free starbucks: a PSA

My take-home messages from the comments on yesterday's post was that a) no one else has awesomely kind next-door-neighbors like me, and b) you don't know about the turn-in-your-bag, get-free-coffee thing at Starbucks!!

I can't help you with the first issue (although there are a few houses for sale in my neighborhood if you're interested...it'd put you a lot closer to great neighbors...and me!!), but I am happy to enlighten everyone about the second!! Here's the deal.

If you happen to buy Starbucks to brew at home, take a look at your bag:

And in case you were wondering if I had to sneak into Diana's office early this morning to take these pictures...the answer is yes. Having a master key is a beautiful thing. ;) And a friend that is extremely organized and keeps her Empty Coffee Bags in exactly the same spot always! Made for a quick field trip.

So. If you were to carefully examine the side of your Starbucks coffee bag, you would find this:

Fo' real!! It's right there, everything you need to know!! Bring in the empty bag, they give you a free coffee. It can be hot or iced, and at the Starbucks we frequent here in downtown Athens, they don't care if it's a flavored iced coffee...so I get caramel. In case you needed to know. Not quite a Frapp, but pretty close, and FREE, so...yep.

This is a picture of Diana's empty bag collection. I have no idea how she gets this many empty bags, but if it's because she drinks this much coffee all by herself, I wouldn't be surprised. But hey- she shares the bounty of the free coffee, and you can't ask for a better friend than that!!

So now you're in on the best-kept Starbucks secret...that isn't exactly a secret. If you don't believe me or the side of the bag, they also discuss it on their webpage. 

Another not-so-secret secret? Remember the amazing veggie reuben sandwich I went on and on about yesterday? Yeah. I couldn't NOT go for lunch again yesterday. It's a weakness, I tell you! Luckily, it was just as good the second time. And I'm trying to muster up all my self-control to not go again today. Part of my 'get self control' plan involved stopping and getting a donut (apple fritter, fine) on the way to work. I figure I'll feel too guilty about eating the donut to go out for lunch now. Solid logic? We'll see. Happy Friday!

happy days

Have I told you how awesome you are? I mean...you people really are the best. Thank you so much for all of your kind words and commiserating and prayers yesterday. You have no idea (or maybe you do!) how encouraging it is to spend the whole day getting a steady flow of kind words and promises of prayers and hope via email notifications...I mean, it made it really hard to stay in a bad mood. So thanks a lot. ;)

In all seriousness, yesterday was actually a great day. I wrote yesterday's post on Tuesday night when the emotions from the doctor's visit were still raw...but I am thankful that by Wednesday morning, most of the sadness and anger had really washed away and then yall were all so nice...it was a great day, truly! 

For one, I knew I'd be having lunch with my bestie Elizabeth who is in town for a conference this week. Very few people on earth make me laugh as much as she does, so the promise of lunch and an hour of conversation with her basically made my whole day awesome. And then we ate at Trappeze and I had the BEST SANDWICH OF MY LIFE EVER, people. FOR SERIOUS. Let me tell you about it. It was a 'veggie reuben' and here's the description from the menu:   on Luna Marble Rye // house-made marinated cabbage // swiss // avocado // tomato // spinach // horseradish russian

Maybe it sounds weird, but it was like the most amazing thing I've ever put in my mouth. I would have taken a picture, but I was too busy dying of happiness. So sorry. Anyways, if any of you are in Athens/might ever come to Athens/want to come meet me in Athens...then we're going to Trappeze and I'm eating this again. I might go back tomorrow, actually. Would that be wrong? It's veggies, right? HEALTHY! (please don't think about the pound of Belgian fries on the side. Those are also to die for.)

No pics of food, but we snapped a picture or 3 before we had to head back to our jobs:

 If we look a bit bedraggled, it's because it was 284028 degrees outside and we had to walk (40 yards) to Trappeze AND BACK. I know. The humanity.

With such a happy lunch hour, the rest of my day was bound to be great BUT THEN IT GOT GREATER!! Diana collects empty Starbucks bags (did you know that you can take them to Sbux and exchange them for a free cup of coffee-- hot or iced?) and every once in awhile she'll call down and be like STARBUCKS- FREE COFFEE- RIGHT NOW!! and who am I to say no to that? 

