(Part Two) The Holiday

Our much anticipated holiday went surprisingly well, considering how much pressure was riding on the first few hours after introductions were made.

Travelling was the first hurdle.  Though A and I have always been close and communicate easily, traveling together seems to bring out the worst in us for some reason and long-haul flights with transfers wasn't something we were looking forward to.  We managed to get a day to ourselves before traveling which gave us plenty of time to reconnect after a week of clashing schedules and to put into place our contingency plans for dealing with the inevitable tensions that would come up during the long journey ahead.  Thankfully, we made it to Peru without incident: our flights were on time, our baggage was easy to re-check and we were able to locate our way around the large international airports with little difficulty.

As we entered arrivals, A's father came up to meet us and, I admit, I actually felt pretty nervous at that moment.  Based on what I had been told about A's father, a conservative, traditional man, I had pictured...well, I'm not sure what I had pictured but it came as a pleasant surprise when he came right up to me and embraced me with a hearty sincerity. And so I came to know Peru. A slightly conservative country still, with a big heart. Everybody I was introduced to that day had a warm hug and kiss for me.
After breakfast, we started in on unpacking the suitcases in the room that was to be ours for the month.  A explained that she used to share it with her younger sister and regaled me with stories from their mischievous teen years as we worked.  It was a pleasant morning and after a while, some of the family came to keep us company.  Her younger brother, who I had already met back when he was living in Spain, came in to tell us that he was getting married the following Saturday afternoon.

So the first week we were there was a flurry of organising for the wedding and A and I did very little exploring.  There wasn't much need to stray far in the first few days anyway, with the market just around the corner and fresh cooked food available on almost every street corner.  The food in Peru is a rich and satisfying cuisine with native dishes originating from the Incas as well as others influenced by Spain, Italy, China and Africa. A's mother is a great cook and continued to amaze us with traditional Peruvian dishes.  She made papa a la huancaina several times during our visit, once she knew it was a particular favourite of mine.  The day after we arrived, A's father went to visit his mother in the sierra for a week and on his return, proudly presented us with two fresh cuy (guinea pigs) which A's mother cooked and served to much fanfare (suffice it to say, it does not taste like chicken)  There were some short excursions that week.  We took in a couple of harbour boat tours and saw lima by night with a local tour bus company.

The wedding ceremony and reception were held in the restaurant next door to A's parents' house (which is space A's parents are renting out to the business) and lasted till after sunrise.  A few days after the wedding, the new couple announced they were expecting. I got my period that evening, We had a low period at this point and this was probably a large influence on what happened next.

Whilst we were there, we had been looking at different areas of Lima with regards to moving to Peru in the future.  Its a vibrant city and we found lots of positive points for each of the areas we considered; Miraflores, for example, has a large ex-pat population and would be a great place to set up a little English style cafe (quite easy to do with how informal things are there) although it´s also the ´tourist´ area of the city and so the most expensive. Barranco is probably our favourite area; the architecture and parks are beautiful. Not to mention that it´s a stone´s throw from the beach.  A few days after the wedding, just before Christmas, A's father took us to view the land he's building a house on.  It's right by the sea with beautiful views of the surrounding hills and an expressway just a few streets away. A and I enquired how much it was for a plot on the other side of the industrial park and well...we bought a plot.

Because everything is so informal there, we had to pay cash for the land, notary, etc and A's parents helped us with a cash loan.  The plot we chose is in the middle of a street and almost the highest row on the side of a tall hill.  We are in love with the location.  Behind us, there's a road, a row more of houses and then it gives way to trees and the higher slopes. We can't wait to start building. The area is more advanced than where her father's plot is located - water is already available and we hope to have access to electricity within the first year - and the best part is we are also lucky enough to have A's father around to help, both with labour and contacts, as he is a builder by trade.

So this year, we'll be saving hard to pay A's parents back and to start building work when we move.  To this end, A and I have been taking a serious look at our finances.  We've both applied for jobs where we stand to increase our income and I'm investigating piece work in the area.  It's all go this year and the effort will be worth it; not only does it give us something else to focus on but it also gives me a way out from the job that seems to generate it's own stress and back luck on a daily basis, which can't be good for TTC.  This is part one of our Resolutions for 2014.  

