I’m feeling really melancholy today. It’s almost like PMS, but I don’t think I’ve even ovulated this month, so I don’t know what my problem is.
I got an ovulation kit. It was one of the digital ones, that you shove the stick into and it gives you (or is supposed to give you) a smiley face readout when you’re ovulating. No guesswork over if the line is dark enough or whatever. A digital read out, while expensive, seemed idiot proof.
I took that stupid kit back to Target.
I got nothing. Not like, “oh, I guess I’m not ovulating right now.” I mean NOTHING. According to the instructions, there’s supposed to be just a regular face on the little digital readout before your spike, and then as your LH spike approaches, the face turns into a big friggin’ smiley face. I got nothing. Zip, zilch, nada. The idiot test wasn’t working at all.
I was going to get another one right then, but this month is kind of shot anyway, so I have some time before I’m going to need it again. Not only do you have to start the kit on the exact 5th day of your cycle (good luck figuring that one out, Brittney…), but it won’t really matter when I ovulate this month, for two reasons.
One, Quincy has his official lab test (specimen retrieval) Wednesday, and he has to abstain for two days prior to get a good sample. He has to abstain for two days prior to his test to get a good sample, and low and behold, guess which day I’m supposed to ovulate this month? Yep. Wednesday. Which means by the time he can do anything Wednesday afternoon, not only will he be spent, literally, but I will have supposedly ovulated and the window of opportunity will be gone.
And two, if I do my math right, getting pregnant this month would mean a baby right around Halloween, which, and I know this is a teeny bit selfish, but it would make for a very difficult Thanksgiving this year.
It’d be fine, really, just complicated. We’d have a newborn, and while I’d still be on maternity leave, I don’t think driving a brand new baby halfway across the country is all that great of an idea. Both Quincy’s dad and his grandmother, Bamzi, aren’t doing very well, so I don’t want to mess up what little time he may have left to spend with them.
I go through bouts of feeling completely discouraged by all of this, and I guess today is one of those days. Everything seems to be hitting me at once. I love Quincy, more than I ever thought I could love anyone, and I love my dogs, but right now, with Quincy working on the weekends, the only time really have to cuddle is spent either alone, or with the pups whining, or hyper, or chewing on stuff they’re not supposed to.
All of this is taking time away from any time that Quincy and I could be spending together, life is kind of hard right now. I don’t want our entire sex life to be whittled down to the two or so days around ovulation. And I wish it weren’t so damn important that we HAVE time together on specific days of the month. I don’t like feeling like we have homework.
This may be why I feel so down today. I talked to Quincy about it a bit last night, but sometimes I need more than a just wailing wall. I need an actual conversation, and Quincy is a man of very, very few words. Sometimes I need to bounce ideas and complaints and worries off someone and actually have them tell me it’ll be all right, or offer different ideas, or at least tell me that my worries aren’t warranted. Anything. Sometimes I think that if I can’t talk to someone about everything that’s on my mind, I’m going to explode. And he listens. I know he does. But he doesn’t really say much. I can spew all I want here, but I need someone to talk to me. A journal doesn’t talk back.
I’m kind of off topic. I started getting really melancholy last night. It’s just that Quincy and I never go to bed together. I’m not talking about the euphemism “going to bed,” I mean literally getting ready and laying down to sleep at the same time. Which means we never have the opportunity to really fool around sporatically at night. I usually have a doggie snuggling with me, because Quincy has gone so long not coming to bed when I do, that the dogs think that spot on the bed is theirs. It’s not their fault.
Quincy just stays later than I do. He and I have different internal clocks. He works primarily at night, I work in the morning and during the day. I went years working the very early shift – 4am-1pm, so I became an early riser. Quincy is a night owl, and he gets most of his work done them. And his spot is generally empty when I go to bed, so one or more of the puppies take it. And as much as I love my furbabies, I love and miss my husband.
