Get your news! Daily news! Fifty cents!

Okay, so I have tons of things to write about today, but we'll start with the oft-requested picture!
(Disclaimer: this photo is barely processed, since I cannot get Photoshop to work right now. Ignore the pimply face, please.) Sorry that this is so long in coming, I just never had decent looking hair after work this week... so it took until Saturday to take!

News #1:
Real women don't date Yankees fans. Love you, Que Sarah Sarah!

News #2: We found our church today! Hope Bible Church is a non-denominational church that is absolutely perfect... for both of us! I had no faith that we were going to find a church that made us happy, especially not one that we both thought was perfect, but that is what we walked out of the door today saying.

They sang hymns and praise songs, had at least 45 minutes of exceptional expositional preaching (and today was just the pastoral intern! We heard amazing things about their regular pastor), in-depth, exciting classes after service, and the friendliest people ever, including "the other" electrical engineer at the church and his wife (who are also new and want to invite us over to their house!). AND THERE WERE SO MANY PEOPLE OUR AGE!!!!11!1!one1!!1eleven! (as Brian would say).

News #3:
I have already done three substituting jobs (in high schools all three times), and I must say that I absolutely love teaching. It is a bit stressful (especially when you have a high maintenance teacher like I subbed for on Friday) and tiring (when standing on your feet all day long running from student to student to keep them on task), but so much fun and really rewarding. Hopefully I will pull myself together some time this week and write a post about it. :)

News#4:
I have my first "recurring pregnancy loss" appointment tomorrow at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore. I am really looking forward to possibly getting some answers and to being pregnant again soon! There were so many pregnant women today at church and I really just wanted to be one of them: a normal pregnant woman who doesn't worry about if her baby will actually make it past 12 weeks this time. Okay, so I won't be that non-worrying person anyway, but at least there is a possibility that my next baby could make it past 12 weeks!

It might be too late for this, but you could pray that the Women's Health Center could find the records that MIT mailed them. As of last Monday they were missing in action and MIT wouldn't fax them or send the whole set again (I had them resend the test results from June, at least), and I'm really hoping that my doctor will have information to work with.

News #5:
I just ordered this printer along with three full sets of ink cartridges....for free! When we signed up for Verizon Fios, their current deal was that you could get a free netbook from HP (one of those mini computers) after paying your Verizon bills for two months. Well, we just passed the two month mark and got our certificate... and realized that we didn't have to use it on a netbook (which we didn't really want or need). So, we had $299.99 to spend on HP's website! We really, really needed a new printer, and decided to get the Officejet 6500 Wireless All-in-One (we really need the scanning/copying function, too!).

News #6:
I'm sure that you could have lived without knowing this, but I needed to share this with other women who might understand me (since my husband just kind of nods his head at this kind of information)... I am having the most wonderful, sweet period ever. I never would have thought that I would call a period wonderful or sweet, but this one has just been absolutely magical after the hellish nightmares of the past four months. TMI, I know. But I just needed to share.

I got contacts.

I had them in high school, but they turned the whites of my eyes into the reds of my eyes and I looked a bit like a monster. So I stopped wearing them. But as that was close to eight years ago, my eye doctor and I both thought that "breathable" contact lens technology may have progressed enough to enable me to wear contacts... I'm keeping my fingers crossed! So far, so good.


In an effort to aid my eyes, we decided that a chemical based cleaning system was probably not a good way to go, and I got this awesome UV/ultrasound cleaner. The UV kills off any bacteria on the contacts and the ultrasound will shake any dust/particles off of the contacts. Really cool, right? The chemist in me had to have this as soon as I heard about it! (Although the chemist in me also shies away from the thing whenever it is on... That purple color throws off so many cancer warning signs in my head!)

Why my eye?

Can anyone guess why I am showing you a picture of my eye?

