Whiney whiney BITCH PANTS

I'm really in a self pitying mood lately.

It's my upcoming birthday/ big news of if this cycle turned out well or not.  I think.

Or it could just be that I feel like throwing a temper tantrum single every day.

I'm scared that finding out the results of the pregnancy test will make me spiral down into a deeper sadness over the bad luck and unpleasantness that seems to follow me through out my life lately.

It's like no matter how hard I try, things SUCK and will continue SUCKING for... an indefinate amount of time.

I'm sorry that I'm being such a whiner but I have really had it.

This birthday (and year) was supposed to be the year of ME.

Now all special plans and mentions of magical fun times have been swallowed into my family's typical obsession  with all things depressing & sad.

My grandma being in hospital is the icing on the cake - we spent much of last year in hospitals & palliative care wards with my uncle.  Our family really needs a break.  We were going to take a cruise together (ALL of us, which has NEVER happened, and D has never even left our home province!) but... that's cancelled now. (Don't misconstrue this, I love my grandma and am so sad about the state of her health.  I don't want to abandon her in her time of need, and same goes for my Dad (it's his mother).  I guess I'm just being selfish when I say "when will it be time for GOOD TIMES???" 

Seems like the last several years have just been full of shit.

But, the thing that's making me the MOST upset is that my parents signed me up for that presentation (about a Slovak writer who was deeply affected by the loss of his family through the Holocaust) that I've been complaining on twitter about for weeks.  They didn't even really ask me.  And it's going to take up most of my birthday weekend, and prevents me & D from being able to go anywhere. And it's such a depressing topic to make matters even worse.   Every play or poetry reading that my parents are involved in is always about death.  Talk about morbid!

My birthdays in the last 10 years have been full of tears, lonlieness & aggravation.  I was really hoping that for my dirty 30 things would be better. 

Doesn't look like it.

I'm still trying to hold out a bit of hope for a BFP but the bigger part of me is telling my hopeful part to not get too excited.

I'm just not a fairy tale ending kind of girl.

A quick update...

I've been so bad at blogging lately.
I'm sorry - I hope you haven't missed my nonsense too much! :P
I'm planning to make a big come back once our work season starts again (Spring)....

Some of the reasons I've been so busy are:

1. WE ARE TTC AGAIN!!!! WOOOOHHOOOOO! 
This month was our return to Clomid, and it went a lot smoother than Cycles 1-3 in 2009.   I think having the mental preparation of what would happen with the introduction of all these hormones was a HUGE help.   March 6th (my Dirty Thirty!) marks the end of this year's first two week wait, and I'm encouraged by all the 'good omens' that have happened on this cycle  (I ovulated on Canadian Family Day, and my birthday is the end of the 2ww)

2. My grandma is in hospital.  This requires a lot of co-ordinating meal times with my parents so that someone familiar is there at every meal.  It's been a struggle, but seeing her sit up to eat, and hearing that my dad and her went for a jaunt around the ward after 3 weeks of her being bed-ridden, makes me so happy.
She's going to be 88 this August and she is probably the strongest and most indestructable woman I know! She survived the Holocaust, breast cancer twice, had a tumour removed from her brain at 84, almost died due to complications from the anti-biotics, and now she's pulling through again!  I'm so proud of her. 

3. Trying to get life on track is time consuming!
Doing yoga has been taking a lot of my (used to be) internet-surfing/tv watching/ tweeting time... though in the last week I sort of fell of the bandwagon (progesterone suppository side effects are NO FUN!) but before that I was doing well, daily practice. If you want to view some of the flow's I've been enjoying you can do so HERE.  I'd love to hear that my meager little attempt at getting in shape has inspired others - it give me such a motivation boost!
Eating better is more time consuming as well, what with the veggie chopping, fish seasoning and rice boiling.  It's been an uphill battle with my junk food addiction, and I'm definitely not there yet, but I'm seeing improvements with the little changes that I'm making & that's really encouraging. 

Another other than that... I'm just waiting for work to start up again (it makes such a huge difference, not only financially but also spiritually, when my days have more structure to them.)

This summer is going to be great- all these steps that D & I are taking towards improving our lives has me so excited! Stay tuned for more frequent blog posts about our progress, both in terms of TTC and also in terms of our new healthier life!

Happy New Year & All that jazz...

So I'm a bit late in wishing you all a Happy New Year - better late than never though, right?

I'm sorry I've been scarce.

I've been busy trying to change my life.

Most of you follow me on Twitter so you know that I've taken a plunge into the wonderful world of yoga, and have been going to a prenatal class at a studio on Tuesday nights, but also have been doing my own practice at home.

WHAT AN AMAZING DIFFERENCE SO FAR!
And it's only been 3 weeks.

The other major change I'm making is my diet.
Since beginning yoga again my body has been telling me to detox, but I have been having a really hard time meshing my more natural food desires with D's fast food fetish.  Last night we ate seperate meals, and I didn't hate it as much as I thought I would. Still have to do some work on this aspect of things though.

What spiked this sudden return to the blogosphere was my appointment at a Fibromyalgia and Cannibology specialist yesterday.  First of all, he claims that my biggest issue is a sleep disorder, and not fibro.  Weird right?   So now my GP is setting up a sleep study for me (which I'm totally nervous for 'cuz I hate sleeping away from home)...

He gave me homework too - in the form of reading and writing.  If anyone is interested in reading his books, I can give you his website address, just leave me a comment below.  I don't want to publicly advertise his name on my blog.  The homework is really interesting so far, and actually is in part the reason for my return to blogging. Last night I spent an hour after yoga filling in the first few pages of a workbook he gave me called "The Magic Pen; Creative Writing for Self Discovery".  I have to admit, I'm hooked, not only to this doctor's unique and more holistic method, but also to his  energy and encouragement that I CAN change my life.

