Fri-day thanks

Thanks for all the good wishes on yesterday’s post, guys!

Here’s a little gift for all of you:

Fri-titties (mini fritattas)

Veggies

Meat or meat substitute

Cheese

Eggs

Spices/herbs

Heavy cream, half and half, or milk (optional)

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. Grease the cups of a standard size cupcake pan.

Chop an assortment of pre-cooked veggies, herb, spices, and meat (I used broccoli, carrot, cauliflower, onion powder, garlic powder, and Boca sausage) and loosely fill each cupcake cup.  Top with a sprinkle of grated cheese (I used reduced fat Mexican blend).  Beat the eggs with a splash of heavy cream or other milk product if desired.  Pour the beaten egg mixture over the veggie in each cup until the liquid almost reaches the top.

Bake for 15-25 minutes until puffed and golden brown on top.  Remove from the oven and allow to cool before removing from the pan.  They will deflate.  Once cool you can wrap them and refrigerate or freeze. These reheat beautifully.  I zap a pair of them for 45 seconds, covered.  You can use any combination of veggies, seasoning, meat and cheese that tickles your fancy. 

As for proportions, I made 6 standard size frititties with 4 eggs and less than ¼ cup of heavy cream.  Oh, yeah and these are S*uth B*each phase 1 friendly.  Enjoy!!

It’s the final countdown

So, I started spotting today right on schedule.  CD1 (Cycle Day 1 for those not familiar with the TTC lingo) should be Saturday or Sunday.  Which means ovulation should be between June 11 and June 15.  And we have a house guest staying June 12-15.  And it’s Pride weekend with celebratory activities scheduled for Thursday evening, Saturday afternoon and evening, and Sunday day.  Oh, yeah and that Sunday is Father’s Day with my dad 45 min away in one direction and Strawberry’s dad 45 min in the other direction.  Fortunately, we are very open with eveyone about our priorites for the weekend so fitting in the IUI at the Dr’s office shouldn’t be a problem.  Although, I guess this means I really ought to figure out the procedure for a weekend IUI. I think they only do them at the downtown office as opposed to the suburban office where we’ve been. On a weekend that shouldn’t be a problem for us, and hey, I could end up having my first IUI on Gay Pride day. That’s got to be a good thing, right?

Fun with pee sticks!

So Nutella has been charting as usual…temperatures, OPK’s, and other typical ways of tracking one’s ovulation. The other day she got the normal two dark lines on her OPK stick. I noticed on the same day that I was feeling a little bloated and had some pain on my right side so I thought, what the hell, and peed on an OPK. Lo and behold, two dark lines. Never done that before, never tracked my ovulation even for a second. It was fun though, to be on that side of things 🙂

Hopefully Nutella will have no problems getting pregnant. I did offer that if she did have problems and we ran out of money, that I would offer to do it later on (I’m a couple years younger than her). In all honesty, I have little to no desire to be pregnant, but I’m pretty sure my body and mind could handle it. The only thing that freaks me out about it is the actual giving birth part, but I know I’m not alone. Anyway, I hope it never has to come to that, but it’s something I never thought I would even give a moment’s consideration to…but people sometimes surprise themselves.

-Strawberry

Binge drinking

Ok, so not REALLY binge drinking.  But tomorrow I am planning to drink far more than my average at a wine festival.  There will be music, food vendors, crafts and over 15 wineries from within our state.   Added fun for this year, we will be going with our wonderful next door neighbors who have generously offered to drive and to set up a “base camp” picnic blanket.  Also, will be meeting up with Strawberry’s parents at the festival.

 This will be the 4th time we’ve been to this event and we always have a blast.  We get fairly tipsy, then stagger across the street from the festival site to the mall where we eat dinner and shop to sober up.  Amazingly, this has not yet resulted in unwise purchases such as hot pants or a puppy.

I hope that we have a great time and I want this to be my last real drinking for a long time.  It’s almost time to make a cupcake!

