upcoming upcomings...

I find myself suddenly worked up about our upcoming IUI cycle. I am 12 DPO today (er, yesterday); my temp is dangerously close to my coverline and my uterus has been doing that you-might-want-to-carry-or-even-possibly-wear-a-pad thing all day.

We're supposed to go back to Birmingham for several different things. A few of which we've put off specifically to try and save a trip (or two). The Monkey needs to have his testosterone and other hormone levels rechecked. He also needs to have his CBC redone along with his fasting insulin (to make sure his metformin dosage is working properly). They'll also test his kidney and liver function (to make sure the met isn't, you know, killing him slowly). They'll also have him repeat his semen analysis to see if and how much the Clomid has helped. Fingers crossed that it has helped at least somewhat; hopefully significantly!

I need to have a repeat mycoplasma culture done. And also a baseline ultrasound and possibly bloodwork. Baseline ultrasounds on CD 2 or 3 are always a blast as many of you know. Poking around at a sore, swollen uterus with the dildo cam -- definitely my idea of a good time. [eyeroll] Also the mycoplasma culture means they will be torturing my cervix. Double the fun! But at least we won't have to drive to Birmingham three times in two weeks. They'll also do repeat blood draws on me and they need to recheck my thyroid to make sure my Synthroid dosage is still right.

My recent worries, however, are due to cost issues. Our insurance coverage has me completely confused. I looked at our claims statements from our first return visit to our RE and then my visit alone for my SIS procedure. Everything they did on The Monkey was covered at a rate of 90/10 -- our payment being the 10%. Everything they did on me -- including the SIS procedure -- was covered at a rate of 50/50. Now, color me confused because when the hell is a semen analysis done but to diagnose infertility?? So then I looked up our coverage details and found information showing that infertility "diagnosis and treatment" is supposed to be covered at the 90/10 rate with IUI covered at a rate of 50/50 and IVF/GIFT/ZIFT not being covered at all. (When I originally spoke with financial and gave them our new insurance info, this is the information I got from them as well.) So I do not understand the 50/50 rate. But then I found another summary of coverage that said the rate for infertility was 50/50 across. WTF?? I don't understand how that could be the case and they would charge the 90/10 rate for Tony's treatments. I haven't yet received any bills but I know they are coming. One will be for almost $200 for all my bloodwork, PAP, and mycoplasma culture. The second will be $125 for my SIS procedure. I know I probably shouldn't be bitching. I know that lots of people don't have infertility coverage period. And I am grateful that we have coverage! But when you are prepared to pay 10% of incurred costs and you're hit with 50% instead... well, you tend to get pissed off.

I am going to require at least five more blood draws (repeat fasting labs, baselines, mid-cycle labs around trigger time, a progesterone check, and a beta), a repeat mycoplasma culture (hopefully just one), and two ultrasounds. Tony is getting his fasting labs repeated and repeating his semen analysis. Then we have to pay for meds and the IUI itself (which are the only costs I'm actually sure of at this point). And this is not to mention the gas it's going to take to get to and from Birmingham (and then hopefully only Montgomery). I keep hearing "cha-ching... cha-ching..." in my head.

My temp dropped below my coverline this morning so I'm likely to start sometime today or tomorrow. CD 1 today means a trip to Birmingham on Thursday; CD 1 tomorrow means a trip to Birmingham on Friday. I really hope I don't start on Wednesday because I'm not sure what services they do on Saturdays and we're trying to make as few trips as humanly possible!

So I am hoping for a few things: 1) That I talk to my insurance company and they tell me that the rate is 90/10 and get things corrected. 2) That I start getting my SSDI check! 3) That this works on the first try and we can stop playing this song and dance for a while!!

Le sigh.

blindsided by a Disney movie??

Last night my sister treated me to the new Disney Pixar movie Up. We've been joking about the previews for weeks looking at each other at random and hollering 'Squirrel!' My niece asked to see it for her birthday so that's what we did.

I'll admit that I really didn't know what the movie was about, exactly. The previews didn't really give away the plot. Right before we left for the theater I read the synopsis online. It seemed harmless enough.

It was a very cute movie but, holy hell, the first 20 minutes of the movie had me bawling. And it was hard to discretely wipe my eyes with 3D glasses on. Damnit! Even the little Pixar 'short' that they played before the movie made me teary. Curse you Pixar! But, seriously, the movie was good. And I think plenty of my IFer friends will appreciate the sentiment the movie expressed.

