HPTs.

Big blogging day. 3 post in one day and it's only noon.

I'm a talker and blogging seems to calm me when I'm anxious. I guess there's no harm in blogging a lot, except for my readers. I find that when a blogger I read posts many blogs in one day, I end up getting behind and I sometimes end up missing some. I try not to - I make an effort to go back and read them all, but I'm sure I'm the exception.

If you fall behind in a blog you read, do you read back to catch up? Or do you just skip the old ones?

If most people just skip, I would feel that I need to write less, because although I'm not writing to any particular audience, I am writing to be "heard". And if I'm writing too much dribble, the things I think are important might be missed. So be honest - is my dribble getting in the way of you being able to read my blog? Am I simply typing ~too much~?

I find myself thinking about something and I want to "ask the world" about it to get their viewpoints. In this case, I'm thinking about HPTs. (see? this is nothing important to blog about. And if this post got in the way of something I did want people to read, like the "quick note about age differences in dating" post, I'll definitely try to curb my blogging.)

• I abhor blue dye HPTs. They are the devil incarnated. Which actually doesn't make sense, since "incarnated" means embodied in human form. What I mean then is the opposite of incarnated. It's the devil in the form of a pee stick. Blue dye tends to give evaporative lines, dry or wet. Being an infertile, I've looked at many dried up pee sticks, looking for some type of a line. (When other infertiles tell me they actually throw away their sticks at the 3 minute mark and never look at them again - I think they are either lying or they are actually and alien) And while there are some pink dye brands that give dried "ghost" lines, these blue dye tests give these false ghost lines while wet! The +/- blue dye tests are the worst. I got a definite "+" once, only to have another stick give me a negative before and after the "+". Evil!!! To put this into perspective: I've gotten three false positives from blue dye tests and I've only had 2 boxes in my poas history! That's a lot of sticks. Believe me. Well into the hundreds. I'll test early, starting 9dpo - and I'll test everyday, many times twice a day, until AF shows her face. Even when I know that my 14dpo hpt is totally accurate, I'll still test. Oh - I've even been known to poas after AF arrives - somehow thinking that maybe AF isn't actually AF.
• FRER are always my confirmation hpt. As stated above, I am a poas addict. To be able to afford my addiction, I buy in bulk. I get them for as cheap as 50 for $25. That's only 50 cents a piece! On my worst days, using two sticks, it only costs me $1. That, I can handle. See, when I want to poas, it's because I'm obsessing. Once I actually get that BFN, I'm cool for now. Of course, I'll want to poas the next day, but for now, I can stop thinking about it. Anywho - FRERs used to be super sensitive - picking up in the 10-15 hcg range. Now they pick up 25, but still, that's early. FRERs have never given me a false positive. FRERs have never given me "ghost" lines. I trust FRER. I know if I see ~something~, I'm seeing a bfp. I've used a good amount of these too - because when I see ~something~ on my internet cheapie, I'll pull out a FRER to confirm. If I could buy FRER for 50 cents each, this would be the only test I would ever buy.
• Digital hpts suck. No lines to quint over. No dried tests to look at. Bah. Plus, digitals need more hcg than what you can see as a "faint bfp" on a regular stick. So I would end up with a BFN early on if another stick gave me a BFP. No POAS addicts would think this was cool.