Swimming With The Dogs

Lately Mike has been taking the dogs to the lake across the street to swim every other day. Both of them are getting older and have some arthritis. The swimming is great because it works all their muscles without having any chance of injuring themselves. And in our hot weather it sure feels good :)

Another New Car

Last Saturday on my way home from work the porsche decided to spring a leak in the radiator and dump all my coolant onto the road. So there I sat at the bottom of the freeway exit ramp with no way to move. A kind man helped me push it to the side of the road until Mike could arrive but it wasn't good. After that we realized that as much as we like the porsche we need a reliable car to get me to and from work while we continue with it's "project" status. So on Wednesday we went and bought this...

A bright yellow 2008 Chevy Aveo. It has auto nothing and cost a whooping $11,000. It gets great milage, approx. 40 mpg on the freeway, and will work very well for getting me to work. I'll still drive the porsche around here but it needed way too much right away to make it my only car. And the Aveo does seat 5...

Continuing with the baby conversation we did find a problem with my last blood test. I don't seem to be ovulating. A normal progesterone level after ovulation is 4 or greater and mine was 1. So starting next month my doctor is going to stick me on Clomid to induce ovulation. It does increase the risk of twins but what do you do? If we have no results after 3 months I get to start seeing a fertility specialist. Cross your fingers for one baby right away :)

Water Bill

So we just got our first water bill since we put in the rain barrel. They bill for every 3 months here so this bill was from May 27 to August 26. Our bill ending in May was for 17,204 gallons at a grand total of $106. That bill covered the first part of our growing season for our plants so it was at high consumption. The current bill is also during our high consumption time and is for 9,724 gallons at a total of $61. In 3 more billing cycles the rain barrel will have paid for itself and we really feel great about what a difference it has made. We have also been making small household changes as far as showers vs baths and leaving water running less when doing dishes and brushing teeth. It just makes us more excited and motivated to see just how much we can do!

Waiting for baby...

Well everyone we decided to get up close and personal this week. If you get queasy hearing about medical procedures or have no desire to hear about our efforts to get pregnant I advise you to skip this week’s post. That being said, here’s the details.
We stopped our birth control the first week of January. My cycles seemed to be pretty regular right off. They are a bit long (30 days) but the doctor said that’s okay as long as we don’t hit 40. So we expected it would take a few months for everything to sort itself out. In March I went to my annual doctor visit and she said things seemed good and to let her know if we weren’t having success after 6 months since my cycles were already regular. After that we started taking ovulation tests and they consistently said I was ovulating right in the middle of my cycle. So in July we thought we finally had made it happen. I was late and was having some pregnancy symptoms. But the home pregnancy tests kept saying negative. My period finally hit at day 50. I went to the doctor the next week and she said it seemed I hadn’t ovulated that month and it seemed like a good time to start some basic testing. So this month I’ve already had blood drawn twice to check hormone levels- it all looked okay. I also had a lovely test done called a hysterosalpingogram. Basically you lie on an x-ray table while they force dye from your uterus up into your fallopian tubes. It is incredibly painful. My right tube looked great but my left had some adhesions. The tubes themselves were open so they should be okay. My doctor said just the flushing can sometimes help if you have any adhesions or small blockages.
Next week I have another blood hormone level test and we’ll see where we go from there…