What took so long?

For someone to come up with (and me to find) a cute flip-flop with some freakin' arch support for us old ladies. Thanks DSW! And a great find at only 15 buckaroos on sale.

And of course I find this dress (which of course isn't $15, or on sale) which I'm seriously loving. Kinda reminiscent of the above, no?

I'm nothing if not predictable... ;)

From underwater to on the water

Tomorrow, we go sailing... I.can't.wait.

What a sham

So I finally decided that our little mis-matched boudoir sham that I wrote about here would go to live with the rest of it's sage family in the guest room.

Funny enough, we are now living there too, but I digress. So our bed now is without a monogrammed pillow, ::shudder::. I'm thinking now instead of ordering another boudoir, I'd like a monogrammed euro sham.

Like this, except turned down about twelve notches...

(Hilfiger's @ The Plaza in Harper's Bazaar)

Since we already have three euros on our king bed now, I thought maybe I should just move them up and get the middle one embroidered at a local shop with our joint initials, KSS. Kinda subdued, you know.



But now I'm thinking I'd like to get a new sham and keep the Frette one for future use. I like this one in euro size, ink blue border, w/this monogram style in blue.



It keeps up the accidental knock-off Pratesi look we have going now. The "chain" shams and duvet and the "three lines" monogrammed sham in the middle, and all (hopefully) in roughly matching shades of navy blue.

(dot/line shams/pics from Pottery Barn)

I'm finally calling it

It's a shitstorm. My life, that is. So after the last week or so we've had, to recall... The realization that our last seven months plus of TTC has been completely wasted. Surgery, post-op procedures, and cycling, all for naught. Now we are gearing up to do it all.over.again. I should be celebrating having a one year old this week, but no I'm nearly 34 and still stuck in infertility hell.

Our basement was/is filled with water and radon. After we got all the standing water pumped out, I managed to get the water heater pilot lit, but we still have no a/c yet (it's in the 90's here) since the furnace blower motor was also submerged. Hopefully tomorrow this will be fixed, but thank God we have another master on the ground level (and power to run fans). In the clean-up, my fingernail came off (long story)... And don't even ask about work.

And now my g-ma K is in the hospital (as of last night) with pneumonia and they are still running tests. She is 93 and is still rehabbing from her latest knee surgery and just moved to WI to live with my mom (she thinks temporarily).

So it's now unlikely my mom is coming down for my surgery. We will just have to make due on our own. Which means S will be dropping me off in Lake Forest (in the far northern burbs) on Wed. morning and driving to the southern suburbs for his meeting he can't miss and returning in the late afternoon to pick me up. So for the first time of all my surgeries so far, I will be completely alone. Here's to not coding in the OR. :|

Surgery scheduled

I had a great surgery consult yesterday. Dr. D is great. Everything fell in place for me to get in quickly and get my CD3 testing and pre-op testing all done is one trip. Surgery day is next Wednesday already!

S has a big meeting on the 4th, so my mom is coming down for the day. It'll be a 600 mile round trip for her, in about a day and a half. But I think she's actually looking forward to it, as she needs a break from her current routine (if only for a day) and I think she feels helpless that there isn't much else she can do for us. Though she has more than enough other care-giving to do in WI between my sister, the grand kids, and my grandmother.

Since I need to have a balloon taken out a few days post-op waiting until the next/our leave week wasn't an option. Unless, as my surgeon suggested, we bring him with us to the Cape. ;) I didn't want to wait until we got back, tick tock...

He could not guarantee me that we would not need another surgery and I appreciate his honesty. His goal is to get the septum down to less than 1cm, so that it is less likely to be an obstruction to a healthy pregnancy. We are also doing the lap, as I figured at this point, we might as well. Even though it's much more invasive than just doing the hysteroscopy.

Zoom zoom, let's get this week over with already...

Bench crazy (update)

These are both on their way to me now...


At the foot of our bed, current storage bench to move to guest room (I think)

As a new coffee table for the living room. I'm wondering if there will be a new rug in our future, we'll see how this goes... Thanks HHF for the tip! :) Can you tell I have a "problem" with nailhead trim? ;)

Free ship to store and if they don't work out, then back they go. And back they went... Easy peasy...