Last but not least, I have to lose weight.  He claims this will be the easiest part, if I don't cheat.  He claims I can lose 100 lbs. in one year.  The diet he's proposing is a bit extreme so I may alter it slightly.  He says I should eat 2 small meals a day, one at 10:30, one at 4:30/5pm.  And only veggies, chicken, fish and a TINY bit of carbs.  And that's IT.  No fruit for a year.  No snacking in between meals - PERIOD.  I think I'll have to have some healthy snacks set up for throughout the day - I can't fathom going without some munchies for a whole day!

The cannibology part of his practice is fascinating to me (for obvious reasons, if you #knowyourNaVe!) He says I will qualify no problem for a medical MJ card, so that will be in the works soon as well.  Not going to go into too much depth here, for obvious reasons, but basically I'll just say - this is the beginning of the rest of my life!

And you will be around to witness it! I swear, I couldn't do it without my constant venting system, AKA Twitter. KUDOS to all my lovely tweeties. You all are my support system and saving grace! Love you!


*in case you are wondering, the picture above is me, about 5 years ago (pre-fibromyalgia), doing camel pose.  Just a bit of inspiration for anyone thinking that fat girls can't do yoga - I was thinner then but as you can see, still far from a twig.  Yoga is great for anyone!*

Empty Womb on a Wordless Wednesday

I had a rough night last night.
An unexpected pregnancy announcement on facebook had me reeling in emotion from 2:39am onwards. Instead of wallowing in a self-pitying post though, I'll make use of Wordless Wednesday and share some images that had me pissing my pants laughing yesterday.

And a couple of them are pretty applicable to my current state of the Infertility Blues.

I think I'm gonna make an appointment today to have my Cunt examined......

And I'll prolly take my trusty friend with me..... 

A girl who's T.T.C. can never get enough of her Sperman after all!

But we have to make sure first that there isn't a...

And maybe after my appointment we'll go here for some lunch....

Or maybe here...

 I feel like having...

\I wonder if I'd be more fertile if I had a...

And I know while I'm at the doctor I should make sure I don't have any fresh STD's... 

I HAVE to get one of these for my kids (if & when I have them that is!!)

And if I never do have any kids then the rest of my life will be a....

And I'll blow you all to hell with my....

And... JUST CUZ THEY ARE HILARIOUS...

um.... WHAAAAAT???!?!

 *phew* it's a good thing that I saw that last sign, 'cuz I really feel like dying right now... 

But since it's strictly forbidden I guess I'll continue on with my day. 

Hope I made ya piss your pants ....er.... giggle :p

Adopted

 I've been thinking about adoption a lot.

Maybe it's because I've been watching that show "16 and Pregnant" during my "breaks" from work. The show has got me doing a lot of thinking in of itself, and a lot of it has to do with the one girl who decided to give her baby girl up for adoption.

That young woman was my birth mother 29 and some odd years ago.
She had to debate, with my birth father, whether or not they felt that they could raise me.
They had to ponder on what kind of life they would give me if they kept me.
They weren't 16, but they were young, and they had their vision of their futures.  It did not involve parenting.

I have always known that I was adopted.
For as long as I can remember I knew the story by heart - how my mom had been pregnant with a baby boy and had an ectopic pregnancy resulting in an emergency hysterectomy.  I knew the story about the waiting, the agony of being 'examined' to see if they were 'worthy' enough of being parents.

It's horrible what they make people go through - every time I think of it I recall a tweetie who once tweeted (or blogged, and I'm quoting VERY loosely so if it's YOU then I'm sorry if I get it wrong!!) "All I need to do to get preggo is buy a 6 pack, start smoking crack, and have sex in the back seat of a car."  It sure seems like people far far FAAARR less worthy of being parents are given the gift of a child on an all too frequent basis.   But I am digressing.  This is for another post.

The fact that I have always known that I am adopted has made much of my life a series of questions. Up until recently, only CLOSED adoptions were permitted in Ontario.  This meant that I know nothing about my birth parents, where they came from, or how they lived. I've always wondered, who am I "supposed" to be?  I have always had these 'urges'.  I've always been drawn to a life far from the one I'm living, intrigued by different lifestyles (often ones which seem to make my parents cringe).  Where do these urges come from?
More recently, as I'm getting older I'm starting to also really want to know what I'll look like 5, 10, 15 years from now.  I have no way of knowing.

What little I do know sparks my curiosity even more.   When I read the disclosure from the Children's Aid Social Worker who was in charge of the adoption all those years ago, I get shivers down my spine reading the many similarities between myself and these two youngsters, my birth parents (I'm now about 8 years older than they were when they had me).

It is not easy to find people in Toronto, despite the fact that I now know the name of my birth mother and where she was born, and where she lived when I was born. 
Especially people who may not want to be found.  And I am scared to find out that she doesn't want to be found, so thus far I am just sitting on the information I have, holding it close, but not too close.

It seems like I do that with a lot of things - hold them close, but not too close.  My animals are an exception to that.  But with people I have a hard time (as you know if you follow my tweets.)  I wonder how much of that has to do with my adoption. I wonder how much of my inherent loneliness comes from my adoption.  I wonder if I cling to the wrong people sometimes because I still have unconscious (and sometimes conscious) feelings of abandonment.

Despite the fact that I have loving parents and family, I had plenty of everything growing up, I got a top notch education, and  I always had all the necessities I needed, I still wonder.

