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Thursday, December 31, 2009

can we get this over with already?

i'm not a huge fan of new year's eve. growing up, my dad usually worked on new year's, and occasionally my mom would make a nice dinner and let me stay up to watch the ball drop, but that was really about it. i went out and did the big new year's eve bash a couple of times in college- once at the drake downtown and once in st. louis (1999! weee!), but both were on other people's dime, otherwise, i wouldn't have done it. i see no sense spending at least three times what you would spend on literally any other night of the year because of some arbitrary day on the calendar. like, would you go to all the fuss over april 17? neither would i. to me, new year's is just like any other day. it used to be that i'd have to remind myself to write the correct year on my checks, but since i got married the husband does all of our billing (and really, who writes checks anymore?), i don't even have to do that.

however, having said all that (nod to larry david), i am not sorry to see 2009 go. as far as years go, it wasn't a great one. here's a recap of the high- and low-lights from the year that was...

2009 was the year that on our vacation, every time we checked our cell phones, we had more bad news. when we got home from said vacation, we discovered our house was ruined by our upstairs neighbor's water heater leaking. which caused us to live in joey's parents (unfinished) basement for a month.

as sucky as all that was, in the end, we ended up with a completely remodeled house on somebody eles' dime, so as much as i'd like to, i can't complain too loudly. although, i still harbor deep resentment for the upstairs neighbors. unless they're reading this; in which case, we love them! (no, we don't.)

a day after we got home from vacation, already frazzled by the living situation, my mom's only brother died after being in a coma for a week and a half.

2009 was the year that we turned to adoption, and we are hoping that 2010 (or 2011) will be the year that makes our family a little bigger.

2009 was the year that i opened my etsy shop, and after selling for about 9 months, i am proud to say it's been moderately successful. not enough to quit my day job (not yet, at least :) ) but enough to keep it going throughout 2010.

so yeah, 2009 was... 365 whole days.

looking ahead to 2010...
  • we are going to finish our homestudy in q1
  • i'm going to write and sell some patterns (i'd like to eventually publish a book of patterns, but i think that's a goal for 2011 or 2012)
  • i'd like to pick up a second language. preferrably one with no practical use at all. like russian. or portugese. (do not expect to see this on my list of things i did in 2010)
  • as always, i want to hike part of the appalachian trail
  • i'm GOING to finish joey's blanket (he'll divorce me if i don't, i swear it!)

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

but it's f*@!ing garbage!

okay, wed. morning is garbage day in our neighborhood, and most of my neighbors put their garbage out on tues. night. so last night, when i got home (after working 11+ hrs- fun!), i took a paper grocery bag full of garbage from my car and dropped it in one of the garbage cans on my way to the front door. because it's garbage, and that's a garbage can. easy, right?
wrong.
i was taking the dog for a walk this morning (5 am to be exact) and we walk past the garbage cans, and what do i see in the street out in front of the cans? my paper grocery bag of garbage from my car.

this means that one of my neighbors (i've got a pretty good idea who) saw me put garbage IN THEIR GARBAGE CAN last night, got incensed over it, put on their boots and jacket, went back outside and took the garbage out of the garbage can.

to which i say, 'but it's f*@!ing garbage!!!'

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

ice, ice, baby (ies)

so. my husband, the fish monger, and i, tried to get pregnant for about three years. we finally put an end to that nonsense almost a year ago and have turned our attentions towards adoption, which is a whole big can of worms but not what i want to talk about right now.

a little backstory for those of you not in the know: in vitro is where they harvest eggs from your body, put them in a petri dish with your partner's (or donor's) sperm and see what happens. i superovulated and they were able to retreive 32 eggs, which is HUGE. one of my coworkers wives was going to the same clinic around the same time and they harvested 9 eggs from her. anyway, 16 eggs fertilized, and 9 made it to the freezing stage. we used 6 of them. (they...didn't make it. my uterus hates babies.)

so, mathaletes, that leaves us with a grand total of 3 embryos left. i hadn't thought of these groanygirl-fishmonger hybrid frozen babies for a long time, but today, i got a bill from the clinic for another year of cryostorage. frozen embryos, unlike walt disney's head, store quite well...indefinitely, as a matter of fact. some of you may remember some gossip a little while back about celine dion getting pregnant (she's "no longer pregnant," which is just about the saddest way to word a miscarriage ever) with frozen embryos that were about 9 years old.

we had hoped to find a suitable surrogate to carry a few of these suckers for us, but it doesn't appear that's going to happen, and now that we're persuing adoption, it feels like cheating on our future kid(s) with these embryos. i mean, how long do we keep them? and what do we do with them when we decide we no longer want to keep preserving them?  (my choice would be to donate them to science rather than just defrost them and let them... melt.) but how do you decide that it's time to let go? it's extremely doubtful that we'll ever have infertility insurance coverage ever again, and even if we did, i don't think i'd want to go through it again. it was the WORST. worst! so i feel like i have to keep them. just in case. or not. do you guys have any better ideas?

i'm putting that gift to good use.


i love to crochet. if i could quit my job and crochet full-time, i totally would. unfortunately, there's not a lot of money to be had in small crocheted animals. trust me, i'm trying to sell them and, so far, it ain't payin' the bills. (and there are so many bills!)

anyway, for christmas, my lovely husband, the fish monger, bought me a table-top studio so i could take better pictures of my ami's. cute, right?

sheesh. you should see the crap i was passing as product photos before this. on second thought, no, you shouldn't. they're awful. of course, this means that i'll have to make all new stuff for my shop for the sole purpose of rephotographing them. craaaaap.

anyway, if you're so inclined, you can buy this little guy for yourself in my etsy shop: www.hamandeggs.etsy.com/


i like to complain.

so... a friend of mine asked me if i was blogging, to which i said, no. but- i do like to complain about things. so... blogging it is! i have no idea if this will be something i'll keep up with, or more like my twitter account, which i started, tweeted once and abruptly abandoned. i hate twitter. see- complaining already! boy, are you kids lucky!

i guess introductions are in order. i am 31, happily married, somewhat happily employed, no kids (not yet, at least, but I'll get to that later...), a few cats and a dog and waaaaaay too many fish. i went to school forever and got a couple of degrees that i don't use, so that was a good way to spend $30k. i am a HUGE nerd for crocheting, so expect more than half of this blog to be crochet-related.

uh, yeah, so that's it for now. stay tuned. complaints hourly.
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