Infertility Miscarriage Bracelet - My take on Infertility's Common Thread

You can read all about Infertility's Common Thread on a previous blog post. But, I thought I would change it up a bit to reflect a m/c as well as IF. Both suck, but having to deal with both of them TOTALLY sucks. So, I wanted to have one piece that represented both.

I went to the store and bought some beads. I looked for a charm that had tiny feet on it but really did not find anything. I was not looking to spend loads of money. I just wanted something inexpensive that I could do myself.

Even though the common thread color is supposed to be pomegranate, I thought the red was close enough. I added 2 sections of pink and blue beads to represent the two babies that I have lost. I also added the butterfly as I have heard that it is a symbol of fertility.



They really are nothing fancy. Just beads on a piece of elastic. But, I like it.

I have lots of extra beads and even some extra butterflies. If you want one, I will make you one and send it to you for free. Just leave me a comment or send me an e-mail at makeitgrandetc at yahoo dot com.

Maybe it will be a conversation starter. And like I have said before - Conversation Breeds Awareness.

I know - ENOUGH about the floors

I promise, this will be my last post about the floors.

I made a slide show of some of the before/after pics. I do not have a full set because we can not walk on the floors yet.

But, here you go:

Confirmation that a Pro should do floors

Here is direct confirmation that we should not do floors. Althought we thought we got a lot sanded, apparently we did not. Here are just two shots. They are in the order of Before - After we sanded for 8 hours - after a pro sanded for about 2 hours (OK, maybe 3).


So - you can totally tell that the job we did was basically crap. I am so glad we did not listen to my dad when he said that our job looked OK and that it would look fine if we just put poly over our sand job.


You will have to wait a few days until I post after pictures - we can't walk on the floors for a few days.

I have been tagged

I've been tagged by the best period jigger in all the land (LOL), and her blog is I would Diet for That

Here are the tag rules:
1. Link to the person who tagged you (i.e. me)
2. Post the rules on your blog
3. Write 6 random things about yourself
4. Tag 6 people at the end of your post and link to them
5. Let each person you have tagged know by leaving a comment on their blog
6. Let the tagger (me) know when your entry is posted.

I am going to try to post super random facts - I hope I can come up with 6 though - so here goes:

1 - I have the strangest sleeping habits. I wake up so quickly while dreaming that I think my dreams are real. I yell and scream and walk around. I talk to my husband about thinks in the room, and really think there are people living in my closet. When I was younger, my parents had to call the cops because I was convinced that someone was in my bedroom. The weirdest thing is - in the morning, I hardly ever remember these episodes. My husband knew about this before we got married - otherwise he would be in for a SHOCK!

2 - I have 2 uncles on my mother's side of the family that are grandparents to the same children. Yes, unusual - but not in an gross kind of way. One of my uncles married a women who had adult children. One of my cousins married one of those adult children. So their kids have grandparents who are biologically related.

3 - My legs do very weird things when I try to do a lunge. As in aerobics. You are correct, I have not done aerobics in YEARS - but it always seems to come up when alcohol is involved. This video (cheesy) shows how a lunge should look. But when I do it, my back legs goes completly BEHIND my front knee. I have NO control over this. When I try to go straight, my hip pops out of the socket. It is very unusual looking to say the least.

4 - I have 18 ear piercings, but I never wear any earings. I actually only have one pair of earings. I have 10 on one ear and 8 on the other ear - hey, it was cool to have uneven piercings. I took them all out when I started working in an office. For a while I would take them out everyday and then put them back in at night....then it was only on the weekend, then it was just one set, then somehow it just turned into never. I am a very low maintence person, so if I had a pair that I could just never take out, well then I would probably wear them more often.

5 - I have had so many different hair colors over the years. I have been dying my hair since I was 18 years old. And even before that, I am sure I used sun-in or clearisil to bleach my hair. I have been doing it for so long that I am not even sure what my actual color is - except for all the gray. I have been many different shades of red, couple shades of brown and WAY too many shades of blonde. I like blonde the best, I guess, it is what I always go back to. My natual color is gross - kind of a mouse very dark blonde - well, at least that is what the non gray parts of my roots are :)

6 - This one is not for me, but my mom (and some of her siblings). In my uncles local paper, every week they post a random picture of a "secret shopper". A grocery store takes a pictures of some random person in the store and post the picture in the newspaper. If you see yourself you can go into the store and get some kind of prize. Well, my uncle saw a picture of an older man that looks JUST like my grandfather. But, my grandfather passed away about 10 years before the picture was posted - so we know for sure it is not him. My uncle copied it for his siblings and my mother still keeps the picture on her refridgerator. It is the funniest thing - it is a picture of a random person that she does not even know. It is sweet though.

7 - Ok I know I was only supposed to do 6, but this one just came to me - because my floors are getting sanded as we speak. I LOVE some interesting smells. I love the smell of sawdust, asphalt, & gasoline. Yeah, I know - weird right.

Who do I want to tag (that has not been tagged before)???? I have to think about that one.

I think we might do injectables

Talked with RE today, he does not think we should jump right to IVF. He thinks we might have better success if we try IUI with Injectables. He said my issue might be the meds I am taking, not the IUI. After all, the IUI is getting me pregnant.

I might be starting injectables with the next cycle. I just have to wait for my post D&C period and need to have all my other bloodwork come back ok.

I am Ok with not going to IVF - it is a big step from IUI. Even if the injectable cycle does not work for me, at least it will be a "practice" for IVF.

The doc will call me this afternoon with what I hope is my last beta. If the beta is zero then I can go in and do the rest of the RPL panel. He said that the results only take a few days. We have already done the tests that take a long time.

I might ask him to Rx the injectables for me now, so that I have them no matter when I get my period. I have to mail-order them. I would hate to not have them in time.