I don't want to come across here as being anti-adoption.  I am far from that.  I think that adoption is a wonderful way of making sure that children are loved and cared for, which in my option should be the #1 priority in our world. I just really feel that children need to know where they come from, and what their genetic story is.

Lets face it, there are just certain things that there is no escaping from, and genetic make up is one of those things.  I have never been able to answer the question "Is there any heart disease, cancer, diabetes (etc etc) in your family?" I would really like to be able to one day.

I would like to know my story - my WHOLE story, not just the details that my Mom remembers of after I was born, but all the details, of my heritage, my history.

I feel as if I live my life as a series of unanswered possibilities.
If I knew that my birth parents were doctors, for instance, would that have made me more motivated to stay in University and pursue a more demanding (and respectable) career? Was it the fact that I knew that my birth mother got pregnant at a young age that made me feel like I should be sexually mature and experience before my time? Did those feelings lead me down certain destructive paths I have taken in my life?

As I mentioned before, I've always felt a pull towards a lifestyle vastly different from the one I was raised in. Perhaps if I knew what kind of lifestyle my birth parents lived I would not feel so estranged .Maybe I'd relax, knowing that I'm not doing anything 'wrong' but just living differently than my Mom & Dad would have preferred. Maybe if I knew that my birth parents lead a similar life to mine I would not feel so guilty for having disobeyed my Mom & Dad.

Maybe I'd feel my destiny for a change.

So many questions, so many curiosities.  I'm not sure what I will do with them, but for now they remain floating in my head, waiting for the right moment to reveal itself.

I love my Mom & Dad, so that right moment may never actually arrive due to the pain that I feel it may cause them.  I'm not sure that they will ever understand my need to find out where I come from.  I don't blame them- they did an amazing job raising and taking care of me and it must feel a like abandonment to them when they think about my curiosity.

But all the same, that curiosity is growing daily.  Especially when I am faced with judgments from my family about how I live my life. And when I am faced with feeling alone, lonely, different.  I have never really felt comfortable being entirely 'myself' around my parents, or my extended family.  There has always been a filter to protect them from my cussing, my rage, my insecurities, my doubts, my wildness, my occasional vulgarity, my inner party girl.   I wonder whether or not that filter would be there if they were my birth parents. 

The notion of unconditional love also makes me ponder.  There have been countless ups and downs in the small unit of our family, and my Mom & Dad have professed unconditional love throughout them all.  But yet, despite their claims, I feel that I am somehow substandard, not achieving enough, not quite the package that they were hoping for 29+ years ago when they were awarded the greatest gift of their lives. 

I'm not sure what I had hoped to achieve by writing this post.  There isn't a definite point here.  I feel it's important to share the views of an adult adoptee (of a closed adoption).

So many wonderful ladies who I have met through my own battle with infertility have begun their adoption journey.  Some have been struggling through their journey for far too long already. I hope that I haven't stepped on any feelings with this post, and again I'll re-iterate that I am certainly NOT anti-adoption.  I just wanted to open up a discussion between us all because I have faith that every last one of you amazing women hoping to adopt will one day hold a baby in your arms.  And that baby may one day grow up to have the curiosities and questions that I have.  I feel it's important for those curiosities and questions to be explored together, and maybe this discussion can help prepare for that day.

My life on this blog has always been an open book to you all, I hope that my honesty and openness about this slightly touchy subject is not in any way hurtful or painful for any of you, my dear readers.  Please join in on my discussion of adoption, whether it be from the point of view of an adopted person, or an adoptive parent. 

The Shift - Week One

At long last I'm sitting down to take the time to write my "vegan post".

Only - it's not so vegan.

I tried to go gun-ho on the whole vegan thing after my doctor's appointment on Monday - only to discover that I have NOT THE FIRST CLUE about how to eat vegan.  And thus I just kinda stopped eating - which was very very dumb of me, I know, I know.

Had a couple days of being a total and complete BITCH  (and feeling like a dirty and wet dishrag) and then decided that going vegetarian before going fully vegan was probably a smarter way to go. I thought that since I had quit smoking ciggarettes cold turkey I could do the same with food.  Turns out my junk food addiction is much more powerful! Who'd have thunk it.

I'm gonna digress for a minute to give you a better view of my (more recent) diet.
My mom was a big time cook so I grew up on home cooked foods.  But lots and lots of it.  I have always been a well-rounded girl!

In 2000 I decided to go veggie.  I did so (very successfully - I <3 vegetarian food!) for 3 years at which point I was forced to not be one anymore due to financial reasons (was barely eating at all - though I still managed to be kinda overweight because when I did eat it was cheap, easy, and usually from the food bank, thus not very nutritious)
Lived that way until 2005 when I moved into my "girl pad" and became veggie again for a year and a few months.  I was thin, I was happy, I was healthy, I was fit... it was great. 
Then me and D moved in together, November of 2006, and out the door went my blissful vegetable, fruit & fish market diet.  For the last four years up until last Monday I have been a total junk-food-aholic.   Not a care in the world.  Well, not entirely.  I always had that voice in the back of my head telling me to STOP NOW... but I ignored it... and now? I am suffering GREATLY from it.

If I'm going to be totally honest I believe that my fibromyalgia and endometriosis are both bi-products of the junk life I have been leading. 

But it ends NOW.
And I'm going to stop beating my head with a stick every time I give in and have some yogurt.  Or cream cheese. I am realizing that baby steps are the ONLY way that this is going to happen.   
And if we are going to eat out, we will eat at Subway or at a decent restaurant where I can get a nice salad or "health-wise" meal.
NO MORE MCDONALDS!
NO MORE WENDY'S!
NO MORE BINGING ON JUNK FROM THE DOLLAR STORE.
and... this one is HARD but...
NO MORE $0.99 ARIZONA GREEN TEA in a CAN.

