Down....and Out.

I give up. Uncle. I fold. Throwing in the towel. I surrender.

It seems like I can't catch a break. I found out from my CPA that I owe a shit-ton of money to Uncle Sam. Just when I thought we were turning a corner, I am punched in the gut again. Shit. Shit. Shit. I mean A LOT of money. So, I guess I made a lot of money last year, huh? Yes, I did. Though I have nothing in my bank to show for it now. Where did all the money go? Oh, I don't know, let's review: Adoption expenses--cha-ching! Medical expenses--cha-ching! You know how I told you I have the world's crappiest self-pay insurance that covers bubkiss? Well, when you have an infant, you go to the doctor a lot. And that's if the baby is healthy. Thankfully, our son has been very healthy, but you still have to go to a lot of doctor appointments. And, we've had our fair share of colds, flu, vomiting, diarrhea, rashes, and fevers, to boot. Also one very expensive trip to the emergency room which turned out to be for nervous-new-parent disease, but there ya go. Also, our premiums for said crappy health insurance DOUBLED last year. Yes, doubled. Why? I turned 35--hooray! And we added the baby to the plan. Cha-ching! Child care--Cha-ching! I don't know but all the money I made last year got burned up, and now I can't pay the tax bill. I should have made estimated payments, but we seemed to need all of my income--and we thought the adoption tax credit would alleviate my liability. Nope. It helped, but not enough. Now, normally, at this time of year, I am sitting on a big stack of deposits for upcoming weddings, and while it would still suck to have to pay this enormous tax bill, at least I'd be able to do it. Not so this year. Thanks to the recession, or God only knows what, this year is looking L-E-A-N. I mean, this is like the slowest year since I started this damn business. So, I have very little in the coffers to pay toward this tax bill. So, I will be incurring yet another debt: monthly payments to the IRS to pay off my tax bill for the next God knows how long.

Just when I was starting to get up, just when I was starting to see the light, POW! Back in the dirt.

What this really all means is that we are still destined to be broke for a while. And, that means that fertility treatments just became an even dimmer glimmer of hope, waaaaay further off in the distance. I was sorta hoping that maybe, by the end of this year, we'd be able to start talking, thinking and planning something....maybe even be able to go back to doing some IUI's. Now, forget it. I can't afford to go grocery shopping let alone schedule an IUI. And IVF? Un-uh.

So, this is it. I am getting the message here that the Universe is against me ever seeing my dreams fulfilled. I work and I work and it does nothing and goes nowhere. I feel like everything I touch turns to disaster.

If we can't do IVF in the next couple of years, then we might as well just forget it. And don't say DONOR EGGS to me, I'm not ready to talk about it now. I just feel like I've GOT to give my eggs a try before we go that route or I'll spend the rest of my life wondering what if.... But, I'm 36 already, so it's not looking good. (Meanwhile women my age and older are having babies all around me, but this is ME we're talking about. One failed pregnancy in 4 years of trying? Yeah.)

I just feel so fucking hopeless right now, and totally beat into submission. I have been trying and trying to stay so positive, but I am finding it very fucking hard to see the silver lining right now.

Oh, to add insult to injury, some dude vandalized my work van a couple of weeks ago. He carved FUCK YOU into the side of my van. He was totally crazy or on drugs--I've never seen him before in my life--but he did it right out in the open, while I was standing a few feet away in my office with the door open. Maybe he was channeling a message straight from the Universe to me: FUCK YOU. That's how it feels right now.

I always SWORE I would not raise an only child. I was an only child. I have a sister but there is such an age difference between us, that she was off to college, abroad, by the time I was 2. She continued to live abroad (married and had children) until she returned to the states when I was 13. IT SUCKED. I always dreamed of having a little sister to play with and take care of, or of having a big brother to stick up for me on the playground. It was lonely. But, it's looking more and more like Handsome Man will be an only child, I guess.

THIS SUCKS!!!!!! I am so angry right now. But I am so sick of fighting. It's like constantly swimming against the current. It's exhausting. I feel like sysiphus.

So, I'm out. I'm out of the game, at least for a while. I'm waiting on a miracle. A very huge, sweeping, unbelievable miracle. That seems to be my only hope. I don't know if I will feel like posting for a while, and I'm sorry if I don't comment as much. It's hard for me not only to see all the pregnant women around me in real life, but also difficult as blogger friend after blogger friend falls pregnant. And I am so happy for those of you that do. Anyone who fights this IF battle and wins deserves every minute of happiness. But, right now, instead of seeing it as something hopeful that I might one day attain, it just feels like more mockery. Everywhere I go big pregnant bellies mock me. At the grocery store. At the bank. At the flower market. That's the hard one. Seeing these women walking around the flower market with their big, bulging bellies, picking out flowers, lah-de-dah. That was my dream. That was my life that I envisioned. That's me--only it's not me. It hurts, deep. So, it feels like I am the butt of some big universal joke on a daily basis. And on a good day, I can manage to chuckle at it, too. But not today.