Suz’s Ramblings…

For the few of you who don’t already know this, the second round of IVF that we did at the end of the year last year WORKED!

Holy crap, we’re gonna be parents!

I’ll be 11 weeks pregnant tomorrow with a due date of 9/2/2010.

Sorry about disappearing like that.  The hubby did a server upgrade, and it didn’t go so well.  Looks like he’s almost done with the recovery phase.

Hopefully I’ll have a real post in the next few days.

The husband got the official word today. He’s going to pass his class.
Which means he’s going to be a college graduate on Dec 15!

I’ve been losing weight lately courtesy of the Metformin. I hadn’t
realized just how much weight I’ve lost until I went clothing
shopping.

First stop was J.C. Penney. They had jeans on sale for 13.99 a pair. I
discovered that I can fit into loose jeans with a 36″ waist, and that
it won’t be long before I can steal back my boot cut jeans with the
36″ waist that were only supposed to be a short loan to the husband. I
decided to take pass through the women’s clothing after trying on the
jeans and I scored 3 long sleeve t-shirt type shirts for 7.88 each.
Usually we only find deals like that in the men’s dept.

Feeling pretty good about myself, I decided to press my luck and we
headed over to The Avenue. There I discovered that I can fit into size
16 slacks. People, I cannot even remember the last time I fit in size
16 pants! Sadly, I did have to pay full price for the pants, but the
$5 sweaters (limit 2) helped the pain of that purchase.

The last stop was Lane Bryant since everything was 40% off. As is my
usual luck with Lane Bryant, there wasn’t really anything that I was
interested in. But I did happen to find some pants that I liked on
clearance, though not the high quality $5 a pair clearance.

All in all, I have to say I’m really happy, and glad to have clothes
that fit more better again!

Ate the long post I was almost done with. As a result, this post is
going to be short, and I’ll redo the post.

In the meantime, I’d like to suggest that those of you who wish I
updated my blog more often should consider following me on Twitter.

While Twitter is way more fun when you use it on a cell phone, it
does still work pretty well through their web interface. All you have
to do is create an account at www.twitter.com and then follow me
(suziwon).

While you can stalk my twitter feed without registering, I still
recommend registering as it will filter out my replies to other people
to keep the confusion about what I’m going on about to a minimum.
Plus, if you follow me, I will follow you, and you never know, you
just might find that you like it. Not to mention that there’s also a
whole wide world of people far more entertaining than I am to follow
too!

Of the blogging via e-mail system.

If this works, I should be blogging more often!

So, the husband is FINALLY going to graduate in December.  However, as with most men of his age bracket, his penmenship is THE SUCK.  Which means that yours truly gets to address the announcement envelopes.

As one who is a throwback to times and traditions that have fallen by the wayside, I’ve already consulted etiquette guides on the proper way to address the envelopes.

Which includes spelling out all titles other than Mr. ,  Mrs. , and Ms.  You know, titles like Lieutenant Colonel.

One does not abbreviate things like avenue, place, nor street, and state names are spelled out as well.

We can use return address labels, but we don’t have any that aren’t cutesy (i.e. have Winnie the Pooh and friends on them).  So, I’ll be getting to do that too.

Oh yes, let’s not forget that the address information is to be written in cursive.

The more I read, the more my hand hurts, and I’ve not even gotten started yet…

Bleh.

Last weekend I had the nieces over.  The husband and I picked them up Thursday evening and returned them Sunday afternoon.  Friday was spent in the pool at the in-laws house.  Saturday was crafting with Aunt Suz!

The older niece decided awhile back that she wanted to learn how to crochet.  So, I bought her a nice hook and a skein of yarn so that she could make a doll size blanket.  Much to my dismay, she couldn’t find the skein of yarn that I’d bought her.  Fortunately, it was a skein of Red Heart yarn.  My logic behind hooking her up with such a travesty of a yarn was that she’s a newbie, and besides, it had plenty of variations of her favorite colors, pink and purple.  Obviously, my logic was flawed.  So, I decided to take Dani’s advice.

