I've been at a Youth Services Symposium. The sessions have begun before eight every morning and run through half past eight at night. The long days didn't hurt so much, but long days filled with lectures about collection development and reference interviews are downright painful. Simply being in a room with sixty children's librarians was an ordeal in itself; Eric has said that one tends to become the people with whom they work, and I can now honestly vouch for the validity of that statement. These women were insane, dancing with beanbags and taking rhythm instruments into the hotel bar at night. It still hurts.

Well, I suppose I did get a few good ideas out of the whole thing (I'm itching to start my own Mother-Daughter Book Club), and the food wasn't bad at all, though I won't be eating another salad for at least a week. I won't count those days as a total loss, but they certainly didn't rank very high on my personal scale of enjoyment, however otherwise the rest of the librarians may have felt. Somebody shoot me if I ever reach the point where I consider 1 A.M. "Kazoo Alerts!" funny. Thank God I didn't have to stay at the hotel with the women who had traveled across the state for the workshop; the symposium was hosted in my hometown, and the drive home each night felt like a huge blessing.

I had recurring dreams each night about the upcoming move. One night I dreamt that when I got back from the symposium, the entire library had been packed up and moved - except for the children's section, which had been left for me to do. Is my dread of this whole thing obvious? I've heard that the temporary building has been seeing some heavy-duty work done in preparation for us, in the way of extra bathrooms, extra lights, carpets, and roofing. Nobody knows when it will be ready, though, and we're all a bit anxious about showing up one morning to an "It's ready! You have six hours to be out of here!"

I quote the urologist, after his examination of Eric: "I'm afraid that there's really nothing I can do. His testicles are rather small, and you're probably getting the maximum output from the size of his factories."

Ouch to me, and Yee-owch! to Eric. To say that his ego was damaged would be a massive understatement; neither of us really knew how to respond, and we have no idea what to tell the family members and friends who were eagerly awaiting the results of the appointment. In fact, it was only after he gave me several firm approvals that I felt anywhere approaching comfortable about writing it in the journal. We still haven't given the whole story to his mother; she called three times the day of the appointment, and Eric let the machine pick up each time, not wanting to have to break the news. Finally she caught him last night, and Eric simply said, "He'll be referring us to an infertility specialist."

And he will be. In fact, his words were, "There are some specialists at the medical college who deal with in-vitro fertilization." IVF, baby. Now, there's a bridge that I didn't want to have to cross, and one Eric doesn't really want to cross at all.

I'm not really sure how much to trust this particular doctor, though. For one thing, he said that sperm density wasn't all that important, and that total count was the main issue. From my research, that's patently false. Secondly, just about everything in his office seemed geared toward the treatment of prostate cancer, leading me to wonder just how much experience this guy has with fertility cases. I begin to think that he was a bum referral, and the whole appointment was an even bigger waste of time than we thought.

Soooo...I did what I should have done in the first place. I called Mary Ann. She's been the only medical professional (outside of the surgeon who removed Eric's gall bladder) that I've trusted since we moved to northwest Ohio, and I figured that she might know what was what. Indeed she did; she told me that, instead of the medical college, I should go to the clinic at another hospital. I believe in her judgement, and so, especially since I've heard reference to this hospital's fine specialists, that's where we'll head. I just hope that there will be some procedure other than IVF (for instance, an intrauterine insemination) that might do the trick.

We'll continue to try on our own, too, putting into action our new knowledge. I'm heading into my fertile period, and we'll be attempting to wait until the last possible moment to "go for it." Here's to timing!

Well, something bit me on my neck, at any rate, and it's driving me crazy. I noticed the wound yesterday around noon, when it was nothing more than a teeny-tiny little bump. By dinner, it was almost the size of a dime, bright red, and sore, as well as horribly itchy. By bedtime, I couldn't handle it; it was painful even when I wasn't scratching it, and every once in a while, a little pain shock would radiate through my neck. I put an ice pack on it to numb it and was finally able to drop off to sleep. Now it's a little smaller, but the bump is still red and itchy.

Was it a spider? Eric is a little more concerned than I am; he claims that the bump seems hot, and he made me take my temperature to prove that I was not running a fever. I just hope it goes away before I have to go to work and suffer "hickey" jokes. It's too early in the season for turtlenecks, darn it!

Or maybe it was a vampire, and I have to worry about going out in the daytime ever again. Only time will tell, I suppose!