So Many Thoughts

So many thoughts are and have been buzzing around my head lately. I'm not sure what to do with all of them.
I finally finished all The Chronicles of Narnia. Didn't like them nearly as much as when I was a kid. Matter of fact I didn't like them at all. As a kid I was able to just enjoy the story. Now it just seemed like there was too much symbolism and things behind the story. Oh well.
I was going to post baby bird pics for show and tell and I did get a few that were pretty good but then it felt like a total downer to then mention that on Thursday the babies disappeared. They were fairly well feathered out so I'm hoping that they took off flying. However I've seen several adult doves around and no babies. My fear is they tried to fly, hit the ground and my dog ate them. Since you know she eats absolutely everything these days. Thursday night I did see momma back looking in the nest which made me fear the worst.
ACLS has been passed and is done for 2 years. It wasn't too bad. It was good that I took the arrhythmia class first. Now on to PALS. Oh goody. Work has been busy. I've had patients all night most every night which I suppose is a good thing. It's job security. Plus the bothersome nurses have less drama to make when they're busy.
The weather here is warm and beautiful. I'm enjoying it sooooo much. It was like 82 today. Nice day for a drive. I went to pick up a water cooler I found on Cra*igs*li*st a ways out of town. I had been watching for one as I like having cold water and the whole buying water jugs for a buck a gallon and then the fact that I'm buying all that plastic. So I got my big 5 gallon jug and it cost 1.25 to fill it. And I noticed it's the type 7 plastic which is supposed to contain the BPA stuff that's supposed to be all bad for you. Hmm. Not sure what to think now.
I have tons of stuff. Stuff that I probably don't need. I have been into craft stuff for a long time. A few years back I got really into rubber stamping and for several years made all of my greeting cards etc. I've noticed though that I just don't enjoy it that much anymore. I don't know what to make and the few times I've had my stuff out in the last 3 years or so I haven't really enjoyed nor been that happy with the end result. I had sold off a lot of my stamps a couple years ago that I wasn't using and am now considering selling off the rest of them. Funny thing is that I had several stamp sets I was having a hard time parting with because I might have a reason to use them someday. Like someday if I have kids. Now I'm just not seeing it. And they take up space etc. And if I'm not using them it seems stupid to keep them but then I'm one of those people who hates to get rid of things. I'm also reconsidering the whole scrapbooking idea. One can only scrapbook so many pictures of ones pets and lets face it my pictures are a lot more likely to get attention if I actually stick them in a regular old photo album then have them sitting in a box waiting for me to get around to making scrapbook pages. The times I made scrapbook pages it usually took me hours to make like 2 pages. So considering weeding out a lot of the craft stuff.
Which may come down in part to the fact that the farther I get away from fertility treatments the harder it seems to consider doing it all again and spending that much money again. I'm still trying to pay off the last cycle (likely to take at least if not longer than the year I speculated till I can try again) and the thought of spending even more money is so hard to wrap my head around. For a better chance but still by no means a sure thing. For the record I did speak to the nurse at my doctors office about having my name put on the donor embryo list there but I am just having a difficult time of the idea of spending that much money again for a maybe. Which makes me wonder if I'm a bad infertile or bad potential mom. One part of me mourns so much the children I've never had (and fear I may never have) and another part of me wants my life back. I want to not spend all my time wondering what's next, when can I try again, should I try to adopt, what car, job etc is the best potential for if I'm a mom. Sometimes I truly feel like I could just walk away from it all and be ok with that. I could enjoy the things about my life that I do really like such as being able to go where I want when I want, spend my time doing whatever I want etc. I could decide to live wherever I want to regardless of whether I could have a house with a yard for children. Then once in a while I see a newborn or little girl or boy and feel myself breaking apart wondering why I can't have that or why it comes so fucking easy for so many who appreciate it so little. I just feel so much right now like I have no idea what I want or what to wish for or hope for.

