Rebecca rolls her eyes

Warning, random venting ahead:

Don't you love when visitors have to make sure to tell you that the reason they need to leave on Friday is that they have four kids under nine and they like to "dedicate their entire weekend to them"?  This was a business discussion and I didn't need to know that.  I asked "will you be leaving Friday or Saturday" and your answer could have been "I'm leaving Friday." 

I really wanted to respond:  "I want to leave early on Friday, too, because I don't have any kids and I like to dedicate my entire weekend to crying while my ovaries age.  This weekend I also will want to make sure I can dedicate my entire weekend to running to the bathroom every five minutes to see if AF has arrived."

Add that to the fact that the entire e-mail was written in lower case letters.  Every single word.  Every "i" and every name and every first word of every sentence.  Even his signature section at the end.  Really?  In business communication?  Are you five?  Did you break the "shift" key?  Is your presentation going to include a PowerPoint with no capital letters?  Do you submit articles to journals written that way?  Are you secretly e. e. cummings?

*****Rolls eyes*****

9DPIUI -- is she or isn't she?

Am I?  No, I'm not!  Well, maybe I am?


Guess that symptom!  Is it new or old?  Is it a pregnancy symptom, PMS or a sign I'm not sleeping enough?

Seems to happen every cycle:
plenty o' pretty pimples
barrels o' achy boobs
carfulls o' dull cramps
bouts o' utter exhaustion

Only a few cycles:
fun with stabbing ovary pain!
crazy creamy CM!

This is new:
random giant temperature dip at 8 DPIUI (deeper than normal dips, but I'm not putting too much faith into it)


I'm torn between trying to stay positive and see the "new" more than the "old" and staying negative to protect myself but hope for a pleasant surprise!  Sunday is when AF would be late, so I'll wait until then to test.

This week is just going to go on forever.  Never ending guessing and wondering. 

On a completely unrelated note -- Passover starts tonight.  My favorite holiday and the one I miss my family at the most.  Trying not to think about them all getting together and singing.  To anyone out there who is celebrating -- Happy Pesach!

Not much going on

Hi folks!  Welcome to Rebecca's boring blog!

Yes, it's the start of the 1ww and Rebecca really has nothing to say...

Um... let's see what I could talk about. Work is crazy stressful?  My house is a mess?  I really want it to warm up so I can wash our blankets and hang them to dry?  I was a bad IF'er today and drank a latte?  My face is covered in zits?  Our town just increased the charges for trash by about 1/2 and seem to be punishing those of us who don't generate a lot of trash and discouraging recycling when they've been encouraging it for years?  My bank just sent me a paper statement to say that they'll be saving paper by combining my statements -- despite the fact that I actually only get e-statements from them and this was a waste of paper?  My great aunt sent me a 1 1/2 year delayed wedding gift that she told my mother she held onto because my mother hadn't sent her grandson a Bar Mitzvah gift?  My RE's office has started sending me bills for procedures that someone else got?  One of my former students is finishing her Ph.D. and applying for a teaching position at my school and I have no idea how I've already been here long enough for that to happen?  My relaxation exercises relax me too much and I keep falling asleep during them? 

OK, so there are obviously lots of things going on but nothing particularly interesting.

AF is due next Saturday.  We're officially in the 1ww.   I'm sure this week will crawl by.  If this doesn't work (but remember, it is going to work) then I think we have to sit out a cycle IUI-wise.  We're going home to my stepdad's 70th birthday party and, since things got delayed a couple of days this cycle, I think it is going to fall exactly during O time.  Oh, well.  A break could be a good thing. 

But, that doesn't matter because this is going to work.

Everything's copacetic

I'm a word-addict.  I love word games.  I live for Boggle.  Bananagrams is my life.  My favorite part of Sundays is the NYTimes crossword puzzle.  I have no fewer than 10 crossword books in various rooms in my house -- one of which has 500 Sunday NYTimes puzzles!  I've always been a huge reader and I seem to have picked up all sorts of obscure vocabulary words and tend to get strange looks from people when I use them.  I never realize that I'm saying anything unusual!!  I have friends who teach linguistics here and one of these days I'm going to sit in on their classes.  My DH thinks I'm making words up since he is definitely not a word person.  I'm truly a geek but I come by it naturally -- my mother is like this, too.

