Awesome Giveaway!

Thank you to my friends Alicia and Stacey and Ambie for letting me know about this giveaway! Right now you can go and enter to win a free handbag as part of celebrating the launch of the site! They will be giving away one every hour for 24 hours! I registered for the one above. Go to the site and pick your own!

So go now! Pin It

I am now....

The proud owner of my very own Nissan Versa! Yay! I've been waiting for this car for a year!!!! No real pics yet, but these are the ones from the ad:

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A new feature here at the blog! Lisa's Precious Pedi's!

So, I went to get my nails done today. It had been a couple of weeks, and I had broken so many that I ended up just taking them all off. So I went 2 weeks with naked nails. weird. Anyway, I get my nails done by the fabulous Lisa Stinelli, currently at Vita Bella Salon and Spa. I have been going to Lisa consistently for about 8 years now, and I absolutely love her!

Today I decided to splurge and get a pedi as well. I don't usually go to Lisa for pedi's, because she is pretty far from my house and it's almost always a pretty sponateneous desicion. She did my wedding toes and my honeymoon toes and I'm pretty sure that's it. Today, she asked what I wanted to do on my toes, and I told her to do whatever she wanted. Imagine my surprise when she offered argyle! Argyle on my toes! Naturally, I thought she was joking, so I played along. To my immense pleasure, I left the salon sporting the cutest toes I have ever seen!

Pink, black, gray and silver argyle. On my toes! I told Lisa I was going to blog about it, and that every month I'd get a pedi, and leave the design, color and stlye up to her, then come and show it off in the blog! So, Lisa's Precious Pedi's is born!

To get a Precious Pedi of your own, call Lisa at 602-790-4830. $20 for a pedi, $30 for a full set of sculpted acrylics. Vita Bella is located at 59th ave and Greenway. Tell Lisa you found her on my blog!

Come back next month for volume 2!

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Dorothy Horton

Dorothy Horton was a lot of things. She was a sister, a wife, a mom, an aunt, a grandmother and an inspiration. She was my great-aunt, and while my memories of her are few, they are fond. She came from Washington DC to visit us, and I remember being excited to see her everytime because she always had the best shoes, and of course she brought me presents. I have a very clear memory of one of her visits. She and her husband Al had just arrived. from the airport, and hadn't even settled in yet. I gave them both bug hugs then went running. They came in a few minutes later and I had taken all of Dorothy's high heels out of her suitcase and was trying them all on. My mother never wears heels, so I'm sure that it seemed very exotic and special to me. Every year after that, she always brought lots of extras with her. I thought that at the time. That she and my mom were very different people. If you don't know, my mom is a true-to-the-bone birkenstock wearing, bra-burning, feminist hippy. No make up, no push up bras, no fancy shoes or hair-dos. Really a hippy. So my Aunt Dorothy always made me think of movie stars. I can almost remember the smell of her perfume. Almost.

Dorothy Horton passed away this morning. I don't know all the details, but she was diagnosed with cancer while Scott and I were in Wisconsin last month. They went to the hospital for an X-Ray, and she didn't make it home. When they first heard the diagnosis, she was given three weeks.

Dorothy spent her last few days surrounded by friends, family and love. She was in her element, and at her happiest. She will be missed, and her absence will be felt deeply. Pin It

Update

No babies................ yet. ;)

That's all for now.

On to the next cycle! Pin It

And.... back to babies.

I haven't posted much about the baby fever and it symptoms since being In Wisconsin. I don't really have a good excuse/reason. I've really been just trying to get back into "Real Life Mode". So here it is!

My chart, in all it's glory.

I understand that to most of you, this is Japanese, so I'll tell you the highlights. The first row is the cycle days. The green ones are "fertile" days. The row under that tracks CM (you don't need to pay attention to that. I do, you don't. :) Moving on) Skip a row, and you'll see PM and AM. This is where you chart BD (baby dancing). **Side note, I think BD is just as ridiculous as you do. But I don't write this stuff, and it's the accepted acronym, so we'll play along** The goal is to BD on your fertile days to increase chnces of conception. Based on my chart, we BD'd 3 out of the 4 green days. So we had good timing this month.

