hubby just noticed today that I had quit carmex.  30 days later.  *shaking head*  I guess it was the skinless, bloody stumps where my lips used to be that gave it away.

it’s been twenty-seven days since my last chapstick application.  it all started when I was a kid and my mom would slather the waxy, cherry-flavored goodness all over me every time I was within her reach.  she then started buying me my own tubes to carry with me.  before I was out of elementary school, I found myself unable to go anywhere without chapstick in my pocket.  it wasn’t until high school that I really started experimenting, leaving the childish chapstick behind and using various types of soft lips and blistex instead.  when I started college, I was introduced to the hard stuff.  that’s right… carmex!  after I discovered that mentholated tube of lip-crack, there was no going back.  nothing else could compare.

in adulthood, I have often been teased and ridiculed for my addiction.  I ran out once while traveling a few years ago and my husband challenged me to take the opportunity to quit.  I went twenty-seven grueling hours without carmex before hubby made the mistake of searching for chapstick addiction on the interwebs and reading me the horror stories of withdrawal.  I immediately decided that my habit wasn’t hurting anyone and giving it up was NOT worthwhile.  I didn’t want to go through the pain and humiliation of having my lips fall off.

so… nearly four weeks ago, I found myself in that same predicament of running out while traveling.  I went to the store and bought a three-pack of carmex… and never opened the package.  I don’t know why.  there was no real thought process or reasoning behind it… I just decided to quit.  it didn’t even seem that big a deal.  the first week was practically a non-event; I just didn’t think about my lips.  the second week, I had a small split in my lower lip that bugged me for a couple days and made me more aware of my lips but I never felt the need to bust out the carmex.  the third week has been… hell.  my lips are suddenly so dry that they are all I can think about.  I can’t smile without licking my lips first because they are so dry and tight.  I have had countless occasions this week where I have nearly fallen off the wagon.  I want carmex. I NEED carmex.   my lips hurt;  they are making me extremely self-conscious.  today, they are cracking and peeling and I am back to feeling that this is not a worthwhile endeavor.  but… I will stick with it because I am no quitter and I have already sacrificed nearly four weeks.  here’s hoping that week four is the light at the end of this tunnel.

it’s finally time to find out if there’s a problem.  I went to the dr today to talk about starting to test for infertility.  I stopped and grabbed a copy of hubby’s results so the dr could see that there are no problems on his end.  indeed, he seemed to be highly impressed with the 110 million sperm count and declared him highly virile.  gee, thanks.  so we scheduled several appointments in the upcoming weeks.  first, i’ll go back next week to have an ultrasound done during ovulation.  I guess that will check the viability of my egg?  the following week, they’ll do bloodwork for a 21-day progesterone reading to see if I have enough progesterone to support implantation.  i’ll then have to email them on the first day of my next cycle (which will be while i’m in Jamaica) to schedule an hsg test to check for tube blockages.  I am praying hard about all of this.  I am hopeful that I can have a baby but if there is a problem with my fertility, I just want to know for sure.  it’s the not knowing whether there’s cause for hope that kills me.

a year after returning from Europe, we received a traffic ticket in the mail from Italy.  lovely souvenir.  hopefully, that was the final payment on our fabulous Holy Land vacation.  and just a friendly PSA:  don’t let your gps take you to the leaning tower of pisa.  if you get anywhere near it in your car, they will hunt you down and make you pay 🙂

open-window weather is finally starting to show it’s lovely face around here.  Monday, i was able to open the windows from mid-morning until mid-afternoon.  Monday night and last night, i was able to sleep with the windows open.  this morning, it’s downright cool in here 😀  i have to close up the windows and curtains when the sun starts blistering the living room in the afternoon but i just know that fall is sneaking in.  i have the urge to roast some marshmallows around a nice fire pit!

hubby had his appointment today to make sure that there weren’t any fertility problems on his end.  dr said he’s working perfectly.  i was really hoping… not for a problem… but maybe that all the extreme exercise of ironman training was causing a slowdown or something.  nope, it’s all back on me.  *sigh*

meantime, my dr said that they won’t pursue any infertility tests on me until i could show six months of tracking ovulation and trying.  I’ve been tracking this on an app on my phone and had finally gotten to the sixth month but when the phone died yesterday, it wiped out my app too.  fortunately, i had done a backup of that data a month and a half ago so it’s not a complete loss but now i’ll need to track another month and a half in order to have the “proof” that the dr wants.  do you have any idea how long a month and a half is in “trying” time????

thursday was my first bible study group meeting.  being an anti-social person, I was already anxious about it so I made sure to test out the online platform ahead of time to make sure that I wasn’t going to have any problems.  best laid plans and all that jazz.  for the first half of the meeting, I couldn’t hear them.  I finally got to where I could hear them and they couldn’t hear me.  and the video was up and down.  naturally, I felt like a moron who can’t work a computer.  my pc has been getting slower and slower for a while now and apparently it just doesn’t have the juice to handle a video conferencing gig.  I was very upset and ready to just give up on the bible study because of it.  in an effort to lift my spirits and keep me from giving up on my spiritual growth, hubby went out and bought a webcam to put on his pc.  tonight i finally got around to testing it out and was able to have a lovely face-to-face with my daddy.  stinks that i have to use hubby’s pc but at least i should be able to stay in the group now.

