Somewhere around 3 dpo...

According to my chart, I'm 3 dpo today. The cross-hairs are dotted, though - I still have fertile CM so it's not sure. Right now it says I ovulated CD21, but I was thinking it happened CD22 so I guess we'll see in another day or two if the interpretation changes.


I've been feeling quite defeated with the whole TTC thing recently. For some reason it really hit me hard when we weren't successful with my last cycle. I don't know why that was harder than previous times, but it was. I haven't given up (clearly!) but I don't think I'm expecting anything at all now. I think if I ever do get my BFP I'll be completely shocked, LOL.

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Our last (4th) foster pug, Hudson, was adopted on Saturday 3/24. We'd had him 5 and a half weeks - that seems to be about average for all the fosters we've had before! He got a wonderful home with lovely people, and that's all I ever want for them all.

Sunday was the big pug rescue fundraiser, and it was crazy busy! All our former foster pugs, save for Hudson, were there! It was so nice to see them all; Cheko (still really timid, freaked out by all the people etc, but looking great otherwise!), Max (the one who stole my heart - also looking great!) and Tien Ping (fabulous as ever!). Cheko's name now is Mayhem (it's ironic!), Max is still Max (or Maxwell!) and Tien Ping is now Ollie. When my hubby told me Max was there (I was in the adoption room), my heart sank. He's the one who broke my heart, I so wanted to keep him. Gosh, even just writing that made me cry! I was happy to see him, of course, but I'm so glad I didn't break down (I thought I might). The people who adopted him are so nice, though, and I'm so happy he's got a great life now with people who adore him. It's a single dad with 3 kids, 10 through 16, and they're lovely. They won a basket of awesome pug cookies in the raffle, and they came and gave me one! I was so touched, it was really sweet of them :)


We already had our next fosters when Hudson went to his next home. Yep, I said fosters, plural! Thursday (3/22) an email plea went out for someone to take these two older pugs in, because their last foster home fell through. They've been with pug rescue for 2 months already, and we've seen them at some of the events. Well, I managed to persuade my hubby to agree to taking them in. At that point we still had Hudson, so we had 5 dogs here which was a shock to the system! These 2 are so sweet and easy-going, thank goodness. They're a bonded pair who have been together for 6 years, so they'll have to be adopted together. Milo is coming up 9 years old and Lilly is coming up 7 years old. Milo is a pug mix, possibly pug-basset hound or pug-beagle (puggle) - he has short legs, big feet and a long body (and long-ish snout!). Lilly is full pug. They're both adorable, we love them! Originally we were only fostering until the big fundraiser, but since they fit in so well here I asked if we could foster until they're adopted. Of course that wasn't a problem - we're inundated with pugs needing foster homes right now, and it's harder to place a pair than one dog on its own. Sadly that's the case for getting them adopted, too: it's likely they'll be with us a while. Milo currently has an anal gland infection so he's on antibiotics for that, and he badly needs a dental so he'll get that done in April when his infection has cleared up. He needs a few teeth pulling at least - they're really bad. I bet he'll feel great afterward, when he doesn't have any pain anymore (he doesn't appear to be in any pain now, but I bet he is with those wobbly bad teeth).

Lilly & Milo are just the cutest couple, though! They were given up by their owner because she was dating a guy who "didn't like them", so she married him anyway and had to surrender the dogs. Nice, huh? At least she did the right thing for them, and didn't just turn them out on the street. I don't know how anybody could not like these two, though!

Here they are at the adoption event we had on St. Patrick's Day, wearing festive bandanas I made for all the pugs (Lilly on the left, Milo on the right).


I hope they get adopted soon, but we're prepared that they might be with us a long time. Sometimes it can be really hard to place a bonded pair, because most people just want to adopt one dog. Plus they're a little older, and that sometimes works against them too. Also, Milo not being "pure pug" might go against them. However, the adoption fee for the pair is what it would normally cost just for Lilly, so hopefully someone will come forward to adopt them. I have to say, Milo is a real sweetie and it breaks my heart when people are super interested in Lilly, only to lose interest when they find out that she's bonded with Milo. He's a lovely boy: I hope someone will see that and give them both a great home!

