Round 1 begins

This week has been super exciting so far, and it's not even So You Think You Can Dance night yet.

First off, lots of excitement around my new business venture. I went live with my Red's Edits website and Facebook page yesterday, and the feedback has been so wonderful I could float away by the sheer strength of my own giddiness. Thank you, family and friends, for this powerful burst of support. It is seriously motivating.

The other source of excitement: on Monday we had our first sperm shooting appointment. As I mentioned last post, I was tracking my cycle. This means I was hastily doing several ovulation "predictor kits" every morning in the midst of my regular daily routine. Hey, the more predictor kits, the more solid the prediction, right? I mean, isn't that what they say? No?

I'm not actually so neurotic that I would go out and buy multiple predictor kits, okay? It just so happened that a good friend was kind enough to bestow two of her kits upon me. But one of them, a fancy little compute-y gadget, was already calibrated to her cycle, and the instruction booklet advised not to put all my eggs in its basket. As it were.

So Thayer went out and got me my own kit, and I continued using all three just for funzies. Plus the P-Tracker app on my iPhone, which is basically a glorified calendar.

Well. P-Tracker was convinced Sunday would be my lucky day, and what do you know -- Sunday morning all my devices were a-bling with ovulatory excitement. They were all very psyched for me, what with their double pink test lines and their digital egg graphics.

Next day, I called the doc and the fertility clinic sperm storer-thawers and told them it was game on. I went in that afternoon and picked up "THE SPECIMEN."

Half my future baby might be in there?

I know what you're thinking. "Surely they didn't just send you off with the vial all exposed and unprotected like that!"

Oh, come on. Of course they didn't.

They sent me off with the vile cradled in the safety of this foam coffee cup stuffed with tissues.

It was not actually hot, as the lid so thoughtfully cautioned.

So, off I went across the skybridge to the medical tower next door, sperm lockbox in hand. Thayer met me in the waiting room there--ten minutes late. I was so afraid the doc would come out and summon me all business business business. "We wait for no man!" she'd say. And Thayer would miss it all.

Instead, Thayer and I waited there together for another half hour or so.

Finally we were called in and the doc was friendly and supportive and sweet as pie. I hopped up on the exam table, glamorous as can be, and Thayer patted my arm while the doc proclaimed everything "gorgeous" and shot the sperm. Only slightly ouchy. Over in a flash.

And then she sent us off with sincere well wishes, but not before advising us not to start preggo testing for AT LEAST TWO WEEKS.

That's a joke, right? I'm supposed to chill out for two weeks not knowing what's going on in there? This is the year 2011, is it not? You're telling me there's no fancy robot that can tell me the verdict instantaneously? I'm calling bullsh*t.

To celebrate and calm down and divert our attention, we went out for pizza, because only pizza can solve problems such as these.

Here's happy Thayer on the drive to the pizza:

 "You're a dork," he is saying, because...

Here's happy me on the drive to the pizza:

 This upside-down thing is totes going to work, guys.

Well, dear readers, that's it for Round 1. I'll let you know how it went IN TWO WEEKS when our ancient detection methods start picking up signals.

In the meantime, I'mma see if Frank and Stu have any special animal sensing powers. I bet they do. They'll tell me for sure.

If you like it then you shoulda put a baby in it

All about babymaking.
So, my plan is to keep this blog about the process of getting preggos, but not actually make the posts public until after we're preggos. As of right now, we've told very few people that we're at the starting point. We have not told our families or most of our friends, because when the time comes, we want the news to be like BAM!

Maybe you're reading this now and feeling all irritated because why didn't we tell you?! But we've seen firsthand what it's like for a couple to dive headlong into babymaking and then... nothing. Nothing for a long, long time. And lots of people asking all the time.

So to prep ourselves for the four to eight attempts that the cryobank says is average, we've decided not to make the babymaking public knowledge. But think -- isn't it fun now that you know we're pregnant for sure and you get to find out about how we got there?

Oh, sorry, did I just skim over that whole cryobank thing? Well, that's how it all gets started on the Hayley and Thayer choo-choo train to Babyville. [Shoutout to KJ for that brilliant segue.]

If the cryobank thing threw you for a loop, our sitch is this: We will be using donor sperm. It's something we always knew we would need to do, so even though it might be news to you, it's old news to us. It's not like we just found out and are uber devastated or anything like that.

In fact, I guess you could say we can count our blessings that way. We were never under any illusion that we could make a baby together the old fashioned way, and now we're going ahead with it the way we'd always planned.

