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.

The Secret Really is the Support

Thank you everyone who stopped by yesterday for my SITS day! It was so amazing to wake up last night (yes night, I'm secretly a vampire. If you tell anyone I'll have to bite you.) and see all the supportive comments. I said yesterday that I wish this had come at a better time, but now I realize this was the better time. This is when I needed the support. It was very helpful to hear from everyone that a) it's okay to be negative when you're having a sucky time, b) they'll be thinking about me and praying for things to get better, and c) things will get better in time. It was all very uplifting and at least for today some of the emotional fog has lifted.

I'm also very thankful that I was able to create awareness about embryo donation. This is such an amazing option and I hope one day it will be as well known as IUI or IVF with your own embryos. On one hand I was saddened by how many people commented that they had never heard of this option, but on the other glad that now they have. I hope that through being featured some struggling couple will learn of the family building option that is perfect for them.

ETA: On my facebook page I try and post about any infertility, PCOS, Endo, etc news I find interesting or informative. However sometimes I just forget to even look at the news. I was thinking about starting to do a news recap here on Fridays which would encourage me to actually look on a regular basis rather than just when I remember. Would that be something you'd be interested in reading?

It's my SITS Day!!

Hello everyone visiting from The SITS Girls! For my regular readers who aren't aware, "The SITS Girls was founded in 2008, its objective was simple: To create a space where bloggers could find their tribe and grow their audience. Although the site has evolved over the years, its commitment to this mission has not changed." Today it is a network of over 40,000 members and each day they feature a different one. Well, today is my SITS Day!

While I'm happy to be featured, I do wish it was happening at a better time when I was feeling better both physically and emotionally. So apologies for seeming like a total Negative Nancy in my recent posts. I do try to outweigh the negativity with awesome cringe worthy puns for Punday each Monday, so please do take a look at that!

Also a little shameless self-promotion: I make awareness ribbon paracord bracelets (and a few other styles as well) for infertility, infant loss, miscarriage, PCOS, endometriosis and other causes using the same colors. All money earned is being saved to go toward building our family, hopefully through embryo adoption/donation. If that sounds like something you would be interested in, please take a look at my Etsy Shop.

Now here's a picture of our dog Scotty with a bandana on his head like a peasant woman.

Dany is my Infertility/Loss Roll Model

Just a little something I whipped up tonight. I got the Game of Thrones font from here and the Volantene Script font from here. Image of Dany and Drogon is from here.

Fun With The Sims 3

This is my cover photo on Facebook right now.

I <3 The Sims. I still have every expansion pack for the original Sims somewhere. We had Sim City, Sim Copter, Sim Tower, and my absolute favorite Sim Safari. I miss that game a lot but can't find a version that is compatible with Windows 7. I haven't played the new Sim City after the launch fiasco but I do spend quite a bit of time playing The Sims 3. I've recently started playing the Adam and Eve Legacy Challenge and am having a lot of fun! Basically your two sims start in a world with nothing in it, no houses, community lots, nothing other than a grocery store. You give them $500,000 (some of which has to be used to buy the grocery store) and through the next several generations (the goal is 50 but that's pretty insane) you're supposed to build the town up. It's really interesting playing in a town where your people can't go to the bookstore or the park or even get a job. The only people around are each other.

As I've been playing I've been taking a bunch of screenshots to kind of tell their story. If you want, you can read all about it on my new blog. It's probably best if you start with the first post. I'm not very far in yet, their first child is still a toddler although funnily enough it took them a long time to have him. I have a mod which lets you do "risky woohoo" and each time they do it they have a certain percent chance of getting pregnant. Mine was set at 5%. They did it at least once everyday in the shower to save time, and sometimes would autonomously do it again. Yet it took 43 days to get pregnant with their first child! Statistically speaking I should have been about ready to have my third child. I felt bad for them so after that I got them fertility treatments so they wouldn't have to wait so long for child #2. Then they got pregnant with twins the very first time. I guess statistics work after all! /facepalm

Here's a couple of my favorite screenshots:

Makin' money writing on the computer.

Admiring her new money tree.

Stargazing.

Finding out she's pregnant.

Watching the birthing video lol.

Daddy teaching little Branson to walk.