I'm using these books to help me along:

I don't have these ones yet, but I'm hoping to get em in the coming weeks:























I'll keep you all posted on how things are going, and if you have ANY tips they are ALWAYS greatly appreciated!  I'm kinda obsessive really... with the checking of the comments.... :P

BAHHHHH!!!

I don't know what's wrong with me.
I was so calm,
so level headed, so EFFECTIVE last night.
I started a conversation with D in the car that I've been meaning to have for MONTHS. 

And I did it well. I did myself proud. 
All the way through the evening. 

And I had some difficult things to say.  Namely:

1. His tone of voice is a total kill joy.  I get cranky just hearing that tone sometimes. It really sucks because it puts my mood instantly into pissy-ville and then things just escalate from there.

And at times it can be a total turn off.  The second part of that was the hardest to say because it involves our sex life, and it's really really really difficult for me to be completely honest with him about that aspect of our relationship. He's very sensitive and I struggle with how to talk to him about some of the issues I'm having. This feels so taboo even to write in my blog. But I vowed that when I started writing this I would be open, honest and totally exposed.  I've struggled with this notion in the last little while and am amending it slightly because of some tweets I've seen lately.  Am starting to feel a bit insecure about how open I am, but I don't want to lose that part of my blog so I'm making an effort here.  A big one.  But baby steps.... more about this in another post.

and...

2. He is a horrible boss. Let me explain.
I am so afraid of the spring in a sense.  I know my tweets often express a desperate need for spring to return and work to start again.  I was really looking forward to this spring in particular though because we were planning on having me not work for him anymore.  But those plans are quickly unraveling before my eyes, so now I'm kind of afraid of spring because he's such a bad boss. He's rude, ignorant, places blame without hearing both sides, and he's completely ungrateful. I've had some bad bosses, but at least I didn't have to sleep with them!!! We've been driving each other crazy this winter being together 24/7 but if I have to work for him again this spring I don't know if we'll survive the season and still love each other.  This scares the shit out of me because as you saw in my Utopia Rules post from last night, we really have a vision together for our future. I don't know what I'd do without that plan.


But despite how difficult and touchy the subjects were, I did well, WE did well... went off without a hitch (and actually resulted in a little bit of BD, which has been really sporadic and infrequent lately! Ya ya!) 

And then... this morning.   I seriously don't know what's wrong with me, I'm up and down all over the place lately.  All he did was say he had a head ache.  I was about to wake and vape cuz my fibro is still bitching and he said he couldn't (well, he was kinda nasty about it I guess, in retrospect...but still, didn't warrant my reaction and my cold shoulder which he fully told me really really bothered him last night) and now he's at his mom's house and I'm feeling shitty cuz I really just want things to be good.

I'm a cranky, always-sick bitchy wifey and I'm pretty tired of it.  The only places my positivity and kindness seems to shine through is online and sometimes sometimes with our friends, or my family. Never with him anymore.

OK. Pity party over.... when he comes home I'm going to make a real effort to be sweet and see what happens.

Input is always welcome (especially on my touchy topics like this).  I believe that our community of women is a powerful source of support and it makes me feel not so alone, as I've said so many times in the past.

Quick Rant...

My Twitter followers already know I had a rough morning today.

I am now in bed encased in duvets and as many heat bags as I can stand trying to recover from it.  I'll recap it briefly for those of you who are curious...

I've been in a bad fibro flare since Sunday, and so even though I normally take the subway when I have to go downtown for doctor's appointments, this time D was supposed to drive me.  This was the appointment for the doctor that my Fertility Doctor reffered me to back in November, for some emotional/mental health support for women who just found out about their infertility and were having trouble coping.
I had a really bad case of depression at the time, brought on by the Clomid I think.

But anyways, this morning I kinda had a bad feeling about it 'cuz the appointment was 'early' (9am, so we had to get up at 7am to be there on time with traffic, parking and what not).   Generally speaking when I need to be somewhere early and D has to drive me there is always some attitude and negativity when we're leaving the house.  (Not something I really like to talk openly about because it makes me question stuff that I'm not ready to question.... maybe in a future post. I don't know. )

This morning was no different.  But I had a shorter fuse than usual because of the intense pain in my back and legs, so instead of putting up with his loudness and ignorance I left alone.  The last straw was when he tried to tell me to CANCEL an appointment that I have been waiting for since November, just because he didn't want to get up and thought I was too sore to go on my own on the subway.

Well, I showed him!

And kinda showed myself too. Cuz I even though I fainted on the subway half way there,  and got to the appointment 1/2 hour late I did it, I didn't give up when he discouraged me, and the appointment went well.

*sidenote* the people in Toronto really really suck! (excluding the wonderful one's I've met on Twitter who may or may not be reading this post)... but, yeah, the people in Toronto are ASSHOLES!  I was at a busy subway station (Yonge & Eglinton) when I fainted, and sat on the floor crying for 20 minutes after I came too ( I wasn't out long)  and NOT ONE PERSON INCLUDING THE 2 TTC (Toronto Transit Commision) WORKERS CAME TO SEE IF I WAS OK OR NEEDED HELP GETTING UP.  Not one person. *

Ahem. Back to the point. 

The doctor seems AWESOME, very understanding,  and I'm really looking forward to the next appointment on March 5th.   I scheduled that one for the afternoon so that in case I'm not well enough to take the subway it won't be so dramatic to get D to drive me.

It really sucks that he acts this way, but ultimately I think this new therapy and the new doctor will be able to help me deal with not only my infertility issues, but also some of these kinds of problems that D and I have in our relationship. 


