Isabella Maria

Isabella Maria
Her 3 week pictures... such an angel!

Thursday, January 29, 2009

75 Things I Want to do Before I Die.

This was an assignment I had to do in high school. Write 75 things I wanted to do before I die and hand it in for my English teacher, Mr. Koch. (Pronounced Mr. Cook, call him Mr. Cock and he got mad. haha)
I have often thought of re-writing it, so here it goes.

1. Be a Mom.
2. Lose weight and be sexy!
3. Have all my credit card debt paid off.
4. Get a Master's Degree in Nursing Management, or Health Administration, or sell out and get my Nurse Anesthetist Degree for the $.
5. Learn to speak Spanish so I can be a more effective Nurse.
6. Go to Italy and look up the Stanziones that I am distantly related to.
7. Watch 4th of July fireworks from a hot air balloon (but far enough away to there they won't fall in and burn me alive or pop the balloon.)
8. Go to NYC.
9. Run into a particular ex boyfriend while Aaron is with me so he can see how good my life is and let it sink in that his probably blows and that dumping me was probably the biggest mistake of his life. Revenge is a dish best served cold. Muahahaha...
10. Go to Disney World.
11. Buy a big farm house in the country and get privacy fencing around a large plot of land so I can have my own Dog Rescue. But instead of adopting the dogs out to families I just keep them all. I couldn't ever give one of my babies away. If I had enough money I would hire people to pick up the dog poop and help play with them so I knew they would be well cared for.
12. Win the lottery so I could pay for aforementioned Dog Rescue.
13. Go on a (safe) nature ride/safari in Africa so I can see the animals in their own natural habitat.
14. Take a vacation in a beach house in New England.
15. Spend a St. Patrick's Day in Ireland.
16. Spend a Halloween in Salem MA and see Boston too.
17. Go to another Emeril's restaurant.
18. Buy/rent a van or trailer and travel all over the US and see all the States.
19. Go on a cruise.
20. Be a Nurse Manager.
21. Own a brand new vehicle.
22. Go to Bethlehem.
23. Spend a Christmas at a cool resort at Disney World/Universal Studios with my family and our kids so they could spend Christmas in Cinderella's castle, or something equally exciting.
24. Go to Stratford-Upon-Avon.
25. Renew our wedding vows on the shore at Bamburgh Castle
26. Have a meeting with a real psychic/medium like Rebecca Rosen.
27. Get another tattoo. Not sure what or where, but I know I want more.
28. Take a cooking class.
29. Go Christmas Shopping in New York City.
30. Spend a New Year's Eve in Times Square.
31. Write a book.
32. Go to Christmas Eve Mass in the Durham Cathedral again.
33. Have a large collection of angel figurines. I already have a couple.
34. Spend a Mardi Gras in New Orleans.
35. Take an Alaskan Cruise. This is separate from #19, by this I meant a Jamacian-or-something-to-that-effect Cruise.
36. See the set of Coronation Street. They used to do tours of it!
37. Learn to speak Italian just because I love the way it sounds.
38. Have an unlimited shopping spree in Rogers and Hollands and Tiffany.
39. Take a globe, close my eyes, spin it, put my finger on a spot, then go there. Except for like, Iraq. F that.
40. OK so I can't think of anything else right now. I will put more on here when I think of more!

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

So annoying

Yesterday I took a pregnancy test when I got home from work. It was negative. So OK fine, I go about my day.
Well I had forgotten to throw the negative test away. So when I went to the bathroom to shower last night before bed I pick it up to throw it away... then I look at it, it's POSITIVE. Hours later this tests looks different.
The other tests I took this week (I buy them at the dollar store, so I will take them as often as I feel like and not feel bad, haha) bled and caused weird lines on them after I read them as negative too. But this one looked different. Kim, it looked JUST like the one you had in November that you showed me. A very faint line, but a line nonetheless.
So this morning I took another one to see if it was true and that I really am pregnant. Nope. No go. Big fat negative.
I know that is says readings after 10 + minutes are not accurate, but damn. I have taken a LOT of pregnancy tests and none of them had ever looked like that. Last night I was so excited I felt like a kid at Christmas. I was too excited to go to sleep. Now I have to go to work tired and NOT pregnant.
Boo.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Doctor Appointment with Reproductive Endocrinology