P.S. Also, what color would you say my eyes are? I'd normally say green, but they look almost blue this close up. Hmmph.
P.P.S. Please ignore the dark circle under my eye. If anyone has any solution for getting rid of those (I'm getting plenty of sleep, thank you very much), let me know!
P.P.P.S. I hope no one 50 years in the future will be able to gain access to some record of mine because I posted a picture of my eye on the internet. Ah, privacy concerns.


UPDATE:

Good guess, Amy, but not correct! Anyone else?

Me=hired

Who would have thought that there was a job left in this economy? Apparently babysitting teenagers is NOT a high priority position (Maybe it's the lack of benefits? Or the possibility that you will not have a job every day? Nah... probably just the dealing with teenagers part) because I was hired to be a substitute teacher for a nearby public school system. Woohoo!

Now we can have a countdown to when Abbie can finally start working! (See above.) Cha-ching!

My backup plan was to get myself a position at Ann Taylor Loft. (Believe it or not, they were also hiring, at least as of a few weeks ago.) 1) I could sell their clothes to anyone, I am a great salesman of things I believe in; 2) I already wear Ann Taylor Loft every day, so it's not like I would have needed a whole new wardrobe; 3) Can you say employee discount? Cha-ching, cha-ching! I would have walked out of there with a net gain of zero in the bank account, but some rather lovely additions to my closet.

You know what? I actually think I've seen a bunch of places hiring around here. Maybe the problem with the rest of the country is that all of the government's money is going into the defense industry, which is basically here. So... if you're looking for a job, maybe you should move to Maryland/DC/Virginia! And be my friend!

And on that positive note, here is a lovely video of a Democrat making a fool out of herself. What better way to end a happy post?

Happy Day

Well, there you go. It only took me a day!

I'm in a great mood today, probably because I got a check in the mail to pay off a loan - that's always a great feeling! Plus, our awesome small group from Boston is headed down here on Friday - it is going to be so great to see them! In fact, our August is full of fun people coming to visit - Brian and Amy, Angelin, Jon and Kate (not the "Plus 8" ones)... I am really glad that it is August - and I think my new blog look shows it!

Did I mention that I applied for the substitute teaching position? I haven't heard anything yet, but I'm not sure that MIT has sent them my transcript yet, even though I'm pretty sure it's been four weeks since I asked them to and they cashed my check two weeks ago! Oh, MIT... How hard can it be to send a transcript?



P.S. I read in Good Housekeeping last month about this guy who is trying to help people stop complaining, and has them switch a bracelet from arm to arm every time they do so. The woman who wrote the article started out with about 100 switches in the first day... I think I would have more than that (although maybe not, since I only get to speak out loud for about 5 hours each day). Her conclusion was that complaining is too ingrained in her way of life, and that it helps her bond with the people she loves. I think I just found my new best friend.

August is here

Okay, okay, so it's August and I don't have a new blog look up yet... I just haven't felt like sitting down and creating! Maybe my creative juices will be more active sometime later this week.

I know that I have gotten incredibly boring recently, and my only excuse is that my life is incredibly boring right now! I don't have a child to report on, or a pregnancy to update you all about, and I am positive that you don't want to hear about how my Lord of the Rings Online character is doing... So I haven't been around much! Hopefully in the next month or two one of those situations will change (hint, hint, I'd love to get pregnant again soon!), but we'll have to wait and see.

my rough day

I had a ROUGH day yesterday!

As background, my parents gave us their old van, and we have to get it changed over to Maryland registration/titling/etc. Yesterday I went to have it inspected, which I figured would end up being an easy peasy thing because it had just passed inspection in West Virginia two months ago... So you can imagine my dismay when the Toyota service man came back to me with a minor problem (rusty battery terminals) and a major problem (replacing the left front inner tie rod, which made us also need an alignment)... It came out to $600 worth of "fixing" our car for the state inspection, instead of the $75 that I had been prepared to spend on getting it inspected! Yikes! I freaked out because we do NOT have that much extra money lying around in our bank account, and I started having a heart attack trying to figure out how to pay it. (I guess it's a good sign that my credit card doesn't quickly come to my mind as a solution.) Thank goodness they at least had all of the parts in stock so that it could be fixed that afternoon.

