happy birthday – we’ll be there between 10 and 6

So there are plenty of worse things than being housebound on your birthday. I mean, especially given that my house is what it is – a stunning gem of modern design, I mean. And also equipped with cable television and a cable modem. And a lot of Fairway salsa. And a corner store to send the kid to if I run out of chips. Really, I’m set.

That said, I would rather not be waiting for the A/C Guy and the Kitchen Vent Cleaning Guy today. But when I think of what else I would be doing, I realize it’s not the biggest loss in the world. Yesterday, for example, was starting to seem all sun-kissed and fabulous in my mind until I realized that what it amounted to was a trip to Target complete with as much food as I wanted from yummy digsusting in-store Pizza Hut (pizza, breadsticks, salad and a cookie I had to save for later) AND a trip to Fairway to buy salsa and have a peaceful decaf iced coffee and aforementioned saved cookie on their waterfront patio watching the ships go by (disturbed only by the thick voiced old Brooklyn woman moaning repeatedly to her husband about some bad real estate decision her kids were making). So it’s not that I’m hard to please.

Tonight we are going to the Brooklyn Bridge Park to see "Strangers on a Train" – part of their "Movies With A View" series. Any of you whom I have met before and who are not serial killers are welcome to join us but it’s not a party and you will be entering into conversation with my mother-in-law at your own risk.
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On the reproductive front, it’s now 9dpo and this is the first time in seven tries that I haven’t tested on 9dpo. This is because I noticed that the difference on the test strips that had 200 units of HCG and 60 units just wasn’t that great, so I know that it still wouldn’t mean anything. It wasn’t until the level dropped down below 40 that the strips started to be a lighter color, so my plan is to test after that point – it’s honestly just not exciting enough to do before that. This means that I will most likely start testing Saturday morning, although it is possible that I could break down tomorrow. The idea of all this being that if the sticks are darker than they were last month at the same time in the HCG fading chart, there might be some hope. Probably dangerously faulty logic but I have to entertain myself somehow.

Then there’s the fact that while my progesterone is nice and high from the HCG booster, my period will not be prevented this month like it has been for the past five tries. So all of this could be dashed before my peesticks tell me much of anything. My normal luteal phase is 11 days. That puts me bleeding by Monday, maybe Tuesday, I bet.

For now, though, the temp is up, testing is not alluring enough, and there’s a whole lotta salsa that needs eating.

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Now, I don’t want to go into it too much for fear of weeping, but I am not so into turning 31. It’s getting better, mind you – Wes’ cute handwriting on my gift this morning, "Happy 31st Birthday," suddenly didn’t seem so bad. But on the whole, I am supposed to have or be with a child by now. My only weird age-related goal was to have a baby by the time I was 30. Getting pregnant while 30 seemed a fine compromise. And while yes, there is some modicum of hope that I may have achieved this and just not know it yet (seriously – that would be some awesome universe-messing-with-you kind of shit, huh?), the likelihood is that I have not achieved this goal. It is an arbitrary goal to some extent, but not totally. Having started helping to raise GMB when I was 21 years old, 50 seems a reasonable endpoint to the more strenuous parenting bits. I really don’t want it to stretch much beyond that. I really want my middle age to be free of children. Not to mention that I am already tired and sick and in pain a lot and that’s very likely going to get worse not better and I don’t want to be TOO ill of a mommy. Younger is better for my situation. And also it was just a nice round number, a nice even age to have a baby.

In any case, I am not pleased.

I want to take this opportunity to tell you, oh Internets, that you have been such a saving grace this last year. I truly don’t know what I would do without my Internet friends and without the Internet to keep me connected to my real life ones. I am so grateful that you have all stuck through this with me and are still here reading every detail of my inner workings and my constant whinings. I really appreciate it.

It can also make dire news a bit easier. Yeah, I didn’t get pregnant last cycle, but look how many times people reloaded my page to see if I was (on June 23rd) – I am starting to be maybe a little bit famous after all.

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Finally, my present…

For my birthday, I would like you to blog. As you may know, I try to blog every weekday. Not all of you are as dedicated and I do try to understand that. But summertime Two Week Waits are DAMN boring when you guys aren’t posting new stuff. So, as a present to me, I would like all bloggers reading this to blog SOMETHING today for me to read (if I don’t link to you and you link to me, leave me a comment and I will remedy that – I think I am still missing one or two paybacks in that way).

Thank you all.