The Sniffles

The sniffles...as in I have them.  The Little Guy was a little congested over the weekend and said he had a scratchy throat.  Well, wouldn't you know that Tuesday afternoon I started to get that same feeling.  I feel pretty much like dog poo.  I'm still at work.  Why, you may ask?  Because at this time of year (election time) there is a bit of a contest as to who comes to work the most and who works longer.  It's ridiculous, really.  And I hate it.  Thankfully the election is almost here and I can stop working the over time and actually stay home if I feel sick.

Remember the other day when I mentioned how tired I was?  I think it was because of this cold I have.  All I want to do is sleep, sleep and sleep some more.  I was hoping it was one of those phantom pregnancy symptoms that I could look back on and say, "oh, that's why I was so tired...I'm pregnant!"  I'm not getting my hopes up too much on that one, though.  I'm on CD20 so AF will be here within the next 3 to 8 days.  Since I don't have a regular cycle anymore it's really hard to judge.  I will have to pay attention to how much people are getting on my nerves to know how close she is.

My temps are still above the coverline and I'm happy about that.  Yesterday was 98.3 and today was 98.5.  I'm wondering if that is also because of this cold.  Maybe I have a slight fever?  I'm hoping not.  I'm hoping that my progesterone is fine and doing it's job.  Maybe increasing because there's a baby in there!

We bought some stuff at the Halloween store to decorate the porch and haven't put any of it up yet.  How sad is that?  I'm hoping to tomorrow when I get home from work.  Our neighbors right next to us have lights up so now we have to get ours up.  You know how it works.  We already have a competition planned for Christmas decorating.  Good grief, I'm a Suburbanite.  Yikes!

9DPO

Hi everyone.  We went to the pumpkin patch on Saturday afternoon.  It was further from our house than we realized but not a bad drive at all.  It was a really nice place.  It was decorated and laid out well.  My only complaint is that the petting zoo was pretty lame because they had all the animals fenced.  If the animal didn't come to you, you didn't get to pet it.  Needless to say I didn't pet anything.  The place we went last year had a big open area where you could feed and pet the animals in a more natural environment.  We survived the corn maze, too!  It was fun to walk around semi-lost with 4 kids on a beautiful day.  We did the easier of the 2 mazes and it worked out fine.  The boys had a blast rolling and jumping around in the hay boxes.  As happy and as grateful as I am to have the Little Guy in my life, I so yearn for a little one of my own.  It's events like these that reinforce my childlessness.  Yes, I'm a step-mother and yes I get to do things that other Infertiles do not because of that fact.  However, I still want my own child to yell out...."Mommy!  I found the perfect pumpkin!"  Or "Mommy, can I get my face painted...pleeeaaase?".  Instead, I have a child that calls me by my first name.  That in and of itself stings.  No, I don't ever expect him to call me "mom" but having a child that I love like my own address me by my name....well it sucks.  I hope I get to be called the royal name of Mommy someday.  Until then, I will continue to thank God for bringing BJ and the Little Guy into my life.  I really did have a good time at the farm, but infertility always has a way of sneaking into everything.

I'm 9DPO today.  I had another temp spike (98.7!!) on Saturday (6DPO) but things have settled back down to a more regular 98.2 the last few days.  I feel a little weepy and I'm not sure why.  I heard a song on the radio and it almost made me cry.  That doesn't usually happen.  Maybe that's a good sign?  I'm going to go with it for now.  I sent an e-mail to a place that will do a saliva test to test my hormones (thanks Sarah!) throughout my cycle.  I'm waiting to hear back from them.  I'm willing to try different things to figure out why I'm not getting pregnant.  I figured this is a good place to start.

I got my hair cut at lunch today.  It really needs color, too, but I passed on that for now.  I told BJ that I feel pretty now that my hair has been cut.  I used a gift certificate that I received at Christmas and it's a good thing.  This place charges $85 for a shampoo, cut and blow dry.  Unreal.  Yes, my hair looks good, but it used to look good when I paid $20 for a cut.  I so wish my stylist hadn't moved away.  I went to her for about 7 years for cut and color.  I've never been 100% satisfied with anyone else.  It's been about a year since I've seen her and I think I've only gotten my hair cut three times and colored twice.  Ugh.  No wonder it felt so good to get it done today.  My mission is to find someone I like that doesn't charge an arm and a leg.  Good luck to me.

