This and That

The year so far has been really good, Alhamdulillah. Except for that bump in the road to our baby miracle, everything has been swell. Even that bump in the road has a silver lining. At least now I know what really is wrong with my uterus, tubes etc right?

DH surprised me with a Mini Clubman last Friday. It's not a present, mind you. I told him that I'd like to pay for it and I will. I've been wanting one for as long as I can remember and I know that he had been scouring the internet to find one with a good deal, and being the magician that he is, he found one! It's an electric blue beauty and is in a very good condition. The best part is that it's a 1979 Mini Clubman, the year I was born. Talk about being meant to be LOL. I've been driving it to work since I got it, and I love it love it love it! Got a few looks while driving it and one driver even rolled down his window and yelled, "nice car!" LOL

Isn't she gorgeous?

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Last week I had my performance review with boss, and the feedback that I got from him was good Alhamdulillah. I was told that he's very happy with my performance last year and that this year he wants me to take on a more leadership role. I say bring it on! I'm hoping to treat myself, DH, my family and my buttcheeks and BFFs this year with my bonus, so I'm hoping that my bonus will be really good this year. Plus, I need to deposit a few bucks in our IVF fund and I have to pay DH back for the Mini so there's that.
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Have you guys listened to Josh Groban's latest album "All The Echoes"? You haven't? Well, what are you waiting for? I've been waiting for so long for this new album to come out and my take on it is that it's well worth the wait. His voice is gorgeous. The songs are gorgeous. And he's good looking to boot!

Get it get it get it. You won't regret it

I saw the Grammys yesterday and there was quite a hype on this Ed Sheeran dude, so I'm gonna give his album a listen. I'm hoping it will live up to all the hype, and since the "singer/songwriter" genre is more of my cup of tea, as opposed to all the trash that's been on the airwave lately. Carly Rae Jepsen's Call Me Maybe was nominated for Song of the Year? Seriously? Granted, I'm probably a bit too old now to listen to those kinds of music :P

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Got my first shot of Diphereline for my endometriosis last Saturday. That plus the Metronidazole antibiotics that I'm taking is making me feel a wee bit wonky. Been having on and off headaches and a bit of nausea. Does anyone know of any home remedies for headache and nausea? I loathe the idea of taking paracetamol every time the headache and nausea hit me. Fun fact. Did you know that Diphereline is originally used for prostate cancer patients? Yikes!

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Since IVF is a no go until at least the end of the year, DH and I have decided to take a holiday. Our options are:

1. Jakarta (no brainer since BFF is moving there end of the month)

2. Japan (almost certain that we'll be going late this year)

3. Hong Kong (a trip with buttcheeks perhaps?)

Any other suggestions? Preferably in the Asia Pacific region. We'll talk about US and Europe in a couple of years LOL. 

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I'm currently reading this.

I only read the "chic lit" genre when I'm feeling blue and am in need of a good laugh and this book does the trick and hits all the right spots. It's laugh out loud funny and reminds me a bit of these books by Laura Wolf, which I read eons ago. 

What are you up to lately?

I'm Bored

It's year end and I'm sitting in an almost empty office with no pending work on my end and I've got Pink's album The Truth About Love blaring through my headphones. You should totally have a listen to the album by the way. I'm practically obsessed with it and that's saying something since I don't generally listen to pop albums. Favourite tracks: Try, The Great Escape, Just Give Me a Reason, Is This Thing On?, Blow Me (One Last Kiss)

Anyway, back to being bored. It's dangerous actually. It makes me browse the internet and when I browse the internet I usually go to online shopping sites, and when I go to online shopping sites, well you know what happens next.

Lately I've been visiting Etsy and Kwerkee a lot, to the point that I think I need to go for a rehab LOL. Anyway, I was browsing Etsy and for some reason I searched for baby stuff and I found some really adorable stuff. From baby rattles to onesies and from booties to jewelry  and I thought of surprising a few friends with presents for their new bundle of joys. I already bought some stuff at H&M for a friend who will be giving birth next month (see previous post) and now I'm on a roll! I can't seem to stop clicking "add to cart"! So I picked out a couple of stuff from Etsy for a couple of dear friends (whom I've never met) and had the presents sent over to them. These friends have been with me throughout my difficult and painful IVF journey and this is the only way I know how to thank them. I hope they will love the gifts as much as I loved picking them out for their little ones. One of the sellers will actually give 5% of the sale proceeds to a charity of my choice and I chose a charity which supports women with fertility issues. It felt really good after doing that. I mean, if only we had these kinds of charity here in Malaysia I think I'd jump on board.

Ok, I gotta go back to pretending that I'm busy with work LOL. Later!

Of Green Ogre and Jason Mraz

So something that never ever happened to me actually happened last week. I won a contest! And not just any contest. It's the Shrek The Musical contest where the price was four tickets to the show in KL. Hip hip hooray! I remember DH and I were at a coffee shop one weekend for breakfast and I was flipping the newspaper and saw the article on Shrek The Musical, and at the bottom was a column on the contest. I answered all the questions (the answers were all in the article) and thought nothing about it and then last Thursday i got an e-mail saying that I won the tickets!

