Well, I’m not doing such a great job of keeping up with the blog. When I started I thought I’d write everyday, or at least every other day. I mean I’ve got tons to say. My emotions are swirling around like a tornado, thoughts are coming rapid fire day and night, and I can’t seem to quiet my mind. But putting thoughts on paper has never been easy for me—I’m not very disciplined about my time, I tend to procrastinate everything, and I’ve always been incredibly self-conscious about my writing. As usual, now that I’m taking the time I can’t decide what to write, although ideas have been churning around in my head for days. I suppose I’ll write about the upcoming weekend, since it’s starting to occupy more and more of the space in my head.

We’ll be spending Memorial Day weekend with my husband’s entire family. At first I had no desire to go. It was just after the last failed IVF cycle that we found out my brother-in-law and his family would be visiting my in-laws and I DID NOT want to go. Then we found out that my sister-in-law and her family would be there as well. I STILL didn’t want to go, but my daughter LOVES her cousins and her aunts and uncles and I felt bad keeping her from this unexpected family get-together, so I told my husband we should go. But I did tell him that I reserved the right to make myself scarce—this is pretty easy since his parents live in my home town and all of 15 minutes from my parents. After about a week and a half I was feeling a bit less down and thinking it might be fun after all. But now that the weekend in only 3 days away I’m starting to feel a bit edgy about it again. I’m not quite dreading it, but I’m afraid I might be by the time we drive down on Friday. I’ll say now that all in all I’m very lucky as far as in-laws go. I get along well enough with each of them individually, and there’s certainly nothing horrible about any of them. But there are things about some of them that annoy me—more so lately given my own not-so-happy state of mind. And, as a family they have issues, so the atmosphere is almost never relaxed when everyone is together. Also, among them only my husband’s parents know anything about our struggle with IF—so the rest will not understand why I’m mopey and sad.

In part, it’s just that given my own precarious emotions I’m not in the mood for anyone else’s bullshit—and there’s guaranteed to be some sort of conflict within the family before the weekend is over. Additionally, my sister-in-law has three children (all easily conceived and delivered), the youngest is almost 3, and my brother-in-law has a 2-year-old, and frankly, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to be around young children (basically any child younger than my daughter) and families with more than one child. It’s also painful for me to see my daughter with younger children. She really loves “babies” and she is always asking for a little brother or sister, and it kills me that I can’t give her one. But the thing I dread the most is the possibility that my brother-in-law and his wife will announce they are expecting. Though I have no reason to expect it, I know they want more children, their daughter is two, and my SIL quit her job a few months ago. I feel horrible saying this, but I just don’t know that I’m capable of being happy for them right now and I REALLY don’t know that I’d be able to control my emotions in front of everyone.