the year in review

2008 can eat a dick. It was seriously a crap year, as far as I'm concerned. A deployment, a miscarriage, exploding eyeballs, and chronic illness. Hot damn! Here's the year in review, hashed out one last time for posterity's sake:

For starters, in January... goddamn, what did happen in January? That was kind of a dead month, really. I started this blog, and that was about it.

In February, I got glasses. I could see the tv again! I could drive without endangering humanity! Life was good! Then Sid was sent on deployment and it kind of killed my buzz.

March was kind of a dead month again. I warred with myself for that whole month over whether or not I should consult a doctor over the wonkiness that had plagued me for years. Sid wasn't around to talk me out of it, and I made the call. Which leads us to...

April! I found out I have hypothyroidism, and this whole month was spent adjusting to Life With A Chronic Illness. My beloved veggie burgers could no longer be a staple of my diet. Vitamins were no longer something to be taken whenever I remembered, but in the morning or not at all. Coffee was suddenly something I couldn't have whenever I wanted. My daily levothyroxine was not something that I could just forget about: it had to be taken regularly. That was a hard thing to get used to. But I hardly did any bitching about any of it: I felt better, and I was so grateful.

In May, I was still waking up from a hypothyroid haze: suddenly I was no longer foggy and tired, and what the fuck, THIS IS HOW NORMAL PEOPLE FEEL?! I spent most of May marveling at that.

June. Boring. Nothing to mention.

In July, Sid returned from deployment and we spent a few weeks getting used to sharing living space (and a bed) again. That adjustment is always rough, I don't care who you are. I thought I handled it like a fucking saint, but maybe I'm just biased. We decided to try to have a baby, and for once in my life, things felt like they'd all be okay.

August. The day Hurricane Hannah hit the coast, I got a positive pregnancy test. A very clear, but faint, positive sign on my piss test.

September. Miss P comes to town and takes no prisoners: it is the worst I have ever had, the most painful and unbearable period I could have imagined. I realize it was a chemical pregnancy, an early miscarriage.

In October, Sid bought a new television. I spent a lot of time being emo. My mother says that my youngest sister might have an eating disorder.

November was the month of the conehead. Our siamese gets an ulcerated cornea and has her eye sewn shut for two weeks to keep it from exploding, which leads to her moping around with a plastic cone collar, looking miserable. I have to wipe her ass for her, which Sid seems to find hysterical.

In December, since we were having no luck making a devilspawn, Sid got paranoid and went to have a semen analysis, which revealed that his sperm are really kind of gimpy. This is the month we give up on devilspawn (for now), and when Knut finally ditches the collar and the pirate eye, it is a cause for celebration.

So here we are. A year of major fail. And minor win. Here's hoping 2009 is better for everyone.

the fail, it is catching

Apparently people think my bad luck at spawning is contagious. The minute my friends find out they're pregnant, suddenly it's like they don't want to talk to me anymore. I have been feeling uncomfortable with this for a while, but tried to blame it on some failure on my part. Maybe I was a bitter wench? Maybe I was being a stupid asshole? But I wasn't. Or at least, I don't think I was. I think a few times, I tried to steer our conversations away from their gestating sprogs and toward a topic everyone could partake of. Like, you know, something not about pregnancy? They seem to be having none of it.

So yeah, at first I thought it was my malfunction. But I'm beginning to suspect that it's not all me. Because they've been making comments that I think are in extremely bad taste: things like we're just so lucky it happened right away, and we didn't have to try for ages and I don't know what I would have done if we found out we couldn't conceive. Like they don't know the trouble Sid and I have had. They might as well just say Oh, that poor unfortunate bitch in the corner over there. What a sad sack of FAIL, and it would have the same effect.