So we moseyed down to Starbucks and got our free coffees and snapped a pic before we headed back to work:

Well, Diana snapped a pic. I stole it off her Instagram, obviously. Do you like how I've basically stolen Matt's sunglasses and claim them as my own now? He never saw it coming. It's just that they're gold and today I was wearing ALL THE GOLD (like, I couldn't stop putting on gold stuff this morning. It's the pirate in me!) and so obviously I needed gold glasses, too.

Matt said I was more leprechaun than pirate, but obviously he's wrong (and just swayed by my green shirt). Although when it comes down to it, there are a lot of similarities between leprechauns and pirates (love of gold, propensity to steal, trickery...), I fall firmly in the camp of PIRATE because a) I'm tan, b) I'm tall, and c) I like rum way better than whatever they drink in Ireland (whiskey? Guinness?). So clearly I'm Team Pirate, but nice try, Mattie.

I think I've digressed.

The rest of work was great. When we got home from work, we discovered that someone had MOWED OUR ENTIRE LAWN for us. I kid you not (and it's NOT a small lawn...almost an acre of grass). I immediately suspected my too-kind next door neighbors, and texted to find out if I was right. I was. She'd seen us yesterday evening unsuccessfully struggling with our lawn mower-- for some reason it wouldn't start (not the battery, not out of gas). Matt worked on it for awhile, but no luck. Our back-up lawn mower (a push mower) is also broken. This meant we couldn't cut the grass...and what with all the rain lately, it was lookin' a hot mess. So she decided to do it for us, without our knowledge, today. Can you believe it? Let's not forget that it was 1893098 degrees today AND SHE HAS A 2-MONTH OLD BABY! But she decided to mow our entire freakin yard. I was blown away. We have someone coming to pick up our mower tomorrow (since it's a huge riding mower, we can't take it anywhere ourselves...bah) and fix it, but I am trying to think of a good way to pay forward her kindness. Seriously, yall. That was no 5-second act of kindness. That was hours of awful sweaty nastiness. I just can't believe it.

I went to the gym (TOO HOT TO BE OUTSIDE) and had one of my best runs ever, managed to talk Matt into having cereal for dinner (personal favorite thing ever)...all in all, a great day. OH- and my SIL texted me this picture of my sweet baby Carley:

 

...and if you don't think that's the cutest thing ever, then I don't think you have a soul. I DIE!!!!! And this weekend I get to see her and hold her and squeeze her cute little cheeks and I'm only just a litttttle excited, if you can't tell.

So anyway. Sorry for the randomness, but I was very happy to follow a fairly crappy day with a great one, and I wanted to make sure the good day got its fair share of press. With that, I'm off to dominate the rest of the week...because that's what pirates do. When they're not laying on the beach, I mean. Ugh. How many weeks til vacation?!??!?!! 

 

well, boo.

Yesterday we had another follow-up appointment with our MFI specialist. Matt's having analyses done every 9 weeks or so (approximately the length of each sperm 'generation') to monitor his progress since surgery. Our first post-surgical follow-up was in March and it was pretty encouraging. At that point, Dr. W put him on two new medications that should have helped support things even more, so this was our next check in to see what was up. 

I had high hopes, I'm not going to lie. I don't know where all this hope suddenly busted up from, but sure enough it was blossoming deep in my heart over the last few weeks, whispering optimistic thoughts into my head...you know, crazy stuff, like maybe you'll get pregnant this month!!!...stuff I haven't really contemplated in a solid year, really. Stuff I didn't know if I'd ever actually think again. 

Although at every. single. one. of our appointments with the REs over the last year their #1 recommendation is IVF (shocking), they've also been pretty consistent with telling us that if we weren't willing/ready to do that, then timed intercourse was our only other option. Because of the severity of our MFI, IUIs were a worse option than timed intercourse because none of our sperm could survive the wash process (please see Exhibits 1, 2, and 3: My first 3 IUIs). So as far as they've been concerned, we're either low/no-tech (old fashioned baby-making-attempting) or IVF. No middle ground.

Butttttt...somewhere along the way I got my hopes up that if our sperm survivability rates could go up, then maybe we could try IUIs again. And in the last two weeks or so I've pretty much convinced myself that that's what was going to happen. A nice IUI cycle, right? A teensy fraction of the cost, physical trauma, and emotional drama of IVF-- and sure, a fraction of the odds it'll work, too-- but jusssst a little something to make me feel like we're doing something, right? Right. I was really excited. All we had to do was get that survivability rate up and I'd be signing us up for IUI on my next cycle. We were totally pumped.

