Here I go again.

I'm pretty sure I've started as many blogs as I've started journals in the last 5 years. But here I go again.

Hi!! My name is Beth. I live in Milwaukee with my husband of almost 6 years and our two cats, Zeke and Luther. Yes, there is a Disney TV show with the same name. No, we did not name them after it. Luther is named after Martin Luther, the amazing theologian and Zeke, well.... he came to us with that name. We just changed the spelling.

My husband is a fantastic guy. I was initially attracted to his voice when we met in college, and I have gotten to listen to him sing for over 10 years, including one Valentine's Day when he serenaded me in lounge of my college dorm and the year he wrote me a love song for Christmas. He does laundry and cleans the bathroom and is willing to help with cooking when I've just got too much work to do. He also is an aide at the school where I teach. Some days, he is a one-on-one aide for an autistic non-verbal little boy and other days he is a run-around-help-everyone aide who works on in library when he isn't running around. I like those days. It makes my life easier since in a weird twist of design, the music room (where I teach) shares space with the library. Go figure.

I teach music and special education. This is my fourth year teaching music and my second doing special education, and one day in the near future, I'm going to give up teaching music to do special education full time.  Well, I'll do just special education full time, rather than both of them full time. I love my job; I just wish I loved my school. I'm sure I will complain about that enough in the future, so I won't go into that right now.

We are members of a lovely church here in Milwaukee, and technically we sing in the choir. Right now, though, with grad school, work, and other obligations, we're planning to take a break from it. At least until after Christmas.

I'm in grad school. I'm working on my Masters in Special Education. It's going well. I finish student teaching in special ed this semester, one more class next semester, and then it's the big THESIS writing. Grad school hasn't been particularly difficult, more of an annoyance than anything. An expensive annoyance, but an annoyance nonetheless.

As for other obligations, I hesitate to refer to my knitting group as an obligation becuase I am upset when I don't get to go on Tuesdays. I started the group in 2008 to fill a void that I had found in the area. All of the knitting groups that I visisted after moving to Milwaukee were make up of women, very lovely women, but women who were significantly older than I. They loved to talk about their grandchildren and putting their mothers in nursing homes, while I could only comment on how my mother took my grandmother to the doctor and that I wanted children of my own someday. My second major obligation outside of work and school is the board of directors for the Lutheran A Cappella Lutheran Choir of Milwaukee. I serve on an internal committee to redesign their website and logo as well. It doesn't take too much time out of my daily schedule, but it feels rewarding to be helping to keep such an important musical influence in the area functioning. I wasn't able to make it to their spring concert, but I hoping/planning to attend this Christmas show.

I spend a great deal of time thinking about my husband and I's efforts to conceive. It was a tough battle to convince him that it was time to start, but we finally started trying the day after Thanksgiving last year. I told him that there would be problems based on my previous experiences with men (i.e. tons of unprotected sex with no resulting pregnancies throughout high school), my lack of regular cycles before and after taking birth control pills, and the knowledge that my mom started pre-menopause in her late 30s. And eventually he wisely decided that I knew my body better than he did, and might not be just a hysterical woman who felt like her clock was ticking. I 'believed' all of these arguments, I really did. But I am not sure that I expected to still be trying almost a year later. I don't think I believed that trying to conceive was going to be this difficult. I mean, 16 year old kids do it accidentally all the time! Why would two adults who were trying on purpose have a problem?

So I'm starting this blog to keep track of what we've tried, the trials to come, and hopefully as a living document for me to process my thoughts and emotions as I embark on this journey!