Stuff. And things. Catching up.

I'm not sure if it's been more than a month or short of a month or what, but here I am!  I've decided to go private for several reasons, most of which involving work.  I use some "language," and sometimes talk some smack about work, so I'd rather not be searchable or open to everyone to read.

Brian got a new job last Monday with a significantly higher salary, plus almost guaranteed overtime.  He's required to work 50 hours a week.  He's also in grad school and has a baby and a whiney wife, so his hands are very full.  The nwe salary brings us within $2,500 of our comfort zone for me to freelance again.  It's only been two weeks, but the longer he's there, the more the freelance thing seems to be a better fit for our family.  He's overworked, so he doesn't have time to do laundry or anything, and it's piling up.  I guess we could hire a cleaning lady or something, but I'd like to work just part time at the courthouse and take occassional depositions as a freelancer.  That may happen in the very near future.

BUT before that can happen, we have to make a decision about switching our insurance.  We're eligible to switch Brian and Ellie to the new company's insurance, which isn't fantastic or anything, but then we'd switch me to the insurance plan with the State that covers IVF, so we need to do that ASAP so I don't have to pay anything for it.

We met with the U of I doctors about our next IVF cycle.  Ideally, we would like to wait until Brian's done with grad school in two years.  But when, really, do I get to plan how my family is built?  It's never worked before.  The doctors told us that, given the status or our last cycle, we got lucky, and I have the Uterus of Doom, or my ovaries are going to implode in the very near future, or.......something.....so they reccomend we switch the insurance NOW and get going.  When I said, "Well, we were thinking about waiting until November," his eyes got huge and he said, "DO NOT WAIT ANY LONGER THAN THAT."

So that's encouraging.  It looks like we're probably only going to have two babies, IF it works the second time.  And that's fine.  Two is a good number.  We shall see.

Last Monday, as I mentioned, Brian started the new job.  It was the same day Ellie started at her new daycare provider, and also the same day our attempted murder trial started in Clinton.  The Trifecta of ShitThatCouldGoWrong, if you will.  And it did.  Brian had to leave work to pick up Ellie Monday through Wednesday, because I was stuck in a courthouse 45 mintues away until 7 p.m., listening to a county attorney who is so horrible the voters should stage a revolt.  He's a nice enough guy, but I've seen recent law school graduates do a better job. 

The trial ended on Wednesday with closing arguments and the jury was sent to deliberate.  I stomped out around 7, leaving all my stuff ther, because I fully planned on being at work on Thursday.  Ellie's stomach had other plans.  Around 2 a.m. we found ourselves cleaning the remains of her lunch and/or dinner from her bed and her hair.  The next four days or so were the grossest, most exhausting days I've yet to have in my life, and that includes the aforementioned jury trial.  She only threw up one more time, but I was lucky enough to have her sitting on my lap at the time, and there was a lot of....velocity, shall we say?  And a lot of dairy products.  The rest of the time I was changing the most rancid diapers in the history of ever, and, after about one day, rancid diapers in combination with raw, bloody diaper rash, which caused screaming the likes of which you only ever hear in horror movies.  Basically, it was super fun.

Then Brian got it.  Whatever "it" is.  I'm pretty sure it's the plague.  My dad also got it from having been in my house for five minutes to drop off some Pedialyte and using the bathroom.  I seemed to be the only one who hadn't been infected.....until today.  I ran a fever all day, but I thought it was just hot in the courthouse (p.s. it wasn't, apparently.  It was just me, and not in a sexy hot way, in a drippy, greasy hot mess way).  And, ya know, if I'm giong to have the flu, I should at least lose some weight because of it.  You hear that, Universe?  Skinny.  Make it happen.  I can't do it myself apparently.

Ellie's doing really well.  She's speaking in sentences, albeit short ones.  She kind of hates the new daycare, but it's just going to take an adjustment period.  We kind of had to start all over today because she hadn't been there since Wednesday.  But she'll get there.

I'll get pictures up eventually.  They are, once again, on this computer.