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.      

Running on empty

So, we bought another car. Note I did not say we bought a "new" car, since new it most definitely is not. Kind of the opposite. In fact, in car years, it's more toward the geriatic end of the spectrum.  Perhaps a slightly odd choice, all things considered, but the price of a newer model was pretty much out of the question and despite the age and slightly funny smell in the interior, it ticked a lot of boxes.

E was a bit worried though, about the fact that the car has a gajillion miles on it, so before buying, he very prudently arranged for an RAC inspection (sort of like the equivalent of the AAA, for those of you Stateside). This was not cheap, but the report included a road test, and carried with something of a peace of mind factor, considering we ourselves had not driven the thing.  (Why hadn't we driven it, you ask?  Well, because the seller of the vehicle in question was over 50 miles away, and being without transport, it wasn't exactly trivial to just pop over there to take it for a spin.)

The report came back with all sorts of ominous mutterings about a few things, but all fixable and nothing we couldn't live with. And apparently the car ran well "despite the high mileage".  Ack. With a bit more fretting and teeth gnashing, E. decided to go ahead and buy the damn thing. So we schlepped ourselves over there (a bus, a train, another train and a taxi ride), me with one of those passport holder things around my neck carrying a ridiculous amount of cash from the sale of our car. I guess I looked less muggable than E.

Blahblahblah a bit of tyre kicking later and some paperwork, off we drove in our "new-to-us" car. We ran a few errands, stopped off en route to see a couple people, and then hit the motor way.

Ten miles out of town, the fuel gauge plummted abruptly into the red, lights began blinking on the dash board, a claxon sounded somewhere in the distance. The car juddered, its eyes rolling up in to the back of its metal head, and then it died. Fortunately, E. had promptly heeded by screams to pull! the! fuck! over! immediately and we slid to a tidy stop on the hard shoulder.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to convince the company with whom you purchased roadside assistance breakdown cover a mere two hours earlier that day that said breakdown cover is actually in place, valid and pleeeease send somebody out right way?  Well, I can tell you.  It's tricky.  Involves a lot of shouting down the phone to a call centre in India.

The rest of story is too boring to go into- a long spell sitting by the motor way playing "I Spy" with E. and getting zapped by stinging nettles, the tedium of waiting for the car to be ratcheted up onto the tow truck, the attempt to solve the problem at a roadside service station, by simply putting some fuel in, the apparent failure of that solution, the endless telephone calls back to the guy who sold it to us trying to figure out what to do, the towing all the way back home, only to discover that when it was taken down off the tow, it started up and was absolutely fine. Fuel gauge is a bit fucked, it seems, and what happened is we simply...ran out of gas.

So that's the car story. E. remarked on how calm I seemed about the whole thing, and indeed, I was. I'm not saying that doing IVF turns you into some sort of stalwart soldier for every other life crisis, but it certainly does teach you that if you can get through that, something like running out of gas actually is not such a big deal. Even if you don't know that is what happened, and instead are faced with the prospect that you have just forked over silly amounts of money for a lemon.  An old lemon.

Oh, and speaking of IVF, E. says he is willing to now try it again, maybe in the autumn. I on the other hand, am not so keen to wake the sleeping dragon- for a whole lot of complicated reasons, which I may or may not be able to even articulate.  But watch this space.   

The Hours

Well, hellloooo. I've been busy, busy, busy.  How much would I love a long break like the Moussester- the thought of a whole month off work sounds absolutely glorious. You know, I always marvel at the people who win vast sums of money in the lottery, and then announce they are still going to work every day at their old job as a butcher, cleaning lady, traffic warden, etc.   Because otherwise, they might get bored!  To which I say, puhleeeze.  That is so not my way of thinking.  If I won enough to live on, there is no way I would keep working; indeed, I would be out of there so fast it would make my employer's head spin.  There would be a little puff of smoke where my fat office ass used to be and the next time anybody saw me, I would be enjoying the largesse of my winnings in an appropriate style.

Speaking of working, one of the reasons I have been so busy is that I was toying with the idea of working a slightly different pattern.  Where I work, there's a reasonable amount of flexibility for employees to tailor their own hours, to the extent that it is allowable to work the normal contracted hours in a four day week.  What this means of course is that you have four verrrrrry long days and then an extra day off per week.

I thought this sounded rather appealing; with a four day week, I could devote the time out of the office doing enjoyable, life expanding activities.  Writing my novel, for example, which continues to wither under the brunt of the full time employment elsewhere. And the beauty of it would be I would continue to earn the same amount of money and get the same amount of holidays.  A win-win all around.

