Just A Little Off Kilter....

Hissy fit - noun A sudden outburst of temper, often used to describe female anger at something trivial. Originally regional from American South. Thought to originate from contraction of "hysterical fit." example: She threw a hissy fit when she pulled out an OPK from the drawer last night. This is exactly what I did. I'm not proud of it but I'm also not ashamed to admit it.  Last night was cycle day 10 and seeing as we are once again going to give the "Sperm meets Egg" plan another go (It did kinda, sorta work last month) it was time to start using OPK's. I'm note sure what set me off exactly...but after pulling open that bottom drawer and ripping the package open...it happened....I lost it.  I stood there for a moment... and then... I stomped and cried... and cried and stomped. That's right...I threw a big ol' hissy fit...and you know what?  It was perhaps just the release I needed. This morning I woke ...

Pretty cool how you can turn cotton into delicious candy or a totally comfortable shirt to wear. Southern Photography cotton plant field farm postcard by  brandMOJOimages   via Etsy

I went for a walk last night to try and clear my head and relax a little (lately this has been so very, very hard to do) and I discovered something about myself that I believe I've always known but perhaps never wanted to admit... I like to look in other people’s windows. Not in a creepy way. I don’t stand outside all night long with binoculars. When I see a light on and the shades drawn, I keep walking (slowly). But I cast one long hard stare as I'm passing, memorizing every detail that I can. I file it all away in my memory bank, building an archive of the way others live. Is that gentleman on the phone with his mother? His mistress? Probably his mistress. Is the blond yogi cooking tofu again tonight? Mrs. Blueroom is dating someone new, I see. I also like to mentally rate each visible room’s decor. Bad red leather couch, Old Man with Walker playing piano. Little lady on Medhurst could benefit from an area rug. If the resident of house number 554 on the street around t...

Thank you for all of the lovely messages of support. It means the world to me...it really does. I'm grateful for the bonds of friendship that this blog has afforded me. How fortunate I am in life is never lost on me....even when I'm at my lowest low.  I'd also like to give a huge thank you to Alexis over at Our Journey Through This Lovely Life and Lauren over at Your Precious Love for the lovely nomination for the Liebster Award. Ladies...I promise I will get to this!  R & M who are very, very good friends (I consider them a part of our family) of ours also deserve a thank you. They made the trek from Toronto to Ottawa to hang out and spend the weekend with us. They were here to celebrate Adam's 36th Birthday. We had a great time. They have two lovely little goonies 7 and 9 years old and M is 32 weeks pregnant with her third. Seeing their goofy smiling faces and M's belly...well...it made me happy and it helped to ease the pain of losing my Nanny. I ma...

My grandmother died today. Her pain has ended and ours has just begun. I was not able to be with her but I take comfort in the fact that my mother was able to be with her mother in those last moments. I'm going to believe that Nanny was able to hold her daughters hand and know that she was there with her and that through my mother, nanny felt the love we grandchildren and great grandchildren had for her. This is what I'm taking comfort in believing. Since that phone call from my dad this morning, I've been sneaking off into a corner to cry and at times, the thought that I will not ever be able to see her again makes me desperate. Moreover, I can't shake off this feeling of guilt that insistently lingers over me. I wish I had spent more time with her when she was still alive, I've missed out on so much. I know that this is a part of life. I know this...but knowing this doesn't make the pain any less intense.  I feel broken at the loss of another pregnancy ...

Have you ever dived head first off a cliff? Taken the plunge with full faith, in full flight, off a towering, rock encrusted precipice, hoping - trusting - that the warm, lapping ocean below will receive you and absorb you into it’s watery embrace...before transporting you weightlessly across the Sea of Love? It seems like madness, of course, diving from a cliff top with no guarantee of anything to break the fall (other than potentially rocky crags). It’s something we’d never contemplate with a rational mind. Yet love, with her coiling tendrils, has a way of entwining herself gently around our otherwise completely sensible minds, stitching up neurological pathways while infusing her seductive hormonal cocktail of oxytocin and dopamine – altering brain chemistry - until she has such a firm grip on the so-called rational mind that she’s then able to effortlessly pop it out like a coconut, leaving nothing but an empty, furry husk. After all, what place do logic and practicalities have whe...

If you don’t pretend you’re in a spaceship every time you walk through some automatic doors, you’re too mature for me.

