I broke down and tested, and saw my friend, the One Line. Still not bleeding yet, and technically, it’s kind of early. I mean, the GOF for the positive OPK was initiated on October 17th, which was 11 days ago. The new plan is to wait and see; if I’m not bleeding by Saturday night, I’ll pick up FREDs, at full retail price from the pharmacy down the street, and test on Sunday. Halloween. My anniversary. Added bonus, Amy will be here then, so if I AM, the squealing can be done in person instead of over the phone. Enough about my uterus.

So, yes, I’m having a housewarming on Saturday. Two of my colleagues got together and decided I needed a party, since I didn’t even get cake or a mention of my wedding, etc. They had me pick a date, and a guest list, and they are taking care of the rest. I just need to make sure the place is clean, etc.

My mom is coming tomorrow night to spend the night, and then Amy will come up on Saturday and stay that night. The party is at 3 on Saturday. Whoo!

I just have to get through tomorrow. I have to write a science test, and finish laundry, and make dinner. And I am hungry and tired and just had a rare evening tea, after a rare afternoon tea. YAWN.

This is a red week. Red is important this week, for some reason. The Red Sox are playing the Cardinals for the World Series during a lunar clipse, when the moon will glow red. It’s red ribbon week ( at school and around the country) for drug awareness or something. A colleague got test results that are not good regarding her um, female system. (more red, okay?) I’m waiting to bleed. Red. Weird.

Can I confess something? As much as I want a positive result, as much as I want to see two lines tomorrow, as exciting even my dream-positives were, and as scared as I have been (either outloud or not) I’m just as scared that I AM pregnant.

That’s ridiculous, right? I mean, I’ve been so focused on “What if I can’t conceive?” I’ve not really thought about “Holy shit, what if I CAN!?!”

What if something goes wrong while I’m pregnant? What if I fuck up the kid when it’s born? What if i was wrong, and I’m actually a HORRIBLE MOTHER? What if I drop the baby or get into a car wreck or leave the stove on or leave the bleachpen in the tub or forget the baby in the car one day?

OH MY GOD! What am I THINKING to want a baby?! All I really want is ice cream, or to break into our Reese’s Halloween Candy stash that is hidden in the locked garage. And a nap. Grownups have babies, NOT ME!

No. I want a baby, I do. But it’s feeling really scary all of a sudden. And I AM a grownup, dammit! By this point in her life, my mom was pregnant with my sister and considered high risk because of her “advanced maternal age.” She delivered Kate when she was THIRTY.

Deep. Breaths.

I mean, it will probably be negative anyway, so I’ll have a month to regroup. Sigh.

Nope. Not yet.

To recap, my cycle lengths, working backwards: 31, 31, 35, 28, 28. I’m at 33 and counting.

I had positive OPKs on Saturday, Oct 16 (CD23) and a lighter, but still positive, on CD25. By CD27, they were negative. I have no idea what they would have been before, so I don’t know if it was The Surge on the 16th, but whatever. We, ermmm, responded to the command of the OPK. So, let’s just say that that was the moment, which makes me 10 DPO today. Possibly.

Symptoms? I don’t think so. The letdown of the dream not trueness of Monday put me off symptom-watch for now. I keep expecting to start any minute, even now, I wonder if I’m starting. So far, my hunches have all been wrong.

And, in my haste/miscalculated ovulation date, I used up two of my three internet HPTs. I have ONE LEFT. I almost ordered a new supply for next month, but hesitated. I want to bleed first, and be sure. And I’m still not sure.

So, because I love keeping the internet apprised of everything that enters or leaves my vagina, I will either start bleeding sometime this week, or I will whip out the HPT on Friday morning. Maybe. I might wait til Saturday (again, I don’t think it will be an issue, since I feel NOTHING) because my housewarming is on Saturday, and I should really be at school the day before, since it’s almost all teachers that are coming. However, I have this notion that I don’t want to go to school if I test positive; I don’t know how I could conceal my excitement if I tested at 6:30 and was at my desk within the hour. My Plan for a Positive is to call in sick to work and just be excited and have a day of “I am SO EXCITED and also TERRIFIED!” before facing the unsuspecting public. Of course, there’s the dilemma of Friday coming and me being “Oh, I might as well use it up, it’s going to be negative anyway”, and if it was positive, THEN what? I HAVE to go to school. And try to hold it in. Oh my gah. That would be hard.

Either way, I’m pretty sure that this just isn’t the month. I feel like I have had an okay LP length (they say at least 9 days, and I’ve had that and then some), so I may have just stressed myself into ovulating a week late. I’ll remember that next month, and just keep testing til I see the OPK double line.

