Joys In My Life

I finished Harry Potter this morning over tea!!! No spoilers here, but it was amazing. I guess I could complain that it was a lot of hard work to get to the end where everything wrapped up neatly, but isn't that the way it should be! I'm very happy with how everything ended. Of course, some of my favorite characters bit the dust, but that can't be helped.

OK, here it is. I'm definately going to be pushing myself to be good to me and do the things I'm supposed to do, especially staying away from dairy and wine. I'm seriously thinking about doing these things for the next month and then talking to the doctor again. Also thinking about pushing on the adoption front. Need to discuss with DH. Overall diagnosis Endometriosis, blood stasis, liver qi stagnation, kidney yang deficiency Symptoms Heavy clotty periods, low back pain, short menstrual cycles, irritability and anxiety – especially when PMS Herbs Started taking these herbs about two three weeks ago. Acupuncture Every other week Supplements Multivitamin, C-1000mg 1x/day, B vitamin 1x/day, Vitamin E 400 IU 2x/day, evening primrose oil 2x/day, fish body oil 2x/day, spirulina 2g 2x/day, zinc 30mg 2x/day, acidophilus 2x/day Diet Avoid – dairy, wheat, cold foods, alcohol Add – seaweed (kombu, hijiki), lemons, pineapple, oatmeal, rice, millet, wheatgrass, walnuts, pumpkin see...

Aunt Flo showed up today. It's officially over. I'll be writing up my current regimen today. I think I need to double back on reinforcing some good habits.

Back to the infertility discussions here. Spot showed up this morning. We now get to find out if her owner, Aunt Flo, is going to show up in the next day or two, or I get to have my body mess with my mind and try to find out if it's implantation spotting.... I'm also in the process of writing up my current holistic regimen I'm following for endometriosis and it's TCM friend, blood stasis. Should have it up in the next day or two.

For those interested in home decorating, I just started a new blog to chronicle the building of our house that was completed in February 2006 and the new decorating projects we have going on. The site for my new blog is: Home Decor with Joy Hope you all like it!

One of Tom's younger sisters (he has five) had a housewarming party on Sunday in South Jersey. The weather was excellent! Couldn't have asked for a better day. Since we have such a nice camera and I like to take pictures, I was the official photographer for the day. Here are some of my favorites that involve my immediate clan: Tom hanging Phoebe by her toes (mostly literally!) Phoebe and some of her first cousins - the ones that are most close to her age Tom manning the grill - He makes great burgers - no hockey pucks in the bunch! Phoebe pretending to be the statue of liberty

She did great. Could tell she was nervous, but now that it's over, I'm sure she'll have more confidence for the next time. Here's some pics after the show. She's in action in all of but one (yes, she is doing mime!). She was on Cloud 9, so it's very indicative of how she is. We went out to dinner with DH's parents after the show and it was so funny! She had the song "Matchmaker" stuck in her head (one of the girls sang it for the recital). Thankfully, we didn't have anyone sitting in the tables around us, so we let her get away with running around singing "Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match, find me a find, catch me a catch. Matchmaker, matchmaker, I know I'm still young, please take your time.." That's as much as she knew, and then she'd start all over again. Really cool to see your six year old singing "Fiddler on the Roof" LOL. They had a professional do the video of the performance, so I can...

Phoebe's been having a great time at camp. There are a lot of teenage girls and they've been very motherly to her. She's been coming home every day, tired and happy. She's painted, sang, acted and loved every minute! Yesterday their acting class was a mime game. That's her favorite. She makes miming fun and not annoying. Tonight is their recital. I'm so excited to see her up there with all the other kids. If it goes well we're thinking about signing her up for the fall program. It will be a time commitment, but it seems like a great program for her to be in. It's been a tiring week for us all. I feel like it just passed so quickly, trying to get her to bed at a decent time and getting her up early in the morning. It's probably what it will be like when she goes to school this fall. I'm looking forward to it. It's so cool to watch her grow up. The way she talks is so funny, I wish I could bottle it up forever. On another note, I...

So I've owed pics of my nose piercing. Now that I can seem to upload pics, here it is! This was from the beginning of June when we were at Valapalooza - the jazz festival at the winery near our house. The owners of this place are great! Their wines are fantastic too - Italian style wines - usually one white and four to six reds are available at one time. Excellent to drink with friends! So now that this seems to be working, I'll look to start a new blog that documents the building of our house (we moved in February 2006) and all the decor we've been working on since then. We're really big into home decorating. Mostly DH's ideas, but I make some great curtains! I'll also be posting soon my baby-making protocol. I have to get back on the ball with some of it. The cafe mocha in the morning has to go. Don't think that will help.

I had been having problems posting pictures in the past with blogger, so I figured I'd try it out with an old pic of Phoebe from May when Tom graduated from Villanova. Here she is wearing his cap and gown showing us how all the students had to pose when they came down from getting their diploma. We were sitting right there, so we got to see all the students do it wrong and have the photographer try to explain what pose they needed to do. She did this pose at home like "What's the problem? It's not that hard!" We're thinking that when she graduates high school or college, we should post this picture in the paper with the announcement. That would be too funny wouldn't it?

