1.  Day off work.  Let me rephrase that:  DAY OFF WORK!!! Since I’ve only worked a total of one day this week, I’m not entirely sure where the soul-flood of relief is based, but I’m just really glad to not be at work today.

2.  I still love my gallon jug that once held apple juice but now holds my filtered water so I can track how much I’m drinking throughout the day.  I’m STILL not living up to my resolution to drink a full 96 oz. every day.  I seem to have developed this weird aversion to actually drinking water, but then I’ll start drinking a glass, and I’ll drain it immediately.  I think I need to work on not listening to my aversions quite so carefully.

3.  I get to start tapering off of the higher prednisone dose today.  Tonight I’ll be back to 10 mg, and starting next Monday (which is also the last day we do PIO!) I get to start tapering down to 0mg/day.  And that, my friends, will be a very very good thing.

4.  No signs of fever or infection yet.  Only  8 more days til I’m past the scary time.

5.  I’d envisioned the naming process to be, well, somewhat fraught with tension.  Instead, the Boy and I are having a great time.  Ok, I’m probably having a greater time than he is, but still, we’re having a blast.  He’s started to call Sprog “Little Mel” since I’ve vetoed the name “Melvin”.  It’s fun because it finally feels like the Boy thinks this is real, and I’m really looking forward to having a full-on partner in all this.

1.  It’s getting easier to eat healthily because anything with oil in it?  Blech.  So, small blessing, but I suppose it’s a good thing that I’m not craving, say, potato chips or french fries.  (blech)

2.  The doctor yesterday was very kind, very capable.  Again, I feel as if I have been exceedingly blessed by finding such compassionate doctors.

3.  Kristin Hersh is playing an acoustic show in NYC in June, and I was able to get tickets.  If she plays a few songs from Hips & Makers, I will be ecstatic.

4.  I have tomorrow off, which is going to be a good thing.  I feel like I could sleep for a year.

5.  I was able to schedule one of my three appointments next week for a day off.  Trying very hard to not burn through my sick days before, say, May.

1.  Remember me mentioning how nice the doctors seem to be here in NYC?  Well, last night, at around 6pm, my brand new endocrinologist – the guy I only met a couple of days ago – called up to see how the CVS went, and to make sure I hadn’t had any problems.  ”I was worried about you,” he said.

I am astonished and touched and deeply grateful to have lucked into such spectacularly caring doctors’ care.

2.  Breaded chicken cutlets.  I wanted them desperately last night, and the Boy made them for me.  With lots of spinach.  Yum.

3.  My knitting pattern is – so far – working out nicely since the rip-out-start-over episode.  This is a good thing, because I hate ripping out, and if it hadn’t made a big difference, I’d've been sad.

4.  I decided to be really really grateful that despite the discomfort, the Doc had to go through my abdomen, instead of through my cervix for yesterday’s procedure.  Cervical CVS almost always produces spotting, and you know what?  I’m so over spotting.

5.  Another beautiful day out there today.  And I’m grateful.  It’s been a long winter and I’m starting to get ready for it to be over.  Come on, Springtime!

1.  I don’t have pink-eye.  Had a couple of hours yesterday morning when I thought I might, since I work with nasty little kids & when I woke up my eye was irritated & red.  But it’s gone now, so I’m thinking “pinkeye free”.  Whew.

2.  Velveteen.  Specifically, my brown velveteen shirt.  Soft!  Warm!  Lovely comforting shade of brown!  Mmmmmm.

3.  Sushi (well, fake, cooked sushi for me) for dinner last night.  Yum.

4.  The lab got one of my bills right!  Seriously – one of about 30, but still, I’ll take it – and even pay it sort of happily.

5.  Connie Willis’s new book Blackout.  Very excited to read it!

1.  Only one more day before our LOTR-thon!  For the non-geek set, this means the Boy & I & a couple of dear fellow geeks are going to sit down in front of the tv with rabbit stew, bread, mushrooms, & other good hobbity things to eat, and watch all three Lord Of the Rings movies in one sitting.  The Director’s extended cuts, mind you, so we’re going to be there for nigh onto 12 hours.  Yes, we are weird enough that this sounds like fun.  If we get into full-on geek mode, we’ll have a computer playing it in the bathroom as well so that necessary hygiene breaks will not interfere with the full experience.