Cape ready

Last night, I finally noticed that my neglected August Conde Nast Traveler has a great article on sailing Cape Cod and the Islands that pretty much sums up a lot of what I, and myriad others, love about the Cape. "...It has been for centuries—a transcendent refuge full of restorative magic." It also reminded me that I still need to finish reading, Teddy's book, True Compass. (my old boss, circa 1997 :) )

Henry David Thoreau wrote so eloquently about it in his book, Cape Cod, which I of course have and love, and is quoted in the article. From the outer beach of Nauset, “A man may stand there and put all America behind him.”

"...I’ve never experienced a land so varied—at once wild and civilized, open and traditional, lush and spare—so transformative as Cape Cod. If offered a chance to spend the last moments of summer anywhere on earth, I can’t imagine choosing anywhere else."

We leave in 16 days... :)

Design degrees

If you haven't figured it out already, I'm kind of a contrarian by nature. But I'm also a Libra, who loves harmony. The contrarian in me fights the urge to fill my design posts with a bunch of pretty pictures "borrowed" from magazines because I figure:

1) anyone can do that
2) as evidence, everyone already does
3) it's boring and impersonal

But today, I'm making an exception. You may or may not remember this post. Well, Stephanie's mother-in-law is none other than designer Kim Coleman.

She recently had a Southampton "blue beach house" featured in House Beautiful along with a fun little interview.

And because I need some blue and some beach house today, here it is...













All pictures: Kim Coleman/House Beautiful

More/wider/better pics of house here (Southampton Residence)

Judging by the wedding pictures in the homes featured on her website, several of them belong to Stephanie and Chase...

One more thing

I realized just now is that if this motherhood thing doesn't work out, I can always move to Switzerland and set clocks by my menstrual cycle. Though I usually applaud promptness, why does my body not understand that this is not what I need for it to be doing right now?!

I woke up to this and several inches of water in our basement and climbing. The pumps are broken, S's is at Home Depot and it's not anywhere near done raining yet. It's going to be an interesting day.

Don't forget!

It's the Mad Men season four premiere weekend!

I've also just received the DVDs of season three. Happy watching!

Moving on...

On Tuesday, I took action to part ways with my previous RE.

Since our main method of ongoing communication has been e-mail, and I wanted to share my latest u/s scan with her, I sent her the following (ccing both nurses):

"Eve,
We are eager to get pregnant (as you know) and are thus looking into IVF with another clinic. Imagine my surprise when my 3-D u/s yesterday showed an enormous septum...(26mm was their measure, pic attached) This will set us back another several months as I get another resection, balloon, post-op estrogen, etc. So I am cancelling the lap I had scheduled w/you and Dr. Tu. I hope you understand. I've enjoyed working with you. Best, Kate"

The first response was from my 1st nurse (not my fave, and I think she thought she was responding to the Dr.)
"WOW, however Vita did note a small residual septum on 4/6/10 u/s."

Then she replied again:
Katherine,
Sorry to hear that...if you received my email, a small residual was noted as stated in your records.
All the best to you, S

Then I heard back from the Dr...

"Kate-
Please feel free to share the following with your new physicians.

Your initial MRI showed that your septum only had a 1.5cm fibrous component to it. The rest of the septum was muscular. At the time of our initial surgery, I resected the fibrous portion of the septum and stopped resecting when I encountered vascular/muscular tissue. Your follow up saline ultrasound showed 1.5cm of residual septum in the cavity. As you may recall, we had discussed attempting to resect more septum hysterscopically at the time of the laparoscopy, though I was not optimistic that we would be able to get much more because of the vascular nature of the septum. The image you have emailed shows the measurement of the septum from the top of the entire uterus and not just from the top of the endometrial cavity, so the 2.5cm is exaggerated.

I would be happy to discuss further with you via phone. EF"

As my new RE pointed out, it comes down to competence, experience, and equipment. FCI hasn't invested in 3-D u/s machines (he had a lot of other choice things to say about them). This is why she had to send me to the hospital in December to get a $3K MRI and my follow-up HSG didn't give a good picture of the septum that remained. And she still doesn't seem interested/able to remove my significant remaining vascular septum, which would impede the success of any pregnancy.

In the meantime, I called her office to cancel my next appt. (for my follow-up culture) and the lap on the 9th and to request the rest of my records be sent to me. S will get all of his upcoming tests done with our new clinic.

I also called my endo surgeon to cancel my pre-op on the 27th and him for the lap. The woman I spoke with was kind of short w/me, but he was very kind and called me back and left a nice msg. He said he had talked to Dr. F, but sounded a little confused as to what exactly had gone on.

