Puppy!

I had a chat with the breeder today, and it looks like all systems are GO for our puppy girl to come home on July 2. She's from a really great breeding and her grandsire is Brooks, one of my FAVORITE goldens of all time! They are just the cutest little things EVER!! Check out the video here at this link...http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6649821001861485712&pr=goog-sl. The narrative might be boring, but they are just the cutest little teddy bears EVER! They are 6.5 weeks old now and we'll know which one is ours when they are 8 weeks. We don't get her until she's 11 weeks though, after vacation.

Anyway, the litter theme is Bugs, so we need to think of a registered name with "bug" in it. Any suggestions? Things like "bug in your ear" or "snug as a bug" or "Stop bugging me!" Please make suggestions! We need input. If the name fits, we'll call her Hope, but if she's a nutcase, we might call her Luna, so the registered/call name won't necessarily match.

Anyway, back to my break time! I only have 3 hours per evening and I'm half done already :(

Would have been a great story

You know, trying for a year, and on the last try when we'd totally lost hope Megan FINALLY fell pregnant? Well, that's not a story we get to tell. Test is negative on 14 DPO, and we're done.

It's really bittersweet. I mean, we never thought this would happen. With age on our side, and her getting pregnant before, we thought that this would be easy street. I mean, how many 24-year olds REALLY have trouble getting pregnant? Most 24 year olds are trying NOT to get pregnant becuse they're so damn fertile. Not us, not us.

So here's what's next:

1. Megan starts a new job, making TWICE her current salary, on June 18! This includes benefits, and we couldn't be more trilled. She'll be working at Millionaire Estates (not really, but I stole that pseudonym from the game LIFE), writing their press releases, starring in their commercials on their private TV station, and playing games with the old rich people who live there. Yay! No more nannying!

2. We're getting a puppy! Perhaps sooner than we thought. Today we have to decide if we want a pup from the litter due to go home on June 9 or July 7. Or maybe we'll get one from the June litter and not have it come out until July so we'll be back from vacation. Either way, Hope is on her way!

3. Studying for the boards is going pretty well, but I have the weekend off :D I like weekends off.

That's it for now, time to go spend time with my girl.

They're kids, jackass! Bring them HOME.

I was just reading the news about the boy they found dead in the river in Iraq. 20 years old, barely out of high school, and apparently a great guy. Dead. Reading that news left me bawling. My neighbor from Rainier, WA was killed there too. He was also 20. I guess reading this news made me think of him, watching him ride his bike when he was a kid, and thinking for the zillionth time that this needs to stop. How many more of our kids really need to die over there?? Bring the soldiers home to their families and pump up our defenses at home.

I'm really angry right now...sorry for the mini rant. Back to work.......

Update!

I'm taking an actual break :) Yay! I ended up getting 20 pages behind yesterday, which had me COMPLETELY freaked out, but luckily I caught up today with time to spare! Yeah!!! I'm so excited that I don't have to miss my break to catch up!

So what's been going on? Megan had a really bad day at work yesterday. Basically, the family had her come in early because she had a pediatcician appointment. Then the doctor called, and told the family that they wouldn't do the Varicella vaccine just yet since she's not yet a year old. So they decided to cancel the appointment, and TELL (not ask) Megan to stay an extra 2 hours. They didn't ask if she had plans (she did), they just told her to stay. Besides, she hadn't brought lunch with her and they won't let her eat any of the food in the house, so she was STARVING. Those of you out there who have nannies, it's not okay to treat them this way. Don't just assume that their only purpose and activity in life is to serve your family. They are an employee, not a servant or slave, and common courtesy applies. Needless to say, Megan was really upset. This after they got pissed at her for not coming to babysit all day on Mother's Day Sunday on 12 hours notice.

The good news? She has an interview tomorrow for a better job tomorrow morning! Please hope, pray, chant, do whatever you do....she really needs out of this family. Come to find out the previous nanny only stayed there for 4 months...had Megan known that to begin with, she might not have taken the job.

We're 8 DPI today and still aren't hopeful. We did a test yesterday to see if the trigger shot was out of her system, and it wasn't (obviously 7dpo is way too early for a BFP anyway, so it was the shot), so I think we'll test on Sunday or something like that. Just to know that it's negative, so she can stop the crinone and we can move on with our collective lives.

Time to go clean! I'm studying at home tomorrow so my office needs to get cleaned out :) Now that the vacuum is no longer broken, I can vacuum! Yeah!!!!!!

I'm in a good mood.....

Boards, ugh

Hardly any time to blog now with the boards. Ugh. This is awful.

I just wanted to take a minute to post a photo of our new backyard! We move in one month!! Check out how deep that is, and on the right there is a little garden plot. I'm so excited :)

I'll write more when I take another real break.