2.  I found another really nice, personable doctor in NYC.  What IS IT with doctors here?  Are they all nice fellows?  Seriously.  My shiny new endocrinologist is a doll.  A wizened though still, like 6′5″ 80-year-old doll who thinks it’s hilarious that my heart rate goes nuts in a doctor’s office.  ”I’m so flattered!”  he said, trying to make me laugh.  If he were 40 years younger, it’d probably be true…  Seriously nice guy.

3.  No bile-gushingly heartburn episodes yesterday.  Nor any bleeding, neither.    I could get used to not feeling like warmed over death…

4.  Snow.  Teeny bits of snow that will probably turn to rain.  Certainly not the sort of weather that a whippet wants to go for a morning walk in.  Not that I’m feeling lazy today or anything…

5.  Tomorrow might be a day to make waffles before our LOTR guests arrive, and I’m looking forward to the taste of maple syrup already.  Just sayin’.

1.  It was nice being at the Realm of Pain for less than a full day.  Also, my April schedule is much improved, though since I suspect the Assistant Manager will be promoted away from the branch this month, I also suspect my new, groovy, Sane Branch schedule is worth much less than the paper it’s printed on.  But for the moment?  I’m rather happy with it.

2.  I learned that my SIL had the same thing I’ve got going on in her 2nd pregnancy.  She had to have the radioactive iodine treatment about 9 months after her daughter was born, but she hasn’t gone hypothyroid yet.  (20 years ago)  So I’m hoping to be just like her.  Actually, I wish that in a lot of ways, she’s awesome, but especially in thyroidic ways…

3.  I really love my OB’s office.  There was an unexpected delay before my appointment yesterday (he had to run – literally – to go catch a baby) so the office staff & remaining patients sat around and chatted.  Such a nice difference from being at the RE’s clinic – oh, and it turned out that everyone in that waiting room was a former patient of my RE’s – where everyone’s too wrapped up in misery to do more than nod.  I heard about the nurse’s Costa Rica vacation, the difficulties of trying to get a ticket to Israel right before Sukkot, and the mumps epidemic going on in Brooklyn right now.

4.  Cereal is still my friend in the morning, and I was able to find the last box of my favorite kind at the health food store yesterday.  Don’t know what I’ll do when this runs out, if they haven’t started stocking it again…

5.  Snow’s almost completely melted (just in time for another storm).  But I was getting tired of slipping on ice – not to mention worried about the whole exploding-manhole-cover possibility of the street outside our house.  Dry weather for a while would be nice.

1.  I got a refund check from the lab that’s been screwing up my insurance for the last 8 months.  Now, granted, I feel like they owe me this money for the grief they’ve caused me, but I don’t think I actually overpaid them, since I haven’t actually sent them any money since this whole thing started.  Don’t know whether to cash the check or not, but it was nice getting a check instead of a bill for a change.

2.  My darling mother sent me a pack of the coziest, softest socks I’ve ever felt, along with a note that warmed my heart.  Can’t wait to have a day off to wear my new fuzzy socks around the house!  THANK YOU, MOM!

3.  There’s a big fan outside our bedroom, pulling up CO so that the neighbors (and we) don’t die of CO poisoning.  So, grateful for, you know, not dying in our sleep, but also that they have already ripped up every bit of rippable street, so there won’t be any more 11:30pm excavating!  Yay for Con Edison!

4.  Glad I have an appointment this morning.  Sucky 24 hours, and I want reassurance that everything’s ok.  Also want to pump his receptionist for a big old list of recommendations, because I don’t feel capable of vetting a new specialist on nothing more than internet recommendations, damnit.

5.  Still sleeping like a champ, despite the recent additions to my stress levels.  Granted, my definitions of ’sleeping like a champ’ have changed somewhat over the last few years.  Used to be, if I didn’t get 9 hours of uninterrupted sleep, I felt justified in being a complete bitch the next day.  Then I married the Boy, who gets by on the amount of shut-eye he gets in blinking throughout the day.  Then I started fucking with my hormones.  Then I developed the “need to pee every hour and a half after dark” pg symptom.  Then I discovered the joys of open-ended insomnia.  So basically, when I say I slept like a champ, I mean that even though I was up every hour & a half, I got back to sleep almost immediately.  I’ll take it.

1.  According to my ticker, I have fewer than 200 days left to go – 199, to be exact (which of course, it likely won’t be.)  Big milestone, if completely arbitrary!

