We’re Out

AF showed up this week. We’ve been so busy with the move I haven’t even been able to go online. Short post to say I highly suggest moving during a TWW. It makes the wait go very quickly and you’re so busy and stressed you don’t even think about it…

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.

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…

So far so good

I started my new job today. So far I enjoy it. I think I will really like it. The other people in the lab seem nice and the equipment is all new. It’s a far cry from some of the labs I worked in when I was in school.

We have found a house to rent. It is a 3 bedroom with den, family room, and office. There’s a fenced in back yard and a screened in porch. I am in love with the kitchen. It is huge and the appliances are new.The owners are willing to sell to us after a year if we want to buy the house. It’s still not a sure thing since there are a few other people that applied to rent it, but I think the owners would prefer to rent and then sell instead of just renting to someone for a year. I’m keeping my fingers crossed and trying not to get too excited. There was a house we were thinking about buying but it was too small. If it was just going to be R and me forever it would have been the perfect house for us.

I’m really lonely. R is still back in PA with our furry kids and all our stuff. My dad is going to drive up Wednesday night to move our stuff back down here. I am driving up Friday to help R clean the carpets and paint. We’ll be coming back Saturday night. We’ll be together for my birthday. I’m excited to see her again. We’ve been apart more in the past 5 weeks than we’ve been together.

We will be back in the TTC track in September. We should be insemming around the 14th or 15th. We want to try to insem at least 3 times this cycle. We’ll see if that actually happens…

Stress Overload

So we still don’t have a place to live in NC. I start my new job on the 27th. R is transferring with her job but she has to work until the 27th and then has a few appointments the 28th & 29th. She sees her cardiologist on the 29th. She has to go every 3 years for a full workup since her heart surgery. Hopefully things are still looking good for her being able to get knocked up. She’ll be joining me in NC after that. I’m not sure if we’ll be moving all the stuff in the house the week before I start my new job or if we’ll be waiting until Labor Day weekend. I really don’t want to move over Labor Day weekend. It will be tough to get it all in since I don’t have vacation time at work yet and it’s my birthday weekend so I would prefer not to spend it moving. We don’t have to be out of our current house until the 10th of September. When we actually do the move depends on if I can find a place to live this weekend. I’ll be headed south Thursday or Friday. There is the possibility to move in with my mom for a few months (that’s all we could take). It’s nothing against my mom, but we’re used to living on our own in a lot more space than we’d have there. We want to buy instead of rent and that would give us some time to find something and save some money.

TTC has been the last thing on our minds these past few weeks but we are excited to be so much closer to our donor. We’re hoping that we will be able to TTC every month until we’re successful instead of taking months off in between because we can’t meet up with him.

Long overdue…

So I’m still in NC, but at leat my mom has an internet connection that is faster than the dial up at my dad’s. I found out yesterday that I got the job that I interviewed for last week. The pay is more than most of the other jobs that I’ve seen in my field. The benefits are OK too. I still don’t know if they offer DP benefits. I’ll be working in a state where they have the right to fire me based on who I love so I wasn’t about to ask either. I’ll have to find out when I get the information from the HR manager. R has had me on her insurance for a few years. She hasn’t found a job in NC yet and starts grad school a week after I start my job. I’ll be making enough that she won’t have to stress about finding a job as soon as we move. She can take a few months and get settled in the new house and the new school and then worry about finding a job. I’d really like to be able to add her to my insurance so we can keep TTC.

I start on the 20th so we have a lot to do in a very short amount of time. I’m headed back to PA tomorrow. I have to start packing, have a yard sale, sell one of our cars (we have three), find a place to live, and rent a truck. My dad is sending my brother and two of his employees to PA to help us move. Hopefully I can find a place for us to live soon. There is a beautiful house for sale that we have fallen in love with. There’s no way that we can get it right now though. There’s not enough time to buy something and we don’t have enough money for a down payment. We had some money saved up before I lost my job but when your income is cut in half it’s hard to save money. We’ll have to rent for a while before we can buy something. My mother and grandmother split up their houses into apartments when all their kids moved out. One of my grandmother’s apartments will be available soon and one of my mother’s tenants just told her that he may take a job in Atlanta. While either apartment would be convenient and very cheap with the family discount we do not want to live with either of them. Neither house has a fenced in back yard and that wouldn’t be fair to Hamlet and Kara. They really love their yard.

Brutus is still alive. He’s not doing well at all. He went 2 weeks without a seizure but has had at least one a day since I’ve been down here. The heat seems to make his worse. He isn’t breathing well and sometimes loses his balance. They are pretty sure it’s his brain and not his liver or heart that are responsible for the seizures. My mom was told to pick 3 things that he loves doing and when he feels stops doing those three things, it’s time to put him to sleep. He slept with me every night that I was here, but he can’t jump up in the bed anymore. That may be the arthritis from the time I ran over him though…

Sorry for the disorganized post, but a lot has happened in a few days. Will update more when I get back to PA. I haven’t forgotten that I promised a post on weak ovulation.

