I’m in love

with my job. There is so much to do and the day goes by so fast. I actually get to “do chemistry” instead of the boring stuff I was doing at my old job. Hopefully the romance lasts…

I have a job!

It took them 2 weeks to get back to me but I got the job! I start next Monday. The hourly rate is less but I will be hourly and they are working 6 days a week right now. That means two things: I’ll be getting overtime and I’ll have job security! With the overtime I’ll actually be making more than I was at my previous job.

I will be able to get health insurance for R. Still no word on their fer tility coverage. She’s been without health insurance for 2 years so she’s excited to go to the dentist.

The plan is to start TTC again in May. That way (big) IF  it actually works the first time (HAHA!) I will be employed for 12 months before the due date. We may start earlier if R decides she wants to try with her body again.

Good News?

I’m cautiously optimistic. I had a wonderful interview yesterday with a company within a reasonable commute from our house. The job is interesting to me, more related to my degree than my previous job, and a great opportunity. The company even offers dome stic partner benefits! Half way through the interview and tour it transitioned from “if you get the job,” “if you work here,” etc. to “when you get the job,” “when you work here,” “you’ll be helping me with this.”During the tour I admitted that I didn’t know how to use one of the pieces of equipment and was told “oh, I can show you how to do that one day next week.” I was told I should know something by the end of the week. I checked today and the job has been removed from Mon ster. Hopefully that’s a good sign.

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.

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.

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.

Hello again

I’m back. I’ve been gone so long that I contemplated not returning. I figured no one was still checking on me; that everyone had assumed I’d never return. I decided that, with all the changes that have happened and will continue to happen,  I needed a place to write even if no one was still reading. I can now access word.press from work. That was the real problem. R is working on her Master’s (only 12 more weeks until she finishes) and I couldn’t ever get my hands on the laptop after work. We’ve had some pretty major changes since I fell off of the face of the earth.

 

1. On July 10th we celebrated our 10 year anniversary by flying to San Francisco and getting married! We were going to elope but then our families found out about it. I was so surprised that they all flew out to CA to be with us. My brother lives in Daly City and R’s dad lives in Pioneer so they were already out there. All of our parents and siblings were in CA to celebrate with us. We were married by the Bay in Tiburon on Thursday and spent the rest of the weekend together. Most of our family members had met, but it was the first time we were all together at once. Our Dad’s got along perfectly! They had so much fun together. We did learn that they should not be left alone though. They’re both pranksters and would get into way too much trouble if left unsupervised. There is already talk of R’s Dad coming to stay at my Dad’s farm for a week. Who knows if they’ll invite us. I’m so glad that everything went well. Our families weren’t awkward with each other. We even took my Dad to a few ga.y bars in the Cas.tro. That’s huge! He drives a muddy pickup truck, flies the Confe.derate flag, has a gun safe that’s larger than most people’s bathrooms, and once told me that the US went downhill when they gave women the right to vote. I never thought I’d see my Dad in a Ga.y bar. He was so happy at the wedding too. He cried. Actually, the only people that didn’t cry were my siblings and the officiant.

2. R still doesn’t have a full time job. She’s focusing on finishing her degree and preparing to take the L S A T. She’s narrowing down the list of law schools she will be applying to. We will most likely be moving again next summer.

 

3. I’m still at the job I hate. It’s still slow and I rarely have any actual work to do. I have half-heartedly been looking for another job but I’m torn. I know we will probably be moving in 8-10 months and don’t want to have to start another job and leave so soon. There is 1 law school that R is applying to in the area so there is the chance that we’ll be here for at least 3 years. I’ll look more seriously if we’re staying in the area.

 

4. I will be getting some time off of work in October. The ankle that I hurt when I broke my foot in December is still f’ed up. I’m having surgery October 2nd. I’m not looking forward to the 6 weeks in a cast or the 6 weeks of crutches. I talked to a trainer at the gym. I’m going to try to improve my upper body strength. That’s what killed me last time I was on crutches. I resorted to rolling around the house in my desk chair. I don’t want to have to do that again.

