Limbo is only acceptable if you are on a cruise ship

Ugh limbo land.

So, I got my new contract yesterday, including my "pay rise". It was insulting to say the least. They have introduced a lovely little restraint of trade inclusion (sneaky snacks) which I will NOT be signing off on, and the "pay rise" that I was teased with is INSULTING. I sat back quietly for FOUR YEARS not asking for anything, and accepting when I was told our wages would freeze. They offered 4% increase PLUS I can no longer be paid for overtime as our average overtime was included in my payrise. Are you kidding me here? So I am expected to work longer hours for approximately $14 a week after tax. Oh and that includes my "pay rise".

I went in and very quietly and politely exploded all over them. They are now reviewing it and I have to wait two weeks to find out what they are going to do about it. Dammit.

I was all fired up last night - to go in this morning and ask for them to stop insulting me, and if they said "no, that's what you are getting" I was handing in my resignation there and then.

But now I have to wait in limbo for two weeks. Shittiest two week wait ever. Why does my life revolve around two week increments? HONESTLY. Cut me a break here.

I was actually getting excited, Lou and I talked about it last night and we could survive with me not working. I would be working from home and doing the odd jobs I used to do when I was at uni. I was excited...thinking of my life as a SAHM full time.

The worst part is that I was just waiting to get my contract, because as soon as I got it I was going to drop down to two days a week, because my household and family are suffering with me working 3 days a week. But I can't even do that now as I have to stick at it while they review me. And if, by some miracle, they do give me a higher wage increase...then how do I turn around and drop my hours after fighting them to treat me like a loyal employee? Oh the dilemma.

So I'm in limbo land yet and the two week wait again, and we aren't even ttc at the moment!

roller skates and houses and pay rises...oh my!

Hello once again my pretties.

Once again I attempted Iron Commenter status and once again fell woefully short. Can you please all stop having such interesting blogs? I get caught up reading each and every one and never make it through the whole list. I am going to continue to wade through them all over the next few weeks though, who says ICLW can only last one week?

Those of you I did manage to visit, I hope you made your way over here too and I hope to see you again soon!

Well on the home front, Monster is living up to his nickname at the moment and being a mixture of completely adorable and completely infuriating. He is scary smart (too much like his brother...uh oh) and is constantly trying to figure out how things work. He responds to instructions really well and talks in full sentences. Now we just need to get him to speak in English (or Spanish) so that we can understand him ;)

Latest discoveries include how to turn the TV on and off, adjust the volume and change channel (why he loves channel 6? no idea. ps. there is no channel 6, it's just snow....).

He adores my roller skates and when he isnt trying to climb into them, he is pushing them across the floor making zoom zoom noises. It took him all of about 30 seconds to locate my new (on loan for now) skates and get into them and try to skate across the floor!

Speaking of skating...I managed to get out on Saturday for 3. whole. hours. ALONE *gasp* something I havent managed in almost a year and a half! It was fabulous, except I ended up with my lil buddy (a friend of Monster's from playgroup) attached to me for a lot of the time so I felt like I was still parenting! He is the same age as my Starbaby and also the cutest 2 year old around, so I love spending time with him.

It was good to be back on skates (albeit briefly, as we are in fact gearing up for IVF #2). I only took one somewhat heavy fall which has resulted in a rather pretty 2 toned bruise :)

Other than that my weekend was fairly non eventful - just a lot of moving furniture and emptying out the house we just sold. This now means of course that our double garage is FULL to the ceiling with furniture and boxes of STUFF to sort through and get rid of. Looks like a massive garage sale is in my future *le sigh* I hate garage sales. Love going to them, hate holding them.

No news on the baby front as yet, I am on BCP until 2nd July, then we wait for Lou's CD1 when we commence the fabulousness of shots and various pills and potions. Depending on when her cycle starts, she could well be in surgery on her birthday! Poor darling. Oh well, at least we will be in a fun city, perhaps we can make a small vacation of it, stay in a nicer hotel, order room service with our pretend non existent money ;)

In happy news (and it is very welcome as we are facing another $11k IVF payment soon) I believe I am finally, after 4 years on a wage freeze, getting a payrise! They have told me my pay is increasing but are torturing me by not telling me how much until we receive our official contracts. Please cross your fingers for a decent rise...if it's only a few dollars I will cry!

awkward silences

It's been over two years now since my son's heart stopped beating and my world was torn open. It has become such a part of my every day life that I barely recognise how horrific an occurence stillbirth is, and that not everyone has come to the acceptance of it that I have.

