Life Update!

Well, I really fell off the face of the earth after the blog challenges ended.  A lot of that has to do with the fact that I have been working crazy amounts of overtime.  In this last two week period I worked 12.25 hours of overtime.  Yikes!  Actually my whole life has been about numbers recently.  I am still waiting for my ovulation kit to turn positive.  I've been through two cycles now with no ovulation occurring.  Taking my temperature each morning has made me slightly psychotic...was that a jump in temperature, or just a random high?  How big a difference is considered a jump?  Isn't it day 21 yet?  I am so sick of peeing on these sticks that all say negative, so let's just get to the part where my progesterone is drawn and we get an actual number. 


In work related numbers, besides the overtime one, are how many credits of continuing education I have.  Every three years we are required to get 36 credits of continuing education to maintain our certification as Medical Technologists.  My credits are due by September and I currently have 11.  Yeah....I'm a procrastinator.  So I am trying to get all studied up to take my Specialist in Microbiology exam, which gives me a few more letters after my name and on the bright side gives me 25 credits.  11+25=36!  But I have to get 1 transcript, 1 letter of experience from my laboratory director confirming I have the 3 years of clinical laboratory microbiology experience required, and 260 dollars to take the exam.  This will give me 3 months to take the exam, which I of course need to do really soon so I can turn in my credits. Numbers, numbers, numbers.


On the gardening front I have a fun slide show of numbers for you!

2 strawberry beds

1 (very healthy) rhubarb plant

1 delicious strawberry rhubarb pie (these strawberries were bought...ours aren't that prolific yet)

20 beautiful pots of flowers on the porch

24 Roma tomatoes planted

24 Bell peppers also planted

21 wheel-barrows full of dirt for 3 more raised beds

10 rumbles of thunder while we were filling them

1 beautiful garden!

Blog Challenge Day 30

One last moment.


For my last moment I would like to share where my life is right now.  The moments I have been having are worry about a number of things, being unsure if the path my life is heading down is the right one and a little bit of fear.  For some of you this will be news you've already heard, for others it might be a shock or just something you knew would probably happen given my own creation story.


I am currently working on getting pregnant.


Without a husband.


Which makes it difficult... :)


I started traveling down this path about 2 years ago.  When I was 27, I talked to my lady-doctor about getting pregnant by artificial insemination.  She said I was still so young that I might find somebody and I should give that a try first.  I can't say that I have been the most active in looking for someone, but that I have given it an honest try.  I looked at the guys I knew in college and tried to initiate a relationship with one of them, only to get turned down.  I looked at the guys I worked with that were my age, but none of them saw me as anything more than a friend.  I looked at dating websites and just couldn't build up the courage to go that route.  I honestly believe that I don't initiate the feelings required for a guy to see a girl as more than a friend, and I am okay with that.  So now that my first choice of building a family has fallen through I am moving on to what I always knew was my back up.


Being a child who has lived the life I am going to give my own children, I can truly say that it is a much better life than some kids who had the ideal family.  I was loved and wanted more than anything my mother ever desired, and I knew that.  There was no doubt about who she loved more and there was no pain over sharing me between parents who were separated.  I had the happiest and best childhood ever and I remember crying one night in my bed because I knew I would have to grow up.  I don't think that recreating that for my own kids is doing them a disservice.  I think it is one of the most precious things I can give them. 


So a year later I asked my lady-doctor again and she got me in touch with someone in the medical field who had more recently had artificial insemination to get her children.  She got me in touch with a reproductive doctor in Seattle who I am now working with to get pregnant.  I have been working on getting my cycle regulated since November and am now working on making sure I achieve ovulation so that I can try with some donor samples in the near future.  I have already chosen a donor and was a bit surprised about how that goes now.  When I was conceived the documents about the donor were sealed, as in you'd need to get a court order to see anything about him besides the fact that he was "Northern European".  Today you get baby pictures, height and weight, eye and hair color, ethnicity, current occupation or college degree, family genetic history...the list goes on.  Also the company that I chose that provides the donor sperm informs you that it is basically an open adoption.  The child that is conceived can contact the donor once they turn 18 if they want to.  Neither I nor the donor can make any sort of contact and the donor has signed away all parental rights to the child.  At first I was a bit unsure of this, but even though I was okay with not knowing who my father was my child may not be and they deserve the choice.  I have to say that women who find out they are pregnant by peeing on a stick are lucky, they only have 9 months of worry.  All this time to get everything working properly is way too much time to worry about the possibility that I am making the wrong choice, that this is the wrong path, that I am not ready for it...I have changed my mind twenty times in the last year, and luckily this train is too big to stop, I'm just along for the ride now.


So those are my current moments.  Watching children everywhere, in church, at daycare, at the grocery store, and feeling that empty place in my heart ache.  Sitting at home watching One Born Every Minute and freaking out a little.  Tending my garden, playing on the computer, watching movies and thinking about how I am just living life, but not living it for any purpose.  Knitting baby sweaters and imagining the kids that may wear them someday.  Endless hours, days and months of w...a...i...t...i...n...g.  And hoping that this will all work out.


I hope that you've all enjoyed these blog challenges over the past months.  It helped me to more fully blog about who I am and share with all of you my deeper thoughts at times.  I'll try to continue to blog more openly and expand beyond what's growing in my vegetable garden.  And I only hope for support from you as I move down this uncertain path of life.

Blog Challenge Day 29

Your aspirations.


