Bloodwork will hopefully be back by Friday

Breast exam and vaginal exam checked out fine. Pap smear results will be available in three weeks.

The blood test is the important part. It will (presumably) tell us why I was bleeding. The doctor gave us these possibilities:

  1. My ovaries are working again, which would mean that I can conceive.
  2. I am menopausal; the bleeding would therefore be simply a buildup of uteran lining that finally broke loose.
  3. I was bleeding for another reason, which would be more sinister than the first two. This is, fortunately, the most unlikely scenario.

If I am menopausal, then there are two things that I must watch out for:

  1. I will need an ultrasound to determine whether or not my uteran wall is too thick. If it is, there will need to be a biopsy, and I will need to take progesterone to keep the lining from building up.
  2. I will need to have my bones checked to ensure that I don’t have osteoporosis, and if I do I will need to take medication.

After the appointment, I got my hair chopped off to just beneath shoulder level, and donated the long remaining portion to Locks of Love.

Today’s the day

Although test results might be a day or two, this is the day of the actual testing. Understandably, I’m a little nervous, and trying not to be.

I have to work a half day today, and then leave at 11 and meet up with Sean for lunch. After lunch we’re going to work out some car insurance stuff. Then, at 3:30, I’m going to see a gynecologist.

I’ve been thinking about so much lately–getting a house, how if we have a child I want a car with air conditioning, where my “career” is going and how I can start making more money, how and when we’ll ever go back to Japan. Sean and I already determined that we will have to wait at least a year before we’re ready for a child. I’ve been wondering if that’s enough time to get everything settled…I really don’t want to live paycheck to paycheck, I want some assets and investments.

My business plan is something that will really have to wait until we’re more financially stable. I’ve been thinking that real estate might be the way to go. If I can just buy up some property and rent it…I think that would be a good way to build wealth. I just need to figure out how to do it.

Of course, there’s always the chance that we can’t have children anyway, that all these dreams and hopes are based on nothing.

I hope the doctor can give us a definitive yes. I feel so naive, but that’s what’s in my heart.

Life: a thing you never expect

After my cancer treatments, I couldn’t have periods naturally. I started on hormone shortly after I recovered, and took it for a few months. With the artificial boost, I was able to have periods. Transitioning on and off the hormone gave me horrible mood swings, and I didn’t like having to pay $10 a month or whatever it was to get the pills. So I finally just decided not to take them. I didn’t go back to the GYN who’d prescribed them, either; not because he wasn’t good, but because I thought I knew everything I needed to know already. He’d performed a blood test, twice, that showed that my brain was sending too many signals to my ovaries. This told him that my ovaries weren’t functioning properly–they weren’t responding to the brain by releasing the proper hormones. He said that he’d never seen someone with that result get pregnant.

For the past five years, I’ve been trying to deal with that prognosis. I’ve failed, pretty much; if anything, it’s been even worse lately. Seeing mothers and their children has filled me with such bitter longing that I’ve had to force myself not to cry.

And then, on Sunday night, I started having a period.

It went strong, very strong, just like a normal period. The cramping and moodiness was the same as I remember. It seems as of this morning to have died down…meaning the length was pretty much normal, too.

I don’t know what this means, and for these four and a half days I have struggled to hold back my joy. Everyone except Sean seems to assume upon hearing this that I can have children. Sean is more skeptical; he doesn’t understand why I would suddenly have a period out of the blue…and why it would happen now, after so much time.

He doesn’t want me to get my hopes up. I don’t want me to get my hopes up either. I think it has already happened, though, subconsciously. I think that my natural state of being has been to not give up hope. Somewhere inside, I always felt there was a chance, even as my conscious mind tried to stay logical. It was probably those two dueling sides that kept tearing me apart emotionally.

I’m going to try to stay as neutral as I can until my doctor’s appointment next Wednesday. If we run the same test as I had before, that should tell us something. Either things are the same as they were, or they’ve changed somehow. Maybe there’s another test they can do, too; I don’t know.

Right now I am just a prickly ball of barely-contained emotions.

I don’t want congratulations at this point…you’re free to give them anyway if you wish, but I’d rather not celebrate anything until I know for sure. That, and just letting the whole thing sink in, is why I haven’t written anything about it until now.

