped my 10 year high school reinion last year. I had just graduated and didn’t have a job yet. I didn’t want to have to answer all the questions. Where did you go to school? Where do you work? Are you married? Have any kids? I didn’t have a job. I was embarassed that I didn’t make it through more than 1 year of college right after high school. I didn’t want to have to come out over and over and over. A few people knew I was a d.yke in high school. There were rumors too, but in my small home town I would
have definitely been ostracized, even in 2007.
Plus, I had enough of questions during my senior year of college…are you going to grad school? What do you want to do with your degree? What field of chemistry are you interested in? I didn’t know the answers to these questions then and I’m just starting to figure them out now.
What I do know:
I am not done with my education.
I do not have enough human interaction in my current field.
I am not happy as a chemist though I love chemistry.
I have decided to go to nursing school. There are quite a few
accelerated B S N programs for people that already have a bachelor’s
degree in another field within a reasonable commute from where we live
now.
I am going to start taking prereqs in January. It will take a year of
before I can start the nursing program. I’m looking to complete the
program in 2011. Right now that seems so far away to me, but it’s doable. My end goal is to become a mid.wife. It will require a master’s in nursing. See, that GRE wasn’t a waste of money! I have to hustle
though. Scores are only good for 5 years and I kicked serious ass on the GRE so I want to make sure I get to use my scores.
My lovely wife is only applying to law schools in cities that also have a school with a nursing program for me as well.   I just hope we each get into a program in the same city.

1 Year Anniversary

Warning: serious bitching ahead.

I really don’t know how much more of my job I can take. I rarely have any work. I could complete all the work I’ve don’t this week in about 20 min. Unfortunately, the higher ups have realized that we’re very very slow. There are 3 FT che.mists in the lab that do the work that 1 very PT employee could do. They have already laid off 5 people in other departments. There have been threats of “head.count red.uctions” in our department over the past few weeks that would take is from 3 to 1. This is bad for me because 1. My boss’ boss is a douche (the one that would be making the decision of who to keep) and is incredibly se.xist. Females aren’t provided training, taken on business trips, etc. We were told that females don’t get invited because the guys enjoy s trip clubs and it’s cheaper to pay out for discrimination than it is for harassment. Nice, eh.
2. I was the last one of us hired.
3. My skill set is almost identical to one of the other che.mists. He has a pe.nis and has been there the longest of the 3 of us.
4. I don’t have a P h D and the other guy does. This may initially sound like a plus for me since they have to pay the P h D more but it’s really a negative because they like to brag to customers that we have a P h D in our dept.

Of course this couldn’t come at a worse time for us. They are offering severence packages but they depend on your length of employment. I started my job 1 year ago today so I don’t expect I’d get much. I’m also having surgery on the 18th of Sept (assuming I still have a job then). We are planning to start trying with my uterus in Nov assuming I still have a job and health insurance. If I don’t have insurance and a job in Nov but R does we will go back to her body around the same time.