I'm Back

Hey ladies, I'm just posting a quick note to say that I'm back from Ireland! It was an exhausting trip and afterward Brandon and I agreed to keep our future vacations to 10 days or less. Anything longer than that and it kinda wears on us and we get a little homesick. Maybe we're just getting old. We also decided that our next big vacation (if we don't have kids) would NOT be an adventure but a relaxing vacation on the beach somewhere. Maybe Indonesia. But that is very far into the future and we're not making plans for that anytime soon. Our next vacation will be at the end of July for my 30th birthday. I'm going to Orlando to see family and of course the Harry Potter theme park!

For now I'm going to be posting all about our trip in three separate posts with the last post discussing my Ireland giveaway! I hope to have the first post up by tomorrow.

On a completely unrelated note, for the Womack ladies who go to Dr. P for fertility treatments, he's putting together a book of our personal stories. If you're interested in sharing your journey of infertility please email it to ourparkerjourneys@gmail.com. I'm not sure if I'm going to include my story unless it turns out to be a successful one. I doubt anyone wants to hear the long journey of 2 IVF's and 2-3 FET's and no pregnancy to show for it lol

I Made a Decision But The Queen Said No

After giving my dilemma situation some thought (and making sure Fran could meet me on the 19th) Brandon and I decided to take the free night at the castle and just meet up with Fran on our first day. I breathed a sigh of relief knowing that we could still do everything we wanted while also staying an extra night at a kick-ass hotel.

Before I begin my rant, perhaps you haven't heard but Queen Elizabeth II (QE2) and Prince Philip will be visiting Ireland May 17-20. Obama will be there on the 23rd but we'll be on the other side of the country by then. I've known about this for a while and thought it was just a neat coincidence until I realized what a big deal this is for Ireland. Apparently a British monarch hasn't visited the country in almost 100 years. Some people are looking forward to it, others not so much. At any rate it will make the city pretty hectic to be in for a few days. There are some planned protests and threats of terrosit attacks (thank God my grandmother doesn't know or she'd be freaking out!) so Ireland is pulling out all the stops when it comes to security. I heard they have about 8,000 police workers on hand for this event. There's road closures and detours and checkpoints, the whole nine. And up until today it never occurred to me that her visit would create such a hassle for our vacation.

So this morning I got an email from my co-worker. You see, Pf.izer has a site in Dublin (they have a site in almost every country it seems) and my co-worker just flew there this past weekend on business. She's going to be there for two weeks and received a few email links from another person on things she should check out while she's in the area. One of those links was to the bus tour that Brandon and I had booked for our first day in Dublin. I had been planning to go on this sightseeing tour but in order to receive a discount I booked (and paid for) our tickets online a couple weeks ago. But if you just clicked the link you would see that due to the road closures from The Queen's visit, the bus tour isn't running on the day that we'll be in Dublin. In fact it's closed down for three days! I was so pissed. I had a confirmed booking and this company didn't bother to email me and let me know that we wouldn't be able to take this tour. I had to find out from someone else and it's a good thing she remembered our plans or I would have shown up at the ticket office on Thursday and no one would be there.

The silver lining of this whole situation is that we at least won't be in Dublin when QE2 is there for her scheduled events. By the time we get to Dublin she'll be visiting in another town, though I think she's lodging somewhere in Dublin so there will still be road closures and tight security for us to deal with. Another place we plan on visiting, the Rock of Cashel, is going to be closed for five days just because The Queen is going to be there for a few short hours. It's craziness. Luckily for us the Rock opens back up the day we're scheduled to go there, so we don't have to miss out on that too.

So I think we're going to have to wing it on our first day in Ireland. My itinerary for that day just flew out the window. Our planned trip to Dublin Castle will likely be squashed due to the high security, though I still plan to visit Ha'Penny Bridge (they surely can't close a bridge, can they?) and to St. Patrick's Cathedral. I hear the Guinness Storehouse will be closed but the Dublin Zoo will be open so maybe we can find something else to do that wasn't on my almighty itinerary. Either way I think we'll have to skip the third night at the Ballynahinch so we can make our way back to Dublin and see all the stuff we missed on our first day. And maybe meet up with Fran again!

Things may not run too smoothly when we get there but I suppose they have a way of working themselves out.

A Dilemma!

