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 ;)

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.

The winds are changing...

It was negative, but we were expecting that. Welcome to the eleventh hour, the eleventh month of our trying to have a baby, and a new plan.

We talked a long time about options, and here's what it looks like. We have one vial left, and we plan to use it. We wrote a long e-mail to the RE asking questions...questions about Megan's fertility, questions about drugs, questions about options. Either we'll do a low- to no-intervention cycle with no monitoring this month or take a little while off. Natural cycle sounds like a good idea to us at this point.

If this doesn't work, which we're pretty certain it won't, then we plan to look into adoption, or maybe a known donor situation. We're not going to go there with injectables and IVF right now, especially with no "guarantee" of a baby. We thought about adoption in the beginning anyway, so it's just a little rearrangement :) When I'm working full time, this will be something we can afford, but not now.

So we'll see what happens. Life goes on.