Happy Thanksgiving!

Being a Thursday, I've got to rep my endosisters by wearing my yellow birthday outfit complete with yellow jeans. Thursdays are awareness day where you wear yellow and use the hashtags #onthursdayswewearyellow and/or #otwwy. Usually I can't participate because I stay in my PJs and don't have any yellow ones! :D

This year I am thankful for my mom, little sister, and husband who remain as supportive and helpful as possible. I really couldn't do it without them.

I'm thankful for the support I've found in a spoonie facebook group as well as the spoonie and body positive communities on instagram. It's nice to have people who "get" you.

I'm thankful for those who participate in the Daily Deal thread on the Sims 3 forums. Because of their help I now own a much, much larger portion of the store that I would with my nonexistent budget. They have taught me the tricks for minimizing costs and maximizing sim points. They are also incredibly nice and supportive for an internet forum. It feels like they really care about each other. They will even gift people store content who are having a bad day, or it's your birthday, or just randomly. In fact yesterday I was gifted a $24 world!

But most of all, I am thankful for those who have donated to my gofundme campaign. I can't express how thankful I am. Because of these donations I now have enough to get my blood work done, which I plan to do next week. I posted before about how hopeless I felt but now I have a little hope. As you can see, I am now over halfway to my goal! I can do the blood work now and the rest (if we get it) will be so I can go to a followup appointment and find out the results of said blood work. I don't have the words to say how thankful I am.

Where did I go?

So apparently it's been like a month since my last real post. Oops. I'm also like a weekish behind on my post about Ruby for From Left to Write. I do still plan on writing that, btw. I've not been having a great time lately. I can't even remember what's been going on the whole time since I posted last, but it probably wasn't good.

I did finally get over my flu like illness at some point. That was a pain in the neck. So yay for eating stuff other than cereal. I've been having more problems with my endo. I got AF and then I've been spotting on and off since. The pain comes and goes as well. Apparently endo has spread closer to my back because I'm having a lot of back pain now. My doctor doesn't think it's from anything else. It sucks though because heat isn't nearly as effective on my back as it is normally. We've increased my aygestin dose again and another lupron shot might be in my future. Josh thinks I should have another lap but we can't exactly afford it.

We had a spell of very nasty weather. Over the last year I've been feeling the weather a lot more than I used to, more than 26 year olds should really. One of our dogs has a storm phobia which also sucks. Parts of our city flooded but our property is fine. Not too far from here whole streets were washed away and stuff so even though the storms weren't fun we're glad we didn't have to deal with that.

My mom graduated with two bachelor degrees on the 27th. Josh kinda graduated too, but he decided not to walk. (He only has internships this summer.) So there were a bunch of events for that. My mom won two awards and he won one! It was quite hard on my body and I think I'm just now recovering. I haven't hardly done anything in my free time since the events started other than lay in bed and watch TV.

Our house had some serious plumbing problems. We had to have a plumber come out with an excavator and replace all the piping from our house to the street and also had to have some pipe in the shower replaced. Something is wrong with the dishwasher too but we aren't gonna deal with that right now because it's not as necessary. As you can imagine it's been stressful and expensive.

Then of course there was Mother's Day. This was my second Mother's Day since the loss and I expected it to be easier than the first one but it wasn't. Maybe it just takes more time, or maybe it will always be this hard. Hopefully we will eventually have other living children and the day will be more bittersweet than just bitter. My mother made things easier for me and decided her graduation dinner would double as Mother's Day lunch. That way I wouldn't have to go out that day or see my hugely pregnant sister. Her baby shower is this weekend I think but I'm not going.

I think that's everything, or all the major stuff at least. Hopefully I'll have something more positive to post about the next time.

Punday 4/21 - Easter Edition

The Joke's on You

Yesterday was April Fools Day. I'm sure most if not all of you have seen images like this one posted on blogs and social media, you may have even shared it yourself. I saw one person even say she would unfriend anyone that joked about this.

I never shared it though (until now I guess) and I've been thinking about why not. These jokes just don't bother me despite my years of infertility and one loss. It's not my favorite prank but that's mostly because it's pretty overdone. I've come up with a couple reasons why this is not hurtful for me.

I know the announcement is not true and that take's it's power away. April 1'st is the only day I can go on social media safe in the knowledge that I won't see a real announcement. This week I've seen a birth announcement from someone I unfriended but Facebook still had me following and a pregnancy announcement from an old friend who hardly ever posts anything. Every time I go online there is this fear I will see another one, but not on April 1'st.

I would rather see fake announcements from most people that real ones. We recently found out my cousin's girl friend is pregnant when she posted an ultrasound picture on Facebook. It's a boy and they are giving him Danger as a middle name. I wish that was just an April Fools joke!

If you are announcing on April Fools then you aren't actually pregnant. I don't have to worry about seeing a real one from you for at least a couple weeks if you announce early or a few month if you don't. You are safe now. I've come to the conclusion than April 1st is my favorite day to see pregnancy announcements.

