From the Department of the Interior

I finally had my meeting with Dr. Ovaries yesterday, with the goal of his shining some light on just what the hell is going on with my lady business (Am I in menopause? Can we still have kids? Etc. Ad nauseum).

As to the first question, he said that despite the crap lab results to the contrary, all other signs--five straight months of semi-regular cycling, heightened emotions and sore boobs prior to my monthlies--point to my not being in menopause.

Not yet, anyway. Between the beating my body has taken over the last year or so and my less than favorable labs, the doc is concerned that my pre-menopause window may be rapidly closing. To that end, he strongly recommended that if I/we had even the slightest interest in having more biological children, we get moving.

Because while some women have achieved spontaneous pregnancy after ovarian transposition, my transposition surgery was different from theirs, specifically my fallopian tubes were cut to achieve the necessary distance from the radiation field, which resulted in cutting off their blood supply, so no more fallopian tubes for me (which now kinda makes the impersonation of a fallopian tube that I would do in college kinda sad or something).

Remember when I said I didn't want to take extreme measures to have more kids? Yeah, me too. Funny how your perspective changes you aren't looking into a basket at the bottom of a guillotine.

Even as recently as my appointment yesterday, I was pooh-poohing IVF, since I didn't want to spend six figures simply to have another child. What conceit, right? Haven't we moved past the whole Selfish Gene thing?

Well, a whole 20 minutes of research turned up that not only is IVF not that expensive, but our insurance covers it up to $20K.

So here's the new plan: Jody and I are going to get the wheels in motion to put some embryo pops on ice as an insurance policy. If we want to have another kid, we [hopefully] have the option of doing so, even if I were to go into menopause the day after the cells go on ice since they can pump me full of enough hormones to fool it into thinking it's a fresh and fertile youngin'.

I have an appointment at the end of next month to talk with one of the endocrine docs at UW that specializes in helping women that have been through cancer treatments have kids.

And before that, I've got some sun to soak. T-minus five days. Hooray!

Doing Our Part to Stimulate the Economy

I am thrilled to report that, despite the inauspicious beginning, Jody and I are half way through with our insulation projects. We had the water heater replaced with an HE unit and moved to a more logical position in the basement, the crawlspace underneath the 1st floor bathroom insulated, and old insulation pulled out from the sill boxes in the basement and replaced with sprayed-in foam.

Yeah, I didn't know what a sill box was, either, but I can talk a good game.

Next on the list is to have the attic air sealed, the old insulation ripped out and replaced with 14" of blown in cellulose.

To give you a picture of how badly we needed this work done, the old water heater was at least 20 years old, the 1st floor bathroom used to be a good 10+ degrees colder than the rest of the house when the door was closed, and while current building code requires that attic insulation is rated no less than R38, we've got about R6 up there. Oy.

My primary goal with all of this work is to first keep the house in good shape (read: prevent it from crumbling around our ears), with the second goal being an increase in efficiency. Apparently the attic improvements wil also keep the 2nd floor cooler in the summer, which is great, because it can really cook up there, despite the AC being cranked up.

I'm also hoping that the new attic insulation prevents new ice dams from forming (the old ones have just about completely melted away in the recent heat wave) because I swear to GOD that there is a new crack in the molding or along the wall seams every time I turn around and it is driving me absolutely BITCHCAKES.

In other house news, we had been thinking about having our garage redone. Currently, you can get a car in there, but being able to open the doors is another matter altogether. In this neighborhood, it seems like you have two choices: use your garage for storage or strip it bare to the walls so you can park you car in there.

We had given some thought to putting on a new garage, and then doing a garage with a bedroom on top, but I had a revelation about a week ago and thought what I would say if a neighbor were to undertake such a project. Since the answer to that scenario was "nothing nice," Jody and I have agreed to put that one on the back burner for the time being.

That's enough outta me for now--I'm going to go and do my impression of a Hungry Hungry Hippo.

Why I Love 30 Rock, Exhibit Q17, Part 6b:

"I'm trying to produce a Christmas special that makes It's a Wonderful Life look like Pulp Fiction."

--Jack Donaghy
Catch episodes for free at the great and powerful Hulu.