Well, here we are gearing up for the 9th cycle of trying. I'm supposed to ovulate on Friday (the one small bright side of this whole trying thing is that my cycles are so regular that I only need to use a couple of ovulation predictor test strips to verify the LH surge--a hormone that spikes a day or so before you ovulate). This is good, because those strips are exPENsive. About 20 bucks for seven of them at your local Walgreens. You can get them much cheaper on the web when you buy in bulk, but because one box lasts me about 3 months, I''ve been lazy about ordering them that way. A friend of mine who is also trying to conceive but has very irregular cycles bought about 100 of strips on the web for a very reduced price (I wonder if Costco has gotten into the act yet? Can you picture women with those huge Costco carts loaded to the brim, checking out with 300 OPK test strips? Hee hee!)

So, back to the matter at hand. Friday is "the day" and then it's back to the two week wait. At least this month I'm also getting the blood draws and meeting with the doctor to talk about our "options" (ugh--I hate that word). Actually, now that I think about it, I believe my period is due the day we meet with the doctor. Huh.

At this point, it's really hard for me to be optimistic about getting pregnant without any intervention, but in a way that's good, because for the last 5 months or so I was definitely riding the roller coaster: the last few days before my period, I would have trouble sleeping at night, and then, when it occurred, I had about a day or so of depression--mild as depression goes, but severe for me, because I'm normally pretty happy. Neurotic, but happy.