Random Bullets of the Third Week of Summer

• It's gone from unseasonably cold to unseasonably hot. Like, according to official reports average high is usually around 72, and it has been in the mid/high eighties for several days. In practical terms, that means I am opening and closing windows all day long, turning on and off fans, to try to keep our (un-airconditioned) house cool. So far it's mostly working, but I expect today is the tipping point.
• Thanks to excellent sale prices, LG and I have four kinds of ice cream in our freezer at the moment: 2 kinds of sorbet, 1 odd cookie-dough flavored coconut milk concoction, and (for me alone) vanilla heath bar crunch. Mmmmm.
• Had good conversations with Dr. Boy and my diss director this week about my summer projects and upcoming tenure nonsense. I have to say, the one nice thing about ongoing fertility treatment is that it's relocated my anxieties. I just don't see the point expending insane amounts of energy worrying about tenure. Either I get it or I don't, and at this point, beyond putting together a good statement of professional goals and activities, there's not much I can do. I'm sure that will change, but for now, that's where I'm at.
• I've been spending my afternoons on the porch reading. I'm about half-way through McInerney's The Good Life, which is better than I expected, though it seems infertility is inescapable (one of the main characters used her sister as an egg donor).
• I'd gotten it in my head that I needed to work on one major project this summer, in a sustained way, to be able to talk about next book project in my tenure stuff. Conversation with diss director reminded me that that's not really how I have ever worked, so why start now. That's somewhat liberating.
• I'm quite ambivalent about my conversation with Dr. Gorgeous tomorrow. I always make these appointments at moments of extreme crisis, which, naturally, have passed by the time I actually see her. I'm not sure what I want to say, other than the more I look into donor embryo as a possibility the ickier it seems to me; I mean, I think if an appropriate embryo just happened to make itself available to me, I'd probably pursue it. But looking at websites where the donating "parents" choose the adoptive parent(s), where they can specify religious background and marital status....ewww. (I could go on and on about the ethics and politics of all this, but for now I'll leave it at that.) Donor egg is wicked expensive and I still feel too young to need it. Logically, I keep telling myself that it took ten cycles to conceive LG, and I began that process at 29; I'm only at fourteen cycles now, which isn't that much more, even though it feels like it (though, to be fair, that's a difference of 10 cycles in 13 months and 14 cycles in 20 months, with cancelled cycles and other complications). That is, I don't feel like I have much more stamina to continue this process, and I also feel like it's too early to give up (which, when I emailed WFRE last week, she actually said). I can't help but wonder if I were actually having sex on a regular basis, would I have gotten pregnant a long time ago? The technical diagnosis on most of my forms is, ironically "male factor," because I'm using a donor; what that glosses over, of course, is everything wrong with me (low ovarian reserve, luteal phase defect, micropolyposis, APA, MTHFR, RPL and who knows what else). [Umm, that was longer than I intended. Sorry.]
• I think I will go to the library this afternoon and maybe, possibly, check my campus mail. There's something about bringing home new books that I just love, no matter how long they sit on my shelves before I read them. It's time to trade some of the old in for the new.
• Today was supposed to be LG's last day at her daycare/after-school program. I mean, she was only there to accommodate my teaching schedule (and random trips to see Dr. Gorgeous), which is no longer a factor. What I failed to consider is her point of view, which has nothing to do with economic or temporal realities; it's part of her routine to go there on Mondays and Wednesdays, and she wants to continue to do that until she finishes school. So, for $33, she gets three more days of playing with her buds, even though I will be at her school on one of those days. I think I should take this as a sign of having her in an excellent childcare program, which is good, considering she's been there in some form since she was 18 months.
• And now, folks, I really must do something resembling actual work.