However, enticing as it may appear, I knew that not that many people actually attempt this.  And this week I discovered why. You see, rather sagely, I decided it might be a good idea to do a little informal experiment before I actually undertook to sign up for this working pattern.  So for the last two weeks or so, I have tried to complete the hours that would be required to compress my work week into four days.

And I failed dismally!  I couldn't do it at all. For starters, I can never manage to get in early enough to get the appropriate jump on the day, and then inevitably there would be a reason why I needed to leave in the evening before compensating for the relatively late start. Plus, by the time I would actually get home, I'd be so tired that absolutely nothing else would get done- no laundry, no cleaning, no paying of bills, and of course, no blogging- thus all of that would need to be crammed into the spare spaces of the extra day. Leaving no time for the all the other ambitious stuff I wanted to do.

Well, duh, some of you might be saying. No doubt that would seem obvious from the outset. I guess I overestimated my energy levels, which wane and wane and wane as I get older. Still, having completed my little experiment, I can knowingly scratch that off the options list as a way forward- and there is something so satisfying about making the informed choice, isn't there? 

Now, where did I put that lottery ticket?

Behold the randomness

So, it appears I've been tagged by Karen. I usually miss out on these games, either because nobody tags me or because I somehow miss the post that designates me as "it". But when the Ovary comes a-taggin', ya gotta play. 

Therefore, I bring you six random/weird things about me, such as they are. 

1. I have deformed toenails on my pinkie toes. Instead of a normal, smooth toenail, I have little gnarled husks, which tend to grow into a lethally pointy formation, unless monitored and regularly pruned.  It's always been this way- it appears I inherited this charming physical feature from my mother; who in turn inherited it from her father.  I used to be slightly freaked out about wearing open-toed shoes, in case the sight of my shriveled toenails repulsed people.  But then I came across a really cute, covetable pair of sandals and decided the world would cope.  With nail polish, it's just about bearable. Only just.

2.  I really like ironing.  I find it soothing.  My mother used to do the family ironing in front of the TV, watching the soaps.  I remember how when I would be home from school with a bad cold, there was nothing more comforting than lying on the sofa, watching her iron, with the smell of freshly ironed shirts and the opening bars of All My Children in the background.

3.  I am related to a rather well-known film director.  Well, not like Spielberg-league famous, but in the sense of the big budget and the mainstream. Chances are you'll have seen one of his films.  I've tried to work out the exact term to define the extent of our consanguinity but the simplest way to sum it up is that his grandfather and my grandfather were first cousins.  Which makes us...uh, dunno. In any event, his parents were very kind to me when I lived in Los Angeles and invited me around to the set a couple of times to see things. Until I moved away, that is, and I don't think the old "our grandfathers were cousins" wheeze is going to get me invited to any premieres. 

4.  Prior to IVF, I had only been in the hospital twice in my life. The first time was when I was eight years old. I was swinging like a monkey between the sinks in the girls' bathroom in my elementary/primary school, treating the basins like paralell bars. Budding gymnast and all that.  Somehow or other another girl (whose name I do remember- how could I not after this?) thought it would be funny to grab my feet as I swung them up. And she did, and she stumbled backwards. My hands slipped right out from under me, off the sink; the next thing I remember was lying on my back on the tiled bathroom floor.  I may or may not have hit my head on the basin on the way down.

I was actually sent me back to math class, until it became apparent from my vomiting and passing out at my desk that I had, in fact, concussed myself.  My mother drove me to the hospital chanting, "Stay awake, stay awake" as I drifted off in the back seat.  The hospital kept me in overnight, and because I was such a good girl when they took blood, my mother let me get my ears pierced.  Hurrah!  A happy ending.

The second time in the hospital was the bee sting thing, but I've already told that story.

5.  Speaking of piercing, my belly button is.  Pierced, that is. I did it about ten years ago, and even though I never wear earrings any more, I still have a belly bar.

6. I am allergic to horses.

Fortune favours the brave

There's a TV programme here in the UK by the name of Relocation Relocation. The format is simple- the presenters, Kirstie and Phil, work as estate agent/realtors to help people in their quest find new homes. The twist (if you can even call it that) is that for the people in question (invariably a couple, or perhaps a mother and daughter), the relocation usually represents a full-on lifestyle change.

So for example: Sally and Bob live in Swindon. Bob is a marketing executive and Sally runs a business from home. Tired of the rat-race, they want to sell their current property, a nasty four bedroom bungalow, and purchase an old barn to convert in the south of France, which they will then run as a B&B. Ideally, the barn should come with acreage, so they can keep bees and chickens, plus grow all their own vegetables. Of course, not wanting to cut all ties with jolly old England, they will also keep a small flat in Devon so they can still be near Bob's parents. With the sale of the Swindon house, they have a budget of three hundred and fifty thousand pounds to achieve their goal.