So, I get a "word-of-the-day" e-mail every morning that gives a word, its definition and origin.   Today's word was "copacetic" (koh-puh-SET-ik meaning "very satisfactory" (or "it's all good" ☺)).  The origin is fascinating!  Apparently there is quite a lot of debate about it.  One prevailing theory is that Bill "Bojangles" Robinson made it up as a kid!  Others believe that it is a corruption of the Hebrew phrase "kol b'seder" which means "everything is in order."  They say that African Americans working in Jewish owned businesses in the early 1900s heard their bosses saying this and repeated it until it became a new word -- "copacetic."  Apparently it was most popular in the southern U.S., so some scholars have proposed that it was actually created in Atlanta! (Others don't believe any of this... ☺)

This is fascinating to me for many reasons:

1. I had no idea this was a made up word!  It's always been one of my favorites.  I'm not sure why, but it just seems to flow so well and it just makes me feel...well...like everything's copacetic!
2. My family came to the U.S. between 1905 and 1915 and were Jewish business owners in Atlanta in several predominantly African American communities.  They most likely would have spoken Ladino and not Hebrew amongst themselves, so it isn't too likely that they started this, but how cool?  I really need to look in my Ladino dictionary and figure out if there's a similar phrase.  (For those who don't know, Ladino is Judeo-Spanish -- it's mostly Spanish with a melding of Hebrew, Turkish, Greek, etc. It was spoken by Sephardic Jews (mostly Spanish origin).  As Yiddish is to most Jews, Ladino is to Sephards.)
3. Apparently it was a more popular word in the 60s.  Which just proves to me, yet again, that I was born in the wrong decade!!
4. When I asked my DH if he knew the word, he thought maybe it was related to "kaopectate" which just made me laugh.  ☺

Anyway, all this to say that I've decided that everything's copacetic around here.  I'm going to attempt to stop having daily mood swings from "eep, the world is coming to an end" to "I'm so happy!"  We'll see how that goes...


Yep, everything's copacetic.

ETA:  The word-of-the-day e-mail is from Merriam-Webster.  They also give you a daily word game (with lots of other games there as well).  My mother and I compare our times on the word games sometimes.  Yep, we're that geeky.  ☺

Lots of random things

I'm just in one of those moods when lots of little things are running through my head.

• I find myself staring intently at the stomach of every woman with a kid around 6 months or so utterly certain that she's pregnant again.  Does anyone else do this?  I'm convinced that the woman down the hall from my office is pregnant with her 3rd.  Probably she just hasn't lost some of the weight from the last baby, but, I'm terrified that's not it and she's pregnant.  If she announces a third pregnancy, I think I'll have to change offices.  I can't watch her belly grow another time.
• I'm so tired of being told "soon you'll have kids and..." by one of my colleagues.  Every conversation with him somehow leads to that.  Sometimes I realize that what I'm about to say is going to lead to it and I try to stop but I can't.  "My DH and I both worked all weekend."  "Soon you'll have kids and..." "This is leftovers from dinner last night"  "Soon you'll have kids and..." "I have to come back for an 8:30 meeting tonight"  "Soon you'll have kids and..."  Sometimes he blindsides me, though.  "I need to work on that new course syllabus"  "Soon you'll have kids and..."  I've taken to talking over him whenever he starts it.  He's only about 5 years older than my DH but had kids when he was in grad school and his oldest is about 23.  He complains about his family all the time.  The other day he said something about "enjoy it while you're young."  To which I replied "too late!" 
• I've become very predictable.  I was watching House Hunters yesterday (which I should stop doing because it makes me jealous of gorgeous (or at least clean) houses and of people with kids...) and the couple said "we're planning on having kids in two years." I snorted and said "yeah, good luck with that."  My DH said "I knew you'd say that!"  Of course, since the show was filmed two years ago, I'd almost guarantee that the couple in question either already had a kid (oops) or got pregnant as soon as they started trying.  It just seems to be that way.  (Anyone watch "Say Yes to the Dress?"  Can't handle the number of times they end with "X and Y got married in June and are expecting their first child.")
• I'm such a horridly jealous person lately.  I keep trying to realize the grass isn't always greener and be happy for what I have, but it's so hard.  I know that these people I'm jealous of have difficulties in their lives as well, but I can only focus on the one thing they have that I want:  they have a kid, they're pregnant, they're jumping into more involved ART, etc.  Will this ever go away?
• I've had so many days recently where I just wonder why we're even doing this.  So, what if we never have kids?  Our lives were fine before TTC.  What's the point?  But, then I see someone holding her infant and smiling or my friend's 3-year-old comes running to give me a hug screaming my name or I hear a new mom saying how "instantly in love" she is or I see a college basketball player's mom tearing up as she watches her daughter in the championship series on TV or I see a divorced dad fighting to spend time with his kids or my friend's stepson calls her "mommy."  My heart breaks and I'm so afraid I'll never feel that way.  We just have to do this.