CD1 yet again!

Yep, AF arrived today. Early in the morning; the cramps were horrendous and I had to get up at 2.40 a.m. to take some tylenol and get my hot water bottle. My LP was normal again at 13 days, so that's good. I'm also pleased about ovulating earlier. Other than that, I'm feeling pretty down about the whole thing. If we'd conceived when we first started TTC, I'd be due now.

Oh well. There's nothing I can do about it, all I can do is hope that this cycle will be The One. Fingers crossed!

I'm out, again.

AF hasn't arrived yet, but I can feel it coming. Spotting started the night of 10 dpo and today is 12 dpo; I'm cramping quite a lot as well. I tested the morning of 10 dpo and it was negative of course.

I feel like throwing myself a little pity party right now, if I'm honest. I didn't get my hopes up this time, but it turns out it doesn't hurt any less this way. I can't help but wonder if we're ever going to be parents. Maybe we should just stick to the pugs.

If there's any crazy formatting it's because I'm on my phone :)

5dpo :)

I didn't get my BFP with my last cycle, but it's all good. I'm currently 5dpo, and I ovulated CD19! That's the earliest it's ever happened for me since we started TTC. I'm so happy that my ovulation day is heading in the right direction. Last month it happened CD21 which I was also pleased about (my earliest before that was CD22). CD19 is awesome for me!

Here's my chart:


It looks good so far, but it's too early to make any predictions of course. At this point I'm just happy that I ovulated earlier than usual!

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Our last foster pug was adopted a couple of weeks ago, he went to his new home on Valentine's Day. He has 2 moms now who both love him to bits! I'm so happy for the little guy. His new name is Ollie, much easier than Tien Ping! LOL. He was the first one I wasn't really worried about when he left us; he's so easy-going and when he came to us from his original owner, he was absolutely fine. I knew he'd be fine leaving us, and not upset or anything.

The day after he left, I went to pick up our new foster pug (Hudson). He'd just had surgery that day: He was neutered, but that wasn't straightforward because he had an undescended testicle so they had to open his abdomen up. They also widened his nostrils because he was having trouble breathing. Anyway, he seemed OK (groggy from the anesthetic of course). I sat with him the next couple of days while he rested. My hubby was away in Wisconsin on a business trip, so it was just me and the pugs. Anyway, on the Saturday evening, about 10 minutes after the vet closed (typical!) his abdominal incision started oozing orange stuff. Not good. I called the advice line for our local vet and they said it sounded like an infection (which we assumed it was) and to keep it as clean as possible and take him to the vet the next day. Luckily, the vet he'd had surgery at is open 7 days a week so that wasn't a problem. Hudson was so good, he let me clean him up as often as I needed to (frequently) - he would just lay there and let me do what I had to do. The next day it was even worse, and we got him to the vet at lunchtime (first available appointment). Initially the vet thought it was an infection which would be treatable by antibiotics at home, but she went and examined him again just to be sure and came back to tell us he needed another surgery. She said it was worse than she'd realized at first and that he had a really bad infection and an open area, so he had to be opened up again, have an abdominal wash-out and be re-closed. OMG! So we left him at the vet and came home, which just about killed me. He's not even our dog and we'd only had him 4 days at that point, but I cried my eyes out that afternoon. I was so scared for him; the whole thing was pretty traumatic.

