6 year anniversary of TTC is looming

So the IUI was a bust. Unfortunately as AF was 4 days late my hopes had grown super high. I didn’t POAS because I really wanted that hope to last for a little bit longer. I started bleeding the afternoon before my bloods were done. I let the nurse know and said I was confused because I was extremely regular and I it was very weird for me to be more than one day off. Only to be told that Pregnyl can make AF late. *SIGH* I really wish they would tell you this stuff when they give you the medications. So I thought I would share it with you all so you may avoid being caught unawares…

So far I have learned that Pregnyl and progesterone (anything) can/will delay AF. Obviously everyone’s body is different, we may not all react the same… yadda, yadda, yadda 🙂

As we come up to the 6 year anniversary of TTC in a couple of months I find myself questioning everything. Currently I have been TTC for 70 months, 70 failed cycles. That’s such a burden you guys. One of the most natural things my body should be doing and it won’t. I’ve never even had a BFP. I know people who have had 3 children in the time I have been trying to fall pregnant once!

Here are some of the things I am questioning:

Should I be looking at a different job which is less hours and stress so I can focus more on a health journey? Could I do a secondment at work or ask to go part time in my role for 6 months or longer? But all my pay goes towards an IVF fund which keeps us moving foward and I don’t really know if I could afford a pay cut.

I know in myself I could do amazingly well in this industry. I have been the library industry version of head hunted quite a few times and I am a hard worker who isn’t afraid of change or leaping outside the box. But any amount of success in this industry would not mean much to me if it meant foregoing the opportunity to be a Mum.

 

Recently I have asked myself a very important question…

Would I be willing to basically blow up my life if it meant we could have children?

The answer is yes.

 

Is this something I need to do? I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t know.

 

What could this look like?

• I have had doctors talk to me before about weight reduction surgery. I have never really considered it because it just didn’t feel right and I have met quite a few people for whom this wasn’t really a long term solution and they have had to have it redone down the track. During this cycle a nurse who has had it done at the FS office chatted to me about it. I asked her about the fact that we would not be able to do IVF during this time and she said we would still be able to make embryos and bank them, but that generally they will not allow us to transfer them for a year post surgery. I am very much in two minds about this, but will raise it with my FS on Thursday when we see her.
• Leave my job or ask for reduced hours to concentrate on a health journey. This is something I have thought about quite seriously. It makes me really sad because I really love a lot of the people I work with. I would really rather not leave, but I don’t know that my job could be done in less hours. Part of me feels that something drastic like this has to happen though. I have a very sedentary life in this job and there are not a lot of ways to fix that.
  If I get the surgery discussed above I will likely have to have quite some time off anyway so who knows.
• Completely retrain for another industry. This is something I have also thought about quite seriously. In particular I have thought about going back to uni and becoming a nutritionist that specialises in PCOS, IR and Diabetes. I have looked and have found it very hard to find specialists anywhere near me. I have also thought about going back to uni and becoming an specialist in the area of Autism. My nephew has Autism and I know a few other children who are on the spectrum too and there is a lot of talk by specialists of all the restrictions children on the spectrum will have. I would love to be a specialist who works closely with children with Autism to help them work through their own individual difficulties and overcome obstacles as well as develop techniques to help them navigate everyday life. Every single person is different, having Autism doesn’t change that, everyone is a snowflake and you need to treat them as such.
  Both of these options would include more work, stress and sedentary behaviour whilst I become qualified and established so I don’t know how realistic these choices are.

 

Has anyone out there blown up their life for this? Would love to hear your stories. Advise is also COMPLETELY welcome! I would love some!!!

 

 

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Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Back in January I talked about my goals to reduce our household waste. So I thought I would do a little recap and see where we are at.