Happiness Is...

- going to the corn maze and pumpkin patch tomorrow afternoon with the SIL and her family.  Since we are unable to trick or treat with the Little Guy this year at least we still get some good Fall activity with him.  I love the pictures I get when we go to the pumpkin patch.  I'm excited about the corn maze, too.  We went through a garden maze last summer when we went to Luray Caverns and it was confusing to say the least.  This corn maze is HUGE in comparison.  I hope we can find our way out.

- wiping my cabinets down after the husband, very thoughtfully, cut my apple with the apple corer and splashed juice everywhere.  He had it all over himself and our pretty cabinets.  I dipped my perfectly sliced apple into some yummy peanut butter after the mess was cleaned up.  When he did it, he just turned and looked at me with that "I can't believe that just happened" look on his face.  It was great.

- a bright and sunny day today...and tomorrow.  I love the sunshine and it will be a little warmer today and tomorrow than it has been so that makes it even better.  I think we should wear a little sunscreen before heading to the maze tomorrow.  It might be October but the sun can still burn us.

- laughing at my own folly this morning.  We have overhead cabinets at work.  I store things up there like, my pens, paperclips, scissors, things like that.  I have a spinning organizer that I keep all that stuff in.  It's not on my desk because things have a way of disappearing when it's left out.  Anyway, I had 1/2 a candy bar up in the cabinet that I was planning on eating this afternoon.  I love something sweet around 3:00...sorry, I digress.  I opened the cabinet and turned the spinning organizer to get to my paperclips and wouldn't you know...the spinning thing turned the candy bar and made it fall out of the cabinet.  Why is this funny?  Because it landed right in the middle of my cup of Diet Pepsi.  Thankfully, it didn't knock the cup over.  It did, however, splash soda all over my desk and note pad.  What are the chances?  It made me laugh and I'm surprised no one asked me why I was laughing.  Pretty embarassng to say the least.

- only 2 more weeks of work and I am off for 2 days!  Yippie!

Welcome ICLW'ers!

I can't believe it's that time again...time to introduce myself to new bloggers and scope out some new blogs to read.  You can get a brief rundown of my history on my side bar.  It's long and tedious to say the least.  Basically, I've been trying to get pregnant for about 9 years now (2 husbands).  What fun it has been.  NOT.  Well, that's not really true.  The first few months of research and all the extra "relations" and all the hope and expectation was fun.  Along with consuming all my TV time with A Baby Story and shows like that and browsing the baby section at the stores and dreaming of buying little Redskins or Capitals outfits....all of that was fun.  And then the fun wore off and turned to frustration, anger, helplessness, feelings of failure...feelings of not being good enough.  If there is an emotion related to TTC, I've felt it.

With my second husband (who has a 9-year-old boy, the Little Guy) we were able to pursue fertility treatments.  We did 2 IUI's and an IVF.  I had a full fertility work up (I'm guessing it was full) before we started any treatments.  My FSH was borderline high at 9.69.  The doctors did not seem worried as everything else checked out fine with me and BJ (the husband).  The 2 IUI's failed even though I responded well to the Clomid with 2 to 3 good follies and good E2 and P4 numbers..so they said.  We moved on to IVF.  I was on my bcp for too long and was unable to produce enough follies for an IVF.  My next attempt was treated as though I am a poor responder.  I was given mega high doses of gonal-f and menopur.  I might be a poor responder but I am a fast responder.  Back in the day when I was as regular as a clock, I ovulated on day 13.  Those doses made my few follies grow really fast.  I was decreased in dosage and had ganirelix added to the mix.  At the time of retrieval, CD11, I had 5 measurable follicles.  My E2 two days before that was 1001.  I had 5 follicles, 4 eggs with 3 mature.  Two of them fertilized normally and were absolutely perfect at transfer on day 3 of their little lives.  I tested 2 days before beta and knew that we had failed again.