On top of that, he and I never wake up in the morning together on the weekends. He has this job at the hotel and he won’t quit it. He works all the time. Literally, all the time, and I hate it. He goes to work at his job at Golden Hippo Monday-Friday, 10-6pm. Then we get home, I cook, he plays with the dogs, we eat dinner, then we clean up, I go to bed and he gets on his computer doing freelance copywriting until late into the night.
Rinse and repeat. Then, come Friday, we go to work in the morning, he naps in the car on the way home in the evening, we eat dinner, then he gets ready and leaves for the hotel, to work from 11pm-730am. Which means I worry all the time, because he’s awake and working over 24 hours nonstop, from about 7am Friday morning through his drive home Saturday morning. The only nap he gets on Fridays is the 45 min or so as we drive back to Palmdale. He’s let it slip that sometimes he’s so tired he has to stop and nap at the Valencia park and ride on his drive home in the mornings. He goes through bag after bag of sunflower seeds, because chewing the seeds keeps him awake. This is not something fun to think about. What would I do if he ever got into a wreck? I worry for his safety. I honestly don’t know where I’d be without him in my life. I can’t imagine being without him. It’s scary and stressful to think about, and I’m faced with this worry week in and week out.
Then, I don’t have him at all on Saturday, because he’s a) catching up on sleep, having been up for over 24 hrs straight, and then b) we can’t go and do anything once he wakes up Saturday afternoon because he has to start getting ready, and then go back to, work starting at about 8:30pm Saturday evening. No dinners out. No movie dates. He’s missed invites out with friends because he’s either too tired or he has to be at work. He worked the night of my birthday dinner, so not only could he not really celebrate with me, but I had to have a friend drive me home because he had to be at work. No fooling around that night.
I can’t remember the last date we went on, either. It’s been since before we were married, I’m sure. I also can’t really go anywhere on Saturdays, by myself, either, because there’s no one home to clean the house or take care of the yard or watch the dogs over the weekend. He does laundry, which is a relief, and he does walk the dogs on weeknights. But I mow the lawn. I sweep, mop and vacuum. I feed the kids 90% of the time. I clean the cat box 90% of the time. I scour sinks and change sheets and clean out the fridge and plan, then cook, all the meals.
Not only that, but if I did want to go see a movie or something with my friends on the weekend, I’d have to have the car back to him in time for him to leave for work, and we live over an hour away from everything. I used to hang out with my friends until late in the evening, just catching up or watching tv over wine or cocktails. I can’t do that anymore. Twice in the past two weeks I’ve had to leave from hanging out with my friends super early – around 5pm – because I’ve had to get the car back or I was worried about what he and the kids were up to. And I had run errands all morning, so I really only go to go grab a late lunch with them and then head back home. So I go back home, he gets ready and heads to work. He comes home Sunday morning, having not slept all night, and he sleeps Sunday.
I don’t have my husband. I really miss my husband, which is odd because I don’t really feel I’ve had one since the day he got the copywriting job two weeks after we got back from our honeymoon. I think the last time we got ready and went to bed at the same time was on our honeymoon, and the last time we woke up at the same time was…well, never, really. I’m an early riser, so I’m always up before him. But it was nice to have the option of rolling over and snuggling with the love of my life. The last time we had the option of sleeping in, together, one morning was New Year’s Day. It takes a holiday that we’re both off in order to get to spend any time at all with the man I’m supposed to be sharing my life with. It’s really, really tough.
I can’t remember the last time we didn’t have to “schedule” fooling around. Unless we absolutely have to fool around for fertility, I’m either in my pajamas with morning breath, or he’s just woken up…but the dogs are hyper, because they’ve been snoozing with their dad all day. Nothing about the situation is ideal. Which, come to think about it, explains a lot of about the lack of fertility.
That was a lot to spew out. I don’t really feel much better, but it was good in a way to get it all off of my chest.
I guess.
My Stork Got Lost 