Barren Mare

Because, because, because

I'm not ignoring you, honestly. It's just that my parents are visiting. Which means that all my spare time is consumed in an attempt to cram in as much familial togetherness as we can stand in the space of ten days.

I thought perhaps the quickest and easiest way to sum up some my feelings about why, perhaps, I am not sure doing IVF is such a good idea is to write a little list. It is as follows:

Because I'm not sure we've actually dealt with all the fallout from the last go-round. You know, the relationship crap that left me curled up in a ball on the bathroom floor around Christmas time? Yeah. That stuff. Time is a great healer, but some issues need more than just time to sort out.

Because even though E. might be willing, the reality is, I'm still the one who will have do all the planning, research, co-ordinating, compiling of paperwork, phone calls, emails, the bulk of the appointments and the taking of time off work.

Because frankly, I hate the whole fucking palaver of IVF. The scheduling, the shots, the hormonal rollercoaster, the invasiveness. The waiting: for an appointment, for a test result, for a call from the lab, for a line on the peestick.

Because at the moment, I think I would rather just get a dog.

Because in a lot of ways, I'm happier with the way things are. I've moved on a lot in a year. I've dreamt up other plans. I'm not beating my head against the wall, searching for answers, driving myself crazy with anxiety and sadness over something which I can't seem to have.

Because I'm more "relaxed" than I've ever been, so who is to say I won't just get pregnant the good old fashioned way? We just bought a much bigger car- I'm sure I could arrange to get drunk and have sex in the back seat.

I know all this sounds like I've made up my mind against it- in fact, I really haven't. I guess what I am driving at is that I'm in a much better place than I was before, and I'm not sure I want to do something to set myself back. But then again....

Must go. At my urging, my dad has discovered the joys of text messaging. He is now giving me hourly updates from their rented cottage as to the progress of their doing the laundry. I fear I have created a monster.

Running on empty

So, we bought another car. Note I did not say we bought a "new" car, since new it most definitely is not. Kind of the opposite. In fact, in car years, it's more toward the geriatic end of the spectrum.  Perhaps a slightly odd choice, all things considered, but the price of a newer model was pretty much out of the question and despite the age and slightly funny smell in the interior, it ticked a lot of boxes.

E was a bit worried though, about the fact that the car has a gajillion miles on it, so before buying, he very prudently arranged for an RAC inspection (sort of like the equivalent of the AAA, for those of you Stateside). This was not cheap, but the report included a road test, and carried with something of a peace of mind factor, considering we ourselves had not driven the thing.  (Why hadn't we driven it, you ask?  Well, because the seller of the vehicle in question was over 50 miles away, and being without transport, it wasn't exactly trivial to just pop over there to take it for a spin.)

The report came back with all sorts of ominous mutterings about a few things, but all fixable and nothing we couldn't live with. And apparently the car ran well "despite the high mileage".  Ack. With a bit more fretting and teeth gnashing, E. decided to go ahead and buy the damn thing. So we schlepped ourselves over there (a bus, a train, another train and a taxi ride), me with one of those passport holder things around my neck carrying a ridiculous amount of cash from the sale of our car. I guess I looked less muggable than E.

Blahblahblah a bit of tyre kicking later and some paperwork, off we drove in our "new-to-us" car. We ran a few errands, stopped off en route to see a couple people, and then hit the motor way.

Ten miles out of town, the fuel gauge plummted abruptly into the red, lights began blinking on the dash board, a claxon sounded somewhere in the distance. The car juddered, its eyes rolling up in to the back of its metal head, and then it died. Fortunately, E. had promptly heeded by screams to pull! the! fuck! over! immediately and we slid to a tidy stop on the hard shoulder.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to convince the company with whom you purchased roadside assistance breakdown cover a mere two hours earlier that day that said breakdown cover is actually in place, valid and pleeeease send somebody out right way?  Well, I can tell you.  It's tricky.  Involves a lot of shouting down the phone to a call centre in India.

The rest of story is too boring to go into- a long spell sitting by the motor way playing "I Spy" with E. and getting zapped by stinging nettles, the tedium of waiting for the car to be ratcheted up onto the tow truck, the attempt to solve the problem at a roadside service station, by simply putting some fuel in, the apparent failure of that solution, the endless telephone calls back to the guy who sold it to us trying to figure out what to do, the towing all the way back home, only to discover that when it was taken down off the tow, it started up and was absolutely fine. Fuel gauge is a bit fucked, it seems, and what happened is we simply...ran out of gas.