Part two is diet.  Whilst ours aren't especially bad, there is still room for improvement.  A and I have made separate specific resolutions in this area.  Mine are to give up chocolate and reduce the number of times a week I skip meals.  Both are fertility necessities that I've struggled to keep to before.  I brushed up on Low Gi foods after the PCO diagnosis and stopped keeping guilty treats in my locker at work but due to the demands of shift work, I have found it difficult to stop and eat a regular meal whilst I am at work.  The treats have started sneaking back into my diet.  A normal evening shift for me usually involves biscuits snatched from a pack I keep on the desk as I fly past, in lieu of breaks. The salt intake alone is wreaking havoc on my attempts to maintain a decent weight.  In the last couple of weeks though, I've implemented a do-not-disturb policy on my break times, managing to get in a good twenty minutes to eat before something pressing comes up. And whilst I haven't had a chocolate free week yet, due to the products already in our cupboards when we got home, the intake has been reduced to bare minimum and once it's finished (which will be soon) I will be going without *sigh*

And there it is. The Grand Venture 2014

(Part 1) Pre Holiday

And after the short intermission, we're back! These last couple of months have been pretty eventful so I'm going to have to do this in a two part post, with the second half posted tomorrow. This first half is basically just a long tale of me getting injured and finally slaying a dragon.

So what's new with us? As you've likely guessed, the pre-Christmas cycle didn't take. Counting our rainbows: we flew to Peru without having to deal with anything beyond meeting-the-parents nerves and I got to let my hair down for the duration of the holiday and try anything I wanted without questioning how it was cooked or if it contained any ingredients I should be avoiding.

Pre-holiday, I finally dealt with an issue that's been causing a lot of stress at work; namely the team manager. Don't get me wrong, when he wants to work, he can - on his terms. Most of the time, Dh (the name I'm using for him here) spends sitting in the office, reading, eating...you know the type.  Two weeks before we were due to leave for Peru, Dh was working night shifts to cover for a staff shortage. One evening, I ended up leaving the store in a very dark mood because of some things he had said, questioning my leadership role and how I motivated my team. He, the man who is well known for spending his shifts in the office, said this to me in front of members of my team and I was furious with him, not just for what he was saying about me in front of other staff but for how he was daring to imply my team was lazy, when three of those with me that night were indisputably the hardest workers in the store.

At that time of night, it gets very calm on the roads, easy for someone holding on to a lot of tension to turn their minds to other things and give them time to vent.  As I cycled home that night, I imagined various scenarios of how that conversation should have gone; what I should have said to him, what I so wanted to say to him. So intent was I on saying my piece that I forgot to pay attention to the road.  I felt the bike start to give under me as I moved over the curved surface at the edge of the road designed to control runoff.  I put out my foot, trying to catch the curb before I fell and missed it.  The road I was on was a large one, the outside lane I was using leading towards the nearby motorway.  As I fell, I felt a blind panic, my mind registering only two things: a white hot pain in my ankle and images of the usual traffic on that road: car, van, doubledecker megabus...Needless to say, I was very lucky things didn't end a lot worse that night - take this as a lesson, kiddies: Always give the road your full attention!

Despite my protesting ankle, I picked myself up and, after a few minutes of limping, cycled back home to where a warm bed eased most of my pains and stresses.  The next morning, I woke to an ballooning ankle and a relentless ache setting in to the wrist I had landed on.  Getting out of the bunk bed was especially difficult that morning and I cursed Dh with every step (even though I know it was my own fault for not paying attention to the road. I think I was still more shaken by what had happened than I cared to admit)
The doctor confirmed that neither were serious injuries. I'd aggravated an old injury - a jarred wrist that had not been given a chance to heal properly - and caused a slight sprain on my ankle (She assures me it would have been much worse had I been cycling the heavier electric bike that night.)  Being me, I was back at work before a week had passed and nothing more was said - I bit my tongue around Dh when I couldn't avoid him but inwardly, I was still seething. Red is not a pretty colour on me.

It came to a head on the first Tuesday morning back at work. I had locked up the store the previous night, as  there had been no delivery and I had sent the night crew home to be utilised when it came in in the morning.  There's a fair amount of work goes into a lock down so we try our best to avoid last minute ones - especially when you're starting the procedure an hour late and short staffed - but we managed it; and whilst I knew it wasn't perfect, I left knowing that it was in a reasonable condition.  I signed on and started a store walk with Dh to assess where we stood.  Once we were away from the general manager in the office, Dh turned to me on the stairs and said "First of all, I don't know what you were doing last night but when I walked in this morning, the store was a state.  Delivery didn't come in so you didn't have much to do and you had plenty of staff so there was no reason for me to find the store looking like this."  His first clue should have been the crack of my jaw as I clenched it.  As we started along the first aisle, he started in with picking fault "Right, this aisle was only given a cursory face-up, which is not good for a lockdown night. I know you're not as fast on your feet at the moment but there was plenty of staff here to help you.  And there's a lot of gaps here that you could have picked from the warehouse and had someone fill [...]"  As he carried on, I kept myself to single syllable answers in the same flat tone - he failed to notice the warning signs until half-way down the aisle, I finally had had enough.

