One Down...Two to Go!!!

I got it!!! I finally got it!!!! I almost feel like Margaret Simon in Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. "She" finally got here 5 weeks to the day after my D&C. The "she" I'm talking about is "Aunt Flo", "Red Tide", "The Curse".

A sense of uncertainty came over me as I've wondered for weeks whether I would have a spontaneous period after my D&C since I have PCOS and irregular cycles. And tonight my uncertainty was replaced with excitement when I found AF did in fact pay me a visit this month. I have to admit that it is weird to want AF to come when for over a year I've hoped and prayed that she would stay away and be replaced with a BFP. This is the first cycle of three that I have to wait for before we can start trying to expand our family again. I'm just so excited!!!!!

Throw Me Something Mister!!!

We're no longer Mardi Gras virgins!!!! J and I went to our first Mardi Gras parade today! We had SO much fun, more fun than we thought we'd have. See, neither of us are "party" people. We're good, church-going folk who like to have a good time, but we're very conservative, so to attend a Mardi Gras parade was pretty out of character for us. Of course, we didn't go to a parade in New Orleans. We had to start small. So we went to the Spanish Town Parade here in Baton Rouge. This parade is easily the best one here in town and draws quite the diverse crowd, but it has more of a family atmosphere if you know what I mean.

Mardi Gras is a celebration so huge in Louisiana that school is actually out for a few days! Can you believe that? As a former teacher from Texas that was so strange to me, but I can see where they would rather give the students the holiday rather than having half empty classrooms.

It's amazing how crazy people get when the people on the floats start throwing the colorful beads into the crowd. Beads that are so cheap, but put huge smiles on people's faces when they catch them. J played it cool at first. Just standing behind me enjoying the atmosphere, and watching me stock up on all kinds of beads. But, it didn't take him long to get into the groove and start going for the beads that were thrown in his direction. In fact, I think it surprised him how fun it actually was to catch them. He says he started catching them so they wouldn't hit him in the face, but I really think he wanted to get into the spirit of Mardi Gras, and the only way to do that was to throw his hands up and catch the beads that came his way.

So what do you do with over a hundred strands of beads? We decided to keep a few as a souvenir of our first Mardi Gras parade, but the others are going to mailed to our nieces and nephew back in Texas. We know they'll enjoy getting them in the mail and playing dress up with them.

Here's a little Mardi Gras History for you...

• Though its exact origins are subject to debate, the celebration known as Carnival came to be associated with Judeo-Christian tradition. In its earliest usage in medieval Europe, the Latin word carnelevare, from which "carnival" is derived (literally meaning "to lift up" or relieve from "flesh" or "meat"), may have referred to the beginning of the Lenten season of atonement and abstinence rather than the festive holiday customs that preceded Lent. In any case, over time it became established as the season of merriment that begins on the feast of the Epiphany (Jan. 6), also known as Kings' Day or Twelfth Night (it’s the twelfth day of Christmas, the day the gift-bearing Magi visited the Christ child).


• The Mardi Gras season begins on January 6 and continues until Fat Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday, which is always 47 days before Easter.


• Because the day before Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent, was one of feasting—as symbolized by the ritual slaughter of a fatted bull or ox (boeuf gras)—it came to be known as Fat Tuesday or, as the French would say, Mardi Gras, which occurred on any Tuesday from Feb. 3 through March 9.


• The official colors for Mardi Gras are purple, green, and gold. These colors were chosen in 1872 by the King of Carnival, Rex. He chose these colors to stand for the following: Purple represents justice, green stands for faith, and gold stands for power.

Found a Place to Lounge

So lately I've been noticing that I haven't seen posts on FF from some regular members. While I was reading a BG member's blog I noticed that she had been having some trouble with FF and she pointed her readers here. After visiting the site I decided that I really enojoyed it's boards more than FF's. Now, don't get me wrong, I LOVE the charting that FF offers, but the boards on the new site are much more friendly and they have a whole lot fewer constraints than FF. So, if you're reading this and you want to join us over here, come on over! We'd love to have you!!!

