Single and Fabulous

My dad made it through the surgery...they ended up doing a triple bipass.  They kept him sedated last night and woke him up and took the breathing tube out this morning.  I went to see him this afternoon and they had just gotten him out of bed and sitting in a chair.  He was still quite groggy and in some pain, but otherwise it's pretty good news.  Hopefully everyday he'll just get stronger and be in less pain.  It's very hard to watch someone who you know to be so strong to be in so much pain.  It's going to get a bit worse before it gets better too I would imagine.  But the scary part is over!

My father is having bi-pass surgery tomorrow afternoon so I would really appreciate any and all prayers or positive thoughts.  He went in on Tuesday for what we thought was going to be angioplasty and possibly some stints...but that turned into surgery since there was too much blockage and it was not in a good place for a stint.  Sooooo...surgery tomorrow.  I know it's a common procedure, but I'm still scared.  It's going to be a long day and I just need it to turn out okay because I'm definitely not ready for it not to be.

Hopefully I'll have good news to report next time...

I'm leaving for Washington DC at 0700 tomorrow morning for National Police Week.  It's already 5:45pm and I haven't packed a thing yet!  I will be back on Sunday and will hopefully have some more great photos.  Plus, the President is scheduled to speak at the ceremony on Friday...so that should be very cool. 

Hope all is well with everyone out in blogland and I'll check in when I return!   

Is 32 too old to like Kelly Clarkson?  I hope not because I just got tickets to see her in concert in September.  Yes, I realize that is five months away...but they just went on sale.  She's actually coming to Vermont so I figured I should take advantage of the opportunity. 

I'm psyched because my friend Casey is coming with me.  Casey is one of my closest friends.  We went to high school together and were even cheerleaders together (yes I was a cheerleader, mock me if you wish, just remember that I carry a gun AND a taser!).  At one time, after college, she lived in Japan, but now she lives about 25 minutes from me!  She has two of the cutest kids you've ever seen in the whole entire world.  Okay, so maybe I'm a bit biased because her 2 year old (Alex) is my little buddy.  He is so amazing the things that come out of his mouth.  He's a freakin' genius I tell ya!  And her newest little one (Eden) was born on December 30th so she's a little snuggle bunny.  Yes, she makes my uterus ache, I'll admit it!

On that note...(Disclaimer to Bob - this next part will be about my woman parts, or rather, woman parts in general.  It's not graphic by any means, but you may find it a bit boring and irrelevant, so I won't be offended if you stop reading)...as some of you many know from my past posts, I've embarked on a little journey to get to know my body a little better, or really to figure out what it is, or isn't, doing.  It's always been a bit of a mystery as it seems to just do whatever the heck it feels like in terms of my cycles.  And for the better part of my life since I was 18, I've been on the Pill (several different kinds).  This has been a blessing and a curse at the same time.  So my experiment began with me going off the pill in an effort to try to figure out how my body is functioning.

I'd read a lot about monitoring your basil body temperature so I thought that was a good place to start.  I got my special basil body temp thermometer (it's not really that special, but it's accurate to the hundredth of a degree, not a tenth of a degree like other thermometers) and set out to chart my temps.  Then I read on some message boards (yes, I've also been stalking some infertility and/or trying to conceive message boards - and before you ask...no, I'm not trying at this moment but I'm getting some good information for when that time comes) about this book, Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler, so of course I had to look it up on Amazon...and then order it.

Let me tell you something ladies...you think by the time you reach your 30's you have your body all figured out and you know what's going on inside of it, but you are wrong.  I've even taken Anatomy & Physiology 1 AND 2 (aced them both, I might add!) and I have still learned SO SO much from this book.  It's freakin' amazing!  I would recommend it to any woman whether she is trying to conceive or not.  It's actually written for both because the charting methods can be used as birth control too (and NO, it's not the rhythm method).  It's really amazing what goes on inside our bodies and how much you can figure out on your own just by charting a few simple things everyday.

The author is careful to say that there will be times when invasive medical procedures will need to be done, however, I can see how it would be possible for the woman to help the doctor's pinpoint the problem rather than just take test after expensive (maybe not necessary) test to figure out a problem if she is trying to get pregnant and is having difficulty.  This book has helped me to see that I was quite possibly misled by a doctor several years ago who told me to expect problems with trying to conceive.  I don't think this doctor meant me any harm, in fact, I think she meant just the opposite.  But having learned some of the things that I have learned from this book, I really don't think she had all of the information needed to make that statement.  Yes, she may have been right, but as for now at least, I have hope that she was wrong (and I have been worrying and obsessing all these years for, maybe, nothing).