"May I say something to defend myself now?" My tone brought his head up sharply and he nodded, folding his arms and drawing himself up to his full 6 feet.  Refusing to be intimidated, I let him have it.
"The team worked damn hard last night to get the store to this state.  Two of us working eight hour shifts without so much as a tea break.  And you know that despite this, had I had someone else to stay with me, I would have stayed till midnight facing up the store after hours in my own time.  If you care to look at my task list on the desk, you know that despite my sore ankle, I was running around this store last night catching up on not only my shift work but half of the previous shifts' tasks - yours!  Take a look at how much we made last night and look again at how many staff I had and then tell me we aren't pulling our weight. And while I've got you here, let's talk about where my motivation's supposed to come from.  How often do I start a shift in the middle of a busy lunch hour with no staff and the whole store needs facing up? How often do I start a shift and the waste needs scanning out? How often do I start a shift and the reductions haven't been touched and all chilled back ups need working before delivery arrives? How often do I start a shift and, despite all of this, you're sitting in the office playing a one-man game of thumb-wars?"
The answer to all of this is - three times a week!
All of this I said to him, right there on the shop floor, and more.  I let him know how I had injured myself because I had been so mad at him for what he had said the other night - and let him have it for that too.  After I'd run out of steam, he couldn't look at me. He shuffled his feet and said maybe we should cut the store walk there and he'd carry on with working the delivery.

I gained two extra staff at my next shift.

- Coming up : The Holiday!

It's the final countdown

It's the day before testing and cramps have set in. They started in my lower back and radiated towards my sides, which is how my worst periods always start. There's been a bit of discharge that might have been pinky but so far, we're keeping up the positive vibes and hoping our visit to Ireland imbued this try with some Irish luck.

A's hard at work and I have the evening lock-down shift so I'm keeping myself occupied with a steady stream of trashy teen shows - interspersed with youtube videos by 'the Piano Guys' (I'm going through a cello phase)

See you on the other side

10 days down...

It's a little over halfway through the two weeks wait and we've succeeded in keeping ourselves occupied.

At the weekend, we visited A's sister (who is now officially two weeks overdue.) As is traditional for us whenever we fly abroad, it started with a near-tears moment of stress. We had made it as far as the check-in desk when I realised that my printed boarding pass was in fact paperwork for our Peruvian Christmas. Ryan air is really strict about having your boarding pass with you when you check in.  It was either pay £70 (twice what the ticket cost) to have a new one printed or call the new lodger and ask him to drive across the city with less than an hour to spare.  In the end, we appealed to the young assistant manning the customer service desk. We got our boarding pass printed on the sly and then after all that excitement, headed for Starbucks - where, I regret to say, I succumbed to the siren call of caffeine. It wasn't the last time that weekend that we broke our pact to reduce caffeine, either.
We were only there for a day and two nights but it was nice to be spending time with family. They even took us out to a nice bar on Saturday night (my virgin mojito was made with lemonade, which I hadn't tried before. It was pretty good)

I've been trying to reduce my stress levels recently, after a friend pointed out that I was having some pretty near-miss catastrophes at work from being too distracted by other stresses (To be fair, that's more to do with the fact that our store breeds stress. On Monday for example, a cage of frozen delivery didn't get put away within it's allocated time and we lost nearly £100 of ice-cream - guess who had to answer for that) I'll admit that I may be wound a little tightly at the moment. Maybe it's that I'm aware of this try being the last until after the new year and I know it wasn't much of a pitch. Maybe it's that we're getting closer to our Peru holiday and I'm getting nervous about meeting A's parents - given that I'm the first girlfriend they've met (that they know of) - whilst they're still wrapping their heads around the idea that their daughter is gay. I don't know. I just know that on Tuesday, I was so wound up that I messed up making macaroni, resorting to straining the roux where I hadn't had to in years. I had a good cry over that; then pulled myself together before A came home. I even managed a giggle, as thoughts came to me of how close we had come to re-creating the scene from the 'Little Women' sequel, 'Good Wives,' in which poor John arrives home with company, unaware that his loving and dutiful wife has made a real wreck of the kitchen trying to make jam and is ready to blast anyone who dares ask how her day went.