Please comment - hearing from you makes me happy!

FINALLY! Some forward movement!

The calls came in!
At long last!
I have a plan!




Sorry for the exclamations but I'm so excited. This could mean a lot of new things for me (and D... us!)  As many of you know I was less than pleased with the way things were going at my fertility clinic.  I felt like a piece of meat - handled indelicately and poked and prodded at will. I barely saw my doctor, other than when she did my laproscopy, the results of which were discussed with me only moments after waking up and then never again. Not to mention the distinct impression that I was being treated as if I was a hypochondriac with every question I asked.

BUT, I'm not going to delve too far into complaining about her though because I'm hoping that today's news means I don't have to go back there ever again.

 The first appointment that I was expected was actually a referral made by above mentioned fertility doctor.  I have been waiting since November for it.  I was pretty much in crisis mode when the referal was made, and now I'm not really in that place anymore, which is making me a bit nervous for the appointment.  It's for counseling services for infertiles provided by a Woman Centered Hospital. Sounds great right? I'm hoping it will pan out to be great.  I'm not in crisis anymore but as it was very Clomid related I'm hoping that if I put a safety net into action now  then I won't have to find myself in that dark hole again. ( I went into a deep dark depression, remnants of which are still visible in my earlier blogs) That appointment is on February 24th at 9am.

The second appointment was the referral that the gyno that I saw a couple of weeks ago.  I am VERY excited for this one! It is a doctor who specializes in Endometriosis and PCOS and he has scheduled off 50 min for me!  I don't think I have spoken with my fertility doctor for 50 min. in TOTAL counting all the times I have been to that clinic! So I am pretty stoked for that one - hoping to get some answers finally! Let's get the ball rolling! That appointment is on March 15th at 10am.

So I'm excited! It's going to be good! Things will get going again, and I can have my baby-focus back :D



Please comment - hearing from you makes me happy!

Who am I?

Things are pretty much back to normal now (thank goodness) so now I can get to some of the posts I have been scheming up in my head but was too scatter-brained to actually write down

Ok - so,  cliques.  Totally  high school right?   So how come, even though I am almost 30 years old, and starting to worry I may not be able to identify with my teenage children, when I finally have them... how come am I still dealing with it all now?!?!?!   I was always hoping that it would pass, as adolescence did, as did early university years, my early 20's and... my more innocent days.   But here it is - constantly and consistantly staring me in the face.

Mainly from out of  facebook's html frames.

I have expressed, in numerous tweets, how I will NEVER go on facebook, ever again. Even D reminded me about 15 min ago (as I hastily checked a fb email from a friend I knew back in elementary school, who tagged me in a pic of me when I was about 9 yrs old.  GREAT.) that I swore - NEVER AGAIN!  One too many pregnancy announcements, storybook weddings, fairytale vacations, and ab-so-fucking-lutely one to many of "those girls" on my list.   (for those twitter amigas and amigos who wanted to exchange facebook's with me - there you have it... the reason why I won't).

I went to a highly prestigious, very  competititve, all girls private school.  I started there in gr. 7 and did 5 years (fast-tracked and did 6 years in 5, which pretty much drove me to insanity!) And, as a result of being in  this environment during some of the more formative years of my life, my facebook is now filled with high acheiving, mostly quite wealthy, women - who all started IN EXACTLY THE SAME PLACE THAT I DID worked hard to get where they are.

Ok- so let me step back a moment and say - I really do believe that all my high school girlfriends worked extremely hard to get where they got.  And despite the fact that I have my moments of insane jealousy (which helps the muse fusing this particular post), I know that I too, if I had made different choices (some of them haven't really felt like choices) and basically, if I had led a different post-high school life, I too could have been in their shoes.  Or at least closer.  Some had a lot more advantages than I did - my parents had to work really hard to put me through that type of school - and they never let me forget it, nor did I have things handed to me.

But I worked god damn hard too. I had horrid jobs, I started from scratch, without help from my parents, or anyone really... and even when I was at my lowest points mentally&emotionally  I still supported myself and was never homeless or starving. Or into hard drugs.   It's not fair that  some of the choices I made due to my (now past) mental illness are now coming back to bite me in the ass every time I "login"....

I want to be able to travel to different destinations around the world every year (or every few months!)
(I have travelled quite a bit in my life, but not at all in the last 10 years)
I want to have beautiful pictures of family and friends dressed up to celebrate my wedding.
(I am really learning the "art and skill" involved in being a wife - which is why I call D my DH... but we are still just common-law husband & wife)
I want to have proud new mommy pictures and turn my fb page into an online shrine for my child (with the odd pic of me in the mix at some point)
(well.... we all know the lovely long infertiliy story that goes behind this one)

and so... longer story made shorter.... I am still not in the right "clique".
I'm not a mom.
I'm not a carefree spirit roaming the earth trying to find myself, or at the very least, make things better.
I'm not even techically a wife.

So who am I?

I'm not sure... but the woman whom I find when I finally figure that out, I'm sure that she'll be stronger for having asked these types of questions.
And I do try to help the earth in what measly ways I can - I recycle, when I do work as a decorator I try to use only eco-friendly products/manufacturers, I used to ride my bike everywhere (pre fibromyalgia & endometriosis)...and I plan to use cloth diapers when my TTC dream is finally realized...
So I'm not that bad, from what I do already know :p

Final thought?   Even in our darkest hours, there is a lesson learned.  No regret, no looking back, move forward and things will enivitably be as they should be*.

*a lesson I learned (but am still trying to LIVE) when I was in dialectical behavior therapy.   I used it as a mantra for a while.   It helped me.