Well, when they did the surgery they found out that he'd actually had a really bad reaction to his sutures and that had caused the wound to break down. They had to cut away the bad tissue (the vet said it was hard because his tissue was 3 times thicker than it should have been, due to the reaction) and wash his abdomen out, then re-suture the incision. The fact it was a suture reaction was actually a good thing, it was better news than a massive infection anyway. So we collected him the day after and he seemed great. The incision looked so much better and he was a lot perkier. We were given antibiotics for him but the vet said his culture results wouldn't be back for 3-4 days so he may need his antibiotics switching when they came back. We took him home and he was so happy to be back! Unfortunately the next day, he started vomiting (it was almost projectile!) and hubby called the vet; they said to bring him back in. They gave him subcutaneous fluids because he was a little dehydrated (even though he'd been drinking), and they gave him shots of his anti-inflammatory, antibiotic and an anti-nausea med. That was good - we didn't have to worry about giving him his meds for the rest of the day. He had to be fed a bland diet in small amounts every 2-3 hours (scrambled egg and rice). I did that for the rest of that day and the following morning, and then his incision started to bleed again. OMG!!!! My heart sank; what was wrong now? We got him an appointment at the vet (again) and I contacted one of the people in charge of pug rescue, who said that she would speak to the vet and ask if Hudson could stay there for a night or two. When we took him in, the vet told us he had 2 infections going on (the culture results had just come back), and the antibiotics he was on were only tackling one of those infections. That kind of explained things! By the time of his appointment, he wasn't actively bleeding. They took him back to the treatment area and started him on his new antibiotics. They called us at 7pm and said they'd cleaned him all up and would see how his incision was in the morning. They called us the next morning and told us it was fine, no bleeding or anything overnight. They also found out he had a 3rd bug in there, but luckily the antibiotics he was on was good for all 3. We arranged to collect him that afternoon, and he's been doing great since! One of his nose sutures came out on Saturday, but that's OK, it's healed nicely (that was 11 days post-surgery and the nose sutures are supposed to come out on their own). His other one is still in, but I'm sure it won't be long before it comes out too.

He still has to wear his e-collar because otherwise he tries to get to his sutures, but he's doing so well. It's obvious he feels a million times better. He's resting in his crate the majority of the time, because I really don't want him to have any more complications and he tries to jump and run when he's out of the crate. Plus, our pugs try to play with him (he so wants to play!) and I'm scared of his sutures being pulled out or something. I'm going to take him for his first short walk today, just down to our local small pet store (like a 10 minute round-trip). He's a skinny little guy, he was found wandering stray with 2 other pugs (a boy and a girl). The girl was pregnant and had a hole in her uterus, so her spay was complicated. Just as well she came to pug rescue when she did, because she probably would've died if the pregnancy had progressed. She was adopted on Saturday :-) The trio weren't bonded, they're all fine on their own. Just as well, because it's hard enough to find a home for a pair, never mind for 3. Hudson is the cutest little guy and I just know he's going to be really popular when he's up for adoption. There's an event this Saturday but I don't know if he can go to it. Hopefully he can, his sutures should be out by then. I haven't been able to write his bio yet because I can't really tell anyone much about him - whether he's potty-trained, leash-trained, how he interacts with other dogs, etc. It'll have to wait until he's able to be free of his e-collar, LOL.

Here's the lovely Hudson:

10dpo today :)

I should know in the next couple of days whether we're in with a good chance this cycle. Usually I start spotting at 11dpo (although last month that didn't happen) and since I've been charting, my temp has always dropped pretty significantly at 12dpo. If that happens then I guess I'm out again. If my temp stays high at 12dpo it's probably a good sign. The best sign (other than a positive pregnancy test) would be missing my period - I really hope it doesn't come! Well, that's stating the obvious!

I feel kind of crampy, very bloated, gassy and tired. This morning I had a 90 minute hot stone massage - I wasn't sure whether to have it or wait until I get my period, but I figured the chances are it would be fine and more likely than not there's nothing to affect anyway. I've been testing every day since 8dpo (way too early, I know!) and all of my tests have been negative. I honestly don't expect anything else at this point - sure, I really hope for my BFP, but it never surprises me when all I get is negatives. After last month I'm not getting my hopes up!

I ovulated! Woo-hoo!

Yep, that's right! I ovulated on CD21 (the earliest since I began charting!). I'm very happy; if we're not successful this month then at least my O day seems to be heading in the right direction. I'm hoping that as time goes on, I'll O closer to CD14. I guess it doesn't really matter, but it would be nice to have shorter cycles!

This means AF is due on 2/4. I'm hoping to get my BFP instead, of course.