And to that, let me just say WAHOO! We are friggin' stoked. About everything. The future baby. Even the process. And let me tell you about this process. I mean, who knows: maybe you stumbled upon this blog because you're looking for info on how to have a donor baby. Well, here's how we're doing it.

There are cryobanks all over the US, even all over the world, that you can access online. We found a donor we like at a cryobank a few states away. His name is 11200. The cryobank gives info on stats like height, weight, hair, eyes, build, complexion, interests, studies, personality, heritage, AND? Celebrity look-alikes. Which... how great is that. I love that. One of 11200's celebrity look-alikes looks remarkably like Thayer. Plus, he's studying accounting and finance. Meant to be? Please. Is there any doubt?
So next, we added the sperm to our "basket" and checked out like we were buying some gadget on Amazon.com. Straightforward and easy, as online shopping should always be.

Would you like to know how much a vial of frozen sperm costs? It costs $575. And of course, this vial was not in Seattle, which didn't do us much good, being in Seattle and all. So we had to ship the vial. It costs $195 to ship the vial. Naturally.

Now you are wondering if we have a vial of sperm in our freezer, which would be hilarious, but I assure you that we do not. Luckily for us, we've got some close friends who have gone this route before us. Thus, we inherited the wisdom they gained through trial and error, and we don't have to do the trying and erring.

Their first tip? Do not try this at home.
Sure, it seems romantic, they said, to make your baby in the comfort of your own home. But really? There's no romance in thawing frozen donor sperm and amateurishly trying to get it to its final destination. Just go to the doctor and have them do what it is their job to do. Because, like... they know how. And if you do it yourself, you'll probably f*ck it up and there goes your first round of $770 and the first month of your time.
 
Hence, our next step was to get the sperm from Elsewhere to Seattle and have it stored somewhere they'd know what to do with it. So we signed up with the Pacific Northwest Fertility Clinic for a free month of storage, and they're conveniently affiliated with the Seattle doc who will be doing what I affectionately call "the sperm shooting."

It seems hella steamlined, too. How it works is: I track my cycle until I'm ovulating, I call my doc to tell her it's go time, I call the fertility clinic and they thaw and prep the sperm, and I go see doc the next day and she does the shooting.

Oh, did I tell you that to buy the sperm from the cryobank in the first place, I had to have an authorization note from my doc to ensure she was supervising the whole bit? Ridiculous, right? I mean, most people just have a free sperm supply and can do whatever they want with it without a doctor's permission. It just made me wonder... what is the cryobank afraid people are going to do with their sperm? What are people doing with $770 frozen sperm, if not trying to make babies? Ideas, anyone? Please--I'm dying for answers.

Someone suggested maybe they're afraid people will conduct their own interspecies hybrid experiments. That... sounds like a pretty legit concern, actually.

Anyway, back to human babies. Where we're at right now is: our vial of sperm is in storage in Seattle waiting for me to ovulate. In a couple of weeks, it will be go time for round one.

LET'S DO THIS.

Art

I am a very very talented artist, you see, so I wrote this haiku and drew this picture to illustrate my current state.


Period goblin
says, "Feed me chocolate and booze.
Where are my sweatpants?"

Girls' Weekend in Forks -- November 2010

Iceland Update: Full Circle

Such a bittersweet feeling on that last day of vacation, you know?

It's a big travel day, and thoughts naturally return to the thoughts you were having on your last big travel day – the day you got there. Ten days ago, we made our first drive across the barren landscape from the airport to Reykjavik, having no clue what to expect, no idea what was ahead of us. And today we made that same drive from Reykjavik back to the airport. Knowing.

We left you last at Hótel Hellnar on Snæfellsnes Peninsula which, now that all is said and done, was one of the big highlights of the trip. The cliffs and the rock formations were unforgettable, and so was our time at the hotel. The next morning we had a delicious breakfast in the dining room overlooking the ocean. The sky was much friendlier than it had been the day before – bright blue with a warm sun. We took advantage of it by spending a leisurely morning on the deck.

We bumped into a man and woman and Thayer said hi to them as if we were already acquainted. They looked familiar, but I couldn't quite place them in memory until Thayer reminded me that the woman approached me a few stops ago—at Gauksmýri Lodge in Hvammstangi—to tell me I had forgotten my jacket in the dining room. Now, in Hellnar, they were soaking up the sun on the deck, too, so we spent a couple of hours chatting with Natacha and Paul from Belgium about our trips (they were on their honeymoon), marriage, Belgian and American politics, languages, and anything else that popped up. We exchanged welcomes to Seattle and Belgium and intentions to keep in touch.

