When you look at it like that

First off, you guys. You guys. I mean seriously, it's these little nuggets of kindness and encouragement that lift me in such times and all your comments and emails were so appreciated. Thank you. 

I'm not going to lie; the last few days have been exhausting. Between tying up all kinds of loose ends as my job winds down, and my grief hangover, I don't have much physical or emotional energy these days. (This is not helped by another round of will-she-won't-she erratic menstruation antics on the part of my disobedient body). Right now, my Spring ain't looking so Invincible people.

Still, I'm putting one foot in front of the other. I'm slowly trying to catch up on all your blog news, and on my commenting. My brain has been intermittently weighing pros and cons, cons and pros in all of this, trying to figure out where I am for the moment...I'm trying to focus on pretty, shiny objects little things that bring me happiness, and just stay with that. Because that's the thing I know how to do, and what else is there, really?

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It's not just my metaphorical spring which seems to have been deferred. We had snow flurries again last night. No kidding. I'm missing the sun and the close-by beaches of Portugal now more than ever. On the other hand, if H's weather divination has any basis, we're still in for some good things in the remaining three seasons of this year. I'm going to go with that.

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 Yesterday was my last real day of work at my current job. I had to accompany a student to an offsite visit where most of the clients are mental health patients recovering from substance misuse. Within 20 minutes of arriving, I'd had encounters with two men in their 70s. One wanted to know if I'd accepted, really accepted, the Gospels into my life. He followed me around the facility until I explained my confused Catholic/Jewish parentage and my personal views (Holy atheist, Batman!) and that finally stumped him. The other guy  - in his 70s, remember - kept eyeing me and my student with a creepy leer, and tried to ahem...shall we say 'win me' without apparently realizing the coffee he was drinking was ending up in a fine spray on our faces. Yeah, he was hot stuff alright. Fun times. Will I miss this part of the job? For the most part, not so much.

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I'm down and out for another cycle. I was neither hopeful nor despairing this time around (in fact I pretty solidly found other things to think about), and so ends another two week wait, less eventful than many that have come before, and for that I am thankful. Still, after two + years of staking my existential status on where I sit in a monthly, merry-go-round cycle, all this uncertainty that my body is dishing out makes it hard for me to relax into the early part of my cycle. I'm Cycle Day...? 2? 3? -1? I have no clue. It's on and off and this is definitely signalling a less-than-reassuring new chapter. Luckily, the lovely Dr. B was entirely true to his word, and we have an appointment to meet with his colleagues in the sub-fertility clinic in just over two weeks. I'm hoping they'll be able to get to the bottom of all this faffing about that my body is doing. By then all my RPL panel results should be back so we can review those as well. I feel like I'm getting good care at last, and people who listen and follow up.

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Crucially, H and I are making big progress on working through our own ideas on the 'what next'. I hinted previously that we'd approached some more concrete plans in this department. Another long, tear-filled, looking-forward (and ultimately very cathartic) heart-to-heart took place over the weekend, and we finally have some sense of where we're ready to go. At our appointment on the 24th we'll ask about possibilities for IVF. We finally fulfil the criteria for 24 months of active ttc without any positive results (technically the year after S died was spent much more actively on grieving than on making a new baby). We still don't know the wheres or hows or whens, exactly (and there's still all the other uncertainty to deal with). But until quite recently, H had trouble with the idea of any kind of major intervention. He admitted himself that it was a kind of protective denial of the reality of our situation. So this is big. Huge.

And just like that, it looks like we might be boarding the IVF train. Holy shit. Honestly though, I'm hoping it'll give us the feeling of moving in a solid direction. Any direction is better, surely, than spinning our wheels as we have been for so many months now.

So good/bad/good/bad/good/bad. All in all, I think I can work with this. I just need to catch my breath first.

A real mixed bag, sweet and sour. Source.