We have been doing okay with this in general, though there are some areas we could improve in:

• We have not been as good on plastic bags as I would like, but we are recycling them instead of throwing them out as we used to do. It’s mostly an issue because I ensure I go for a walk at lunchtimes and often do some household shopping then and I don’t always remember to go to my car to get the eco bag first. Definitely something I need to work on habit wise.
  
• Meal planning has also gone out the window for us for the most part just due to different crazy life things going on. I try to do it in my head a bit, obviously this is nowhere near as good as if I were doing it properly though so I really need to make an effort with this. Not only is it better for reducing waste, but it is also kinder on our wallets and better for our health because when I plan we end up with healthy well rounded meals.

Things we have done include:

• I have done research into some of the things we buy and try to only buy items that have recyclable packaging (harder than you might think – though the redcycle program at Coles has helped a lot).
• When it comes to items like egg cartons which are recyclable I will also look for opportunities for reuse. For instance our library storytime sometimes uses egg cartons for craft. In fact I found a flower craft recently for Mother’s Day that I sent through as a suggestion that uses egg cartons. This will mean that all staff’s egg cartons will be donated for the next few weeks to be used to create Mother’s Day gifts rather than being thrown out or recycled.
  
  There are so many fun crafts you can do with egg cartons that I am actually going to save that for another post I think 🙂
• Though we do not want junk mail it seems to keep magically appearing so I use the elastic bands from them on my frozen veggie bags once open to reduce the chance of freezer burn and recycle the junk mail. It’s only a little thing I know, but I also feel that that thought and little effort if magnified by many certainly counts.
  I also found out that my girlfriend who lives 30 minutes further bush than me doesn’t get junk mail at all so I now keep them for her and she recycles them after use.
• When we next needed rice I bought a 5kg bag. Every one that sees it thinks I am crazy and it does take up a lot of room, but I used to buy the 500gram packet so I am literally saving 10 plastic packages and it saved me a BUNCH of money!
  We may not have sugar in our house, but if you need a cup of rice I am definitely your girl
  
• At work I have noticed that I have naturally become a lot more conscious of recycling and providing opportunities for people to learn more sustainable habits. No matter how small the scraps are now (from cutting out or whatever) I will put them in the paper recycling bin. I have also gotten into the habit of checking the staff paper recycling next to the internal printer for scrap paper as this is always in high demand at the library.
  Our Council has business card sized laminated signs with a cute cartoon of a light bulb reminding people to turn off switches. I have ordered some of these to place above the switches in our study areas as people often leave these on. I have also convinced Council to add recycling bins into all the libraries and centres (gyms and pools) which is amazing!!!
  I also had a chat with the guy from Council who runs eco programs like creating sustainable gardens, building terrariums and composting at home. It started with me offering to promote his programs in the library particularly on our social media sites. He was super excited about this and we are now talking about him possibly running some programs at the libraries which is amazing because we get a whole new slew of programs whilst our resource output would be minimal and we would be collaborating and networking with a whole new area of Council so I am pretty excited about this possibility 🙂

It was great for me to discover that I was able to make a difference at work as well as at home.

What changes have you made or do you suggest I make?

Free Comic Book Day

So there is this annual event called Free Comic Book Day. Never heard of it? Check out the information here http://www.freecomicbookday.com/ We have an amazing time with it at our library service with kid and family friendly activities that run all day. We have actually had people tell us they are visiting us rather than the big comic book stores which is amazing! I have taken my nephew to it for all of his 5 years he has been around.

I have been asked to participate this year as a character. Huge excitement!!!!! I get to choose who I want to be and source the costume which hopefully means I can find something that fits okay.

So here’s the thing… have you ever looked for plus sized costumes? Pretty much all of them have the word “sexy” in front whilst men get these awesome looking things like the below with options for fat or skinny people.

Where are all the awesome costume options for shapely ladies?!!

At this stage I am pretty much assuming I am going to have to put one together myself so I have started thinking about who I might like to be. One of the other librarians is going as supergirl. I found some interesting costume (DIY) options for wonder woman which I think could work well. Another one I am pretty interested in currently is Claire Redfield from the Resident Evil comics/world… at least then everything is not as clingy and bodysuity… plus I really like the character.

