Reconnecting...

I am a big believer in couples having time away from one another. This was especially important for the G-man and I when we were working together on the same schedule. You just need some time to yourself or with friends where nothing is expected of you. No one is annoyed that you didn't take the garbage out or didn't pair the socks. But now that G and I are working in different fields on different schedules I feel like I need to make an extra effort to connect with him. We don't have the drive to and from work to talk and vent, or dinner break to joke around, and we don't go to bed or wake up at the same time anymore. Heck we rarely have a meal together anymore.

That is why this morning I decided to forgo my usual run followed by couch surfing while G slept till 1pm. Instead I corralled the dogs upstairs and I crawled into bed with the Hubs at noon and waited for him to wake up, which didn't take long (I swear he has a 6th sense for when I am in bed naked). It was fantastic. We just lounged in our undies in bed with the AC blasting full force so we could snuggle with out getting all sweaty. We had some awesome mid-day sex, and then just relaxed for hours. We talked, cuddled, had tickle fights, laughed at the dogs being idiots on the floor. We made plans for the week. When I got a little hungry G went and got us a couple Lean Pockets and we snuggled in to watch Kung Fu Panda. I snoozed a little, he texted his BFF a little. But mostly we were just together. The world outside our tiny little bedroom might as well have not existed. We could hear the crazy thunder and rain, but we really didn't care.

But eventually the bubble had to burst. I had to get up and take a shower before work, and he had to wash his uniform for work tonight. But even now sitting at work I can feel my closeness with him clinging to me. I can see his smile when we talked about how happy his new job is making him, and hear his laugh when I tickled the spot on his hip that always sends him squirming. Tomorrow we will be back to runs to the gym and the grocery store, bickering about whether or not we should spend the extra $.50 for name brand over generic. He'll be racing off to work, and I will spend the night watching cheesey TV shows meant for teenagers and going to bed early. But today I have the perfection of three hours spent in bed with the love of my life making me feel light and happy.

Vanilla Lemon Lime Cupcakes

Summer always puts me in the mood for all things citrus. I decided last week I wanted to expand my baking horizons and try a few things I have never made before. So I decided to make Lemon Curd with the intent of using it as a filling for some cupcakes. Then I got sick and the lemon curd sat in my fridge for a week.

Finally today I felt better and got my baking pants back on. Since the lemon curd used up all of my lemons and I didn't feel like a run to the grocery store I opted to make Lime cupcakes and fill them with the curd. I took the recipe out of Martha Stewart's Cupcake cookbook only changed it around a little (I can't leave anything alone). After tasting the lemon curd with the cake I decided I would need a frosting that was light and sweet to cut through all the tartness. So I went with my classic Vanilla Buttercream that I adore. Seriously, if I could bath in that Vanilla Buttercream I would.

I must say they turned out great. Moist, but not sticky. Tart, and dare I say bright? The lime flavor gets lost a little with the lemon curd, but I didn't mind that much. And the buttercream did exactly what I wanted, it gives just enough sweetness so the lemon curd doesn't become over powering. I think the folks at work would agree that they were great since as soon as I walked in I had four guys swarming around me. This one is going straight into my scrap book where I keep all the 'keeper' recipes.


Here is the cupcake recipe as copied from Martha's website. I will italicize all changes I made to the recipes.

Lime Cupcakes

Makes 24 (I got 32)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup cake flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
2 cups sugar
4 large eggs, room temperature
Finely grated zest of 3 limes (about 3 tablespoons)
4 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup buttermilk

Directions

-Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners. Whisk together flours, baking powder, and salt.

-With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until each is until incorporated, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Beat in zest and vanilla. Add flour mixture in three batches, alternating with two additions of buttermilk and lime juice, and beating until just combined after each.

-Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each three-quarters full. Bake, rotating tins halfway through, until a cake tester inserted in centers comes out clean, about 25 minutes. Transfer tins to wire racks to cool completely before removing cupcakes. Cupcakes can be stored overnight at room temperature, or frozen up to 2 months, in airtight containers.

And here is the link to the Lemon Curd recipe which I used verbatim.

Yay... about to start up again!!!

First a couple pieces of good news on the weight loss front. Thanks to the last four days of being sick and barely being able to eat I am now down 25 pounds since April! And I went to my GI doc yesterday (everything on the Crohn's front is fine) and since my last check up with him i have lost 33 pounds! yay! I must say as much as I am annoyed with my body right now I am pretty proud that I am still doing so well with the weight loss. I can't remember the last time I was down to this weight.