It was the hardest failure for many reasons.  I'm still trying to get over it.  It haunts me almost daily that my 2 little embryos didn't stick around.  I feel pretty jipped in a way.  I put entirely too much trust in the clinic.  They treated me as though I was just like everyone else instead of like an individual with a unique situation.  And when I say unique, I only mean that every patient is different.  Every patient will respond differently.  I'm not like everyone else.  No one wanted to find out why I can't get pregnant.  They just assumed they could do a couple of blood tests and pump me full of medications and voila! - a baby!  I never went in for a follow up appointment.  Mainly because we knew we couldn't afford any more treatments so there was no "next steps" to plan for.  We are on our own now and I'm not dealing very well with it.

I've begun to think that not only do I have bad eggs but that I have low progesterone.  My temps barely rise after ovulation and so I'm wondering if it's now a progesterone problem to add to my other problems that no one can seem to find.  I'm convinced there must be a problem somewhere because I refuse to accept that I'm just not meant to give birth to a child.  At least not yet.

I have a good group of regular readers and commentors that give me good ideas to pursue and things to think about on a regular basis.  I love that I can come here and spill my guts and these women understand.  They know where my pain comes from and although I hate that many of them are still struggling, I love that I know they are here with me.  So thank you, readers and commentors.  I appreciate each and every one of you.

Today, I am 4DPO.  Although due to my slowly rising temps, FF says I'm only 3DPO.  I'm in the 2ww with knowledge that we timed our baby makin' pretty damn good this cycle.  I'm not at the "hoping" point yet, but it will come, as it always does.  And maybe, just maybe, there will be a different outcome for me this time.

I have a funny story to share with you all.  As you know, and for any new readers stopping by, I have a step son.  He's with us 50% of the time and that is pretty much every other weekday and then every other weekend.  I usually take him to daycare in the mornings when we have him.  Sometimes BJ will take him but only once a week or once every couple of weeks.  The Little Guy was with us last night and I asked BJ to take him this morning because I had to come in early.  I got up, made BJ's coffee, the Little Guy's lunch and snack and set his pills out to save BJ some time in the morning.  BJ called me on his way to work and started with "I almost forgot my own son!".  Ha ha!  He said that he got ready for work and was putting his coffee in his thermos when he noticed the Little Guy's pills on the counter.  Immediately, an "oh shit!" came out and he ran upstairs to get the boy up.  He confessed to the Little Guy that he forgot to wake him up and told him to hurry it up.  How funny is that?  If he would have left him there sleeping, I would have asked, as I normally do when BJ takes him to daycare, "how's the Little Guy this morning?" and BJ would have remembered at that second.  What would have been bad is if BJ had left him there and he woke up before BJ could get back to him.  He probably would have opened the front door to look for vehicles and set the alarm off and I'd probably be bailing BJ out of jail on child neglect charges.  Thankfully it all worked out.  I still think it's funny, only because it worked out ok.

Progesterone Information

After reading Mel's comment on my last post, I decided to look into progesterone creams.  I posted an answer to a question someone else asked on a message board regarding the use of progesterone creams after ovulation.  The response came from an ob/gyn doctor in New Orleans.  It's a bit disheartening to say the least.  I figured I have bad eggs but his answer to her question really hits home.  And according to him, I can't do anything about it by myself.  Nice.  Thanks for the pick me up, doc.  Below that paragraph I posted another partial bit of information I found while doing some research.  Let me tell you, this information really hits home, too.  I have thyroid dysfunction.  I also feel like I have PMS during my cycle when I shouldn't.  My leutal phase seems to be ok, actually a bit long at times, but maybe that is a defect as well?  Either way, a lot of this makes sense to me.  I might not be ovulating a good egg (pretty likely) and that is causing the low progesterone which causes a hardly noticeable temp spike, thyroid issues, moodiness like PMS and trouble conceiving.  Hmmm...sound like anyone you know?