At playgroup the other day someone asked quite innocently of another mum who her OB was, we started discussing it. I mentioned that we went through a different hospital than them because we wanted a specific OB - the head of obstetrics at the major public hospital in our city. I rambled on abut how great he was, how he was the one who delivered the autopsy results to us and he gave us scans at every appt with Monster because of my anxiety.

**crickets**

The room was silent. AWKWARD. Then I realised what I had said. No one commented on it, as they all know my story by now (well, except for one new mum who I am sure was sitting there thinking "WTF is this woman talking about???") and it dawned on me that while I feel completely comfortable discussing his death, to them it is a scary unknown. I can imagine how I would have reacted had I been sitting in their position only 3 years ago.

I remember when I was pregnant with our Starbaby we watched a tv show that followed a bunch of couples through pregnancy and birth. One of these couples were pregnant after a stillbirth. We were horrified. Both that "that" really happens, and by the fact that she was pregnant so soon afterwards. "How would you live with that!?!" we asked "I cannot even begin to imagine that!" we said.

Only a few months later we were in the hospital delivery our little man, and a few months later we were back there, pregnant with Monster.

These things just keep happening, me rambling on and then looking up to see the horrified expressions on people faces...I refuse to censor myself, but I am frequently surprised when I catch myself mentioning it so casually. People must think I am so callous, but the fact is, I have made my peace with it. I don't believe it ever could have happened any other way, and this was always meant to happen.

But I had a dream the other morning that they discovered his trisomy earlier and we managed to get him out alive. That he lived for a few months. I dreamt of a party we threw him, how beautiful it was to have all our friends and family there to meet him, to see how amazing he was. I woke up smiling. I wish every day that we had managed to have just a few days with him. It's my only regret about the entire story...

My readers kick ass!

Wow, thank you so much for all your supportive comments on my last entry. I wasn't sure how it would be received but I had to say it!

Now I am no gay rights activist by any means. I live in as traditional a family as you can imagine. We have quite traditional roles and we stick to ourselves. We are private people and I am certainly not attending rallies and protests every week. But I would really like the government to wake up and smell the coffee. Because the majority of citizens either want gay marriage approved, or dont care either way. There are very few people who are actively AGAINST it.

I too grew up in a Catholic household. My partner's family is Baptist. This fact causes more dissention in the ranks than the fact that we are gay!! lol.

But as one of you wrote in your comment, if you dont like gay marriage, DON'T HAVE ONE. That's pretty much my belief. First these people are scared of "the gays" and don't want us coming onto them. But they don't want us to be able to marry, an institution based on faithfulness. Surely the more of us who are married, the less likely we are to hit on you (or in the lesbian case...hit on your wife ;)

Anyway, I'm back on my soapbox again *steps down*

Don't even get me started on the political happenings of the day, I am exhausted from talking about it all morning.

Our first female Prime Minister should be a massive celebration, a victory. Instead our PM was shanghai'd by his own party and forced out. Shameful behaviour. Hope you enjoy it while it lasts because rumour is an election is around the corner (literally by August) and you just aren't instilling a lot of trust. For shame Julia, for shame.

And that's enough of THAT.

On the IVF front, exciting news there for us as planning is underway for our next cycle :)
I couldn't be more excited...our doc is willing to talk about getting things moving in the pre cycle preparation even though I'm not at zero yet, I am so close that he doesnt see a need to wait. I could NOT be happier about that.

Plus I am getting new skates on saturday (hopefully) and going skating with some of my favourite girls (and a few derby stars too :) :) SO things are looking up.

Now I must go make my MIL some chicken noodle soup to take down to her tonight as she is very unwell and FIL is away working again for the next 3 weeks.

Have a kickass night, you are all awesome (thanks again for the love)

gay marriage - ruining the sanctity of marriage

So I was flipping through the channels tonight as nothing interesting was on. I stumbled across a show, have you heard of it? It's called I Mar.ried a St.ran.ger.

Most of you would probably roll your eyes and move on. I was intrigued. At first I thought it was a show about traditional arranged marriages. I am no stranger to these, as I went to school with a lot of girls from different cultures, and it was not unusual for them to become engaged in tenth grade to a person their parents chose. In one case a classmate became engaged to her cousin in Lebanon when we were 15. They had never met. I was always intrigued by these marriages, and fascinated by them. They all seemed to be happy with it as it was the way it was done in their different cultures.

So I tuned in, thinking "this might be interesting". Turns out that no, it's another american reality tv show. In this particular one, a girl who is sick of dating agrees for her mother, best friend and sister to pick her husband from 6 men chosen by the producers, and marries him, sight unseen, after 72 hours.

Say it with me...W T F?

At first I was morbidly intrigued. What a trainwreck!

