still waiting on a normal cycle

Well, today is cycle day 19 on my first cycle off the pill. I've heard of women having hundred-day cycles their first couple of times off the pill. I hope that's not me. My temps are still low each morning. My cervical fluid still looks to be fertile. I just don't know what's going on. But I don't regret getting off the pill. I should have done it a long time ago.

I called my mom again this afternoon. She said that she and my sis were going to try to come see me over Labor Day weekend after all, but sis started her job sooner than that so they can't come now. I really and truly don't know when at all we will be able to see each other now. Probably not until after my as-yet-unconceived baby is born. When said baby arrives, though, I will be able to have a homebirth with a legal midwife. There is a small practice of CNMs that is still listed in the phone book as doing homebirths. I hope they are still around when it's my turn.

I've developed the pictures of girl kitty playing fetch. Hope to post them sometime.

childbirth thoughts

No, I'm not pregnant. But I do think about it and dream about it and hope about it for one day in the future. Today's post is prompted by a post I got on another list I'm on saying that they don't do referrals for illegal midwives. That would have been my best chance for having a homebirth since most of the Certified Nurse Midwives have to have doctor backup and very few of them do homebirths anymore. It's possible, but only slightly such, that legislation will pass between January and May that makes direct-entry midwifery legal again in MO, but if it does not pass then I may have birth by myself without any "professional" guidance. I have no fears.

But in the meantime I will still pray that legislation will pass to decriminalize midwifery.

family is so far

For the first time since I first left home 9 years ago, I'm homesick. I really want to see my family. Especially my new nephew who is 6 weeks old now. And I have the Tuesday after Labor Day off (and Sunday and Monday). Since I had to work Saturday and Wednesday, I was thinking that my mom and sis and baby could come up at least for that weekend. I called them this evening... and my aunt is already going to Amarillo that weekend so they can't come up. I cried. I won't get enough time off anytime soon to take a trip up there, and they said that they can come up and see me sometime on one of Dad's off weeks, but I will only have limited time off to visit with them. :( I just feel so detached from them lately like they're thousands of miles away and I'll never see them again. But Mom did say she'd send me a few pictures.

Charting is going fine. I wonder if I'm really doing it "right" sometimes but this is still only my first cycle off, so I am still learning. Without being TMI, I wonder if I'm charting my CF correctly. Hopefully I'll have a temp shift in a couple of days.

first overnight guests in new apartment

More than a few years ago, Tim's family was host to a German foreign exchange girl. Since that time, that whole family has made an annual trip to America to see us and also visit several other places around the country. This is the first time that they came and Tim and I weren't in Oklahoma anymore. Saturday afternoon, Tim's parents and the girl and her brother arrived. They stayed the night and stayed Sunday night also, then the German parents joined us today briefly for a quick visit to a park (where the ducks and geese are so tame that they will eat out of your hands) then we went out to eat.

While we were waiting for our table, I noticed that my left eye seemed to be doing better. I covered my right eye and could see things way across the way. Today was the first time that eye had been clear since before my last appointment on July 20th. It still comes and goes but mostly comes now. Hopefully it will stay fairly clear from here on out. I was a little worried that I would need an enhancement. Not because of the surgery in general, but because I live so far away now that I would probably have to take a week off work to have followup appointments, and then still go back a month later for followup, etc. When I had it done the first time, I had a LOT of followup appointments, pretty much every other day. I don't have enough time off to do that again.

We got word on Tim's car and they fixed it, but all 8 of the valves were bent so all 8 had to be replaced. So it was about $150 more than the estimate. No worries though. We will be taken care of. Tim's parents gave us some garage sale money for the things of ours that they either kept or are going to sell sometime down the road. So that will definitely help us out. But all through the weekend we were still a one-car family. I was able to use his parents' van for a few things I needed to do this weekend since Tim had to work and needed the car for that. Plus when we were all together too, they "let" me chauffer them around since they didn't know their way around the city. It was neat to drive their van. I was used to a much smaller car but did pretty well with the big truck-ish vehicle.

Charting is going well. So far I have remembered to take my temperature. This week I am more nervous than last week though. This week I am REALLY off the pill. It's kindof exciting. I can't wait until we can TTC.

fixing a car and a delay of plans

Well I have a bit of bad news today. DH's car kindof died on Tuesday. It died about 100 yards from home so we were able to get it into a parking spot, but it wouldn't start. When you turn the key to "start", it would just make a high whine. Kindof like if you turn on the blender with nothing in it.