Progesterone itself is classified as a thermogenic hormone. That is, it tends to raise your basal metabolic temperature by about one-half to one degree when it's secreted from an ovary that has successfully ovulated. It is secreted to adequate levels when there's been a decent ovulation. So treating low progesterone after a faulty ovulation is only wishful thinking. This won't help a bad egg. In the rare cases in which there's been an adequate ovulation but low progesterone, then progesterone will be useful to stabilize the implantation bed of the uterus for the fertilized egg. Repeated miscarriages may support this concern, but only a doctor trained for this can distinguish between the two.

Progesterone is the one hormone in the body of both male and female that regulates the entire endocrine system. That means that progesterone helps to keep all the other hormones in check, in balance. When there is a deficiency in progesterone the entire body can seem out of whack. Symptoms include all PMS and menopausal symptoms, thyroid dysfunction, low libido, infertility and pregnancy problems. Right now I’m going to focus on the role that progesterone plays in fertility.

Now, maybe I'm over reacting.  Maybe I can help myself with the cream.  I'm willing to give it a try and I'm thankful for the idea.  I'd like to talk to a doctor about it first, though.  Heck, I'd just like to find out if it's really the case.  I wonder if I'd be able to convince my ob/gyn to do a fertility work up on me.  I'm so done with doctors, though.  The very thought of having to go in and talk about my infertility issues makes me want to wretch.  But I'd like to know if I have low progesterone levels.  At least I would have some sort of answer to the question that has been nagging at me for a while now.  Thanks Mel for opening my mind to this possibility.  I do appreciate it.

Beginning of the 2ww

We had a good weekend. Friday night was not a scrapping night for me as I decided to go down to Rick and Leslie's with BJ. I had a few glasses of wine and played Wii with Leslie while BJ played pool with Rick. We made it an early night because Leslie had to work early Saturday morning. BJ agreed to go to the shed place with Rick Saturday and then head over to the farmer's market/flea market. The weather was pleasant and we walked and browsed and came home with some tomatoes and some good apples. Then we went to lunch with Rick. Rick is 50 but I don't think he looks his age. The waitress brought over the check and gave it to Rick. The thought running through my head was that she figured he was our dad. BJ pulled out his wallet and we paid with our card and took cash from Rick. When she came back, she handed the slip to Rick again! Later, BJ told me that he was going to call Rick "dad" but didn't want to offend him. It's funny that he and I both thought the same thing about the situation.

We went to the Halloween store to get a few things to decorate the front porch. We didn't buy much but ended up spending just over $100. Sheesh! Then on Sunday, BJ washed his truck and I did some laundry and we watched football. My poor Redskins...they put up a good fight but ended up losing. I (and most everyone else) thought we'd get creamed, but they hung in there and they forced turnovers and held Peyton to just 27 points...not to shabby for a team that went 4-12 last year. I'm proud of the progress they have made as a team this year. I still love Peyton, but I was so hoping he'd lose.

I did some opk testing Friday and Saturday. Friday was very negative. Saturday afternoon's test was really close to positive so I knew that ovulation was probably going to happen Sunday. We did the deed Friday night so I knew we wouldn't be doing anything Saturday as well. I felt pretty confident that anything that was still swimming around would be ok since I was having some major ewcm. I tested Sunday morning and it looked the same as Saturday afternoon so I knew we needed to get things done soon. I tried all day to get my husband in that bed...he seems to think that sex is something we can only do at night. I started feeling the ovary pain at 5:00pm. I was finally able to get BJ into the sack around 7:00pm. My ovary hurt so bad I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to continue. I haven't felt pain like that during sex in a long time...I find it odd that I feel pain in my ovary when my ovaries have nothing to do with the actual act of sex. Strange. Anyway, BJ was oblivious and eventually the pain became tolerable so the job got done. So now I wait. And I hope. And I dream. And I imagine.

I would like to think that we timed things really good this time. Friday and Sunday with ovulation Sunday night seems pretty good, right? I sure do hope so. It's time to start analyzing everything going on in my body. I now think I don't produce enough progesterone. My temp spikes are hardly noticeable anymore. Today's temp (I usually spike 2 days after O'ing) was only a tenth of a degree higher. I hope it goes higher because I would hate to think that I have yet another obstacle against me. Infertility keeps throwing me curve balls and I can't seem to figure anything out anymore.

