I'm Back....

I've been back for a week actually. There's a lot going on.

My feet don't like shoes and the bed seems too small after sleeping in Kings and Queens for weeks (yes, we have a double here in the PufferHouse).

Getting over the jet lag has been hell, but I can't complain because I got on that plane willingly! It was the 10 hour layover in Tokyo that really screwed us up.

Me: Can you double check what time our flight leaves tomorrow night before I get a taxi? I think it's a midnight.

K: WTF? We have a 10 hour and 10 minute layover in Tokyo?

Me: No, that's an hour and 10 minutes.

K: No, you missed a ZERO.

Me: That sucks. But I emailed that to you! You signed off on that! (like we're business partners or something) You agreed!

Now, what probably happened is that we both saw the 10 hours way back in June and agreed to it as the next ticket was about $400-$500 more. But the brain has a funny way of forgetting painful things...and I made that 10 into a 1.

Also worth forgetting: Jet Lag. Seriously, if I remembered how bad it sucked recovering from a 12 hour time difference, I'd never go to Asia again. It's a good thing we have a year in between trips so we've conveniently forgotten just how bad coming home is.

So, last week was all about catching up on home, the cats, work, personal life, running errands and trying to stay awake--which I failed to do quite spectacularly.

Three mornings I was wide awake at 3am--wide awake and starving. There's no food in the house and I defrosted raspberry/yogurt "Emergency Cake" from the freezer (the cake you freeze when you don't finish it all but know it could come in handy later?) and ate it with my hands while drinking milk straight from the carton. I wanted McD's breakfast. Too weird as I haven't been to a McD's in Years. But as soon as I got out the house with the light of dawn, I went there and happily munched down on a bacon/egg/cheese biscuit with one of those horrible-for-you-but-tastes-so-good hash browns. I wondered that night if this is what it felt like to be in the first trimester...

Finally, I was waking at 4am, then 5 am and finally I'm pretty solid at 6am these days. I can do 6am. I'd rather do 6:30 or....7. But it's a big improvement from 3am when I thought I might DIE.

I came home to dreary, cool weather; the news that my troubled brother who was living in Galveston not only fell 20 feet (after surviving the hurricane) and badly injured himself but is now also homeless and the world's economy is in the worst crisis since the great depression.

Fabulous.

I'd rather be here right now:

Or here:
Vacation photos are being edited...I'll send out a link when I'm finished if anyone is interested.
It was Fab.

PufferPoo Finish

The poo is gone. Just a 24 hour buggy and she's fine now.
We've been on a 2.5 hour trek this morning through rice paddies, villages and tons of art galleries.
We bought two amazing paintings from a local guy for $40 total. Now, in USA we would never hand over $40 and just 'trust' that he would bring them to our guesthouse, but here we do....and I think they'll be there when we come back this afternoon.
In the middle of this village is a Western cafe with free internet, so here we are!

Yes, once you pay the price of the plane ticket you can live like Queens and to PBX, we have encountered about 2 Aussies mainly because we have no interest in partying like maniacs and so have purposely stayed away from the main tourist hubs (like Kuta).
It's been brilliant.

Thanks for the love.

xoxo

Live from Bali!

Hi Blogger Friends,

I hope that everyone is doing well. I quickly skimmed through my G reader and saw some good news, some bad news, some still waiting news and some hopeful news. I didn't comment, but I was too curious to know what's going on not to read up!

So, there are 5 days left of the vacay and I am feeling great. Let me tell you, it wasn't 12 hours past arrival that I'd totally forgotten about the 24 hour plane ride. Before we landed they showed a video titled "Bali-The Healing Paradise" and I knew we were in the right place.

We have had an amazing beach portion of the trip-2 days at the luxury (free) resort and then 5 days on a small island-Gili Air-off the coast of Lombok, where I did 7 scuba dives, much snorkeling, sunset viewing every night and waking up for sunrise every morning. You can walk around the entire island in about 1.5 hours which we did every night and there are no cars or motorbikes, only horsecarts, bikes and your own two feet. It's fabulous I tell you.
Oh, but there's no fresh water, so bathing in salt water for 6 days makes you a bit..dry and salty. Not so nice.

