Halloween and Moving Forward

Thank you for your feedback and support around my and S's difficulties.  I really appreciated receiving your comments.  We have come back from the brink.  In huge news, he has recognized and admitted that he has a lot of anger from childhood (perhaps exacerbated by issues in his marriages), and it comes out in vastly disproportionate ways in our relationship.  He is working with our counselor around some acceptance and healing work, which will hopefully lead to having a healthier relationship with the anger and more skill in expressing feelings. 

On my side of the aisle, I see that I was the one that opened the door to breaking up by bringing up this possibility in the heat of some of our recent arguments.  In the moment, I felt completely overwhelmed and part of me DID want to get away from him, but in the big picture, it's not what I want.  So, I'm instituting a self-imposed moratorium on break-up language, and am also working to be more present when conflict comes up, versus deflecting it or getting defensive.  I get scared this means I'll be trampled on but am trying to remember being present doesn't mean being a doormat.  Ideally, I want to be present for both myself AND for him - trying to acknowledge his experience, while not taking in the shame part.

Enough of the super heavy and deep stuff for this post.  We had a fun Halloween evening!  I raced home from work but still missed most of the trick-or-treaters, I think.  :(  I handed out candy to a few groups, including one gaggle of teens, just as we were leaving.  For some reason, the teens were endearing to me, and I was glad to end the candy-giving time with them.  Then, we went out for Halloween drinks and had some enjoyable conversation about the deep stuff going on with him and with us.  We came back to my place afterwards and goofed around - watching TV and doing computer and household stuff in a tipsy state for a while - then had a nice sleepover.

We have a birthday party to attend tomorrow night, church Sunday morning, and hopefully continued dance lessons Sunday night.  S is somewhat reticent because he has a lot of writing work on his plate, but I really want to keep up our dance progression.  I think it adds to the fun and romance of our relationship, which is vital.

Quick ttc check-in... I'm starting to wean myself off of the DHEA/Metformin and am pretty much throwing in the towel on my own eggs.  I'm not sure the grief around this has hit me yet, but I do feel we gave it some really good tries here at the end.  Last week, I talked to someone at CA Conceptions, and that program sounds promising on the donor embryo front.  Continuing to do research.  In the meanwhile, I'm taking action to get my large fibroid (and likely the smaller one too) outside my uterus removed.  I have a consult in two or three weeks with the same surgeon I met with previously and will hopefully get the surgery before Christmas.

I'll end with pictures of Zoey in yet another Halloween costume that didn't fit!  In the second picture, you can see she has a couple white bumps on her left eyebrow.  She's had them for a few days and I'm keeping an eye on them.  If they don't improve soon, I'll take her in to the vet.  Any idea what they might be?  I'm thinking either bug bites or a reaction to a poison oak-type plant.