Onto the fertile front... I had my consult with Dr. F today. We are not going to do a lap. He said that based off what I have told him about my symptoms, if I do have endo it would be a pretty minor case. It said that the Remicade infusions actually probably help with Endo if i do have it, so the only good a lap would do is to remove endo if I do have it, and that would only help if I planned on doing a lot more IUIs.

Instead we only want to do 1 more IUI. I don't want to waste all my insurance coverage on IUIs. So we are moving onto injectables starting the end of August/beginning of September. When I get my next period in about two weeks I will call the RE's office and go in for a lesson on giving myself injections. Then around cd 22 I will start Lupron to suppress my ovaries, then when I get my period again I will start with either follistom or Gonal-F and we will continue that until it is time to trigger. The goal will be to produce 3 good sized follies. If we get over 5 he will cancel our cycle.

If this IUI doesn't work than that is it for IUIs. Hopefully we would be able to start IVF in January or February. It all depends on whether or not I keep up my current rate of weight loss. I am really hopeful for this IUI though. I trying not to get too excited, but i can't help it. I have been completely hopeless for the past four months, I just want to have some hope back.

The Power of Friends

In the past two weeks it seems like bad news just keeps raining down on me. First my Mother In Law got hospitalized for kidney failure and low heart rate. It was very scary there for a couple days. Thankfully she was released a couple days later, but she will most likely need dialysis once a week from now on. Then I found out yesterday that my Uncle was admitted to the hospital for headaches and disorientation. It turns out he has spinal meningitis. He has some of the best doctors treating him, so we are very hopeful that he will be OK. He will definitely need lots of rehab to be able to speak normally again. On top of that my sister had a colonoscopy to try and figure out what is causing her stomach problems, but they didn't give her enough drugs during the procedure and she could feel and remembers everything. She was in a lot of pain and, lets face it, that is not a procedure you want to remember in the first place.

This was all on top of everything else that is already going on in my life. The fertility problems, the hubs changing jobs, my extreme dislike for my job right now, and the surprise bout of strep throat that decided to descend on me yesterday. It has all just been a little too much for me.

But the good thing is people that you never thought would step up and be there for you start coming out of the wood work. I broke down and started sobbing at work yesterday because it all just came crashing down on me. I walked in and one of my co-workers asked how I was, and I couldn't even fathom how to answer that question and started sobbing. Before I knew it another co-worker comes rushing up and starts patting my back and asking me what's wrong and do I want to talk about it. Then I come into work today and she has a card for me that says "Thinking of you" and a very sweet note from her inside. I started tearing up again and had to walk outside so I wouldn't have another break down. But that little gesture meant so much to me. I don't think she'll ever know how much it helped.

Then there are the dozens of women that I only know through screen names and facebook pages that sent me words of condolence and understanding. You see I post on a discussion board for infertile women. But we share so much more than that. We talk about what is going on in our lives in general, what we are excited about, and what we are scared of. Because as any woman that has ever dealt with fertility issues knows, IF starts to creep into every aspect of your life. For instance the second thought to go through my head when I found out about my MIL was "She can't die before we have kids!" The first thought was "oh god is she OK" of coarse. But the women on the infertility board understand all of this. When I went back to my post about everything that was going on it just struck me how much these women help me everyday. Even on days when I don't have it in me to post much, they are there helping each other, on the ready for the next question or crisis. And those twenty some replies to my post just made me feel supported even more than I already did.

It was then that I realized how much I have to be happy about. I have a husband that loves me and is willing to sleep on the couch so I can have the whole bed to myself when I am sick. I have family that at the drop of a hat are on the phone calling each other when anything goes wrong, and are willing to drive in the middle of the night to be with you when there is an emergency. I have a few friends that I know I can call/email/or text and they will be there to listen. Everything in my life may not be perfect all the time, hell it can be down right crappy at times. But at the core, it is good. In the middle of all this crap happening in my life it was really nice to be reminded of that.

The Plan....

So AF has come and gone. I am temping and charting again, which is not my favorite thing to do, but whatever it takes right. I have also been consulting Dr. Google (which Dr. F actually encourages) and I have some symptoms in common with Endometriosis. I don't have all the symptoms, but some of them. So I have decided to make an appointment with Dr. F to sit down and talk through what we can do to figure some stuff out while I am on this stupid break. I know doing a lap is one possibility, not sure if there is more that we could do.

I also want to talk to him about the possibility of doing an injectables IUI at the end of the summer. IVF just scares the crap out of me (mostly the egg retrieval part) and I want to try everything we can before moving to IVF. So I want one more shot at IUI. I may also ask for a repeat HSG to see if my right tube stayed open after the Tubal Recannulization.

So we shall see if anything news comes of all that.