Stalking Thomas O'Brien

Of course I'm not really stalking him, but he is coming to the Merchandise Mart tomorrow to do the keynote address at the International Antiques Fair. And guess who waited too long to RSVP? It is now full, but I'm going to go and see if I can get in anyway. He is promoting his new book, American Modern.


Some of my favorite Tom O'Brien pieces:
Marielle (my phantom daughter's name)- Indigo dinnerware by Reed&Barton
Marco Rug for Safavieh

And of course there are all of his yummies @ Target...

Handpainted dinnerware

Boring, I know, but his towels are the best. We have them in multiple shades blue, sage, chocolate and white because I couldn't pick fewer colors than that...

TOB throw

Justice is served

I didn't think that jury duty would be so traumatic that I would look forward to coming back to work. But here I am. I don't really want to talk about it yet. We had to deliberate late into the evening and ended up finding him guilty on both charges. I'm just enjoying being connected back to the world. I missed my phone and my computer and my sheltered life.


Love this pillow on OKL today. I'm a bicentennial baby...

Jury Duty!

So I got picked today (lucky me, right?). I can't talk about it until it is over, but I'm learning a ton. It's boring and sad and fascinating all at the same time. More to come...

The Trust Hormone and A Life without Fear

There was an interesting story on NPR this weekend on Williams Syndrome called, When the 'Trust Hormone' is Out of Balance. My eldest sister Sara, who is now 40, was born with Williams Syndrome and since it is quite rare, it is always interesting when it gets picked up in the media.

As a gene deletion/chromosomal condition from conception, there is no "cure", but this is the first time I've heard it characterized as having the same affects (though not stated as being influenced by) having too much oxytocin. Today's installation is called A Life without Fear. Last week the series talked about those w/WS lacking racial bias.

Also,
NPR story on WS and language from 7/06

NPR story on WS and music from 10/06

Nice to see that over the last four years they've dropped their description of those w/WS as "elf-like"... Hope there is increasing depth to the series.

Three strikes and you're out

I'm finding this is my rule for evaluating RE's. Here's the history...

RE #1:
strike 1: didn't want to do anything about septum which she found on initial HSG a year ago (RE #2 ordered MRI and we learned it took up most of my ute, and as it was fibrous its presence basically guaranteed I'd never get pg, as no blood flow @ implantation site = not viable)

strike 2: insisted on giving me Clomid even though we both knew I O'd on my own (and I had lowish E2)

strike 3: botched IUI #2 by "waiting for more follies" when I had a 19.
After the IUI fiasco, she had the balls to suggest we go right to IVF. No thanks...

RE #2: (her nurse is actually a big part of the problem here)
strike 1: Dr/nurse wouldn't address my reaction to post-surgery prog (stop taking cranberry pills was their reaction to my multi-day excruciating stomach bleed)

strike 2: RE's SB vacation (or rather her insistence on doing test herself) pushed back my HSG a month (as I refused to go on BCP/lose a mo. to accommodate her schedule)

strike 3: this is shared w/RE #1 (but she was useless and #2 is actually decent), but no thought of and actually resistant to checking my post-O prog levels when I present what everyone agrees is a "fertile" profile, but am not.getting.pg.

I can't wait until the mtg. on the 4th. Needless to say, it's no longer an IVF consult (which she didn't think I "needed", but I had resigned myself to doing...)

It's probably a good thing that I decided at the last minute not to go to law school, as the main word on the tip of my tongue right now is MALPRACTICE. I need to cool down. Maybe I would have gotten further faster if I'd followed my initial plan and gone to med school. This is truly unbelievable.

A breakthrough, perhaps.

I'm still processing all the craziness of Friday. I went to the RE in the morning for my 7dpo progesterone test (which I called and scheduled on my own, only to get a call back from the nurse asking why I was coming in). When the new nurse who did my blood draw called with my results in the afternoon, I knew right away when she said it that it was low (7.48), but she said nothing and since I was sitting at work I didn't want to get into it right there. So I doubled checked what is normal (>10 natural cycle, >15 medicated) and turned to the board to see what they thought I should do. The consensus was ask for a supplement next month, but I thought, why wait?

As I was running out of the office at 3pm to go to the city for my acu study consult, I made sure I had the info I needed to call from the car to get some sort of action from my RE. When I spoke to the nurse (SA, not the new one), she still seemed puzzled as to why I had come in for the test (she guessed to see if I had O'd, not because I actually thought and wanted to confirm that I have low P). Her exact words, "we didn't think you were trying this month." I don't know if I've ever been so angry. Was she kidding? I mentioned to her twice that our meeting with the RE next month is an IVF consult, so why does she think we aren't trying. It's really beyond me to understand her reasoning at all. She is the worst person in that office.