Because the car was going to be several more hours to be fixed, they offered me a free rental car, which I suppose was a bit of a consolation considering how much money they were stealing from me... I decided to go ahead and get my grocery shopping done, since I had been planning to do that after the inspection, and then just hang out at my house until they called me to tell me the van was ready. I drove 30 minutes north to go to the Sam's Club near our house, and when I had my groceries, headed 5 minutes back to our apartment.... at which I discovered that I didn't have my house keys. (I had about $30 worth of refrigerated food, since this is Sam's Club we're talking about.) Since I don't know any of my neighbors and don't have any friends in the state of Maryland, and since my husband works at a place in which he can't bring in his cell phone during the day, I couldn't leave the groceries with anyone! The only solution I could think of was to drive down to the Toyota dealership, pray that the van was ready, and, if so, swap the groceries into it and come back. But it wasn't ready when I got there and still had another hour to go... So I had them bring me my house key, at which point I drove 30 minutes back to my house, dropped off the groceries, jumped back in the rental for a 30 minute drive back down to the dealer. My van was finally ready, so I got in that and headed back home (again, 30 minutes).

I drove a total of 3 hours yesterday. I could have been almost back in WV by then! All I could think of as I was driving here and there was that the perfect end to the day would be either 1) crashing the rental car into something or 2) getting a speeding ticket (I was going about 10 over on my third trip down seeing as how ticked off I was!). Thank the Lord that neither happened...

Blah

They say your cycles change after a pregnancy (whether ending in birth or miscarriage). Sadly, I think my days of 24-27 day cycles are OVER. I am currently on day 33. Last month was 35 days. Way too long for an impatient person like myself. Sadly, I don't know where I am in the two week wait because I no longer temp! My, oh my.

Sorry for the self-loathing that snuck into my post yesterday. That's about where I spend most of my days, so it was pretty real, but I shouldn't take it out on other people. I'm sure that's not what they're thinking when I explain what I'm doing or not doing right now. It's only what I'm thinking.

Home

I am home this week, well, at my parents' home in Wheeling, WV. All of the kids are finally back together, and minus my hubby it almost feels like zooming back six years in the past to when I actually still lived here... Except I have a cool, grownup 15 year old sister now. And I own a car. :-D

My cousins from Louisiana came up for my grandma's 85th birthday, which is why I came back. Jonathan couldn't come because he doesn't have time off from work yet, although I think everyone is thinking we must be hitting a rough spot in our marriage, because they keep asking where he is with a slightly accusatory look. Yeah, thanks for your confidence, peeps.

On that note, I think the title of Jon & Kate Plus Eight should be edited to include a big red slash through Jon's name. What a jerk.

Gotta love the other question I get from everyone: so what are you doing now? See, that question is so loaded when it's coming to me. I was the one who left West Virginia to go to MIT! The genius child! I should be a doctor or a rocket scientist or at least a plain old chemist (who's on the way to curing cancer). But I am a NOBODY, and no one pauses to consider the fact that I was expecting to be a MOM right now, not sitting on my butt being a NOBODY for three months. And after this summer, I'm going to be a lousy substitute teacher. I mean, who wants to brag about their neice who went to MIT and became a substitute teacher? Kind of a flat ending.

Church news

You'll have to forgive my silence... I just don't have much to say from day to day! Not much changes daily in my life right now. :)

In good news, I think we may have found a church that we are both okay with. I think it will mean us going to two services each Sunday (one traditional and one contemporary) on top of a Sunday school class before the first service, all of which is annoying and time consuming, especially as two are in the morning and one is in the evening, but that is probably the best solution we are going to have for Jonathan and me anyway. We are just two different people when it comes to how we worship. I say we're okay with it because we weren't in love with the senior pastor (there wasn't much meat to his sermon), but we're going to give him another chance and see if that was just a fluke. The pastor who spoke at the contemporary service was much better, in my opinion. Anywho, it was encouraging to finally see some people our age at a church... The churches we've visited in the weeks prior looked like 40+ clubs, with one heavy on the 60+ side...

