My incompetence leads to a happy budget discovery!

4/7/07, CD21--Answer brand OPK
Originally uploaded by peeonastick.

By the way, that is not my pee on that stick. Not that you can see the pee.

So I buy the ClearBlue Easy Ovulation Predictor thingies. The nurse at Kaiser said the regular ones were fine, but the digital ones were easier to read -- they have a happy face. I'm at Walgreens looking at the different packages, and the digital ones are ten bucks more (almost $40!!!). But, I am obsessive and nervous, and have a hard time reading the two-lines version. See, that picture at the right? That's not a positive. The line on the left has to be as dark as or darker than the one on the right. So I was using something like that and spending god-knows-how-many minutes going "Is it darker? Should that count? Would you consider it as dark as...?" I took them into other rooms to look at them in different light and everything. I figure the ten bucks (about $1.25 more per stick) was worth it for clarity. I pay for them and go on my way.

Well, when it first is time to use them, a week or so later, it was my camping trip. I pack two with me in my little toiletries bag, but do not read the instructions, because I believe that they are probably "pee on the stick." On that Saturday I go into the pit toilet with no light, unwrap the foil thing, and pee in the only spot that appears to be pee-accepting.* It turns out to be the window. I only realize it after I pull off the pink cap with the absorbent end. Duh. Anyway, that one's wasted.

Sunday, I take another one and actually pee on the correct end. I then put the little lid back on and wait. Does a happy face come up? No, a LINE comes up!! I paid ten extra bucks, and I get a line?! I was enraged! I assumed someone must have wanted the expensive ones as much as I did, and switched the cheap ones into the expensive box, then bought the expensive ones in the cheap box! Trashy bastard! When I got home, I hunted up my receipt and decided I would take that box right back to Walgreens and demand an exchange. If they gave me shit for having used two of them already, I would say "Hey, I'm obviously dealing with fertility issues. Do you really want to fuck with me?"

I grabbed the receipt, picked up the box, looked at the little foil packets to see if the number on them matched the number on the box... and it did. I opened the directions. It said to put the stick you pee on into the digital reader. The what now? I look in the box, and tucked into a fold of cardboard in the corner of the box is a digital thing that sort of looks like a thermometer. Oh. So, you put the stick inside the reader, and THEN you get the happy face (or the finger, I think).

Abashed, I put the receipt and the box away. I was a little mad at myself for having been so dumb. But then I had a thought -- if the sticks are just the garden variety two-lines ones, then next time I'd buy the cheap ones and stick THEM in the digital reader! Hah! ClearBlue Easy, I just figured out how NOT to give you ten dollars!

That's... a really tiny little victory, considering, but I'll take it.

*I have been using OPKs, but little chemistry-class type paper strips that don't have fancy absorbent tips, which is why I didn't know...