Turducken

Have you tried this magical dish? Every year, our group of friends gets together on American Thanksgiving and goes to a local restaurant that serves up Turducken as a salute to our American neighbours to the south. You Americans are ingenious (and maybe a little crazy J); to think of stuffing a chicken into a duck into a turkey and also taking the time to create 3 different stuffings to go along with it. Madness I tell you – magical, yummilicious, madness.

For those of you not familiar with this dish, here’s a blurb from the restaurant’s website that explains it a little better:

"Turducken - the American Thanksgiving Treat! A chicken stuffed into a Duck stuffed into a Turkey. Your Turducken comes with three delicious stuffings: Cornbread, andouille sausage & oyster. Enjoy yam gravy made with Bourbon and Grand Marnier , cranberry citrus compote. Served with brussel sprout gratin and our famous roasted garlic mashed potatoes.
What is Turducken? Turkey, Duck and Chicken all rolled into one with three delicious and spicy stuffings. If you a had a few days off and more than 25 people to feed, you could make this 10 page long recipe with 12 hours of prep time and 13 hours of cooking time at home. Why not save yourself the trouble and let us do it for you! "

Essentially, each bird is de-boned and laid flat. Turkey on the bottom then a layer of cornbread stuffing, the duck is laid on top, then a layer of andouille sausage stuffing, then the chicken is laid on top and a layer of oyster stuffing. It’s rolled up and cooked and then it’s sliced and served.

This year’s offering was the best yet! For dessert there was a choice of pecan pie, vanilla bean ice cream, & bourbon bread pudding.

All that to say that while you were celebrating, some Canadian friends were as well.

Happy Gobble Gobble (to my American friends...)

In honour of American Thanksgiving, I have come up with a few things that I am thankful for:

1. My Health
2. My Husband
3. My Family
4. My Dogs
5. My Friends
6. My Friends in the 'net
(not necessarily in that order)

I'm so happy that American Thanksgiving is here because it means that Christmas is right around the corner and then I get to decorate!!!!

I LOVE Christmas. In fact, I'm going to see if I have any Christmas CDs at work and listen to that right now...

Happy Gobble Gobble! As my Uncle Earl used to say, if you get too full, just have a small bowl of vanilla ice cream to cleanse the pallette then you'll be ready for more.

Oh and Go Cowboys Go!

Wistful

Every day as we drive back and forth to/from work we pass these wonderful children’s boutiques. There are beautiful clothes, pint-sized running shoes, children-only hair salons and children’s bookstores. I look at them so wistfully as we drive by. All I can think as we pass each one is ‘When is it going to be my chance’ or, on better days, ‘I can’t wait to shop there’. Invariably, I get a little quiet and just a little sad. Then H. will ask me a question or start a conversation without noticing my little bout of “poor me” and I am pulled back into the moment.

Infertility is kind of like grief – it sneaks up on you when you least expect. My Grandpa died 10 years ago, to this day if I hear particular old 40’s songs or smell his aftershave I will cry. So, when I see new neat little children’s stores or I run into an old friend who’s now pregnant with her 2nd even though I hadn’t heard about her first, it’s like I’ve heard that old song or smelled that special scent. I get wistful.

Hmm, that’s definitely the right word for it; it means full of longing or unfulfilled desire.

I think we can all relate to that.

Recap

What a weekend. Feels like a whirlwind, we got a lot done, but I wouldn’t call it a good weekend. The one really good thing we did was buy a car on Saturday. Our lease was up on our old one (well it’s up next month) so we impulsively bought an HHR on Saturday. It’s black with ebony interior. Just the basic model, but I love it. We pick it up next Saturday.

On Saturday night we were supposed to go to a friend’s place for a party. Well, I went up to our bedroom to get ready and then had a huge meltdown. I hated everything I owned. I felt like a fat pig in everything. It was so bad that I just decided not to go. Then of course I was mad at myself for acting so irrationally. It really brought down the rest of the weekend. Sigh.

I am on CD16 today. No idea when I ovulated, I know I did because my temp is up (I’ve been temp’ing sporadically). So I have no idea if our DTD was well-timed or not. Now I’m kicking myself ‘cause I’m such a control freak I like to see what day I’m on and know exactly when my body fails me.

We are for sure, 100%, definitely doing the IUI in January. I have one more month needle free and then -boom- back at it. I am not getting any younger and I don’t want to be a really old Mom so it needs to happen soon.

Nowhereville - Population 2

I’ve completely given up temp’ing this month and taking my vitamins. I kind of feel blah – you know, what’s the point. We’re still DTD and trying, but I feel kind of like we should just throw in the towel. I know we have only had the one IUI and haven’t done anything else. But it all feels so pointless. I guess you can tell that I’m not feeling a lot of hope right now. Oh, it’s still there at the back of my mind, but it’s not nearly as strong a feeling as it used to be. Doubt has even crept in. Do we really want kids? Are we ready for how it will change our lives? I have already dealt with all of this stuff. And, the answer is yes on both accounts, but I don’t know. I guess I really didn’t expect it to be this hard.

I thought it might take a while, I thought we might have to go to a FC, but I really thought we’d be pregnant by now. So, now that we are where we are in this process (essentially nowhere) how do we keep going?

We're still going ahead with the next IUI in January. I guess I just have to stay focussed on that.

Feeling blah

I went to my naturopath/acupuncturist today. I was not in a great mood… just read that the pregnant man is pregnant again. It makes me feel like such a defect – a so-called man can get pregnant it seems at will and I can’t. Just pisses me off. I say ‘so-called’ because men don’t have the reproductive organs to get pg, so you can’t really call yourself a man if you’re using your body to perform female functions. Of course this is just my opinion- to each their own.