I also called my new clinic to get a consult with the other RE in that practice who does all the surgery. We are now set up for next Monday, the 26th, for the consult when hopefully I'll be ready to get my CD3 blood work done as well. He only does surgery on Wednesdays, but the nurse told me it won't take too long to get on his schedule, when I asked. Of course, this will be driven by my cycle and our vacation (which was scheduled around our previous lap).

From my new surgeon's bio on advancedfertility.com

'I understand the stress of infertility'

Dr. Deutch has personally experienced the ups and downs associated with infertility treatment. "I think it's important to talk about the stress that infertility puts on a relationship," he says. "I'm not a psychiatrist, but I think it helps to get those issues out in the open and to let patients know there are options to talk to people if they are interested."

"Infertility is such a difficult problem from a psychological standpoint, especially for women," he adds. "A lot of women with infertility feel they're not living up to their full potential. Helping patients work through that is very rewarding."

Dr. Deutch and his wife are the proud parents of twins - a boy and a girl that were born in January 2009. "They're really adorable," he says, adding, "Obviously, I'm a little biased. My patients were very excited when the twins were born. It was very nice."

I like this guy already...

Pillow love

Party planning

Not since my wedding four years ago, have I planned a party for so many. Tonight I'll have about 80 of my colleagues joining me and my CMO on the Ravinia lawn to enjoy the B-52s. Given my affiliation with the Festival, I volunteered to help with the planning and have ended up shouldering most of the duties.

Thankfully, the catering and such was pretty easy to plan. But just managing the RSVPs/tickets/logistics has been taking a ridiculous amount of my work time the last few weeks, and of course I have a huge work presentation tomorrow too (that's not quite done). The best news is that it is not supposed to rain and be in the 80s cooling to the 70s in the evening. Yay!

Radon testing, part deux

Well, just in case things were going too well for us yesterday (note sarcasm), we got a really bad report on our follow-up radon test of our house. We did our initially testing in June and the results were mixed, but not too terrible.

Last night when I got home, I opened the e-mail report for our latest test and it was over 10pCi/L for BOTH of the new vials!?!? I'm guessing since the last test set was old, the new one is probably more accurate. If the number of spiders we have in our house in any indication, it's a sieve for just about anything. So now, as directed, we are testing yet again. Good times.

Unbelievable

Ladies, have you ever wondered what your uterus looks like? I didn't think so. Well, now I need wonder no more. This is mine, as of yesterday. What is that pesky thing in the middle, you may ask? Oh that's just the septum I had "removed" in January. Remember this? My seventh post detailed (w/photos and all) my first septum resection. It was such a big deal at the time to find an RE who would do it, and then it was a complete drag post-op.

And now we get to do it all again. Though this time we're dealing with the remaining vascular septum, and the muscle will obviously bleed much more than what we had removed before. Apparently the fibrous septum was only a small portion of it. The crazy thing is that this isn't causing IF (now that the fibrous tissue is gone), but it would be unwise to do IVF with it in there. If I got pg w/twins, bad things would likely happen as there is not enough room. :(

Just when I think things are going well, or our luck is turning, reality hits me like a brick to the face. This time we'll have a balloon (as in in my ute), and we'll have to repeat the lovely hormones that I wrote about here and here and here.

I've stopped my Crinone. It's CD25, and I'm not due until Friday. As the new RE reminded me, getting pg with my ute like this is not a great idea. High risk of miscarriage, premature birth, malpresentation, etc, etc. So I have cancelled my lap and am getting the resection done with the surgeon from our newest clinic ASAP.

Dr. Sherbahn was happy with my "perky" ovaries (~33 little antral follies) and great lining and thought long lupron, aka "lupron down-regulation", aka "mid-luteal lupron" should be my protocol. We'll need to wait for at least two months post-op to cycle for IVF.

Now that's my kind of textbook

The textbook for my upcoming class is over 500 pages (of design deliciousness, no doubt) and weighs nearly four pounds. So it'll help me out as I try to get my workout act together as it's fallen apart since my last surgery, in January. ;)

Had a lovely GTG w/the girls yesterday and we kept up our tradition from January of taking a picture of us all together. Well in this one I look pregnant, which of course I'd like to be, but am not yet... :| I wish I could blame the angle or my too small skort, but no I'm just carry too much pouch. Boo!

Well, it's about time...

I'm finally signing up for interior design classes this fall! The real kind, no longer just the decorating ones they offer at Pottery Barn to get you to buy more stuff. ;) I'm not sure where it will lead, but I figured it was time to finally do it.

