Return of the Meme and Other Goings-On

Several weeks ago, I responded to Shannon's question meme.

Shannon and Flmgodog responded, saying they wanted to be questioned in return.

I'm not so prompt with my end, but here they are, five questions back. Go 'head and post your answers.

1. Vanilla or chocolate? And if chocolate, what kind (milk, dark or white)?

2. In five years, what do you want to look back on and be most excited by?

3. What's your favorite season?

4. In 30 years, will you go to your high school reunion? Your college reunion? An elementary school reunion? Why or why not?

5. How have you been affected as a result of keeping a blog?

I know I've been affected by NOT blogging these past two weeks. Work deadlines, nicer weather, and taking advantage of sleeping in a bit later most mornings have cut into the time I'd typically be blogging. I tend to write in the early morning, or on weekends, and this past weekend I took advantage of the sun and hung out outside and gardened. Being a city girl, I've never had the opportunity to really worry about a yard. But the house the Mister and I bought has this gorgeous landscaped backyard, so I feel an obligation to keep it looking nice so it doesn't get overrun with weeds and leaves and become the house on the block everyone sniffs at.

And yes, we could hire a gardener to manage the upkeep, but once you own a house, there's always something else you could be spending money on. At least for now, I can manage the weed pulling and shrub pruning, while the Mister mows and fertilizes the grass. I did, however, just write a check to have someone come and prune and treat our trees for pests. Trees. I certainly never thought about maintaining trees when I lived in New York.

In a high school way, I've also noticed that some bloggers who have started blogging around the same time I did have way higher numbers on their stat counters. Is it because I don't update more regularly? Should I branch out to other readers besides diabetics? Comment on many more blogs than I already do? What's the secret?

And finally, in a topic that's actually germane to this blog's focus, the Mister and I held off on jumping on the IVF train. This month, and I apologize for too much information in advance (WARNING: BODILY FUNCTION TALK AHEAD. AVERT YOUR EYES IF SQUEAMISH), I noticed the most ovulatory cervical mucous I've seen in years. Like, honest-to-goodness egg white goop. In truckloads.

In the seven or so months that I've been charting my temperatures to see when I ovulate, I've rarely or never noticed any change in the mucous production downstairs, which is typically a key sign to figuring out when you ovulate. When I saw it a few days ago, I was like "Honey, we have to have sex right NOW!"

However, since I'd been planning to start an IVF cycle this month, we were instructed to avoid sex entirely this month and instead start taking Lupron, a drug that kicks off a two month process of drugs and egg formation and retrieval. The IVF regimen starts on day 21 of the cycle (pretty late in the game compared to ovulation and typical fucking for fertility's sake, which happen about a week before).

With the mucous truckload, I wondered if maybe this month I was actually fertile and producing an egg the way my body was supposed to. In months past, I've been told I've ovulated just fine, and for two months I took Clomid which was supposed to amp up egg production. But with this extra goop, I thought, "Maybe this is the month my body is actually behaving and producing a top quality egg. Let's not waste this opportunity."

So with many calls to my reproductive endo, we cancelled the IVF cycle and scheduled an unmedicated IUI instead. So in addition to our own canoodling this month, we tried the turkey baster method as well just for an added bonus.

And thus begins another two week wait.

But if the pregnancy test is negative, there's no more postponing the IVF stuff any more.

Yowza, who knew I had so much to say. Trees? Goop? I gotta blog more often.