What do you have? But, what do you want?

Nope, this isn't a post about "secret to having what you want is wanting what you have." This is a post about a board game called Settlers of Catan. One aspect of the game involves trading resource cards with other players. The title went back and forth between Husband and Princess Kate one night. I think after the fourth iteration we all burst out laughing. This is probably funnier to Princess Kate and me. The rest of you should just trust me; it was hilarious.

I like board games. and card games. One of the first real dates Husband and I went on was to go to a Tarocks tournament at his great uncle's house. I got to meet the whole extended-extended family. Early on. I got to learn a lot of things that day; but most importantly, I learned to play Tarocks. It's kind of like Spades on steroids. If you've grown up playing Spades (as I have) I encourage you to find someone to teach you Tarocks. It. is. awesome.

Husband made us some Chilean sea bass last night. That is one expensive fish. Which made him paranoid that he would ruin it because he doesn't have much experience with fish. It came out delicious. Was it $10 per serving delicious? I don't know, but it was pretty good.

Hair and stuff

My hair is down today for the first time in three (four?) weeks. It's pretty much been in a ponytail, half-ponytail or bun for that time. Today, I have the sides pulled back but the rest is down. I checked with my coworker (who is very truthful) and he confirmed that my hair does not look dirty. That's a relief to hear considering I've not used shampoo for four weeks and have used nothing but hot water for 3 of those weeks. I did buy a boar's bristles brush to distribute the oils throughout my hair. It seems to work okay. I also have to rinse my hair much more frequently than I was washing it before, but I guess that makes sense.

I also would like to report that I've been jogging twice since Saturday. I plan on jogging this evening as well. Husband has also been regular with his exercise.

Last night was day 13 for me and I took the cardboard out of the window (this is for lunaception). Sunday it will go back. I have to say, I miss the dark.

Broken plate and Mardi Gras

It's the laundry plate. We have amazingly large piles of dirty laundry especially when you consider we are just two people. We are to the wearing-as-we-wash stage. That's a bad place to be. I'm making it my goal to get the laundry sorted and get one load done and put away. It's the put away step that usually trips me up. It's also my goal to get all currently clean laundry put away. If I can get that much done tonight, I will be successful. I will have that plate glued back together and on its stick.

It's Mardi Gras! Fat Tuesday for you no-French-knowing peeps. Husband and I like to do a fast during Lent. This year, we are giving up eating out. There will be no restaurant eating for us until Easter. Even though, technically speaking, Sunday is not a part of Lent, we treat it as though it were. Tonight, sushi! Tomorrow, whatever we have in the kitchen.

Monday, Monday, can't trust that day

Actually, I don't have trust issues with Monday; but I do like song lyrics as titles. and the Mamas and the Papas.

Husband and I have decided that we are going to focus on getting our bodies healthy and enjoying one another rather than focusing on conception. Sex can become a chore. We are rediscovering the fun sex. This is also improving our communication and our closeness.

It's been awhile since I last posted. My last post was day 5 of this cycle. I'm now day 11. I've mostly successfully blacked out my bedroom. I still need to fill in the cracks around the door. More on this later. Wednesday will be day 13 and I'll remove the cardboard from my window so that I will be sleeping in light from day 13 - 17. The hope is that I will ovulate during this time. However, this is the first time I've tried this so I don't hold out much hope that it will happen. Left to its own devices, my body likes to ovulate around day 45 or so. Stupid body.

I'm also back on the Chinese herbs. I'll post the name of them in my sidebar. In addition to the herbs, I'm taking red clover leaf tea. It's the whole plant in bloom, dried, with hot water. It doesn't taste bad; but it doesn't taste good either. I'm supposed to add burdock root to it, but I can't find any. The clover leaf is supposed to help with my skin. The clomid and ovidrel really messed with my skin. I had bad breakouts along my jaw line and neck. Not very attractive.

On the topic of skin care, using the shea butter as moisturizer for my face is bad. It was clogging my pores. I'm now using straight coconut oil. It only takes a small amount to do my whole face, neck and chest area. And my skin feels wonderful. I think the tone has improved drastically.