We just got the news today that my hubby has to go on a week-long business trip in the middle of February. My first thought, after "That sucks!" was, "Oh good, it won't coincide with ovulation!". LOL. I guess it's a good thing that we don't buy into Valentine's Day, because he'll be almost 1800 miles away. I'll miss him but we've been apart for much longer before, when we were in a long-distance relationship. We'd go 3-4 months without seeing each other and that was hell, so this will be fine. He'll only be gone Monday through Friday, too. I just hope the dogs behave for me while he's gone...

About half an hour ago, some idiot rang our doorbell twice in quick succession and then proceeded to bang on the door. The dogs went crazy of course (they hate the doorbell) and in the process of me trying to crate them they started fighting. I got bitten by Suzie pretty badly on my index finger - she broke the skin on either side of my knuckle. I don't think she meant to bite me (she was trying to get to Gracie), but still. The best of it is, whoever the idiot was who caused the frenzy didn't even wait for me to answer the door. If it was important enough to ring the bell twice and bang on the door, with no gap between any those things, then they could've waited the 45 seconds it took me to get to the door. I mean, they would've heard me shouting at the dogs, for goodness sake - they knew someone was home. Ugh, I hate some people!!!

Speaking of which, over the weekend someone stole my debit card number and emptied my bank account. Well, they actually put me in the red. Wonderful, right? I was woken on Sunday morning by a call from the card company asking me to verify a transaction at a gas station in Michigan. Um, nope, it wasn't me. Never been there in my life. Anyway, it turns out there were 4 transactions before they called to ask me if I wanted to block the card. We went to the bank yesterday to sort it out and now I'm waiting to get my money back. The lady at the bank said we were the fifth customers she'd seen yesterday with the same problem. Isn't it a sad reflection on society that this kind of thing is so common? I had the same thing happen to me years ago in the UK. Anyway, hopefully the people who do that kind of thing will get what's coming to them. Karma is a bitch!

Feeling better

My LP ended up being the usual 13 days, so I started off the new year the way I really didn't want to, with my period. Oh well. That makes today CD11 and I'm not expecting to ovulate for at least another 10 days - but sooner than that would be nice! I've long accepted that I'm not pregnant, although it was incredibly disappointing at the time because all the signs looked good. It's just one of those things, I guess. Better luck next time :-)

Life here is back to normal. Our foster pug, Max, was adopted on Friday. I had a really hard time letting him go, I really bonded with him. It just about broke my heart when we left his new home, I cried all the way home and still get teary-eyed when I think about him. I hope his new home works out for him, though. I want him to be happy. While he was with us, he lost about 4 pounds I think - he weighed 35 pounds when he came to us, and around 31 when he was adopted. Still very heavy, but it's a massive improvement. He is a big pug, tall and broad - it's not all fat!

We went to collect our new foster, Tien Ping, a few hours after Max left us. He's 6 and such a cutie! We collected him from his original owner, who said she didn't have enough time for him anymore and he'd been living mostly outdoors. Poor little guy. He's thrilled to be at our house, he hasn't been sad at all. Within an hour of getting here, he was playing with our pug girls. I think he's just so happy to be indoors and part of the family. I'm sure he'll be adopted quickly, he's just lovely.

My dad left last Tuesday, which honestly was a huge relief. Eleven days of not very much to say or do, plus him yelling at me in the street because I dared to stand up for myself re: my bitch of a MIL, and I was completely done. I was actually done after 5 days, when we had that argument.

My relationship with my dad isn't the greatest, and since I moved to the US it's deteriorated somewhat. When I lived in the UK, he would piss me off on a pretty regular basis, but the way he's acted since I moved has been worse. Before I moved, he actually asked me to change our wedding date because he hadn't booked the time off work when we'd given him the date and couldn't get the vacation time when he actually attempted to. We flat out refused - who really expects someone to change their wedding date for them? Especially when it's virtually paid for as well. Come on! Then there was the whole BS while he was visiting last time, which was a shitty 10 days because of his behavior. Then he never bothered to contact me, which was annoying. I think what was worse was his "I miss you so much" crap that he'd come out with after a whole month of no contact (because I'd stopped making the effort since he couldn't bring himself to pick up the damn phone himself). Actions speak louder than words!