So we call around and find someone to look at the car and we get it towed out there early yesterday morning. The immediate issue was the timing belt. It snapped, so that caused the dying. Another potential issue was that the valves could have bent but they wouldn't know any more until they put a new timing belt back on. So we called them a little later and sure enough, several valves are bent.

We just don't have the money for a different car and it's going to cost quite a bit to fix it, but we looked at the budget, the checking account, the savings account, and the upcoming bills and decided to go ahead and get it fixed. It pretty much ate up all the washer/dryer fund. Being a Nissan, which has a reputation of running for a long time, I have no reason to believe that anything this major will happen to the car again anytime soon.

This is where the delays come in. Since we have to start rebuilding the W/D fund then that will of course delay our purchase of it. And I have a stash of fabric to sew into maternity clothes but about 2/3 of that is still unwashed (I pre-wash my fabric before I sew with it). I don't want to tote that to the laundromat so I need a W/D to wash it... and since it's for planned maternity clothes then I want to have my sewing done before I need it so I don't sew in a hurry and mess up and have to rip out seams, etc.

This also has the potential to delay TTC-ing. I'm still looking for January, depending on how fast we can rebuild the fund. But as soon as we get a W/D then we will have to start saving for a midwife fee which is yet to be determined for the amount. (Not covered by insurance but a homebirth is what we want).

But as of right now I am still hopeful. I just keep praying and being faithful and know that DH and I will be taken care of. These setbacks are only momentarily frustrating. The wait only briefly seems forever. And the reward at the end of the tunnel will be what I've always been waiting for. Or something like that. Didn't mean to get all philosophical there. :)

Then Tim tells me just tonight that we should go ahead and have a baby b/c we'll be so happy with the baby that it won't matter that we're broke b/c we won't care, that all we'll feel is happiness for our new addition. His head is in the clouds and deep down he really knows that we should wait. With this car thing, he knows now how important living within a budget is, and not eating out, etc. I think we will be able to stick with a budget more than ever now. But only time will tell.

dissatisfied with job after only two months?

Well, not really dissatisfied with the job, per se, but with one particular person I work with. I prayed the other day for patience and already that helped a lot. When I first started, it didn't bother me but now I feel like she is overly bossy and loud and talks too much etc. And she is the one that is going to be there for a while. My other coworker, the sweet quiet church-going one, plans to leave next summer at the latest. :( I am sad, but maybe she will be there through the summer and hopefully if we are blessed with children when we try then I'll only be "without" her for 2 months or so. All these little mini-trials will just make me stronger. But every other single facet about my job is great. I am thankful for my blessings. Today I got to work in a different store again to help out. It's nice to have a change of scenery like that. I wasn't very busy but had spurts of 3-4 customers coming in at once. I liked it.

I've re-figured the credit card payoff scheme. I added an extra 30/month or so to just the regular payments, and also an extra 200 for each of 3 months towards the end of the year to reflect the extra paycheck we get. (Get paid biweekly and the budget is based on a 2-check month but some months we get 3 checks). And the new payoff date is September! A whole month earlier. I think we will still wait and start TTCing in January, though, just to give us that extra month of cushion and savings. Plus I might be able to pay off my car the next month. That would be very exciting. :)

I'd better go for now. I want to do some sewing this afternoon. I cut the cloth out last weekend and all week I was too tired to do anything else besides cook and dishes. It is a summery dress so I want to finish it while it's still summer. Once Labor Day hits then I won't be able to wear it to work since I'm not supposed to wear open toed shoes there, etc.

last week of pills

Well, this week is my last week of pills. I ordered a thermometer online last week and it came on Monday. I had to go online because all the ones I found in stores weren't sensitive enough. Taking Charge of Your Fertility recommends that it be sensitive to 1/10th of a degree. I found many that would measure to 1/10th, but when I read the fine print in the instructions manual it was only sensitive to 2/10ths. But I have the thermometer now and have "practiced" taking my temperature for a couple of days, to get into the habit of doing so.

I'm so nervous about going off the pill, but Tim understands that we shouldn't get pregnant before January. If we do it won't be the end of the world, but we just wouldn't have our debt paid off as soon as we'd like. If we don't get pregnant right away in January or February then I can pay the car off in November. (The rest of the credit cards would be paid off in October). That would be awesome because then there would be 3 more months that we could put it into savings. So exciting.

My eyes are still having troubles. My right eye is the one that can see clearly, but it is also the one that itches more than the other one. Both of them also turn red, but only red in certain areas. I'm being liberal with the eye drops and have been since my last appointment, but I just don't know what's going on. My next appointment isn't until the end of next month so I have a long wait. Hopefully my eyes will heal up (with the redness and itching at least) in another few weeks or so.