And last night, we had a room change around. The new carpets that we have been bugging the landlord about finally arrived whilst I was at work.  When I arrived home, A and vecina had switched furniture between the living room and the lodgers' room. So now they have the bigger room but we have a private living room - which is better all round as I think all parties were starting to feel the strain of sharing that space.
A new wardrobe that we had arranged for the lodgers came a few hours afterwards but it had to be sent back, as it didn't so much resemble a wardrobe as a large box.  The fixtures were all missing.  There was a solution though(!)  When the alternative arrived, I had taken refuge in our new living room (which at this point still resembles a rubbish tip) and I could hear the guys trying to manoeuvre the wardrobe up the stairs from halfway across the flat. A told me later that it was clearly too big for the narrow stairway that leads up to our flat.  Did that stop four grown men from trying though?  This falls under the category of 'you can't tell men nuthin.' After ten minutes of trying(!), they decided between them that the best course of action was to take it apart and re-assemble it in the room.

Today is, thankfully, a day off. I had all weekend off, Tuesday off and a (slightly) less stressful daytime shift yesterday but I am still ridiculously grateful for a whole day to unwind. Between the mild nausea, cramps and breast tenderness coming on we can either expect a positive test next week or a particularly unpleasant period.

In which there is a day, an insemination and absolutely no reference to Henry Fielding

8:30 am, 11 November

Signs it's going to be a good day

* The radio greets us with Bon Jovi and the playlist just gets better from there
* More ewcm than I've had on any given morning in the last six months.
* The new lodgers are on their way out for work

- Sorry, if this is graphic btw but it seems to be the case that whilst you're ttc, you're so focused on the many amazing things your body is doing to prepare for baby that you sometimes forget that not everybody has the same endless fascination for mucus and follicles and linings.

14:00

A flurry of cleaning, a warm shower and then a cup of tea whilst waiting for A to get home from work. Nothing left to do this evening but pop in a movie and pour out the (non-alcoholic) mojitos.  R confirms he has finished class and is en-route.
-the new lodgers (vecino & vecina) return from work

22:30

After talking all evening and enjoying a fabulous dinner cooked by my very talented partner, R does his manly duty and heads home, leaving us to get down to business with the goods.  I should mention at this point that the bed we're currently using (whilst waiting for a new one to arrive) is a large bunk with a 'study' underneath. Every movement makes the bed sway and creak. The lodgers are in the next room. There were rounds of creaking, shushing and intermittent giggles but we got the job done. We even discovered that the bed is the perfect distance from the ceiling for me to prop my legs up and check out the pretty colours A had painted my nails for the occasion (she'd made me put my socks on as soon as they were dry and made me swear not to look)

So that's it. Our only insem attempt for this cycle. The Hail Mary Pass.

Wishing and hoping and praying

Due to Scheduling conflicts, we missed this cycle's O date.

Along with monitoring basal body temperature (bbt) and cervical mucus (cm) we've been using ovulation test sticks from around day ten of my cycle.  This cycle, there was no faint build up to the results line; one day the window was blank, the next it was a strong line. R, the donor, and I have some pretty tight schedules this week but he's going to try to meet us at the flat tomorrow. It seems a little like locking the barn door and all that...but at least it's a try.  For me, at least, the cycles we don't get to try hurt that little bit more than the negatives. Now we just have to figure out how to distract the new lodgers from the length of time R is spending in the bathroom. We've also been in contact with the group who cast our fertility spell at the start of summer to arrange a re-casting and hopefully a boost for our last try of the year (We'll be abroad for a month over Christmas and New Year, so we'll be skipping the December cycle and possibly January, depending on timing)

Things are a little sensitive at home with the impending birth of our nephew (A's sister's due date is this week) Either way, we will be visiting next weekend. A couple days in Ireland will be a pleasant change of scenery and maybe a nice distraction during the TWW - if we pull it off tomorrow.

And on it goes....

Halloween. The date we had chosen as test day for this 'magic' cycle. And although my period has come and gone, we are in a better place than we were at this point after last time. There's still a strange sense of suspended time hanging over the house though. It's like when you know there's rain coming - even when you have no need to leave the house, you still keep looking out the windows and wondering where it is. I keep looking at the cupboard thinking 'that period was pretty light/short..' I know how ridiculous it would be - taking a test after my period - but it's almost like I'm missing the closure of that negative.  Funny, that's what it was like waiting for my period last time. Maybe I need them both to make it real.  Managed to hold off taking it anyway.

Thinking of using the instead cup for next attempt although we're still debating weather to wait until after the new year to try again(not wanting to risk long-haul flights if I do get pregnant in the next couple cycles). Will continue to think these things over and distract ourselves with research.

In the meantime, Happy Hallowe'en to all who celebrate