Church last night was refreshing, for once. I felt like I actually connected with God and we had some encouraging time together, which is not happening very frequently for me right now... I'm sure because of where my heart is most of the time. And believe me, folks, I know in my head how wrong what I am feeling is, but that doesn't change that I am feeling it! Only God can help me do that.

I'm off to do some more cleaning - my house is such a mess after the weekend and I need to get on top of it! I get stressed out when I am in a gross environment.

July look and Independence Day

New blog look up! Even though the 4th has already passed, I'm still feeling mighty patriotic, especially living near DC and all.

Like it?

You guys have been visiting me while I've been gone! We're already past 12,000 hits! In sad news, I know a lot of those visitors have been mommies who have lost their babies recently and have needed to take cytotec for a medically-induced miscarriage. I have been reading all of your comments and praying for you girls. I feel your pain (physically and emotionally) and I wish that you did not have to go through this. But better to go through it together, right?

Our Independence Day was well spent, our first time in Washington, D.C. We went in to the city to visit a friend who was in Northern Virginia for a few days, and I'm so glad we did! When we got there, there was a huge parade on the mall. The first part had tons of military walking by us, and it felt like a victory parade. Everyone in the crowd cheered for these brave men and women.



We have more pictures of the parade, but I won't bore you with them. This is my favorite group from the parade, the Chinese Americans. The fans are just priceless. :)



Waiting for Sarah and her entourage near the National Art Gallery. What amazes me about this picture is that I am actually walking toward the camera here, although I look like I am posing.



This is Thor, the god of thunder, posing with the Washington monument. Actually, he's a toy from a McDonald's happy meal from 2003 (don't tell him I told you that; he gets a little touchy about the subject). Does anyone know what movie/tv show he is actually from? We have no clue and would love to find out! There's a prize in it for anyone who delivers the right answer with picture proof. :)



Me and my friend Sarah! All of the randomness in the background of this picture upsets my artistic sensibilities, but oh well.



And finally, I am so jealous of this picture, but I must admit that my husband took it, especially since the fact that I am in it gives that away. :) Fireworks on the Ellipse.

We haz teh interwebs! Nao i can haz cheezburger?

Hello friends!

I am back on the world wide web - finally! It's been a rough four weeks, but Verizon Fios was worth the wait and I am loving the speed. Reminiscent of MIT. :)

I will definitely have more to say about life in the next few days, I'm sure, but I have tons to do online right now...

Here are some pictures of our new car to tide you over:


Her name is Carly Corolla. :)

Update from Maryland

Hey all-

Thanks for your good wishes. We're doing well here in Maryland - we managed to buy our first "new" (used) car yesterday - a 2008 Toyota Corolla that's in mint condition. We were pretty excited to find it and both felt like it was our car when we saw it - love at first sight. :)

We got our driver's licenses, finally (after waiting for the post office to switch our locks so that we could get our mail with some updated addresses for address verification!) and that's a big relief. There's so many things on our to-do list every day; I'm really glad that Jonathan has this whole week off so that we can run around and get things done.

As for test results (drum roll, please)... Everything was negative. Which could be good news or it could be bad. It's hard to tell right now. So, we're hoping that everything is fine and that our next pregnancy will go well. No news on the pregnancy front - it's probably still too early to tell for this month (I didn't temp so I have no clue where I am right now), and it's nice that I'm not really worrying about it right now. In fact, I haven't taken a prenatal vitamin in weeks, so I should really get back on that!

I'm starting to realize how difficult it is going to be for me to make friends here. Our neighborhood appears to be full of older couples with children from 6-15 years, and we've only been to one church so far, which had no one our age (although we really liked the people, the worship and the sermon). Where do the 20-somethings hang out? Walmart? Hehe.