I guess I should replace Google Reader now... also 100 posts so yay!

This is officially my 100th post! Woohoo! I've had blogs before this but I'm never made it this far so this is quite an accomplishment for me. Excuse me while I have a party. 

Okay, okay, enough partying now. It is like 5am so time to wrap things up. What my post was going to be about before I realized it was my 100th post is finding a replacement for Google Reader. I've put it off because I like Reader and frankly wanted to use it while I could. However since it's death is only a month away it's time to start looking at my options. I want to have some time to try them out and find the best fit so I don't have to make a rushed decision. So lovely blog readers, have you found a replacement yet? If so what it is? I'd love to hear any and all recommendations!

Infertility Dreams

source

This post is not about the "I have a dream" kind of dreams, but the kind that sneak up on you in the middle of the night. Why dream about puppies or rainbows when you can dream about injections? We're not even in treatment right now!

If you can't tell, last night I had a dream (or probably nightmare) about infertility. One of you lovely ladies got her BFP and offered to give me the rest of her stims so I wouldn't have to pay for them. So I went and got this little mostly full bottle of something, the dream wasn't specific. And then everyone started getting on my case about that being illegal. I was going to go to jail because someone was nice to me. Apparently in Dream Land it's illegal to give someone your fertility drugs, but only if you used some of them. The person who gave me the vial had used some, but only a teeny tiny amount. I had to try and convince everyone it was still full and she hadn't used any, otherwise they were going to call the police on me. Both dream me and real me are terrible liars so this didn't go well. It was so frustrating because things were finally going well and instead of having our baby I had to try and keep from being arrested. When I woke up I was so relieved. Not because if someone gave me their drugs I wouldn't actually go to jail (I know others have had stims donated to them without a problem), but because we won't need stims for our donor embryo cycle. Infertility really does seep into every aspect of your life.

Spring Cleaning 2013

What with the demise of Google Reader approaching I decided now would be a good time to clean out my blog list. As of a week and a half ago I had 140 subscriptions, and I've added several new ones since then. I added some of the Living Child-Free blogs from Stirrup Queens' Completely Anal List of Blogs That Proves That She Really Missed Her Calling as a Personal Organizer, and then a bunch from this month's ICLW. I've noticed that with our current situation it's harder to read some blogs than it used to be and I really don't feel like torturing myself right now. So if I've unsubscribed from you there's a pretty good chance it's me, not you. =) About half of the blogs I unsubed from either haven't been updated in ages (some not since 2010!) or just plain ol' don't exist anymore. About 3/8's of them were mommy/pregnancy blogs that I found too hard to read. The last 1/8th were like Reader clutter. For whatever reason I've been skimming or skipping over their blog posts lately so I decided to just get rid of them. I'm now done to 78 subscriptions! Some of these still haven't been updated in a while, but they belong to IRL folks and if they do start updating again I'd want to know about it. So excluding those I'm probably down to about 70 active subs which means I basically cut my list in half!

What about you? Done any spring cleaning of your own lately? Approximately how many blogs do you keep up with at any one time? I'd love to know where I stand as far as the average reading list goes.

A New Start

With the end of one journey upon us and a new one beginning, I felt it was time for a bit of a blog overhaul. A new look, a new name, and a new URL. I hope the URL change doesn't mess things up too bad. If you have any links to the old site you need to replace, the new one is http://frozenoj.blogspot.com/.

Save Google Reader!

Google announced today that it plans to shut down Reader on July 1st. I don't know about you guys, but that's what I use to keep up with all your posts. I love the way it is integrated with Google Friend Connect (my widget of choice for subscribing to blogs) and also G+ so I can effortlessly share the posts I love. I also adore the browser extension that shows me if there is any new posts and if so, how many. I would appreciate it if you would take the time to sign the petition, tweet using the hastag #savegooglereader, share on Facebook, post on G+ also using #savegooglereader, and/or make a blog post such as this one.

These stats are a bit off, I've clicked a bunch of times.

Endo Awareness Week

Books for a Buck February 8-9

Don't miss your chance to grab some great books for 99 cents February 8th and 9th! Categories include: Young Adult, New Adult, Urban Fantasy, Horror, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Paranormal Romance, Contemporary Romance, and Chick Lit. Click the banner above for more info.

