I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.

Wow, it was HARD to get up and come to work today. I know it’s a short week, but man oh man oh, I could have used an extra day of rest. Couldn’t have you?

Weekend recap
Friday we ended up going to Texas Roadhouse with Pam and Jason. We had a really good time, it was nice to see them again and we made plans to have a Wii game night sometime in the future. My only complaints were that the wait was LONG and we sat outside and weird bugs attacked us. Also I felt really bad for the servers. I hate places that make you stop in the middle of taking an order to dance or something stupid. Plus the music was super loud so we could hardly hear each other. But like I said, it was fun to see them and we need to see them again soon.
Saturday we woke up early and tried to go to Verizon to get our new phones before we headed over to Jesse’s trailer. What a FREAKING NIGHTMARE. We went to the Verizon store on 72nd by the new Walmart. Seth had been in there before to find out some info about when we could change over from Alltel. We went in and the guy was all jazzed to help us, but when he looked up Seth’s number he found out that Seth’s number (which he’s had forever, so it’s a Columbus number from high school) is in one of the “hold back” area’s, which basically means we can’t change to Verizon for another year, as long as we have that number. We suggested just changing the number, but they guy told us it would be considered a cancellation of our contract and we would have to pay the cancellation fee of 200 bucks or something. I start FLIPPING OUT because I wanted a new phone and this guy was being just ridiculous not even trying to help. Then out of nowhere this other guy starts tapping on my foot and then motions me to a dark corner. In my head I’m like, dude, that’s my HUSBAND and we are not into threesomes or swinging. But I go because I’m about four seconds from punching the “helpful” guy in the face. The guy in the dark corner tells me he used to work for Alltel and we should just go there to get the change over and they will take care of us. I thank him and we leave to the Alltel on 72nd by Nebraska Furniture Mart. It is packed and full of really overweight people. We basically find out that we can’t change Seth’s number until the 11th, so we have to come back then. I kind of wanted to cry, but at least it’s not a year. I was really looking forward to spending the weekend learning how to use my new phone. So I was a little disappointed. Which kind of turned out as a theme for the day.
Jesse’s trailer was a freaking pit. It was so gross, I was just in charge of vacuuming shelves and organizing things into boxes. Maybe it will look different with new carpet, but right now, I wouldn’t live there if you paid me too. I had no idea it had gotten so gross. I guess Jesse had LOTS of parties. But by the time we left, I felt a lot better about it and felt a little less guilty that my parents were struggling to get this place cleaned up and Saturday was the first day I offered to help. It seems they have a good plan in place, and there isn’t much more to do besides to have Jesse go thru the boxes and re do the carpet. It was good we went through because if we didn’t, Dad would have tried to do all the lifting himself and that would have aggravated his hernia. Plus I got some free lunch out of the deal and really didn’t have to work all that hard. And I had fun talking to my mom when Seth left us stranded without keys to drive to get food. We laid on the bed and laughed a lot.
After lunch we ran errands but of course I forgot that the mall we went to didn’t have half the stories I needed. I went to Old Navy to look at their maternity stuff only to find it’s been discontinued and they no longer carry it in stores. Then I went to Gordman’s and found out their maternity line is independent or something and you can’t get any of the discounts they offer on the clothes, so I paid 25 dollars for a pair of pants and cried (I’ve never paid that much for pants in my life) only to find they didn’t really fit yet, I’m still not round enough for them. But I did get some sweet bath sheets on clearance at Bed Bath and Beyond so that made me happy. Saturday night we watched football and I went to bed around 12.
Sunday I woke up early and practiced using the griddle that Pam lent me to make the English muffins. I made one heck of breakfast. I figured if we ate a good later breakfast we wouldn’t want to eat lunch out (and I was right!) Seth was so sweet, I was trying to surprise him but I thought I had broken the griddle (that would be my luck) because the light kept going off and I thought it was shorting out or something, so I woke him up and that’s when he informed me it was the preheat button. Oh. Oops. After that we went back out and go to the stores at our mall that we missed Saturday. Then we went to Target and Seth talked me into this expensive belly band thing that helps keep the new pants up. I got a couple of longer shirts too. I’m in a very weird in between stage right now the maternity clothes don’t fit, but my old stuff doesn’t either. Let me tell you, the band really helps. I’m almost glad I paid near 20 bucks for it. We came home Sunday and I made a lovely beef stroganoff for Seth and a delicious tomato cream sauce for myself and Seth cut all the veggies up so I could have dippers for after work snacks and salad all week at work. Then we watched something on TV, I don’t recall what and went to bed.
Monday I literally laid around and watched Gangland on History Channel and the Criminal Minds marathon on A&E. I know, I know you want to know about the English Muffins…
Something about my recipe wasn’t right. I don’t know if it was the ingredients of the flour, but something didn’t hold well. They are basically like hard tack biscuits. They didn’t get the little air pockets to hold the butter or anything. I’m pretty sure I’m just not a baker. If I get my own griddle (as I’ve instructed Seth’s to tell his parents would be a nice birthday present) I might try them again and see if I can use soda water or buttermilk or something different. But until then, I’ve given up, I suck at baking. Plus it TOOK FOREVER, easy peasy my arse. I had to wait for the dough to rise twice and then cook them on the griddle, and because the dough wasn’t light enough, then I had to throw them in the oven.
Around 5 Seth and I got the motivation to work in the yard, we bought 2 burning bushes to replace that horrid prairie grass in our planters at the end of the driveway. Seth dug them up and mowed. I raked mulch and helped with the planting of the new plants.
Then basically we watched some TV and went to bed. Only late because there was one last episode of Gangland on before we went to bed. I got Seth hooked on it around 2 o’clock so he was all into watching it too.