So here's to the 2ww!

Mundane

Things have been pretty mundane in the TeeJay house lately. Things have been pretty mundane on the TTC front, too. AND, work has been nothing if not mundane. And that's pretty much how my moods are going. Nothing swinging me way up and nothing bringing me way down. I view that as a good thing. However, we are midway through October and that means that there are 3 big things coming my way that will probably wipe out my mundane-ness and put me in down and out mode.

1 - Halloween - I love Halloween now that I have the Little Guy in my life. We have had him to ourselves the passed 2 years (the day has fallen on one of our days to have him anyway) and dressing him up and taking him out with his cousins has been a blast. I love all the pictures I get to take and I love feeling like a normal family. But then there's the other side of things. I should be dressing up 2 kids (at least) to take trick or treating. And this year, I should have an almost 7 month old...but our IVF failed. When I look at all the babies and toddlers dressed up I long to have one of my own. And now this year, the Little Guy's mother has made a request to have him, even though it's our night according to the schedule of days. We agreed because she's missed out on it for 2 years and this might be his last year wanting to go AND...we have to share. So we will hand out candy and wish that we were out there walking around. I would have loved to be pushing a little pumpkin costumed baby around but that was not to be.

2 - Thanksgiving - As you know, we are hosting for the first time this year. Again, there should be a baby in the house. This is such a family holiday and I feel somewhat jipped because I feel my family is incomplete. So even though I'll be busy beyond belief with prepping and cooking, I will still feel a whole in the day.

3 - Christmas - This should be my baby(ies) first Christmas. As down as I was last Christmas with the move hindering my decorating and all the quickness of the season, I fear this year will be worse. Maybe I'm wrong and I will be my old self with the decorating and the magical feel of everything, but I don't want to raise my expectations. I don't want to feel like I'm letting myself down if I'm not in the Christmas spirit enough, so I'm preparing for a somber season. In my heart I know I should be hanging a fourth stocking. And the fact that I won't be is pretty upsetting to me. I'm not sure how I'm going to handle things this year. I hope I will be able to be strong and put on a happy face, at least when the Little Guy is around. I guess we'll find out when the time comes to put up the tree, which will happen Thanksgiving weekend. I will either be ready to go and decorate everything or I will stop with the tree and call it a day. I will hope for the former to happen.

So right now, I'm doing ok. In a move only my body can do, I saw some ewcm yesterday afternoon so I did an opk. It was negative and I was glad because it's only CD7 today. I forgot to bring test strips with me today but will test again when I get home this evening. We don't have the Little Guy this weekend because we switched with his mother, per her request, so it would be nice to get a positive tomorrow or Sunday even though it's a little early. We always do better when he's not there. BJ is going over to Rick's tonight for some guy bonding (beer and pool playing) and I'm hoping to do some digital scrapping. I have new software that I'm trying out and I have a lot to learn about it. Some quiet time on a Friday night is the perfect time to dive right in.

I hope you all have a great weekend! For those of you trying, I hope you get some good news very soon. For those of you that have succeeded, I hope your pregnancies continue to go great. And for those of you holding babies, give them a kiss from me. We are all in this together and maybe one day we will all have our dreams come true.

Happiness Is...

- getting 20 scrapbook pages done on Monday! It's such a great feeling to accomplish something like that. We worked (on and off) for about 6 hours. It was tough with my niece being there, but I still got a lot done. I was on a roll until BJ and the Little Guy got home and I had to stop. I am so far behind...I was working on November and December of 2008 pictures. I signed up for an all day crop on 11/13 so I hope to finish out the year and start on 2009 pictures.

- looking at campers and thinking about buying one in the Spring. I've wanted a camper for about 3 years because of all the possibilities it brings for weekend get aways and getting out in nature. The Little Guy's mother and boyfriend bought a used one a couple of years ago and the Little Guy loves to go camping. So we are thinking about getting one that is family friendly with bunks to bring along little friends and/or cousins.

