The process can be hard, I know.
Re OPKs, although some women do find them helpful as I have said before they are not great for everyone. Personally I think charting is better and, together with checking cervical fluid, can tell you just as much (actually more, since if your temp goes up you have ovulated whereas a positive OPK does not mean you will definitely ovulate). And a pee on a stick habit can get very expensive.
If you want to start taking your temps, you need to buy a basal body thermometer, which goes to 2 decimal places. Access Diagnostics do these pretty cheaply.
You take your temperature every morning at the same time, immediately on waking up and before you do or say anything. I keep my thermometer right by the bed so I hardly have to move to get it in my mouth and I take it at 6:30 which is the earliest I am ever likely to wake up.
Then make a note of the temperature.
When you have ovulated you will see your temperature shift upwards (some people say by at least 0.2 degrees but I think this depends on the woman), and it will stay high for at least three days. What you should see is a phase when your temp is lower (during your period and before ovulation) and then a second phase when it is generally higher. It is important to see a sustained rise as you can get one off high temps if you have, for example, had disturbed sleep or if you have a sore throat.
Your temp then stays high until your period is due and if you are not pregnant, it drops back to pre-ovulatory levels. If you are pregnant it stays high.
Does that make sense? To put it into context, my temps pre-ovulation are generally below 36.6. I ovulated on Sunday and now they have gone up to above 36.75.
The downside to charting your temps is that it won't predict ovulation - you can only confirm it retrospectively after getting 3 consecutive higher temps. But after a 2 or 3 months you may well come to see a pattern which allows you to work out what is likely to happen.
It will also help you in identifying if you are not ovulating as then you would not see a thermal shift where your temperature goes up.
You can get a lot of help from Fertilityfriend.com. You can set up an account and put your temps on. It will draw a graph for you and will try to work out when you have ovulated. It is not always right, but is a helpful tool. You can also put in other signs, such as what is going on with your cervical fluid, so that you can see all of your data on one chart and start to learn when you are most fertile.
I hope this is helpful. Some women find that charting their temps is too stressful and I have been told by a Dr that I shouldn't chart because it will "add to your stress level" and make it harder to conceive. She picked a pretty bad moment to tell me this, as I was having an internal scan to diagnose the ectopic. In fact she was missing the point because I knew that there was a problem with that pregnancy in part because of how weird my chart was (temps were high but not as high as they should have been on a normal pregnancy chart), so regardless of what my silly Dr said, it definitely has helped me, and may even have saved my life or at least my fallopian tube.
Let us know how you get on.