Books, Books, and More Books

So I've probably mentioned a few times that I like to read. Haha. Or maybe a lot. My mom used to read to me a lot when I was little and I kept that joy. I think as I got older it drove my mom a little crazy because as much as I liked to read I hated to read the religious literature that she wanted me to be reading. At any rate reading has always been one of my favorite pastimes and I've read many, many books. Sometimes I liked some books so well that I read them numerous times. I remember one book I read when I was about 13 or 14 that I loved so much I kept checking it out from the library. It was called Eyes of Darkness and I must have read it 10 times. When I was 18 I discovered De*an K00ntz who is one of my favorite authors although I like much of his older stuff much better than his newer stuff. I was so surprised then when I figured out years later that he had actually wrote that book I loved so much as a teenager under a different name.
I've also went back and re-read some of the books I read when I was younger to see if I really liked them that much. I remember buying some of them for my little sister. Stuff like "From The mixed up files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler" and "The Egypt Game" I hope someday to read some of those books to my children. Or at least have them read them.
Another set of books that I remember loving and reading several times was "The Chronicles of Narnia" I remember thinking my mom wouldn't like me reading them because of the magic aspect in the stories. Magic was considered bad and the work of the devil basically. Heck, once my mom figured out what the smurfs was all about I wasn't even allowed to watch that. A few years ago when the first movie came out I did rent that and watch it and remember thinking it wasn't nearly as good as the books. A couple weeks ago when I was wanting to re-read Harry Potter I decided instead to re-read the Narnia books. So I started yesterday and made it through the first book which actually isn't "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe" but "The Magicians Nephew" or at least that's the order in my book. I remembered nothing of that story although I'm fairly certain I did read it. I've also now made it through "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe" However I am finding that I'm really not liking these books as much as I did as a child. When I read them as a child they had the draw of being somewhat forbidden. And they were fantastic stories about magic. I had a friend who pointed out to me a few years back that C.S. Lewis was a Christian and that he had wrote a book about Christianity that she wanted me to read. Of course she was at that time still trying to convince me that I needed to go back to church. So now reading through these books I am sort of surprised by the Christian undertones in the books. These weren't anything I ever picked up as a child but are things I can definitely see now. And whether it's that coloring my impression of them or what I'm just not enjoying them as much. Funny how things that you don't notice as a child seems so different as an adult.
Another thought I had about books lately was related to a dream I had a few days ago. I had an absolutely fantastic dream (which I can't remember hardly at all now) but I remember waking up and thinking "wow if I could remember that later and write it all down it would make a great book!" Of course within minutes it was mostly gone. And who knows, maybe it would have been a horrible book. I don't usually have much desire to write books but I sure do love to read them.

Show And Tell

For Show and Tell today I'm showing my absolute favorite cheese!!! I had never heard of C0ugar G0ld cheese before I took my micro biology class back in 2002. Our teacher (who was an absolutely brilliant if a bit strange man) was talking to us about the beneficial uses of bacteria and brought in samples of this cheese for everyone. I loved it but it was a couple of years later before I actually bought any at the WSU bookstore. I have to admit that I don't really buy it very often because it's a pretty big amount of cheese that I have a hard time getting through the whole amount. A couple weeks ago though I was thinking about how good some would be so I had to get some. So here it is. My favorite yummy cheese. It's a while sharp cheddar that is oh so yummy!

To join in this weeks show and tell head on over to stirrup-queens and join the fun.
Oh and in other show and tell news. There are baby doves in my flower pot!! I suspected there were as I thought I had seen them but I actually just now saw momma feeding them when looking out the kitchen window. Unfortunately as soon as I stepped out with the camera she quit and I didn't get a pic but I will.