- deciding not to give up our dream of a backyard paradise but to alter the plan a little bit. BJ had his heart set on an in ground pool, and I mean set. It was one of the main reasons we picked this lot to build on. After meeting with a guy and looking at options, he knows it's not a reality for us right now. He has caved on the idea of an above ground pool. They are 1/4 (at least) of the price of an in ground and just as much fun as far as I'm concerned. So that will be something we probably do with our tax refund next year. (of course I'd rather do another IVF but there's no guarantee that we'd get a baby out of it. At least a pool is something we know we can enjoy and have fun with.)

- leftover sloppy joe's for lunch today. I already ate them (2 small ones on hamburger rolls) so I'll probably be starving at 2:00, but they were yummy!

- loving my new dining room table. It fits in the space just right. It's about 4 1/2 feet each way and it's counter height. I was at the grocery store Saturday morning when it arrived. I loved coming in the door and seeing it there. I put a wire bowl with some small fake pumpkins and leaves in it in the center and it looks like Fall.

- my 'Skins pulling off a dramatic overtime win against a team no one thought we could beat. They showed that they didn't give up...and that is something new to this team.

- AF lasting only a day and a half (she arrived at bedtime Friday). As much as I hate her, I like the fact that her visits are pretty short. It lets me jump right back in that much quicker.

Headache and Heartbreak

I still had a temperature above my coverline yesterday morning. And of course I deluded myself into thinking that maybe, just maybe we were lucky. Yesterday afternoon I started to get a headache. I brushed it off by chalking it up to the fact that I was a little stressed at work and really tired. It was still there when I got home so I took 3 extra strength tylenol. When the medicine didn't work, I knew the headache was hormonal. It used to happen every month but it hasn't happened on a regular basis in quite a while. I knew then that the thermometer would let me down this morning. I was right.

Not only was I right, but I still have this damned headache. It's not as bad as a migraine, but it's close. I might leave work a little early today if it doesn't let up. I haven't seen any spotting yet but I know it's just around the corner. What a great way to start off my weekend.

I'm on CD30 right now. What happened to my good old predictable body? Where did my 26 day cycle go? Out the window, that's where. That's where my hope started flying yesterday, too. Right out the window. I even let myself go as far as picturing what a pregnant belly would look like on me. That's something I haven't done in years. I think my hope builds more as time goes on because I'm getting more and more desperate. I was in a pretty "flat line" of hope until recently. I've noticed that I get more and more giddy in each 2ww now. I need to be a bit more resolved and not let myself get caught up in the what ifs all the time. That's easy to say at the end of a cycle, isn't it? It's much harder to rationalize the situation when I'm in the 2ww or the 1ww. Hope has a way of wiggling right in here and then breaking my heart all over again.

As sad as I am, and as much as my head hurts, I'm very excited that our dining room table is being delivered tomorrow between 8 and 12. We will officially have a place for people to eat Thanksgiving dinner. And that is something to be very happy about. So that is what I'm going to focus on...my table and the big dinner and all the prep work that will need to be done before the big day. And there's a lot. BJ needs to finish the kitchen for crying out loud. :-) We need shoe molding, handles and transitions. Maybe getting the table will spark him into action.

I'm off on Monday and have invited my SIL and her daughter over for some scrapbooking. It will be the first time I've had someone over to work on scrapbooks. I'm pretty excited about it. I have many pages that need mounted and I want to work on some Christmas cards and tags with my Cricut.

So I guess I have 2 things to look forward to as I head into the weekend...my table and scrapping. Hopefully it will make the eventual showing of AF not so terrible. Distractions are a good way to mend/ignore a broken heart.

I hope you all have a great weekend and if you are having the kind of weather we are forecast to have, I hope you can get outside and enjoy it a bit.

