What's on your night-stand?

My first tag! Wow! (now I sound like Kim Kardashian :) )

From Mandy-Leigh of Where is My Baby?

What's on your night-stand?

• A lamp for reading at night
• Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol (yes I know it is entirely fabricated but damn is it entertaining)
• Carved Wooden box from Mozambique containing
• Extra Soft tissues (we live in the fall-out zone of the Refinery so I sneeze at night)
• Elizabeth Arden's 8 Hour hand cream
• Make-up remover wipes (too lazy to do a proper wash so it is this or I sleep with the day's make-up on and wake up really scary in the moring with mascara making me look like a panda bear just not as cute)
• An engraved silver box from Mandy-Leigh which is so special to me that sometimes when I see it, it can change my day around. Feeling lost and lonely, here's proof that someone very far away that I haven't even met in real life cared about me enough to send it to me. Friends don't get better than that.

Thoughts on IVF next year

I’ve been hesitant about writing about our baby making issues and plans. Okay I know it has only been 5 days since I started with this blog but it is always on my mind every day. I battle to call it infertility as in my mind infertility is a medical problem that prevents a couple from conceiving naturally within usual time-lines or from successfully carrying a baby to term.

My husband deciding to have a vasectomy at 31 and then the two of us getting married 9 years with the full intention of having a child is not “infertility”; it is “struggling-to-have-a-baby-after-permanent-sterilization” or something like that. Doesn’t really roll off the tongue so easily does it?!

Most people suffering from infertility have been through round of round of increasingly invasive and expensive treatment before reaching the IVF stage. My second gyne appointment in my entire life was my scan before I started with my first IVF cycle. While I am very grateful to have skipped over the couple of agonizing years and uncertainty about diagnosis that infertile couples go through; I think I started the IVF rollercoaster with all my newbie enthusiasm and total belief that it would work and without any idea how much this all could hurt if it failed.

Before my first IVF I thought I would be disappointed if the cycle failed because of the time lost and the wasted money but these issues were maybe 5% of what I felt when the cycles did fail. Instead the loss of the embryo’s, although only 5 days old, that I loved for the possibility of all that they could become, was a huge sadness to me and then the fear that no treatment cycle would ever work set in.

At the moment the thought of doing an IVF next year is terrifying. It is this big ugly monster waiting for me next year. I know how it goes.

Step 1: Start stims all looking good
Step 2: ER all fabulous, ET still fine.
Step 3: 5 days into 2WW, starting going mad and start crying.
Step 4: Get negative blood test, cry for a week.
Step 5: Three to four months depression.
Step 6: Go back to gym, loose weight and slowly piece self back together in time for my next IVF cycle.
Step 7: Rinse and repeat as necessary

Forgive me if I am not exactly excited about getting on the IVF rollercoaster again...

Creativity vs Sleep

I think over time I have lost the mental correlation that me getting up each morning and sitting at my desk dealing with queries, completing month-end putting in controls and trying to lead my team actually earns me the money that magically appears in my bank account each month. I can’t see what any particular task is worth in terms of putting cash in my pocket.

I’ve been scrapbooking and making cards for friends for a couple of years but about three months ago I brought a few of my cards to work on the behest of a friend. That day I got a few orders to make greeting cards for special occasions and the next day a few more and suddenly I have price stickers, cellophane bags, a costing system, an order form, a website (tbc) and a class to teach card-making in 3 weeks time for 20 people! It is a very small undertaking, I’ve only sold about 200 cards in total but it has re-taught me the value of money.

I am definitely thinking differently about spending money because it can take me 1 hour (often late at night) to make a special card, deciding on a style and stamping the design, distressing the edges etc which would cost me maybe R 10 and I charge R 25 so I am effectively working for only R 15 an hour. If I buy lunch for R 45 at the Café downstairs that is 3 cards worth!

The other thing I have noticed since I have started making cards on order is that I am less tired. I used to go to bed at about 21h30 but now I need to be dragged from the Art room by Hub often around midnight. Maybe creatively stimulated minds need less sleep?

What is your hobby?

Not for sensitive stomachs, sensitive viewers or sensitive readers

Nothing quite says “Romantic Date Night” quite like dinner amongst v. scary Tableview teenagers and even scarier toddlers at a well known steak franchise and followed by your standard aliens invade Earth movie complete with alien flesh bursting from a once normal human arm (oh no now I’ve given part of the plot away) and guns that vaporize innocent bystanders… Good plan, yes?

It started with the S.alad V.alley OF DOOM (thunder crash and ominious music), I can’t even write about it without gagging. I served up a portion of what I though was brinjal due to the blackish, grey colour (more ominous music) and chickpeas and proceeded to my table. Hub and I were chatting and drinking so I was distracted by how bad the taste of the (apparently) brinjals was. After the third bite, the revolting taste actually made my head swim. It was then that I realized that the blackish grey blobs were not innocent brinjal but putrified potato and I had eaten it.

Half an hour into the brilliant but oh-so-disgusting District 9, when the hero starts throwing up after alien contamination, I took the hint and spent the next half hour in the bathroom. Came back for a further hour of dismemberment, the previously mentioned human vaporizing and general carnage.

Yup, I’m now in charge of choosing the restaurant and movie for all Romantic Date Nights in the future.

Stealth...

My prey was in my sights, not expecting a sneak attack...

I stealthily leopard crawled up to this sleepy Cape Cormorant for about 15 minutes before I realised he was tame enough for me to sit down next to him on the bench with him. Duh!

I have arrived in Blogland

I have been toying with having a blog for a while now and decided against it because I don't want the pressure of trying to be intelligent or funny or even vaguely interesting, but today I saw the Create blog button and pressed it and without further thought; here I am!

At the moment I want to keep this blog fairly private so I'll just send the adress out (oops if I can remember exactly what it is again) to a couple of people who write blogs that I enjoy.

So let's see where this goes...

My blog posts are likely to be random, erratic and conflicting and I will promise only one thing, honesty.

Thanks for joining my journey to wherever it takes me.