Zzzzzz…

I’ve been pretty busy since getting home from Kentucky. Working full-time, regular daylight hours is a new experience for me, and I’m still adjusting. My past jobs have all been part time or shift work: at Wal-Mart (for the whole week and a half I worked there) I was doing a 2 to 11 pm shift; at Willis Music I worked different hours at varying points between 9 am and 6 pm; at GRW I worked 3 pm to midnight (due to going to school); and at the University of Kentucky night desk I worked either midnight to 4 am, 4 am to 8 am, or both. So yeah, I guess from that lineup I appear to be a night owl, and this new 8 am to 5 pm (soon to be 7 am to 4 pm) shift has me a little wonked. I’ve basically had to start going to bed at around 10 or 11 pm in order to get enough sleep, which precludes participating in many of the online chats I’ve come to love. I’m in bed before most of our AMRN people get online; either they’re out doing something else until the late evening, or they’re on the other side of the world, in which case they’re at work or just waking up when I’m going to bed.

This might be a good thing; sitting around chatting could be considered a waste of time, especially if I’m not accomplishing anything else in tandem. But I have always liked being available to my AMRN players and GMs, and it looks like that won’t be as possible anymore.

Regardless, this week hasn’t been extraordinarily restful. I got home on Monday night after 8 hours of driving, stayed up too late, and then got up early for work the next day. I’ve been trying to get more sleep since then, and it’s worked out all right, but I’ve had chores and errands to do after work that have made me feel as if I don’t have time to do anything. Normally I would catch up on the weekend, but I’m driving to Savannah on Saturday to see my aunt and cousin, so I have to get everything done before then, including get all the junk I brought home from Kentucky out of my car, and two loads of laundry. I guess those will be my chores for today after work, since I don’t have any other time to do them.

Yesterday I listened to a motivational CD by Earl Nightengale. It was fairly inspiring, but I’ve been left sort of befuddled. The main point was that people should pick goals and then work towards them in order to be successful. That has been a real problem for me in the past, and right now. What is my goal? I have a business idea, which I’ll not describe here lest someone steal it ;>, but I don’t know if that is my goal in life. Then again, I don’t know if the goals have to be permanent…I think maybe after you’ve accomplished one goal, you can come up with another one.

I guess my main problem with doing this sort of thing has been not wanting to give up on certain dreams in favor of other ones…and of course, fear of failure. Once I get past the first one and pick a goal, Nightengale suggests writing my goal down on a card and looking at it whenever I feel discouraged or fearful. I suppose that could work…so I just need to figure out what my goal is.

I was talking with AJ about it, and he suggested that I make a list of all my goals with two columns: REALLY WANT to do, and WOULD LIKE to do. Then, he said, I could prioritize the REALLY list in terms of feasibility. I don’t think Nightengale would approve of that second step; I’m supposed to believe that I can do anything. The first one, though, might be helpful.

I need to leave for work in about fifteen minutes, so I don’t want to start making my lists now. I’d like to give them some time and consideration. Sadly, I already know one of the things that’s going on my REALLY list: “be a mommy”.

My body shape has changed somewhat, so that my stomach seems to be sticking out more than it was before. This isn’t new; it’s been happening to me for months now. When I look at my profile, I tend to feel like I look pregnant. This has caused me to purchase pregnancy tests three times, “just to make sure”. Wednesday was one of those times, and seeing the negative result was depressing. Even though I know it’s impossible, I still have hope…and that hope invariably leads me to despair.

Working for Proactive Genetics doesn’t really help my emotional state. I do all the mailings for the company, and I’m in charge of the affiliate program, so it’s not like I can divorce myself from the idea of having children. It’s in my face on a daily basis. Every day, some lucky person with twins puts in an order for our zygosity test. I can’t even have one, but all these people have two. You can see how this would get disenheartening.

Still, I’m trying to stay positive. Maybe it’s possible. If it’s not, maybe I can adopt. Unfortunately, with all these maybes, it’s sort of hard to make goals! The only thing I know definitively is that Sean doesn’t want children right now. Sometimes I wonder if he ever will.

Maybe. :P

Ta-Da!

One of the things FlyLady suggests doing in one’s Evening Routine is “Work on journal/’Ta-Da’ List”. I figured I’d do a smattering of both.

I haven’t written anything in the past few days, not for lack of desire but because I have been simply too busy during the day (either doing things on my to-do list, or thinking about how I should be doing things on my to-do list), and at night I have been exhausted. Thursday, Friday, yesterday, and today, I have gotten up at ~7 am in order to get ready and make Sean’s breakfast for him before he leaves for work. (He ate all the breakfasts except today’s, because he was running late this morning.) Since this is well before the time I would normally get up, it has taken some getting used to. Yesterday I got up at 4 am; muscle soreness was preventing me from sleeping any longer. Because of that I ended up taking an extraordinarily long nap in the afternoon. Still, I was able to make it to bed at a decent hour (around midnight or one, I guess) and then I got up this morning right on time. No naps today, though I did relax in the La-Z-Boy for a bit.