What A Day

So today was the first part of my ACLS class. I had gotten the paper work in the mail like back in January with all the info on the class which I of course had misplaced or something since then. I figured I was going to a place I had been several times before for various classes. No biggie. Then Tuesday night at work I figured I better look at the schedule. I looked and oh wow. It's somewhere different, good thing I looked and all because the instructions say that class starts promptly at 8am and if you are late you will not be allowed in and you will lose your deposit of $50. So I head on over to the other place I've never been before bright and early this morning. I left super early since I hadn't been there. Get there, park, figure out I parked in the wrong spot. Go move car to acceptable spot. But yet no one's here yet. Hmm. That's odd. And the staff know nothing of class. Attempt to call education department, they of course don't open until 8am. I call my unit at the hospital, ask the person who answers the phone to look up the ACLS schedule and tell me where it's at. She does, tells me I'm in the right place etc. Finally it's 7:50 and no one is still here. I've done 2 more frantic calls to the education department leaving messages and I KNOW something isn't right. Finally security guy lets me use his computer. I pull up schedule again. There it is. The place I'm at. I page up a little and finally notice at the top of the page it says 2008. Umm yeah. It's 2009. Why the fuck do they have a calendar that is past still here and on top. Isn't that the type of thing you remove at the end of the year??? So I head on out to my car. Leave wrong place at 7:55 and drive like a bat out of hell to right place. Get there 15 minutes later, go to education department and ask if they will let me in. She doesn't know I have to go ask the instructor. I walk into class breathing heavy like I've run all the way there, gasping my story of how I ended up at the wrong hospital. Guy tells me I'm late, has me sign a form, tells me to take a deep breath and find a seat. Whew.. Class was fine. Helpful. I go back next thursday (to the right place) and finish the class and take the test. And hope like hell that I mostly never have to use these skills.
Oh and my morning also started off with a puddle on the floor. Not sure who peed there but I am sort of thinking it was the dog. I had gotten up at 2am to go potty and heard her do her all over body shake which is often her way of letting me know she wants to go out but sometimes it's just because. I wasn't doing the out part at 2am. So instead I cleaned up pee. And even though when it comes to pee in the wrong place Sara usually gets the blame (my cat) I am fairly certain she stayed in bed with me all night and that it wasn't in fact her. Besides, on the floor is not really her thing. She's more of a rug kind of kitty. Or dog bed. Which I will get a new one of tomorrow. And maybe stick in the closet so I can close the closet when the dog isn't inside so Sara won't be tempted.
Another odd thing I noticed was a missing bug. The other night the girlies (cats) had a big big bug. Some sort of beetle and no I'm fairly certain that it wasn't a roach. Even though I saw one in my garage a couple of months ago. Anyways, they were watching it and trying to play with it. I finally got it to crawl away from the wall enough so that I could squash it with a shoe. I'm getting way better. I didn't have to stand on the other side of the room and throw shoes at it!! However cleaning it up is sort of big on the gross factor and I was tired. So I didn't. Figured I would get the vacuum out on my day off and suck it up. So today... It's gone. And I know it was dead because I pretty well mangled it and saw there for a couple of days. So I'm pretty dang sure the stupid dog ate it. Cause since she started the seizure medications she's pretty certain that I'm starving her to death and she will now beg continuously for food (not just while I'm eating), randomly walks around the kitchen licking the floors and makes sure to lick clean her dog dish at breakfast and dinner. Yes, she will eat pretty much anything she can find. Oh goody. At least I don't have to clean up the stupid dead bug.

Hello

Yes, I'm still here. Doing pretty well for the most part. Last week's melancholy didn't last that long but since I was back to work the day after I wrote that and it's been a crazy busy week at work I just haven't gotten back to another post. I also feel like I just don't know what to talk about.
Work is work. I like my job, still not so sure about my coworkers. It's better though. Better since I decided that I really needed to stay out of the drama and avoid the whole gossip about this or that person. I try to just ignore it as much as possible. It's been a lot easier to do when it's busy.
Otherwise I feel like so much of my life is just in a holding pattern. I'm on hold with TTC until I can either manage the money to try again with donor eggs or come up with some donor embryos to try with. I have no idea how to really go about the whole donor embryo thing. I'm trying to get out and enjoy myself and the sites in California but also trying not to spend too much money. This week I have my ACLS class which hopefully I do well with. I suppose I should crack open the book soon. I just don't have a lot going on in my life. Hence the holding pattern. So I just am not blogging a lot. I am reading though. I do still check my reader daily and check in with how everyone is doing. Even if I'm not commenting a lot. I'm cheering you all on and hoping for the best for everyone.

