Trigger Shot

Tonight's the night! Well, sort of. It's the night I take my last shot (ever I hope :). At 8:30 promptly I have to take some drug that does something that allows doctors to remove follicles from my ovaries. 36 hours later they put the fertilized ones back and we hope it works from there. Two weeks of waiting and we find out if the trigger worked. I probably won't post anything if it's good news, so if you don't hear me whine in a couple of weeks, it could be good news, or I could be busy trying to work out my frustration in the garden.

Interesting that it's called a trigger shot I think. Like it's a race. Life in general has felt a bit like a race lately, so it's pretty appropriate. We've got until the end of the week to decide if Gerd wants to keep his position and move to Dallas, or if he wants to be demoted to a developer (probably facing a salary cut) and continue working from home for a while. Dallas isn't really an option, but New Mexico is. The company would let him work 3 days a week in Dallas and fly back to NM and work from home the rest of the week. But, like I said, we have a week to decide if we want to move our entire household in the next month or two.

It's all got me thinking about where we really do want to live with children. We could move anywhere while Gerd's working from home. Why live in the most expensive city when you can live somewhere cheap and earn the same salary? We have good friends in Boston, a church that I love, I finally found a counselor I feel comfortable with...in other words, life is pretty good here. But can we afford it without my salary? With a pay cut? And if IVF doesn't work, can we afford to live here AND adopt? Plus there's the school issue, I mean, Boston public schools are seriously troublesome (but Albuquerque's aren't any better).

We could move to Denver, which is a place both of us could enjoy, but we don't know anyone there (with the exception of some of my SCA acquaintances that I haven't seen in years). We could move to upstate New York to be near my parents, but there really aren't that many jobs that would interest my husband in the long run (plus he seems to hate cities that aren't dense, urban, smog infested areas...you know, heaven forbid everyone has yard on all 4 sides, and with a garage no less).

Or we could stay put and hope that he finds (actually starts looking for) another job. We've got tons of expenses right now, the bathroom, IVF (although this cycle was mostly covered by insurance if it doesn't work we'll have to pay 100% of any future cycles), Gerd's annual German retirement account transfer, fixing the Mini so we can sell it, finally moving his stuff over from Dublin... We can say we'll stay on budget, but it's all a lot right now.

So I'm like the athlete with her feet in the blocks, waiting for the sound of the gun. You try not to stress, instead to free your mind and just run, and to trust that you've done all you could up until this point and remain calm, because you know that you'll actually do better if you relax. But somehow you still notice a bead of sweat dripping down your brow.