Barren Mare

Caninaternity

Oooh, guess what!. At long last, after all these years of yearning, it looks as if we may finally, finally, finally be...getting a puppy!  Hooray!  What could be nicer?  Well, a positive pregnancy test, obviously, but that looks as if it is not to be any time soon. So I am embracing joyful, four-footed, furry alternatives.  With! lots! of! exclamation! marks!

Of course, nothing is ever simple for us , including getting the dog I want. A couple of years ago I fell in love with a rare breed of dog, which I discovered upon reading an article in a magazine by one of my favourite authors.  By the time I turned the page, I thought, "this is the dog for me."  Smart, happy in the city or country, adaptable, good with kids, adorably cute in appearance and deliciously toaster-sized.

Once I set my heart on the dog of my dreams, I found out there was really only one breeder in the UK, and she lives way the hell down the other end of the country.  So it wasn't a case of just popping over to drool over the little puppies, and oops! accidentally take one home.  In fact, I had never actually managed to see of these particular pooches in the flesh until quite recently. I was pretty sure I would like it when I saw it, but it did seem like a big commitment for an animal I knew very little about. 

"We could get a different type of dog," E. would tentatively suggest.  And I would roll my eyes.

"I've compromised on a lot of things. I've missed out on a lot of things. I've had to live with having certain choices taken away from me. So I'll be goddamned if I'm going to settle for anything less in terms of the dog I want, " I would say, while doodling possible doggie names on a notepad by the computer. 

Ultimately, the timing was just all wrong. Like just about everything else, we ended up putting it off: until we lived in the same city, until we had dealt with the fertility issues, until our relationship got back on the rails. It seemed like just too much to take on, with too much uncertainty in the mix. And so I contented myself with yearning for furry friendship from afar, occasionally googling things like "dogwalkers" and "pet passports" from time to time.  I waited. And I watched as proud owners posted pictures on their websites of their prize-winning puppies, dogs from the litters I was forced to pass up.

After awhile it started to feel all too familar, and not in a particularly good way.  So I stopped looking. Puppy hopes were consigned to gigantic crate of limbo, along with so many other things.

But now it seems the time may have come! And! I! am! jubliant!

In the last couple years, the breed has slowly started catching on here, and there are more puppies available. It looks as if I still may have to trek halfway across Great Britain to pick the little guy up, but I think we can probably live with that. I spoke to another breeder earlier in the week; her puppies are only a couple weeks old, and don't even have their eyes open, so we're in a for a little bit of a wait before we are ready to bring Dog O'Mare home. But that's OK- by the time they are ready, we should be a bit more organised for puppy parenting.  In the meantime she's going to post weekly updates on her site and we'll talk regularly.

Did I mention this is very exciting for me?  The only thing I haven't quite figured out is how we're going to manage the initial housebreaking stage.  I imagine I will do a fair bit of sprinting home from my nearby office to let the little guy out regularly but I am guessing we may need to enlist some professional help.  Ideally, I would take a caninternity leave from work for a few weeks to cover it but I'm not sure I'll have enough leave entitlement by then.  If I were having a baby I would of course receive a generous paid statutory maternity leave, but unfortunately that's not transferrable to, say, looking after a puppy.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, a dog is not a baby.  But my heart still rejoices at the prospect of something on which to lavish love and attention.  I draw the line at dressing up the critter in silly outfits though.

Except maybe that little hat I was knitting...

Oh, and lastly and on a totally unconnected note: the powerball. What is it for, you ask? No, it's not a pervy "toy", you cheeky monkeys. It's used to strengthen and tone the arms & wrists; we're going sailing again this summer, and I want to be prepared for all that winching action.  It's also helluvah fun to play with, and makes a pleasing whirra-whirra noise.      

Rarer than hen's teeth

Excuse me while I clear my throat and join the national caterwauling about the bizarrely warm weather we are having here in the UK.  Most of bonny Caledonia has been bathed in sunshine and yes, even heat as well. I know hearing about a few random days where the mercury exceeds 75 degrees must be intensely boring for people from places like Gary, Texas where, at the time of this writing, it is a sizzling 100.4.  But really, anything resembling a heatwave in this country is such a rarity that I cannot let it pass unremarked upon.

In my office, people are showing up for work in the most extraordinary outfits. Most of us don't have anything resembling a proper summer wardrobe, you see- apart from the sorts of things you might take on holiday. So improvisation is the name of the game, and as a result there are slightly odd items creeping into the attire here and there- rather saucy colored tank tops, unusual casual-ish sandals and a frightening amount of pale Scottish flesh.  Everyone sits around fanning themselves with expressions of dazed lassitude, commenting at regular intervals to anyone within earshot that "it's boiling".  Boiling out there!  Boiling!  You half expect the women to start toppling over like wilted flowers, calling for their stays to be loosened.

To be fair, it is quite warm by Scottish standards.  Air conditioning is not standard, so it does get rather stuffy inside. The other night I sweltered even with the window open, driving me out of the bedroom at midnight to the relative comfort of a better ventilated living room.  I fell asleep and woke up at 3am with a sweaty cheek stuck to the leather sofa. Wandering back to my bed, I found E. lying spread-eagled across only a fitted sheet, having kicked off all the remaining bedcovers in the night.  Staggering into work, I discovered my colleagues were similarly hollow-eyed from a heat-induced lack of sleep.