The way he acted since he booked his trip, 3 months before he arrived, was terrible. Virtually every time I spoke to him (on Skype) he'd do his very best to piss me off. His behavior, even by email, was horrible. His shitty attitude and insults got old very quickly, and I shot him down every time he came out with his crap, but it didn't stop him from doing it again. I realize now that I should have given him an ultimatum - treat me with some respect or you will not stay in our house. I totally should have done that; I wish I had. Instead I seemingly allowed him to get away with his behavior, because although I voiced my displeasure over his demands and the insults he would "jokingly" deliver (not joking really though, I'm sure) I never gave him any real consequences for what he was doing. I should have hung up on him, or told him he's not staying with us with that attitude. Better yet, I should have told him I wasn't going to talk to him for 4 weeks (we usually talk on Skype once a week) and that if, after that, his behavior hadn't improved, he could cancel his vacation.

There was a consequence for his behavior while he was here, though - as a result of the way he acted prior to his visit, and while here, we barely made any effort to make sure he had a nice vacation. When I say that, I mean we didn't take him on loads of sightseeing trips and we didn't bend over backward for him. We didn't take him out for dinner or anything like that. The effort we made was in providing a comfortable room and feeding him for 11 days. I let him use my laptop virtually every day to Skype with his wife, I rented a couple of DVDs for him to watch and downloaded movies that we have available through Dish (only free ones, not pay per view!). I even did his damn laundry for him, twice. More fool me. It took him 2 days to say thanks. It sure as hell didn't take him that long to see what I'd foolishly done for him - I'd folded his jeans, boxers and sweaters, hung his shirts up (I didn't iron them, screw that) and paired his socks up - they were all on the bed in neat piles. So yeah, it pissed me off that he couldn't even thank me in a timely manner for doing all of that. He's the one who made the conscious decision to bring carry-on only, when he could have (and should have) brought a suitcase and plenty of clothes. He's also the one who told me I was "too lazy" and should "want" to do his laundry all the time while he was visiting because I hadn't seen him in a year. Yeah... Why the hell did I allow his rude self to stay here?!?!

There must be something wrong with me because despite the shitty way he treats me, I still want to please him. I hate that, it really needs to change.

The big argument we had was my breaking point, I actually wanted to kick him out after that. My FIL was coming over for dinner that night, without MIL since we're still not speaking to her after she tried to bully us into her 'religion' (cult!) in September. Before my dad came here, he asked me a couple of times if he would be seeing my in-laws. He knows the situation with MIL - and I told him he'd most likely see FIL and BIL but not MIL. A few days after he got here, he brought it up again with me and my hubby - he said he felt 'awkward' not going to see MIL and that she would think he was being rude by not visiting her. We both agreed that given the situation, there was no way that he could go and see her without causing us more problems. Remember, he refused to hire a car. We weren't about to drive him over there, or even call to arrange anything for him - we're not speaking to the woman! What's so difficult to understand about that?! We figured that was the end of it, but hubby and I discussed it again privately and still both agreed that it wasn't going to work having my dad go visit her.

Two days later I was walking the dogs with my dad and I mentioned that FIL would be arriving at 5.30. Well, he took that opportunity to lay into me because it's so 'awkward' for him not seeing MIL. I reminded him that we'd discussed it already and it wasn't up for discussion. He started shouting at me in the street. I had to tell him not to shout at me. Within a couple of minutes he was shouting again and I had to tell him to stop for the second time. His favorite thing to say to me, whenever I disagree with him, is that I'm "being ridiculous", so of course that was his response this time too. I told him that just because he was here, it didn't mean anything had changed with the MIL situation - we would see her when we were ready to, not because he was pushing for it. He kept going on about what my MIL might think of him if he didn't see her, so my response was "Don't you care that you're upsetting me and my hubby by bringing this up repeatedly? It's an awkward situation to begin with!". He got all defensive, saying "Fine, I won't see her!". I told him he could walk himself over there right now - of course he didn't. He would never bother to initiate a meeting with her himself, he fully expected us to just say "Oh, well if you feel awkward about the situation, we can't possibly allow that! Let me pick up the phone and call her right now, we're being so silly to not want to see someone who's been a total bitch to us aren't we?!"