I was retelling some of the plot to my mom this afternoon and couldn't even get all the way through it without bawling again. Meh.

Errgh. Only 42 more days until we go up north. While I'm thoroughly excited, I am worried that we won't have the money. I am really praying that The Monkey gets a bonus. We have to renew our tags in July. I think I am going to have to take my sister's advice and call in and ask our bank about foregoing our car payment for July. Surely they will oblige? I mean, I only have six payments left (I financed the car for five years) and I've never missed a payment in that entire time. The same thing goes for The Monkey's car. If we are able to do that for the month of July we'll have an extra $400 for the month which we can put toward our tags and we won't be so strapped for money.

seriously??

For the past week I've been losing a straining battle with my skin. I am most certainly experiencing one of the worst breakouts that I can remember. Certainly one of the worst since I stopped Lithium (which is known to cause skin issues). I chocked it up to being hormonal because it started just before AF made a grand entrance. But instead of steadily getting better it has steadily gotten worse.

I hate when my skin breaks out even a little bit. This is atrocious. I look like I have a freakish bumpy skin rash. (These aren't the kind of pimples that come to a head and can be easily disposed of with a warm wash cloth. These are horrible, painful cyst-like bumps that take FOREVER to go away!)

Perplexed and frustrated, I went to Walgreens to pick up something, anything that might help end the breakout that is making me feel like an overly hormonal teenager. I found a system that looked promising and as I was examining active ingredients I thought about the new Clean & Clear cleanser that I'd bought a couple of weeks ago when I ran out of my other cleanser. (Stupid me, I'm always looking for a skin-miracle-in-a-bottle and try new things every now and again.) When I looked back at the timing of the breakout the only thing that had really changed was my switching to this cleanser. So while I was still looking in Walgreens I picked up the very same cleanser and checked the ingredients...

Can someone please give me a logical explanation as to why Clean & Clear decided to put MINERAL OIL and PETROLATUM (aka Vasoline) into an acne treatment?!? Since when does slathering your face with additional OIL help clear up acne??? I am SO furious. Because a) I was stupid enough to buy the cleanser without checking the ingredient list and b) Clean & Clear was stupid enough to put OIL in their acne wash!

From here on out, I am a Neutrogena girl. I will never, ever again buy another Clean & Clear product. In the mean time, I am covered in pimples. My face looks awful and I have these terribly painful bumps behind my ears. I even found a pimple on my earlobe. WTF?? Hopefully the stuff I bought today will help clear it up in a few days or, at most, a week.

In other news, I picked up my car from Expert Tire this afternoon. The final bill came to $654. It went on credit. UGH. The bright side of this is that my car has all new quality brakes, my 'change oil' light is no longer on, and it no longer veers slightly to the left. And, though I can't really tell right now because I don't drive long distances anymore, the 'shakes' associated with unbalanced tires are no more. So, am I glad I did it? Absolutely. Am I glad it set us back $654 and change? HELL NO! But, that's life, eh?

I guess that's what I get...

Note to self: When car starts making bad noises, do not put off getting it looked and/or fixed for several MONTHS.

[sigh]

For the past couple of months my car has been making a scraping/grinding sound. I knew where it was coming from: the front brake on the driver's side. It was a distinct noise -- one of metal scraping against metal. But it wasn't an every-time-I-braked thing. It was intermittent. Sometimes I went for weeks at a time without hearing the noise at all. I knew what it was because a couple of years ago I had the same problem on the passenger side. But, the idiot mechanics I took it to replaced ONE caliper instead of both. It's safe to say that if they'd replaced both (like the mechanics are doing today) I wouldn't be having this issue. I guess it says something that the place I took it to last time went out of business weeks after I took my car there. Figures.

Then a few days ago it got significantly worse. The blood curdling scraping sounds were happening every time I braked no matter how ginger I tried to be. So this morning I took it over to Expert Tire. Normally I give all mechanical issues over to my dad because, well, he's a mechanic. But when I told him about the scraping noises when they first started he brushed me off about fixing it. So I put it off. And then I didn't have money for parts so there wasn't much point in bugging him about it anyway. So a $600 bill is what I get for putting it off. [sigh] They replaced both front calipers, both rotors, and the pads (of course). Then they adjusted and cleaned the rear brakes which, thankfully, were not in any need of being replaced. (Dodged THAT bullet considering they haven't been touched since I bought the car almost five years ago.) Since I was spending a small fortune on car maintenance I told them to throw in an oil change, to balance and rotate my tires, and to do a front-end alignment. (The alignment is free, though, thanks to our purchasing life time alignments on both cars shortly after we bought them.)