Here is the current list I am considering:

• Claire Redfield – Resident Evil
• Alice – Resident Evil
• Wonder Woman – Wonder Woman
• Lady Mechanika – Lady Mechanika – would be awesome, but huge amounts of prep.
• Poison Ivy – Batman – would be a GREAT costume, but worried about doing a villain and having the kids be afraid of me when I am trying to get them involved with stuff 🙂 Also sometimes kids might “fight” villains.

Side note: I would totally love to do Abby from the new Ghostbusters, but that character isn’t from the comics 😦

What are your thoughts? There are other comic book characters I love, but I need it to be fat friendly, movable to some degree so I can interact with kids and hopefully more than one piece for ease of pee breaks 🙂 I would LOVE some suggestions from you all!

Annnnnndddddd…….. GO!!!

 

Christmas Book Critters

You might remember the Halloween Book Critters I created back in October. Well, due to popular demand I was asked to create some Christmas Book Critters for our Christmas display. Woohoo! I was so excited and got straight to it and I am very happy with the results (although I think my Elf needs a hat, I will have to find some time to work on that or take some stuff home and work on it lol).

Introducing our Christmas Book Critters.

Santa:

Elf:

I really do think this guy needs a hat. Will have to work on it 🙂

Rudolph:

And last, but certainly not least… Olaf 🙂 :

Unfortunately you cannot see his arms and hair too well in this photo, but I swear he has them 🙂

Halloween Book Critters

So I found a picture similar to the critters we made somewhere a while ago. I can’t remember when I saw it, but the idea stuck with me and so I convinced my Youth Librarian friend that we totally had to make some Halloween Book Critters (payback for all the YA books I have read this year hahaha kidding).

So we were going to make 5 initially, but decided to go with four because of the space we had to put them in and honestly creating them took longer than we thought. I’m sure initially people thought we were silly spending so much time on a couple of decorations, but we were proud. Here they are…

This is Franky

Our witch

Our spooky ghost

and little Master Jack

Here they are on display

Remember how I said people probably thought it was a waste of time? Well the public love them and have been taking photos. A staff member uploaded them to our Instagram page and we got 200 likes overnight and a bunch of libraries are now doing the same and tagging our library as the inspiration. How cool is that?!!!

A little fun can be great promotion 🙂

Happy Halloween everybody!

Librarian Rhapsody

I have a rather short post for you today, but that doesn’t mean it is lacking in quality.

Someone I know was involved in making the below film clip. It started as a way of showing what they had accomplished and morphed into something much, much more. This video was even shared by Brian May (lead guitarist for Queen) on his Twitter feed which sent the views into a frenzy.

Ladies and gentleman I give you… Librarian Rhapsody…

Shoalhaven Library service is not overly large, but it covers quite a large area and obviously their staff work incredibly hard and are extremely talented 🙂 If you want more information on them you can visit their webpage http://www.shoalhavenlibraries.com.au/

I hope you enjoy it and feel free to share on your social media pages 🙂

Déjà vu clients

Recently I seem to be having a lot of deja vu clients and it’s starting to make me feel insecure!

What is a deja vu client?

A deja vu client is someone who comes into the library (or whatever workplace you are in) and asks a question. You look at the client and figure out either immediately or partway through the answer that not only have you answered this question before, but you have answered this question to this EXACT person.

This seems to happen most with scanning, photocopying and printing. Even though I make the client do it each time and just verbally guide them AND show them the instructions hanging on the wall NEXT TO THE PHOTOCOPIER/PRINTER/SCANNER and they come in ALL THE TIME they just can’t seem to remember how to do it.