But I feel like I’m getting better! I feel like I’m actually doing something instead of just sitting around all day. I have started writing up brief to-do lists for myself, and accomplishing as many things as possible. Sometimes I’ve had to switch priorities; updates to the family business website have taken precedence over some old data entry tasks, and when my boss emailed me with a menu update today, I penciled that in and got it done right away. In fact, here is everything I accomplished today (the Ta-Da List!):

  1. Successfully followed morning routine (getting up/dressed/ready; cleaning; breakfast)
  2. Dropped off half a year’s worth of aluminum cans at the fire department as a donation to help burn victims (I have been meaning to get those cans out of our outdoor storage space for, well…a year. I’ll get the rest of them tomorrow–they wouldn’t all fit in my car!)
  3. Played tennis for approximately 30 minutes
  4. Watched two DVDs (8 episodes) of Martian Successor Nadesico (hey, I’ve been meaning to do that!)
  5. Fixed a problem on no-dog.com
  6. Updated a menu for 2go-Box
  7. Worked on some birthday club data entry for 2go-Box
  8. Made dinner and managed to keep the counters and sink clear and clean
  9. Ate dinner with Sean at the dining room table (I’ve been trying to do this more; for awhile we’ve just been eating at our computers ^^;;)
  10. Did dishes (dishwasher)

So yeah, I’m feeling pretty good! Tomorrow’s to-do list includes grocery shopping, taking the rest of the recycling over to the fire station, and working on more data entry. I may or may not add in AMRN stuff; it depends on how urgent I feel the matters are. There are a lot of little things in the back of my mind that are bugging me and that I want to get done…and with this system, I feel like I am slowly on my way to doing them. This is great :)

I’m also trying to make sure we take vitamins at breakfast…I think we could both stand to be more healthy.

Thursday and Friday, I got myself in the frame of mind to get up in the morning. I didn’t do it Saturday or Sunday, and Monday I totally slipped up–stayed up too late the night before. But Tuesday I was ready to get back on track, and so not only did I finish my morning routine, but when I took the garbage out I decided to take a fifteen minute walk for exercise.

It was a little chilly out, so after I’d made it most of the way around the apartment complex I decided to use the weight room’s treadmill instead. I obtained a key from the apartment manager, so now I can get in whenever I want, and then I finished up my fifteen minutes. My muscle soreness did end up increasing…but it felt great, really. It’s kind of sad that fifteen minutes of walking seems like a big accomplishment, but that’s just the point I’m at right now. I’m going to get better. I’m going to get awesome :>

I was going to take another walk today, but since Paul and I had previously decided to play tennis on Wednesday and Saturday, I figured that I should keep those appointments instead. It will throw a little variety into my routine, which is always welcome. So Wednesdays and Saturdays will be tennis, and the rest of the week will be walks.

After awhile building up my walking endurance, I’ll add more to my routine, such as the stair climber or the weight machines. I’m also going to start doing kung fu stretching. But it’s going to be incremental. I don’t want to burn myself out early and quit altogether.

I don’t know if I’ll lose any weight doing this, and to be honest that’s not my primary concern. I just want to know that if I needed to, I could run a long distance, or lift something heavy, or do strenuous activities without passing out. I also just want to feel better, and not be as tired as I usually am. Today I feel energized. That’s how I always want to feel :)

Eliminating my back pain would be a plus, but I don’t know if that’s even possible :>

Cory Doctorow’s new book is online, so you know I’ll be reading it. Kevin linked me to Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom awhile back and it was a fantastic read. I haven’t checked out Doctorow’s short stories yet, but I’m sure I’ll get to them. For now, though, Eastern Standard Tribe is on my short list, along with Master and Commander (I’m somewhere in Chapter Four–and yes, if I haven’t mentioned it, I’m reading it because the protagonist’s name is Aubrey) and The Time Traveler’s Wife, which I have yet to crack open.

With that list, I’m making it appear as though I am a voracious reader. However, I have had those two books since Christmas. :> I’d like to get back into my old reading habits, but it’s a struggle, especially since I spend so much time reading online. Online reading is not necessarily a bad thing, but I usually end up reading blogs and entertainment news (and occasionally real news, home and garden tutorials, and self-help articles). I am a websurfer extraordinaire, but I’m not sure if I’m getting enough meaningful input.

Well, that’s about it for me. I’m going to follow FlyLady’s advice for the evening routine and try taking a relaxing bath, and then I’ll putter around online until bedtime. A comfortable end to a lovely, productive day.

Despair transmuted

Here I am at 6:30 am after staying up all night–as usual, with something of a nap to tide me over–trembling with euphoria, chest swelled, eyes smarting with unshed tears, because I actually worked hard at writing something.