We love that our county library has free wi-fi! We've been able to (slowly) check our e-mail most days and it's enabling me to write to you now. We're holding out for Verizon Fios to go in our area on June 30th, which is why we don't have internet yet, and probably won't for a few more weeks - gulp!

Well, I'm signing off now - tons of things to do with our free hour of online time!

Random. Thoughts. On. A. Friday.

- Training. Hungry. Never 5 seconds to eat or relax. Silly working hard guy... Leave me alone!
- Wow, this is post number 170 - I guess I'll have to figure out soon what to do for number 200.
- Moving in t-minus eight days. So excited, but so sad at the same time.
- We picked out our diploma frames yesterday and are planning to hang them on the wall where they will be the most conspicuous. Why, yes, we went to MIT. BOW TO US NOW. Oh, you don't know what MIT is? Oh well.
- June 1 is Monday - new blog look then. Not so bright; not too depressing. I hope.
- By the way, I know I said I wouldn't mention this again, but I want closest to 10000 that's over 10000, 9999 doesn't count! (Sad, but true.) Don't forget or I will be very sad. This will be me ---> :(

Weekend Update Monday

I really had a great weekend - thanks to Jamie for taking me outlet shopping on Saturday morning, Jennifer for inviting us over for dinner (yummy Indian food!) and games on Saturday night, and my sweet, sweet husband for cleaning my house and going grocery shopping Saturday morning while I was gone. What a darling he is!

I haven't been sleeping super well lately (waking up frequently, and then not being able to go back to sleep), so I'm praying that will end soon because I'm TIRED. I was having this same problem last spring and ended up on a sleeping pill that I eventually had to get off of (when I got pregnant with Max). I slept better on it, but I was always tired for the first half of the day, so I think I'm not going to go down that path again unless I get really desperate!

Pi-lat-es

Hubby's coming home today - hooray! Sophie has been a very good kitty while her daddy was gone and let mommy sleep as much as mommy wanted to - hooray!

I started Pilates last night and my back is killing me this morning. I think it's a combo cramp/backache, but I know it'll go away with time. My poor back is just not very strong right now! I'm really going to try to stick to doing Pilates at least every other day, since I really need to strengthen my core muscles and it'll be good for me during pregnancy, too.

Fertility friend is messing with my mind and telling me that I actually O-ed on Tuesday, not Monday. Hmmm... Well, in any case, now I have hope again. We'll see next Saturday/Sunday if AF shows up or not. I'm either pregnant or I'm not and me worrying about it right now doesn't change matters.

Rant over

Sorry for that, but I was just too mad to function and needed to get some anger out in words. I'm over it now, though. There's always next month! And I'm happy that my cycle is looking back to normal hormone levels. My next goal/prayer is to have a luteal phase with high temps for at least 10 days, hopefully lasting at least 11 days. My last few cycles have been non-pregnancy sustaining lengths, so I need my progesterone levels to stay higher longer!

Doctor's appointment today to check my hopefully dead cyst. That's at 11 am EST, and I'll update afterwards.

My husband's leaving me today! He's going to Baltimore to finish some processing for his job and will be back on Friday. I'm going to miss him something fierce!

UPDATE:
Jamie reminded me that I didn't update yet! The appointment lasted all of 10 minutes (it was just a brief internal exam), and I was told that my uterus tilts slightly to the left and my left ovary is somewhat larger than the right. They don't do ultrasounds at my Ob/Gyn so I have an appointment set up for next Thursday at 9 am.

A Good Substitute

Editor's note:
Sometimes I try to edit myself on what I write on this blog, thinking that you all couldn't possibly be interested or want to hear the same thing for the 50th time in a row. But I'm realizing more and more that this is not your blog, it's mine, and really, I need to say what I need to say. Whether you guys read it or not is a moot point.