There is a gentleman that comes in who can never connect his WiFi, I don’t know what he does to his computer at home, but everytime he comes there are issues connecting. I have helped him twice. Both times he has said to me, “I don’t think you know enough, you need to get someone else” and both times I have said to him, “sir, there is only one person in the whole Library service with more IT knowledge than me and she is unavailable” (in my mind I added “jerk off” to make myself feel better). This same gentleman has asked me twice how to save pictures from an email and get this… it was the same damn picture each time (SIGH!). The first time I showed him how as soon as we pressed ‘save as’ his picture library came up with some pretty graphic close ups of lady parts, I turned away and said I couldn’t help him with that on there and he seemed embarrassed. The second time I was wiser and said to him, “remember we have done this before” he said we hadn’t and when he brought up the picture I said, “yes, see this is the same picture we saved last time and remember when you pressed save some inappropriate photos came up. If they come up again I will walk away” he looked at me and then said, “oh, okay, I will delete them”.

Just today I had a lady ask me how to scan documents, I looked at her and knew we have had this conversation before. I told her she needed a USB and she said she didn’t have one. I let her know that the machine will only scan to a USB and she asked if she could borrow one, I said we didn’t have any to borrow, but she could buy one at the front desk for $10. She said too expensive so I suggested she walk down the road to Kmart because they have cheaper ones there. I felt like a robot during this discussion, we have literally had this EXACT conversation before. I remember her because she has some cool tattoos. Cool tattoos yes, but I think she needs a remembrall!

Does anyone else have this happen with their clients regularly? I am not sure having the ‘you need to be quiet in the quiet study area’ really counts does it? If it does then I have an epidemic on my hands hahaha.

Books, Book Buying and Life in General

I have been on a little hiatus, between work, house stuff, baby stuff and being sick I have not been spending a lot of time on here. I have been keeping up with my reader though so do not fear I did not completely abandon you.

I went to a seminar last week and whilst on the train I was amazed to notice that I was the only person in the train carriage reading a print item. Halfway to the city another lady got on the train and I saw her pull out a book. I have no clue why I was so happy to find a comrade in print reading, but I was. I was reading My Booky Wook by Russell Brand where he talks about his time trying to cure his sex addiction, it is very well written, that man has a great way with words. Then I saw what she was reading and started giggling, she was reading 50 Shades of Grey hahaha could two books be more opposite?!

The seminar was at the State Library and was awesome, whilst there I visited the bookshop and low and behold because I was attending the seminar I got a discount – woohoo. Then I discovered the range of books they had redone the covers for and had to buy this, a) I wanted to read the book and b) It was too funny not too.

Then this week I went book buying, all day. Which sounds like so much fun until you realise that you are basically standing for a minimum of 8 hours and reading/looking at books that aren’t always that interesting and aren’t for you hahaha. Imagine my surprise when I discovered this gem:

That made my day, I laughed so much. Why does this exist? Actually, you know what? I am not going to question it, I am just going to be really happy about it.

Then I was looking for a general information book on STDs… don’t worry guys it was for the reference collection 🙂 Whilst looking I came across this:

Really not what I was looking for, but completely amusing non the less 🙂

So I asked for some help finding a more appropriate book and they sent me to the “Relationships” section. Well wasn’t that an interesting journey… apparently the kind of books that reside in this section include titles such as, “50 ways to spice up your sex life”, “How to add kink to your relationship” and “The encyclopedia of sex toys”. This last book was big, I couldn’t believe it could possibly all be about sex toys so me and the lady I was buying with opened it to a random page where I made the mistake of saying out loud, “What the hell is that? It looks like a coffee pot with a dildo on top!” closely followed by, “Is this so you can have your coffee and your orgasm too?” We both cracked up.

After forcing myself to attend book buying and some other training when I wasn’t feeling so hot I felt like I hit the wall, my head was smashing. It was like being on the edge of a migraine permanently, I went to see the doctor to discover I have infected sinuses… YAY! So now here I am writing to you from my sick bed hahaha apparently to find time to write I needed to get ill.

