Housekeeping

Hey there.  Yes, you. 

Hi.

I'm still plugging along. There's been a lot going on here, so let's give you the run-down:

1. Mom had to do another round of IV chemo (the Femara didn't work), which was a bit of a blow and interfered with her stroke recovery. The only real side effect was that she got extremely dizzy, which made it hard for her to walk. Even though the chemo did shrink the residual cancer that was left in her body, they want to continue it, probably since she's way too high of a risk to have surgery. She's getting her feisty back, though, minus the brashness she once had. It's like mom....light. But she's starting to bust my dad's balls, which is hilarious to see-it's like a ghost of the dynamic that was once in our family, pre-cancer, but a lot softer. I like it and it freaks me out at the same time, to be honest-it's good that there's no more blunt criticisms to constantly deflect but in some ways I feel like she's a completely different person and it's hard to reconcile the "old cynical, defensive, controlling mom" with the "new softer, more emotional mom". Which I guess she is-I'm just having issues with how to deal with it all.

2. I found out in May that my school district wasn't renewing my contract, and therefore I was out of a job. Since I was a few months before being tenured, you might say that reaaalllly sucked ass. Not to mention that the principal tried to use the fact that I had to quit an extracurricular activity that I was scheduled to do because of my winter IVF cycle being pushed back as a reason to let me go. Needless to say, Bitch Mode kicked in and I went to the union rep, informed him (and the county rep) that it was ILLEGAL to put that in a performance review since IF is covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act and that if it wasn't removed immediately I would sue the pants off of them. Not that it got me my job back, but they wasted no time in removing it. It's sad-when I got that job I really loved it, until the whole budget/job cutting mess started. Then we got a new superintendent and.....well, let's just say that he was a real douchebag. Add to the fact that my principal isn't yet tenured and.....it's a mess. And to add insult to injury, my job was advertised THE NEXT DAY in the state newspaper, so this was planned all along. So, I was sending out resumes like a wild woman, got two interviews (one was the district I left to go to the new school) and never got offered a position. After trolling the board minutes to the schools that I applied to, they hired all first-year teachers, so obviously someone like with me who is experienced is screwed. So, what am I doing, you ask? Why, I'm a statistic, of course-on unemployment and hoping that I can find a job for January, otherwise I'll have to start all over again in the spring, and compete with more recent grads and people who've been out of work. Yaaaaay!

3. My Handsome Nephew is....well, he's just SO DAMN HANDSOME!!! He's almost 16 months old now and it's amazing at what a little person he's become. He loves water, has a great smile, likes to be chased and is really into pulling things out of drawers. My brother and SIL were here a month ago and he was just adorable. I'll be visiting them soon so I can get my fix!

4. Had a bit of a shock when I found out from my best friend M that she found a lump on her breast-literally a few days after her annual exam (the lump wasn't there then). So, she went back to the doctor, who sent her for a mammogram (which she hadn't had in a few years), which showed something, so she went to a breast surgeon who did a biopsy, which came up malignant. She had the lumpectomy last week, which confirmed that she had breast cancer, stage 1B. Luckily, it seemed to be small, it was contained so they got it all out, but due to some of the markers coming back she has to do chemo and radiation. Oddly enough, her doc is out of the same hospital that my mom went to (and I go to for Dr. Pipsqueak), so I immediately recommended my mom's oncologist, and she's got an appointment this week. Did I mention that she's 39 and has a 10 year old daughter? And that she's been my friend forever (we joke that we've known each other "since fetus" since our mom's knew one another when pregnant). Yeah. Scary as all fuck. But the good thing is that it was caught early-she had the lumpectomy maybe about two or three weeks after she found the lump initially-and her prognosis is excellent. So remember girls......get your boobies smashed-it doesn't matter if you're young, it can still happen. And there's my PSA for the evening.

5. SkinnyGirl Sangria-wow, there's nothing more I can say about that. Probably because then I'd have to stop drinking it long enough to form a sentence. Yum! Perfect for sitting around the fire pit in the back yard!

6.  I guess it's time to update the blog-out with the old, in with the new.  Since Blogger has moved with the times and I'm still stuck in the dinosaur age, programically speaking (is that even a WORD?  Jeez..), I suppose it's time to update my roll, my template, maybe add a twitter account...who knows what will happen.  I'm gonna go crazy like one of those wacky guidettes at the Jersey Shore on a summer weekend!  Woot!  Fist pump!!

7. Oh, yeah......I'm meeting with Dr. Pipsqueak tomorrow. For a consult. To start a DE cycle. Crazy, ain't it? Sean and I had a long talk about it, and although we were going back and forth on whether or not we should go forward, we were really waiting to see if I'd get my job back full-time. When it was obvious that it wasn't happening, we were about to shelve it completely, since we'd be basically self-pay (our insurance would only cover our portion of the cycle, not anything related to a donor). Then my dad sat us down one day at my parent's house and said that he had a long talk with my mom, grandmother and brother, and they felt that maybe losing my job was meant to happen, since it can potentially give me the opportunity to really focus on starting a family-up until now everything revolved around my job, singing gigs, shows and we really didn't make cycling a priority. We tried to fit it into our lives instead of making it what was most important. And then he handed us a check, for the amount of money that we needed for the cycle. He told us that it was a gift from my grandmother, that one day it would've come to us eventually, but my grandmother wanted to see us try our best to get what we most wanted, and then have the whole family enjoy the potential outcome, before she's gone.

Wow. I never thought the Man Upstairs would have me lose my job to clear the way to a baby, but hey.....I'm just going to go with it-maybe there's something to this. I will get on the ride again and see where it takes me, because I won't ever know what could happen if I don't try, right?

Now, please remind me of what I just wrote when I'm hopped up on hormones and having panic attacks and in IVF hell, donor-egg style. Because I'm going to need all the positive thoughts I can get.