I keep telling myself that I'm overreacting. And sometimes I can make myself believe it. But then it's a huge wake-up call when I realize that if our situations were reversed, I for damn sure would not be making comments like that around them. I FOR-FUCKING-SURE would not be bitching about my terrible pregnancy to a friend that I knew was having spawnage issues. It's rude, for one thing; and for another, it's just a downright douchebaggy thing to do. I never bitched to them about MY EPIC FAIL. I told them about it, but I didn't rag on and on about it, or make every conversation we had about THE FAILAGE. I have a life outside that bullshit - I know reading this blog, it seems like that's not true, but this is where I go to vent. My friends aren't verbal punching bags...this is.

Maybe I just need to stop having friends.

seven years

I am not okay today. I just want to start by saying that. This is not a good day for me, not at all, and I am not okay. Whatever I say here, I won't mean it tomorrow. Tomorrow I will regret everything. But not today.

When I was in the bath earlier, I kept imagining what would happen if I just put my head under the water and didn't come back up. Where the fuck did a thought like that come from?! It scared me, and now I'm sitting here crying because I don't know what the fuck my problem is, and I don't want to be around anyone right now, but I don't want to be alone.

I wish I could be somewhere else - I just typed "someone else" and I guess that applies as well. Where can I go to get away from everything? Where on this earth can I go where the demons from this day won't find me?

It's been seven years, and in so many ways, it's like it all happened yesterday. Merry fucking Christmas.

happy anniversary

For our anniversary, we found out that Sid's not quite up to snuff in the baby-making department. Yes, the results of his semen analysis are in, and some of his numbers are way off, His doctors are going to be doing more tests.

So yeah, happy anniversary to us... right?

I'm actually not really bothered by it, I just wish the timing had been a little better. When asked what we did for our third wedding anniversary, I will ever after be forced to reply, "we found out that we suck at making babies."

HAR.

stop the world, I want to get off

Another one of my friends is pregnant.

Seriously.

I couldn't make this shit up if I tried.

At this point, it's safe to assume that if you are a female of childbearing age who is even an oblique acquaintance of mine, you're going to find yourself knocked up. I think it would be best for everyone if I stopped having lady-friends, yes? Solve that problem in one fell swoop.

I would feel better if even one of my friends could just manage to avoid fecundity, but that seems unlikely in the extreme. And this whole situation might be kind of amusing to me, if only it could manage to be slightly less pathetic.

nothing

I must have started this post and abandoned it four times now. Things have been pretty boring around here - then again, things always are - and there hasn't been anything I've particularly needed and/or wanted to document.

One of my friends, someone who has been a fucking rock for me throughout my EPIC FAIL mess just told me she's pregnant. And I'm happy for her. That's kind of bland. I'm ecstatic; she's wanted this for a very long time, and I am so glad she has finally got it. Buuuuuuut... I can't help feeling a little down that I can't go through that with her.

That feeling will pass, it always does. But it always returns, as well.

The Christmas party I was dreading so much was kind of a bust. It was excruciatingly boring, and the drinks were horribly overpriced. I got semi-wasted and decided I should thank Sid's XO for sending him home from the boat in September. Even after the wicked buzz wore off, it sounded like the right thing to do. So I did it. Yes, I actually brought THAT up among company, of my own free will, without being totally wrecked.

At least I'm not a nasty drunk.

Knut's update

I forgot to mention it, because it was so anti-climactic.

Dr Proctor kept saying her stitches would start to come out over Thanksgiving weekend and that I'd either have to take them out myself or drive out to the clinic in Powellsville to have the vet there do it, because he was going to be out of town. I said I'd do it myself and spare Knut the forty minute drive. The conehead was given the heave-ho, and we agreed that I'd bring Knut back the Monday after Thanksgiving so that he could check her eye.

But the stitches never came out. They remained firmly in place until December 1st. So Dr Proctor took them out himself. And I could see right away that Knut's eye was healed: the big ugly scratch, the ulcerated divot, was gone. The official all-clear had to wait until contrast dye was put in and the site of the ulcer had been inspected under a magnifier. But in the end, the general opinion was that Knut is fine, and the surgery worked.

But Knut is still a pirate. I don't care what anyone else says.