Trying to be Patient

According to my records, I am either 14 or 15dpo. According to FF, I'm 12dpo. My temperature was still above the coverline this morning. It's not unusual for me to have a longer than average leutel phase. It's not unusual for me to not spot anymore. It is unusual for me to know that we timed our bd'ing pretty well this cycle. I'm not overly moody. I'm a little gassy, but I did have chili for lunch. :-) I'm not overly tired yet. The boobs are still a little sore. I'm starting that phase in my cycle where I'm tempted to believe that maybe things could be different this time around. I'm sure I'm setting myself up for disappointment, but I can't help it. I'm sitting here trying to be patient awaiting AF's arrival. It's not easy. My mind is running amok thinking of the possibilities. My stomach has butterflies right now as I type this. I know I'm crazy for even thinking it, but what if?

**********

I want to thank all of you for your kind remarks on my previous post. Reading the nice things you guys say warms my heart. I was almost brought to tears. For real. You are such a great support system and I'm so glad that you are here for me. I'm going to write my post very soon about my cut off date/age but right now all I can think about is the fact that I haven't started spotting yet and I don't have any of my strongest indicators that AF is going to show up. I know that the likelihood of a bfp is slimmer than none, but I guess you just never know, right?

I Hear Her Knocking...I Think

I think ugly old AF is knocking. My temps have been slowly declining and today the boobs are sore. I don't have the other symptoms just yet, but the boobs are a pretty good indicator of things to come. It's CD26 so it's about time for her to show up. Dumb witch.

The Caps Convention was spectacular. I could have stayed another 3 hours but BJ doesn't like crowds and he's not as into hockey as I am so we cut it short. I was disappointed, but it's all good. I stood in line for about 45 minutes to get Peter Bondra's autograph and I was 2 rows back when they pulled him and made him go to another panel event. I followed him at break neck speed and tapped him on his arm right before he was unreachable and asked if he could sign just one more. He was so nice, he did it and he apologized that he had to leave. It was AWESOME. He is the main reason I am a hockey fan. I was star struck! It's probably a good thing BJ and the Little Guy were standing in a line where they couldn't see me because chasing a hockey player (walking really fast) is not behavior that would have been smiled upon. :-) The Little guy participated in a few of the children's activities...he took a shot on goal with Slapshot (the mascot) tending net, he dressed as a goalie and got pelted with some hockey balls, he took the slapshot challenge and then tried to score a long shot. He's never held a hockey stick in his life so he was a little awkward with it, but he did fine for a first timer. I told BJ that just the Little Guy and I would be going next year and he said that was fine. He's just not into crowds (even though it really wasn't that bad) so I know I'd enjoy myself much more if I didn't have to worry about him getting pissy about standing in line for things. All in all, though, it was a BLAST! I am so ready for hockey season.

After we got home we all went over to Mary's and Steve's house for a Fall Bash they were having. Two of the 3 pregnant neighbors were there. One of them, April, I hadn't met yet. She was the "honeymoon" baby lady. I wanted so badly to not like her, to not even talk to her. Much to my chagrin, I liked her a lot and we talked quite a bit. She's 2 or 3 years older than me and was very pleasant. Of course, I had to stop myself from staring at her belly so much but I enjoyed hanging out with her. BJ could tell I was having a hard time so he didn't ask about the baby at all. Then after we got home, I told him how hard it was for me and it's even harder now that I like her. He said he knew and that he was sorry. He also said that he's not ready for me to go on bcp any time soon. This topic deserves its own post, but as you know, I had set a deadline for myself of my 35th birthday...a short 7.5 months away. I'm glad he thinks that now, but like I said, I need to write a post about this very soon. I have lots to get out and it helps me sort things out to type them here.

Sunday was a chill out day. The Little Guy's mother came and got him early to take him to the fair that we didn't get to take him to due to the rain and so it was just the 2 of us after he left. We went and got 5 Guys for lunch (yummy!) and then took a short nap and headed to our local bar to watch the 'Skins game. It wasn't a good performance by our offense, but we pulled out the win and knocked the "dog killer" (as my neighbor Mary would say) out of the game. We ordered the meatloaf special to go and headed home after the game.

All in all, it was a good weekend. Now I feel that AF is coming to ruin my mood. Damn her. Between her and all this rain and cold weather I feel my mood slipping away anyway. The only thing good about the cool temperatures is that we put the big comforter on the bed last night and snuggled to keep warm. Can't complain about that.