Trying to believe

—

I’m sorry if I owe you an email, or haven’t been commenting, or seem to be MIA…I’m okay, I think I just need some “me” time.  Or something.  xoxo

—

Image credit: patrick costilow via oh, hello friend who found it via Sacred Lotus

Whew.

It’s been a long week.  Both good and bad things happened…but here I am, still standing, and it’s finally Friday.  As a bonus, just today I found out I have the holiday off on Monday, when all week I’ve assumed I’d have to come in.  That was quite a pleasant – and much needed – surprise.

I’d give anything to spend a day this weekend doing nothing but reading and snuggling with this guy:

Let’s hope I can make it happen.

Happy Friday, everyone. Thanks again for your incredible support and wonderful-as-always comments on last week’s post. I wish I could thank each and everyone one of you by hand-delivering (arm-delivering?) a hug and some baked goodies.

Have a wonderful weekend, dear friends.

Courtney

Best blank journal cover ever.

Bathroom stall philosophy.

Your dreams are almost always here!

—

So there you go.  No more worrying if your dreams will come true or not, they’re all already here.  You know it must be true if it’s written on the wall of a bathroom stall.

It’s just like if you were to call Jenny, you know you’d have a good time because it says so right there above the toilet next to her number!  Then again, there’s the chance she could make a special kind of dream come true.  *wink, wink*

11.11.11

[ via flickr ]

I just erased a long emotional tirade about how I wish I had more passion for protesting the war and how the numerous battles have effected me and my family personally; but after last night’s post, it just felt like too much.  All I really wanted to say is that today I’m thinking about my grandfathers who are still with us and my uncle who is no longer, S’s step-father and her sweet friend from college that lost his life in the war, and all the men and women who have served our country.  Just saying thank you doesn’t seem like enough.

(Also, I can’t help but put this in because it hits close to home — did you know that during the past two years, the US military has lost more men and women to suicide than it has to combat in Iraq and Afghanistan?  Devastating.  This war needs to end.  Yesterday.  A decade ago.)

 

Ugly Bruise Watch: 2011

I just figured you were wondering how my bruise was coming along, so I didn’t want to leave you in the dark any longer about it’s status.

What’s that?

You don’t think about me and my injuries on an hourly basis?

Oh, okay.  Fine.  Whatever.  But you’re going to get a progress report anyway.

As you may remember, this is how it looked a week ago:

Here’s what it looked like Saturday night:

And here’s what it looked like last night:

It just keeps getting uglier.

So there you go.  You’re welcome.  You no longer have to worry about me and my arm…it’s only scaring away little children everywhere.

Or, you know, you can just go back to whatever you were doing 35 seconds ago.

Not quite what some of you had in mind.

Wow.  Feeling lonely on your blog?  Want to increase your views?  Apparently all you have to do is make a sex innuendo in your post title, and they’ll come flocking.

I feel like I should apologize to all the newcomers that came here for a little somethin’ somethin’ and all you got were baked goods and a reproductively-challenged married woman.  Talk about a turn-off.  Unless, of course, that’s  your thing.  If that’s the case, then welcome to heaven!

Some of the links that people came from to get here yesterday took what little innocence I had left.  And that was just the link I was seeing!  I hate to think what’s behind those clicks.  I’m blushing just thinking about it.

I do however find it very humorous that I then chose to post a picture that included a positive pregnancy test and that’s what they came to.  Ha!

In other less…ahem…exciting news, my doctor’s appointment on Monday went pretty well.  I ended up meeting with the midwife I had during my last pregnancy because my doctor was out of town and she scheduled me for an advanced ultrasound in a couple of weeks to see if we can check things out at their height.

She’s concerned blood might not be flowing to my ovaries properly, causing the cysts to hang-on instead of dissolve like they should. I also brought up the fact that they’re always on my left — a sign my right ovary may not be functioning properly and becoming a bit lazy in its old age.  Hopefully it will give us some answers as to why the cysts keeps lurking.

And now, since I can’t figure out where to go from here, how about a picture of the t-shirt I won?  It rules.

Thank you so much Emilie and Chris for hosting a giveaway that allowed me to win my very first contest ever!