I am really horrible at maintenance. The only thing I'm diligent about are oil changes. I really have to start taking better of this car. Especially considering that it's no longer under warranty AND it's about to be paid for. (After July's payment, I'll be in the triple digits! Holy crap!)

The Monkey's car is in need of some TLC, too. His brakes act funny. We are fairly certain that the rotors are warped. We've only replaced the pads one time on his car (versus the four times we've replaced mine due to faulty calipers). He also needs an alignment (again, free) and an oil change. He also needs new tires. The set he's riding around on now are terribly bald. But we don't have the money for tires just now. Thank goodness he works about two miles from home, eh?

So now it's time to go pick up my car. I'm interested to see how much different it performs after being serviced. It's probably psychosomatic but I always feel like my car runs better when it's just been serviced or washed and detailed. :P

a visit from the money fairy!

So, after much annoyance, The Monkey finally had some free time to call and talk to his previous employer's corporate office regarding his W2. Thankfully we didn't have to wait for the damn thing to come in the mail because they had it setup online. Hooray! Since I had all of our other documents readily on hand, I spent an hour this afternoon filing our taxes using TaxACT.com. (A very good service for those of you that file yourself. I paid $16.95 for the 'deluxe' service and they e-filed both our federal and state return, both of which will be direct deposited into our bank account in a couple of weeks!)

I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by our refund amount. Before I entered The Monkey's unemployment income we were already getting over $2,000 back! After I entered the unemployment we were still at $1,300 and I hadn't even entered my education stuff yet! Hoorah! So the grand total for our Federal return this year is going to be about $2,000. About half of what we got last year but I'm not going to complain considering we didn't pay ANY tax on The Monkey's unemployment for 33 weeks!

So then I went on to enter all of our state information. For the past two years we have owed the state of Alabama so I was expecting as much this year especially because of the unemployment income. So la di da... I plugged in all of the numbers and TaxACT did its magic and it said we are getting a REFUND from the state of Alabama this year! Baffled, I ran through everything again. And again. And checked just one more time to make sure it wasn't a fluke. Nope! We are getting about $300 back from the state on top of the $2,000 from Federal. Hoorah!! No more empty savings account! I could even pay off my car, I believe, and still have about $200 left over. But I'm not so sure I want to do that. We started out on this unemployment "adventure" with $3,500 in the savings account and now it is down to $0. We fell back on that money quite a bit, it seems. (Of course, we do a lot of frivilous spending thinking we would have a real income a lot sooner than we did. And I haven't done any real budgeting since the beginning.) However, I'm not planning on being so careless with our chunk o' change this year. Oh oh!! And and and!!! I got an email from my school saying that a refund (!!!) check is in the mail for $976! Yeah, okay, that is Student Loan money but we can definitely USE it. PLUS I thought I owed the school money and was not, by any means, expecting a freaking REFUND! So now I get to call the school tomorrow and register for my next classes -- MY LAST THREE CLASSES UNTIL I GRADUATE!!

So, yeah, this was a happy happy news day!

But now I must go lie down before I fall over from the Lunesta I took about 20 minutes ago.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Lissa and the Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

My day started off with my usual three mile walk. As per the norm, I clipped my [brand new] cell phone to the inside of my hoodie pocket. Somehow, someway, I managed to knock it out and it went clattering onto the asphalt. While the new faceplate did take the brunt of the fall, my poor [brand new] Voyager is already scratched.

Damnit.

I got over that fairly quickly only to have the dumb ass working the Arby's drive-thru hand me a bag that was too small for the food I ordered out the drive-thru window, ripping the bag in the process. I would have asked nicely for a new bag but I was already late picking up The Monkey for lunch so I said screw it. Long story short, all but a third of The Monkey's curly fries wound up on the floor board. Then, when I was attempting to clean up the mess my Diet Dr. Pepper sprung open covering my console and my entire right side in the thankfully un-sticky mess. Come to find out the lid that the dumb ass working the drive-thru gave me was cracked and popped loose when I leaned over to clean up the fries.

Mother f*ckers!