Back to the blacked out bedroom. I've found that I can sleep much later on mornings that I don't have to get up at a certain time, because there's no light coming in. I don't know that the sun has risen already. I could usually rely on myself getting out of bed by 7:30 without an alarm. Not so anymore.

Downtime

I started off my four-day weekend with not only my period, but some nasty allergies as well. Husband and my co-worker both got a cold/flu and have been running fevers. I don't have a fever but I sure don't feel very good. I tried to go to work today. That didn't work out.

And again

Yesterday Mother Nature let me know that I am not pregnant. Although, around this time, I think of Mother Nature in the "Mommy Dearest" sense.

TTC: Got the call

from the clinic letting me know I'm not pregnant.

We're taking a break from the clinic.

On a lighter note

I finally made the cheesy beef and rice casserole last night. I served it with my homemade sauerkraut on the side. Lil' bruddr mixed it right in. It was delicious. Both Lil' Bruddr and Husband loved it. I also thought it was pretty good ;)

We enjoyed an evening of eating food, watching "The Avatar," and drinking tea. There is a lot of tea talk in some of the episodes of "The Avatar" and our friend who just went to China brought back some jasmine tea and tea cups for me. I could not resist.

I'm currently growing a sourdough starter that I hope to use this weekend to make my first loaves. (pictures in progress) I want to see if I can find some stone loaf pans. We have money set aside this month for kitchen purchases. We are also going to get a stainless steel skillet. This is part of my quest to eliminate the non-stick coating stuff we have.

Today we will buy a leg-of-lamb roast which I will roast up on Sunday. This is brand new territory and an expensive experiment. Lamb is running about $8.75 per pound. That's not cheap. I've decided that I don't want to do a rare roast as is suggested in Nourishing Traditions. I'm going to do a long, slow roast and try to get it to be all melty. Then I'll use the extra to make individual shepherd's pies, and the bone will of course be turned into broth.

On the ttc front, we tried to get my blood test done yesterday but got to the clinic too late. We will try again today. But I'm not feeling pregnant and am not hopeful. I mostly want to make sure that I'm producing enough progesterone to sustain a pregnancy.

The hardest part

During our drive back from Houston, Husband and I got into a conversation about when we should consider adoption. In the course of the conversation, Husband says that we've only been trying to get pregnant since October. This did not go over well with me. This was very hurtful. It drove home how very alone I have been in my efforts for the past two years.

Have you seen that movie Howl's Moving Castle? If you haven't, you totally should. If you have, then do you remember that scene where Howl calls on the dark spirits because his hair color got messed up? That was me, but much worse. I was in a very dark place.

Husband is, in his own words, very self-absorbed, and he doesn't like to face problems. So, at least he is aware of the root of the issue.

We worked through things. We're fine now. He's taking a more active role in trying to figure out how to fix our fertility problems. He's willing to discuss adoption. We might not be on the same page, but we're at least in the same chapter of the same book.

I don't expect him to suddenly become supportive. I'm thankful for my friends who provide a lot of support. I'm thankful that I have an independent personality that enables me to still function in a relationship where my ideas and thoughts are not considered interesting or important by the other person. I know he loves me. I'm thankful for the love.

No 'poo for me too

(that's assonance)

So I've read on a few sites of a method for removing shampoo from your life. The basic idea is that when left to its own natural resources, your hair will regulate the amount of oil naturally. In the meantime you use a combination of a baking soda rinse and a vinegar rinse to bridge the gap, so to speak. I was already going a week or more between hair washings so my scalp was already producing less oil. Today would've been a shampoo day, but instead I did a baking soda rinse and apple cider vinegar rinse. The results? Not bad. But not overly good either.

For one, I have trouble with the method itself. I'm not good at pour liquid on my head, apparently. I got a lot of baking soda water in one of my ears and all over the side of my face. I think I should use a squirt bottle for more precision. Secondly, I don't think I need the baking soda rinse at all. I think the combination of the hot water and the vinegar rinse will be enough to redistribute the oils in my hair so that I don't have any grease spots without stripping my hair. My hair does look nice and does NOT smell like vinegar.