I’ll take any chance I get to show my pride for my amazing home state, and the fact it’s cool is an added bonus.  I’m going to rock it every chance that I get.  Maybe even the luck it took to win it will spill over into the rest of my life.

Here’s hoping!

—

(If you love Maine as much as I do or just want a cool shirt, check out the rest of Chris’ Maine-inspired gear over at http://www.beermemaine.com/.)

(No, he didn’t pay me to say that, but I figure the least I can do is point people in his direction since he sent me a t-shirt for free!  Contest or no contest…that’s still awesome.)

Hello there!

I’ve apparently been taking weekends off from the keyboard…and yesterday, well, um, I stayed home from work because, I, um…*cough cough*…didn’t feel well.  As for the weekends, I think I have a fairly good reason for stepping away — all week long I sit in front of the computer from 8:30 to 4:30, without even taking a lunch (I eat a my desk – bad Courtney!).  Then, when I get home, I turn on my computer and either write a post or keep reading what I couldn’t read while at work.  It can’t be healthy.  The last two weekends I’ve barely turned on my computer.  I briefly read a few key blogs, then walk away.  And it’s been really nice.  I think it helps not only my mind, but it gives my wrists a break.  After 15 years of waitressing and 10 of typing on the computer non-stop, my wrists are a wreck.  It’s nice to give them a break, too.

This past Sunday I met up with another fellow blogger from this world of ours, and I can’t tell you how good it was to be able to talk to someone who understands.  Yes, she has gone on to have a baby, but because she’s had a loss, she acts as hope for me rather than fear.  And it was the first time throughout this entire experience I’ve talked face-to-face with someone who knows exactly what it’s like to have experienced this kind of loss.  Do you know how wonderful that is?  We also have some common ground with the friend issues, and it was nice to compare stories and get validated that we’re not crazy for feeling like we do.  I also loved that we were opening talking about our womanly organs and fluids with an old man not even a foot away from us.  Now that’s my kind of girl.

And this is the part of the post where I talk about my period and bodily fluids.  (Dad, feel free to step away at this point if you’re reading.)  Guys, I’m on day 35 of my cycle.  THIRTY-FIVE.  That’s 1, 2, 3, 4, 5! days past when my period was supposed show, and I’m not pregnant (there are 4 BFNs to back me up).  For the past 6 or so years I have had consistent 30 day cycles.  I have never been this late without being pregnant.  Unfortunately, I didn’t temp this month, either, so I have no idea if I even ovulated.  There was an absence of CM for the second month in a row, so there’s a good chance I didn’t.  Last month I’m pretty certain I had a large cyst on my stinking left ovary (they’re almost always on the left one), so that could be the problem.  Last night I had a pretty sharp pain there as well, so maybe it never burst?  I just don’t understand.  Has this ever happened to any of you?  When should I call the doctor?  There aren’t even any signs of it coming any time soon.  Although, just this morning my breasts started hurting a bit, so it might be finally coming.  But this is just too abnormal for me to not worry just a little bit.  Any thoughts?  Oh, I also haven’t been stressed or had any strange changes to my diet, so it’s not that, either.

After a year of being completely in-tune with my body, I hate not knowing what’s going on in there.  Not to mention a little bit annoyed.  I mean, come on!  Haven’t I dealt with enough disappointment regarding my body in the last year and half, can’t it just do this one thing right?!

Randoms on a Saturday

I’m sitting here having got sucked into a Sex and the City marathon after the basketball game that I was watching ended, and it happens to be the one where Charlotte decides to befriend a bunch of lesbians and Miranda’s hair is just awful.  Miranda and Samantha were just talking to Charlotte about how maybe she should consider being a lesbian, and the whole time I’m watching Cynthia Nixon’s face, trying to find signs that insides she’s really wanting to scream out that she’s actually a lesbian.  She’s also one of the thousands of women in Hollywood having babies right now.  Only her wife had it.  Carrie’s hair looks awful this season, too.  I better step away from the TV, I would get sucked into this all day long and risk seeing the season where Charlotte has a miscarriage and I’ll be tempted to throw my remote at the TV.