This is Harder Than I Thought

I'm at the three week mark since my D&C, and the wait is killing me. But it's not just the wait to try again. I mean, it is that, but I'm also waiting to ovulate for the first time, I'm waiting for AF to show for the first time, I'm waiting for the day when I can go get all the blood work done to hopefully give us some answers, and I'm waiting to go back on the pill so I can have the magical number of AF's before we can try again. It seems like all I'm doing is waiting! And I'm tired!!!

I've tried to keep myself busy so I'm not always thinking about everything I'm waiting for. I don't have a "real" job. I'm a housewife. All I do is cook, clean, do the laundry, and run errands that we need done. For eight years I taught elementary school back in Texas. My life had purpose and meaning back then. But then J got transferred to Baton Rouge. We naively thought we would become parents pretty quickly after moving, so I never found a job because I was going to be a stay-at-home mom. Boy were we wrong! Thirteen cycles, two miscarriages, a buttload of tests, and a year and a half later, we have no children, and I have no job and no purpose in life. So to help the day go by just a little but faster I've taken on the task of repainting our guest bathroom. Actually I'm correcting a bunch of HUGE mistakes that the professional painters made before we moved in, but that's a whole other story!

Painting...not one of my favorite things to do in life, but it can definitely make you feel good once you're finished and can look at your masterpiece with pride and excitement for a job well done. I sanded down the errors made by the incompetent "professionals". I primed the walls and even the baseboards. I took all the cabinet doors off. I removed the knobs and hinges from the doors. Much to J's surprise I took the toilet tank off (something the pros didn't do) so I could reach an area that isn't seen much, but if I was going to do this I was going to do it right! I taped the baseboards, and then it was time for the color. I chose a beautiful moss color. I was so proud of myself, and I had really done anything yet!

So the painting began, and all seemed to be going just fine until I got to the point where I couldn't reach some crevices because I was too short, even on a ladder. J came home and saved the day! He got into those tight places, and the room was beginning to take shape. I removed the tape while the green was still wet even though J thought I should wait a little while longer. The next day I went in to look at our beautiful green room, and I was so pleased!

Next it was time for the baseboards. I taped up the walls and off I went. It took me nearly a whole day just to get two coats on the cabinets and baseboards, but I finally finished right before J came home from work. I jumped in the shower to rid myself of all the day's paint, got in the kitchen and started making dinner, and after a pretty simple meal, I sat down for the evening to watch a little television.

The following day I went in the bathroom to look for any spots that needed a little touch up only to find that I had forgotten to take the tape off the walls. No biggie, right? WRONG! When I started taking the tape off I started removing the paint from the baseboards along with it. I was petrified! The paint that had gotten on the tape had dried along with the paint on the basbords and now it was stuck!

Two hours and several "not nice" words later I had finally managed to get the tape off, but not without messing up my paint job. I was not about to retape everything and start over so decided to use a tiny water color brush to fix the wounds on the baseboards. It didn't look great, but it was good enough for an ameteur. It still looked better than the professional's job.

I took a few days off after that because my arthritis was flaring up from all the painting, but yesterday I got back to work. I took the cabinet doors outside to paint them. (We have a cat, and it doesn't matter where you put something, if it's got wet paint on it, she's going to find it!) It was a beautiful day so I was glad to be out in it. I left them out to dry, and right before bed we brought them inside and placed them on the floor of our spare bedroom so we could shut the door and keep our curious cat from stomping all over my hard work.

I took them back out today for one final coat, and then it will be time to hang those puppies up! I bought new hinges and knobs to replace the old ones covered in lilac paint. I'm not quite ready to put the bathroom back together just yet. I still have the doors and one door frame to paint, but this painting thing is a lot harder than I thought it would be! I can't wait for the day when I can walk in that bathroom and look at it with a smile instead of frowning about the fact that we paid professionals way too much for the crappy job they did. (Yet another thing I'm waiting on! *sigh*)