It's so bad of me to want to change my itinerary at the last minute. Especially when it has stayed the same for months now. But I just got a newsletter from the Ballynahinch Castle (I still don't know how to pronounce that damn name). You see, we're staying there for two nights, the 27th and 28th, then driving to Dublin to stay our last night in Ireland (the 29th) before leaving on the 30th.

But Ballynahinch Castle is having a birthday celebration and is offering a free third night stay to its newsletter readers. They have availability on the 29th for us to stay an extra night.

Our original plan was this: stay two nights at the Ballynahinch, drive to the Dublin airport on the 29th and drop off the car. Then take a shuttle back to Dublin, visit with my blog buddy Fran, stay our last night, then take the shuttle to the airport the next morning. Our flight leaves Dublin at 11:00.

Now I'm thinking maybe we could stay the extra night at the Ballynahinch and then just drive to the airport for our flight on Monday morning. The trip is about 3 hours so we would have to leave by about 6 am in order to make our flight. And then I could visit Fran next Thursday, as soon as we fly into Dublin (if she's available, which I really hope she is!).

So what do you think? Should I make the changes and stay a third night? It's a really nice place. Maybe two nights is enough though and it's too much of a hassle to change plans at this point. Brandon isn't too keen on driving straight to the airport from Recess, he said if something goes wrong and we're late then we'd be in deep shit. Maybe he's right.

Single Digits Baby!

7 days till Ireland! It's so close I can almost taste it. I seriously need this vacation and these last few days are dragging by. My work move didn't go too well, my new workspace is a tiny desk in a small room with about 30 other people. It's almost like a call center setup and is constantly loud with people always walking by. So now my workdays are even crappier. One of the people who I work with has been on vacation and our (my) workload has increased exponentially because of it. So I've been working 10-hour days for the past week and a half. Oh well, that's just more money for us to spend in Ireland!

Mother's Day sucked and I tried to stay away from Facebook as much as possible, though I did get on long enough to congratulate my IVF cycle buddy, Susanne, on the birth of her little girl. It was a bittersweet moment for me. I'm happy for her but sad that I'm now left behind. None of my infertile friends are cycling anymore, they've all gotten pregnant and given birth. I can't say they're no longer infertile because they will always have infertility, but you know what I'm talking about. Now it's just me going through the fertility treatments by myself. I do have two infertile co-workers but they aren't actively trying for a family so it's not the same. It almost makes me not want to find cycle buddies anymore just for the fear of being left behind again, becoming the one girl who doesn't end up pregnant. It sucks to get the short end of the stick all the time. But such is life.

Other than that, not much is going on. Just packing and working. B-O-R-I-N-G

A Bittersweet Day

Bitter: Today would have been our transfer day for FET #2.

Sweet: FET #2 has been rescheduled for late June and for the first time in a looooong time I'm feeling optimistic about fertility treatments.

Bitter: We should have never had to cancel this cycle. We should have never grown apart and allowed our relationship to go downhill like it did.

Sweet: We're still married, things are looking positive for us, and I don't think we'll ever let our marriage get to that place again.

Bitter: The Lost Stork Foundation only sold 6 tickets for the NIAW raffle we worked so hard at. We didn't raise enough money to be able to add anything to our grant fund

Sweet: 6 people showed their support for the Lost Stork Foundation and participated in our raffle. And we at least raised enough money to cover the shipping costs for the 3 prizes so we didn't lose anything.

Bitter: Work sucks and I have to move to a new location on Monday, in another part of town.

Sweet: Brandon and I started carpooling to save money and now we get to spend more time together. And my new job location is closer to his work.

Bitter: I get very few benefits at my job and in order to get 35 hours of vacation leave I have to work 1,100 hours. (Don't bother doing the math, it amounts to .75 hours of vacation per 40-hour work week...lame)

Sweet: I'm only about 90 hours away from accruing my first 35 hours of vacation leave.

Bitter: The value of the dollar is shrinking against the Euro (at least since January) so our vacation is costing a bit more than we originally planned.

Sweet: Who cares about money? Only 16 days till Ireland!

Sweet: Osama bin Laden is dead.

Sweet: My latest sweepstakes win is a Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows DVD and it just came in the mail today! And I just found out while typing this post that I won another sweepstakes...a $500 gift certificate to Best.Western hotels!

Bitter: 5 Sweet: 7

Looks like it's been a sweet day.