And here’s where I tell you something and whine and complain about something you don’t already know, but Tim and I were talking this morning as we were waking up wondering how it is sperm regenerate themselves (the actual science behind it)  and how very few eggs we have in comparison.  I just looked it up and I haven’t found much on the science behind it just yet but I was reminded, yet again that they produce MILLIONS of sperm daily, and so of course, because we’re all masochists here, I had to look up the amount of eggs we have and then I found this: “At birth, a woman has around 1 to 2 million eggs. However, throughout her life, a woman loses eggs through a destructive process called atresia. At puberty, only around 400,000 eggs remain. Throughout the reproductive life span, from puberty until menopause, women lose about 1,000 eggs each month. Of these thousand eggs, only one is released.” Again, nothing you or I don’t already know, but it never fails to boggle my mind with the unfairness of it all. I mean, COME ON!  REALLY?!  Can we just get a collective F* You to science right now?  Why did we get the short end of the stick here?  Gah!  It’s no wonder we have such difficulties making this work.  Science is rooting against us from the very beginning.  Life is so unfair (cue the music).

In other news, I won my very first contest yesterday!  I won a t-shirt giveaway from One Mom in Maine (I love her blog) and I was so excited to see my name selected.  Plus, come on!  It’s a shirt from Maine that displays pride for my home state.  How perfect!  Maybe my luck is changing.

Oh good, Carrie’s hair is straight now.  I love how you can instantly tell what season it is by her hairstyles (and Miranda’s).  Ha!  Carrie just called herself a masochist.  Okay, on that note, I have to shut this off and go try and do something productive with my day.  Like clean.  (oh joy!)

Hope you guys are having a great Saturday.

It’s something.

I had a totally different post planned for today but I just don’t have it in me.  So how about a list of random facts started by my dusty uterus?  Yeah?  Okay.  Here you go.

Twenty-Six

1. Age: 31.
2. Blog Title Inspiration: I currently live in the town of Bodega, California (not to be confused with Bodega Bay — they’re different!) and my blog started out as a pregnancy blog to keep my family and friends back home up-to-date with my pregnancy.  So put those two together, and they were supposed to equal Bodega Bliss.  After 3 miscarriages, it’s been anything but blissful.
3. Chore You Hate: Cleaning the bathroom.  Putting away my clothes.  Putting away the dishes…um, all chores?
4. Day at the Beach or Cozy Rainy Day? I may be in the minority here, but give me a cozy rainy day and I’m a happy camper.
5. Essential Start Your Day Item: It used to be coffee.  Oh how I miss coffee. Tea is such a sad replacement for that delicious beverage.  Now I have nothing to look forward to.  Sigh.
6. Favorite Color: Green
7. Gold or Silver? Silver (but I can actually wear both and am, in fact, wearing gold right now because they’re green!)
8. Height: 5’7″.
9. Instruments You Play: Guitar hero drums.
10. Job Title: Program Coordinator
11. Kids: 7-year-old step-daughter.
12. Live: See number 2.
13. Mom’s Name: It begins with an L (hi mom!).
14. Book Currently on Your Nightstand: I tend to read more than one book at a time and right now it’s Pregnancy After Loss (no, I’m not pregnant) by Carol Cirulli Lanham and Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain.  Not-so-fun fact: Up until a year ago, I had worked in restaurants for 16 years.  It was 15.9 years too long…and this book is so right about it all.
15. Nickname: Court (plus my dad calls me Buggy, but no one is allowed to call me that but him).
16. Overnight Hospital Stays? Not yet!
17. Pet Peeve: Currently, it’s people that make assumptions.  Why, why, why?!  Also: cabinet doors left open.
18. Quote from a Movie: If you’re gonna spew, spew into this! (hehehe)
19. Right or Left Handed? Right.
20. Siblings: One older sister (hi M!).
21. Time You Wake Up? My alarm goes off at 6:55, but I don’t get out of bed until 7:35.  Don’t hate me because I’m a snoozer.
22. Underwear: Hiphuggers.
23. Vegetable You Dislike: Celery.
24. What Makes You Run Late: See number 21.
25. Yummy Food You Make: I’m a damn good pizza maker (if I do say so myself).  And I finally perfected my dough just this past year.
26. Zoo, Favorite Animal: Do they have cows in zoos?

So there you go.  Copy and paste the list!