The Calm after the storm...

Please pardon me if I'm depressing today.  The last few days have been excruciatingly difficult.  
If you are following me on Twitter you know that I had a relationship meltdown on Thursday night, and D left the house for a while.  Things are a bit better now but I'm still recovering.
Between the arguing, the quitting smoking (both of us @ the same time, and cold turkey), and with time off of infertility treatments (the only thing stable and positive that I was focused on before..... 
I feel like too many things in my life are just too negative.   

My uncle's situation in palliative care is going from bad to worse, and as bad as this sounds, there is no relief in sight for him or for us.   I miss having a normal family life - we haven't had any good times since last spring.

My health is going from bad to worse - probably because I'm so depressed and barely ever want to leave the house. 

If it wasn't for Twitter right now I would be totally and completely isolated.
Sounds so pathetic when I type it out.

I stopped talking to the only close girlfriend I had about 2 months ago because she was completely incapable of comforting me, but expected me to consistantly come to her rescue.  I am too tired to rescue someone else, and too tired to entertain someone who calls, leaves a voicemail saying she wants to "catch up" and then says absolutely NOTHING when I call to chat.  If I wanted to hear myself speak I would talk to my cats. 
I'm actually pretty relieved that I am not speaking with her.  My frusteration levels would go through the roof every time I called her in the last little while.

I can't understand people who WANT to be depressed.  I spend every day that I am depressed trying NOT to be - and trying to plan activities (even though at the moment they are mostly  within my home) to keep busy and not stay sitting like a lump on the couch.(I'm all for marathon couching, sometimes, but you can't do that all the time all day long!)   She did not do the same, nor did she encourage or try to participate in any of the stuff that I was trying to plan.  She just wanted to sit on her porch smoking cigarettes all day long - and even when I told her I was quitting, she could not respect that fact and would still constantly bring up smoking when we talked. And if I were to come over, she still wanted to sit on the porch smoking cigarettes all day.   Same thing happens with emotional cutting.  I haven't done it in years, but she constantly still does it.  I asked her to please not talk to me about it, she has a great therapist and I feel that those things are better discussed there - especially since I told her that I  felt quite triggered and had to work very hard not to fall back into old habits when she would describe her cutting to me.  The same thing would happen if she decided to overdose on her medications.  I have had issues with that in the past as well, and am doing my best to stay away from that kind of harmful behavior.  Sure there are nights when I wish I could just down 5 sleeping pills and knock out for the whole night (normally I sleep maybe 1-2 hours and then wake up).   I don't need that kind of temptation. Or lack of support. 

Despite the fact that I am relieved to be rid of that particular frusteration, I am still missing female contact.  I think that if I had more girlfriends I wouldn't feel so desperately sad about some of the things I'm lacking in my romantic life.  Plus I'd probably have a more realistic view on what a romantic relatiionship is really like, 'cuz right now I compare our life to that which I see in the movies... and, lets face it, that's probably enough to make anyone depressed.  

I'm not giving up on my happiness though.  I don't know what it's going to take to get there - but I'll figure it out eventually. 

My Newest Distraction

I've been kind of out of circulation on Twitter today and yesterday because, in addition to my severe Dexter addiction, I have also re-started an old project that I began when I first quit smoking about 7-8 weeks ago. (so kicking myself in the pants for not noting that exact date now! I really didn't think that it would stick... ) I knew right off that I would need to find something to do with my hands (keep your mind outta the gutter, people!) so I started knitting a baby blanket. 

Now, since I am on a Clomid break, and not in the full swing of TTCing, because of various reasons (money, identity crisis, to name a couple) I thought I had to change the direction of said blanket. Because it's just depressing me, and remind me of the unsurities that I  am dealing with. 

I have however already purchased a great array of wool, suited to a baby (boy or girl colours) and have already thought up the scheme for it.

So, while I am not twittering, I am making a blanket that is, or is not, for my future baby. And if it has to sit, along with my secret IKEA baby blanket, stashed away in the back corner of my linen closet, so be it.  At least I'll be ready - and it kind of makes me feel pro-active again.   Like, ok, so we're broke, and I can't be on Clomid, or do the trigger shots, or the progesterone after... but I CAN eat better, continue to not smoke(which the knitting TOTALLY helps with by the way), try to excersize ( which I have yet to manage to do- by the time I walk up the big hill out side our building after a dog walk, I'm officially K.O)... and, I CAN make my spirit baby a blanket. 

Pictures to come :)

Today WILL be a G-DAMN good day. Dammit.

So, even though I was up at an ungodly hour this morning... I have decided.
Today IS going to be a GREAT day!
Despite the fact that I forgot about the run in that my laptop had with my un-lidded Subway 7-up and turned it on this morning ( but it turned on! YAY!) ....
Despite the fact that after I turned it on, and went to make tea (at the ungodly hour) I stepped with faith into the pitch dark kitchen, knowing that D vacuumed & cleaned up yesterday and... SPLASH! The sink overflowed and flooded the kitchen & dining room. 
Despite the fact that my 'c' button has fallen off my keyboard and I now have to type this blog with my desktop's keyboard balanced on top of my laptops sickly one... and I just searched desperately for the mouse pad on the desktop keyboard... for like 5 min... before * aha!* I have to lift it OFF the actual laptop first!
Despite the fact that when I shifted around to get comfy just now my laptop ( which can not survive even a moment without it's lifeline) came unplugged.  Thank god for Blogger Autosave.  
Despite the fact that I have to see my parents later... this is not really a bad thing, just, considering the circumstances right now in our family, it may prove to be rather depressing... but it's my Daddy's 62nd birthday so I gotta try and make him smile.  At least for a bit.  But more on that stuff another time.
Today will be a good day. A great one even. 
I was quite an insomniac last night and I realized a few things. Namely;
1. I have gained 60 lbs in 3.5 years!
2. I am completely out of shape wheras 4 years ago I could bike from Birchmount & Finch to the Beaches (for you non Torontontians... that's pretty damn far - hold on I'll check the mileage on Google Maps....10 miles... or 16.7 km... and I was still able to walk the next day (sitting was a different story. Oh, the bruising!)
3. I have now quit smoking cigs. This fact ALONE means a lot.  I was in a serious love affair with my DuMauriers.  But I left 'em in the dust.   So if I can do that, I can go back to looking, acting and feeling how I did 4 years ago.  EVEN WITH Fibromyalgia... right?
Right.
I've been carrying the financial assistance forms for the YMCA in my purse for over a week.  Need to go do it, but we're pretty tight at the moment so Wii Fit will have to do for now (for a couple weeks, 'till some of our outstanding cheques start comin' through the mail slot!!! DAMN DELIQUENTS!)

