So, I'm sitting at my current fave coffee shop (independently owned, amazing and chewy homemade granola bars, free wifi, and well, cupcake happy hour), working on a paper -- yes, due today -- for a course I just finished, titled Rabbinic Anthropology. I loved this class, and it was super to end the year in an intensive seminar that just evoked for me so much happiness and gratitude to be in this school. Because the paper topic is one that addresses Big Questions rather than a more concrete/detailed topic,  it feels like a coda to the whole year, though I'm no Beethoven.

Besides, in theory it keeps me distracted from Wondering.

hope springs eternal

Alas, lovely crampishness does not always a baby make. So, today it was on to IUI #8 -- H came along with me (and oy, we left her unknowing daughter in the waiting room!), and once again I'm in the land of the hopeful. Afterward, the three of us went to my favorite place for pizza, took a walk on the beach, drove up to Boston, and had a sweet little Memorial Day bbq with friends. Had some sangria as well, because we were with friends who conceived on the night of having had too many cosmopolitans. In the alcohol department, I actually had quite little, but it was part of this month's round of superstitious fertility tricks. So for now I'm on to drinking lots of water, trying to eat well, and walk lots to encourage greater svelteness followed by pregnancy. That's the hope.

sunday morning

pregnancy progress update: I have been having lovely crampishness and some calf pain, which a couple of my cyberfriends in fertilityland have said were early signs of pregnancy for them. so I'm being cautiously hopeful...

in other news, I am at H's house (new gf), where I have just committed to an exclusive datingship. it's been over 2 months, so it's definitely time. it's very nice to have a wonderful person to be with. and it's a nice plus that she also made me coffee this morning!

my plans for the day are very exciting: read a book by AJ Heschel (Who Is Man) and a couple of articles for a two-week intensive class that will finish out the semester. Actually, this class ends the day after the end-of- year party... Alas. But then it will be summer, and I am hoping to write a megillah (scroll of Esther) and kayak, and perhaps do some bartending and/or some internship-type of work. 

lots of eggs

so, this is the sixth time with my preferred donor -- did one in between with a spur-of-the-moment donor, and I'm actually glad it didn't work. no drama, just that I preferred My Guy. I did an IUI yesterday, preceded by an ultrasound peek at the follicles and a trigger shot. I LOVE the trigger shot. There's nothing like knowing exactly when I'm ovulating. Did I really just say that? Ovulation timing has become my most exciting activity? um, yes. (especially since I'd taken 100 mg of Clomid -- moved through that fear -- and had several nice big friendly follicles just waiting to be my child.)

I also had an acupuncture appointment early yesterday evening, then promptly went to buy fertility foods that I'd not yet tried: pineapple in two forms, sardines, brazil nuts, whole milk yogurt.  and I ate an egg. with it being Passover, I have plenty of hard-boiled eggs in the fridge! and because I was following a Highly Scientific Theory of Someone's Embryologist, I had an Egg McMuffin (despite it being Passover) yesterday morning, before the IUI. I will also have another couple next week during the possible implantation days.

meanwhile, I'm waiting -- reading about what's happening with my cyber babymaking friends, and hoping every moment for fertility fortune to smile upon me.

very winter

ok, so the third time wasn't the charm. if it had been, I would have had an embryo made almost completely of persimmons -- my last few weeks in Jerusalem, I must have eaten about 30 persimmons, which were a total delight. I'm now back home in Providence, where the fruit selection does not include guava, dragonfruit, or persimmons, but where my apartment does have central heating, so I'll go with that for now.

On the reproductive front, IUI #5 was this past Tuesday, and I'm now in the (what feels like a 5-month-long) two-week-wait. New developments this time: a friend came with me (I decided that yes, I'd faced the being a single parent thing, and it would be nice to have her company), and also I am now doing a little hormonal support. :) 

I had a little fantasy that I'd be going on lots of wintry hikes when I got back here, but frankly, it's been more cold than inspiring; combined with a serious Winter Cold, I'm basically indoors. Hiking will have to commence once the temperature thaws a bit. In the meantime, I've decided that I will watch all of Sex and the City -- no, I'd never seen ANY episode before this week -- as my winter entertainment. So far: one season down, 5 to go.

turkey baster baby?

so, it's a little embarrassing that it was my mother who put together this week's pregnancy pursuit with this week's pilgrim pursuit, but there it is. last month, the angels of conception were not so thrilled with my 6-hour hike in the Negev. I thought it was a very spiritual way to start a little life; they apparently did not.

so tomorrow is my third time (please be the charm) -- and not only is it cool in some general family sense to do this on the holiday of family gatherings, but for my particular family, Thanksgiving is the #1 holiday. e.g. my last 40 thanksgivings (which is all of them), I have spent with all of my relatives at my parents' house -- both sides of my family. yes, there are individuals and/or the cousins now in Texas who don't always make it, but if I were to say that my Thanksgiving is a family affair of about 50 people, that would be about right. so, as I am 5,000 miles away in Jerusalem, I find myself missing Thanksgiving for the first time in my life -- but for the fabulous opportunity to conceive in Jerusalem.

so, I'm happy about that -- couldn't really ask for better family karma -- and while I will so much miss cutting all the carrots, roasting the vegetables, pouring the juice into the same pitchers as they've been poured into for decades (apple, cran, tomato), putting the cloth napkins in the silver biscuit box for the pretzels, snitching bits of turkey while my dad carves it, asking my mom up the stairs how again I make the gravy, leaning against the kitchen counter and talking with my aunts and uncles -- I can tell that I'm beginning to get more concerned that it will go off without a hitch, without me even there.

ah life. can't have everything.

if a train leaves the station...

So if I'm sitting in the Hadassah Hospital Women's Clinic (in Jerusalem), studying Talmud (for the class I am concurrently missing) while waiting to have an ultrasound, and a very regular-looking Jewish guy says 'behatzl'cha' (good luck/success)-- is he referring to my reproduction project or my Talmud study? I decide to take it as a double helping of hatzl'cha.

I started this blog at the inspired suggestion of Rachel Pepper (The Ultimate Guide to Pregnancy for Lesbians) -- she's on blog-hiatus, and this seems just slightly less ridiculous than Googling 'cervical mucus' yet again in an attempt to bring forth the angels of conception.