Search Terms

So every once and awhile I check out the search terms that bring people to my humble site. Usually they pertain to something like 12 dpo, known donor, home insem, CA, NC, chemistry, or, on the rare occasion Bl0ckbuster. Today was a shocker though. Someone found me by searching “I hate being a mother”. I guess the title of the site mixed with my “I hate that I’m selfish” post brought them in. That someone could actually hate being a mother, to me, seems impossible. How I wish I could get drunk, have a one night stand, and oops! get knocked up, actually stay pregnant long enough to give birth to a live baby only to hate the baby (watch out, don’t slip on the dripping sarcasm). It baffles me that people might actually hate something that I want so badly. I just want to get to a point that I can be the Other Mother to something other than the furry kids.

While we’re on the topic of knockin’ up my wife, we don’t know if we’re going to get to insem in July either. The class I’m teaching ends July 13th. After that I’m planning on taking a trip to NC to try to interview for some jobs and find a place to live. R is almost out of vacation time and wants to save some for the move so she doesn’t think she can get off of work for the long weekend. She should O around the 19th so that weekend would be too early anyway.  I’m hoping to find a job and then come back and help R pack. Once the movers show up (oh how I love that word, we’ve moved 7 times together and never had movers) R & I will head to NC and stay with my family until our stuff gets delivered. We’re hoping that I can find a job and a place to live in time for us to try again in August.

Still nothing

13 dpo & no BFP. We’re not looking for one either. I would be seriously surprised if AF wasn’t here by Friday. R is off work 20-26 June and we’re going to visit our donor then. I’m also trying to schedule some job interviews during that time. It looks like we’ll be moving to NC. My dad made us an offer we can’t refuse. He has offered to move us and get us set up in a house. We will rent first. If I decide to go to graduate school down there we’ll buy a house. It just doesn’t make much sense to buy a house if there’s a possibility that we will only be in NC for a year or so. My family is very excited that we may be moving down there, especially my sister. She really misses us.

Moving and much more

I’ve decided to put off graduate school for one year. I need to work and save up some money. Also, assuming that R gets pregnant in the next few months, I didn’t think a newborn during my first year of graduate school was a good idea. We will probably be moving by the end of the summer. There aren’t really any jobs in my field in our area and I need to be closer to an actual city. We really wanted to move out to CA, but there’s no way we can afford to move across the country right now. Being unemployed for the past 4 months ate up any savings that we had and we don’t want to go into debt while TTC. The two cities in the running are Pittsburgh, PA and Raleigh, NC. We used to live in Pittsburgh. It’s where we were living when we first met. R was a student at Pitt and I went to CMU. We’d love to go back there. We have a friend in Pittsburgh that has an apartment but really wants to get a house but can’t afford it on her own. She really wants us to move in with her even though she knows we’re TTC. I’ve applied for 3 jobs in Pittsburgh. As for NC, my family really wants me closer. My dad has offered pay to move us down there if we can find jobs. A very tempting offer. I’ve applied for 14 jobs in the Raleigh area. The odds are in NC’s favor. There are just more jobs for me there and I don’t know about living with someone with a baby. There I go making decisions based on a nonexistent child again, just trying to think ahead.

Does anyone want to weigh in for or against either city? I don’t know too much about the GLBT community in Raleigh. It’s close to where I grew up, but a much larger city than my hometown. I also haven’t lived in NC in years so I don’t know if things are still as bad as they used to be. I don’t know how long we’d be down there but I have to start thinking about how our future child will be treated at school once it gets out that they have two mommies.

Just to complicate things R just got a call today for a 2nd interview for a job she really wants and is a little bummed that we may have to move. She’s still going to the interview but knows she may not be able to take the job if it’s offered to her. There is only one job in my field within 50 miles of our house and I don’t want it. I know it pays well but I didn’t go to college to wash dishes (laboratory glassware) for a living.

My internship is going well. The prof that I’m working for is a lot of fun and a great teacher. I am also working with one other student so I don’t get too lonely in the lab. I do miss the sun though. There aren’t any windows in the lab or the instrument room. We’re trying to develop a nanosensor to detect pesticides but so far all I have done is spend three days shopping for chemicals. The enzyme we were looking for was back-ordered until November so we basically had to redesign a portion of the project to work with an enzyme we could get our hands on. Not too exciting yet, but I get to work with instruments (SEM & AFM) that I haven’t ever used before since they usually don’t let undergrads touch them (they’re really expensive). I’m also learning new techniques. There’s also the possibility that, as long as we get good results, we could be published once it is all said and done.