And, I went to Chapters and bought books on a fertility diet, so before I go for groceries I am gonna actually look through that book and make a list so that I'm not wandering aimlessly looking for pregnant women in the store so I can buy what they are eating.... 

So today will be a great day.  Even though when I read this blog to D just now (hoping for some kind of positive reaction)... well.... lets just not even go there. Smile, nod & DO MY THANG. (sorry... in the process of finding a new mantra)

I can see the light!

It's there.  The glimmer of excitment, the spark of motivation, the beginning of my next positive wave.  I'm starting to see it in the distance.  

In retrospect - could this past episode of extended darkness have been off-clomid (therefore disguised in a cloak of soul shattering doubt) PMS?  I can be  moody but it doesn't generally linger on and on for days at a time....

Who knows.  Who gives a fuck.  I'm just glad that I can see the end now.

To my followers who stayed through (and read about ) my dark & depressing few days - THANKS!   I appreciate the support more than you know.

Ok - so on to more interesting things.

Today I did an impulsive but albeit very profitable and mood-lifting thing.
D and I went to the Peanut Plaza to get some stuff from the dollar store (mainly an old school corded phone which will work better with our Magic Jack than a cordless. *sidenote, if you don't have a MagicJack and you call people long distance.... GET ONE!  $20.00 a year.   Unlimited.  Need I say more!...)....

But I digress...

Beside the dollar store is this hole-in-the-wall herbal tea/supplement store.  I've never gone inside before - much preferring the brightly lit isles of the local GNC Stores, or even my Shopper Drugmart has a pretty good selection nowadays... but today, I went in. 

The man in there was so helpful, knew exactly what I wanted/needed before I had even finished saying "infertility, endometriosis, fibromyalgia".  And I got some stuff for D too- maybe his horrid eating habits can be slightly improved if I force vitamins down his throat.    In the end I wound up only spending $60.00 and I got prenatal vitamins for me, multi vitamins for D and L-Arginine for D as well.   And he also had 2 chinese herbal vitamins I had been looking for - Ho Shou Wu Tablets and Angelica Compound Tablets.  Fantastic!  I was so ecsctatic I can't even explain it in words.  Like, jump up and down in front of the shy, quiet store man ecstatic. 

We are seasonal workers, meaning we don't operate full time in the winter, and we pretty much put ourselves in the poor house at the fertility clinic.  A one month cycle of Clomid, trigger shot & progesterone, not including the reccomended vitamins for D cost over $500 at the clinic! Not included the reccomended IUI's (which we haven't been able to afford to do yet. Hoping to in the spring)  The worst thing was that those treatments didn't even have any hope of improving the reasons behind our infertility problems.  And the fact that I am in a ridiculous amount of pain and can't work, or function, makes me kinda sorta wanna know... WHY THE FUCK IS THIS HAPPENING!?!  The whole reason I went to the clinic in the first place was the pain & obvious issues with my menstral cycle.  And my fertility doctor just is not interested solving those issues.   She just wants me preggo.  And don't get me wrong, I want that too, but I have issues (physical and emotional) that needed resolving first.   She was initially supposed to have been operating on me to just to see if I had endometriosis, and the next thing I knew I was on Clomid & in the middle of a battle with time for my future child. 

This more hollistic approach to gaining back my fertility just may be the key to my worries.   It gives me time to resolve some of the issues within my relationship with D so that episodes of doubt  like the last one don't have to happen.

If anyone has ever taken any of the Chinese Herbal Medicine tablets I mentioned  before, I'd REALLY love to hear from you! Positive or negative experiences.   I am trying these things because we can't afford to do medical treatment at the moment.   I have no clue if they work but I'm more than willing to try.  I've been trying my best to stay "herbal" for the last several years.  I would be so blissfully happy if I managed to get preggo via Chinese Herbal Medicine vs. more invasive Western Medical techniques.  

I leave you now to work on a new blog I am starting - going to leave you with a bit of mystery, but I promise, I will reveal all soon! 

Oh! And leave some comments, will ya?  I tore my hair out this afternoon fixing my layout, and I certainly hope that it fixed any comment posting issues.    :) 

Rocky Road... and not the tasty kind.

I've been feeling really funny lately.
Like something is missing; I've forgotten an important birthday, missed an appointment, forgotten to renew my drivers license... something is askew.

Today I figured out what it is. 

I am missing the drive & motivation that came with our actively trying to conceive.

