Goodbyes and Shocks to the System

Good morning blog world. Hope everyone is doing well. I'm doing okay...still pretty hopeless about this cycle. Even though I was on a higher dose of Femara I ovulated later than I did the last time, cycle day 17. WTF? I told my Dr and he said "Rose, I don't know why, you're an enigma!" I don't want to be an enigma! I just want to know why my body will not do what I ask of it! So I am currently cycle day 22. Feeling nothing special and just trying to get this cycle over to start my Femara again. I cannot build this cycle up because I cannot emotionally handle another failure. So I give up before I even get a chance to fail.
I'm gearing up for a hard goodbye in about 2 weeks. My best friend N, a friend I met here in Sicily and have been joined at the hip with for almost a year, is leaving to go back to the states with her husband to their next duty station. I cannot imagine life here without her. I'm dreading a week filled with tears, she leaves on the 17th. We still have a fun trip to Germany planned for next week. Can't wait to make some more fun memories with her.
N gave me a pretty good shock to my system on Thursday. She is one of my two friends that doesn't have any children. She is happily married and wants children but was waiting because they weren't ready and her husband is deployable. Well her husband expressed to her that he got his deployment schedule and the she should remove her IUD so they can start trying. She was caught off guard too and excited and she called me to tell me and then asked me to come down to the ER to hold her hand while one of the Dr's took out her IUD (5 minutes after her husband had called her and told her she should take it out). She was totally sensitive and asked me if I was okay with this, and told me she wanted us to be pregnant together. I really appreciate that she thought of me. I know she gets how hard this is for me. But it still stirred up my feelings of jealousy and self pity. In my mind I have her pregnant already, leaving me behind like every other friend that has started their families. She has all kinds of questions for me about trying to conceive and she is so excited she just wants to talk about it. It just hurts that I have lost that excitement, that it is replaced by negativity and cynicism. It hurts that everyone gets to move forward, so quickly and for free. I am jealous that her husband really wants to have children and is excited for the next adventure in their lives. Sam told me last week that he has only been going through with the TTC to make me happy and that he could do without children. I feel like crap. I'm a bad friend. I'm a bad wife. I'm feeling like a bad person. Uggghhh!

Midcycle and devoid of any hope!

This cycle sucks for me already. My doctor upped my dose of Femara to 5mg each day, days 3-9. I have not had any side effects but I also did not have any ultrasound because my Dr is on vacation. Now I am cycle day 14, I have no idea what's going on inside my lil' ovaries, I am out of ovulation tests (I ordered some but they haven't gotten here yet), I've been slacking on temping, and I'm just overall feeling defeated. I don't want to be negative but there is little for me to be positive about this cycle. If this cycle bombs I have no one to blame but myself. I'm working hard to tell myself not to care, but rarely am I actually successful. I hope everyone else is keeping their spirits up out there in the blog world. I'm praying for all the people I follow. Your success will keep me hopeful!
In order to cheer myself up a bit and focus on the positive.....I will post about Florence. I was able to travel to Florence for New Years Eve with a couple of my really good friends. My friend Naomi and her husband, Stacy (another nurse from here) and my good friend Amy from my last command flew up to meet us. Amy is on a deployment in Africa and was able to sneak away for 4 days of fun. And man...did we have fun. We drank way too much champagne, ate fantastic food, and saw all the sights. There was an awful hour and a half on New Years Eve, where I drank way too much and picked a horrible fight with my poor husband. I am ashamed of myself for acting that way, I should have known better that to drink so much when I had been feeling so out of control and tearful for the weeks leading up to that day. Thankfully I have learned my lesson and my hubby forgave me. It was truly embarrassing to lose my shit like that in front of all my friends. Thankfully they forgave me too! So here are some great pictures from our trip. The best part of all the traveling we have done is the beautiful pictures that I have collected. I have enjoyed learning to use our camera and making scrapbooks of the pictures after each trip. Enjoy!

Watch a Volcano erupt.......officially checked of my bucket list!

On Wednesday evening this week I was able to witness something I've been waiting for since we moved here. Sicily is home to Mt. Etna, the most active volcano in Europe, and on Wednesday night she put on quite a show for us. Sadly I had to work on Thursday morning and when my hubby tried to wake me up at 2am to see the real fireworks, I wouldn't get out of bed. But he got an awesome video of it. I'll try to post it soon.
In other news, I had the world's longest period this cycle. It started on Saturday night and just ended on Friday. WTF! I'm taking the letrozole again and trying not to care. My "friend" that's pregnant was so excited about her ultrasound pictures that she hunted me down at work to show them to me. I was hurt but I tried to be excited for her. I just don't understand how she can be so insensitive to me when she is the person that gives me my prescription of letrozole each month. It's like here's your pills because I know you're infertile, they probably won't work this month either, but look at my cute belly and check out my ultrasound pictures. It would be nice if she could throw in a little, "I know this must be hard for you" or "I'm praying for you and Sam". I guess I can't expect that from anyone these days!
I spent yesterday with my best girlfriend Naomi. She is leaving to move back to the states in about a month. I can't imagine getting through my days here without her. She has been such a blessing to me and a wonderful support through everything I've been going through. It's like she gets mad with me when I'm mad, and sad with me when I'm sad. We went to the Caleca factory in Patti yesterday. We each bought and entire set of dishes that are hand painted. Caleca is a sicilian factory that makes dishes for Willi.ams-Son.oma. We got a helluva deal and had such a good time digging through all the patterns. This is the pattern that Naomi got, I couldn't find a picture of mine online. I'll have to take one later. It is beautiful pottery though!

Cycle is over :(

I had a strange day today. I woke up and decided to test, my period is due today. I braced myself for another negative (I had one on day 11 and day 13). I decided to use the digital that I've had for a while. I peed, saw the little hour glass pop up and started brushing my teeth. And wouldn't you know that after about three minutes, the sucker just went blank. No answer, no nothing. It expired this month so I guess it started to work and then just gave up. I didn't want to waste another test so I have no answer. I started a very slight amount of spotting this afternoon. I'm pretty surprised that I didn't start full on yet. However, I'm pretty sure this cycle is over.
I'm not going to cry or dwell or beat myself up. We had a good cycle, it didn't work, eventually if we have enough good ones in a row, something has got to work right?
I was productive today. I took the tree down, cleaned up, worked out, and I just finished watching Love and Other Drugs. It was pretty good. Jake Gyllenhaal is one sexy muther if I do say so myself. I wouldn't kick him out of bed for eating crackers. Hope everyone is a having a great weekend. Stay positive!

A sad start to the New Year....

A few hours after we returned home from our trip to Florence (which was overall fantastic but slightly ruined by my irrational behavior) my world was ruined by some family news that I discovered on faceb.ook. My beautiful 34 year old cousin was killed instantly by a drunk driver going the wrong way on the free way. The drunk driver did not have a valid license and was being chased by the police. He survived with severe injuries. I am so angry and in shock. Corrie was the most beautiful, kind, and passionate person I've known. I was lucky to have seen her about 6 months ago at a family wedding. I am filled with sadness for her boyfriend, her 9 year old daughter, her two sisters, and her mother. Each time I talk to one of them I choke on my tears and am barely able to speak. It's just senseless and unbelievable. I'm still in shock.

I'm so hoping that this cycle works out. If I find out that I'm pregnant at the end of this week, it will help me find some joy in all of this sadness. I would love for my baby to have a connection with my cousin that I loved dearly. I will be praying for this. Not just for me and Sam but for the comfort of my family.
I'll write more about our trip when I'm not so torn up inside. It just doesn't seem right to talk about good things when everyone in my family is hurting so badly.