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It's been a month and a half since that last update, so there's a few new things to update you on now.
Last month I was stressing over not being sure whether I was pregnant or not, and not being able to get a clear answer out of the doctors.
Well, a day or two after writing that last entry, I managed to call a nurse at the Fertility Clinic, she is specifically Dr Murray's nurse (Dr Murray being the doctor I saw), and she was able to clarify a few things. So the Letrozole 2.5mg dosage I had taken that first month hadn't worked for me, and the blood test had shown that I hadn't ovulated that month. So I wasn't pregnant, and my period was late because of my usual PCOS problems.
I was annoyed that noone had contacted me earlier to let me know this, but at least now I know she is the person to contact for more information when I need it, and to get test results.
Finally, my period came on about day 50 or so of my cycle. The nurse I had spoken to on the phone had told me, because the 2.5mg dosage tablets hadn't worked, to take 2 months dosage in one month the next time (so it would be the same as taking 5mg dosage) so we could see if that worked better.
So I did that, which then meant after taking them I was completely out of the tablets, as I had only been given 3 months supply (of 2.5mg tablets), but as it happened, even though I had only been able to try them for 2 cycles, because of the stupid long delay in getting my period at the end of the first cycle, three months was almost up, and so it was time for my follow-up appointment with Dr Murray last Friday.
By then, it was Day 27 of my cycle this time, and so I had taken the blood test just a few days earlier, but didn't know the results yet.
At the appointment, Dr Murray told us that this time, the blood test showed I had ovulated. He was all positive, saying this was a good sign, the Letrozole was working. It was too early to know whether or not I was pregnant, but he prescribed me another three months of the tablets (this time in 5mg dosage though), and sent us on our way to continue trying.
He told us that if I wasn't pregnant, my period should arrive between Day 28 and Day 35, and that if it hadn't arrived by Day 35 to take a pregnancy test then.
Typically of course, my reproductive system really likes to mess with me. It literally kept me waiting until Day 34, right when it was almost too late for me to possibly not be pregnant...and then, there came the period.
That was yesterday, and so now I have the not-so-fun times of cramping and other such period stuff...and then, tomorrow it will be time to start taking the Letrozole tablets again, and get my hopes up again for the coming month.
Ah, the joys of trying to get pregnant. Months and months of getting your heart broken over and over again.
Anyway, the other big news.
So last time, I was talking about how our landlord had sold our flat, and we had to move out, so I was hurriedly finding new places to go and look at.
Well the next couple of weeks after that, we looked at several places. Some of them were small, two-bedroom flats, similar in size to the place we were already in. Others were bigger, homelier three bedroom houses. Yet they were all pretty close in price, between $370-$450 a week, all of them significantly pricier than the place we were in.
My favourite place was actually the first place we looked at. Warspite Avenue, a main road that runs through Waitangirua towards Cannons Creek (in Porirua). It was a three bedroom house, way bigger than where we were (which was great because I had been struggling with claustrophobia a lot in our small flat), and it had had some recent renovations, fresh paint around the rooms, a new bathroom. It was nice, and felt like a home.
And it had a backyard, and a clothesline. It was a stand-alone house, not conjoined onto another property, so I wouldn't feel so confined by close neighbours around, and it meant we could make noise and walk around without feeling like we would be disturbing anyone.
It even had a park right next door, with a big grass area, and a bush walk out the back.
There was a lot of interest in the house though, and so I didn't get my hopes up.
We looked at a couple of others places, but when we got turned down for a couple of them, panic started to set in that we may not be able to find a place in time, and that maybe if we got offered a place, any place at all, we would just have to take it, because we didn't have time to be picky.
Then we looked at this one 2 bedroom flat, it was small and pokey, but had an upstairs/downstairs thing going for it. Seemed quite cold, probably not well-insulated. The rent was $420, pricey considering how small it was, and that it was attached to two other properties. But...it was livable.
The property manager was looking for someone to move in urgently, because it had been vacant for a few weeks, so we put in an application, and immediately the next day this property manager had contacted my references, and offered us the place.
That cautious, nervous voice in my head said I should take it. What if we couldn't get anything else? What if we find somewhere else, but it's even worse?
But at the same time, I knew I didn't want to live there. I knew I would feel miserable there. I'd feel confined, and that would make me depressed a lot. Chances were, as soon as we could I would want to move out again. So what was the point in moving somewhere that I would want to leave in a few months?
I spent the day at work that day going over and over it, and asking advice from everyone at work. Mark thought I should take it, to play it safe. But everyone else said I shouldn't do it. By lunchtime, I had decided. I had to take the risk. I had to say no.
Calling the lady to turn down the place was awkward, but I was relieved once I had done it.
I came to the conclusion then, however, that I needed to fight harder to find a place in time. It wasn't good enough to just go to flat/house viewings and try to make a good impression on the landlords and property managers, and then leave the rest up to them. I needed to get in there and fight for it.
The first place we had viewed, the house I had really liked, I hadn't heard anything about, and it was still advertised on TradeMe.
So I found a contact number for the property manager, and left him both an email and a voicemail on his phone, enquiring on whether the property was still available, and expressing my strong interest in it.
My next day off was Friday, and I went to view another property on my own while Taina was in a class at Tech.
The place I went to view was another good-sized, three bedroom house. But god, I was not relishing the idea of living there. Everything was run down and dilapidated as heck. Wallpaper, stained, dirty, peeling. Carpet...barely intact. A couple of small holes in the wall. A tiny kitchen. A huge backyard....that we would likely only have for a couple of months because they were intended to subdivide it and build something else there.
