So it’s yet another grey rainy day here in Sub­ur­ban Detroit … fit­ting for Mother’s Day, if you ask me. Hubby & I have found our way to our favorite cof­fee house where we can finally read the paper and relax as we want. And yes … I man­aged to make my way through Mother’s Day lunch with the fam­i­lies with­out hav­ing to make a “trip” to the restroom to cry in pri­vate. Although … I do con­fess, I wanted to whack the host­ess who wished me a “Happy Mother’s Day” and tried to shove a rose in my hand, even after I told her that I was not a mother. Grrr …

Any­way, since it’s a grey day, I fig­ured it would be a great day to finally waste a lit­tle grey mat­ter on answer­ing a meme that Io sent to me ear­lier this past week. So here goes …

4 Things I Did Ten Years Ago (1998):

• Had surgery to cor­rect a her­ni­ated disc in my lower back after a patient fell on me. That would sig­nal the end of my “Floor Nurse” career and would even­tu­ally end up work­ing for the hospital’s Case Man­age­ment Depart­ment … sig­nal­ing the begin­ning of my sec­ond career in Nurs­ing Case Man­age­ment … Or “Skirt Nurs­ing,” as one of the ICU nurses referred to my job … mean­ing I don’t have to get my hands all dirty and in to every aspect of direct patient care. Well, I cer­tain­ing DO get my hands dirty … it’s just a dif­fer­ent kind of dirt.

• Watched the Red Wings win the sec­ond of two con­sec­u­tive Stan­ley Cup Cham­pi­onships and made it a point to call in sick at work just so I could go to the Cham­pi­onship Parade in Down­town Detroit. Tried to make sure that no news cam­eras were around us either! LOL!

The 1998 Stan­ley Cup Cham­pi­ons … See Kon­stan­ti­nov in the Wheelchair?

• Helped my SIL and our nephew (who was 2 and a half at that time) move in to our house after Tyler’s dipsh*t dad decided he wanted to get a divorce. They lived with us for just under a year while my SIL fin­ished up get­ting her Bach­e­lors. It was good thing to have them there with us, as we totally adored and loved Tyler (and still do!) and wanted to make sure he had some sort of sta­bil­ity while going through such a dif­fi­cult tran­si­tion. The only down­side to it all was that Bobby & I were just start­ing to really focus on our mar­riage and start­ing our fam­ily … which made it just a lit­tle hard and frus­trat­ing when hav­ing other peo­ple liv­ing with us. In other words, not enough pri­vate time for some spon­ta­neous nookie.

• In May, I had my yearly GYN appoint­ment and finally told my Doc that I was hav­ing issues with try­ing to get preg­nant. No blood tests were ordered at that time, which should have been my first clue. Was told to take my temp every morn­ing and chart and if I wasn’t preg­nant in 6 months, to make an appoint­ment. In Octo­ber, I started the first of many Clo­mid chal­lenges (because obvi­ously I wasn’t preg­nant by then). I was opti­mistic at that time, think­ing that I’d only have to do a few months of this and I’d be on my way to start­ing my happy fam­ily. How I wish I could go back and change things …

4 Things I Did Five Years Ago (2003):

• The first half of the year found me head­ing back and forth to the first of two RE’s I’ve been to. I’d spend the first two weeks of my cycles con­stantly at his office hav­ing blood sucked out of me. And another week of pok­ing myself in my belly or thigh. And then wait­ing two weeks only to be utterly dev­as­tated and dis­ap­pointed with the BFN (that would be “big fat neg­a­tive” as in preg­nancy test, for those that aren’t well-​​versed in IF-​​speak) which ulti­mately followed.

• At the same time, I was work­ing in lead­er­ship for the same com­pany that I work for now. I super­vised about 10 RN’s and had over­all an excel­lent group of nurses that all worked together seam­lessly. I couldn’t have asked for a bet­ter team to super­vi­sor. And then … we (as in the other super­vi­sor I worked closely with) made the mis­take of hir­ing a per­son who just couldn’t get the hang of the job nor could she get the hang of work­ing with a com­puter. I remem­ber think­ing … “For f*ck’s sake! It’s the 21^st cen­tury! Some­where down the line you must have at least worked on a type­writer or even a com­puter in the hos­pi­tal!!” So … unfor­tu­nately, I had to let her go. It wasn’t the most pleas­ant feel­ing in the world, know­ing that I was the one respon­si­ble for mak­ing her unem­ployed. Now … imag­ine hav­ing to try to train this per­son and ulti­mately hav­ing to let her go while going through stim cycles. Yeah … def­i­nitely NOT pleasant.

• In July, I turned 31. While it’s not a mile­stone birth­day to mark, I clearly remem­ber this one because it’s when I decided to finally take a break from IF treat­ments. That week­end, we headed up to Toronto to attend, of all things, the baby shower of my husband’s cousin … whom BP (that would be “Before Preg­nancy”) I felt very close to. I can clearly remem­ber the drive up, feel­ing very dejected and when I think of it now, seri­ously depressed to the point where I couldn’t find the will to live. And I can also remem­ber how dif­fi­cult it was to hear Hubby’s extended fam­ily (whom I oth­er­wise love dearly) sing me “Happy Birth­day” when frankly, all I wanted to do was crawl up into a cor­ner and wither away. Yeah. That bad. And the Mon­day after we got home from Toronto, I sought pro­fes­sional help and Hubby & I decided not to think about what our next step should be until the end of summer.