Monday Night Musings

So I just finished watching Nigh*ts in R0da*nthe. I had read the book years ago and remember that I liked it really well but didn't remember what it was about at all. The movie was good but has left me feeling melancholy. It's just stuff. I'm not looking for an answer, or a solution or anything along those lines. But I watch stuff like that about a love that deep (which while rare and still requires work, I do believe exists) and I find myself wondering what happened. How did I get here. What did I do wrong that I'm 38 and single and likely to stay that way. Funny thing is and I was just talking about this today to my friend Jan, for the most part, I'm content with my life. I'm fine with my own company on most occasions. It doesn't bother me a lot to go do stuff on my own and sometimes I think I enjoy it more than I would if I had someone else there with me. I know I've reached a point in my life where I'm old enough and opinionated enough that to enter into a serious relationship might be difficult as it would involve a lot of compromise and I like things in my life the way they are in a lot of situations. But I also at one time desperately wanted love and someone to share my life with. And sometimes that still pops up a bit and I'm left feeling a bit sad or even a bit cheated in the things that haven't turned out the way I had planned or hoped or wanted. Usually after watching certain movies, reading certain books or hearing about someone's fantastic husband from blog reading. And by tomorrow I will wake up and this feeling will likely be gone. My life will go back to being mostly ok. I'll try not to stress too much about the lack of easily accessed sperm that would allow me to continue trying even though I'm too broke to go to the doctor and try again. I will try not to think about how scared I am that this dream or goal or whatever it is will slip away from me too. That I won't find myself down the road somewhere at 45 or 50 wondering what the hell happened and how did I get here.

Show And Tell

When Sadie was younger right after we first got her she used to collect shoes. It was so funny. Me and my boyfriend at the time would come home from work at the end of the day and she would be surrounded by one of each of all of our shoes. Sometimes as many as 5 shoes. The only thing I could figure is that they smelled like us and were comforting. As she got older she seemed to do this less often but once in a while she would have one of my shoes or something when I came home. So last week I came home and I couldn't find one of my slippers. Until I checked with Sadie.
Poor dog just hates being left behind for any reason.
To join in on the show and tell fun this week head on over to Stirrup-Queens.