I was grouchy all through lunch. Poor Monkey. I managed to get my anger in check with a nice, long, scalding hot shower. Nothing like near-burning your skin to bring about a nice 'warm fuzziness'. (Now I remmeber why I always used to self injure the worst when I was angry -- there's just something about physical pain that dissolves all the emotional GUNK away.) So, in a slightly better mood, I started on my makeup. I was almost finished and went to sit on the bed to put my socks on when I noticed Jasmine lounging peacefully. I pet her on the head and she looked up at me lazily and started purring. Then she got up and stretched then plopped precariously onto her back revealing a nice hole in her tummy. It wasn't bleeding so I contemplated going to Walgreens and picking up some butterfly stitches to hold the skin together and wrapping her in an ACE bandage. In the mean time, I decided the best course of action would be to put her in the kennel and call the vet that did her surgery. Which I did and I tried futilely for a half hour. As it was already dangerously close to 5:00 PM I went ahead and called a local vet instead. They said to bring her in.

Half an hour later (after the poor kitty was poked and prodded and weighed and violated with the butt thermometer) they determined that she needed to be resutured and to do so they had to anesthize her again. I walked out with a semi-healthy cat, $160 poorer. Needless to say, I was not happy. This time around they put a lampshade collar on her to keep her from chewing out these sutures. She has to wear it for a week. I am so pissed that the vet didn't do this initially but the girl said it's really not a standard practice for cats. I didn't have this problem with Olivia or William when they got fixed and declawed so this was really unexpected. Thank heavens the vet accepts Care Credit although now we went from having $0 balances on all but one of our credit cards to only having a $0 balance on one. I'm waiting for something to happen to one of my or The Monkey's tires. Then we'll have a $0 balance on none.



She looks pretty pissed, huh?



Poor kitty!

I am very irritated with this whole situation and having to pay $160 that we really do not have. My sister has been talking about the electric and water bills a lot more lately and I feel like she's hinting around wanting us to chip in. I feel like shit that we really don't have the extra cash to chip in. I thought about giving her some money when we get our tax return but The Monkey STILL hasn't gotten his W2 yet. ARRRGH! Depending on how much we get back, I'd like to throw at least $300 my sister's way. I know it's really not much but there's not much else we can do. We're going to need that money to fall back on for other things. Like groceries. I do not like living like this. I do not want to live like this. I do not want to be sitting at my computer wearing gloves with a blanket draped over me just to keep from freezing. I do not like feeling USELESS and WORTHLESS and POINTLESS all. the. freaking. time. I am tired of the mood swings. I am already sick and tired of the meds and how the Lithium makes my stomach feel like it is in a perpetual knot and I hate that even the micro-dose of Zyprexa has me sleeping 12 hours against my will. (I won't even go in on the food cravings and how my weight is not BUDGING even though I am doing my best to eat less, drink more water, and exercise daily.)

On my to-do list this week:

1. Start looking into getting paid to blog. Since I do it almost daily anyway, why not try to make some extra cash?? Even an extra $100 a month would be a huge help at this point.


2. Find out whether or not we qualify for any other assistance while we're waiting for my SSD appeal.


3. Call my school and see about getting them to credit back the finance charges they tacked onto my bill. (I owe them around $200, they charged me finance charges for for the $6,000+ that was on my account for two months because my student loans too almost the entire semester to post to my account. I am NOT paying interest on $6,000+ dollars!!)


4. See what I can do about registering for next semester -- hopefully my FINAL semester.


5. Try to think of good reasons to keep on living.

On top of everything else, I caught my niece's cold. So now I'm stuffy, sneezy, achey, blah blah blah...

Now I am going to get off of this thing so The Monkey can play WarCrack for a little while and I'm going to attempt to give myself carpel tunnel from playing Guitar Hero on Hyperspeed.

ride the walrus!

I've been riding a nice steady wave of mild hypomania for days. It broke briefly on my birthday during which I sobbed uncontrollably for an hour before pasting a fake smile on my face long enough for my husband, sister and family to sing me happy birthday and eat cake and icecream. I must say that it's a pleasant change from my 'norm' which tends more toward depressive states rittled with anxiety and aggression/irritibility.