I have been making great use of my new toy Netflix (thanks Mr. T.) when not in bed I can currently be found nursing my sinuses on the couch and binge watching Arrow or the Vampire Diaries 🙂

Sneaky Hobitses!!! They stoles it from me!!!

So, recently (meaning last Friday) IT did a “PC upgrade”. Now being that it was called a “PC upgrade” I honestly took the dictionary meaning of “upgrade,” which for Oxford is, “raise (something) to a higher standard, in particular improve (equipment or machinery) by adding or replacing components”… in short… better than what I had before, right?

Well, apparently the IT guys have a different definition because I now get random programs that are set to start when I turn on my computer that are completely useless to me and have nothing to do with my work and Internet Explorer… well the version I have now is 2 less that what I had on my old PC. I used to have IE11… back to 9 now. GRRR.

So this afternoon after having a very long day with a lot of annoying things happening that just kinda made me do this…

I truly do love my job, but these days happen to all of us 🙂

I kept getting this thing pop up (one of those auto start programs that I cannot uninstall because I do not have freaking admin access ARGH!) whilst I was trying to wrap up for the day… ended up being there til an hour after I was supposed to finish… like I said, one of those days. This thing shouldn’t really have annoyed me as much as it did, but hopefully they wll see the funny side of it as well as get that I am annoyed about it.

The email had the subject, “Sneaky Hobbitses” – yup, seriously. Then it went like this…

~

IT…

What is this thing that always comes up on my computer now?

 

 

 

 

 

Is the whole point of this thing to tell me that I have spent $18 on printing since the inception of my account? Is that the whole function of this annoying ass program?

If so, how do I get it off? What a waste of time and space when there is no reason for me to know this information. Ain’t nobody got time for this 🙂

Here I was thinking I was getting an upgraded computer… sneaky Hobbitses, my nice computer with IE11 and no annoying random programs… they stoles it from me and replaced it with something… less. Upgrade… pfft… I call shenanigans!!!

Kind regards,

DTB

~

Hmm… yeah. Reading that over now, I am thinking I really shouldn’t have pressed send. But come on, at least I didn’t send them pictures or something too, I could have made it a lot worse by adding the following:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Or this one… I like this one…

This works too…

So you see, it could have been worse.

Have you ever sent an email and wondered if maybe you should have saved the draft and re-read it tomorrow?

 

Friday was my day!

So Friday turned out to be a very good day for me for two reasons;

a) Our house evaluation passed and therefore our loan was approved which means that next year our house will start being built woohoo.

b) I was offered my first full time permanent position as a Librarian! Oh my gosh you guys this was amazing news!!! Job security in a position I love, in a company I love, within 30mins of my home? Hells to the yes!!! This is a seriously great dream! Librarian positions rarely come up in our area because people who get in those positions sit in them until well after they should retire. This year I was lucky enough to score a contract for 11 months to fill someone going on long service leave to use it all up before they retire. As of the 31st December I would have been unemployed again except that the gentleman who was Reference and Information Services Librarian at the Council Library decided to relocate to another area and he found a position there. I applied along with apparently a number of other people and interviewed with 10 others (okay so it’s no ‘The Librarian’ line, but usually places only interview 5).

Finally, finally after 2 weeks of nail biting and obsessing over what I had done wrong in the interview and totally losing hope I get a phone call offering me the job. ARE YOU KIDDING?! Hells yes I will take the job! Best Christmas present ever!!! I have been on one contract or the other for over 5 years now. I have been lucky in that I have never been out of work for long, but those times I am out of work I have never been able to enjoy the time off because I have been stressed to the eyeballs trying to find a new position. I can not even begin to describe for you the sweet relief I felt as the realisation came that this frantic annual part of my life was over.

I start in the New Year and all I have to do is pass 3 months probation and that is it guys. So, so happy right now!!! Everything’s shiny!