I didn't blog yesterday because I had to do my writing class homework - reading 60 pages and writing 2 critiques. I obviously knew that I would be critiquing the work of others but when I applied for the workshop, I was so focused on being critiqued myself that I think I sort of forgot. In any case, it was pretty painless for homework.
Strangely, we were busier than ever this weekend in spite of the whole broken foot thing (speaking of which... I didn't enter this week's Photo Friday because I really couldn't think of anything tacky in our house - it would never be allowed in! Tacky gifts are quickly dicarded in our world. Only this morning did I realize what I could have done for the tackiness theme - Wes' funny broken-foot-shoe thing!). Probably it just felt like a lot to me because I was doing all the driving around whereas many driving errands like Home D*pot would normally be done by Wes alone. On the whole, we had a really good time - Saturday we drove around looking at different neighborhoods to decide whether we might someday want to live in them and Sunday we went to open houses in the areas we had deemed acceptable (the verdicts: Cobble Hill - of course; "Cobble Hill West" - maybe but only for a fabulous deal because the waterfront park isn't going to be done for another 10 years and no way we'll be able to stay in one place that long; DUMBO - gives Bri panic attacks after an hour but otherwise fun; Red Hook - as much as we WISH we were the kind of people who could move into an up-and-coming neighborhood and make a fortune on the real estate, we are really not and therefore we are not ready for Red Hook but Bri loves the proximity to cruise ships; Williamsburg - the only place where quality new development is happening and yet not at all green enough and entirely too full of aging hipsters (or, as NY mag calls them 'grups") wandering around at age 35 with their skateboards strapped to their hip messenger bags so, um, no; Boerum Hill and Downtown Brooklyn - fabulous in VERY specific blocks).
I love going to open houses but it's mostly for the nosiness factor. New York apartments are usually so small and close to one another that we spend a lot of time looking through windows as we walk around. It's nice to get a full sense of a place, to see what interesting things people have done with the classic brownstone layout, to make fun of those who have done nothing. Really, though, it's the disaster zone houses that really make our mouths water - our biggest dream is to get our hands on a house of our own that is in a great location but somehow cheap enough to allow us to do a complete modern overhaul on the thing. Yes, it is but a dream and we will have to wait at least one more rung up the property ladder before a brownstone (or its equivalent) is in the cards for us. So for now, we dream and we try to find a slightly more expensive and larger apartment for us to eventually move to.
We have "promised" ourselves that we won't move for another year, but sometimes it seems impossible to imagine another year in our current home. There are about a zillion things we love about our apartment - the totally unique layout and dramatic and extreme modernness, the backyard, the built-ins we have done - but sometimes they are totally not enough to make the barking acceptable. As mentioned before, we have a private backyard that is surrounded by the common backyard for the whole building. The dogs, however, cannot make the distinction between our private backyard and the yard surrounding it. The "big yard," as we call it, was recently landscaped and is now constantly visited by our neighbors. And the dogs bark like crazy almost every time someone goes out there. It is going to be a LONG summer. Most of all, though, I think we may just never be the type to get totally settled in a home - we love the thrill of the chase and the great fun of renovation and addition way too much and are always on the lookout for our next project.
Finding another home is practically a joke, though - it has to be bigger than 1200 square feet, have 3 bedrooms or the clear possibility to make a third, have a private outdoor space and not have common space surrounding our space, be in a neighborhood we like, and be in our price range. In all our exploration, we have seen almost no apartments that fit that bill. But considering we have an excellent place to live now and no rush to move (other than the crazy-making barking issue), we are in a great position and can have fun exploring.
On the anti-bitterness front, I am proud to report no further meltdowns and a fairly consistent good mood (OK - I lost my patience when trying to escape from DUMBO (the neighborhood, not the elephant) on Saturday and also during our second trip to L*we's). But on the whole I was pretty good. When looking at apartments, I managed to talk about the baby possibility without snorting or guffawing or making bitter angry comments. Old Bitter Me would have looked at that three bedroom and laughed heartily at the mere thought of her broken, pathetic body bringing life into the world, let alone into the overpriced and slightly scary Boerum Hill house. New Unbitter Me actually thought, "I wouldn't want to bring my baby home to THIS!" So you can see the improvement.
I have an appointment with the RE today for the Infertility Meeting. I don't anticipate much controversy or shock (unless my FSH or Estradiol levels were somehow weird) - I want Clomid and she's ready to dole it out. It will be the first time that I may mention my limits, though, and I think that's important. It's important that she know that there is a really high probability that this summer is our last hurrah at the baby game. If that means we may want to up the stakes a little with dosages or something, that needs to be talked about. I keep thinking she's going to.. what? laugh at me? yell at me?... when I tell her how very much we want to avoid twins, how that is one of the reasons for some of our limits. Her hallways are lined with pictures of twins and triplets, for heaven's sake, as any self-respecting RE's office would be. Most infertiles are itching for twins because they want two kids and twins means they don't have to go through this hell again. But we really *don't* want two kids. We have a (very big) kid. We intend to have just one more. Now obviously there are a lot of non-fertility-drug-related twins out there (hi J+M!) and even with no intervention it could happen. We understand that, obviously. If it happens, we will deal. And since my Dad apparently has a big thing for the cuteness of twins, I have a feeling it might be OK and Grandpa would come through when we couldn't make our mortgage payments because of double doses of preschool PLUS college tuitions all at once. But we are not interested in raising our twin risk a whole hell of a lot. No gonal-f IUI cycles for me. And the only way I could ever be convinced to do IVF is if they transferred just one embryo at a time. Do they even do that? It would seem incredibly silly, I think.
In any case, I think that by tonight we will have some sort of plan and that is good. And if all the timing issues work out, we are probably a go for one last unmedicated try, too (probably this weekend) - I went ahead and ordered old donor, trying to take advantage of the HSG enhanced fertility thing everyone raves about. I am trying not to snort after saying that. See, Old Bitter Me would be guffawing right about now - "HA! As if that could work for me! Pshaw!" But New UnBitter Me celebrates the great fertility of all those around her, of Spring (I actually planted all our flowerpots this weekend!), of another chance. Yes. She. Does. Really. I. Mean. It.