"Boiling last night!  Boiling, I tell you!" we muttered to each other, before universally agreeing that we should all be sent home when the temperature exceeds 70 farenheit. Not to worry, a freakishly chilly sea mist or possibly even a thunderstorm is no doubt right around the corner, at which point normal service can be resumed; that is, we can all go back to moaning about the cold and wet. 

In other news, I have purchased one of these.  One of the finest gadgets ever; extremely addictive.  I don't quite know how I have lived all these years without one.         

On Holiday by Mistake

I meant to post something in the brief few days between my parents' departure and my leaving on holiday, but I ran out of time. Yes, you read that correctly, I was on holiday. Again. Now, lest you start rolling your eyes and muttering under your breath about how often I seem to disappear off on these little jollies, let me remind you that my allotted vacation days add up to something like seven weeks in total, and to use all that up every year is hard work. Takes a dedicated, methodical approach.

We decided that it was our civic duty (not to mention environmentally sounder) to opt to spend at least one holiday in Scotland. Support the home team and all that. We've done this in the past, and- at the risk of sounding negative- invariably regretted it somewhat. Let's be frank- taking a trip in this country tends to mean indifferent food, rip-off prices, poor service and crap weather.

And I regret to report that this time was no exception; all of those elements were present.

I suppose, given the spectacular countryside much of the aforementioned craptitude could be overlooked, had the weather not been so appalling. We left home in relatively balmy temperatures. Then, as we drove further north, (our destination being island off the west coast rhyming with, er, "rye"), the clouds rolled in. The sky turned dark. The thermometer plummeted to 55 degrees.

To our teeth-gritting annoyance, whenever we turned on the radio or the TV, the announcers were gibbering on endlessly about the heatwave in London. Temperatures in the high 80s! Pensioners collapsing from heat exhaustion! Photos of carefree families frolicking happily on the sun dazzled beaches!

Meanwhile, we reached, er, the place that rhymes with "lye", and found ourselves in a slightly damp rented cottage. Cue endless hot baths to try to stay warm, as a roaring wind blew the rain at 90 degree angles across the front of the house. There was a fine view of the sea from the living room window- or at least there would have been, had the hills not been completely shrouded in low hanging mist.

"But it's Julllllly," I moaned to E. as I scrabbled in my suitcase for a wooly hat and long underwear. (I packed on prior knowledge of what to expect). "We should be strolling hand in hand down some sunny promenade, sipping cooling fizzy drinks in a sidewalk cafe, basking like sandsharks in the warm waters."

E., who had optimistically packed the bikes, his fishing rod and his hiking boots, stared grimly out the window.

"We've gone on holiday by mistake," he muttered a la Withnail & I.

We stayed in and watched England get knocked out of the World Cup; later that evening, as a change of scene for the Brazil game, we decided to make our way down to the local pub. It was set back from the road in a pleasing little dell surrounded by trees, lights glimmering appealingly in the rain-sloshed gloom. But as soon as we walked in, we realised our mistake. The place was filled entirely with sullen English people, and the atmosphere varied between mildly unwelcoming to slightly hostile, overladen with a veneer of funeral gloom. Oops.

Unfortunately, this was to be a recurring theme throughout the rest of our stay on the island. For example, we tried to book a table for our anniversary dinner at a nice-ish recommended restaurant. "If you can find a table, you can order," grunted the owner, waving his hand dismissively in the direction of the bar, slapping the change for our drinks into E.'s hand in an unfriendly fashion.

I tried to order the fish special- nope, off the menu. Turns out this was to be the first of many things unavailable at various venues throughout the week. No giant chocolate chip cookies as advertised. No, there's no ice cream for a milkshake. No, sorry, we're out of the Moroccan lamb stew. No, the library is closed all day on Tuesdays, you can't book a computer to check your email. No, actually, we haven't had internet access available for two years- we really must get around to updating that leaflet sometime. No, we don't have the recommended walking guide book in stock, maybe check in the town 25 miles down the road- they might have it. Or not.

Complaints aside, the island did nevertheless work its slow magic on us over the next few days. It stopped raining, and the sun came out. We played a round of comedy golf on a funny little course. We walked to a white beach, waters as clear as the Mediterrean. E. caught dozens of mackerel skimming just off the surface in silvery schools. We looked through the binoculars at seals frolicking offshore. We hiked up an eery hill, the cloud suddenly rolling in over the sea, whispering the names of the strange stone formations; the Needle, the Prison, the Table. We walked an isolated peninsula, through the crumbled remains of a village lost to the Clearances, inexplicable patches of daffodils growing around the old stone walls.

Then the weather turned crap again and we came home.

So, now you know where I have been. I should perhaps mention, one slightly odd thing happened. You see, we spent a lot of time in the car, both driving for hours to get to the island and then once there driving around to the various parts (which are otherwise quite inaccessible, not being terriblly well served by public transport). And for the first time ever in the whole of the history of my relationship with E., I got a strange sensation that something, or more specifically, someone was missing. The backseat looked so empty. I found myself imagining, repeatedly, a little person in the back- a baby, a child.

I say it's odd, because in the whole of the saga of trying to have a family, I've never ever really pictured it so vividly before. Never really pictured it all, actually. And now that I have done so, I'm suddenly finding it hard to stop.

Consider me worried and intrigued in equal measures.