Ah...
Finally, someone who took it all seriously. Finally, a doctor who made more than just a passing, fleeting comment about my fertility (or lack thereof). I talked to two doctors and one nurse today whose primary goal is to see that I become a mom. I didn't feel like a bother to them. It was nice. But what they told me wasn't so much.
First, they want to rule out PCOS and metabolic disorder. Hmmm. Didn't a doctor already tell me I was out of the woods for PCOS. Yes, a doctor who does not have the tools or the knowledge to do so. She tested my hormones and sure, they were all within normal limits. But since I hadn't had a period in 3 months, there is no way to tell what part of my "cycle" I was in, which basically rendered those levels (as well as the time I took out of work AND 2 pokes) useless. Thanks. I appreciate it. While I am at it, thanks for the false hope I had for the last month that everything was really OK. The only good thing she did for me was make me have a medicine induced period and refer me to someone who knows what they are doing.
So in a nutshell, here is the plan:
If I don't either have a positive pregnancy test or a period on my own by beginning of Feb. then I have to take more meds to induce another period, then on day 2 of my period I have to have a fasting glucose test done, as well as all the female hormones AGAIN. (Yes, all the tests I have already done... all over again.) In addition to this they are running genetic tests for cystic fibrosis since Aaron and I are both European descent. That is just a blood test, but THANKS for making me think of something that 1. most Caucasian people don't even think about when trying to conceive and 2. giving me a WHOLE NEW THING to worry about. Then, AS IF that wasn't enough, on March 5th I am having a Saline Infusion Sonohysterography. AND... they want to do a semen analysis on Aaron. So there ya go, a whole reproductive workup. Oh yeah, and I have to consult with a dietician, which can really only be a good thing. I hope my insurance can cover all this...
So I spent a part of my morning crying and being scared. Pap smears just about send me flying off the table because for whatever reason they hurt like a son-of-a-bitch. I had a nurse practitioner ask me after a Pap a couple years ago if I was a victim of sexual abuse because of how much pain it was for me, because usually "only women who have been traumatized have that kind of reaction." No, the only one traumatizing me is the bitch with the speculum and the mascara wand who is shoving it in the os of my cervix! A Pap is only scraping the cervix, and with this test they are going to go straight through my cervix. OH MY GOOD GOD I AM SCARED. AND, they give nothing for pain control. No, wait, I am sorry. They wrote me an order for f*cking Motrin, so my fallopian tubes do not vasospasm, therefore messing up their images. It has nothing to do with my comfort. They say it should just feel like a pinch. Well, they just say "a little pressure" when they do my Pap and that makes me just about jump off the table. It feels like electric shocks going up my body. I bet they're right though... just a pinch. I wish you could see my face as I type this. Yeah right just a pinch.
I am so disheartened by all this crap. Why can't I just have sex and get pregnant like you're supposed to?! Why does everything have to be such a pain in the ass for me? I know, I am probably blowing it out of proportion right now, but whatever. My blog, my feelings.
I hope to God more now than ever before that I am pregnant before this all happens to me so I don't have to go through it. I know that damned test would be a walk in the park compared to what childbirth is. But just as much as I am afraid of the pain, I am angered and disappointed in what it all signifies. My body potentially failing me. I just want to curl up in a ball, cover myself up with the biggest fluffiest blanket I can find and hide from the world.
And if one person leaves a comment on here saying "Well, there's always adoption!" I am going to scream. Yes, I know, and it would be an amazing thing to adopt, but this isn't the issue right now. If I have to yes I will. And I will love an adopted child very much. But I want to give my husband and I our own biological child. I want to make a baby with him and see ourselves in him/her and know that little person exists because two people loved each other so much. I want to feel a baby kicking from the inside, not the outside for once.
Ugh. The whole world feels gray to me today. I am going to bed.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Crazy Pants