You’ll note, though, that I still haven’t reordered a stick-supply. Damn hope coals!

1. Amy pointed out that I typed “son enough” instead of “soon enough” on my last entry, and wonders if it is a freudian slip.

2. Also, in my dreams, one of the pregnancy tests was odd, and I realized what it was this afternoon. While the first and third (I remember my dreams very clearly, and I do dream in color) were standard stick-tests, the second was weird. I realized that it looked exactly like my intuition razor. I realized it while recounting to Amy, who then burst out laughing: “your INTUITION razor? Jesus, Gretchen.”

3. My kids called me mom today, repeatedly. One of them was doing something that was borderline inappropriate, so I walked up behind him and tapped him twice on the shoulder, He stopped, and this led to the Mrs S as Mom discussion. “You’re a mom! You have mother powers!” and I kept saying “But I don’t have children!” and they said “WE’RE your children! You’re like our mom!”

4. I have not yet started.

I was expecting my period to start today, but it didn’t, and then I realized today is only day 31, so I still have tomorrow to suffer through. That I have been feeling a moderate level of nausea all day is now annoying me. I was (am?) convinced that it was game over, but the gaggy feeling keeps stoking the hope coals. Grrr.

In other news, I spent today working on snappity graphics enterprise. Yeah, I could have done ONEMILLION other things: laundry, correcting, raking, etc, but instead I wanted to get my web presence established, and put together the album for the teachers’ room. There are always booklets for other teachers’ second incomes (Avon, Pampered Chef, Creative Memories, and my favorite to make fun of, Princess House) so I imagine it’s okay to put mine in there. Instead of a markered up post it slapped on, though, I spent TIME making a cover for the album using alphabet stickers from Target’s scrapbooking section, photo corners, little labels, etc.

I also spent time using up that third weblog I have been reserving. My default page is now the snappity page, and I am waiting for my domain to start pointing to it. (www.snappitygraphics.com) My domesticated blog (the parent-safe, boring one) is still gretchen.typepad.com/home, but it’s just not the default setting anymore.

So, there are the details on what’s new here. Not bleeding, feeling gaggy enough to NOT want to make cookies, and pursuing a creative outlet of the non-fetal kind.

Also, another sign I am definitely not pregnant: I watched ER this week, and while I was horrified at watching that mom order her two little girls to jump out of a second story window, and I had to close my eyes repeatedly, I did not cry. As I said to Amy, “ER Pregnancy Test Results: One Line.”

I added a link over yonder, BugMeNot.com is a great little site that gives you generic logins for sites that need it: newspapers or image-sharing sites (ofoto, etc). Very clean site, and so useful. I love it!

Feeling very morose today. I was supposed to call Angie (or was she supposed to call me? Hi, Angie!) and instead I have done dishes, changed the trash, listened to Indigo Girls loudly and workied on grad school stuff. My housewarming is next Saturday, and I’m hoping to tackle the Sewing Room soon, but honestly? I don’t wanna.

For one, I want to put my sewing stuff in the basement when I can reveal the True Purpose of that back bedroom. Setting it up to throw my mom off my trail seems like a waste of energy, you know? If I just ‘put it off’ for a while, well, I won’t have to move all that crap twice.

And, now I feel sickly again. I wonder if it was the Cream of Wheat, or the Veggie Sub? Hmmph.

I’ve decided I’m not knocked up this month. My boobs aren’t hurting as much, and I still feel like ass, but tonight my fingers are freezing and my face is hot, and neither of those are PMS symptoms, but they might be symptoms of general illness, so, yeah. I’ve decided that this isn’t the month.

I want it to be, though. Every month, I want it to be. Wait, no, WE want it to be. Dave has his own 2WW, I think. It’s always late in the month when he starts rubbing my belly, curling up around me and putting his hand right on my skin, just below my navel. He doesn’t say anything, but it’s an unspoken statement.

(Of course, it looks like I DID ovulate late; hope springs eternal.)

On work: today we had an early release day to work on scoring the aforementioned asinine assessments. We had 7 for middle school to get through. We finished ONE. So, now, the rest of them go back into the locked cabinet until Who Know When, and I’ve STILL lost a week (so far!) of the math curriculum. Sigh.