Based on my O date FF calculated that if I still had no AF by today, I should POAS. Well, here we are at today. No AF and a BFN. My issue is this. My longest cycle (before now) was 27 days. My longest LP (luteal phase - the days between O and AF) was 15 days. Here I sit at cd 28 14 dpo. My O date may be inaccurate (it could have been cd 14, 15 or 16) because of our travelling in the beginning of the cycle. I missed some temps and woke up lae a few days too. HOWEVER. Even with a later O date, I'm still sitting at cd28. With a negative HPT. I have no AF symptoms, until this morning when my BBs started to get sore. I have high temps still. I don't know what is going on! I told Scott this morning "I took a test, it said no" his response? "Did you get your period?" no "Then fuck the test, what does it know?". He was still mostly asleep during this coversation. What does the test know? Really? It's a scientifically developed tool. HPTs are generally right. The only way this could be a false neg was if I O'd later than cd14 (which is possible) because I wouldn't have enough HCG to trigger a positive result.

Gah. I'm not even sure where I'm going with this. I'm just frustrated. If BFN, then where is AF? If no AF, why no BFP???!!!

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Disconnected

Lately I've been feeling very disconnected. I feel like I'm losing myself. This happened when I was planning our wedding, too. I  started feeling like I was being defined by our wedding. I wasn't me anymore, I was Scott's fiancee. Now, I don't even have that. Yes, I am Scott's wife. I am a daughter, sister, cousin, and friend. But what does that all really mean? I'm having a hard time with this. I think that my self worth is defined by what I'm doing. What I'm planning, creating. When I'm not working on a project, I feel a little lost. Like I'm adrift in my life, but going in no direction. Right now, I'm concentrating on babies. But then what? I know that I will be much busier when we do have children, but I'm pretty busy now. What kind of mother can I be? How can I teach my children to have a strong sense of self, to be confident in who they are, and be true to themselves at all costs, if I can't even begin to do the same? I'm worried that my life will never be enough for me. That my family,  my job, and my friends aren't enough. I get so easily bored. 

None of this is coming out right, but if you bear with me, it may all make sense in the end. I hope...

I'm a member of a private chat board with about 20 other girls I met on the knot. Some of them I count in my circle of best friends, some I don't really know all that well, and some of them I am friendly with. I feel very distanced from the board lately. Part of his comes from not being able to participate as much as I used to. Part of it is simply being discontent with myself.

I am having guilt pains just writing this. I love my life. I love my husband. I love my family, and I love my friends. I have a job I am happy with, 3 awesome dogs, a house I adore and friends I can count on. i just don't understand what is missing from my life.  Most days I think it's children. The other days I  worry that it's not. I am not the most patient of people by any means. I can't even begin to imagine what life with an infant will really be like. What if I'm not really cut out to be a parent? What if I'm just supposed to be an awesome babysitter? What if we have a baby, and it turns out I'm a horrible mother?! I've never been a mom before. Never had one person's well being completely in my hands. What if I drop the baby, or think it's ugly? You aren't supposed to think your baby is ugly. What if I'm that girl???

That was a lot of  "what ifs" in one paragraph. These are the things that run through my head. I have a constant fear of not being good enough.  I think that might where my need to plan comes from. If I spend a ridiculous amount of time planning something, I don't really have to do anything else. If I figure out every little thing we could possibly need, or that could go wrong, I already have an answer. Hopefully it's the right one, but an answer nonetheless. It takes the guess work out of decision making. I am less likely to make a mistake.  Which in normal people is a good thing. Preparation is a positive thing. But in me, it turns into a compulsion. I am constantly researching everything. When I don't do the research I am not happy with my choice, and I am prone to making rash decisions to try and correct it. Which begins a circle  that I can't find my  way out of.

I don't thik that there is anything I can do, say, hear, buy, research or  feel thatwilll help. But I pray toGod there is, and that I figure it out in a hurry. I don't think I can lose anymore of myself before I'm lost  forever... Pin It