The upcoming weeks

This is going to be a loooooong blog post. I have a whole lot to say and I have to say it all today, otherwise I'll have no time to blog and I'll never get to see it! I'll arrange it by topic :D To be helpful, really:

School - I made it through my second year!!!!! I passed my OSCE practical (really well, actually, the graders are on crack) and I'm sure I passed my last exam. Hell, half of it was OB/GYN and I know WAY too much about that anyway. Now on to studying for USMLE Step 1. I have until June 18 to study for the exam and I'm going to be giving 1000% until then. Tomorrow I'm making up a scheudle, then Monday I begin! I can hardly believe that this time has arrived already. I mean, how did I get here? This year flew by so fast (granted, I was preoccupied with TTC most of the time). I can hardly imagine how fast future years will go by. Anyway, I will post some updates on school, but not too many.

Apartments - I don't know if I've posted too much information about this, but we have apartment issues. Our roof has leaked since we moved in and they keep saying they've fixed it, but leak it does. So we told the landlord we were sick of it and wanted out of the lease early. Boy, they sure changed their tune. Apparently they don't want to lose us as tenants, so they want to deal. They've been showing us new apartments right and left, and we think we may have found a new place to live. It's in the best part of our nieghborhood, where there is a Starbucks, our favorite pizza place, our favorite bookstore, our church, the grocery store, our bank, a bakery, and a freaking cheese shop are all within two blocks! I LOVE living in the city sometimes :) Anyway, it has a HUGE yard (not really even by city standards, it's probably 20 feet wide and half a block deep, and fenced...all grassy. The dogs would be in HEAVEN! We haven't toured the inside yet (we will Monday), but we peeked in the windows and could see the kitchen, which is really nice, and the hallway, which is, well, adequate :P Anyway, we're very excited about it and barring catastrophe, we will be moving there before too long!! Which is great, because most of the other apartments we've seen that are less expensive are unworkable for so many reasons :(

TTC - Megan is surging today! However, since it's the weekend and our clinic is the Baby Factory of Great Confusion, we'll be going in for HCG shot on Monday and insemming that same day. It sounds totally cracked to me. Anyway, this cycle is more a formality than anything else, so I'm not overwhelmingly concerned. Meh. What can you do. Anyway, We'll enter the TWW on Monday and know if we're prego two weeks from then, safely separated from my boards testing date.

Adoption - We're trying to decide on public vs. private adoption. We really see plusses and minuses to both options, but we're just not certain yet. We really would like to start with a young child, newborn to 2 years old. We would love to adopt an older child, but since we're young now and have not experienced parenthood yet, we would rather start with an infant or toddler. If anyone out there in cyberspace has a story to share, you're welcome to share it :)

Church - We've had two meetings with Pastor Nice in the last couple of weeks and feel really good about joining. We'll officially join at the Pentecost. I'm really excited to be welcomed into a community that is so attuned to social issues and is 100% accepting of our family! And Megan is really thrilled to get back in touch with her faith, so much that she went to bible study this week and is going to join the choir (once her cold is gone). I think she really needs the human interaction beyond the girl she nannies for. SO happy this is moving forward.

Work - Megan has three interviews! One for a job that could double her income, easily, and give her a very marketable skill. PLEASE let's hope she gets it!!! Pray, hope, whatever you do, pleasepleaseplease! One other is a temporary part time thing for extra income. The other other one is a job that pays better than the nanny thing and has benefits, but isn't as great as the first one. Regardless, we have options, and we're really happy about it :)

Random life - Stupid crap keeps happening. Our vacuum is broken, our showerhead snapped off, our landlord is randomly charging us $40 for an unlock service, damn dog peed on the floor (that NEVER happens...)...blah blah blah. Really, sometimes I wonder if there's someone up there going "HA ha," you know, like Nelson on the Simpsons.

Time for me to go participate in real life now ;)

I'mDoneI'mDoneI'mDone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wow, that was, like, hard.

Okay, sorry. I'm just so incredibly worn out that I don't have much articulate to say, other than I'm DONE and I don't have to study for two days, then I will be studying more than I ever have in my life for 5 weeks, then VACATION!!! Then I'm a Third Year. Yikes. They're going to hand me a scalpel? Crazy people.

Off to make Mac and Cheese for our crazy post-exam potluck tonight ;) More this weekend...

Scheduling, good news and bad news

I got to switch my OB/GYN rotation to Jefferson! So now I don't have to drive to NJ, which is great! The only bad thing is that my friend won't switch with me for York, so I'm still stuck there. But there's no better way to make sure we get pregnant this cycle than to make sure I have to go to York when the baby is due!

Cycle and Adoption

I really don't have time to blog, as I really need to pass my test this week so I can study for the boards, but life is really busy. And I need to talk. We're moving ahead with this cycle, even though our HSG was cancelled...so there could still be a tubal problem of some kind. We will not be TTC anymore after this cycle until I am making an income large enough to finance injectables. So we'll consider that chapter of our lives closed. Neither of us thinks that this cycle will work, so there is surprisingly little stress involved. I mean, it can't work, so why worry about it? If it does, hell, we'll be shocked.

