Complaints: Now with Real Ingredients!!!

Ok, so I'm noticing a trend in advertising.  This all started a few days ago when my mother-in-law asked me what kind of cake I wanted for my birthday.  Well I knew right off that I wanted the most chocolaty thing you can find in a cake mix, and since I've had good luck with Duncan Hines I thought I'd look through the flavors on their website to see what seemed to have chocolate on top of chocolate with a side of chocolate.  I ended up here:
http://www.duncanhines.com/products/cakes

At first glance this looks like a simple list of a variety of cake flavors.  But then I noticed something.  Under the heading "Decadent Mixes" there is the phrase "contains an additional pouch of real ingredients."  This got me wondering.  What exactly is a cake mix made up of if it's not ingredients?  I mean, when I was a kid and I made mud pies, these mud pies had ingredients (mostly mud).  When I look on the side of a box of regular cake mix, what exactly would you call the list of things that supposedly go into the box?

But it didn't stop there.  Today, I spent most of the day watching football with my husband.  Ok, so I don't so much watch football as exist in a room where football is on TV while I pay attention to other things, but occasionally something on the TV catches my attention.  This time it was a Tostitos commercial.  Now I love Tostitos.  They are the corn chip that I am most likely to buy, more because they're often on sale and in the shapes I like than because I think they're particularly nutritious, but I've eaten and enjoyed a variety of Tostitos products.  So when I heard them advertising that they're made with "real ingredients" it got me thinking.  Why in the world would anyone with a lick of sense advertise that a food is made with real ingredients?  Are these real ingredients as opposed to the fake ones?  If Tostitos are made with real ingredients does that mean that Fritos are made with paste and paint?  (I love Fritos, and would never mean to malign their excellent reputation, and they go really well with chili.)  What kind of idiot do the advertising executives think I am?  Who would spend millions of dollars to tell me that their food-like substances are made with real ingredients?

This really makes me wonder what other advertising and marketing campaigns are utterly meaningless.  Does my toothpaste really keep working for hours, or does it just remove the grubby stuff and it takes time (and eating) for it to come back?  Is lite mayonnaise really light, or is it just lighter than say, injecting lard directly into my veins?  Are these desiccated grapes or plumper juicier raisins?  Will the shoes make me run faster even though I don't like to run.  I mean really, I spend more time driving a car or sitting at a desk than anything else in life.  Will this added layer of clothing make me look thinner, or will it just add another layer to my already extensive padding?  When you say something tastes better, better than what?

Silly, silly advertising executives.  You're even stupider than you think I am.

P.S. My actual birthday cake was a Duncan Hines Moist Deluxe Dark Chocolate Fudge Cake Mix with the Creamy Home-Style Dark Chocolate Fudge Frosting, and it was VERY good even though my husband complained that it was ugly.  I picked a cake because it would TASTE good, not because it would look good (if I'd wanted a pretty cake I'd have let him spread frosting on a hunk of styrofoam), and not because it had REAL INGREDIENTS!

Netflix is making a big mistake

So... Netflix sent out a letter explaining their recent changes today.  I read it.  I went to their blog to respond to it, and wrote a response only to have their comment system require that I'm a Facebook member.  I'm not.  So without further ado, my open letter to Netflix:

That's a bunch of malarkey.  Re branding a successful brand is always a mistake.  I can see the price increase (though I think it could have been better implemented incrementally), and I can see re-organizing into two different groups.  But the re branding is a mistake, and a bad one.  Amazon.com made the steps to sell things other than books, and they have been successful because now folks know Amazon.com is their one stop shop.  By re-branding you're alienating all the word of mouth marketing you've had through the years.  I can see only one reason to re brand a part of the business, and that's if you're planning on selling it off.  Sooooo, when are you planning on selling off the DVD by mail business?

P.S. if you're new to the Netflix debate, you can read their blog that I'm responding to here:  http://blog.netflix.com/2011/09/explanation-and-some-reflections.html?lnktrk=EMP&g=924FD2284294B084FFA5EF8B00E123120AC0315E&lkid=netflixBlog

Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

And of course, another disappointment. The good news is, I've gone part time at work just to have some time to take better care of myself and to take some of the stress off.

I keep wanting to cry out, begging, screaming, "God PLEASE give me a healthy full term pregnancy." But I keep reminding myself, "Not my will, but Yours be done."

I'm really trying to mean it.