I also made my own body cream this afternoon. Same concept as the face cream, only I used a lot of shea butter and a little grapeseed. I scrubbed it on and then shaved my legs. I did not need lotion when I got out of the shower. So far, so good. I might even try a little of it on my face for moisturizing.

So, I think I've reached a milestone. I don't think there is anything I could do at this point to be more crunchy granola. I never thought I would think it's a good idea to stop using shampoo.

Roadtrip to Houston

We are going to Houston this weekend to visit a friend who recently went to China and bought us stuff there. He's a pretty cool friend.

We will be taking the dogs with us so I need to get their food prepped beforehand. I just checked with the big boss man and he said I can have tomorrow off. Sounds like it's time to make a plan.

The plan is, tomorrow I will do a lot of packing and cleaning. I think I'll get husband to take the crap car to work so that I can get the subaru packed and ready to go by the time he gets home.

Dogs food will consist of: greens, rice, molasses, vinegar, any vegetables that I still have after cooking tonight, garlic, egg shells, yogurt; Everything except the yogurt and rice will get blended in the food processor and put in a container. They will be meatless this weekend because that's just easier when traveling.

Cooking tonight: chicken fried rice and the beef cheese rice casseroles. The casseroles will go in the freezer and the fried rice will be consumed tonight and tomorrow.

Trying to conceive Tuesday

As you all know from intently and religiously readying my blog, we are in limbo right now. We don't know if we are pregnant or not. However, I'm very pessimistic about our prospects. I don't think it worked. But this time, I have a plan.

Here's the plan.

No more clomid for either of us. Husband needs to find another way to raise his testosterone. I need to find another way to ovulate.

I'm going to eat more seaweed. The idea is that this will boost my iodine intake and help my thyroid do what it is supposed to do.

I'm going to practice lunaception. I will start this on day one of my cycle.

Days 1 - 13: Sleep in *total* darkness. As in, you can't see your hand in front of your face after 15 minutes.
Days 13 - 17: Sleep with a little bit of light. This should prompt ovulation.
Remainder of cycle: Sleep in *total* darkness.

Tuesday already?

Time flies when you are menu planning. Let's first start with what I've done wrong.

Wrong

• Did not take into account that we would need to eat on Saturday and Sunday. Therefore the spaghetti that I had planned to use for lunch yesterday was already eaten. I had to improvise which led to me taking toast triangles and chicken liver pate for lunch. This did not work and I ate out in addition to eating the pate. If I had packed some of the soup to accompany it, that would have worked.
• Expected myself to cook and bake way too much for one weekend. I need to focus on doing the long prep so that I can cook during the week. For instance, I made the rice for the cheesy beef and rice casserole, so that all I have to do when I'm ready to make it is to brown the ground beef and mix it all together.

Now on to what I did right.

Right

• Roasting the chicken on Saturday was a success. They were delicious. I have cooked chicken meat that I can use in a casserole or fried rice. I used the carcasses to make a delicious broth.
  
• The lentil soup was also a resounding success. Husband can't get enough of it and it's chock full of good stuff. I used homemade broth in place of the water. Between the bone broth, collard greens and lentils, it's a very healthy meal.
  
• Spreadsheet was a success. It was very useful to have the spreadsheet. That was not wasted effort as I feared it might be. It also allows me to start planning future weeks in advance. That way I know what to look for and buy at the markets.
  
• Eating. We did not eat out all weekend because we had yummy readily available food in the house. Even when my evil friend tried to talk us into sushi.

The WAPF meeting went well even though it was just me and the chapter leader. I made the chicken liver pate. It has an interesting taste. I forgot to add the salt and I think that would've improved the taste greatly. I'm now experimenting with ways to eat it. I have a lot of it. One of the ways that I've found I like it is with some Swiss cheese and sea weed. I picked up a package of dulse from the coop and have been snacking on it intermittently. I'm trying to develop a taste for it. The salty flavor of the cheese and seaweed go well with the pate. I'm thinking of making a sandwich from these ingredients.