The nuts and bolts of this process are all too obvious to anyone that has been through it before and pretty self-explanatory even if you haven’t. The cycle that you may not realize that you end up on however is the ups and downs of fingers crossed, highs and lows, and waiting for a result that continually doesn’t come. The what if, the not drinking, the casual feeling that maybe you’re sore or tired or swollen or cranky because it happened! But it didn’t. I don’t have the exact count anymore but I would guess that it was maybe two full years of month after month on that roller coaster before we decided that it wasn’t going to happen. Possibly impossible.

Post Covid we all were shooketh, in varied ways. Hubby the cats and I hunkered down pretty seriously and started out drinking and zooming like so many, but then switched gears into crazy cooking and exercising. As a reward this time last year I was in a wonderful place. My marriage thrived, my work was going great, and I was in probably the best shape of my life when not skiing 100+ days a year. We were in some aspects newlyweds through all this but also making up time by always being together in quarantine. And then…