The waiting game

When I talk to my friends with infertility they often talk about the month after month of disappointment.  And while that's horrible, I don't find that to be the worst of it.  See, with disappointment at least you know.  What we tried didn't work, so it's time to formulate a new plan, there're plans to make, and stuff to do.  There's always something different to try, and having something different to do makes it that much better.  It gives something to hope for.

No, the worst part of it is the time of the month where you just don't know where you stand.  You've done everything you can, and you have no idea whether it worked.  Every month you spend a couple weeks talking to your body, saying "Please let it take!"  "Everything's ok, you can focus on reproductive stuff now."  "Please let everything get together and do the right things this time."

And I'm afraid to do anything that could be the wrong thing.  I found myself watching a funny TV show last night, and laughing, wondering whether if I laughed to hard if it would jar anything loose and it wouldn't take.  I'm afraid to exercise to strenuously because I might get dehydrated and cause a problem.  I'm afraid to do anything that could cause a lot of pain or stress on my body, lest my body decide that maybe now's not so good a time to put the focus on reproduction.  I kick myself wondering if the incident with the legs I burned with expired dilatory cream could have triggered some sort of fight or flight stress release that caused my miscarriage.  I don't know that I'll ever know.

So here I am; afraid to eat the wrong thing, afraid to get sick, afraid to move the wrong way, afraid to even laugh to hard!  Tired, and yet waking up in the middle of the night unable to think of anything but what MIGHT be going on inside me now.  Is it any wonder I'm no fun at all?

I'm beginning to itentify with Job

Ok, so my house hasn't collapsed, it's just the air conditioning gone out in the middle of what I read a few days ago is a "Deadly Heat Wave" gripping half the United States.  And my children aren't all dead, it's just that I can't seem to have any in the first place.  I haven't broken out in boils and sores, it's just a doozy of a UTI on the tail end of a week of rumbling tummy trouble that ranged from Full Stop to Go, Go, Go!  But compound this on top of more than normal stresses at work, more bad news from the fertility clinic, and more frustrations ranging from a breast cancer scare (nope, it's just a cyst, everything's fine) to a guy who can't seem to decide whether he wants to sell us the car that we said we would buy MONTHS ago, and I'm wondering just exactly how much more of this we can take.

Ok, so my husband hasn't told me to "curse God and die" for which I am always thankful, but when it comes to breaking points, well, I'm way past where I thought mine would be.  Instead we lie naked in bed (it's to hot for clothes) and thank God for ceiling fans, even if the one in our bedroom has this weird tendency to cut off in the middle of the night.  We thank Him for sustaining us thus far, and pray that he will help us through whatever comes next.  Oh, and we cry, a lot, and do our best to comfort each other because we both know that God knew what he was doing when he put us together and that there's no way we would make it through this without each other.  And then there's the yelling, crying out to the universe.

WHY CAN'T WE GET A BREAK!?

If God's got a bet on with the Devil about what it'll take to break me, then I don't want to let Him down.  But I kinda wish he'd go pick someone else to bet on and let me have some time to recover from all this... stuff.  Surely work doesn't have to make both me and my husband miserable at the same time.  Surely God can heal our bodies or thyroid and hormonal issues and whatever else is making it impossible for us to have children and loose weight.  I eat really healthy, a low calorie but balanced diet with lots of leafy greens, and I started working out 3-4 times a week over a month ago.  I shouldn't be GAINING weight.  But combine PCOS with an under active thyroid (which I was doing a really good job of controlling before all these fertility treatments) and you get twenty more pounds of me since January.

I really didn't start this diet and exercise plan thinking that it would result in me only gaining a pound and a half in the last month, and now I need to go out and buy all new jeans.  I mean, I like shopping as much as the next girl, but in general I just want my clothes to fit!  And I'd really prefer a new pair of earrings to shopping for a new air conditioning unit.

This too shall pass

I’ve been comforting myself lately with the idea of change. No matter what happens, this will pass. Change is the only thing I can count on, so no matter what has me down now I know that in a few days or weeks it’ll be something else, or my circumstances will change, and whatever seems insurmountable now won’t be there, or won’t seem so bad, or will have changed into something else. This is something I learned from Mark Lowrey.  

All I have to do is wait.  If nothing else my ADD will kick in and I'll forget to be upset about whatever's upsetting me.  Right?

3 months

Three months and I'm still not pregnant.  Confirmed today.  All I want to do is go home and cry.

Well, that and a big FU to all the folks who said "Don't worry, you'll try again next month."

In other news, I think my hair is falling out faster than normal.  It's a good thing I have more than average to start with.  I can stand to loose a fair bit without looking like a freak... well, no more of a freak than normal anyway.