This is How Things Have Been.

I'm going to be honest, here. And if you don't like complaining, you should probably go away when you finish this sentence, because the last month has SUCKED.

Shall I start with Christmas? I think that was the beginning of the sucking.

I had to close the store on Christmas Eve. No surprise there, really. But I also decided to host two Christmases at my house. One after I got off work on Christmas Eve, the next one at noon Christmas day. Why? Because I like to bite off more than I can chew.

I'd tell an elaborate story, but the long and short of it is that my body decided to play an awful, awful trick on me. I had two glasses of eggnog (with rum, but only a little bit of rum, mind you) and a glass of wine. And then I got violently ill. With my house still full of family. I didn't even drink very much. I still feel like I got cheated out of Christmas. I slept on the bathroom floor. BoyWonder actually did drink too much, and spent the next morning puking, too.

We actually had to call his family and tell them we were too hung over to do Christmas at our house.

Of course, I know now that I wasn't actually hung over. I actually had some kind of bug, because my stomach didn't stop bothering me for four days. That's right. I had all kinds of stomach problems, for four days. It was pretty awesome (and by awesome, I really mean I spent four days wishing I could just die and get it over with).

So... I'll probably never drink eggnog again. And that was Christmas.

(Note: There were good parts to the evening, but they were overshadowed by the Awful.)


I got new neighbors. They started moving in around New Year's, and they are... trashy. I'm trying to remain optimistic. I'm trying to keep an open mind. I'm failing on both counts.

The house was up for sale for ridiculously cheap (I think it finally sold for $23000 or so). I had joked with BoyWonder about buying it and either using it as storage and parking, or letting my brother (Ducky) rent it from us, so he'd have somewhere to live when the Duckling is born. Now I wish I had.

The house isn't nice to begin with. Their driveway is about four feet from our bedroom windows. The new people are loud, and they fight. We've listened to several rounds of, "Fuck you!," followed by a, "No, fuck you, you asshole!" Right outside our window. Their vehicles are loud. Right outside our window.

Don't get me wrong. I remember getting irritated with BoyWonder when we were moving into this house and I'm sure we had our rough moments. And our vehicles weren't quiet back then, either, so I'm sure we probably irritated our (really awesome) neighbors to the south of us. So I could probably overlook those things, if it weren't for this:

This, my friends, is a view from my laundry room window. A window I used to leave open so my houseplants could have light. In case you can't see what all this crap is, let me break it down.
Eight used tires. Two window AC units. Two car batteries. A shop vac. A step ladder that probably goes to an above ground pool that no longer exists. Boxes of junky crap. An old, rusty grill. And slightly out of view is a giant pile of bricks, a brick saw, a picnic table stacked full of crap... And they're fencing their yard off with some really ghetto looking wire fencing.

Luckily, I don't have to look at most of it because we had the good sense to build a privacy fence the first year we lived here. But I'm seriously sad that I can't leave my blinds open in the laundry room without seeing this clusterfuck. And I'm going to hold out hope that maybe they're going to use their tax return money to buy a shed of some kind.

We shall see. If nothing else, they may end up being good fodder for my writing.


Also, I think I might actually be depressed.

It's hard to tell because in my natural state, I'm really not that bubbly and happy. I have more of a Daria type personality. The truth is, the stress just keeps piling up on me and I can't even seem to break through it anymore.

And I don't know what to do about it except keep pressing forward.

We finally got referred to the RE (for you fertiles, an RE is a reproductive endocrinologist). Our first appointment is February 1st, which is also the same day as my follow-up with the spine specialist.

I'm wavering back and forth on whether I even want to bother with either appointment. I'm exhausted. I spent  the better part of last year scrambling from work to doctors appointments and MRIs and physical therapy and now I'm looking at the same thing, but for the fertility testing. I'm tired. I've been really frustrated with BoyWonder and I can't tell if it's because he won't talk to me about anything important or if it's just because something bad is going on in my brain. Some days, I don't even know if I still want to have a baby, which is what makes me think I may have finally just snapped.

So for now I'll just keep pushing ahead. I'm still working on eating healthy, because if the doctors decide I have PCOS I'm going to have to follow a low-GI diet anyway. I'm saving money to buy an elliptical (because the last one I bought never worked, from day one), because I'm also going to be told to lose twenty pounds, regardless of what they find out.

And I'm re-quitting smoking. Like, today is day two. I bought an electric cigarette because it seemed like I would be more likely to use it, and it wouldn't freak me out. Last time I quit I used the gum, but it was nasty and didn't really help with the hand-to-mouth movement which is part of what I really craved more than the nicotine.

So far, I like it a lot. My goal is to keep tapering off the nicotine, until eventually I'm at the nicotine-free stage, and then I can keep stuff around for when I just really want a cigarette (what got me started smoking again in the first place was going out drinking with my friends). We'll see how it goes. BoyWonder has been less than supportive because he quit cold-turkey (before he met me), and doesn't understand why I can't just stop on command. Oh well.

Oh. Not everything has been completely horrible, either. My one little bright spot? In about a month, the Duckling will be here, and I'll have a tiny, perfect nephew to squish on. I'm ready for that. So, so ready.

I'm not sure when I'll be back. Probably after the visit with the RE, maybe sooner if I go off the deep end and start contemplating homicide. So until then...