Not that I don't love you all... Because I do. And I appreciate you so much for coming here and grieving with me and being my friends. It is very nice to have an audience for my feelings. It's just that it's more necessary for me to get out my feelings, rather than make myself more interesting or less annoying or happier or whatever.

(I'm not convinced that this Editor's note has anything to do with the below post. I was going to post about something else, and then got caught up in some different thoughts. But in general, I think it still applies, so I'm going to leave it.)

Real post:
I'm considering becoming a substitute teacher for a few months in the fall (or until I have a baby... who really knows how long it's going to take to get pregnant). I've had this kind of floating thought that after my kids are in school (as in, middle school or high school when I'm done home schooling) that I'm going to become a high school chemistry/science teacher. But I'm realizing that I have no idea whether I actually even want to be a teacher. I've taught Sunday school before, but my kids were 1st graders and now three year olds. I know I enjoy teaching three year olds (although maybe not on a daily basis :-P), but I don't really know my feelings about teaching high schoolers. What if I go back to school some day, pay lots of money to get my Masters (in Teaching/Education) and then hate it? So, I've come up with the idea of trying out substitute teaching. Did you know that you only need a high school diploma to do that? (They pay more if you have a certain number of college credits, or even more if you have a degree, but that's beside the point.) In any case, I'm going to think about it more, but I'll probably apply this summer and hopefully have some work to do in the fall. My major concern is lack of sleep. I don't do well without sleep, and I'm not good at going to bed at a decent time when my husband's around to talk to. (It's too much like having your best friend over for a slumber party every single day!)

On a different note: there's also been some Drama (yes, with a capital D) going on in the Christian blogging world over the past few days. Seems some Christians have gotten themselves in trouble for judging other Christians for not "shining their light" or whatever. I don't do well with judgment (read: I'm a cry baby), so I'm just glad I haven't had any of that over here. Because I'm not sure that I'm "shining my light" so well.

I'm not one of those Christians that likes to think that Jesus has made her world perfect and that I need to tell everyone how perfect my world is. Because He doesn't make everything perfect, sadly. If He did, our babies would still be here. I've been mad at God for taking my baby. He didn't need Max, why didn't He just leave him with me? But this world is messed up (corrupted by sin, just like us) and bad things happen because of that. He didn't make it this way; we made it this way. And He had to give up His son to fix what we did. I'm eternally in his debt, and every child he does give me is a gift, not something that is owed to me.

Okay, that's all I have to say. Not that it wasn't a lot.

Bleh.

My husband's going out of town next Wednesday-Friday, and not only am I going to miss him fervently, but those are prime baby making days right there! I need serious prayer to O (ovulate) early this month - my O dates are really widely varying, so I've O-ed as early as CD13 (Monday the 16th this month) and as late as CD17 (Friday). Maybe God's trying to teach me patience.

Guess who went back to her old Babycenter group today? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I have a bad temper. I don't think I knew that about myself until I got married. God gives us marriage to make us holy, not happy, right?

Schtuff.

Okay, pink it is! I'm in agreement with all of you - the pink is much better than the purple. Phew, problem solved.

It's the blizzard of the century outside, and I'm at work. I think that if a nuclear bomb were dropped on Boston, MIT would still say that their policy on Excused Lateness was in effect. Oh, excuse my lateness, it's just hard to crawl in when your legs have fallen off. (Sorry, I'm just sore that they DON'T HAVE SNOW DAYS in the FROZEN TUNDRA. I hate the Northeast.)

But the weekend was nice! We didn't have Sunday School yesterday so Jonathan and I were bad Christians and stayed home to listen to the church service via the Radio. Jonathan's a bit worried that we're going to have to teach Sunday School for the rest of our lives to make sure that we end up going to church ever. But that's what evening services are for!

I don't really feel like doing a Not Me! Monday today. Oh, well.

Wishing and hoping and thinking and praying
Planning and dreaming...

Oh, Max. I love you, sweet baby boy.