Barren Mare

The view from the desert

OK.  I'm ready to admit that I suck at finding the time to blog; which is a shame because when I do get around to it, it is with such sweet, sweet pleasure that I push the "publish" button. 

Things here are...well, a trifle chaotic, largely owing to the fact that we decided to buy another house without having sold this one. The sound you hear is me thwacking myself hard on the head with my own hand. This is at least the second or third time I have embarked on such a utterly stupid plan.  What I can I say, clearly I get a curious thrill out of dicing with financial catastrophe.  At the moment I am in that hazy space of denial/blind panic with lots of number- crunching doodles on the backs of odd bits of paper.  I suppose all will be fine if the nice bank people give us a punishingly large loan.  Huzzah! And if we don't eat, buy anything or go anywhere until we sell this place.  Huh. 

Did I mention that the car sorta needs a half a new engine?  And Christmas is coming?

Anyway, there is other stuff afoot with treatmenty things.  But aside from the fact that I am not sure if we would be able to pay for it, I find another strange hesitation in talking about it. You see, the last time we embarked on fertility treatment, I was really very open about the situation with- well- just about everyone I know.  I didn't exactly take out a full page advert in the local newspaper to announce that we were doing IVF, but neither did I make any efforts to cover it up, and where appropriate (and perhaps sometimes where inappropriate), I disclosed the fact fully and frankly. I told my boss. I told my boss's boss (who may have in turn told his boss).  I told the human resources department, most of my colleagues, all of my friends, my family, E.'s family, a couple of long lost relatives, a neighbour, possibly a few bar staff down at the local pub.  Oh, and lest we forget, I shared the blow- by- blow with the wide worlds of internets.   

In hindsight, I marvel at this. Especially nowadays, when I barely tell my boss whether I am leaving for the day or just going out for a cup of coffee. 

I now appreciate that in more ways than one, at that point I was really having a terrible time suppressing what sometimes felt like a geyser of anguish welling up within me. It was horrible, realising that we really did have a problem- that this mess was happening to me.  To meeeeeee!  Meeeee!  And so to try to pretend that I wasn't going through this big, scary, wretched thing just felt like an added burden during what was already a mightily stressful time.

So if the subject came up, or if I felt like talking about it, or if it ostensibly made it easier to "share" what was going on, then I more or less spilled it forth with whomever was in my line of conversational flow at the time. Naively, I think I also somehow felt it would be "healthier" for all concerned if if they knew what I was going through- and instead of wasting energy on trying to defuse the inevitable solicitious queries, gossip and stupid comments, I could just cut to chase. 

Regretfully, I didn't get the result I was looking for there. I'm not saying my own little trauma warranted the whole world pivoting on its heel to provide me with attentive, soothing comfort. But while many people were kind and supportive, on the whole, there wasn't a sudden outpouring of empathy.  The stupid comments didn't stop, and in some cases, just got stupider. And because I had been so open and honest, it felt like even more of a slap in the face when I was on the receiving end of what I perceived as inappropriate reactions from people who had been informed and from whom I consequently expected better.   

What I know now is this: going through infertility treatment is basically going to suck ass no matter how you cut it. With the possible exception of the wagon-circling of like-minded friends or fellow infertiles, there's no way around the fact that it's by and large a lonely journey. And it doesn't matter how many people you tell- only you have the full panoramic vision of the strange, thrilling, terrifying landscape before you. No one, not even the people you love best, are really coming with you- not all the way, not completely.

And so- present company excluded, of course,- I feel like I don't really want to waste any more energy trying to describe the view from the desert, from my own part of the island- a place where most people I meet have never been and will never have the misfortune to go.

Sometimes it's hard to stand this much cuteness

Gremlins in the house

We are plagued with gremlins in this house at the moment. It seems like everything we own is breaking, broken, or is suffering from intermittent faults or malfunctions.

A few examples:

• The car

Remember how we bought the car and it crapped out the same day?. Well, it was apparently an omen of things to come. A couple of weeks ago it died again, as E. was barrelling along the busy motorway, forcing another delightful interlude on the side of the road awaiting assistance. Cue two weeks of mechanics scratching their heads, unable to figure out the cause. In the end, they decide it needs- wait for it- a new engine. Aieeee!

The good news it that some of it may be covered by warranty, but the bad news is that most of it will not. And the further good news is that because we bought it less than six months ago from a dealer we may still have some protection under the consumer legislation in this country. Though the further bad news is that he's a two bit dealer operating out of his garden shed and he doesn't give a shit about our statutory rights so it may involve taking him to court to obtain any satisfaction. Oh, what larks.