Oh - also - the genetic tests from the D&C were "normal" However, they can not tell if the tissues were from an embryo or from me. If the tissues were from me, of course they would be normal. Even though the results were normal, it is still possible that there was a genetic defect with the embryo.

So - we move foward from here.

UPDATE: RE Called, beta is down to zero. I will go in this week for the rest of the RPL panel.

DYI Refinish Hardwood Floors

We decided to try to refinish our hardwood floors ourselves. Many of our friends and family told us that it was a piece of cake and a great way to save loads of money.

I was all for hiring someone - I mean I really wanted professional results. But, I was willing to put in all the work and save lots of money.

So, here are my tips to DIY Refinish Hardwood floors.

1 - Know When NOT to DIY
Save your money as long as it takes until you can pay a professional. I really can not stress this enough. Even though we attempted to do this ourselves - we are bailing out. It is really a bigger project than we can handle. Maybe if our floors were not 100 years old, or covered in layers and layers of god know what - maybe we would have different feeling on the matter.

2 - Sanders
Rent the best sander out there. Do not believe when the guy at the rental place says that XYZ sander is just fine for residental use. Tell him you want the sander that the pros use. We started with an easy to use sander. It had 3 round disks and was in a triangle shape. This machine was easy to use and got a lot of the film and varnish off the floor. However, after 8 hours of sanding (with different grits) that is barely what was off the floor. Again, if the floor was not as old, maybe this would have been a great sander.

After a whole day of sanding, and our floor still looking like crap, we decided to rent the super pro sander. This sander is called an orbital or belt sander. The sander has a long wheel where the paper sits and it spins like a wheel. This sander worked GREAT!! It was harder to use than the first one, but you got used to it after a few passes - just start where the couch, etc will be.

We also rented an edger - this thing was HARD to use as it was so powerful that it had a mind of its own. It did not have rhyme or reason where or why it sanded. Plus, it was not a long handle type of thing, so you were either squatting, knelling, or on your knees.

3 -Knee Pads
Knee Pad???? - Yup, as much as you can't think about why or when you would need knee pads, trust me - you need them. It seemed like I was on my knees a lot. It was using the vac, using the edger, wiping up the dust, looking for staples or nails......I was on my knees all day. My knees are still red from yesterday.

So, beg, borrow, steal (OK - maybe not steal) - but get knee pads any way you can. Trust me it will be worth it in the end.

4 - No contacts, please
I usually wear contacts but decided not too because the amount of dirt. I am glad that I made that choice because I was still rubbing my eyes often.

5 - Pick your nose!
OK - now I am getting into the "personal" tips. But seriously - pick your nose and pick it often. We did not wear a face mask. Maybe if we did then this type would not be required. But the dirt in my nose was just gross. So, I figured the more I cleaned it out the better it was. And yes, I did try just blowing my nose. Picking was totally a better method.

6 - Dirt is GREAT for your skin
What the heck am I talking about???? Dirt can't be good for your skin. Well, I have to beg to differ. The amount of dirt on my face was totally gross. But let me tell you - when I took a shower and started cleaning my face - well the dirt was a great exfoliator!!! My skin was so smooth after the shower!. I might just bottle up some dirt and sell it as the next beauty secret!!

7 - Know when to call it quits.
First let me say that my neighbor is a floor guy. We got a quote from him last week - higher than others we got.

After sanding for 8 hours with a crappy sander, I told my husband that we should have floor guy (FG) come over and at least give us some info. I really wanted to know if this was going to be the best that we could get. I said that FG might be able to give us a tip on how to do it better or might even say we are doing it all wrong.

But - my husband is stubborn - even more so than me. He said, "no, lets just get the other machine"

We spent more money to rent 2 more machines and more money getting the paper for these machine. We worked for another 2+ hours today before my husband finally said, "This fucking sucks, we will sand for another 5 hours and still have the floors look like shit" - "Let's just throw in the towel and ask FG to do it." - "Maybe since we did some of the work he will knock off a few bucks"

So in the end we will have paid about $200 for rental fees and paper used. We are able to return anything that we don't use.

So, if we can knock off a few bucks form FG's price, then it will basically equal what it would have been if we jujst went with FG in the first place.

I feel so defeated. I really thought this would be much easier. Again, if our floors were in OK shape and maybe were not over 100 years old, well then it may be a different story. But with the edger so hard to use, the marks where the sanding is uneven, the hallway that has to be done by hand because it is too narrow for the machine, and the fact the our bodies are HURTING, we are throwing in the towel and getting a pro to do the floors.

We will stick to DIY projects that are annoying - but do-able (aka painting the stairs)

I will post pictures our our sanding job and then pictures of the FG's sanding. I am just hoping that it can be done this week!!!

OK - some house news

Things have been CRAZY around here and I have been slacking in the house updates. The past two days I have been painting my stairs. We originally were going to strip them and then stain them to match the adjoining wood trim. This proved to be a bigger job because we could not get stain to match the 100 year old wood trim.

Myhusband is not a fan of painted wood in a brown shade - he is OK with white, but feels that if you have dark wood, it should be stained not painted.

But, that proved to be our best option. We were not about to strip all the woodwork when it is in good shape and has never been painted. Half the house has the original trim in the original color (well aged color)

After searching high and low, we (that means I) found a paint that is SO SO SO close to the trim where the stairs meet. So, I painted the steps and the baseboard this dark brown and the spindles white - well actually I only primed them so far, but you get the idea. I also primed the "kickplates" - I don't even know if that is the right term.

I only have a true before picture - which has carpet. i should have taken a picture of the stairs after I tore up the carpet - but use your imagination. The stairs were ugly - has several shades of stain, paint, etc and the kicks were a yellow beige kind of color.

Here are some pictures: