As always I don't want to write all that much but I feel also somehow compelled as I haven't been able to do it in days.

It seems like such a simple thing, to sit and write, but it becomes complicated because I simply cannot do it with Penny around because she likes to chat in a casual way, giving me her thoughts as they pop into her head, and for me to be present on the page and trying to write something while simultaneously listening to her tell me a story she has told me five times already, or at least some variant of a story (her latest technique to tell me a story that I've heard a million times is to frame it as "I was telling Maria..." which is a sneaky way to embed information I already have into a new context and force me to pay attention to it.

Example: I was telling Maria about how fat my sister in law is.

The story I already know. Penny's sister in law has been gaining weight. Penny hates her – I dislike her but don't know her well enough to hate her. Penny is gleeful about the weight gain. I think it's funny but I am not as invested in revenge gossip as Penny is, particularly in this case. At the end of the day I recognize the interest and drama but despise the repetition. Penny seems to rejoice in it – familiar stories and themes about people in her life, repeated until death.

So I know the SIL is gaining weight and Penny knows I know, but since Maria, the caretaker for Penny's mom with Alzheimer's, does not know everything, Penny can discuss these facts with Maria and then present a brand new story to me: the story of her and Maria throwing shade on the sister in law.

It is a wrapper around an existing script to my brain, though. The existing script is already present. It contains execution details, variable definitions. The wrapper script calls the existing script. There is virtually nothing new to talk about other than Maria's reaction. Penny will gush over these things.

I didn't meant to talk about this but on the other hand of course I did because it's trivial and banal and that's a lot of what goes on in my head as I work through the course of the day – the small battles during the day, battles with Penny for my own attention, battles with myself where I wonder how much I really need to give to her and how much I can reserve for myself. Is my life really entirely hers? Is it healthy for me to feel this degree of tethering with my spouse? I don't need to be around her all the time and there are often activities I simply would like to engage in, with her not around.

Anyway I can't really think about this any longer. I have to get the dog up. Shelley needs to be dropped off at day care at 8 AM and it's seven fifteen so that gives me about half an hour to run through the morning routine with her – pee poo walk eat. I will feed her a little extra. Penny will worry about her. I will not. I will say things like it is good for Shelley to be socialized and have to sleep somewhere else at night once in a while. She is safe and in good hands. The girls there love her. And we will need the night off.

We're headed to Albany after that to do another Embryo transfer. We had three fertilized eggs left after the Albania debacle. We're just going to run through them. I dread it every fucking step of the way, I am beyond sick of it all. Happy, I guess, to have the child. But upset about the time and money and most of all the feeling that I have been trapped into IVF against my will at this point and it's half of what Penny focuses on and it's such a mix of terrible emotional labor as I support all the crap going on in Penny's head plus logistical shit like stabbing her in the ass with needles full of meds on the regular plus money because these transfers cost six thousand bucks a pop and we just absolutely cannot afford this and yet the money disappears from my checking account and goes to these medical companies again and again and again and on top of it all I feel obligated to tell Penny that I'm hopeful, that I want this, that it'll be okay this time.

When what I really want to say is: This isn't working. It hasn't worked in four fucking years. No more. No transfers, no donor egg, no surrogate investigations upcoming, nothing. This needs to stop. We must be 120K in the hole at this point, failure the whole way. No more. Uncle.

But I know how bad Penny wants the kid. And I'd be lying if I said I didn't think part of the motivation was to show the fucking world something. Show her dumb sister in law that she did it, she's fertile, she's popping one out, and it's time for everyone to give her the congratulations and kudos about the new child that she, Penny, has had so many times to give to others in her life.

I think Penny thinks there will be some kind of catharsis in this act.

I do not. I think nobody will really care. I think they will say congratulations the way that I do to other people who announce they are having children, and then they will instantly move back thinking about their own lives, goals, and troubles.