Really? A dessert post? How lame am I? Wait...don't answer any of those questions. I figured that after the last few gloomy posts...I needed a rainbow and lollipops kinda post to lighten things up and hey...perhaps the couple of peoples that took the time out of their very busy schedules to send me an unkind message and then promptly leave my blog will feel better. I mean...it's not healthy to hang onto that kind of anger man and desserts makes everyone feel better. Don't they? Anywho...I have to confess something. I think I am addicted to brownies. Seriously! I've eaten so many variations of this silly dessert that it's a borderline obsession. Because I am a girl obsessed and I just can't leave them alone, I started stalking the Duncan Hines website. It's becoming a problem. But anyway...imagine my delight when I discovered that Duncan makes... Caramel Turtle brownies Chocolate marble swirl brownies C hocolate peanut butter browines.... the li...

Most of the time, in fact I would say 95% of the time I am quite happy and content. 4% of the time I am happy but my facial muscles don't tend to show this fact. That other 1% of the time yes I am feeling upset and sorry for myself.  Today is a 1% kind of day.  Given the circumstances of my current situation surely this is an acceptable deviation from the standard? Early this morning, I awoke to the intense cramps and bleeding that I knew was signalling the end to chemical pregnancy number two. Mercifully  I was only a couple of days late so I'm grateful that this is not going to be a long drawn out process. I have all these feelings about losing this early pregnancy and our struggle for baby JaAdam. I usually take these feelings and put them in the back of my mind and live my life because sometimes it feels like you can't actually deal with them and this is the best place to put them.  To hold them there I sort of build a dam,...

Seeing as I'm currently feeling rather blue and as a result of said blueness and Adam's absence this weekend (he's winter camping...silly boy) I've been sitting on the sofa curled under a blanket since o'dark stupid this morning, watching movie after movie. Combine that with the fact that I have an eye that makes me look like a vampire...I figured that I would finally cave and watch “Twilight”.  First of all, yes...I did read the book and I did know that essentially it was about a teen vampire falling for a normal teen. So I guess my first question is, was the film supposed to be hilarious? Because I think I laughed too much. My second question is why was 90% of the film tinted blue-green? Was someone unable to read the light meter? or what this just me? And I guess my most pressing question is… Why the frack was the vampire in high school? Homeboy looked straight-up 25. Look, I get that if Edward wasn't in high school then there would be no book...

I may be broken. I may be sad. But...I can still manage a smile or two  for Funny Face Friday!  Please try your best to ignore the "Eye of Sauron" My apology...it's not very nice to look at I know. I'd like to send a  huge thank you to Alexis from Our Journey Through This Lovely Life for the amazeballs mustache ! Alexis sent me the best package of treats and I'm grateful for her friendship. Alexis is also going though a chemical pregnancy so please head on over and send her some love.  Happy Weekend!

I debated on sharing this. I know that there is always someone struggling a little more than I am. Someone that doesn't have the same kind of fortune life that I have...But in life I try my best to be as honest and transparent a person as I can be and you lovely people that care enough to check in with me here are no exception.  In short...I'm hanging onto a life raft just keeping my head above water as the waves crash around me. I'm afraid that the next wave will rip the life raft from my grasp and I will be left all alone floating out into nothingness.    I am struggling. A couple of weeks ago I posted about our plans to try the " Sperm Meets Egg Plan ". It was a good plan. A plan I felt hopeful about. A plan I was sure was going to work. It did work.  I did get a little  pregnant.  I've been a  little  pregnant for a few days now and will be a little  pregnant for a few more days. Mercifully, I do hope that it is only ...

I saw a man at the beach yelling "Help, Shark, Help!!!" I just laughed, I knew that shark wasn't going to help him. Great White Shark sign by Castaway Halls via Etsy

Let me ask you something...when you email people, do you use curse words in your writing? Weird question, I know, but a hilarious (maybe only to me) survey was recently conducted by an email aggregate, and turns out...lots of people swear in their emails. And, taking things a step further, said aggregate, clearly never ones to shirk their duties as "researchers", discovered which curse words were the most popular in email in 2012.  Ready to find out? The most frequently emailed curse word is shit. I want to say I'm surprised, but, really, I'm not. Shit's just one of those words people use completely haphazardly, whereas the second most emailed word - f*#k - takes a nanosecond of premeditation to use and, more so, to type. Shit accounted for 41 percent of all emailed cuss words in 2012, whereas f*#k accounted for 37. Damn came in third at 15 percent, while bitch only made up 6 percent of swear words. They also found that the most popular emoticon of 2012 wa...

