Three Patches In

And I've already gained back two of the pounds I sailed off this summer. And I nearly started crying in the book marketing meeting when the marketing director said she really, really wanted me to start an email newsletter.

I didn't, thank God. But you know. Among other things, I really really really don't want to start a fucking email newsletter. Because what am I going to be thinking about, primarily, in the coming months? IVF, that's what.

It's easy, they said, you just have like a picture, and maybe a track you're listening to, and what you're reading.

I immediately picture a photo of used needles, the same track I've been listening to all summer, and an article about protocols for DOR.

Fucking bullshit nonsense waste of time.

My period is due in six days. So in theory, one week from today I go in for Day 2 monitoring, and I probably start my shots that night. Today the huge pack of meds arrived. No syringes, strangely, but fortunately it doesn't matter because I still have so many of them that it's crossed my mind to find some kind of heroin needle exchange to donate them to.

Anyway. I'll try to buck up. Soon, the bucking up must occur. I must get with the program, as my father always used to say to me when I was sulking about something that I was expected to do.

Get with the program, Cartooniste. Stop all this mucking around. Make your fucking newsletter, take your fucking shots, and shut up.

How Do I Feel About It

I'm in a piss poor mood. Is it the rain? The change of season? The pressing need to put boats away and ship the oars and put on socks and go back to work, and in this case, back to the work of trying to have a baby that I will never have?

I was feeling confident before, but now, even before I start the most preliminary of all possible steps, I feel not just hopeless, but annoyed that I am wasting so much of my own limited time. There is so much else I could be doing. I could get a job. Not my current job, but like a real one. I don't know. Or I could do better at my current job, crank out book after book after book instead of dilettanting around daydreaming and waiting for a good idea. Any good idea. Who said all ideas had to be good? Who even knows from good anymore?

In a way, I feel like the process is already over. Am I just going back and retracing my same steps, hoping for a different outcome? Do I even hope for a different outcome anymore? Having a kid is an awful lot of work, much of it very boring. I already haven't had a kid. It has already happened. I'm railing against a thing that lies in the past. What a pointless enterprise that is.

Why not let the past stay the past?

Why am I doing this?

Am I doing this?

What would it be like if I just..... didn't do it?

Mania

So you know that thing where you have sex with your husband and it's sort of chafey but okay, and then it's still sort of warm and irritated for two days afterwards and you start worrying that you have secretly been a carrier for chlamydia for twenty years and it's just now flaring up because of stress and your husband will leave you in a rage and your life will be over so in a fit of neurosis you go to the urgent care place to get checked out and when the warm and friendly nurse practitioner asks what else has been going on and you tell her you're about to head into your fourth round of IVF and it's awful and a complete living nightmare and she says oh I know my sister did it, it was terrible, and gives you Kleenex and assures you it's totally okay to bawl all over her in her office?

That's where I'm at today.

Getting ready

I have picked up the prescription for the estrogen patches to start priming, and this morning I took my first ovulation kit pee test. When I get the smiley face, I call the office, and they tell me when to start patching.

It's coming. It's coming very soon.

IVF attempt #4.

I felt confident about it at first. Today, I have my doubts. That this cannot be good for me, or my mind, or my body.

In my regular work cafe, and a cute slender pregnant woman has sat in my direct line of sight, which I shouldn't find depressing, as it has nothing whatsoever to do with me. There's construction outside the door of the cafe, and the noise is deafening. Perhaps literally, like I might need to be wearing ear protection, but I'm not. I'm listening to cafe chatter and the Talking Heads.

Once in a Lifetime.

That's all it takes.