Postsecret

Every once in a while I see a card on Postsecret that really resonates with me. Something I could have sent in if I had the guts. Sometimes I think a middle finger symbol would be more appropriate than the dreaded words "not pregnant".

Vacation post

We are currently having a fantastic time sailing around the Caribbean. Or at least I imagine we are. It would suck if we weren't, right? I'm not going to pay the exorbitant price for internet on the boat so you'll just have to wait till next week to find out! So since I can't update you on my cycle or how TTC on vacation is going, here are some random thoughts I've had over the past few weeks that never made it in to previous posts.

I'm a gamer. One of the games I love is Sims 3. I'll be honest, I kind of project my infertile frustration on my Sims by giving them giant families. One of the dudes I've been playing has 15+ kids with like 7 different women. =D Anyway, one of his baby mamas recently had twins and I couldn't think of a good name for them. I haven't had to name most of his kids because the mom didn't live with him so it was automated, but I had to move this girl in because her family already had 8 people. So I went to the play store and searched for a baby name app.

Plus he has some on the way.

What I found was Baby Name-o-Matic. This thing is seriously awesome. It gives you a random list of names picked out of the 5000+ in it's database, and you rate them 1-5 stars. After you rate a few it considers the ones you've given high ratings and then generates names that have something in common with them. I apparently tend to like English/Irish/Scottish names so that's what it mostly gives me. When you click on a name to rate it the app also shows the origin and meaning which is nice. I showed it to DH and he decided our girl name was going to be Aubrey. Not necessarily because he loves the name Aubrey, but because it means "ruler of elves" in French. =D Too bad for him I've had two girl names picked out for years.

Another discovery I've made recently is a baby picture generator. Someone posted about it on one of the forums I visit or on their blog, I can't really remember. The one I used was Morph Thing and it was fairly easy, although more complicated than just uploading a picture. You have to upload your picture and then tell the program where the different parts of the face are, like eyes, nose, chin, etc so it can line those up correctly. Unfortunately DH and I both wear glasses and you can still see their imprints in the generated pictures. Here they are! I think they're pretty cute.

International Blog Delurking Week 2013

Every year the first full week of January is International Blog Delurking Week. What does that mean? It means if you have been reading my blog but not commenting, also known as lurking, this is your opportunity to let me know you're there! A simple "hi!" would be fine, or you can go into something a little deeper. The amount of views I get each week is so disproportionate to the amount of comments, so I'd just like an opportunity to say hi back and thank you for reading. =] I am guilty of lurking myself so I encourage everyone else to participate! 

Don't want to just say hi, but can't think of anything else to say either? How about answering this prompt: If you won the lottery, other than paying off bills, what would you buy?

To answer my own question I would of course bring out the big fertility guns, injectibles at the very least and IVF if that didn't work. I would buy a new-to-me car. I would get a much nicer apartment/rented house, but not buy a house as we are looking at moving away from the area in 2014. I would update my wardrobe slightly and get some really nice, supportive bras. The ultimate goal though would be to invest the bulk of it so it could supplement our finances long-term. 

I am so, so sorry.

Something weird has been happening in TTC land this week. Several other gals I know have been late, but not pregnant. These are women who have been TTC for a while and know when they ovulate, so it wasn't just they ovulated late, their LP was longer than normal. So weird. Not even a hint of a line on a test so I don't think they had chemicals or anything. Breaks my heart to see them go through that and know how hopeful they must have been, only to have that hope crushed. =[

A lot of people have been sending their condolences to these ladies. This is awesome because we can all use some support on CD1. I feel kinda bad though, because every time I see someone post "I'm so, so sorry" I can't help but think of Doctor Who. It just happens. I always read it in Ten's voice and chuckle a little, then feel guilty because it's not really something I should be laughing about...

So that's my confession for the day.

Oh and as a side note, since I'm posting on one of my off days anyway, I've been having a weird symptom all day. Well I'm sure it even IS a symptom. But my feet keep falling asleep and feeling all tingly. Like if you sit funny too long and cut off the circulation. Only it's been happening at times when I'm most definitely not cutting off the circulation so I don't know what the flying flaming flamingos is going on.