2.  Tomorrow was my due date for the pregnancy I really thought would work out.  Not particularly grateful that my brain refuses to let me forget that, but grateful that a)  I’m pregnant, and b) it wasn’t all that long ago – doesn’t FEEL that long ago.  Which, if I take it and apply it to the future, means that September might not actually be a lifetime away, the way it feels right now.  That’s encouraging, right?

3.  The ongoing nightmare in the electrical conduits outside our bedroom actually halted at 11:30 last night.  At 11:00pm they were still using the Cat to rip up the street.  I thought it was literally going to go on all night.  Grateful.  I really needed the sleep after the late night at work coupled with the early morning.

4.  Target sells cheap bras.  They even fit (for the moment.  Dear lord, am I going to have to buy a D-cup?)

5.  Appointment tomorrow morning, which will cut into my Realm of Pain day.  Darn the luck.

1.  I love getting to skip to a new month when yesterday was only the 28th.  Juvenile, I know.  I prefer to think of myself as “young at heart, if not young in the ovaries…”

2.  I spent much of yesterday in the company of two of the dearest women I’ve ever known.  One of whom I’d never “met” before yesterday.  Taking an afternoon to hang out with Mekate & Mo was one of the best things I’ve done in ages.  Thank you, ladies, for one of the nicest Sundays I can remember.  Can’t wait to see you again.

3.  I get to work at the Sane Branch today.  ’nuff said.

4.  My last Lovenox injection until after the CVS was last night.  Won’t miss that bit of my nightly routine for the next week or two.   In fact, I’m hoping to have a bruise-free belly to start up with again, after the genetic testing procedure is over and I’m cleared to have thin blood again.

5.  We didn’t die from carbon-monoxide poisoning last night OR burn to death in our bed.  Underground electrical fire in the ditch outside our basement bedroom caused exploding light bulbs, and a stink of electricity gone awry, which caused a neighbor to call 911.  Which caused 5 hook & ladder trucks, 3 ambulances, and an assortment of police cars to show up at 5:30am, sirens a’blaring.  The cowardly whippet may never recover, but hey!  Firemen!  Firemen everywhere! 

Oh, yawn….

1.  I love the little green market right around the corner.  Rather nifty that when I neglect to brush off the 2 feet of drifted snow from my patio plants until 6:25 to discover that my thyme and rosemary died this winter (and are therefore unable to provide me with fresh herbs for the marinade that I’m making at 6:30  for tomorrow’s meal) that I can just run and buy them around the corner with no hassle, no fuss.  There are some nice things about living in NY.

2.  I’m going to say it again – Freedom Pharmacy ROCKS.  My prescription did not arrive on time due to the storm conditions on Friday.  Normally, no big deal, but I cut it kind of close and, you know, the weekend.  So I called, and instead of giving me the tracking number and saying “good luck with that”, the woman I got hold of called FedEx herself.  When she’d been on hold for a few minutes, she offered to call me back when she learned anything.  She called back 15 minutes later to say that she was still on hold and that they were just going to overnight a new package to me, to make sure that it arrived before I ran out.  Both packages arrived yesterday, and when I called (because I realized there was no receipt in the overnighted package, which means they didn’t charge me yet for it) to give them a credit card number for the copay, I complimented the rep. on their customer service, and she was appreciative because apparently, the pharmacy has been without electricity since Thursday.  They’re running their computers off a generator but basically operating in the dark and cold, dealing with panicky IF patients who haven’t received their orders.  And under those conditions I got such fantastic customer service?  Seriously, these people ARE THE BEST.

3.  I finished my knitting pattern last night – and seriously, people, for someone with no computer training, I did GOOD on this one – and started the baby blanket to end all baby blankets.  It might not turn out as nicely as I’m imagining it, but it won’t be for want of a decent pattern.  Very proud of myself.

4.  Ah heartburn!  I’m not feeling anywhere near as yucky in the afternoons (though that didn’t stop me from taking a preemptive nap yesterday) but the heartburn, she sneaks up on me at odd hours of the day.  Nasty, though totally treatable with Tums, but oh-so-reassuring!

5.  Had a good writing day (ok, a good writing 2-3 hours) yesterday.  Figured out where, exactly, my revelations from last week are going to fit into the existing manuscript and (sort of) started piecing the ending together to incorporate the new bits.  It’s coming together.  In slow-like-brontosauruses-mating-motion, but still.  Coming together.