 

5. TTC – Before we flew to CA for our wedding I checked with my employer about adding R to my insurance. HR assured me that I could add R to my insurance as long as we were legally married (even though we weren’t going to be legally married in our state of residence). They were wrong. We were counting on that to start TTC again. We have decided to switch uteri. I will have my first insem in November. We’ve selected a donor from a bank. I registered and placed our first order (thanks to wedding $). On a side note: How exactly do you put that in a thank you note? Dear Auntie, Thanks for the cash. We bought spe.rm! Love, R & B

I’ve started acupuncture. I didn’t start it just because I wanted to TTC with my body. I felt like every time I went to my doctor with a complaint she would just throw another pill at me. I originally went to try to regulate my cycles without medication. It just so happens that my acupuncturist has done lots of fertility work. After one month of sessions I had my first unmedicated cycle in 5 years! I am hooked. He also has me on an herbal regimen and I have ovulated for the past 3 months. I also went for a physical in preparation to start TTC with my body. Blood.work showed that I have hypoth.yroidism. I got that under control with medication. Weight loss has been much easier since I’ve started the meds. I haven’t lost all I want to lose, but I think I’m in a good place to start TTC. I also found a doctor that is willing to do insems for me. We originally were having trouble finding a doctor that accepted my insurance and was also willing to perform an IUI on a woman that wasn’t married to a man. When I called his office the nurse that I spoke to seemed astonished that we had been turned away so many times. I am not crazy about having a male doctor and will probably return to my midwife for prenatal care if I ever get pregnant.

 

This post is already way too long so I’ll leave it at that. I promise it won’t be another 6 months before I post again.

 

 

 

 

Job Update

I am still miserable at work. I sent out several resumes and applied to a few jobs in my area. We live in a relatively small town and there are not a lot of places within a reasonable commute that employ chemists. I got a call this week about a job. It was in the same town where I’m working. I had a brief phone interview and the HR manager determined that I was overqualified for the job that I had applied for. She asked me if I would be interested in a different position. It pays more than I’m making now. It is actually in the area of chemistry that I focused on in school (current job is no where near it). Sounds great, right? There’s a huge problem. It’s about an hour from where we used to live in PA. I moved all the way down here to get asked to interview for my dream job where I used to live. I am still going in for an interview. I was planning on taking a trip to PA next weekend to visit some friends anyway. Now I’m taking a vacation day to drive up Thursday evening and interview Friday morning. If the pay is right and they offer relocation assistance I will consider moving.

R still hasn’t found a job in the area. She has 3 weeks of unemployment benefits left. We’re starting to sweat. She has even considered begging my dad for a job. She has had a few interviews in the past few weeks. One is very promising and she hopes she gets the job. It’s a state job so things take forever. They told her she should know if she got the job in a month.

R is convinced that as soon as she gets a job down here I will be offered the job in PA. I told her that I’d turn down the job in PA and keep looking in this area if that’s the case.

Back in the Game

It is day 3 of Cl0mid. We have tentative plans with our donor for next Wednesday. He is free from Monday through Thursday if Wednesday isn’t good. It feels so good to be back in the game.

Things are really up in the air on the house front. We didn’t get the rent/purchase option house. Apparently over 50 people applied and they were able to narrow it down to 4. Then they chose the first person that saw the house. We were number 2. I am upset, but maybe something better will come along. One of my dad’s friends is a house fl!pper. He has a few houses now. He is willing to do a rent/purchase option with us. He is going house hunting in the area this weekend for us. He knows we want at least 3 bedrooms, a big kitchen, and a good sized yard, preferably fenced in, but we could do that ourselves if we needed to.

I am still loving my job. I did more work today than I did all last week. They are trusting me to work on my own now. R was supposed to transfer down here with her company. She went through all the proper channels and the manager for this area was supposed to call her last week to let her know when and where she was starting. She never called though. R has left messages for her daily and nothing. R did find 5 jobs this week that she has applied for, but we’re really worried since both of us are relying on her job for our health insurance.

R is finally down here with me. Our furry kids are here too. It is really cramped at my mom’s house and we hope to find somewhere else to live VERY soon.

Hopefully something goes right for us soon…