The show was on Tuesday and I brought DH, my mom and dad along. I was actually waiting for my internal client to give me Jason Mraz tickets for his show, also last night, but I didn't hear a peep from him so I figured why waste perfectly good tickets (worth RM390 each by the way).

Pretty decent seats seats too!

I was riveted during the entire show. The cast was great. The music was great. The acting was great. The script was great. My favourite character would probably have to be Lord Farquaad. He was hilarious! What surprised me was how similar the voices of the characters in the musical with the actors in the movie. Donkey really sounded like Eddie Murphy! All in all everything was great and we had a really good time.

The stage from where we were sitting

Mama enjoyed it too and I thought she would. But Baba really surprised me. He's not the kind of guy who watches animated movies and I highly doubt that he has Shrek at the movies but I could tell that he was really into the whole thing.

Me & Mama

The next day hitz.fm was all abuzz with updates from the Jason Mraz concert on Tuesday night. I must say that I was a wee bit disappointed that I didn't get to go. I was looking forward to going actually, since my colleague told me that she would try her hardest to get me a couple of tickets, but alas, it wasn't meant to be. Anyway, if you haven't checked out Jason Mraz's latest album "Love Is A Four Letter Word", please do. You can thank me later.

I also started reading A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. I saw this book at my favourite bookstore and picked it up. I usually go for bestsellers but for some reason I was intrigued with this one. Apparently it's about a Harvard Professor who is actually a witch but does not want to have anything to do with sorcery. Oh and there's an "enigmatic" vampire thrown in there somewhere. Please don't make him sparkly. Shudder. I'm only up to page 15 and so far we have a good relationship, but we'll see how it pans out. Has anyone read this book? What do you think?

Much love,

Lovestrong

Working in a telco, and especially in a division which serves the whole company has its perks.  I knew Christina Perri was coming to KL and would be performing on Thursday night, and my colleague had been trying to get tickets since the Blue Telco is one of the official sponsors of the show. But, as it turned out my colleague suddenly fell sick and have been "out of commission" since Monday, and so I thought "there goes my chance of getting free tickets".

And then on Wednesday I got a call from one of my internal users asking me if I wanted to go. He said he had two complimentary tickets to the show, so hell yeah I wanna go! Funny thing is, I've only done one agreement with this particular user, so it came as a surprise when he called me up. Must remember to name him as one of my performance reviewers end of this year :P

Since one of my buttcheeks just got pregnant via IVF (yay!) I couldn't bring her along to the show so DH volunteered to go with me. I was afraid that he wouldn't enjoy the show as much since he doesn't really know Christina Perri's songs, but surprisingly he did!

So on Thursday I collected the tickets and after work DH picked me up and we drove to one of the parking lots near KL Live where she was to perform. We figured that walking a short distance to KL Live was better than sitting in traffic for an hour if we were to park our car at KL Live itself. It would have been a better idea if I was wearing my Fit Flops instead of my 2" heels LOL.

Yay!

When we got to KL Live we bumped into a friend who worked with one of the medias covering the show, and he pulled out two VIP tickets from his pocket and asked us if we wanted them, since he already had his media pass. What luck! 

We quickly made our way to the VIP entrance, and thank God we took the VIP tickets. Because KL Live was a pretty small venue, there were no seats and all the tickets were free standing tickets, but luckily for us the VIP section had seats! Plus there weren't that many people in the VIP section. Yay!!

Now on to the performance. My gosh, I have to say Christina Perri has pipes! She sang most of her songs from her Lovestrong album plus a couple from her upcoming album. Her songs are great, especially the more popular Jar of Hearts, Arms and of course A Thousand Years, but her voice is outstanding! Even DH was surprised that she sounded so good on stage. The music was great too, especially the drums. I'm a little bit in love with her drummer, by the way. Must google him in a bit :D All in all, it was a really fun night. Thank you Nik for the tickets, although we didn't use them in the end. Times like these make me feel good about the work I'm doing with my often times difficult internal clients. 

Here are some pictures from last night.

'Twas really a night to remember. Now if only I can get Jason Mraz tickets for his show on the 19th. Oh Niiiiiiikkkkkk...:D

CD8 Update

It's CD8 and I'm happy to report that I've been very positive and not a single tear has been shed thus far. I can already feel that this cycle is different from the first one. Even DH commented this morning on our way to work saying that he feels different about this cycle too. I mean we've already been through the worst that could happen i.e. the miscarriage right? And we pulled through and the whole experience made us stronger and more determined.

I haven't told anyone at all about this cycle except for a select few:
1. My parents coz my mom will be staying with me during my bedrest. I didn't even tell my siblings and DH didn't even tell his mom and family
2. My buttcheeks coz they know every single thing that's going on in my life
3. My wonderful BBC ladies coz we cheer each other on
4. My other best friend coz we talk everyday on YM
5. My office clerks and immediate boss so that they can be prepared for my three week break

The main reason why I don't want to tell a lot of people is because of the added pressure and expectation. So we're laying low this time. I figured that what DH and I do for our family is our business and nobody else's.