Thank you so much for your nice comments on my last post. I know I was rambling a bit, but I had a lot on my mind. This morning was very exciting for our family. Phoebe started a Theater Camp at the Delaware Opera this morning. She'll be going all week and she's the youngest kid in the program. The ages are from 7-17, but they let her in even though she's a little under 7 still. It's a full day program from 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM. The younger kids go for just this week, and the older kids can continue for another week. They are going to have acting classes, voice classes, set design and costume design. In the last two they will be doing painting and sewing. She's really excited about these parts of the camp. That and the acting. Singing isn't one her forte right now. We were a few minutes late for drop off this morning, but I found out it didn't start until 9 AM, so I stuck around with some of the other parents. Phoebe was really nervous, not knowin...

Tom and I had a good talk last night about the whole "having another baby" thing. It actually came up because of how we wish we could adopt a little girl that is in our "extended" family. She's the daughter of Tom's BIL's niece. If you can follow that. She lives with her grandmother, which is Tom's BIL's sister, because the mother (her daughter) doesn't have custody, the father does, but he can't keep her, so he let's the grandmother (the mother's mother) keep her. Not of this is formal and legally binding. I know this sounds like a Jerry Springer show. This little girl's grandmother was in the hospital recently and so Tom's sister has had her for a few days. I'm not sure if the grandmother got out of the hospital yet. Tom and I heard about this and we both said in his mom's kitchen that if anything ever happened that the grandmother couldn't keep her, we'd love to have her. Of course we'd wan...

We went out to the movies on Friday night and it was really the first animated family movie I've enjoyed since Monster's Inc. Yes, we went to see Ratatouille and it was fabulous. I highly recommend this movie. I thought the story line was original, which is often hard to come by when it comes to any movies these days, let alone children's movies. The characters were highly entertaining, and they made me love a rat for his love of food and wine. He often ate cheese and wine in the movie, so of course I could relate to the rat, LOL. I'm sure this isn't a very professional review of the movie, but just like my wine tasting reviews, "I just know what I like." I was left with the same feeling I had after seeing Monster's Inc. "That was the coolest movie ever!" After the movies we went to Friendly's for ice cream sundaes. The rest of the weekend was kind of quiet. Tom got some painting done in the dining room. We're happy with the ...

Since Phoebe got out of school and the summer officially started, I've let a lot of things go around the house. Especially, since DH started the painting project that we are still in the middle of and it will definately contine for sometime since we're now working on some special effects in the study and dining room ala Home Depot Ralph Lauren style . I know I've promised pictures before, but I promise to post more especially of our home decorating projects. Since this mess in half of the downstairs rooms is going to continue, I decided it was time to get back on the Flylady bandwagon. I updated my planner yesterday with my daily and weekly routines. I'm trying to follow them, but I know I still have a bit more work to do there. I wish I woke up earlier than 6:30 AM this morning. I would have been able to finish my morning routine then. I have conquered the laundry monster and am all caught up now. The kitchen was nice and straightened up. My Weekly House Bles...

I so love my acupuncturist! I told him all about my problems this past month. We decided to change my herbal formula. Problem is because of the holiday in the middle of the week, I won't have the new formula until next Monday. :-( It seems to cover everything I've been having problems with PMS irritability, low-back pain, clotty periods (aka blood stasis) and a wiry pulse. I'll take his word on the last one. He always says I have a very wiry pulse. Shows me off to his apprentices as a perfect example of a wiry pulse. "It's very rare. You rarely see such a beautiful wiry pulse." Yes, Dr. TCM, but it's not supposed to be that way and it's standing between me and a new baby! So we'll be changing my herbs and he did some acupuncture to work on my blood stasis. Now I know I should get better about avoiding dairy products and making sure I get regular exercise. The 4th of July was nice, Phoebe and DH played in my in-laws pool and we had a ba...

So one important thing to mention is that I've given up taking my BBT (waking temperatures). The fact that I was being forced to think first thing in the AM about fertility was getting too much. I've been taking my waking temps for years now,, so it's a big deal for me to stop. I think the other reason I'm OK with stopping doing this is that I do trust my acupuncturist to straighten out my cycles, even though this last month sucked. I'm trying to remember that I did have the stress of the HSG test that could've messed it up as well. I don't remember if I mentioned my results, but everything was clear, but the spillover on the right side was slow. I think I do have touches of endometriosis still and that's why. My lower back was hurting most of last month and I've been having strange twinges or cramps in my right lower side. This is what TCM guy and I are going to discuss today.

Well AF showed up yesterday. Not that I'm surprised, but TCM guy and I are going to have some things to talk about tomorrow. I had horrible PMS rage on Friday and Saturday. Really don't want that happening again. I also made lots of changes to the website. Sorry for those who don't like advertising, but if it makes me a few extra $$ every month, it's a good thing.