Random TV notes
I still love Kevin the best on Top Chef and I decided that I don’t like any of the crews on ABDC and don’t want to watch it anymore. And I think Shane Sparks and JC and Lil Mama should have a dance off, and the loser has to leave the panel. That’s just what I think.

First trimester blog:
And now, your first installment of my first trimester blog. This entry is the first one I wrote and it explains a bit about the background of our struggle with the first trimester, I warn you, it’s me, so it’s kind of graphic:
5 weeks and 4 days
I can't take it anymore, I have to bang out my thoughts during the first trimester. According to tradition (*blows raspberry*) and my wonderful husband (*sticks out tongue*), I can't tell my blog about it. I can't write about and post it on the world wide web. He's already mad I've told my closest friends. He'd be even madder if I told him everyone at work knew, but that's because we are a close group and this is a good group of women who have been helping me thru our "infertility issues" so they deserved to know, and also, I vomited in a trash can at work and they aren't idiots. Plus they have been the most loving and caring women through these last couple of scary weeks.
Oh wait, I guess I need to backtrack, huh?
Well a couple of months ago we found out we had "fertility issues", I say this in quotes, because right now, it seems we have no problems at all. All we needed was a Hindu fertility statue from my Aunt, a Hopi fertility god put under our mattress (thanks Mom for buying those cut outs for my RA welcome bags years ago-which BY THE WAY-things make worlds of sense now, like how 3 girls on my floor got pregnant in one year, and thanks to the pack rat in me for never throwing them away), and precision scissor kicks and butt elevation after intercourse for ½ hour (this requires a book and a man servant for sure.)
We were referred to the Heartland Center for Reproductive Medicine by our doctor and found out that we would be trying IUI. It was a VERY emotional process. Maybe in some other blog post I will get into all of that (because I've devoured the blogs trying to find a good blog about supporting your infertile partner-they don't exist)-but let me tell you, I like came this close to joining a infertility support group because the information and acronyms and all that's involved with it is so overwhelming and scary. I went thru a horrible HCG procedure that made me seriously want to die. One of my tubes had a little blockage on the left hand side, and they thought it would be a great idea to just force the dye thru to unclog it, the pain was UNREAL. Plus there was a clamp on my cervix, which I mean come on, that statement alone should make you cringe.
But on July 6th, after waiting incessantly for my period to start (and us to start the IUI process), we decided we had waited entirely too long (so says mathematician husband) and we took a test that morning before I went to work. It was positive. I freaked out-I was so excited, Seth was happy but wanted to wait for the blood test. We scheduled the blood test for the next morning. I called my parents, I was so excited-Mom screamed! We got the results of the blood test and it was true! With a beta level of 126-I was definitely pregnant! We were so excited.
The excitement was not long lived though. Tuesday night after shopping at Sam's Club, I was dancing while Seth was making pizza in the kitchen (my "we are having a baby" dance). I had been suffering from a horrid allergy attack the entire day-unfortunately, I couldn't take my "clear it up in half a second" medicine since I was like, making life in my lady bits. I sneezed mid dance, and something exploded in my underpants. I knew something wasn't right. I ran to the bathroom and lo and behold, dark red blood. I FREAKED. We called nurses line on our insurance, and I got put on immediate bed rest. I was up all night freaking out. I took Wednesday off because I didn't sleep. All I knew is I needed to talk to someone from MY clinic. Our next level check wasn't until Thursday. As soon as our clinic opened Wednesday, I called, by then the bleeding had turned to brown spotting (actually the bleeding was only red blood in that sneeze spooge). The internet had scared me, I was sure I was miscarrying. My whole heart was dying. Our WONDERFUL nurse, Tara, who takes my blood (and if you know me, I don't do that well, at