Georgia On My Mind

So I will be the first to admit that I’m not a news junkie. As a matter of fact I rarely watch the news and don’t keep very up to date about current events. Yes I know I probably should but I don’t. Therefore I tend to stay out of many debates etc that I know not much about. Every once in a while though I come across something that intrigues me or scares the hell out of me and I start researching. I’m pretty good at researching things. So last night I read on Stirrup Queens about the new piece of legislation that is being considered in Georgia today, and I started researching. It’s worrisome. Very worrisome. Bill 169 otherwise known as the Ethical Treatment of Human Embryos Act. The bill was drafted by the Arizona Bio-ethics Defense fund and the Georgia Right to Life group asked Senator Hudgens to introduce the bill. Sen. Hudgens makes the argument that this was inspired by Nadya Suleman and how the care of the 14 children is now the responsibility of the state of California. He doesn’t want a similar situation to happen in Georgia. To some who hears just this part of the bill without really examining what all is included, this may seem like a good idea. Or a great idea. However once you look a bit closer at the whole thing you see that there is a lot more to it and a lot of scare tactics and half-truths being used to promote this. The bill refers to embryos as “a living in vitro embryo is a biological human being who is not the property of any person or entity”. Georgia Right to Life states that the bill is not about abortion but that they “want to see strong protections in place to stop the dangerous practice of implanting more embryos than is medically recommended and that this would help avoid premature births and low birth weight in in vitro fertilization.”
What they don’t say here is how often it’s the IVF cases that are premature or low birth weight and how often it’s non-IVF cases that are premature or low birth weight. There are many many more things out there that can lead to prematurity or low birth weight than IVF. Yes, high order multiples is one of those things but only one. They are not addressing many other know contributors to preterm birth or looking to research other causes of preterm birth. What many people are not going to see about this bill until it’s too late is that it’s not just trying to limit how many embryos are transferred. It’s trying also to limit how many are created. According to the bill the doctor will “limit the number of in vitro human embryos created in a single cycle to the number to be transferred in that cycle” of course also thrown in with that little bit is the line “In interest of reducing the risk of complications for both the mother and the transferred in vitro human embryos, including the risk of preterm birth associated with higher-order multiple gestations” Because if you limit the number of embryos created then of course everything else will be perfect? No, what about all of us who have had cycles that we started with 12 eggs but yet ended up with only 2-3 transferable embryos and yet still no take home baby. Of course also the state of Georgia doesn't mandate insurance coverage of IVF so it would be an out of pocket expense for couples pursuing IVF. They use statistics of how studies show that 80% of fertility clinics in the US do not use the ASRM guidelines on number of embryos to transfer. Yet what isn’t mentioned is how many HOM are the results of IVF. If they were truly looking to decrease risks associated with infertility treatments they would look at actual statistics of how many IVF cycles ended up being multiple births compared to how many cycles ended up being multiple births with other fertility meds. I did. Last night I spent a couple of hours going through the 2006 report on ART from the CDC. While I’ve never taken a statistics class and it’s a bit confusing with the charts for fresh and frozen cycles with donor and non-donor eggs I could understand the basic gist of it. One figure showed a multiple birth with fresh non donor eggs as being 25.1% and that is including twins. Basically the percentage of pregnancies that were triplets or more resulting from IVF was relatively very small. Look at many of the known cases of HOM and it’s seen that these cases were not the result of IVF but fertility medications with insemination or timed intercourse. No, this bill is not about preventing problems from IVF, it’s about a back door into legislation on right to life.
Another point in this law is that an embryo shall not be intentionally destroyed for any purpose. So PGD is pointless.
Doctors who do not follow this bill according to many of the articles I read would be subject to a $1000 fine. What also is not mentioned is that they can also be denied further licensing in Georgia to practice medicine.
One more piece of legislation that isn’t getting as much talk is the SB204/HB388 which is an embryo adoption bill which would allow parents to adopt human embryos. As Sen. Mills stated, “Under Georgia’s current laws, a woman could implant an embryo and carry it to term, only to have the biological parents reassert their parental rights when she goes into labor. That’s not fair, and it’s a risk that most people are unwilling to take. The Option of Adoption Act would fix that problem and protect a woman’s parental right should she choose to adopt and implant an embryo,” However when you look at the wording for bill 169 that the embryo is a living human and not property of anyone else and you factor in Sen. Mills who is stating that they need to deal with the 20,000 frozen embryos in the state of Georgia this could get really scary. Say you live in Georgia and have embryos frozen that you plan to use later. Then the state comes along and says you have to use them or lose them and they will be adopted out to someone else. Don’t think that’s possible? According to Georgia Insight a bill from 2008 that was introduced but tabled stated, “that unclaimed embryos will be appointed guardians and may be adopted for implantation.” These embryos can be claimed by egg and sperm donors and will be granted rights but what if those rights included the requirement to use them within X amount of time.
To me all of this is a very scary attempt to eventually stop IVF (and abortion) and not an attempt to provide safety to people or to protect the state of Georgia from another Octomom. And sorry this feels a bit (or a lot) like a research paper but I had so many strong reactions to these bills being decided today in Georgia.

Show And Tell

Whoohoo, I made it to class. Yeah, I've been a bit lax in posting for show and tell lately. This morning though I had a pic that I just couldn't resist sharing.

This morning as I had the back door open to let Sadie in, Sara decided it was an invitation for her to go out. Since she longs to be more of an outdoor kitty than an indoor one. When I went running out in my socks to catch her (not difficult since she usually gets just out the door and then stops as she doesn't know what to do first) I happened to look up and see this...

This cute little dove has decided the perfect place for her nest is apparently in the hanging flower pot on my patio. I don't know how long she has been there and my only complaint will be the resulting bird poo that will end up on my patio but she's so cute there. I walked right past her a couple of times and then walked fairly close up to the planter with my camera to get a pic of her and while she looked a bit alarmed she didn't move at all. I wonder how long before there are babies.

Want to see what the rest of the class is showing today and join in on the fun?? Head on over to Stirrup-Queens and join in!!