So after she acknowledged that if we were trying, she'd like to see it at 15, I asked if I should expect a call from the Dr. on what we are going to do, or if she already had or what. She only then agreed to try to get a hold of the Dr. to see what she wanted to do this cycle. Within a few minutes, she called back and left a msg. that the Dr. wanted me to start Crinone 8% that night and then to continue every morning (until when, TBD) and she had already called it in to our local fertility pharmacy. This is the fastest, most proactive thing that has come out of this office, and they are the good RE.

(Crinone, my new best friend)

Then when I finally made it to the wellness clinic for the acu study consult, I got to rehash my entire history with the dr. (who I had spoken to on the phone and had my doubts about, but who was very nice). She had to stop me several times as she was a bit overwhelmed with what I was telling her (which should probably worry me). It's so old hat to me, I could recite it all in my sleep. She also maintains that I am "out of balance" and fortunately I was able to share with her my newly discovered hormonal issue.

She is still interviewing candidates for the study (so not in the clear yet), but she seemed very positive. I should hear in the next two weeks. Sadly, she did tell me that my 4+ mos. of weekly acu sessions likely were not really helping me beyond making me feel better for a bit after each one, as infertility needs to be treated with a minimum of two treatments a week to actually have any benefit. So like other recent discoveries, this made me at first very mad (how many thousands would I spend at the other clinic before she upped my regimen?), but then it made me happy that now I knew better than I had before.

Thanks to my DH, I got my Crinone before the pharmacy closed and now I just trying to feel out the side effects. So far, constipation, hot flashes, general not so great feeling, but somehow I feel fabulous that we might be closer to an answer. I'm trying not to think of the fact that we could/should have found this out a YEAR ago. I'm due on Friday and I'm not holding out for a miracle, but besides making my month/year, it would certainly make our weekend at my nephew's baptism with all the family much more palatable.

Choosing the perfect house color (update)

We've lived in our house for nearly 4 1/2 years and one of the many great things about our HOA is that they paint the houses every five on a rotating schedule. So we bought the house, despite not being crazy about the color, knowing that we could change it when the time came (without having to pay to do it ourselves, which we are much too practical to even consider). We didn't realize the house had just been painted when we bought it, so we've patiently waited and the time is finally here. Yay!

One of the not so lovely things about our HOA is that they dictate the colors that you have to choose from to paint your house. Weird, right? But given the options, we figured we could come up with something.

Our subdivision is comprised of single family and town homes all in what I've discovered is a "mountain style," like this... (NB: this is not our house)



Cedar siding with brick accents and natural/neutral colors. Since my go-to style is cape cottage, this was not a natural fit for me, but I bit the bullet since the layout, location, etc. was what we wanted. One of my main criteria was no vinyl siding, which may sound strange, but I have a sort of allergy (design wise, of course) to it, so that ruled out most of the houses in the areas we were considering given when they were developed. Any who, back to colors.

Our house is currently "beige gray" (Ben Moore solid siding stain, all color representations from here)



With trim in "cocoa"


And when we replaced our old brown leaky aluminum (ick!) windows a few years back with Pella's Impervia fiberglass super energy efficient ones, we got them in brown.



We spent a lot of time thinking about this, since we knew we wanted to change the house color as soon as we could, but after we discovered the brown sliding glass doors on the front of the house (yes, you heard that right) were of a non-std. size (of course), they would have cost a fortune to replace. So we just upgraded the glass and went with brown windows so that everything would continue to match. Since we figured a house with non-matching windows = really bad.

I also thought the trim should probably continue to match the windows, so it all blends well. Also if we were to change the trim color we'd have to prime and then repaint the fence.

We also redid the roof, and those shingles look like this...
(CertainTeed architectural in "mission brown")

So everytime we go to buy stain @ Ben Moore, I look at the color options. I found this one, called "stone hedge," awhile back...


(it's really a sort of blue gray)

But then when we went recently for fence paint (we have to do this ourselves, ugh!), S thought we might be able to pull off this with the brown trim. It's called "cape cod gray" What a tease (the husband and the color), right?



So we got some of the cape gray to try out on the back of the house to see how it would look like w/the trim. And sadly, it didn't do it for me. So I went back and got the stone blue. They look almost identical on the house, but somehow the stone hedge looks better. So now we get to "apply" to the HOA for a color change and hope they approve. I knew I should have run for the board. Wish us luck! :)

Update: I was overruled and we applied for the Cape Cod Gray. More to come...