I think this doctor based her "findings" on two things.  One, she had my blood drawn for a hormone test which apparently showed questionable results.  I have since learned that it's important to take the same test several times throughout a cycle and specifically on several key days within the cycle.  Therefore, taking one test on a random day really tells you very little.  Two, I had come to her with my own version of a "chart" in the form of tracking how long my cycles were.  These ranged anywhere from 32 days to 49 days over about a year and a half.  Now, I never believed that EVERY woman fell into the "28 day cycle", but I was misinformed into believing that "normal" was at least somewhat close to that.  I was thinking somewhere along the lines of 26 to 31 days, so I thought that meant that my long cycles were indicating that I wasn't ovulating.  From reading this book, I know that might not be the case.  I also never believed that EVERY woman ovulated at perfect "day 14" either, but with cycles as long as mine are, I had lost hope.  From this book I've read about women who don't ovulate until "day 28" or even higher!  I didn't even know this was possible, so I have hope.

I just completed my first cycle off the pill, 39 days.  Before reading this book this would have freaked me out (although I probably would have shrugged it off as just coming off the pill...which probably does play a role, I know).  Also, my chart for this first cycle does not show a clear "thermal shift" which would suggest that I didn't ovulate this cycle...but again, I didn't expect to this cycle.  I believe pumping myself with hormones year after year after year will eventually take it's toll and my body will take time to adjust (at least this is what I keep telling myself!).  I will only question this if I don't see a thermal shift after several cycles.  But there again, I will have more knowledge going to see a doctor and will know that is the problem (versus many of the other problems women face with trying to conceive).

So there you have it.  My overaies, in a nut shell.  You can blame Patresa since she asked.  Just kidding P! :o)  Until next time...happy blogging!

I just realized that I never posted some of the pics from my NYC trip I took back in December, so I've done that now.  Some of them are kind of fuzzy, but I think with all the lights the effect looks kind of cool (plus for some of them, the blurriness is only because I was a bit tipsy.  Hey, I was on vacation!).  For some reason I can't figure out how to add a description to each photo.  They are all pretty self explanatory though...except for maybe the one of the large curtain.  That's to show how close we were to the stage when we saw the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular.  It was SO awesome!  If you have never seen it, I highly recommend it.  The Rockettes are amazing!  I absolutely LOVED it!  And the one of me in my jammies is from Christmas morning...and yes, we had mimosas.  My brother got me Sex and the City: The Movie and I was psyched!

Other than that nothing too exciting to talk about.  We finally got our new cruiser in the other day so I have a shiny new car parked in my driveway!  Yes, I get the new car 'cause I'm special.  Right now it's not set up for patrol.  My chief is going to be putting in the radio, siren, and light bar.  He was just waiting on some parts so he can do that.  Plus he's going to put all the lettering on it (he used to be a body mechanic and worked for a race team, so he's done that sort of thing before).  It has that new car smell.  I love it!  It makes me want to trade in my Subaru and get something new...but that is not in the plans at the moment.  My plan is to finish paying it off (15 more payments left...maybe less) and then keep it for another three years before getting something new.  So having just paid off my credit card then next year not having a car payment, I should be able to put more money into savings and my IRA.  That should free me up to make some career choices that I've been thinking about.

Well, this post has been boring enough so if you're still with me...I'll sign off for now.  Hope all is well with everyone.  Until next time...xoxo

P.S. - At least I didn't talk about my ovaries! ;o)

Well my first cycle of temperature taking is underway, albeit a bit rocky.  For some strange reason I keep waking up at different hours which makes taking my temp at the same time everyday kind of difficult.  I ended up waking up Wednesday at 0630 (even though my alarm was set for 0730) and that turned out to be "day 1" so I thought "Well, 0630 isn't so bad.  I can do that for the entire cycle."  So yesterday my alarm was all set for 0630...and I wake up at 0500!  WTH is up with that?  And today?  Today I woke up at 0400!  When I wasn't waking up to take my temp, I'd sleep just fine until 0830 or 0900, and now I can't sleep through the morning to save my life!  It's just so weird. 

So it's been a bit rocky to start off with, which isn't that bad since this cycle is more of a test run anyway.  I don't expect the "results" to show much since I've just come off of the BCP's.  I'm also just curious to see what my body is going to do with itself.  I've always been kind of an anomaly anyway, so we'll see.

In other completely unrelated news, I managed to FINALLY pay off my credit card last month.  It's taken me about six or seven years but I finally did it.  I was the "typical" American that had accumulated almost $10,000 in credit card debt, so you can imagine how it feels to be completely out of debt...well credit card debt anyway.  But my stupid credit card company continued to draw out my automatic payment, and when I checked my bank statement yesterday...there it was.  My payment to a credit card company that I don't owe any money to anymore!  They still took $200!  Bastards!  It took me forever to get a real person on the phone, but when I finally did, they said I should have my money back by tomorrow.  We'll see.  They better hope I do or they will not like me very much when I get them on the phone again!