Saturday afternoon we stopped by Knit Las Vegas and picked up some yarn for her to make a scarf with.  She already knew that I dye yarn and tie dye fabric, so she really wanted to be able to dye the yarn for her scarf.  With Christine’s help, we settled on a cotton/linen blend.  When we got to the dyeing stage, I tried to explain that the longer the stripe of color, the more stitches of that color you will have in a row.  However, I think that power of the MANY! BRIGHT! COLORS! were too much for her: 

Don’t misunderstand, I think that the yarn is quite pretty.  The only “problem” is that her stripes are 1-2.5 DC in length.  I crocheted a small gauge swatch of the pattern that she’d like to use:Fortunately, the curly Q pattern seems to work fairly well with the striping…the best part is she’s excited to get started on the scarf.

Also participating in the dyeing was her younger sister.  I unwound 50ish? yards of size 10 crochet cotton for her to play with.  The “Aunt Suz, we’re out of fuschia” should be a good indicator of more supervision being needed in the future (there was 4 oz of fuschia dye when they started):

I’m not sure that you can see the patch of brown in the lower left corner.  The blackish mess that starts in the upper right is actually more of a burgundy color.  Really doesn’t look all that bad in person, but I’m pretty sure this wasn’t the look she was going for…

Once they were done, the hubby and I got to play.  I did three onesies, as skein of Paton’s Grace, and a swaddling blanket, and the hubby did a swaddling blanket of his own.  It’s past my bedtime, so pics of the blankets and onesies are here without commentary:

In case there’s any confusion, I did the swaddling blanket with the swirls, and the hubby did the one with the inkblots.  The onesies will be in my Etsy shop in the near future, and the blankies are going to my best friend’s son.

Anyway, I’m off to melt into bed.

Just over a week ago I had my first appointment with a regular endocrinologist.  As opposed to the reproductive endocrinologist variety.  I must say that I’ve had a smidgen of my faith in doctors restored.

With the exception of my RE, I’ve had a hell of a time finding someone to treat my PCOS.  The absolute worst encounter was with the doctor who told me that there’s nothing medically wrong with me and that if I wanted to lose weight all I’d need to do was stop snarfing the donuts and get up off my lazy ass and exercise.  The only exaggeration in that sentence is the use of the word ass.  Needless to say, that was the first time I’ve ever left a doctor’s office and sat in my car and cried.  And that encounter was strike two.  Strike one recoiled in horror when I made the mistake of quantifying how quickly I can eat a plate of food.

Strike three didn’t want to treat my PCOS, and because I’m not diabetic (just insulin resistant) that visit ended up being almost useless.  I say almost because the doctor hooked me up with a prescription for a low dose of metformin.  Which the RE had me start on about a month after that ill fated visit.

After the hell of starting on metformin had passed, I asked the RE about how we know if it’s the correct dose.  He said with blood work.  Which threatened to send me down the rabbit hole of depression and despair with medicine and doctors yet again.  So, I asked him if I might have better luck with either my gyn or a regular endo.  He said go with the regular endo and gave me a list of recommended doctors on my side of town.  Only one on the list was on my insurance  company’s approved list.  I called for an appointment, and his first opening was four weeks from when I called.  Lovely.

So, back to the appointment.  We talked about how my diagnosis was arrived at, and then what symptoms I was having.  Apparently my “shedding” (euphemism for copious amount of hair in the shower drain and my comb) might be related to the metformin dose not being high enough.  As is the extreme lethargy in the mornings when my blood sugar is over 100 (but under 110), where extreme can be likened to being hit by a bus.  I also described that on the occasions when my blood sugar spikes after a meal (between 120 and 130), I have an intense desire for a pillow and a blankie.  Which isn’t helpful for getting my work done.  Based solely on this, he doubled my metformin dose.  He wants to get my blood sugar levels “back to normal”.  I could have hugged the man.  After all of the times that I’ve been told there’s nothing wrong with me, and after two medical professionals (doctor & diabetic nutritionist) told me that my blood sugar numbers “looked good” here was someone doing something about the symptoms regardless of the numbers.

Monday (7/6) was the first day of my goal dosage.  It sucked. A LOT.  But for all the suckage, I don’t have the hit by the bus feeling any longer.  Yeah, I’m tired, but posting @ 10pm when you need to be up at 4 is a reasonable explanation.  Here’s to hoping it stays this way and that the follow up visit in a few weeks is another positive experience!

It’s taken two weeks to start getting stuff listed in my Etsy shop.   What I’ve listed (not including the two reserved items) isn’t all of what I have ready to list.  My plan is to see how much interest what I do have up generates and then I’ll go from there.

Link to my Etsy shop:  suziwon.etsy.com