So that's the car story. E. remarked on how calm I seemed about the whole thing, and indeed, I was. I'm not saying that doing IVF turns you into some sort of stalwart soldier for every other life crisis, but it certainly does teach you that if you can get through that, something like running out of gas actually is not such a big deal. Even if you don't know that is what happened, and instead are faced with the prospect that you have just forked over silly amounts of money for a lemon.  An old lemon.

Oh, and speaking of IVF, E. says he is willing to now try it again, maybe in the autumn. I on the other hand, am not so keen to wake the sleeping dragon- for a whole lot of complicated reasons, which I may or may not be able to even articulate.  But watch this space.   

Accidentally on purpose

There is no good reason for my lack of postiness except that every time I have sat down to write something, life has gotten in the way.  But! As one who previously spent so many months crouched over the keyboard endlessly google-mining for the buried treasure of a solution to our infertility woes, I can say that dealing with a series of "real life" stuff comes as a sort of a good thing.

Note the manner in which I put such a positive spin on the silliness that has ensued here at the Barn in recent weeks. For starters, we accidentally on purpose sold our car. Well, I say "we" but in fact, I was simply following in the slipstream of one of E.'s half-fermented ideas.  Thing was, E. figured he'd "try" to sell the car privately, and no one would buy it.  Then we'd concede defeat, decide what kind of car we want, and head round to that dealership for the ritual trade-in mating dance with the salesman before enduring a shafting for way more money than we wanted to pay in the first place.

Only guess what?  The very next day after putting up the ad online, we had a buyer coming round to view the car with the cold hard cash in his pocket. Cue a bit of manly pawing of the ground interspersed with kicking of the tires, and by the end of the weekend we had ourselves an envelope with a fat wad of cash and a nice big empty space in front of the garage where the car used to be. Huh.

Turns out thereafter we have had quite a lot of trouble figuring out what kind of car we do want, and then finding one that actually fits the bill.  Thus several weeks later we are still sans auto. Which makes doing the grocery shopping that much more amusing.

Then there was the saga of the bathroom tiles. The previous owner of this flat had put carpet in both the main bathroom and the ensuite. Now, I don't know about you, but something about carpets in bathrooms equals heebie jeebies.  You could practically hear the mildew growing underfoot.  It wasn't even nice carpet but this sort of bland pale beige colour. Ack. It gives me the shudders just thinking about it; I don't know how we put up with it for as long as we did.

Anyway, so we decided to rip up the carpet and put down tiles. Since the layout is a bit weird, complete with funny shaped bathtub, the tiling wasn't the kind of thing we could do ourselves. So we phoned a tiler guy to come round to give us a quote, and he actually showed up more or less on time, provided a reasonable estimate for what would be a two day job to lay some natural slate tiles and offered a start date of before next Easter.  Super, I thought!  This might actually be OK!

Erm, well, it started OK. Except that his tile cutting machine broke on the first day so he didn't get very far past laying a few tiles in the ensuite; then the next day he explained that the pesky natural slate tiles were in fact  causing a bit of bother in terms of needing to be recut; then the day after that he didn't show up at all but texted E. at 11pm to say that he wasn't sure about how long it would take, the tiles being sort of crappy and all; until finally the last day, when he finished off the small ensuite before departing in a puff of dust, flat-out refusing to do the rest of the job because the tiles were the worst he'd ever seen, leaving a note charging more than half the estimated price for doing less than half the work. Then texting us every half hour to ask for his money.

I know!  The bloody cheek! To cut a long story short, First Tiler Guy was jujitsued with one of my sharp email specials, and we got somebody else in to do the rest of the work.  Second Tiler Guy efficiently completed the job in a day (turns out much the maligned tiles were absolutely fine), and all was well. Even if he did leave a big mess behind when he left.  I don't even care, such is the vast improvement to the previously manky bathroom floor. Really, it is so much nicer in every possible way, and far pleasanter underfoot.

And that is more or less what I have been up to.  How are you?  If you get a chance, please go round and give some blog lovin' to both Thalia and Pamplemousse, two fine women on the receiving end of some particularly cruel blows.