I wish that I was in Hawaii instead of the land of snow and ice! Have you ever been to Hawaii?

In November, Adam's cat Brick died at 14. It was sad. We miss him. I did not however think that we were ready for another cat just yet...until...going back to work after the holidays and coming home to an empty house every evening. It was time.  We had been on the lookout for someone giving kittens away and this proved much more difficult that I expected and I also was increasingly unhappy with the vibe that we were getting from these ads/people. So...we decided to go and "visit" the Ottawa Humane Society . The important word here is "visit" I in no way intended to adopt then and there, much less a cat and not a kitten.  The Ottawa Humane Society to put it quite simply...is amazing. We were very impressed by the calibre of people working there and the level of care that they provide. Ottawa is lucky to have them and I can't say enough good things about them! Please go visit their website. You too will be impressed. www.ottawahumane.ca Long story short...

Someone stole my mood ring... I don't know how I feel about that. Mood Meter Ring by M oshikoart  via Etsy 

Remember when... Not so long ago...back in the day when it was not unusual for neighbourhood kids to gather together and literally "play games", the one that was quite popular was "Hide and Seek". I wonder which part did you like better. I suppose it was the "hiding" part, right? I myself hated those times when I got to be the "It" especially when I end up doing it for several rounds. I just couldn't figure out where those rascals were. Obviously, the "hiding" part was the best one. You agree? We became so creative in finding those tight places the "It" would most likely not figure out! What is so intriguing about this "Hide and Seek" game is that it has actually ceased to be a mere child’s game. Full grown adults have not outgrown this game; it has become so much a part of their nature; the "hiding" part especially. What's the point of all of this you may be asking yourself? Well... It's Intern...

Over the last year, I have periodically come across the "Sperm Meets Egg Plan" as a method of getting pregnant. We now know that my tubes were blocked so "Sperm Meets Egg Plan" was never an option. IVF was our only shot at conceiving baby JaAdam. That was until...we changed clinics, lost our last two embryos in shipping and began to take a much closer look at things. It's amazing how a fresh set of eyes can change everything. After some additional testing it was decided that surgery to open my tubes was our best chance at getting pregnant so November 1st 2012, I had said surgery that resulted in two beautifully open tubes! Now making that baby was up to Adam and I alone. This was both exciting and scary. For months every cycle, every try had been timed and managed down to the smallest detail. We had the okay to start trying in December and we did but not all that faithfully. You see...I was terrified of a repeat of last Christmas. You know the one. The one...

Happy Weekend!

I stopped at Walmart on my way home to pick up an ovulation test kit and I happened across a display promoting these... This scenario for a commercial popped into my head... “I call purple!” is surely a line of dialogue for when they said commercial for these fun tampons. It will likely feature four 13 year-old girls running toward the box of tampons like it’s a box of One Directioners. Each girl will wear the color of the tampon they’ll be racing towards. These girls are stylish and the tampons are, too! I predict texting and laughing and Yellow Girl teasing Hot Pink Girl about Harry. But in the end, it’s just that. Teasing. Because these four girls are besties. Besties with style. And they’ve got the tampons to show it. They’ll protect each other just like these tampons will protect them. Things that are actually written on this print ad... Great protection just got better looking. Introducing this season’s hottest colors from U by Kotex. Break...

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather. This is what my font and back yard looks like...that's a lot of snow!

Well the sun has risen and set on this glorious New Year, again filled with possibilities. What will I achieve with the next 365 days? I believe the New Year is not a force by itself. It is a catalyst and we ourselves apply the force. For better or for the same as last year we drive the change in our lives. Look for what you want, not what you want to be free of. Help yourself, don’t rely on other people or a mystical force to do it all for you, yet be open to perceptions that may guide you. As I did last year I intend to start the year with a series of goals in mind. Some goals that I made this time last year, I met...others I did not but you know what? That's okay. I've learned that beating myself up over not meeting my own personal expectations does me no good at all. I am going to train myself to be better at letting things go. I hold on to feelings, thoughts and possessions that no longer serve me as I am now. This year I will learn to effectively release these things back...