The best thing I've done for myself in a long time is get a job.  Although I feel bad about neglecting my home-based art business, I am very grateful for the opportunity to get out of the house and earn some money, or as I call it, IVF coupons. The job keeps my mind off my woes during the day, but when I go to sleep at night my infertility is first and foremost.  For weeks I've been dreaming about children -- my friends' kids, kids my dreams made up, never my own.  Every dream had kids in it, even if it was just in the background.   Last night's dream was not so pleasant.  In it I sewed lots of little rag dolls and then opened up their legs and scrawled on their rag-vaginas with permanent markers, cut them with scissors, pounded them with my fists, and ripped off their sprawled legs.  When I was finished, I was scared at what I was capable of, and ashamed of myself for my perversion and rage.  I spent the next segment of the dream trying to hide the dolls from my family.  Later in the dream I had other bad stuff happen to me, ranging from an inability to find a birthday present for my mom, to getting beaten up in a used bookstore, to realizing that my shirt was inside out and the tag was showing. I think I have some issues with reproductive organs.  Don't know why. James and I have embarked on another cycle of ART - Advanced Reproductive Technology.  I've always called myself an artist.  I just never knew the extent of it. We're doing a medicated IUI, which means that I took Clomid at the beginning of the cycle, a pill that was supposed to make my egg-holding-follicles grow big and hearty.  James delivered the trigger shot, 2 ccs of hCG, like a champ on the living room couch.  Two days later he had a date with the recliner in the men's room at 10:00, then I had a date with the tube in the other side of the office at noon.  James went and had his happy release, his petit-mort, and came out commenting that some of the porn seems to have been stolen since last time.  They were down to Black Coeds, the series.  We went to breakfast and I filled up my bladder the way God intended: with glasses of water and Diet Coke downed with a whole grain waffle.   When I got the the clinic at noon I the bladder was pleasantly plump, and I didn't have to throw up the way I did last time when I just chugged water.  The nurse took a great deal of time trying to get the catheter through my cervix, as James pushed on my belly with the ultrasound zapper, trying to get the bladder to force the uterus into place.  It was determined that my bladder was too full, a conclusion I was reaching myself.  Having long since abandoned my pride, I walked to the bathroom clad on the bottom only by a paper wrap that didn't quite go around me.  If everyone in the office has already seen my vagina, no one will mind seeing my butt, I'm sure. After I performed the Herculean task of peeing for only 10 seconds, I returned to the room to make another attempt.  This time the nurse jabbed the catheter all the way in and safely delivered a thimble full of a nice pink liquid into me.  She captured a picture on the ultrasound of the washed sperm as they were deposited into the uterus.  Woo-hoo!  Even though they were in a pink medium, the nurse was not willing to speculate with me that that meant they were all girls.  Even when she referred once to "James's boys," she caught herself and reiterated that they weren't all boys, either.  Yeah, whatever.  We're aiming for boy-girl twins.  I'm one myself and I can speak highly of the institution from personal experience. Of course, our IUI this month is largely for practice, not results.  We found early on that I am one of 15% of women whose body reacts strangely to Clomid.  Instead of stimulating my natural fertility, Clomid has an anti-fertility effect.  Though my follicles get happy and fat (and I had two this round!), the Clomid thins the uterine lining giving these kids nowhere to go after they get fertilized.  "I've seen women get pregnant like this," the doctor cautioned me, "but not very often."  He told me that if and when this round didn't work, "we have to talk."  He has long leaned on us to do another round of IVF.  I don't think he knows that it costs $15,000.   And so I have a date with the blood test a week from Friday.  The following day James and I are going to Texas to see my father and grandmother.  That will give us a chance to get over the bad news, or give my grandmother the good news before she dies (she's 94 and fading).   While we're in Texas we'll see my friend AshleyPenelope, a faithful contributor to this support group.  She just got a negative on her second IVF this week, and it broke everyone's hearts.  I'll be very glad to hug her in person.  And I'll be very glad for my husband to meet hers.  I wish James were a part of this group, or had more friends in the husband-in-infertile-marriage role.  The other day we heard that some of our friends who are newly married were going to start trying to get pregnant.  James said, "It's not as fun as you might think."   In the meantime, I'll be spending two weeks trying to scrape melted suppository-material off my inner-thighs.  I'm taking my Progesterone in vaginal suppository form, and I've run into what I think is a design flaw.  Namely, vaginas should open upward, not downward, if they are expected to keep anything in them.  I put on a panty liner that did its best to shift around and exactly miss the river of waxy fluid that ran off this morning at about 10:00.  I was describing this to my co-worker, who likened it to a yeast infection cream.  The one good thing I have to say about the Progesterone bullets is that they are nowhere nearly as cream-cheesy.  They just melt into oil.  Hallelujia!  Hallelujia! With that exhaltation I'll sign off.  I have lots more to say, but this is enough for one sitting.