So now we're trying to get out of our lease. We want a less expensive place, and we want away from our landlord because they will never fix the leaky roof. We've had enough! And we want to move on with life, gosh darn it! So we've seen a few places and there are some great prospects out there! Very exciting!!!

We're also doing some preliminary research on adoption agencies. Well, Megan is anyway. Trying to find a really gay-friendly one or two.

Megan is ALSO looking for a more corporate job that has good benefits and good pay. Her nanny job is fine, but the family is SuperRomanCatholic and the gay thing isn't going to go over well. So time to find something new. I'm hoping something crops up soon.

Finally, I'm getting geared up to study for boards. Wow, lots on the plate for me. Not like it isn't taking its toll. My stress level is higher than it's been since I was a kid and I cry more often than I have in a very, very long time. I hope we catch a break soon. We really need one.

This week sucks beyond sucking

-Financial difficulties
-Starting a new cycle
-Getting the HSG cancelled randomly after falling over ourselves to schedule it, and then deciding to scrap the cycle
-Un-scrapping the cycle after so many tears and stress
-Almost running out of gas late at night
-Toilet breaks
-Dog decides to be an ass and try to run out in front of a car (she's fine)
-Fucked up my physical dx practical, though not badly enough to fail
-Whined too much to my poor friends who have listened to me too much already anyway

There's more, but I just don't feel like writing any more about it now. Will it NEVER end? We just want closure, we're ready to be done with all this. One day soon we'll get another fertility workup once I'm in residency, and then we'll get pregnant with injectables or IVF, after adopting our first one or two, but Clomid is NOT going to work. There, I said it. Clomid is NOT going to work.

So there.

Protocol

Clomid: CD4-10
HSG: This Friday 2:30 p.m.
Monitoring: At home until the day of the surge, then 1 bloodwork and ultrasound to confirm
HCG: Trigger shot with the natural LH surge
Crinone: Whole LP after ovulation

The RE actually came up with this on her own, so we decided to do it. And we really want to know if her tubes/uterus are clear and decided to go full out (well, in terms of our budget this is full-out) for our last try with our last vial of swimmers.

Am I such a dork that I can't wait for Megan to do a HPT after the trigger???

Lol. yeah, I am a dork.

Oh, did I say I PASSED my Physical Dx test? I'm SO relieved. And I almost passed my practice USMLE with NO studying leading up to it, so that made me feel REALLY good. REALLY REALLY.

One more thing, we had our first personal meeting with the pastor of our new church today and it went really well. We found out our church voted unanimously to be Reconciled, which means accepting of gay families. That was just fantastic. And the congregation has a really stron social justice bend, which is appealing to us. Anyway, we meet with him again next week!

Okay, I need to study for my practice Physical Dx test which might be tomorrow. I needed to get a friend to switch times with me (Thank YOU Sarah I LOVE you!!!!) so I could go to the HSG with Megan. I hope it all works out.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!

I'm sad. I just got my 3rd Year rotation schedule and I'm slated to go to YORK for 6 weeks in the Spring. YORK. Stupid Stupid Stupid YORK, which is more than two hours away from here by car, which I would not have because we only have one car and Megan will need it. Stupid Stupid Stupid YORK. And I can't switch it with anyone because it has a minimum/maximum enrollment of ONE, which is me, so I can't drop it. Maybe if I can find some nutty person who wants to switch with me, then I can get a different rotation. But this is SO not cool SO not fair.

Here's my full schedule:

July 9 - August 3 : Internal Medicine at Jefferson (Center City)

August 6 - Sept 28: Internal Medicine at Methodist (South Philadelphia)

October 1 - November 9: Surgery at Methodist (South Philadelphia)

November 12 - December 21: Anesthesiology and Ophthalmology at Bryn Mawr Hospital/Wills Eye Hospital (Center City)

January 7 - February 15: OB/GYN at Virtua West New Jersey - Vorhees (SW New Jersey, not that far away)

February 18 - March 28: Pediatrics at Delaware Valley (Jefferson and DuPont Hospital for Children)

March 31 - May 9: Family Medicine in STUPID STUPID YORK (Way the heck far away from Philadelphia)

May 12 - June 20: Psychiatry at Belmont (Center City)

So overall, not bad, except the York thing.

In other news, we still have no idea what we're doing this cycle. I called to report the start of Megan's period yesterday, and they called back saying that the doctor needed to look at the chart before they gave us instructions. WTF??? Are they telling us the doctor hasn't been looking at our chart the whole time????? I should find out today. This is bullshit. I think we need a new RE. I mean, this clinic is top in the area, top in the State, but they're really noncommunicative and apparently the doctors don't look at our chart. Fuckers.

More later...