Bronchitis, meet luteal phase

here's hoping you're both gone before too much longer...

I've been a bit out of commission for over a week. I have bronchitis, a hacking nasty cough that doesn't want to go away (even with a trusty Z-pack under my belt, finished a few days ago). I can't even describe how tired of coughing I am. My back hurts, my abs are sore (hey, maybe I'll end up with a six-pack from my bronchitis!), and somehow even my upper arms hurt. How they're involved in my coughing is beyond me.

There's only one good thing about being sick: I get to sleep in the guest room. Now our guest room isn't very pretty; it has paneling straight out of the 70's (yes, it's been on my to-redo list since we bought this place 5 years ago), and it's a bit cluttered. Plus I have to put a pillow over the cable modem because the flashing blinking lights threaten to keep me awake all night. But my guest room has a futon, yes a futon, and it's the most wonderfully comfortable sleep surface ever made. I don't think all futons are like mine. This one rocks. Well, figuratively. So at the first hint of a sinus infection or cold - anything that makes me cough, really - I head upstairs to the guest room. Aahhh, futon. It's not that I don't want to pass my germs to my husband overnight - I don't think he could be any more exposed to my germs than he is during the waking hours - it's just that when I'm up coughing at night, I can't relax enough to fall asleep if I'm worried about waking up him or the kiddo.

And in unrelated news ...

For the past couple of mornings, I've had the opportunity to take my temperature, before I start my morning coughing. And - YAY of all yays - it appears that I am firmly in the luteal phase. (Unless my temperature is just inflated because I'm sick, but I'm ruling that out for now because it's *exactly* where it should be mid-LP, and that would just be too mean of a trick for my body to play.)

This means I'm probably a week or less out from my next period. I'm hoping this means I can get an IVF cycle in this year, before the lab shuts down for the holidays. I haven't had the nerve yet to call the nurse and ask her when that is scheduled to happen, or more specifically, when I have to get my period in order to be able to do a cycle this year. I think I'll do that tomorrow...