My aspirations have changed overtime like anyone else's.  I found an autobiography that I wrote when I was in about 5th grade.  We had to write this section about what our future would be like and when I read it as an adult I was floored.  In my future I had said I would go to college close to home, become a hematologist, own the house I lived in and get married.  Well, I went to Central Washington University which is very close to home, but it wasn't the first place I wanted to go when I was in high school.  I was looking at Gonzaga or St. Mary's College in Tacoma.  I wanted to be a hematologist because my mom is one.  She's actually a Medical Technologist and works in hematology.  Well I became a Medical Technologist, but I work in microbiology, making me a microbiologist (not too far off from my prediction).  When my Grammy passed away, Mom gifted me her half of the house, so I do own part of it.  The only prediction that didn't come true was getting married.  When you're ten I think predicting 3 out of 4 futures that come true isn't too bad!


So I guess the lesson I should learn from that is that I really need to be serious about the aspirations I want to achieve because my self-talk is so convincing even I believe it!


My current aspirations are:


1.)  To someday own a time-share or house here-->

2.)  To travel to Italy someday.


3.)  To make my house as off-grid as possible.  We've got the barn and fenced in pasture for animals like sheep, goats and cows.  We've got the chickens and vegetable garden going pretty good.  We're working on a root cellar, compost pile, and a hand-pump on our well.  We'd love to get solar and/or wind power someday.


4.)  To get new carpet in my living room along with a nice flat screen and sound system (especially since our current TV's screen keeps jumping at loud sounds...yeah it's old enough to still have a tube system).


5.)  To get my Specialist in Microbiology registry test taken, which is equivalent to a Master's degree in Clinical Microbiology.


6.)  To pay off all my credit cards and student loans paid off. (Which with all that I've listed above will be pretty impossible!)


7.)  To have a happy and fulfilling life where I am surrounded by people I love and who love me back.

Blog Challenge Day 28

Something that you miss.


I would have to say the thing I miss most...is my Grammy.


I know that those of you who know me would say "Really?!"  And it's true she drove me crazy half the time, but the other half was worth putting up with the constant nagging, yelling, and name calling.


Okay, that makes her sound really bad.


The thing was she was unique.  My grandmother grew up in Butte, Montana and that really molded her personality.  She was resourceful, direct, liked to have a good time but let you know when it was getting out of hand, generous, honest to a fault, and the spice to life.  She had only an 8th grade education but she was very well educated in life skills.  She could can and preserve and cook for dozens of people (and still did when it was only the three of us).  She could find a use for anything.  She was kind of a pack-rat, but had lived with so little for so long that it was hard to throw anything away.  She loved to chop wood and did so until her back wouldn't let her swing the axe anymore.  She enjoyed painting anything and everything gold...with gold glitter...and add some more gold.  She loved sending cards for any and all occasions.  She had a lovely singing voice.  She would rub her knuckles when she was worried.  She would gossip to you about people in church...who were sitting only an aisle away.  She was upset when anyone sat in OUR seats at church.  She loved babies and could help you calm most any baby down.  When she was younger one of her favorite things to do was to go to old dumps and pick through for "treasures," broken bottles and things.  She loved to make up decorated magnets for the people at work.  She thought that everything would be worth something someday, as in, "Keep that!  It'll be worth something someday!"  She liked to freak out her grandchildren by dropping her dentures out her mouth.  She really did love her family and was a true matriarch.


Some good stories of my Grammy....


One time, when she lived on the wheat ranch, her best friend Mary Neal and her started playing Yahtzee one evening.  Their husbands went to bed and it got later and later and they still were playing.  When the sun started coming up they decided they'd better cook breakfast and act like they got up early so they're husbands' wouldn't be upset.  I hear they acted like school girls when they got together.


Another is a time when they were up at the cabin.  They used to take sticks of dynamite for blowing rocks out of hills.  Seriously.  Well one of the guys decided it would be a real laugh if it blew (a safe distance away) without anyone knowing.  So he set it up to blow and was going to run back and act nonchalant until it blew.  Well she knew something was up so she watched for him to come back and sure enough here he was walking back.  Well he couldn't run while she was watching so he sort of stilted-walked back because he wanted to bolt so badly, but didn't want to give it away.  I'm sure she found it terribly amusing.


Again at the cabin there was a time when they were all eating and Mary yelled "O-RE-O!" real long and loud.  Uncle George stood up and sat down and stood up and sat down, unsure of what he should do.  And baby Fred took his bowl of peaches and dumped them on his head.


One of my favorite memories of my Grammy is the way she would walk the beach with us.  She'd have a backpack on and a grocery bag in her hand and pick up all, and I mean all, the broken and whole pieces of sand dollars on the beach.  She'd wear her shoes and walk out and in with the waves coming on shore.  Occasionally she'd have to high tail it if a really fast wave was coming in.


Another of my favorites is her and mom stealing oyster shells from the shelling plant.  They were all in a pile, but I'm not sure they were out there for free.  They climbed out of the van, with us four girls waiting, and got a garbage bag full of them.  Shoveling as fast as they could, they filled it and then threw it in the back and jumped in like Bonnie and Clyde.  I think that was the year a bunch of you got Nativity scenes on gold painted oyster shells...


After Grammy passed away our lives became less cluttered, less dramatic and ultimately less lively.  Who knew it was the 80 year-old that was keeping Mom and I so active?