Anyway as per usual, I brought my chart from the previous cycle with me. It’s truly a beautiful chart – triphasic and everything. I talked to Dr. W about how I had been feeling, symptoms, cramps, temps etc. She basically confirmed what I had already been thinking – last month was a chemical pregnancy. The kicker was that the chart was triphasic which is not normal for me.

I was feeling a little crazy thinking it was a chemical and being sad because I hadn’t tested. I didn’t have concrete proof that it had really occurred. But, I trust my body and Dr. W trusts my body and what it was showing. So, I’m going to say it. I was pregnant and now I’m not.

My heart aches a little at writing that. I told my husband and two friends about this. You know what they all said… “you have to take the positive away from this… you know you can get pregnant – that’s half the battle” You know what I wanted to say back to all 3 of them “fuck you.” But I value my husband and my friends so I just nodded and absorbed the blows.

So, I move on. Hopefully next time I will get pg and stay pg until the time has come to hold a healthy baby.

Nope

BFN. My LP was 14 beautiful days, I had a lovely 27 day cycle. Almost text book for an ovulatory cycle. Our DTD timing was impeccable. I had a dream last Thursday night that I received a card in the mail that said "We were so sorry to hear about your first miscarriage." So, who knows, maybe subconsciously I knew it was a chemical. I don't say that lightly. I know my body, I was so sure that this was it. I was crampy, tender boobs, moody - things I am not normally during my LP. Until Saturday morning - my temp was down - but, I just didn't feel it anymore. Got AF on Sunday morning at 6:30 - full flow - extremely heavy. Went through a Super tampon in 3 hours.

Anyway, it made me want to start the IUI process right away. But we're not going to... our plan is to try on our own two more cycles, save money and try to get a little healthier. Then we'll do the IUI. H is working again so we can actually save money and pay off some of our debts. Thank God.

I felt so close this time. Oh and my co-worker's wife had their baby boy at midnight Saturday night. He's their first child. I'm incredibly happy for them, but there's a small piece of me that is so sad and broken.

BTW - Thank-you for your well wishes. I truly appreciated them.

Quick Update

First - thank-you America for making the right choice (in my humble opinion!) Barack Obama will make a phenomenal president.

Now to me... I'm on 12DPO, my temp has been high and dropped today (it was really low when I woke up at around 4:45am, went back to sleep and temp'd again at 6:30 - it was a little higher then). My average LP is 12 days. My boobs are sore and have had some lower back pain, but that's it. My boobs are sore every LP so that's an indication of exactly nothing. My temps have been higher than usual (until today) so hope was creeping in. FF has me testing on Saturday. I have only ever made it to test day once - the cycle I did my IUI and I was on progesterone suppositories. All that to say that I'm waiting for other shoe to drop which I'm sure will happen later today or tomorrow morning when AF rushes in. I didn't want to post anything about this because I thought I'd jinx myself. Then I realized that a. I'm driving myself crazy from thinking so much about this and b. it is what it is - either I am or I am not and posting about it on a blog is not going to change that fact.

Anyway I'm driving myself crazy with the "am I's" or "aren't I's" and I refuse to do an HPT because I hate those things! I may do one if I make it to Saturday, but it's more likely that if I can make it through the weekend I'll get blood work done. My spidey senses tell me I'll need a tampon more than an HPT.

A Meme

I had a meme about the top 100 songs the year I graduated up here, but I took it down because people doing searches for the names of the artists were landing here. I just feel weird about that. shrug.

This is my first one:

The Rules: A.) Go to Music Outfitters. B.) Enter the year you graduated from high school in the search function and get the list of 100 most popular songs of that year. C.) Bold the songs you like, strike through the ones you REALLY hate. I don't know how to do the strike through options so I'm going Green for Good, Red for Bad.

Thanks to Inconceivable for the idea!

The Year was... 1990...

My new hobby

On Saturday morning I took a knitting class – the Virgin Knitter’s class to be exact. It was a 2 hour class for people who have no or very little knitting experience. When I was about 12 years old my Grandma tried to teach me to knit, but I just didn’t have the patience for it. In that class on Saturday morning, it all came rushing back. We were taught how to cast on, how to knit, how to pearl (is it spelled that way?), how to change balls of wool when you run out. There were 5 women in the class, 4 of us were pretty quick learners. One poor soul was completely confused. She spent a lot of time just mastering the knitting, not worrying about the “pearl”. The rest of us learned the garter and stockingette patterns as well as how to do ribbing. We also learned how to bind off.

I felt so confident at the end of the class that I bought two skeins of charcoal gray alpaca wool - so soft – to knit a scarf for H. for Christmas. I have already knit half of the scarf so he may be getting it as an early gift. Maybe I'll post a picture of it if it turns out the way I hope.

I’m already trying to decide which class I want to take next.

Anyway, not a whole lot of TTC stuff happening, H. and I tried more this month than we ever have in all of our time of trying. We got a High rating from FF for the numbers of times we DTD around O time. We both realized that while our chances of getting pg naturally are low, we have never really gone all out. We used the Sperm Meets Egg Plan this month. It seems so weird to even be talking about changing approaches at this late stage in the game, but that’s what we’re doing. H. and I were outside raking on Saturday afternoon (we got 20 bags of leaves raked up in 2 hours) and started talking about our next steps. We both want to wait until January to try the next medicated IUI. It’s nice to be on the same page about this. We’ll try a couple more times like we did this month and save some money. Now that H. is finally working again we are able to put money aside for this.

I guess that’s it. I haven’t been posting very much because life while not boring has been pretty uneventful lately.