Now we are back on Bali and have spent 2 our of 5 days in the cultural and artistic center of Ubud. We walked about with our bags and found a steal of a room for $15/night, hot water, fan included and breakfast brought right to your porch chair and table. It's beautiful weather and no need for A/C. The building faces the famous rice paddies and all day and night the ducks waddle by eating whatever they can in the paddies. Then along sunset time, the duck herder comes by and puts them in their pen for the night. The guest house owner brings us tea to our porch around 5:30pm and we sit in our chairs and watch the ducks go by. It's quite a life I tell you.

After all of the salt and sand on Gili Air we did a Javenese Princess spa treatment yesterday--4 hours and I had an hour massage, a salt scrub, my body rinsed and lathered up with yogurt, a soak in a fragrant tub filled with every kind of flower petal you can imagine, a facial, a peel, a face massage, a mani/pedi complete with foot massage, leg massage, hand massage and arm massage followed by a special treatment cream of avacado and aloe vera for my hair. At one point I had 4 different women doing 4 different things to me and it was a little overwhelming. Bonus is they grow everything in their garden and so it's all 100% natural. All for $60. A girl could get used to this!

The shopping is the most amazing I've ever seen. I'm not that much of a shopper and am so overwhelmed by all there is to choose from I haven't bought a thing. I will...but it's really all so much. I could seriously go into just about every store and say yes to one of every thing. It would be a dream to furnish a house from the good here. Oh la la.
There is beauty everywhere here and it's incredible to see how important rituals and spiritual offerings make up the pace of the day. Just going down the street, you are constantly stepping over little baskets of offerings b/c they are placed everywhere.
As far as an entire town goes, I've never been somewhere so astethically pleasing as Ubud.

Unfortunately, K has been bitten by the traveler's poo bug and is a sick little bunny today. So, of course, I brush my teeth with the tap water and she gets PufferPoo. I've been doing Gatorade runs all day and staying close by. We've got some Ci.pro with us which she's started and a bit of immod.ium, so hopefully after 24 hours of this she'll come out on the other side ready to hike up a volcano or take a trek through the rice paddies in the countryside.

I feel good and a million miles removed from just a couple of weeks ago. I took the most challenging yoga class today and have meditated for hours on the beach this past week. It has been so relaxing and decompressing and just what I needed.

It's been so nice not to temp or be 'waiting' for anything related to the TTC. Even so, while we aren't talking about that--we are always talking about traveling with a child and how amazing it is going to be.
K wants to take a sabbattical for a year and travel with the baby...I think that's a mighty fine idea especially because I'm going to get pregnant again when I get home. Oh yes I am.

xoxo
Puffer in Bali

54 and Cleared for Takeoff

The beta numbers have dropped incredibly in the last two days. But still I have yet to see blood.
I read that with an early miscarriage it's possible for your body to 're-absorb' the tissue. Our bodies are quite bizarre at times.

So, while I'm not happy the numbers ever dropped, I'm incredibly grateful that they are dropping now and so quickly. There is no ectopic, there will be no D&C and the trip to Bali is on.

I packed everything yesterday thinking positive thoughts that we would go. I can't think of a better place to relax, rejuvenate and recharge. Bali operates on spirituality 24 hours a day. They wake with offerings to the gods, there are ceremonies for nearly every occasion and family always comes first with children viewed as little treasures. In fact, Balinese children are generally held until they can walk because it is deemed that the floor is too filthy for these little treasures to tread upon.

Thank you everyone for all your kind comments and words of hope. It has been so touching for me to realize how much support and strength this community brings me.
I'm not commenting so much these days, but please know that I'm following along with you--just a bit more silently these days.

Delayed Reaction

We had a massage, ate a great dinner, saw the excellent indie thriller "Tran.sibberian" and then the night went to hell.

You never know when the stress, the pressure, the weight of it all will hit you and how you will react.  Or not react.  There were hours spent alone, outside, in the middle of the night, processing the enormity of it all before finally coming back together again.  Feelings were hurt, but today the lesson seems to have been learned.  Today was better.

More blood.  My arms are starting to look like a heroin junkie.  I'm already thin.  I wonder what my co-workers, let alone strangers on the street, must think.

The numbers are still going down.  No D&C today.  But no blood either.  Hard to believe a week ago we were wishing for the blood to stop and now we are wishing for it flow.

How everything changes so quickly.

It is over almost before it began.

Up or Down? Down, Please.

This morning, Dr VID, due to my lack of spotting in the past couple of days...is thinking I might be having a uterine based miscarriage rather than an ectopic/tubal pregnancy. 