After check-out, we drove up a mountain road and frolicked about on Snæfellsjökull – or “Snow Mountain Glacier” – then continued the drive back to the mainland and down to square 1: Reykjavik. We checked in with Apartment K again and stayed in a different flat, yet equally awesome in décor. An egg-shaped toilet, a stone-walled bathroom, and a ceramic bird statue centerpiece were among the unique features. They really go all out with the adornments, which make it such a fun and interesting place to stay. I plan to write a very satisfactory review on Trip Advisor.

We had nommilicious sandwiches upstairs at Prikið, its old windows overlooking downtown, and then met up with Thayer's old college friend, Shauna for drinks at a bar called Boston, where she seemed to know probably 7 or 8 people who came in throughout the evening. “It's Reykjavik,” she said in explanation. Shauna has lived in Iceland for about two years. She came one summer, fell in love with the place (not hard to do), and did everything she could to come back. This is no easy feat. To apply for residency, you must first find a job and prove that you are the one most qualified individual for the position – out-qualifying all the applicants in the entire European Union. She found a loophole in the system, though, which was to create a business and then apply for license to hire herself. Totes brills. The system doesn't have that loophole anymore, so she skated by that one with some amazing luck. She, true to fairytale form, has met her Icelandic love in a man named Arnar Somethingsson, and they are getting married in a few weeks. Love in the Ice Lands!

At 1am we went back to Apt K, suited up in our eyemasks, and slept the sleep of world-weary travelers. This morning we enjoyed a fantastic breakfast and coffee and, of course, my Swiss Mocha on the patio at Tivoli and wrote out all our postcards in the sunshine. Then it was off to Keflavik and off the ground.

It feels good to be heading home. Vacation life is awesome but hard to maintain, and I miss my kitties. But I must say that I feel like I'm leaving with unfinished business in Iceland. I feel full, yet not quite satisfied. I think that means we'll go back again someday, so knowing that will have to do for now.

Before we left Seattle, we got a lot of confused looks and questions of, “Iceland? Really?” The answer is: Iceland, really. Because it's both firmly settled and virtually untouched. Because it's both monochromatically brown and fantastically colorful. Because it's covered in both the highest cliffs and the flattest plains you've ever seen. Because it's like the edge of the earth, or the middle of the moon, or just the most impossibly beautiful fantasy world you could dream up.

Iceland Update: The West Fjörds

“Sometimes there's so much beauty, I feel like I can't take it.” - American Beauty

The West Fjörds. I... ::sigh::... nope. Nothing. The words – there are no words for the West Fjörds. I wish I could write about what it looked like and do it justice. How the bright blue water and gray-pink striated cliffs in the foreground stood against the snow-white and grey striped “Snæfellstrond” mountain chain in the background. At sunset. All of this at sunset. Miles and miles, driving in and out of each fjörd, seeing this spectacle from sea level, then from cliff level as the road wound up and down and around. The sight made me weepy then and it's almost making me weepy now just thinking about it.

We were told by a friend of a friend to hit the West Fjörds because it was “the most beautiful place she'd ever seen.” As we made our trip around the island, we encountered no travelers who had come from or were going there. We knew it was going to be a bit of a job, and a long one, getting through it. The road, as I said last update, is sometimes paved and sometimes dirt, but the real thing of it is the length of the drive. There is no direct way to get from point A to point B. You can't just drive from the northeast to the southwest, for example. You have to drive across the entire north to the west and then down to the south. But it's not that simple, either. Have a look at a map of the West Fjörds, if you will. See how the edge of the land goes in-out-in-out-in-out-in-out-etc-etc-etc? The road – the only traversable road – follows the coast. Thus, the shortest distance between two points is not a straight line, but an unbelievably long meandering one.

The more we realized that no one else, it seemed, was making the West Fjörds a part of their trip, the more we wondered if we'd be wasting our time there. If it would be beautiful as the rest of Iceland has been beautiful, but with no new sights to see. The same beauty we'd been seeing all along. I mean, what more could there be, right? We were not prepared.

It is THAT BEAUTIFUL. It's like, just when you think you've seen as much beauty as can possibly exist, the gods throw this in your face like “BAM! You thought that was it? GET A LOAD OF THE WEST FJ ÖRDS.”