Then I slowly became enraged.

Then I cried.

Why??

Because this dumb ass stupid girl can marry a person she has never met, on a whim, almost as a joke, on a stupid ass tv show to get her face on tv. But our government has declared over and over that gay marriage will ruin the sanctity of marriage.


This girl can make a joke of it and will almost certainly be divorced within a year, but I cannot marry the love of my life, the mother of my children, the woman I want to spend my life with, the woman I have made a home with. This girl on tv can make a joke of it all but I have to ask PERMISSION to be allowed to have the right to declare my love and fidelity to my soulmate.

I don't generally agree with divorce (although I certainly understand why people do it, I think that if you make the right choice in partner, it shouldnt be necessary). I believe that you should marry for life. I believe in being faithful. I believe in true love. I believe that God made us in his image, and that he created me and my partner and wanted us to be together. How else could you explain how perfectly we fit together?

And it makes me so sad that a heterosexual white male sitting in an office somewhere can dictate to me how I can express my love for my partner. The minister at our church is gay. She would marry us if she could. But again, a man sitting in an office dictates to her that she cannot marry us. I just dont think it should be up to them...

And I just cannot believe that people STILL claim that it's gay marriage that will ruin the "sanctity of marriage" when there are shows like this all over our tv screens. When will society realise the absolute idiocy and hypocrisy wrapped up in their own inability to see past their baseless prejudices?

Suzy Home-renovator

I've been reading back through past blogs (both this one and old blogs) trying to recapture how I felt and what I used to write about (what? not everything is babyloss/IF related? you're KIDDING me?? What else would I write about?) I am not quite there yet but am going to try to post daily about something other than IVF because hey, boring.


Good news this week in our corner of the world is the final sale of one of our reno properties :) BIG yay for that. It is a big load off my mind and while we didn't get the best best best price for it, we did get $40k more than the bank valuation, and cleared enough to pay out all our debts. So YAY for that! Now if we can get reno house #2 sold (has to hit the market first) then we will really be laughing all the way to the bank and be able to jump right into renovating #3 where we are currently living...

I have to say I am very proud of us. If you had seen this place before we go to it...it was ugly. And it smelt funky. And had holes in doors etc. Just a mess. Now look at it!!









It really makes me realise that we can do this. We are so capable, and I think we are getting really close to the point where we can throw in the towel at our annoyingly mundane jobs and take on renovations as a full time job :)


And finally, because I just. can't. not. talk. IVF....good news/bad news on that front...good news is we got nearly $6k back from our last cycle which means we can definitely go ahead again! Bad news is that I'm STILL not at zero which means waiting...and waiting...and blood tests...and more waiting...to see when we can go ahead again. The longer we wait, the bigger the age gap will be and that is bugging the crap out of me because that is the main reason we decided to do this - to have kids close together. Already we are 6 months past where we wanted to be...and every week that goes by I mourn the idea of having children who are really close together. Hercules would have been born at the perfect time.

Lady Luck

*sigh* It seems like every time I come on here to type a happy entry...something else happens! I've thought of so many entries to write, but all at inconvenient times...and then when I was halfway though a derby entry, we got the news that a colleagaue has been diagnosed with breast cancer, and suddenly anything I had to write in here didn't seem quite as important.

At the same time, my close friend's marriage is breaking up, leaving her a single mother to a 1 year old with no possibility of an income to support them both (she has a disability) and it all just seems like "who am I to bemoan my life?"

I have it pretty good. I have two beautiful earthbabies and a precious starbaby, an amazing partner who makes my life better every single day she is in it, and a lovely house to live in. I have a job and can provide for my babies, and we have family members who love and support us and help us step up in life.

I'm pretty fucking lucky, all things considered.

So now I will thank all the universe for my astounding good luck, and focus on my two friends, going through far more significant upheaval than I, and give them all my love and support.

Because I can...but I don't want to.

I dyed my hair purple the other day...because I can. I've drunk more red wine in the past few weeks than I have in the past few years...because I can. I had a migraine this morning so I took the strongest painkillers I could find...because I can.

I don't want to be able to do these things!

Roller derby and red wine and purple hair and painkillers...all things I have great affection for and enjoy wholeheartedly but I wish I couldn't be doing any of them right now. I'm still just feeling bitter and hate thinking the "I should be almost 9 weeks pregnant right now" thoughts. They just make me more bitter and twisted than I already am.

I'm out of thoughts. The same things are on a carousel in my mind and I'm just sick of it!

I need to pull myself back on track. Stay tuned for better entries...hopefully with a more interesting topic than my broken record of wah wah woe is me...

{ETA}