For the record, he's only met MIL twice, a year ago, for about 2-3 hours each time. They haven't been in touch since. It's not like they're best friends or anything! I doubt she'd even give a crap if he didn't visit her! And since she's fully aware of the situation, she most likely wasn't expecting to see him anyway. Don't get me wrong, I'm not expecting people to take our side, but they should at least respect our position and shut up about it; especially if they're staying in our house and eating our food!

He also came out with this gem: "If she died tomorrow, you'd be sorry". I replied, "So just because anybody can die at anytime, that means we have to let everyone treat us like shit? I don't think so!"

I also asked (politely) that he not bring up the subject to FIL, and he flew off the handle again, saying he can say whatever he wants. Um, as a guest in our house, I really think you should be doing your best not to piss us off even more than you have already. Seriously. What kind of houseguest would even argue about this in the first place?

I challenged him to bring the whole thing up with my hubby again - and he didn't have anything to say to that. I told him he was undermining me/us by continuing to bring this up, and he said "I've only brought it up twice!" - "Twice too many," I replied. I hate the way he waits until he gets me on my own and then treats me like crap. He wouldn't dare yell at me with my hubby in the house, so he waited until we were walking the dogs. What a fucking coward, seriously! He had to ambush me when I was alone.

Five minutes after we got back to the house, and I'd told my hubby everything, my dad was asking "What's wrong?" - as if he didn't know. Oh, I guess I'm supposed to just forget all that BS! Sorry, not going to happen. I said "Nothing," in such a way that it was very obvious that I was pissed off with him. I know that's kind of passive aggressive, but if I'd said "Gee, I don't know, maybe I don't appreciate being yelled at in the street like a naughty child!" he'd have said I was "being ridiculous" and WW3 would have ensued. Maybe I should have said that, and then kicked him out when he spouted more crap. My hubby looked up hotels right after I told him what went down on the walk, too. Anyway I barely spoke to him for the rest of the day, which was awkward because I acted completely normal with FIL and my hubby but pretty much ignored my dad. I was just seething at him - what an asshole.

So after that, I spent the rest of his trip counting down the days until he was leaving. He kept treating me like some kind of maid, asking for drinks while I was clearly busy making dinner etc. I had to clean up after him all the time because he has no respect for me whatsoever. It didn't matter that I'd just finished cleaning the kitchen, he'd come and get something to eat and make a huge mess which he wouldn't even attempt to clean up. I'd love to see how he'd react to someone acting that way in his house...

He also kept making comments like "I won't be visiting again for another 3-4 years because I can't afford it" (my thoughts? Good! And, he totally could afford it if he didn't insist on paying so much extra for unnecessary travel upgrades). Another of my favorites was: "The next time I see you will be when you come to England. I'll probably be waiting 20 years" (which he said at least twice). I wish I'd said, "No, we'll be visiting England sooner than 20 years from now, but if you keep acting this way we sure as hell won't be visiting you!" Why is it that you think of the best comebacks after the fact?!

So, I guess since it's Wednesday I'm supposed to be talking with him on Skype in, oh, about 2 hours. Great... I'm very tempted to just not log in, honestly. But then, on the other hand I kind of want to because I'm pretty sure that now he's had a whole week to discuss his vacation with his wife, he'll probably let me know how awful we are for not doing more for him. You know, because he always has this "woe is me" attitude and he never takes responsibility for his actions. No matter what he does, he always ends up turning it around on me to try and make out that I'm the one at fault. His wife will no doubt have been stirring things up, saying that it's awful that he spent all that money and flew over 5000 miles only to have us not bend to his every whim. That's how she is - she loves to stir things, especially when it involves me. She's always had a problem with me, for the last 15 years since they got together; he's just too blind to see it. Anyway, I'm kind of hoping he does say something bad because I will have a good excuse to lay into him if he does. I know that probably sounds bad, but it's the truth. He was such a pain in the ass and that argument just took the piss. I'm done with the way he treats me, honestly.