• And so that next step was taken in Octo­ber, when Hubby & I were referred to another RE. This is the one that ulti­mately diag­nosed me with mild PCOS and started me on Met­formin. And even­tu­ally was the one who did my one and only IVF cycle. I truly liked this RE; and if we had decided to do another IVF cycle, I would have stayed with him. … So over­all, I’d have to say that 2003 totally sucked …

4 Things I Did Yesterday:

• Woke up. D*mn … that was a mir­a­cle, con­sid­er­ing how hell­ish my work week was. Let’s put it this way, last Fri­day I was so upset that if any­one would have asked me how I was, I would have burst in to tears. You know that feel­ing of want­ing and know­ing that you’re doing the right thing, but yet you feel like at every turn you’re hit­ting your head up against a bric.k wa.ll? Yeah … that’s exactly how I felt. But then I thought about the whole “Bric.k Wa.ll” anal­ogy by Ra.ndy Pa.usch and con­tem­plated exactly how I was going to climb over this obsta­cle. Still contemplating …

• Took Hubby to den­tist appoint­ment and while he was there, ran to two dif­fer­ent banks and the phar­macy to pick up a cou­ple of our prescriptions.

• Headed to the local mall to buy … da da da dum … Mother’s Day gifts for our Moms. And of course, Hubby’s sis­ter (Tyler’s mom); but THAT gift was really from our “furba­bies” to their “Aun­tie J” By the way … Does any­body find it strange that the major­ity of Sister-​​to-​​Sister Mother’s Day cards are more like “Sis­ter with Kids” –to– “Another Sis­ter with Kids” cards?! Yeah … per­son­ally I find that annoy­ing. And yet another rea­son for an infer­tile to find fault with this holiday.

J’s old­est “niece,” Rain

• Fin­ished writ­ing the post I started Fri­day night about the hap­pen­stances at the Resolve meet­ing AND also wrote my Mother’s Day “Woe-​​is-​​me” post. Except when I went to try to post both of them … W.ordpress decided to do some server main­te­nance. Dang-​​nabbit!

4 Shows I Love To Watch:
Okay, I con­fess that I do watch a lot of tele­vi­sion dur­ing the fall and win­ter sea­son. But if I had to pick my Top 4 from after the Writ­ers’ Strike, they would have to be …

• “Danc­ing with the Stars” … Yeah, I know … but hey, at least it’s not all a pop­u­lar­ity con­test like, let’s say … Am.erican I.dol

• “Project Run­way” … Yep, in this real­ity show, these con­tes­tants actu­ally have to show tal­ent and are actu­ally being judged by pro­fes­sion­als in the busi­ness. Def­i­nitely not a pop­u­lar­ity con­test here!

• “Grey’s Anatomy” … Uh huh. I know. Not as good as when it first came on air. But def­i­nitely not as bad as it was just before the strike. Ugh … totally hated the whole George and Izzie plot.

• “Smal­l­ville” … The comic book, super hero-​​loving geek in me is def­i­nitely some­thing that I picked up from all the years of being with my Hus­band. (Okay, so maybe it started ear­lier, while watch­ing the “Super­friends” car­toon every Sat­ur­day morn­ing.) So watch­ing a show that fol­lows the story of Super­man before he actu­ally becomes Super­man is def­i­nitely some­thing I enjoy. Plus, see­ing Tom Welling on my TV every week isn’t such a bad thing either …

4 Things I Love To Do:

• Write. Ever since I started reg­u­larly post­ing to my blog, I’ve found myself men­tally com­pos­ing thoughts in my head. Not all of them make it to my com­puter screen, but many times they end up fer­ment­ing in my brain for a few days or weeks before they come out in some sort of man­ner. Besides, keep­ing up on this has kept me from bot­tling up my emo­tions like I used to. So. F*cking. Therapeutic.

• Take ran­dom pic­tures. Last year for “Moth­er­less Day” (that’s the day before Mother’s Day, at least that’s what I’ve named it), Hubby got me a newer, sleeker, eas­ier to work dig­i­tal cam that I have taken to keep­ing in my purse at all times. I never know when I will come across some­thing that I might per­ceive as unique. Or cool. Or beau­ti­ful. And now that W.ordpress has a new tem­plate design for pho­to­blog­ging, I’ve started yet another blog.

• Hang­ing out at our local cof­fee house. This gives me a chance to col­lect my thoughts and get them down on “My Lap­pie” (nick­name for my beau­ti­ful Mac­Book). I get waaay too dis­tracted when I’m at home, so sit­ting here and tak­ing in the peo­ple and atmos­phere gets my cre­ative juices flowing.

Hubby at one of our fave spots

• Read, Sleep, and Eat. In no par­tic­u­lar order, I’ve con­densed Io’s top three into my last thing that I love to do. (Is that cheat­ing?) Because seri­ously, with­out them I am totally not able to do the other three things above.

Alrighty then. I think I’ve wasted enough brain power for the after­noon. Well, actu­ally now it’s early evening … and it’s still rain­ing. Yuck.

Hmm … who to tag, who to tag. I think this time around I’ll ask Sheils and Hope548 to to this next!