So... turns out there is this weird guy on blogspot.com who thinks its necessary to tell you you're going to hell if you don't share EXACTLY the same very narrow minded and unaccepting views as he has. I saw him messing with my friends, so I made a comment to him on one of their blogs.
I woke up this morning to find 24 new comments on my latest blog that I posted days before I ever commented about him. At first I was going to erase them but then as I was reading them they became quite comical. So I am going to save them for your gawking pleasure if you want to see it. Just go to my last blog and read the comments.
I will say this about him, I think it's great that he has such a love for God. I wish more people did. But, I also love God and I don't go around harassing people who don't, or who do but just have different beliefs than I do. I think about 95% of Christians agree with me here when I say that he is NOT helping out God or Christianity because he is promoting hate and intolerance.
I know if I had a problem like drug addiction or anything else bad, I could go to the woman who married Aaron and I and she would accept me and try to help me in any way she could. She really IS a follower of God and would try to help. If I emailed Crazy Pants and asked him for help he would send me links to websites that tell me to be afraid that I am going to hell for eternity. How is that helping? Would Jesus do that? NO. He would probably hug me and tell them that no matter what, he loves me.
I know nothing I say or blog will change this person's point of view, and that is fine. That was not my intent. But I HAD to blog about it for the sheer WTF factor of it all.

A little nugget of wisdom/info/whatever I have for him and anyone else like him is this: Love the sinner, hate the sin.
If you truly think that someone is doing something wrong, chastising them for it will not improve their behavior.
***I am SOOOO not saying this because I want this person's acceptance! I'm just sayin is all.***

He said in a couple things that he is a saved Christian. All jokes and irritation aside, I am glad for him. But if he is trying to get others closer to God by doing what he is doing, he is actually causing much more harm than good.

PS- If I keep getting harassed by him on here I am going to copy and paste this blog as well as every comment I have ever gotten from him and send it to the blogspot.com/google administrators and try to get him booted off of here. This is not a threat, it's a promise. Pick your battles, buddy.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Aaron's first gig and then some little extra crap.

So, Aaron's first gig on his own with My Trivia Live was Monday. Jessica and I went to support him, as well as the managers for My Trivia Live. He was (understandably) nervous. It was at the Quarter Bistro in Ann Arbor. If you have never been there, it's a higher scale restaurant, that I doubt would have signed up for My Trivia Live if they really knew what it was about. Don't get me wrong, MTL is fun, but that's just it. This "bistro" is so stuffy, and their rich, snooty clientele basically turned their noses up to it. It really pissed me off.
One of the girls there that Aaron went up and talked to, offering her to play looked at him and said "You're not from Ann Arbor, are you?" BITCH! No he's not... he unlike you was not a trust fund baby and had to work for everything he had! Asshole.
Ooh that pissed me off.
And then there was a woman there, a few chairs down the bar from the first bitch, that was scuffing and squawking because he didn't know how to pronounce the names of the 19th century novel characters. They weren't normal names, like Ann of Green Gables. They were all funky, the easiest one being Mowgli (sp?) from the Jungle Book. She said " He can't even prounounce them!" I was so pissed at that point that Jessica was trying to relax me and we went out for multiple cigarettes. I stared her down with a "I'm-going-to-jump-over-this-bar-and-punch-your-teeth-down-your-throat" look until she looked back at me. And instead of getting shy or nervous and looking away, like I usually do when I am trying to intimidate someone (haha) I kept staring her right in the face. I think she got the point. That was the last I heard from her apart from her telling the whole bar that it was her friend's 50-something-th birthday. Bitch, get yourself another glass of chardonnay and shut the hell up before I go Westland on your ass.
But on the bright side, Jessica and I won 2nd place, which was a $20 gift certificate to Quarter Bistro. AND I won the little game where you get a shirt or whatever. He asked for the first person to give him a receipt from a department store, and it was me. Having a messy purse paid off for once! :)

On another note... a little bit more on my TTC journey. :)
This week I started taking my basal body temps. I am a cold bitch! The highest temp I have had was 97.1, and the lowest was 96.3. Every morning when I first wake up I get stressed about it because I want to make sure I do it right. Since I am just waking up, nothing makes sense, I am confused, whatever, but I have managed to get a temp every morning and scribble it down in a little notebook that is sitting on my bedside table. A mornings ago I woke up with a tight grip on my thermometer. Apparently in the middle of the night I thought it was time to take my temp... I am not sure how long I had had the thermometer in my hand. I think an hour or two. It was kinda funny to me. This morning I kept having little mini dreams that I was taking my temp and forgot to write it down. So by the time I actually did take my temp, it felt like it was the third this morning that I did it. It's probably not interesting to you guys, but to me it is slightly amusing.