Punday 3/17 - St. Patrick's Day Edition

Punday 2/10 - Valentine's Day Edition

Winter Wonderland

I think I've mentioned before that I live in Florida. It hasn't snowed since 1989 and sadly I was too young then to remember it. Apparently we went sledding on cookie sheets. Well it still hasn't snowed *insert sad face here* but we did get about 1/2 and inch of sleet and freezing rain! That hasn't happened since I was old enough to remember either. Everyone here got a lot more excited about than most people probably think is reasonable lol. We had two snow days! It happened overnight so I don't have any pictures of it actually sleeting (although I did stay up all night just to make sure it didn't turn into snow) but we do have some from the next morning. 

This is our bridge which as you can see they shut down completely. I think it was actually closed about 24 hours. We don't have any salt or anything so they tried dumping sand on it from the beach.

Little Sister in front of the palm tree in our yard with ice on the ground. It was about 30 degrees when it's normally about 60 so she just wanted to go inside, but we made her take a picture because she'll probably want one later. I wish I had pictures of us as kids when it snowed but no one knows where they are!

Here's a pretty good picture of the ice. It was so slippery! Obviously if you think about it ice is going to be slippery but I didn't expect it to be that slippery. It was such a weird experience.

And lastly here is Scotty in the backyard having a great time. Dobby wouldn't stay still long enough for me to get a good picture of him. They loved running around and chasing each other through the ice. About 10 minutes after being out there Scotty started sneezing though so I made them come inside.

Good Riddance 2013

2013 sucked. As did 2012, and 2011. 2009/10 were decent, either because not too much bad happened or there was enough good to even out the bad. All I dare hope is for 2014 to be more like that. They say what goes up must come down. Do you think the opposite could be true? That what goes down must come up? Like a bouncy ball let go to drop on the floor and then bounce back into your waiting palm. Then for Heaven sakes put the ball away! I don't need to be up, I just need to be level. Not down. Is that too much to ask?

I think the worst may be over when it comes to lupron side effects. I still have hot flashes, joint pain, mood swings, etc but my pelvic pain has eased somewhat. It's not better, it may not even be getting better yet, but the extra pain caused by the lupron has passed. I can get out of bed so that's an improvement. I'm seeing more chest pain flares though which sucks. Two steps forward, one step back.

My depression is getting worse. My mother has nicknamed me Killer of Dreams. I had an initial appointment with a health and family counseling group earlier this month. I saw a psychiatrist on Christmas Eve and had a terrible experience. He was very dismissive of my problems. I'm on a low dose antidepressant already for chronic pain so he just doubled it to the lowest dose used to treat depression. Of course it makes me so tired I'll sleep for 17 hours after taking it. I've just been taking the new amount every other day and hoping my body gets used to it soon.

I have an appointment with a therapist on the eighth so I'm hoping that goes better. There are so many things bothering me right now I don't even know where to start. If I have another negative experience I've already had someone else recommended.

My disability appeal is due soon and I still don't have a lawyer. I've pretty much been on bed rest the last month and haven't felt up to calling around to the other lawyers. Even if I can get out of bed now I still don't have the energy to explain everything and try to persuade them to take my case. I'll probably end up just filing myself (or getting Josh to do it). With or without a lawyer I'll probably get denied again. A larger percentage of cases are denied at first appeal than even initial application. Gotta weed out those not super serious, I guess. Persistence seems to be the key.

I hope all of you are doing well. Congrats to anyone who has gotten a BFP lately! Hugs for those who haven't. Wishing everyone a happier 2014.

Punday 12/23 - Christmas Edition

My Thanksgiving Contribution - Apples in a Blanket

I'm not up to doing a lot with Thanksgiving this year, but I've found a desert so easy even I can do it! I'm calling them Apples in a Blanket. I wasn't going off a recipe or anything so didn't use exact measurements but I used one apple (cut into 8 slices by an apple slicer), one thing of crescent rolls, one tablespoon of butter, about one tablespoon of brown sugar, and about half a tablespoon of cinnamon. 

Then I put it all in a microwave safe bowl and stuck it in the microwave for two minutes, stirring every 30 seconds or so. The apples won't be in the oven long enough to cook so they need to get pretty soft first. I think next time I'll do three minutes because they were still a bit firm. 

Then I rolled out half the crescent rolls and spread the butter, brown sugar, cinnamon sauce on them. If you do all of them at the same time they'll be too gooey to roll up later. You can use a pastry brush if you want but I just used the back of my half tablespoon. 

Then stick an apple slice at the big end of each crescent roll.

Roll them up and then do the same thing to the other half of rolls.  Spread a little more of the sauce on the top of each one.

Cook them in the oven according to the crescent roll directions. I think mine were in the oven for 11 minutes. Give them a minute to cool and that's it, they're done! Easy peasy! 

Happy Thanksgiving everyone from me, Josh, Scotty, and Dobby!