I already have the designer's story of constantly rearranging my bedroom furniture as a child (trite, but oh so true). And of constantly changing my bedding, and painting, and wallpapering... I've always loved design and architecture and houses. One of my favorite memories growing up is going to endless open houses and "parades of homes" w/my mom. I earned a real estate license randomly nearly ten years ago, but have never used it, except for my own knowledge.

I think I was one of the only non-art majors (and certainly the only IR/econ major) in my architecture and art history classes in college (the closest thing at my liberal arts alma maters). I worked/designed rooms at Laura Ashley in college (back when they had stores). And I even got a teaching job where my chosen teaching demonstration interview topic was "how to decorate". So it's probably way past time.

Our local community college is oh so affordable (like $100/credit), and while I considered/visited Harrington back when I was soul/career searching in the early naughts, I decided not go back into hock to get another over-priced degree. So here we go, Interior Design 100, Theory and Fundamentals of Design...

I hope I can't go...

U2 has just rescheduled their cancelled tour dates for next summer. I hope I can't go because we will be very pregnant/have a newborn from IVF #1 (or 2) come next July...

Happy Bastille Day!

I'm not sure I've ever mentioned here that I'm a serious Francophile. Like chronic. I first started studying French language and culture in the 2nd grade (how's that for advanced? ;)) and then went full bore in the 7th. I still have my bicentennial commemorative copy of Nat Geo from July, 1989.

I studied French all through HS and into college. Of course, I probably couldn't carry on a conversation in French now if my life depended on it. I've visited a few times, but haven't been in ages, you know all that being a grown up stuff gets in the way. Anyway, I think I love Bastille Day as much as the Fourth.

We are celebrating tonight at L'Eiffel Bistro, a cute little place that we've been once before. Hmm, will I have crepes or steak frites? With cancan music on tap, who can resist!? Magnifique!

family photography

As you know, I don't have a family yet, well just Mr. Happy and me.

So when I came across these adorable pics on FB recently (great use of sepia w/the Phelps family), I immediately thought of my sister's family. She has three adorable kids between 6 mos. and 3 1/2 yrs. (the middle one is 19 mos. old)

The photographer is Nicole Lenzen, who I've known for about thirty years. My mother used to babysit for her and her sister when we were all just wee ones, before my parents divorced and my mother went back to school and started working outside the home. Anywho, I'm thinking I just found my sister's family's Christmas gift (sorry, no 529 contributions this year kids ;) ).

The fragility of life

I unfortunately didn't know Marija Stephens (though she lived just a few miles from me), and I sadly didn't find her blog until after she was gone, but her tragic passing has hit me really hard today since I first read about her this morning. The design blog world is awash with tears. She was what many of us try to be; honest, good, and stylish. She was a mom and a wife who bravely (and successfully) made the transition from the corporate world to the design world. She was a lover of life. She was a proud Libra. She was a good egg, and now she is gone. RIP Marija.

Mad Design

So I hope I wasn't the very last to find that Bryan Batt, who plays Salvatore on Mad Men, is also a huge design aficionado and co-owner of Hazelnut in New Orleans (ty T&C).


Banana Republic is jumping back on the Mad Men band wagon again this year with a co-marketing campaign. Brilliant!

A little hope...

"...suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us..." Romans 5: 3-5

My dad always likes to remind me that tough times breed character. And my typical reply is "...but I've got character coming out my ears, it would be nice if things were easy once in awhile."

But what we were forgetting was the last piece, that character gives you hope, which inexplicably (or so I thought) I also have in spades. I never really understood why, as it makes no logical sense.

N.B. I'm not a big bible reader, so thanks to my HS friend Sarah H., for posting this today on FB. :)

Every little thing she does is magic...(update)

We are going to see Sting this Saturday night at Ravinia (their biggest show ever). We saw him last a few years ago at Wrigley Field, when he and The Police were doing their reunion tour. His new album, Symphonicities (out tomorrow), is some of his solo and Police classics with the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra. I think I'm going to wait to see what it sounds like live to see if I want to buy it (snippets in Amazon link above).

Amazing show, great album. I highly recommend it!

6%

Another great NPR story from the weekend, though I may be partial as I'm from Wisconsin and S is from India. Now that is one cute kid!

A little bit of whimsy

I'm liking this fun little pillow to add some whimsy to my otherwise very serious chair.