July ICLW

I can't believe ICLW time has rolled around again already! Seems like time is flying these days!

If this is your first visit to my humble online abode, welcome! I'm pleased to have you with me =D If you've been here before, pull up a chair and visit for a while! It's always lovely to have friends stop over!

For those who don't know me well, I'll share a bit with you. I'm Lynn, a 32-year-old Georgia girl. I'm married to The Hubs, a 35-year-old Englishman. We met online nearly 11 years ago and we married 8 1/2 years ago. We lived in England for the first 3 years of our marriage but moved to the US in January 2006. We've been here ever since!

Life has its ups and downs for us. Our move to the US hasn't always been what it's cracked up to be. The Hubs was out of work for a 16 month period just over a year ago and, once he finally found a new job, it is not what he would like to be doing, nor does it use his degree at all. In addition to that, we've been on a fruitless 7 1/2 year journey to start a family. We've never even seen a positive HPT. It is so depressing somedays I barely feel able to even lift my head.

Having said all that, we do have one another and we are very much in love! We have awesome (if sometimes too caring) families and we have a few good friends. We're working everyday on improving things for ourselves.

We are currently on a hiatus from fertility treatment while I attempt to lose weight. Our RE wants me to lose 30lbs before we move onto the next treatment. This reasoning is down to the medical challenges I have facing me. I have PCOS, Type II Diabetes, hypothyroidism and sleep apnea. I had endometrial hyperplasia last year, but am currently showing all clear at the moment.

Not related to losing weight, but another challenge I face on the fertility front is that my right fallopian tube was removed in a surgery 4 years ago. I went in for a routine laproscopic cholecystectomy (gallbladder removal) and, when the surgeon went in to remove the gallbladder, he discovered a very large cyst (he drained more than 2 litres of fluid from the cyst) on my right ovary. Sadly, my fallopian tube was buried in the cyst and had to be sacrificed. I understand the tube was not salvageable, however, the fact that the surgeon "forgot" to tell me about the removal of the tube until 3 years later when we were gathering medical records to carry to our first RE visit, kind of pisses me off.

Anyway, back to weight loss. I am currently about half-way to my mini-goal of having lost 30lbs! As of this past Sunday (normally I weigh on Fridays, but I cheated and weighed during the week - not a fact I'm proud of), I had lost 15lbs! Stay tuned tomorrow to see if I've managed to keep that weight off and continue losing or if this is one of the flukey weeks I gain weight. I am on a strict 1480 calorie per day diet and I generally try to walk 2 to 3 miles everyday. This week has been unusual because I've had rehearsal every afternoon for a local musical I'm involved in, so I've been unable to get a moment to exercise. Let's hope all that singing has helped me to shed a few pounds! My overall goal is to lose a total of 103lbs. 15lbs down, 88lbs to go!

The Hubs and I have 3 dogs. Isabel, our terrier, is 9 1/2 years old. We adopted her as a rescued dog when we lived in England. When we made the move to the US, we naturally had her vaccinated and certified to move with us. She is our first baby and we love her enormously! She is spoiled rotten! Our second fur-child is Melly. She is a beagle hound/border collie mix. She was born to a couple of stray dogs who took up residence at our house several years ago and were our fur-children for a while until the dad got hit by a car and the mom wandered off a few months later. I really miss them. However, Melly is lovely! She looks more like a hound than a border collie. She has long floppy ears and she's so soft. She has a lovely temperment! Our third fur-child is Fonzi. He is technically Melly's brother, but from an earlier litter. Same mom and dad, Fonzi was born and we had him until he was about two months old. At that time, he just disappeared from our house. We never knew what happened to him or where he had gone until he appeared back at our house last year looking much the same as he did when he was a puppy and still answering to the name Fonzi. He also has a great temperment, though he is less inclined for silliness than Melly is. They are also incredibly spoiled!

I have lots of interests including reading, writing, music, movies and crafts. I'll read just about anything. I love vampire novels, mysteries, children's fantasy/sci-fi and morality fiction (i.e. Nicholas Sparks or Jodi Piccoult). Reading has been a huge part of my life for as long as I can remember. I also love to write, hence the reason I have a blog. I've been in a state of writer's block for creative writing for several years now, so I've been hoping that writing my blog will trigger something there. Unfortunately, I find that a lot of times my writer's block just carries over into my blog as well. I struggle on, though!

I live for music! It is so difficult for me to do anything without having music on. I love 60's and 70's rock. Fleetwood Mac is my all-time favourite band, but I also like The Doors, The Who and The Beatles. I do love modern music - I absolutely love Adele, Lady Gaga, Train and Katy Perry. Jazz, soul and classical music are also favourites in our house. We're a very musical family. I enjoy singing as well as listening to music and The Hubs plays piano. I own a violin on which I can play a few notes, but I hope to one day find someone who can give me lessons to play it properly. I'd also love to learn to play guitar.

The Hubs and I are movie fanatics! We go to the cinema usually once every week or so. This is a big thing for us because the nearest cinema to where we live is a 45 minute drive away! We use this time as date-night and go out for a meal as well. It works really great for us as a break away from the everyday. We're not really picky about our movies - we enjoy comedies, dramas, thrillers, horror.....you name it, we'll probably watch it! Having said that is not to say we have no taste in movies - there are movies even we will not watch, lol! But, in general, we probably do take in more movies than the normal person.

I love crafts. I enjoy crocheting, cross-stitching, scrapbooking, card-making and most any other craft I can get my hands on. I'm currently attempting to teach myself to knit, which has been an interesting experience. I'm not sure I could term it successful yet, but interesting definitely fits. I also recently purchased some wooden photo frames I'm hoping to paint and offer personalization on so that I can sell them to add money to our treatment/adoption fund. Someday maybe I'll actually get them uploaded to an Etsy shop, lol!

That's about all I have to share about myself right now, but if you have questions, please ask them! I'm eager to answer any questions. Also, please, please, please share information about yourself as I'm always interested in meeting new people, too! Have a great ICLW!!