I did something kinda, sorta stupid today. I went shopping. ACK! I had a nice time with my sister, though. I woke up super early (after only a few hours of sleep) and got dressed, primped and pressed for a day of shopping in Dothan. We hit up Target first (hooray for Starbucks!) and then we went to Kohl's, Walmart, Old Navy, and the mall. Honestly, as far as manic-fueled shopping sprees go, this one was pretty tame. I found some PJs on sale at Target, a car charger for my iPod for $5 bucks, and two three packs of Argyle socks for $6 bucks each at Target. I followed my sister around in Kohl's and managed to distract myself from their massive pre-Christmas everything sale (jewelry, clothes, and shoes... oh my!) by playing the hand-held game 20Q - TV Edition. In Walmart I found a pair of Happy Bunny fleece PJs but managed to talk myself out of them. In Old Navy - my infinite weakness because I love their clothes AND I have an Old Navy credit card - I managed to walk out only spending $10 on a really cute long-sleeved t-shirt. What can I say, it was on sale, and the last one they had and it just so happened to be in my size. It was totally meant to be, damnit! I was doing fabulously well controlling myself in the mall until we went into Pacific Sun. On the surface, it appears to be a skinny-girl store but their XL tops actually fit me! So, I wound up buying four v-neck long sleeved t-shirts there, too. They were only $6 bucks a piece so it really wasn't a horrible expenditure either. All in all, I spent around $55 bucks, total.

Try as I may, I have been completely unable to find a bathrobe ANYWHERE. I looked in Target, Walmart, Kohl's, JC Penney's, Old Navy, and Dillards and all I can manage to find are fleece house coats! UGH. I want a bathrobe made of terry cloth so I can throw it on right out of the shower while I'm still wet and use it as nature intended -- as a robe-shaped bath towel. My current bathrobe is falling apart and doesn't quite close around my body since I've gained about 20 pounds since Tony bought it for me. But whatever.

Shopping isn't quite finished. I didn't get any Christmas shopping done today, unfortunately. I think I'm going to buy my sister a couple of belly rings, my mom a couple of Urban Decay eyeshadows, my niece some pajamas (at her request), my nephew a DVD (The Dark Knight), my other nephew a Nirvana hoodie, The Monkey World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King and a new 60 game pass, Madison a toy or an outfit, and my dad a gift card. I'll have to consult with my sister to figure out something for my BIL. Oy.

In other news, I found a couple of my good friends from High School on Facebook yesterday! I was freaking ecstatic to finally get in touch with them after more than five years! I didn't have many friends in High School but the few that I did have were really wonderful and it's nice to be in touch with them after all these years.

Hmm. Time to go lie down and curl up under the covers. It's freaking COLD out tonight! Very windy with some rain. Not bad holiday weather for LA ('Lower Alabama'). Tomorrow is Friday (already!) and I need to buckle down and knock out my homework so I can clear my schedule for finals this coming week. Thank goodness we have a two week break after these classes! It's definitely needed.

I hope I can sleep tonight. I have a sneaking suspicion that my hypomanic 'wave' is being fueled by sleep deprivation. :-P

therapy 101

So my session yesterday wasn't too bad. I really wasn't feeling particularly down anymore and it's so hard to say "I was feeling depressed two days ago, but now I feel okay." without feeling like a complete moron. But I told her anyway and, if necessary, we'll look at shifting some meds around. I'm hoping restarting the Topamax will be the ultimate "boost" that I need to stay moodswing free for a while at least.

We also discussed TTC. She stays up on that because that is the primary reason I started going to therapy. I was just tired of being so bitter towards other women. Anyhow, we talked about a few different things and then she brought up that she has another patient that has been TTC for about seven years. So now she's looking into starting a support group for infertile women! I'm very excited! It may take a while but the prospect of meeting people that are going through the same thing I am is really encouraging. Not that I'd wish IF on anyone, but it's nice to know you're not alone. I have all my online friends and I love and appreciate you very much, but nothing compares to having someone to talk to IRL. (If I lived closer to Birmingham, this wouldn't be a problem. [le sigh])

In other news, school is stressing me out to no end. This class is a lot harder than I expected. Hmmph. Programming can bite me, I just want to get to the web developing!! My next class is going to be my second and final math class. That should be a nice eight weeks. (It's all self-paced so I could finish it in two weeks and have six weeks off! Or something similar, you get the picture.) Following that I'll be taking either Biology or Astronomy. I haven't decided which. I'm leaning more towards Biology because I'm good at Biology. But Astronomy seems so interesting and I love looking at the stars. So I guess we'll see.

I also need to do my FAFSA which means I need to file our taxes. Tony and I both got our W2s back so it's time! If the 2007 H&R Block Tax Estimator is right, we'll be getting around $4,000 back this year. w00t w00t! This excites me to no end. We are going to get a new mattress and box spring, pay off the WaMu credit card and still have some money left over. Hooray! I'm really looking forward to being mostly debt free again.