In addition to the gorgeosity, our West Fjörds trip became something of an adventure, too, as we weren't sure if we were going to have a bed that night. It took us ages to get to Dýrafjörður, where there were two guesthouse possibilities, both of which had been open since mid May, according to our brochure. And yet there was no one to be found at either one of them. One of them—Hótel Núpur—was unlocked, and we roamed the entire former-schoolhouse in search of someone to give us a room, but to no avail. Still, it was awesome because in one of the hallways hung large framed class pictures dating back to 1953. It was fascinating looking at the styles and names like Guðrún Ólafsdóttir and Halldór Bjarnason.

While searching the area, we met two girls from Hong Kong who were staying at Hótel Núpur. They invited us back with them to see if we could find someone to help. They were there with a photography group on some kind of working trip. Among others, there was a girl from England and a guy from Boston, and I think their trip leader was Russian, maybe. I have no idea how this trip came to be, but they were there to take pictures and also to do work on the hotel. They were staying in the gymnasium and invited us to stay with them, and we wouldn't have thought twice about it but we had no blanket or pillows or anything, so we thanked them for their attempts to help and scurried on our way.

Hayl: All we can do is hope we get to the next place by midnight and hope they have a room for us.
Thayer: Midnight?! It can't take us five hours to get there!
Hayl: Can't it?

It was a long, long, long, long, loooong, long time before the next guesthouse, Hótel Látrabjarg. And when we got arrived, there was no one there, either. But to be fair, it was 10pm. It may have felt like midday to us because of the sunlight, but to the natives it was not midday. While searching around, Thayer found the cook in the backyard doing some gardening. Because why wouldn't the cook be gardening? He didn't speak much English, but he knew what we were after, so he called the host and the host came over and gave us a room. It was a happy ending. Man, was it.

Today was stress-free. We had a lengthy drive, but a beautiful one, from Látrabjarg, back inland, and then back out again on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula. Along the way we stopped at the bird cliffs where, as you might imagine, there were many birds. We saw a puffin, too, which satisfied one of Thayer's goals. We also did a bit of frolicking at the westernmost part of Iceland and therefor the westernmost part of Europe, at Bjargtangar.

Oh, and in one of the small towns, we stopped at an Icelandic handicrafts store and I bought another Lopi sweater – this one is short-sleeved and has SHEEP as the pattern around the neck! I die every time I think about how adorable it is. After I did giddy jumpyclaps over it, I discovered that the woman sitting there knitting was the one who made it. She didn't speak English, but her daughter translated, and she was very happy I loved the sweater so much. It's not often you get to meet the maker of the stuff you buy. Then the two of them helped us plot our route to Hellnar, but not before several minutes of language barrier over the pronunciation of "Hellnar." Over and over, we said it, the repetition met only with their confused stares. Finally, we pointed to our map. "Oh, Hkbmfnvoslvd!" they may as well have said, for how much the Icelandic pronunciation sounds like "Hellnar."

Hótel Hellnar, at the tip of Snæfellsnes Peninsula, was warm and welcoming when we arrived, and our room is very sweet with a view of the ocean. The stormy weather is making the water quite angry and it is enchanting to watch. We had a delicious dinner—which rocked our world because we've been living on Clif bars for about a day and a half—of cheesy cauliflower soup with bread and smjör, the Icelandic word for butter. I'm sure you can guess how many times we try to work "smjör" into our conversation. Following the soup was cod in marinara for Thayer and bacon-wrapped chicken breast in mushroom sauce for me. And then came the Panna Cotta. Panna Cotta is a dream come true - like Baileys pudding with chocolate sauce and whipped cream. Bliss.

After dinner it was about 9:30 pm, so of course we went sight seeing. At the water's edge, there was a naturally-formed rock arch, snaking out from the cliffs like one of those Chinese dragons. The waves would come in and crash through the arch and the holes. The clifftops are shockingly green on top of slick wet black. The waves were so dramatic, exploding off the cliffs like fireworks. We stood in the rain and cold and watched, mesmerized.

Now we are snug in our bed and ready for sleep. Eyemasks, ready, go.

A couple of quotes to leave you with.

*

Hayl: Iceland, you can be really difficult sometimes, you know?

*

[lambs skipping along the road]
Thayer: Get away from the road, you damned skippies!
Hayl: [loses it, laughing hysterically]
Thayer: Oh dear, it's that point of the night, is it?

*

Hayl: Nice fjarm.
Thayer: Nice bjirds.
Hayl: Nice shjirt.
Thayer: Look, there's a ljamb!
Hayl: Hi, ljamb!
Thayer: Whoa, that sheep is shjorn.