Go, Kirstie! Go, Phil! Make that dream a reality!

What I like about the show is that the lifestyle changes are occasionally wacky enough to entail traipsing around a large number of interesting properties. The south of France features fairly often and I enjoy choking into my gin and tonic at what you can get for your money there, as opposed to here. Kirstie usually wears some fetching ensembles- in particular, she has this blue coat with very large buttons, of which I have become quite fond. Lastly, things don't always go to plan for the intrepid couples, so it's not uncommon for the show to end without a happy resolution. To my mind, that is good reality TV.

What I find myself wondering lately is how is people actually manage to make all these major, life-changing decisions; some of which involve a fair amount of upheaval and financial risk. Whereas when I look at myself and E., I see a couple who are hamstrung by an apparent inability to decide anything. Sure, we talk a lot about grand schemes to do things: move back to America, build a house in the country, run away and join the circus- but when the talking is done, we don't seem to be any further forward. After all that, it was just talk.

What does it take to make the big moves? To take the big risks? Is it courage? Is it desperation? Is it idealistic naive wishful thinking? Or a bit of all of the above?

Personally, I feel as if I have completely lost my nerve when it comes to going out on the proverbial limb. Which is why I am all about the small steps- one little decision, one tiny move at a time. But eventually, if things are really going to change, there will need to be a large leap.

And the prospect is scary- so much so that lately, I find myself scuttling back to the sofa with the TV channel clicker in my hand. Marveling at those who seem so much braver than I. Of course, they do have help- and some very large buttons- to accompany them on their way. But where did they get up the gumption in the first place- and how do I find some of that resolve to call my own?

Under the overpass

Here's something you don't yet know about me:

When I was nineteen years old, I cycled across the United States. As in, I rode my bicycle from Florida to California. Three months and over 3,000 miles.

Crazy, huh? People always ask what possessed me, and there is no good answer. I was bored and restless in college and wanted some time off to figure out my life. Oh, and there was, uh, a guy. Sometimes it seems like there was always a guy behind my stranger decisions.

Anyway, the story of that trip deserves to be told another time. Suffice to say it was a long, hard journey, but one full of interesting encounters and eye-opening revelations. By the time we reached the Pacific ocean, I had thigh muscles like tree trunks. And the guy in question turned out to be something of an anal-retentive fuckwit. He used to yell at me for not tying the knots on the panniers tight enough, and he would never let me put the tent up in case I somehow damaged one of the itty bitty poles or heaven forfend, got dirt on it. Even though we were camping! Sleeping on the ground! Ground means dirt! Let's just say more than one journey ended when we got to California.

But I digress. I was thinking about that trip today for a different reason. You see, no matter which state we were in, there were lots of long dull stretches of road where nothing much happened. In Florida there was lots of flat farm land, and orange trees. In Texas there was lots of flat scrub brush and cows. And day after day, we'd ride the white line, with the wind blasting in our faces. Everyone knows that the wind blows out of the west, and we were heading right into it. As far as journey planning goes, not one of my cleverer moves.

Some days we'd pass through little towns in the middle of nowhere- so dry and remote, so down in the mouth that I would shudder. The houses had crumbling porches and needed paint. There were rusted- out cars in the front lawn. The only shop seemed to be a 7-11 or a withered Dairy Queen. Some nights we ended up stopping in those towns because we could find nowhere else to camp, but if at all possible we would press through until we could find a less depressing prospect.

Invariably after one of these small town interludes, I would turn to Mr "Don't Get My Tent Dirty" and say, "I never want to end up in a place like this."

And he would roll his eyes, before pedalling off at top speed, miles ahead of me. Leaving me to wonder if perhaps there were any axe murderers lurking in the shrubbery by the side of the road. Actually, there weren't- although there was this one town on the Florida-Alabama border where a disconcerting proportion of inhabitants appeared to be lacking limbs.

Eventually, I became slightly obsessed with worry that the trip would never end, and I would find myself living in a lopsided shingle house beneath an overpass, in the kind of place where people like me pass through going "Who the hell lives here?" What was really odd is that when we finished the bike trip, I flew back to the east coast; whereupon I promptly got a job in California and two weeks later drove back across the entire country. So I got to experience some of those same charming landscapes twice.

The irony is that it seems like despite my best efforts, I've ended up under the overpass anyway. I don't mean in the literal sense, obviously. But in my head, I feel as if I've arrived at a dry, desolate place- stranded on the way to somewhere else- and I can't get out. It's exactly the place I didn't want to be, and here I am anyway. And there's not even a fucking Dairy Queen.

Still, I have hope. I believe that if every day I climb on my bike, and pedal as hard as I can, one day the dusty plains will eventually be behind me. That I will see the ocean again. And that I will get there with all my limbs, and my sanity, intact.