So anyway, I learned that today is Infertility Awareness Week. Some great blog posts from bloggers I follow on Infertility Awareness Week that I'd like to share. One is from Jay from The Two Week Wait blog here and from Stirrup Queens here. Reading these posts remind me that I am not alone and that whatever I do, Don't Ignore Hope.

Also, have a listen to Jack Savoretti's album "Between The Minds". I love the lyrics, his voice is amazing and the acoustics are excellent. Notable tracks are "Dreamers", "No One's Aware", "Lovely Fool" and "Dr. Frankenstein."

I'm gonna head out to the bookstore in a bit to stock up on my provision for my bed rest LOL. Have a great day everyone!

Much love,
xoxo

Minor Meltdown

So I was reading last night and suddenly it occurred to me that in less than two weeks I will be starting IVF #2. And then I started crying. I guess all this time I've been refusing to think about it and have been putting this whole IVF #2 at the far corner of my mind. And then last night it hit me. To make things worse, DH was not at home. He was out playing badminton with his buddies. So there I was, alone on my bed crying my eyeballs out. For some reason I kept thinking about the nights after my miscarriage when I asked DH to stay the nights with me and he did. No questions asked eventhough we had to share a single bed. He was with me, holding me the entire time.

I'm scared. There I said it. I'm scared that this cycle will fail. I'm scared that this cycle will work and then I will lose the baby (again). I was so glad when DH came home. When he saw that I've been crying he immediately pulled me to him and that made me cry more. I asked him if he ever thinks about this new cycle and he admitted he does. He said he's as scared as I am and I love him for admitting that. He asked me if I want to postpone doing this but I told him I want to do this now. But I love him for asking.

I don't know what's gonna happen, it's all in His hands. But I know I must have faith that things will work out for us. Sometimes I wonder how is it possible for someone to be lucky and unlucky at the same time. I'm so lucky to have found DH and yet I'm also the unluckiest person in the world for not being able to have a baby.

Anyway, enough moping. This is what I read last night. I bought this book yesterday and started reading at 6 p.m. and finished it by 10 p.m. The story may not be very original but I just couldn't stop reading. I can't tell you about the book without revealing spoilers. It's a story of friendship, teenage love and a mother's love and loss all rolled into one. There were moments in the book where I cried. There was a line in this book that stays with me.

"Maybe you need to be broken a little before you can put yourself back together."

It was like the author was looking at me when she wrote this line. Have a go at this one. I've loved Kristin Hannah since I read Firefly Lane (excellent, excellent book) and this one doesn't disappoint.

Note to self: Must find more books to keep me company during my "house arrest".

Oh and Tyler Hilton's new album "Forget The Storm" came out. If you are a fan of One Tree Hill (I'm quite embarrassed to admit, but I am) you would know him from Season 2 and Season 9. I love his raspy, soulful voice and I love the lyrics to his songs. My favourite track would have to be "Prince of Nothing Charming."

One of my current favourite Tyler Hilton songs which I have on repeat on my iPod is "Keep On" from his Ladies & Gentleman EP".

The chorus goes like this:

When you lose what you love, live on live on

When the road gets too rough, be strong be strong

What you can't understand, but you're starting to see

It'll work in the end, you just got to believe

And keep on, keep on

So now whenever I'm down I will listen to this song and tell myself to keep on, keep on. And it'll work in the end.

Much love,
xoxo

We're All Set! Plus The Awesomeness That Is James Morrison

So DH and I went to see the good old Prof yesterday to talk about the new cycle. Boy he sure he looked happy to see us. I think he wants this to happen as much as we do. Anyway, it looks like we're all set for an April cycle. Yay for us! We talked about assisted hatching, a procedure that the Prof would like to do where the layer surrounding the embryo is peeled off using laser to improve implantation. And the good news is it won't cost us an extra dime! Double yay! I'm excited about this new cycle. I guess I'm looking at it differently. I'm more hopeful this time. Still cautious, but hopeful. Hey, any extra positive vibe helps right?

Prof prescribed me antibiotics (Zythromax) to be taken before my next cycle starts to flush out any infections and I'll start taking clomid and Puregon injections on the first day of AF. I'm gonna speak to my boss about the possibility of working from home after the ET. That way it's ease off his worry that my workload will be taken care off. This time I myself will try not to worry about my office work. My baby comes first. Everything else is secondary.

So now we'll just have to wait for my AF to come, possibly mid next month. That's one good thing about my AF. It is ALWAYS on time. In the meantime, I'll try to finish off whatever office work I can and prepare myself physically and mentally.

On a side note, I've been listening to the new James Morrison album, The Awakening, and it's awesome! I love his slightly hoarse yet smooth as silk voice and the songs just blew me away. Have a listen especially I Won't Let You Go, One Life and Up (feat Jessie J).

And while you're at it, have a listen at his sophomore album, Songs For You, Truths For Me. Also awesome, awesome album. My favourite tracks are Please Don't Stop The Rain, Broken Strings (feat Nelly Furtado) and If You Don't Wanna Love Me.

 

Have a listen guys. You can thank me later :P

Much love!!
XOXO