I'm still alive, even if I feel dead on the inside!

Last time I posted I was so depressed... so angry with life. After a couple of days I started to feel better, but it seems like with every passing month the feeling of despair just gets worse.

My husband gets really disappointed when all I get is BFNs, but he doesn't have the same feeling of total and utter devastation that I get. I understand, it's different for men to some extent. He says the worst thing for him is seeing me so upset and not being able to make me feel any better. He suggested that maybe we should see an infertility counselor. I guess it's probably a good idea. I don't have too many awful days, but the bad days I do have can be pretty terrible. I think we'll be making an appointment soon. We also need to go and see a fertility specialist. There are a couple of additional tests I could have run, maybe one of those would shed more light on why we're not conceiving. Maybe not, too. At this point, I just wish someone could tell me if we're ever going to have a baby. If the answer was "no" then I could try to move on. As it stands, there's this cycle of hope and despair and I don't feel like we can give up yet because maybe something will happen soon. Sometimes I really do feel like just quitting TTC, but I know I can't do that yet.

I chatted with one of my best friends on Skype yesterday, and she's one of the few people IRL who I've told about this stuff. Well, she means well but she really doesn't get it. I know she can't possibly truly understand, because she's not at a point in her life where she's TTC. Some of the stuff she's come out with, though, is super frustrating. She told me that someone she knows couldn't get pregnant, and she went on vacation to a tropical island and came back pregnant. Then she told me that she knows someone who tried for 2 years before getting pregnant. OK, so I know we haven't been trying for that long, but when 12 months of TTC with no pregnancy is the definition of infertility, of course I'm frustrated after 14 months! I explained that we even know we've timed everything right every single time, so it's even more frustrating - it's not like we're missing our chance, you know?

She then said that "There are people much worse off!". Yes, thanks for that; like I don't know that?! I used to work in a hospital, with terminally ill patients. I get that things "could be worse". I know. It really doesn't make me feel any better about our situation, though. All I could say was "There's always someone worse off! Anytime anybody complains about anything, there's always someone in a worse position. If you were going through this, you'd understand how I feel". And honestly, I hope she never does have to go through this because it freaking sucks. I said, "For someone who's always wanted to have children, not being able to even get pregnant is a terrible thing". I told her that we have no idea if we'll ever have a baby, and she said "Don't say that, it makes me sad when you say things like that". Then she admitted that she knows I have to be realistic. I told her that all the positive thinking in the world isn't going to get me pregnant - and that it ends up making me feel worse, because it inevitably gets my hopes up. I explained how people saying things like "relax!" isn't helpful, and she said that it's better than saying something like "I'll pray for you". Well, all I really want people to say is "I'm so sorry, I'm here for you if you ever want to talk about it". I explained that I know nothing anybody says is going to change our situation, but minimizing the problem isn't the right thing to do. Anyway, I think after talking she understood a little more. Although she did suggest that we could use a surrogate... I wonder if the next "helpful advice" will be, "Why don't you just adopt?!".

This week my hubby is away on business, so it's just me and the dogs. I managed to persuade him to agree to taking in another foster pug, so we picked him up on Saturday. I know I must be crazy, because now we have 2 pugs of our own and 3 fosters. Oh well! The fact is that pug rescue has to spend quite a lot of money boarding pugs when there are no foster spaces available, and that money would obviously be better spent on vet bills. The cost to board one pug for a week could pay for a dental cleaning, so when you look at it that way it's better that we took one extra. We won't be able to take any more, though, until someone gets adopted. We actually had 6 pugs on Saturday night, because we picked up another from boarding at the same time as our new foster (he went to a different foster home on Sunday). That was really tough and I don't want to do that again! It was OK because we knew the 6th one was only staying for one night, but it was hard work.

Our new foster has been kind of difficult because he hasn't wanted to eat much, and he had 4 medications when we got him which required him to eat! I was seriously frustrated the first few days because he wouldn't really eat and wouldn't take his pills without a fight. Pill Pockets would work occasionally, but not consistently. I had to resort to using a pill dispensing syringe, which he obviously hated. Thankfully since yesterday he's eaten better and taken his pills better. It helps that now he only has to take 1 pill a day, rather than 4. He had a dental last week and had to have 18 teeth removed (poor baby!) so he had antibiotics and painkillers for that. He also has a skin infection on his face, so he has a pill for that too. That's the only one left now, so that's a relief.

His name is Cimon - Simon with a "C", because we've had other "Simons" in rescue and it gets really confusing with vet records etc. if we have multiple dogs with the same name! Unfortunately, my stupid ex was also named Simon. Luckily this "Cimon" is a million times sweeter, LOL.

My hubby left on Sunday morning, then I had the pug adoption event to run (we had an adoption, yay!) and by the time I got home I was so tired. I spent most of Monday and a couple of hours on Tuesday sewing, then cleaned the house because my friend was coming over for dinner Tuesday night. I made a pizza which turned out great :) She brought cupcakes for us from this little bakery, they were so good!

I think I'll try to organize the "baby room" today and hopefully get some ideas together for my craft room. It's senseless to have the room sitting there with no real purpose. We moved in almost a year ago and we've never used the room for anything other than random storage. At this point there's really no point in keeping it for some theoretical baby that doesn't exist... so screw it, I'm going to transform it into a useful, happy space.