Pick a card, any card

Any time I see or hear that line, I always think of Paul Daniels, the irritating little English magician with the nice bit of totty for a wife.

I'm not sure he ever did it, but I always enjoyed watching magicians twirling their assistants around 360 degrees, in a box on wheels, before attempting to hack them in half.

Classic entertainment, don't ya think?

We enjoy it so much we've decided to try it ourselves, hack open the wife, and see if we can't eventually pull a dead rabbit out of a hat.

One week from Tuesday, ET will undergo a laparoscopy.

For once the hospital seem to have moved swiftly and arranged this between yesterday and today.

It's been a thoroughly shitty week, and so it's really with a sigh of relief that we accept the appointment. Something is being done.

While on the subject of the week that was, I really can't say how much we appreciate the comments and e-mails. Your collective self submersion into a pool of vulgarity in the name of sympathy is honestly appreciated.

It's nice to find you are not left totally on your own at a time like that.

Weirdly, the appointment falls on what will be cycle day fourteen, and basically rules out us being able to try ourselves this cycle.

It seems then, that I'll be in the market for some good pornography this month, all reasonable offers will be considered.

So for now, project 'hump n'hope' is on hold.

Well....just one half.

You know I can be found

"There's something there".

Mmmm. Sleep.

"There's something there".

Fuck, what now? spider? mouse? herd of cattle? Half awake now.

"There's definitely something there..." she repeated, flopping down beside me and shoving it in my face.

"...look".

Shit. There is too.

No way.

Impossible.

Squinting through my sleep glued eyes and sure enough, faint, but obvious.

A pink line.

I'm not sure what we did for the next half an hour, I started it out telling her not to get carried away, it was impossible due to the temperature drop, but I finished it trying to convince her it could be, as faint as it was, it counted as a positive.

Not even 40 minutes after my rude awakening, it had vanished.

3 hours later it was over. Finished, along with cycle nineteen. A false positive.

The red menace sailed into port before lunch and I really don't know what to say now.

I feel like I should use an "At least..." line in here somewhere, but I can't think of one.

An ill wind?

Day twenty seven in the big brother house and the house mates are climbing the feckin' walls.

Hourly emails and calls between our respective workplaces, and constant badgering, have left ET wishing I were a fingerless mute.

Good news and bad news is rampant, and the very fact you haven't seen me running screaming through your streets should tell you what the good news isn't.

No red menace, no Aunt Flo, no painters, no monthly visitor, no yokes.

Absolutemente nada.

This of course, is good news.

Not so good was, that following another great high temperature yesterday, we had a hefty dip in basal body temperature this morning.

Seemingly, instead of hell freezing over, Lucifer directed the cold front right up into the wife's innards.

The reproductive equivalent of knowing you don't have enough in the tank to get you to the next petrol station.

Such a big dip is bad news, and barring some reproductive anomaly, the end of this cycle is imminent.

Then again, an as eternal optimist, (read: idiot), no news is good news, right?

...right?