I don't  mean to say that we aren't "trying" right now (still doing our 'baby dance' on a regular, sperm motivating & inducing rate), but I am on a clomid break.   Those of you who follow me on Twitter know that this break has not been an easy one so far.   I haven't seen a substantial difference in  my crazy night sweats, extreme fatigue, depression and most importantly the good ol' clomid rage.  

To be honest, I am not 100% sure that my freak outs are clomid rage related.  Winter is always a hard time for me, especially in the last couple of years.  My guy and I run a home-maintenance business from home so winter time means that he is home with me all day.  Every day.  Don't get me wrong, I love him to pieces, but 24/7 exposure can be too much even in the best of circumstances.  And we also just quit smoking. Together.

So now I'm faced with this question:  Am I getting mad at him for reasons that are justified? 
Or am I just raging?

Normally I try to not overanalyze these kinds of  things to the extreme.  Of course I do a little, but I try to not drive myself insane about the source of my emotions.   But in this case I'm really perplexed.   If I am indeed justified in my anger, that puts a whole series of doubts & questions into my head that I just really try not to think about most of the time.  In particular: "should I be trying so hard to have a baby with a man that I get so frusterated with?" 

And to add into my mix of confusion, I've been given a time limit on my fertility that I was really really not expecting.  Is that a good enough reason?  I'm meant to be a mother, and have known that pretty much since I got my first period.  Is that a good enough reason? Do I want to have a baby with the thought that that baby may wind up growing up in a split up home in the back of my head? I know I could be a single mom, and a great one, but do I want to do that "knowingly"?  

I know that ups and downs in relationships are normal, so I often pasify myself with this knowledge. 
But that knowledge is not doing much for me in the last week or so.  I find myself daily questioning where I am, why I'm here and if I should be making a change or not.  

I almost wish that I was on the clomid so that I could explain away all these questions and blame it on being hormonal...

And right now I'm actually grateful for one of the complaints that I've had about hubby lately - the fact that he doesn't read this blog made it much easier to be totally open & honest!

A little more detail...

I've been meaning to do a "who am I" series of posts since I started this thing... but it seems life's little ups & downs keep dragging me from my plans. 
Tonight is the night tho.  At least for part of my story... Here I go. 

I'll start back in 1999.  I graduated from high school a year early (in Ontario we used to have 13 grades, I "fast-tracked" to get out early).   I hadn't planned on doing this throughout the course of my high school education, but a summer trip to Oxford, England made me realize that I really needed to get out on my own. ASAP.   So as soon as I returned to Toronto I high-tailed it to my high school and changed around my whole schedule so that I could finish a year ahead.  

As brilliant as that plan had been (to get out of my parents' stifling home), I pretty much lost my mind that final year of high school.   Too much stress I suppose - my school was a high-pressure, fancy-shmancy all girls private school, and I was taking a more than full course load, all while doing an insane amount of extra-curriculars.   I officially burnt out in March 1999, started cutting, and wound up in the psych ward at the hospital.



Before that, I had always felt that there was 'something' in me that kept me from acheiving happiness.  I was always melancholy, a bit dark, introspective (though not shy) and had brief bouts of depression/eating problems from the age of 13+.  They came to a peak in 1999 and I started my journey into the world of psychiatric medicine.  


I'm not going to bore you with all the details, but basically I have been on almost every anti-depressant there is, have had 4 different diagnosis', and in the end... I really don't think there was a need for any of it. In fact, I think some of my problems have stemmed from being put on the wrong medications at too young an age. More about that in another post... 



Those trials & tribulations lasted from 1999 to about 2004.  During that span of time I went through 2 extremely abusive relationships, was kicked out of my parents' home (after having to come back from residence life at University due to mental health issues), and basically did a whole shit load of stuff that I either can't remember or am totally ashamed of.(I may write more candidly about this part of my life in a later post as well, theraputic reasons mostly, I think it would be good to finally owe up to some stuff and just move on)



But for now... Lets skip to the part where things start getting better. 


I wound up living in Government Housing (ok, so that's not the getting better part, but it's coming I promise!) in a really crappy & dangerous neighbourhood with a really abusive guy.  That was not a good time in my life, but I have to mention it in the "getting better" chapter because that's where I met & fell for my hubby.   We were roomies while I was with "the looseball" (that's what we both call him now)  and we became close friends really quick due to our common love of all things animal.  We also had so many other things in common, and he made me laugh, and laughter was so foreign to me at the time.  I had pretty much been living through 5 years of total hell up until then.  


Being friends with him gave me the confidence to move out of that hell hole, and in 2005 I got my first real apartment, and my first real home as an independant person.  


I lived in my pretty pink & white girly space for a year before I decided that I just HAD to tell future-hubby what my feelings were.... 


And luckily he reciprocated!

After that it was a pretty quick turn-around from my one and only year as a single woman, to being in a wifey roll.  He moved in, bringing his various reptiles, giant fish tanks  and 2 big dogs with him ( much to the dismay of my only kitty at the time, Sessie, who lived in my walk in closet for a month before re-staking her territory from the dogs).  Did I mention I had been living in a bachelor apartment??   It was... cozy!


After about 4 months of tripping over fish tanks & animals we realized we really really needed to get a bigger place and so we moved away from my beautiful apartment (which was in a GREAT part of town) and got the 2 bedroom apartment we live in now, which is in a part of town I really don't like.  Now it's just about saving that dough so we can get a house. 


Things are pretty calm now in my life,  other than the medical aspect of things (infertility, fibromyalgia, endometriosis) And for that I am grateful.  It gives me time to think about the things that I want to improve, instead of just being in emotional crisis mode all the time.  

I am getting better at facing my past - hopefully blogging about it will help to make it truly my PAST, and not just baggage that I carry around in the present.  
'till next time!