A year

Friday, November 21 will be one year since I've been jobless. I'd only been with the company for 9 months, and I was the happiest I ever was at a job. I was promoted 6 weeks after I started, and received a 20% raise. Clearly I wasn't doing a bad job. Last year on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, my entire department was eliminated. Happy Holidays! Surprisingly, I wasn't angry, but I think I was just in shock. I calmly called JB and told him, then took one of the other girls in that was let go out to breakfast. It was the second time in 13 months that I found myself unemployed. (In my previous job, I knew my first week there that it was not the job or company for me, and I stuck it out for almost 2 years in a battle of who would give in first. Other than that I tend to stay at jobs for a long time, usually 5-7 years.) This time was different. I knew there was a reason.

Just a week earlier I had made an appointment with my OB/GYN to discuss TTC and the lack of C. We were ready to get really serious about it, something we hadn't been in all the time we were trying. My appointment with him was on January 2. He immediately sent me for an HSG and told me to come back in three months or when I got pregnant, whichever came first.

Three months later I was back. I walked out with a prescription for Clomid and the name of my RE. I'm usually a big wuss about calling doctors, but as soon as my next cycle started and I took the Clomid, I was on the phone with the RE.

Since that call, my life has revolved around RE appointments. I can't imagine doing this if I'd looked for and gotten a job right away a year ago. How would I have explained to a new employer that I needed to be late 2 or 3 days a week, with little to no notice? If it was a job I'd been at for a while, sure, but no way as a newbie. It's been a rough year with only one income. We've cut out a lot of luxuries like going out to eat every weekend, big impulse buys, and things like that. But in other ways it's been good for us. We're (ok, Me) much better with spending money wisely, we have more in savings that we have in a long time, we've paid off a big chunk of debt, and most of all, our relationship with each other is better than it ever was.

I'm not the best housekeeper by any means, but I do love cooking for us every night. We used to have takeout several nights a week because I got home from work so late. I've been able to work on my photography, although my ambition in that department has been lacking lately (know someone local to me that wants to model for me in exchange for prints? Email me!) I actually like doing the laundry too, despite having to bring it to the laundromat. I like having it smell the way I want it to instead of like the laundrymat's fabric softener like it did when we could afford drop off service.

So, thanks Adam and Greg for eliminating my department and job, giving me the opportunity to better my life and try to have a baby.