And then...yeah. No. Not so much. Not at all.

For your pleasure (and my record-keeping) I made a lovely chart:

 Right, so...that's a big boo hiss.

Let's take a moment and be thankful that LOOK!!! Our penetration count is actually in the GOOD RANGE!!! YAAAAAYYYYY!!! At least one thing on the chart isn't getting a failing grade. So I am definitely thankful for that, because it doesn't matter if you have a zillion sperm and they all survive-- if they can't penetrate an egg, they're all useless. So at least now 84% of ours are not useless!!!! I am super happy about that, don't get me wrong.

I am not happy about: Total count DROPPING??!?!?! (and the dr wasn't concerned at all and I KNOW it's normal for count to vary wildly, but still...not cool); survivability still unchanged and terrible.

Just because I'm a glutton for punishment, I decided to ask about IUI anyway. Predictably, Dr. W said NO. Same story- not enough would survive the wash to make it worth their time (which is saying something, since they get paid whether or not it works, and it only takes about 10 minutes...). He said our success rates will be higher at home or (you guessed it!) with IVF (really? you don't say.).

He's letting Matt stay on the 2 current drugs for another 9 weeks to see if another life-cycle of sperm will show any improved survivability. He added in a 3rd drug (serophine, which some of you would recognize by a different name...;) ) that will hopefully help to boost the total count. His thinking is that if we can't improve the survivability rate, if we could at least boost the overall number, then we'll still end up with more surviving (even if the rate stays unchanged) and could maybe consider IUI then. Makes sense to me, so we shall see.

When I type it all out it doesn't seem as bad. That's good. I must admit, I was pretty crushed during/after the appointment, though. I just thought it was going to be all good news. I wasn't prepared for mediocre...or bad. I was ready to move on, to do something. But there's nothing to do, now...except watch Matt take pills and pray that his pills work faster than my endometriomas grow. Isn't that a fun game?

God, I could really use some miracles right about now.

Infertility sucks. Having both male-factor AND female-factor infertility double sucks. And with that, Suzie Sunshine is signing out. Have a lovely day. And if you have cute kids, keep a close eye on 'em. I'm in a kidnappy mood.

she who hugs hydrangeas

 On Friday of Fashion Week (yeah, I skipped 2 days, so what?) I wasn't feeling great. I hadn't really bothered to accessorize. And it was hotter than Satan's sauna outside and we still hadn't taken pictures yet. By the time I'd taken Diana's pictures, what had been left of my makeup was definitely sweated off and all of this is to say that I was really not in top shape for a photo shoot.

But then, as we walked around the side of the building, I saw it. And I knew what would make it all better.

A beautiful, lovely, fabulous, just-turning-blue patch of hydrangeas. In case you're new here, I have a moderate-to-extremely-intense love affair with hydrangeas. I (somewhat regularly) commit crimes in the name of hydrangeas. Thanks to my eagle eyes, detail-oriented memory, and the fact that I spend almost every lunch hour prowling around downtown Athens and UGA's North Campus, I can probably tell you off-hand where every single hydrangea in a 2 mile radius of my office is. And what color it's blooming. And what's next to it. I have a problem. I know.

So when it's 3:00 p.m. on a Friday and you don't really feel like being a model, but you happen upon a few hydrangeas within crawling distance, you really have no choice but this:

You crawl behind the bushes, underneath the tree, and across the prickly pinestraw and you cuddle with the dang hydrangeas.
 

You lay back, careful not to smush, and you smile like a crazy person because there's really nothing else you can do when you're laying in a patch of hydrangeas.

And then you hug them, just in case they weren't sure what your feelings really were. Later you can email your husband this picture and say THIS IS THE MOST 'ME' PICTURE THAT THERE HAS EVER BEEN, knowing that he will immediately set it as the wallpaper on his computer because he will agree. It is the most me.

And the rest of my afternoon was pretty great, because how could it not be when I had just freaking hugged some hydrangeas?
 

The rest of my outfit, not that it really matters. What matters is hydrangeas. And hugging them whenever possible. I think that people underestimate the importance of hugging plants. Forget trees...this week, find a beautiful plant to hug. It'll make your day way better. And then you can be just like me, which is really all you ever wanted, right?? Right. Bye!