all) reassured me that it was a common issue some women have, and as long as the spotting was brown and there was no cramping, I was okay. Or the baby was okay. Thus began the LONGEST day of my life-Wednesday. Around 2 I panicked went to Walgreens and bought a ton of pregnancy tests and called my mom to come sit with me. Seth had class the whole night and I was tired of being alone with the internet and my hypochondriac mind. It was awful. It's one of the worse hell's I've been in. I felt like I was letting everyone down, especially Seth, who our reproductive endocrinologist blamed our infertility on. This was, for all intensive purposes-a miracle baby-our miracle baby. Even the clinic classifies it as something special (okay a spontaneous pregnancy, which sounds horrible like the baby is going to explode At! Any! Second!) It was awful. Thursday morning we went in and then waited for our results. I went to work and lived in torture for those hours until we got our results. For those of you who don't know, typically they like to see your beta levels double every 48-72 hours when you are pregnant. My level was 318. A GREAT level. We were back on cloud nine.
We finally told Seth's parents, since we held off during the first bleeding scare. They were so happy. We told Seth's brother's the next day, they were excited too. We all couldn’t believe we had done it naturally.
That weekend we were taking it easy and being happy and I got up from a nap and had the red blood spooge again. I FLIPPED. We called the emergency answering service at our clinic and this time our doctor called us back. Let me tell you, I linked our clinic for a reason, if you are struggling with infertility in the Omaha area, I cannot stress enough what a WONDERFUL place that clinic is. Especially Dr. Maclin. She reassured me, gave me her personal cell phone number, and brought me down to a sane level. It was amazing. Right after I talked to her, the spotting went immediately back to brown and I was on bed rest the rest of the weekend (I kind of love bed rest when Seth is there-because he gets bed rest too and it's like being on vacation) We got our third level test the following Tuesday and it was 2786-which is STELLAR! Our first ultrasound, to see the heartbeat is next Tuesday and we are really, really excited and hopeful.
I still have brown spotting, all though its light unless I’m standing up for an extended period of time, and it's still brown, no recurrence of blood. I know I will feel much better when we have the ultrasound and there is a heartbeat and it's all so REAL.
For now I pray extra extra hard, to anyone that will listen, even pleaded to my dead grandma to help out if she is up there. I carry an olive tree cross from Jerusalem in my bra that a teacher at my last visit to Jesus Camp gave us. I remember the love and energy and the power of all those women and it really helps to carry that reminder with me. I also know they are praying, even if they don't know exactly what for, for me too. And that is a big relief.
I have no big complaints yet, mostly a random upset stomach and waves of nausea but no real throwing up. I really have no desire to eat at all-so I have to force it, which gives me an upset stomach. LOTS of gas-so much so that I woke up Seth out of a dead sleep Sunday morning and he thought the house was falling down or he rolled over on Willow. My breasts are tender but mostly veiny, which is super gross, they are about to be too big for my bra. My BIGGEST thing though is sleep. When I get home from work, I need a nap from 4:30-6:30. It's the best nap I've ever had. But it has to be done. I can still go to bed at 11 with Seth, and wake up and still feel tired. I'm just exhausted, but if I'm exhausted because I'm growing a brain and a heart and lungs-CALL ME RIP VAN WINKLE!!!

Working for the weekend
This weekend Chet is coming over to help disassemble the guest bedroom so we can start planning for the baby’s room and steam clean that carpet. Other than that, I plan on more bumming around in my pj’s and helping to decide what is going out of the storage room to the tool shed and what is staying in the storage room. And also dragging Seth to Target and seeing if I can talk him into buying the baby crib I like already. We will see, I think he won’t let me.
Phew, that was a long blog post-hope you all have a great day!

Love (being able to talk about the Bean freely!),
Carrie