While I was desperately trying to look for something positive about the place to report back to Taina, I got a call on my cellphone.
It was the guy I had tried to contact about the first place we had seen, my favourite place. He said, the place was ours...provided we could move in in one week.
It was short notice. It would be tricky. But I said, heck yes, let's do it.
And so four weeks ago, at the start of June, me and Taina moved into our new house on Warspite Avenue.
So far, the main negatives about the place are the price ($400 a week), which is a lot harder on the budget than the $270 we've been used to, but still better than some of the rent prices we saw for much smaller places.
Also, our new place is not well-insulated, and while our last place was easy to heat because it was upstairs and got a lot of heat from the flat below us, this new house is very cold and I spend most of my time at home wearing about 5 layers of clothing, and putting on gloves and a beanie just so I can feel comfortable watching TV. And that's while sitting in front of the heater.
But to be fair, it is Winter, and not only that, but this June has been exceptionally cold and wet (it has rained almost every day this month), so I keep reminding myself, this struggle with the cold is only temporary. It'll be amazing in Summer, sitting in the backyard, or maybe having a barbecue at the park next door.
The move itself to the new place was exhausting. Because of the short notice, we had very little time to pack. And finding a moving van to help with the big stuff was almost impossible, so we finally found someone at the last minute, who could only come briefly and do one trip, so the van basically just took our big furniture items, and we had to spend the weekend making a million car trips backwards and forwards in my little car trying to get everything across to the new place, and still find time to clean out the old place.
On Sunday (which I had taken off work to help with the move) I was at my wits' end because there was still so much to do. Dad and Jill kindly helped us by bringing Dad's car and trailer, and finally we really made some headway and got most stuff moved. It wasn't great though, because Dad had gotten knee replacement surgery just a few weeks earlier and so was still recovering and couldn't do much lifting.
Monday that week was Queen's Birthday. It didn't mean much for me, because I had to work, but Taina had the day off from Tech, so he managed to get his parents to come and help with the final cleaning up of the old place.
So finally by the end of that day, it was done. But then there was still the stress of unpacking.
One thing that moving, and unpacking made me appreciate, is how easy it is to accumulate stuff that we really don't need.
I realised, owning more things doesn't make life better. You don't become happier because of the things you have around you. Quite the opposite, having too many possessions can be overwhelming, and creates stress and a sense of uneasiness that doesn't benefit your life in any way.
So over these last few weekends of unpacking and sorting, I came down tough on Taina and said we both needed to make some hard decisions, get rid of lots of things.
I forced myself to let go of a lot of clothing items I hadn't worn in years. They were things that I hadn't been able to fit in ages, but I had kept purely for sentimental value, because they were clothes that I loved back when I first got them.
But the thing is, clothes are just clothes. I still have the memories of wearing those things. The memories of buying cool, one-of-a-kind hippie clothes from gypsy fairs back when I was a teenager/early twenties. In some cases, I have photos of wearing those clothes. But keeping them around? It just clutters up the house, and in turn, clutters up a space in my mind.
We got rid of a lot of random stuff, notebooks and scrap paper that we just kept accumulating, because we kept thinking, "That'll be useful at some point." But you know what? Years had gone by without us ever needing most of it. These days, I often make notes and to-do lists on my phone or on my laptop, so why bother having so much paper?
Taina got rid of some of his old school stuff, you know, School Cert exam papers and school reports. He figured, he didn't do anything that great back when he was at school, so why keep documentation telling him he was below average? Especially now, that he is doing a course in something he actually cares about, and is actually doing well. Why hoard something that reminds you of past failure?
Last weekend we finally go to the end of the unpacking. There's still some boxes to throw away, and Taina has set aside a couple of things he would like to donate to Luke (gaming posters he got free from Renata at Armageddon that he doesn't actually want)...but otherwise, we're all set up now.
It's great. Nice and fresh, a big house, no clutter. The larger of our two spare bedrooms has been designated as the music room, and so I keep the DDR mat set up ready to use, and keep my laptop in there, so we can just play DDR whenever we want.
At the last flat, the mat kept being propped up against the wall to save space, and it was a hassle setting up to play DDR, plus being upstairs from another flat, I felt uneasy playing it, I always worried if I stepped too loudly and jumped too much it would be loud, or would vibrate down to their flat.
Now, no problem. We can play as much as we want. And being Winter, it's much too cold to get exercise outdoors, and I can't really afford to join a gym, so DDR is the perfect option for trying to get fit and lose some more weight.
It's also nice just having a sense of space to one's self. Like, right now, I am sitting in bed writing this, and Taina is out in the lounge watching YouTube...but I feel like I have privacy. The two rooms are far enough apart that I feel like my alone time is actually alone time. Somehow, in the smaller places we've lived in together before, it always felt like it was impossible to ever actually have alone time, even when we were in different rooms.
So June is almost over, and I'm quite happy with the new place. Managing money is a little scary, and the cold Winter weather is not the easiest, but I'm hopeful that things will all work out.
Taina's semester has finished. Technically, he should have finished studying now, because it has been three years since he started, but he failed one paper last year (it was hard for him to meet the workload while we were travelling overseas last year), so he has to go back next semester, just to complete one more paper.
The plan is- hopefully- he can manage to get a job as soon as possible, and just fit in this one paper around working. It's a little daunting, because I don't how long it will take for him to find a job. But I just have to try and not freak out and worry incessantly.
But that's basically my update for now. I should really try not to leave it so long next time. Oh well, hopefully some exciting good news next time!
weezieishness · Sat Jun 30, 2018 @ 11:53am · 0 Comments |
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