 

Find the missing very expensive package

I am very upset.  Got a call this morning from the lovely sperm bank people.  The very expensive shipping dewar has not been returned.  The due date for it was 5/9.  They are now charging me $10 per day for each day that it is late.

Called RE office.  They got it on Friday 5/2.  And after that, no one knows where it has gone.  The RE says they don’t have it.  The bank says they don’t have it.  DHL has no record of ever picking it up from the RE.  The RE does not keep track of things like tracking numbers and DHL pick-ups.  The bank does.  The dewer had a pre-paid-pre-addressed return label.  If no one can find it, I will owe at least $800 to the bank.  Even though I never touched the damn thing.  Have now spent over 30 mins of my workday calling back and forth talking to all kinds of people in both places.  Bank is very helpful and RE’s office is clueless.  And I am very very upset.  Must go start a conference call on online meeting and will have to hope that this sorts itself out before I can deal with it again tomorrow.

Oh, and the very helpful lady at the bank told me that in 15 years working in sperm banks she has NEVER seen this happen.  Why me?

** EDIT: Further details/updates of this situation are included in the comments.

‘When’ is the question

As we’re getting closer to the actual act of “trying” to get pregnant, I find it more and more difficult to answer people when they ask “When?” Because we don’t know how long it will take, we don’t want to give the exact time because then we’re going to have to face the barrage of “Are you pregnant yet?” questions.

We’re being very open with our wonderfully supportive parents and close friends, but with people that fall on the periphery of that…well, it just gets harder to want to give them exact details. We’ve been saying “the summer,” but now the summer is almost upon us (despite it being unseasonably cool and wet as of late). So now we’re saying “the next couple months” but even that lends itself to people inquiring more in detail and more often.

Ah well, it’s just one of those things. It was easier when it was further away to tell various people, but now I find myself not wanting to spill the beans so much.

-Strawberry

Adventure for a rainy day

We’re experiencing rain of biblical proportions today.  Our poor chihuahua refused to go outside this morning.  Can’t say that I blame her, the puddle off of our front stoop would have been chest deep. 

Yesterday afternoon I left work to drive the 45 minutes to our county courthouse to take the next step in my name change.  I’m taking Strawberry’s last name and making my last name my middle name.  All of this is in preparation for adding a cupcake to our family and for all 3 of us to share a last name.

Two weeks ago I had made my first trip to the courthouse.  First let me say that the name “courthouse” is misleading.  It’s actually a huge sprawling campus of sorts with at least 15 different buildings, spanning the space of over 4 city blocks.  All plopped into a middle of nowhere farmland/ countryside/small town.  I had all of my paperwork printed out, filled out, and signed and I had the forms of ID that I’d need.  I had my checkbook. I knew the room number I was supposed to be at to drop these things off.  I parked in “short term parking” paid at the mini-meter and went off to complete my task.  Two metal detectors, 3 security guards, 1 helpful information desk, 2 buildings and a 15 minute walk later I was in the right place.  All my forms were submitted, my money was taken and I was back in my car another 15 mins later.  Piece of cake!!

Last week I got a bill in the mail from the newspaper that was running my name change petition.  Sent a check to pay it the same day.  And I saved the “notice of publication” since I would need to submit it at the courthouse.

So yesterday I decide to take the afternoon to submit the “notice of publication”.  I drive the 45 minutes over to the courthouse and park at a meter on the street close to the building I now know is the one that I need.  Thru security and up to the 4th floor I go where the clerk stamps my form and waves me on. 

“What happens next?” I ask.

“You’ll hear from us.” she replies.

“And about how long does that usually take?” I press.

“I don’t know. I’ll ask”

She asks the clerk next to her, who pulls my stamped form from the top of the pile and says “This doesn’t go to us.  What is it?”

I explain that it’s the “notice of publication” for my name change and she shakes her head.  Turns out, I will get something in the mail from the newspaper after they process my payment and the ad runs.  and that second piece of paper is the actual “notice of publication.”  I sigh, thinking I have now wasted a trip out here and that I’m going to have to do it all over again. 