A colleague spent the morning at a laptop meeting, and was back in time for our Middle School Morale-Boosting Potluck (every non-payday Friday the two programs switch off making lunch for all of us, ; itwas my program’s week– corn chowder, salad, bread, and cupcakes) and he said “Hey, I tried to get you a job today!” I think I may have been a little *too* eager when I said “WHERE! DOING WHAT?!” He was very nonspecific (I’m not even sure he knew what he meant by that) but then we had a conversation about technology, etc, that reminded me I need a) out and b) FT grad school. My inbox at home had a reply form my advisor letting me know that the ed building’s lab will need an assistant next year, and she strongly encouraged me to apply. So, there are forms I need to get and fill out, and we’ll see what happens.

I am so. tired.

Today, in addition to school, I had detention duty, a technology presentation to this semester’s crop of student teachers, and then a night spent doing childcare while our curriculum coordinator and assessment team held an informational night about assessments. (Our LAS is absolutely asinine, and is part of the reason good teachers are fleeing the business.)

The childcare was fine. As NJHS advisor, I was there with some of my advisees to help with the childcare. Two other adults(parents who own a daycare) were also there, but there were still a lot of kids.

One little guy, pacifier in mouth, started to break down. I took his hand and we walked up and down the lower school hallway. I talked to other parents as I did, and several thought he was mine. “Oh, no, I don’t have children.” ‘Yet,’ I think. ‘I’m just waiting.’

I survived the wee ones (I am SUCH a middle school teacher) and came home. I’m irrationally unhappy that King of Queens is not on (I’m assuming because of the Sox game — 6-0, go Sox!) and I am exhausted. My tits still hurt, my whole chin region is a mess (I can feel a zit under the surface on the outside-left, and a canker under the surfeace on the inside-right) and I am doing whatever I can to wait to test on Saturday.

I wanted to write about how my student teaching advisor wants to meet with me to talk about what my plans are (I gave her the hush-hush news that I’m thinking of jumping ship and she is sort of upset about that “But, you are SUCH a good teacher, Gretchen….”) and how one of my kids gave me this weird compliment like thing, but I’m too damn tired to write anything. And I can’t even get my Kevin James fix.

G’night. YAWN.

Definitely tired. Deeefffiinnniitteellllyy Tired.

Today was spent tossing back tea in an attempt to beat the fatigue, to no avail. Well, I guess there was some avail as I didn’t drop dead in front of my class, but the tiredness persists.

Also, definitely some painful breasts. Right now, they feel hot and big, if that makes any sense. (Oh, if I hadn’t blocked googling of my site, that would have brought in SO many hits.)

The Plan is to pee on that last OPK as part of the experiment. Either way, I’m going to try to not get too excited in either direction, but I figure what good is ONE OPK anyway. If the Fat Lady sings, I’ll be ordering more and OPK testing later, as a result of that weird positive over the weekend. Then, depending on how I feel, I’ll try to wait until Friday/Saturday to test.

I have three HPTs left from my cheapie internet order, and the my rationale is that if I need to order OPKs, I will also order HPTs, since the best deal is a combo pack, so there’s no harm in using what I already have, especially since they were so cheap, and since run-on sentences may also be a sign of pregnancy, no? 😉

Tonight, I was talking to Dave about how kb wants to order some of my work, and I said “She’s pregnant, too” and Dave was all “WHAT? WHAT DO YOU MEAN, TOO? Are you trying to TELL ME SOMETHING?” I rolled my eyes at him, and insisted that if I were knocked up I wouldn’t drop it into conversation an hour after he got home. Duh. However, it does make me smile that even Dave is hypersensitive to All Things Pregnancy.

Today, when I got home and checked the mail, there was a package from Gerber Baby. It was addressed to the previous owners or current resident, and, as I mentioned, they DID just have a baby and were expecting when they lived here. But, it gave me a little electric shock to see “WELCOME TO MOTHERHOOD!” peeking out of my mailbox.

I was telling Amy (who has been a saint in all this, seriously, you guys only get about 10 percent of my Baby Mania) about how I had these 6th sense predictions about her first son, and her brother’s as-yet-unborn daughter, and I try to get a read on my own future children and I run into a brick wall. With my other “visions,” it was specific, and instant, and I can remember where I was when I had them, and there was no reason at all for me to have them — not like “oh, they’ve been trying, so it’s on my mind” (actually, I had one with Jess and the twins, too) but random, specific thoughts that are quickly proven right. For me, I have no idea.

For example:

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On a rare weeknight run to the grocery store, we saw the previous owner of our house carting around his newborn baby. The crying didn’t even faze me. BABY!!! (So we know the house isn’t opposed to reproduction, anyway.)