I have had a pretty shitty night up until this point. The reason I went to take a nap was because I wanted to cry. Bawl, in truth. I was unable to do that; my sobs felt forced and pathetic as I lay wrapped in the covers, face buried in my pillow. But I did at least cry, and then fell off into restless, desperate sleep.

I am unsatisfied with my life and I am unsatisfied with the way I spend my days. I do not feel as if there is any purpose to anything I do. I want more, I want to stop feeling desperate. I want to be more than useful; I want to be thrilling, inspiring, necessary, adored. I want to Do Things that make people Sit Up and Take Notice. I believe I have fallen into despair because I can’t envision these things ever actually happening. I’m lost, jobless, a housewife who hates keeping house. I’m no good to anyone else and I’m no good to myself.

But I wrote something. Something I am outrageously proud of, something I revised until it flowed off my tongue with a rhythm that plows a clear path. I read it aloud, several times, and tweaked it far more than that. I worked on it, and it’s finished, and I can say that I am reasonably happy with it.

It’s only a post. But holy shit do I feel good about it.

I must have needed that.

It’s a marathon…

I’m about done with my

  • Slim-Fast

and I’m not really sure what I want to talk about. I guess another ramble is in order.

Paul just had his birthday the other day. Today we’re going over to his parents’ house for a little party. This means I don’t have to cook dinner. Whee!

I finished my Slim-Fast like half an hour ago and I’ve had this window open for longer than that, and I can’t think of anything to write. Instead, I’ve been reading stuff. I came across this interesting article during my bored procrastinations. Basically this is a group that will train you to run a marathon and then send you to where the marathon takes place–they cover virtually all costs as long as you have found enough pledges to meet their requirements. All the pledged money goes towards cancer research: specifically, leukemia and lymphoma. And you get to travel and get in shape. It sounds like a win-win-win situation to me :) I’m going to start seriously thinking about doing it.

I have never been fit enough to run a marathon. It would be really cool to be able to run. Even when I was in kung fu, the time during which I was in the best shape of my life, I couldn’t run even a mile. There’s just something about running. I could stand (or jump) around for two hours throwing kicks and punches, but sustained running always left me winded and nauseated with a horrible stitch in my side. Imagine being able to run a 26 mile marathon and not feel that way!

Originally posted on GP4. Woo…

I was stoked. I was in the zone. I was ready. My mind was working overtime, I was geared up, I was totally going to crank out some serious postage to lay on all yer asses.

Then my mom says, “Change the business website.”

I figure, oh, that’ll take me an hour or so, no biggie.

It took all freaking morning.

By the time I was done, I wanted to hurl my computer out the window. I puttered around online a little, ate something for the first time today, listened to Cowboy Bebop Blue three times over, chatted with Foreman and Reaper, and got absolutely nothing done.

So I decided I needed a break. I went to go watch Friends. It was funny! Yes! Maybe I felt good enough to post! Sat down again, but the TV was still on, so I watched a little of that Adam Sandler movie with the kid. It started to depress me, because the kid was so miserable and alone, and it sort of reminded me of those five minutes I caught of Law & Order, where the seven year old is telling how he killed his baby sister, in graphic detail.

So after that I was pretty depressed, not to mention disturbed. Cut off the movie, put in the Attack of the Clones soundtrack. Just sat and listened to it for awhile. Love theme good! Went out to ask my mom when she was going to make smoothies (I’d wanted one all day) and she and Dad were discussing (make that arguing about) a new business venture. I agreed with Mom, and tried to convince Dad, didn’t work. Gave up, came back here, complained to Shade about it.

Finally got a smoothie a few minutes ago…and it’s good. Listened to the love theme again. Now I’m just sort of staring at my monitor thinking “I am supposed to have a post up by now.”

But! It’s almost bedtime, and I want to be nice and energetic tomorrow because I’m driving an hour and a half into Louisville to look at wedding dresses. This could take hours, and I want it to be fun

And I’ve been thinking about writing, about how I really need to work on certain aspects, and how I really don’t feel like it. I’m so…lethargic. I could probably just go to bed right now. I’m still not really sure where my day went, other than the web design thing…

So anyway…

I’m not sure when the GP4 GenDis became my blog, but basically this is why there are no posts. I feel like a heel, but I have no inspiration. I know what I need to get done, and now it’s just a matter of churning it out.

My head hurts.

Time to ramble

This is my last week of school. Finals week is next week, but I have no finals, only papers. I should be able to get everything done fairly easily. What’s on my mind right now is the short story revision due tomorrow; I haven’t quite started on that yet ;> I had a group presentation today, and that seemed to go pretty well. Other than that, I don’t have anything pressing until next week. I think.