But right now it's just wind in my face, mile after mile of white lines, and barrenness punctuated by sadness.

Little earthquakes

Oh dear, has it been over a week already? Erm, yes, it would appear so. Time flies when nothing much is happening.

Really, I have had the most awful case of blogger's block- I would attribute a lot of that to the fact that my mind is a-whirra-whirring away with a great many other things. What I realised the other day is that there simply has to be some sort of shift from the status quo, in a fairly grand seismic sense. Because I don't think I can plan on plodding on like this for the next 35 years or so, or to whenever it is "they" deem I can retire.

What I have been pondering muchly of late is the possibilities that are open to me. I'm trying to move on from the big shock of watching the Big Plan A crumbling under my feet. So. If children aren't necessarily going to happen, what else is there? What a question. In the last few weeks, I have contemplated everything from the sublime to the ridiculous. I'll open a bakery! I'll start up some weird religious sect! I'll take a year off work and travel! I'll move to London! I'll move to New York! I'll stay where I am...oh, wait, we decided that last one wasn't working out so well.

Anyway, to cut a long, navel-gazing story short, I've now come up with a rather interesting plan. It has all the elements I so delight in- it's just wacky enough to make me stop in my tracks and think Whoooah! It's dauntingly challenging, but it's also realistically do-able, if I put my mind to it. It would be something that takes place over the medium to long term (since I am generally not one for the spur of the moment decision-making). It would, I hope, open up a lot of possibilities either for me on my own, if it comes to that, or for us (that being E. and I). A pleasing kind of ripple of effect, if you will.

And now you are all going to roll your eyes, moan, and then hate me, because I can't tell you what it is. Wait! Stop! Ouch! I'm not being deliberately coy, I'm not. Stop hitting me with that pillow. Were to I to divulge the details of this idea, then I would have to reveal rather more than I care to share about my professional life. But let's just say it involves my career. It's a notion I had on the backburner for a long time, but always shelved until now, primarily because I had thought any minute now I would get pregnant and then I would be too busy with kids to do it. Well, we all know how that one turned out. Therefore, in light of recent events, I am shuffling the pots around on the stove and turning up the gas.

The best thing is that suddenly, I feel better than I have in a long, long time about what could be out there for me. If I go through with it, I know there will be moments when I want to stick my finger in the light socket, but I figure an occasional burst to the nerve endings is no bad thing. At least that way, I'll know I'm still alive and feeling something.

South

Having gotten done with all that fanfare about yon bloggie changes, I suddenly don't know what to write about. Go figure. Is it stage fright? Or akin to going out wearing a bright yellow polka dotted top, instead of my usual somber gray? Or, even more likely, is it the fact that the avalanche at work continues unabated, and most of my spare moments are spent lashing on the crampons and trying to chip an airhole with my ice axe?

Yes. That last one.

Some of you asked about the new picture. That suggests to me it translates less well in a small photo, as opposed to, say, its other role as my screensaver. It's actually a large compass in a glass case, reflecting the ssky and the mast of certain ship . That being the RSS Discovery, Scott's ship, now docked in bonnie Dundee, Scotland.

I suppose the photo is part of a theme for having the instruments you need to get where you are going, but not being quite able to see yet. Almost there, but somewhat obscured. Er, perhaps the theme itself is too obscured for its own good, if I am having to do all this explaining.

In case you haven't noticed from my liberal sprinkling of icy analogies over the last couple years, I am fond of all things polar. And Robert Falcon Scott of the Antarctic and his band of merry men (most notably, the redoubtable Captain Oates) have a special place in my heart. Their tale is the absolute epitome of "close, but no cigar". Beaten to the South Pole by a rival expedition by only one month, and dying on the return trip, due to adverse weather and a refusal to ditch their load of heavy rock samples. Every time I read about their adventures and their sad end, I want to shout, "Oh, for heavens' sake! Drop the damn rocks, willya?!" As if it could somehow still turn out differently.

Funny thing is how much the expedition's untimely end became a stirring example of all that was fine, noble and stiff upper-lippy. Lots of people nodding their heads, remarking, "Oh, I say. A glorious effort in a glorious age. Jolly good show." Whereas nowadays many of us would be muttering, "Freaks!" under our breath, or possibly turning the escapade into a bestselling book about the lunacy of man, a la Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild.

Sometimes at night, when I can't sleep and when I tire of reading blogs, I check in at the South Pole. Of course, soon it will be that time of year when it gets very, very dark and cold there, and then there's not much to see. But that has a certain appeal as well- and somehow it always cheers me up to think of places more desolate than here. Desolate, but with a savage, windswept beauty.