• The kettle

If you don't live in Britain, I am not sure you can fully grasp the sheer horror of being without a kettle. The kettle is the source of all lifeblood- that is, endless cups of tea. When the breakdown occured, E. and I staggered around in a daze for a couple of days before flailing around in the cupboards to see if we had a spare fuse. We did not. Then we remembered that we have an entire garage filled with crap, including the exact same style of kettle (when furnishing two houses, if you find something you like, why not buy two?). Of course finding it meant going to confront the utter, utter nightmare that is the garage. It's still crammed to the gunnels, and things are beginning to get rather fusty.

• The battery on the camera

One of the reasons I have not taken more pictures of Little Guy is that everytime I reach for the camera, the battery is dead. A direct result, I am sure, of the damage suffered earlier when E. dropped the damn thing in a puddle of water. The nice guy at the camera shop managed to fix the camera itself but the battery seems to be a bit gubbed ever since.

• Little Guy's intestines

I applied his worming meds the other night, and twelve hours later, a series of the most ginormous roundworms emerged from his bottom. Aieeee! The vet tells me that is a sign that the medicine is working properly, but good grief. Poor little guy. As E. pointed out to me during our walk in the park, if I were to poop out something on a comparative scale, there would be worms the size of my arm. Nice.

• The roof

I think I wrote a couple of years ago about the saga of the roof leaking, though I can't now find the link back to it. Never mind, it's not that interesting a story, really. In a nutshell, there is a structural fault running the length of our building and somehow when it rains (which it does a lot, this being Scotland), the water gets in- either into our flat (i.e the kitchen or the hall) as well as the flat directly below us. It was supposedly repaired by the builders a couple of years ago after a protracted, annoying fandango, but guess what? It's leaking again! Hurray.

• The internet connection on the laptop

Since getting Little Guy, I prefer using the laptop computer to blog, because then I can sit on the sofa while he plays on the rug at my feet, and he likes that better than weaving under the chair legs at the dining room table. It's also baltic-y cold in the study in the winter. But for some totally unexplained reason, the connection is busticated. I've rebooted everything there is to reboot, and still it defies me. Mustn't grumble, I suppose, since I am lucky to have an at least one working connection (touch wood)- even if I may have to chop off a my frostbitten fingers afterwards.

• My reproductive system

Oh, wait, that was already broken. No change there.

When is a door not a door

Hi! Hello! I am alive- or at least not dead- after my bout with gastro-whatsis.  I feel much better now, the symptoms and attendant unpleasantness having just gone away on its own eventually. But fun while it lasted, uh huh.

Unfortunately I am still struggling to find time to blog in the style to which I was once accustomed. Much of that is attributable to Little Guy; supervising him during his waking hours is a full time job. He's into everything, chewing, bounding, playing. He loves most of all to romp in the pile of pillows on our bed which he treats as his own special den. Fun! for! little! dogs! where! is! my! toy?! aha! there! it! is!

By the time he finally goes to sleep, I need to catch up on all that life stuff in the half hour or so before my own energy levels go *wumpf* and I fall asleep myself. Also, there was a time when he would happily curl up in my lap while I sat at the computer; now he is big enough (and clever enough) to jump up onto the chair itself before scaling the dining room table and jumping on the keyboard with his tiny furry paws.

So my posts end up looking like this: shadiafhlpishdfaidhiDHIwhfihncCNSIHLOIchHIHISHIhishdihisdhipa 

Ahem. We're working on the "down" and "no" commands.

On the upside, we have (touch wood) more or less mastered the housbreaking thing, as eventually he cottoned on to the fact that the bell on the door was for multi-purpose potty activities. Huzzah!  It's been five days now with no accidents in the house (unless of course he's wheaked one out someplace I haven't yet discovered, like the back of my closet.)   

In other news, I made an appointment to go see Dr. Best Friend in a couple of weeks- a sort of speculative re-con exercise, if you will. Not to mention the fact that I have not seen in her in about a year, and I remain rather fond of her and miss her in the way in which you miss people who you don't really know but for whom you harbour the friend-crush.  We'll see. I have no doubt the existing waiting lists for any of the Scottish clinics are still as absurdly long as always, and I have not quite mustered the will or enthusiasm to seriously consider going abroad. 

But I figure, what the hell. There's really no harm in at least getting a foot in there- since after all, you know that old chestnut. When is a door not a door? 

When it's ajar.