IUI #4 is done!

IUI #4 is done!  It went pretty smoothly.  A little cramping but not too bad.  DH's total count post-wash was 74 million highly motile, so woohoo!!!! :)  With the two follies and great lining, we've got as much chance as we ever do, I suppose!


My regular RE did it, which was nice.  We got to talk to her a little about what comes next.  (Hoping this cycle works, of course.)  I think we'll basically try one more cycle with the same protocol (femara and estrogen) and then we'll figure out what comes next.

But, I'm going to stay positive -- this is going to work. 

Oh, and the chemistry demo show went great!  :)  Lots of kids and grown-ups there and we had a great time.  

It's going to work.  It's going to work.  

This is it for us, it's going to work.

It's going to work.  It's going to work.  

It's going to work.  It's going to work.

It's going to work.

It's going to work!!!

Sometimes I really love my job

 One of the many components of my job is that I'm the advisor to our campus' student chapter of the  professional chemistry society.  It is often one of the most time consuming parts of my job (although it's supposed to be just a minor service activity) but, for the most part, I really love it.  I'm over-involved, I admit it, but it's hard for me to step back.  I'll miss it if I ever manage to get to go on maternity leave.  (Although, my DH will say that the best thing for my stress levels and sanity would be to stop working with them.  He's right.)


Let me take a moment to toot my own horn:  when I started working here 8 years ago, the chapter was disorganized, had about 5 regular members and didn't really do much.  I took over as advisor during my second year teaching here and I've worked with the students to make them a national award winning chapter.  It's taken incredible student leadership and a lot of hard work.  We now have at least 30 active members, with lots more semi-active members.  They do all sorts of outreach activities in the community and social and professional events on campus.  It's been just an incredible part of my job.

That isn't to say that sometimes I don't feel like strangling them (because 18-22 year-olds are not always the most reliable people in the world) but I absolutely love how excited they get and how creative they can be.


So, all this leads to the most stressful but absolutely best part of this week.  We just got back from performing a chemistry demonstration show at the local elementary school.  Students made solutions change color.  Others made bubbles appear from nowhere.  Water disappeared.  They got an egg stuck in a bottle.  We put small children inside of giant bubbles.  We brushed an elephant's teeth.  (You had to be there.)  All set to music.  We had an audience of over 100 kids.  It was crazy stressful getting ready for it and I truly didn't think it was going to work.  I can't count the number of hours the students who were in charge put into it.  But, it was absolutely incredible.  There's nothing like the rush you get when 100 third and fourth graders are screaming with excitement!  They had a great time, we had a great time and hopefully someone out there learned something! 

This is the third year we've done the show.  But, it's the first time we took it directly to the elementary school.  We'll do a longer version tomorrow for the greater community and then again next week in a town about 1 1/2 hours away.  I'm still stressed about it, but seeing how much the little kids enjoyed it just absolutely made my week.

I'm not sure what I'm more excited about -- the IUI tomorrow morning or the next show tomorrow afternoon? ☺ 

Pictures from rehearsals for our first show three years ago:

The Element Song

Don't you wish you could be in a big bubble?

Dry ice is fun.

Rainbow Connection