No News Is ...

Well, frustrating. No news is frustrating. We were expecting to get a fertilization report from the clinic today, but no word. I guess they're short-staffed headed in to Thanksgiving and they do seem to be a bit heavily booked at the moment. We have to run out to the pharmacy there tomorrow, so hopefully we can corner someone and get some information.

The reason we have to run out there is that the Lovenox injections are the wrong dosage. Last time, with the IUI, we were using 40 mg injections, but Evelin's response indicated that she should use less. Since we had 40 mg syringes left over, we planned to just squirt 10 mg out of the syringes and use the remainder, but we found out tonight that that doesn't work. The syringes are preloaded with the specified dosage, but they aren't marked, so there's no good way to figure out how much medicine is being discarded/reserved.

One other injection item: After injecting Evelin with the progesterone, I was trying to cap the syringe with one hand while massaging the injection site with the other. A tip for those trying this at home: Don't hold the needle cap in your mouth and try to cap the syringe one-handed. I ended stabbing myself in the lip. Lips tend to bleed for a while.

Other than waiting for the call, Evelin's laid low today. She's recovered from the anesthesia, but is feeling really bloated and pained. It's probably a mix of recovery from the retrieval and symptoms of ovarian hyper stimulation syndrome (OHSS). It's another reason we're going to try to talk to someone at the clinic tomorrow.

I got a few things done. I built a small wine rack for under the stairs in the cellar. It's really just a simple rectangle with a diagonal bar running through it, but it holds about 40 bottles, which helped clean things up down there. I also, based on Evelin's suggestion, framed up a quick high-sided shelf to sit atop the box to hold the other bottles that didn't fit in the main rack. I also organized things: labeling things so that I can tell what's what without pulling out a bottle and making sure the whites and others that should be drunk young are on the easy-to-access top shelf, while the ones that are supposed to lay down for a few years are on the hard-to-get-to bottom.

I realized that if I am going to do anything more complicated than little things like this, I really need a table saw. It's a bid difficult to cut long straight lines with a circular saw and no rip fence or anything else to run along. (Despite the equipment used, I managed to keep all my fingers connected to my body.)

This evening, I made us a nice tagine with artichoke, olives, garbanzos, and preserved lemon from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. It turned out really well. The preserved lemon really added a nice flavor to things, contrasting with the bell peppers and other spices. It also had a sort of parsley pesto sauce that was drizzled over it, which added a nice note.

Right now, I'm trying to get a head start on the week by making cranberry sauce. We aren't hosting Thanksgiving this year, but we did say we'd bring the cranberries. I'm using a port wine-based cranberry sauce recipe from Food & Wine that we did last year (when we did host things). It tastes great. Friends this past Thursday was making light of how easy cranberry sauce is to make and how nobody really pays attention to it, but I've always liked it (even when I was a kid and it came out of can) and the port and orange in this recipe complement the cranberries very well.