Christmas Firsts

This year brought several Christmas firsts and unfortunately they weren't of the good variety.

No. 1  No Stocking hung by the chimney with care.
       For 26 years my grandmother has hung a stocking a piece for me, my brother, and my two cousins. My oldest cousin is almost 40 and yes he's had a stocking every year for that long. This year, there was no quartet of red stockings hung on the mantle filled with little goodies like candy, gum, batteries, and in my case usually makeup or jewelry. Instead there were two stockings for the great grandbabies. My year and 4 month old niece, and my 9month old second cousin. I may come across sounding like a baby but it hurt that we didn't get stockings...it hurt that I didn't get one. Yes I'm an adult and I don't need a stocking. But if that was the reason the tradition stopped it should have stopped when I turned 18, 21, or hell even 25. Instead it stopped because of the new babies. I can't help but feel left out, rejected, and pushed aside. I wouldn't mind if my place had been taken by my own child. But no one took my place on that mantle, it was just erased. Does her having great grandchildren erase the fact that I am still her grand-daughter?
No. 2  Christmas Eve Doggies
       On Christmas Eve I called to ask my Dad what time my grandmother expected us. I was yelled at it. Which took me completely by surprise til my father took a deep breath and explained he was in a bad mood because two of our dogs had just gotten in a fight and he was still covered in blood and urine. I was understandably worried, especially since my dad is a worst case scenario type person. Turns out both dogs are fine. It was a supremacy type fight over affection. But later on that night as I was preparing to take off my shoes, my brother called. His dog was having seizures. We rushed over. Unable to pinpoint the problem and watching the poor pup go through agonizing seizures every 5-10 minutes they made the call to take her to the nearest ER vet. On Christmas Eve at 11:30 at night 45 minutes away. About 5 minutes before we arrived she had her last seizure. When we walked in the vets she could walk again though still a little drukenly. By the time the vet saw her she was back to normal. A very expensive blood screening later and she was checked out as completely normal. The seizure session was deemed a random fluke. It could happen again and develop into something more or she could live the rest of her life without one. It was about 2:30 before we got back and finally into bed.

No. 3  Christmas tree removal
        For the first time in my life I took down the Christmas tree before January. It was always a tradition in my family to wait til the first of the year. The symbolism behind it was that you put ornaments on the tree that represented things you wanted in the coming year, health, wealth, happiness, love, etc, and by leaving it on the tree til the first of the year you brought those things with you symbolically. We got home Christmas day unwrapped our gifts and I spent the next couple of hours shooting dirty looks at our very dead tree. I just wanted it out of my house and for things to be clean. I gave in. What took more than 4 hours to decorate took only one to dismantle. I didn't take a single picture of my tree...not even one. It's like it never existed.

I tried so very hard to get over my grinchiness. I baked, decorated, listened to old records, christmas music every second I could, sent out cards, the whole nine yards. But all I could think of was how much I wanted it to be over with.  The loss of traditions hurts. The alienation real or imagined hurts. The emptiness of our own stunted family growth hurts. Throw in being physically hurt due to a vicious stomach virus that attacked a little less than a week before Christmas and is STILL making my stomach a little weak....(I did lose almost 4 lbs tho so that's good right lol)... and its the perfect scrooge storm. I don't know how I'll be able to handle another Christmas like this one. DH and I keep thinking we should make our own traditions ones that other people can't flub up. But I liked the ones I used to have. I don't even know how to go about making new ones.
Today is my birthday. I turned 27. And what do you know another first...for the first time my birthday made me feel sad...really really sad. I just wanted to sit at home, curl up, and ignore the day. I was 25 when we started ttc. Dh turned 35 one week ago. Our birthdays are glaring reminders of the time that has already passed us by, slipping through our tightly clenched fists. I'm just tired of this struggle and everything it impacts.

Busy, Busy, Busy

It's been a hectic couple of weeks, so here's a quick recap.
We went to Tunica. We gambled. Surprise, surprise we didn't win. No biggie, since my family decided to be extremely generous Dh and I didn't actually lose any of our money. We gave up before we lost everything they sent out with us and added the last 20 dollars to our fund. Which bumped it from 140 to 160.
Yesterday was the start of my third week at the vet's office. It has been the best thing for me. For months now IF has pretty much taken over every waking moment. I've struggled with stress, being emotional, and not sleeping at night. Having something else to focus on has been a god-send for me. Even though it's hard working at a new place with new people I, ironically enough, feel less stressed than I have in months. And you can forget about the not sleeping. Uh-uh, I'm in bed and out by 11 most nights, once it wasn't even 9 oclock before I climbed into bed. I received my first paycheck yesterday and this morning I more than doubled our IF fund. I have decided to split every single check right down the middle. One half to have, one half to the fund. I estimate that it will cost approximately 90 out of every check to work. Two tanks of gas at $30ish a pop, and 6 days of $6 lunches. So I'll have a little less than $100 to play with when all is said and done. I'm pretty confident that I can handle that since I'm used to not having more than $50 a month coming in at any given time.  And there's a chance that I could go full time here pretty soon which would bump everything up quite a bit.
My goal is to be ready for IVF by the end of Summer 2014. If nothing changes in my work I'll have made $3K for the fund by my onesie. Add in a guesstimated $3k from the tax refund. And then hopefully DH will contribute around the same. Dh is still banking on being able to conceive naturally. I'm a little more realistic at this point.
We bought three lottery tickets today. Dh was going over what he would do with the money, how much it would accrue in interest, yada yada yada. We both agreed that we'd start an IF charity. Give 10 deserving couples every year a free IVF cycle. If we just put aside 1 million out of that hypothetical huge win, we could do it for 10 years without any extra fundraising. Yeah. But you know our chances of winning the lottery are about the same as us conceiving naturally so you can bet I'm not banking on it.
We have almost all of our holiday shopping done. We lack my grandfather, and my great aunt and her family. That's it. I thought I was going to get my grandfather a kitten. I think I've changed my mind. At 91 he doesn't need a kitten, even if he would like one. My Nana has also made it clear she would be upset if another kitty showed up at the house. So my Nana's wrath vs my grandfather's happiness. I'm still undecided.
Whelp that's it for now, aside from a huge temp drop today which more than likely heralds CD1 tomorrow.