I do need to do some observations of a non-academic teaching English as a second language class…I’m not sure how I’m going to get that done. I went last week with Katie from TESL class, and that sort of went badly. She got really offended about the way the group proctors kept making derogatory jokes. They invoked stereotypes and things like that to get the foreign students to open up. I personally didn’t really see a problem with it; humor is usually the best way to break the ice in a situation. I thought it could have been pretty fun, but Katie was so adamant that it was stupid and degrading that I would have felt like a traitor to stay longer. Well, that, and they were going to a bar, and I’m not really a bar person.

So much of what we believe is based on perception. Katie believed that the students were offended by the proctors’ remarks, whereas I thought they either found them amusing, or didn’t quite understand yet. I definitely felt that an introduction to humor and slang was appropriate and useful for the students…they probably learn quite a bit about conversation from that group. I will have to talk a little about the experience tomorrow–we only stayed for about half an hour, so I hope I’m able to speak authoritatively on the subject somehow. I do think I’ll have at least a few things to say.

My short story, which doesn’t really have a title right now, is pretty good. I actually like it quite a bit, but it does need tweaking. I think I’ll hold off and put the “final version” (or at least, the final class version) on the website. People don’t really need to see the drafts. I may as well take “Mikey” down completely…I’m thoroughly disgusted with that story. It’s a load of crap :>

I seem to write the best stuff about Japan. At least lately. I suppose that’s what’s been on my mind, both subconsciously and consciously. I didn’t do a whole lot of writing about the experience while I was there, or even when I first got back. Things seem to come out better after a little time has gone by. The bad thing about that is that I can forget things…and my notes aren’t all that great :( I do know one thing, though: I love Japan and I want to live there someday.

I sometimes wish I had accomplished more in college. There are people who have done independent research projects, been active in clubs or Greek life, been activists, received scholarships and fellowships, and other things like that. Me, I just plug away at classes, then go home and do my own thing. There is a distinct lack of community there. Part of it is because I don’t live on campus, but even the year I did live on campus, back in Huntsville, I wasn’t extremely active. I was in one club, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, mainly because I liked the people in the club and had fun hanging out with them. I helped organize stuff, and I even became the Treasurer for the club, but I wasn’t intensely active like other people. I had my own hobbies, and there were times where I would just withdraw into myself.

I’ve always been like that, I suppose. I’m not necessarily a loner, because I love talking to people…but I do like having my own time, too. I don’t mind going to restaurants and movies by myself. I would prefer to have some people to go to the ballet and opera with, but right now everybody’s so broke that I can’t go anyway. Sometimes I feel like I distance myself from people who are near me, developing close bonds only to people online. I guess the online people will always (in general) be around, but the people I know in person won’t. I’ll be moving to Georgia next year, and it seems useless to get attached.

But that is pretty cynical and depressing, too.

And it’s not like I don’t have friends here. I’ve actually gotten pretty close to a woman in my TESL and Semantics classes, Mary. She has a husband named Phillip, two daughters (Lisa and Rebecca) and a son named Don. The girls are out of the house, but Don is 13 and still in school. Mary, Phillip and Don moved to Lexington from Nashville; Mary’s a natural musician and writer. She’s fantastic, really. I went to her house today and had lunch (a taco salad without the shell); it was really good. She also hosted a party last week, which was a blast. I knew most of the people there, and I skunked them at pool :D

So I can’t really say that I’m totally out of the social arena. But there is a feeling of detachment. Often I’m more comfortable on my computer than I am in a group of people.

My most comfortable place, hands down, is with Sean. Whether it be online together, on the phone together, or in person, there is no place I’d rather be. I don’t know, it is just so strange to me sometimes, to have my heart swell up and fill my chest, and this silly smile come on my face. It’s like a definite knowledge, something that no one can take away. He is the man I love. I’m going to marry him and live with him and grow old with him. And this certainty doesn’t make me feel trapped…it’s exciting. Together, we can do anything.

And really, he is the most fantastic man I have ever met. Our relationship is amazing to me sometimes. We are so comfortable with each other that we tease each other mercilessly, but we also comprehend each other on such a deep level that we know when to stop. We support each other, but we respect each other. We know each other. And damned if I’ll ever find someone as uniquely intelligent and intuitive as him. I can tell him everything, even silly things, and he’ll only love me more. I just can’t believe it sometimes. I can’t believe what I’ve found. I, to be cliché, must be the luckiest girl in the world.

I hope everyone feels this way when they find true love :)