Fun borrowed book list

100 Books
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read. (Or just put comments next to them)
3) Underline (or mark in a different color) the books you LOVE.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Good day

I'm down a full size I think. I feel really good....and get this, when I tried to cheat today while out for sushi I got full! By the end of September (if this cycle fails) I hope to be down to a 14 which is what I was the fall after we got married. My goal is a 12 and if things continue they way they have been it is not a stretch to get there for Christmas. A 12 on me (I'm 5'10") is downright svelte;)

K and I went for groceries and I bought M a Wii game to keep him occupied while immobile on the couch. I feel sorry for him. This may sound bad but I am glad it's him and not me. He is pretty good at staying stationary where as I go stir crazy after an hour in one place.

I'm neither here nor there about this cycle. Maybe I am trying not to think about it. I feel the same as every other cycle but it is still early and with my reaction to the progesterone who the hell knows what's what.

Sore boobs and all

I lost my temper with M yesterday. It seems every cycle he accuses me of being overly pessimistic about the outcome. I believe his exact words are "If you don't think it's going to work, why do we do it?"

I see it as being realistic. After all the odds ARE against us. What makes me so angry and hurt is that his question comes across as him doubting my commitment to the whole IF process. Do you think I would pump myself full of drugs and sit with my feet in stirrups far to often for nothing?! I tried to explain that the "realism" is simply a safeguard for me. I am simply trying to make it hurt a little bit less when a cycle doesn't work. I don't know. I know no one is reading this but do you think realism can sabotage a cycle? I sure as hell don't. It is out of my hands. It will happen or it won't.

My boobs feel like they are going to explode. This is normal for me on the progesterone but it's still uncomfortable. 14 days to go until beta. I usually get AF before then. I guess we'll see.

After we had calmed down and worked things out, I talked to M about getting a dog if this cycle doesn't work. For the first time he didn't immediately shoot the idea down. This makes me hopeful. I need something to look forward to if we are going to put IF on the back burner. Here are my two hopes:

1. This cycle works and our dream comes true.

2. In the event of this cycle failing I am able to bring home a love hungry pooch who will hang on my every word and force me to go outside.

I don't think that is to much to ask.

Drugs suck unless they work

It turns out that Crinone (besides being very pricy compared to prometrium) has the same effect on me. I feel like I'm walking around with a bag on my head.

M is driving me a little banana's. I know he can't help it but I'm not sure I can do this without any help. I can't wait until he is more mobile. The things I need help with aren't really things you want friends helping with. Remind me not to be a nurse or home care worker. Bedpans are not my specialty.

I'm going to make a yummy veggie lasagne for supper. S is coming over and he's in the middle of a horrible break up with his cheating-ass bitch (excuse my harshness) of a wife. I thought he could uses a good meal. That seems to be my caregiving style...just feed 'em and everything will be ok. LOL

Speaking of food, I am down 12 pounds on WW. I'm proud of myself for not cheating even through this stressful time when it is so tempting. I am very determined to look and feel better and so far I am VERY happy with the results.

Here we go again...

Today was the big day. DI number 7. I think the nurse could tell I was tired and not to excited about the whole thing. She said she understood how hard it was to imagine it working. I'm glad she said that rather than telling me to think positively. Sometimes that is so hard to do and you end up exhausted just trying to see the bright side in a shitty situation. I start Crinone this evening which is new. I've always use Prometrium as a progesterone suppliment but it had terrible side effects for me so I'm hoping the Crinone is better. M's family has once again come through financially. I hate having to accept it but the truth is that we need it and they are allowing us this last chance at DI for a while. My beta will be on Sept. 13. Cross your fingers.

M is home from the hospital. I feel like I haven't sat down for more that 10 minutes. He is almost completely immobile which means he needs me and I can't get away very often or for very long. He is handling it quite well though needs to be told to sleep. I suppose this is practice for a baby if we have one!

I'm so tired and am trying not to to think of the weeks and weeks of this that I have to look forward to. Time for that decaf coffee that's been calling me...mmmm.

M went in for knee surgery today...6am to be exact. So here I sit at home alone....a little bit drunk and a lot stressed out. The surgery went well but there were some complications in recovery. He stopped breathing. I don't think there was ever real danger because he was being monitored but it was really scary just the same. I ended up at the hospital for 12 hours straight.

I know I need sleep. I know I need to be up for 6:15 but I can't shut my brain off.

Tactless people...wtf!

I just had a meeting with a parent who wanted to enroll her son in piano lessons for the fall. I was a little uneasy from the beginning of my contact with her as she seemed to have a million questions which isn't a bad thing only she wouldn't listen when I gave her the answers.

So as we were chatting about music lessons, she looks at my belly and asks "are you going to have a baby?". WTF! I answered no and turned the subject back to music but instead of letting it go or apologizing she jumped in again with "Oh, I guess you could be and just not telling anyone! *wink *" I stated again that I was NOT pregnant and we continued with the meeting. The whole time all I wanted to do was scream at her but instead I was professional and finish the meeting.

I...am...so...angry! Why can't people just think before the say stupid things!

Let's pretend...

I had a VERY good dream last night. It was very emotional but maybe it means something? I dreamt that I had an amazing connection with a beautiful man. There was no sex but it felt unbelievable just to be with him, just to touch him. The interesting part is that he was a cancer patient and when we were around other people he completely denied knowing me. Weird. Dreams are strange, especially when you write them down the morning after!

I am going to hang on to today with dear life and pretend that tomorrow I don't have to get up at 5am and drive M to the hospital. I then have to drive back into downtown for b/w at 7am and then BACK to the hospital hopefully before M goes into surgery. The nurse at the hospital told me to expect to be there all day so I'd better pack a bag of things to read.

...but like I said, today is about pretending that tomorrow isn't happening. I am going to have a fabulous cup of coffee and clean up my studio for the students tonight. I might even go eat lunch on the patio.

Back again

So here I am again, almost a year later. I'm not sure why I didn't continue writing after the first post. Life gets in the way I guess. We are about to attempt our 7th donor IUI. This time with more drugs. We've decided this will be the last IUI before moving on to IVF. The injections aren't bad. Not fun either. I'm proud of myself for giving myself a needle! I am trying to remain optimistic. If this IUI doesn't work we will be taking an extended break before attempting IVF. With M trying to finish his PhD it is just not financially viable to continue. It really feels like shutting a door and that is scary

This will be a hectic week. M is going for major knee surgery right around the time that I start the daily b/w and u/s. I'm trying my best just to breath through it all but I admit I am stressed. We are both scared of the surgery. It is a 3-4 month recovery and I worry about being able to help him through it. Tomorrow we have a meeting with the accountant and I feel disorganized. I should have time to gather everything after my early morning b/w. I hate dealing with money.

It has been a good summer. We've done a lot of fun things and for the most part it has been very care free. I feel so lucky to have a job that allows me 8 weeks off. I needed it. September is going to hit me hard I think. Even though I am looking forward to seeing all the kids, I worry about my lack of energy and also worried that if this cycle doesn't work, I will be in a bad headspace to jump into full time work again. In the end I'll just get through I guess. I have 'til now and I'm still here and manage to laugh on a regular basis. Here we go...