still not completely recovered from that scarring technological experience, my phone started acting up yesterday.  I heart my phone.  I’ve bragged so much about it and my service plan.  this morning, it was shutting itself off constantly even though it had a nearly full battery.  I finally got it to come up and stay up for a little bit and was texting with my sissy when it spontaneously shut off again.  when I finally got it to start up again, I noticed that it had wiped out all my stuff.  fantastic.  so I played with it some more and tried, unsuccessfully, to get some data off of it and it just kept running slower and slower… even though there was really nothing on it anymore.  I decided to go ahead and try a factory restore…  now, it is a complete brick.  it just loops through a boot/error cycle and won’t stop until I take out the battery.  i freely admit that it was my fault last year when i killed our phones.  this time, i did nothing to harm it.  and, of course, it’s about six weeks past warranty.  ugh!  i am just so ticked off and depressed about this.  hubby and i both spent all day reading the interwebs trying to find a fix for it.  we both made calls to support and got nowhere.  it is beyond fixing.  again, hubby to the rescue.  he took me tonight to get a new phone and then complained loud enough to the company to get them to give me a free month.

moral of the story:  technology sucks but husbands are fabulous!

chapstick free.  just because.  it really hasn’t even been that bad until i smiled too big and cracked my dry lower lip last night and so today i have been all too aware of my un-balmed lips.

since we’ve been getting more involved with the church, I’ve been wanting to try joining a small group.  I’ve never done bible study before so i was pretty nervous but i felt like i needed to do it.  i really wanted to do something that hubby and i could do together but his training just doesn’t leave him any time for it (which is a shame because there was a really fun looking group that was going to study the bible through a les mis character study… how cool is that?!!!).  since i was going to have to go it alone, i decided to try the online group.  i kind of thought that it was going to be an asynchronous message board kind of thing where we would all just post our thoughts on the book we’re reading.  turns out it’s actually going to be a weekly video conference.  aacckkk!!!  why didn’t i just wait until the next course when my hubby could join me?  i’m so nervous about this endeavor now.

this pas weekend, hubby had a hilly bike race up in north ga.  it was a beautiful day and he did great… especially considering that he’s a Floridian athlete whose idea of “hill” training is riding repeats over the highway bridge.  the course had a mile of elevation change and he finished almost an hour quicker than he anticipated.

since we were going up to that neck of the woods anyhow, we decided to extend the trip a bit and visit our old office and my brudder’s family in their new habitat and new restaurant.  the restaurant is awesome and huge.  plenty of room for them to really grow it into a great business.  naturally, my SIL stuffed us silly and we were fat and happy with her fantastic cooking.  of course, this also meant that we got to see my baby girl for the first time since she was just an itty bitty.  we spent some time with her at the restaurant but she was shy and didn’t feel like getting to know us.  when we went back to their house, she decided to open up to us a bit showing us her great room and toys and how she can wrestle her daddy.before long, she had warmed up to us and let me pick her up and play with her. who doesn’t love being upside down?  it’s great fun! auntie arcanai is her favoritest aunt… she just doesn’t understand that yet 🙂 she likes to play “so big!”  i’m not sure if this is a well-known thing or not but it’s something we got from our mom.  basically, you say “so big!” in a high, sing-song voice and she reaches up to the sky to show you just how big she is.  I have fond memories of this and I’ve always done it with any baby I’ve ever held in my life.  apparently, it stuck with my brother too because this definitely was not her first rodeo.  it’s really stinkin adorable! the only family pic I got.  they were playing and having fun so it’s okay that their eyes weren’t all open.

oncologist signed off on the experimental treatment so the heart condition isn’t going to be a problem after all (hopefully).  program should start next month.  praying with all my heart.

we’re taking a couple of days off next week to loafer around in the mountains after hubby’s hilly bike race.  about a week after ironman, we’ll be celebrating with a Jamaican all-inclusive resort with friends.  and today i booked a cruise for December.  so excited about all of the fun down-time we’ve got to look forward to over the next couple months.  there is a bright light at the end of this training tunnel!

one of hubby’s first cousins was killed today in a car accident.  her five week old baby was in the car but, praise God, the car seat left him unharmed.  it’s not that we really knew her well but we just saw her two weeks ago at a family reunion (organized because her mom has cancer and isn’t doing well so the family wanted to get together while she can).  she was so proud showing off her new little baby.  it’s just such a shock.  she was three months older than me.  she left behind a mother, father, 8 year old daughter, 5 week old son, ex-husband, newlywed husband, two brothers and a pile of nephews and nieces.

apparently there’s some question now as to whether the existing heart condition is going to be a problem for undergoing the experimental treatment.  this makes me mighty sad.