Tonight I am going to the Red Wings Game with Aaron, Kim, Mark and Jesse. I am so excited! I hope it doesn't go too late though, I want to get a good night's sleep. When did I turn into an old lady? Yeah, and I hope they have prune juice smoothies there too... can't let that arena food get me irregular. haha.

OK, I have to get back to work now. Have a good day!

Thursday, January 1, 2009

1-1-09

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!

Last night was fun. A lot of us got together at Stevie's house and talked, hung out, played poker, and basically just made asses of ourselves. 1 1/2 bottles of champagne and about 6-7 jello shots later, oh yeah and a beer, and I am proud to say I did NOT wake up with a hangover! WOOHOO! I think I found the cure. Eat some chili and a sloppy Joe before bed and all should be well. Yes, I know I am lucky. This NYE was kinda, um... interesting for me. I looked at it as hopefully (!!!) the last time I celebrate the New Year without a child. I really REALLY hope to be a Mommy or at least a Mommy-to-be by this time next year.

2009 will hopefully be a great year. I feel bad saying it because 2008 sucked for SO MANY people, but it for the most part was good to me.
We got Harvey in January. Our one year wedding anniversary was in April and we went to Chicago to celebrate, which was awesome. My Mom and Aunt Sheila came over in May to visit for a week and a half and we went to Chicago again and it was SO much fun! Sadie had her first birthday, Aaron and I went to Universal Studios for a week in Orlando and had a great vacation together, I went to Virginia for a family wedding and saw my family whom I haven't seen since 1996 when my Grandpa died AND I got to see my friend Nicki that I haven't seen since 2004, I got to meet Cassie and Carl, who I have heard about for years and finally got to know them and they are really fun, Kim met Mark and fell in love and now they're blessing us with a new niece/nephew, I made new friends in Jessica and Damien and we have a lot of fun together, I got a new job that is awesome, we had a good Christmas and to top it all off, New Year's Eve went without a hitch. (Holy run-on sentence!!! My English teacher from middle school would have KILLED me for that. lol)
I know I am looking at the year with a glass half full attitude, because there are a lot of bad/sad things that happened too. We lost a friend way too soon, Dawn House on January 3rd. Aaron's Uncle Al died in January too. My great Aunt Julia passed away in May. So did his Grandma, Monica Houff. They will all be sorely missed. Also a lot of our friends lost their jobs, and a few went bankrupt. A couple of them even lost their homes due to the crap economy. It makes me feel bad to be happy for myself when so many people that we care about have passed or are suffering.
But I have hope for 2009... we will have a new President that will *hopefully* not fuck things up more than they are already. Aaron and I resolved to eat healthier, start working out again and quit smoking again. I have smoked a little recently, (unfortunately) because Aaron has been and I caved in and wanted a few. But I KNOW I HAVE to quit because we are really trying to get pregnant.

Oh yeah... speaking of which (caution: girly body period talk)... my Dr. put me on meds to make me have a period so I can get pregnant... and it came yesterday. And OH MY LORD did it. My body hasn't had a period since September and now it is PISSED. Oh the pain! This morning I was laying in bed with my arm around Aaron's side and got up because I realized I started digging my nails into his stomach a little bit because it hurt so bad. Poor guy, he shouldn't get clawed because I am in pain. It feels like my body is trying to get revenge on me for taking the pills. Like, OK, you want a period? Here ya go bitch! And yes, I know, one should not personify one's uterus. But I am sorry, it felt like the pain was coming from the depths of Hell. I was laying in bed thinking to myself hmmm... this pain is amazingly awful. What number would I score it? Meningitis was a 10 out of 10. That is the worst pain I have ever had so I compare all runners up to that. That is the only thing I have ever used a 10 for. Even when I ripped my effing toenail in half of the wheel of Kim's bed when she was in labor with Sadie that wasn't a 10. It was like a 6 or 7. I think I have a rather good pain threshold. The cramps this morning were a 6, more or less. They were as bad as running to a hospital bed with a puke bucket wearing flip flops and hitting your toe so hard that it ripped the nail in half and made the skin tear open and bleed. Good God. I am glad I have something to compare it to for those of you out there reading this who have never been "blessed" with a uterus.

OK, I am going to quit rambling on here and clean my house before my cousin gets here later today.

Hope you all have a great start for 2009!