“But wait” she says “What newspaper was it?”

I tell her. “Oh, their office is just over on Main Street.”  She tells me how to get there and off I go into the drizzle.

So, after a 10 minute walk I’m at the newspaper offices.  They are very busy but helpful and after another 10 minutes I’m back out in the drizzle with the form that I need.  Back thru security, back up 3 flights of stairs to the clerk.  I’m really feeling like a contestant on a reality TV show.   Running all over the place getting this thing here, that thing there, all in 20 minutes so that I don’t get a parking ticket.

This time, it seems like I’ve got what they need and it’s stamped in.  Now I just have to wait for the judicial decree and I’ll get my name change in the mail.  Now why do I doubt it’s actually going to be that simple?  Oh, and yeah, this part’s going to seem easy once I start changing my name with all the people and organizations I have to.  Sigh.

Change of heart

I have always been of the mindset “yeah…I’ll probably have a kid one day….maybe…I’m not sure….” which I think is a fine mindset for one to be in during their early to mid 20’s. Unfortunately, I’m not in my early to mid 20’s anymore, and finding myself in my late 20’s and married to a woman a couple years older than that whose biological alarm clock went off a while ago…no longer such a good mindset to be in.

I’m writing because a few months back when I still found myself in that mindset, and mentally resisting any ideas of parenthood, I felt pretty alone. All around me were lesbians having kids and trying to get pregnant and constantly talking the talk, and I just wanted to run away. Baby talk bored me to tears and, more than that, frightened me. I hadn’t even really held a baby in over a decade. And here I was, facing the very real, very soon prospect of my wife trying to conceive.

Every night I had anxiety dreams…ranging from being stuck taking care of babies to general anxiety dreams of drowning in tsumani-like waves. Good stuff. I talked to my friends, some who sympathized, some who said “you’ll come out of it….it’ll be different when you have one of your own.” I talked to my wife and probably made her very sad and confused when I kept saying over and over, “I’m not ready…I can’t see doing this….” She listened, but she wasn’t going to be veered off the motherhood course, and I knew it.

I kept waiting and waiting for my feelings to change, but they weren’t changing. I began to accept the fact that this whole baby thing was going to happen whether I wanted it to or not, and the choice I had to make was, was I going to be a part of it? Talk about scary.

I decided that yes, I was going to be a part of it. I loved my wife too much to not give it a shot. But how can you just “give parenthood a shot”? You can’t really….and so I kept waiting for my feelings of uncertainty to change.

We held a baby shower for friends in our neighborhood…lesbians who were due in a couple of weeks (we are lucky in that there really is no shortage of lesbian moms or moms-to-be in our area). While the baby shower was fun, it was still uncomfortable for me because I just didn’t want to imagine it happening in our near future. I couldn’t.

Our friends’ baby was born a week later and we went over to visit them and bring some food. There he was, the 6-day old, laying on one of his mom’s lap. She offered to let me hold him and I said “no, thanks.” She insisted, I resisted, but then I finally gave in and she placed him on my lap. The first thing I noticed was how tiny and perfect he was. Teeny tiny fingers and fingernails. A tiny little button nose. And a sense of peace pervaded the room, and me, as he slept snuggled warmly in the blanket. I kept staring at him, never having held an infant so new and so small before. And finally….finally my wall of resistance began to crumble.

I know if I were reading what I just wrote on someone else’s blog a few months ago, I would’ve probably rolled my eyes and thought, “that would never happen to me.” I can’t tell you how relieved I am that it did. When I sat there holding that infant and thought for the first time, this isn’t so bad….I can see this in my future….the sense of relief I felt was overwhelming.

No one wants to become a parent whose heart isn’t into it. I certainly didn’t. And there are still times I think about the immense changes that are going to take place and I get scared, but I think I can finally handle it. I think my desire to have a little one in our lives is now strong enough to take on that challenge and never, ever give up. And I think that’s how people need to feel…I’m glad that I finally do.

-Strawberry