He spent a lot of time up my hoo-ha with the dildo cam looking for a sac, but it's just so early and incredibly difficult to tell.

We decided the best plan of action would be to come in for a D&C tomorrow morning.  Wow, I never thought I'd be having my uterus scraped on a Sunday morning when I'd planned on going to the beach.  It's like a mini abortion and I never thought I'd be having that done.  It's not really like that, but yeah, it sorta, kinda, is all at the same time.

Can I tell you how weird it feels to be relieved?  That hopefully we can get this done quickly and it won't be a long, drawn-out and far more complicated process like an ectopic would have been?

He's even cautiously optimistic that if this works and my numbers go down--I'm free to go to Indonesia.  He doesn't need to see the numbers return to zero, just going down all next week.

Sweet Jesus.  Please go down numbers.

ETA:  Just got the numbers back from the blood draw--they are going down by themselves.  I am so happy.  Thank you body, thank you universe.  Change of plans:  Dr. VID is having me come back tomorrow morning and we'll do another blood test at 8am.  They will rush the results and I should know by 8:30.  If they are still going down by themselves--no D&C.  If not, I'm in for a 9am appointment.

Thinking positive and optimistically--We're taking our beach bag to the clinic and if the results are good, we're going to the beach.  And hopefully--next week we'll be on the beach in Bali. 

Because really, who doesn't need a freaking vacation after 8 months of TTC, getting pregnant and having a miscarriage?

I guess the universe wants me to go scuba diving after all.

So Far, Zen

I'm OK, K is OK.  We are handling things with a sense of calm.  I cried my tears on Thursday all alone and by the time K came home, I just wanted to get on with it.  Whatever it was.

Although I 'could've' gone away to Montreal--I'm so glad I choose not to go because the trip would have just delayed the question of "what now" and I needed to be at home and with K.

I spent most of the day Friday in the house reading a book and listening to French music.  I'd made some amazing (if I do say so myself!) CD's of old and new French music.  We were supposed to be listening to these tunes all weekend with our friends and having a great time reliving good times and reminiscing about the old times.  That plan foiled, I cranked up the music and danced in the living room, at times with the cat, other times with K.  And I was happy.

Whatever is happening is going to happen.  I cannot control it.  There is no one to be angry with--I did everything I could.  I have treated my body, mind and soul like a temple throughout this entire process and I have done nothing wrong.  My body has NOT failed me.  It just simply isn't meant to happen right now.  For whatever reason.  I don't know.  It doesn't matter.  It just 'is'.  The sooner we accept that we will never know the 'why', the more peaceful our lives will be.

I'm glad that we only had a week.  And in that week, I had really only believed I was truly pregnant for one day with absoluteness.  It makes it easier.  I think since the first test came back--we were cautiously optimistic but realistic.  We knew the numbers were low and we are both very pragmatic.  This has made the news less of a blow because while we'd hoped things would turn, we also knew very well they might go the other way.  It's like I've had one foot in and one foot out--just waiting to know which way to go.  Now I know.

My faithful gay blog reader invited us over for dinner that night and it was exactly what I needed.  K hadn't been able to get me out of the house all day--not even to go to the gym!--so I showered and we walked up to his house.  It was a beautiful night, he made a lovely dinner and we while we were able to talk about everything that is happening and what we are going through, we were able to have other conversations that had nothing to do with all of this.  

He mentioned how Zen I was being which I needed to hear.  I thought perhaps I simply was choosing not to deal with it.  But he assured me there's a big difference between not dealing and accepting.  I suppose all those years in a Buddhist country have rubbed off on me.

The evening ended with perfection--raspberries and The Daily Show on TV.  We have no TV, did I mention that?  Nope, ours broke in January and we decided to just go without one.  I've never bought a TV my entire life...they have always just somehow come to me...so I've been waiting for another one to come my way...but it's not happening!

K was totally smitten with his new flat screen, shining beacon of non-stop, time-wasting machinery and decided that she will use some of her bonus money and by God make us true Americans!

So, while we've missed the Olympics and the DNC, at least I won't miss the new season of "The Amazing Race", haha!

That's all for now.  I stopped the progesterone Thursday night, so the bloating is starting to decrease.  Blood testing will be tomorrow morning followed by meeting with Dr. VID for the dildo cam and Q & A.