Does anything ever pan out as planned?

When I started writing posts for my blog again this year, I envisaged that I would:

• say a little bit about IVF before I forget it all;
  
• completely bore the pants off you all about my experience of being pregnant;
  
• share my attempts at making clothes for the first time in my life using a bunch of maternity patterns that I picked up at my local Fabric Hell; and
  
• fill my blog with nice pictures of the things that I am making for my niece and for Spud. Or at least, trying to make.

I am not doing very well, am I?!

The truth is that we have been run off our feet with Everything Else and I've barely got to my studio, let alone sat down at my PC to write blog posts or sat down at my sewing machine to sew.

The maternity patterns are sitting with a length of fabric in an untouched pile at my studio. Time issue aside, I emailed Roo recently and confessed that my bust and my tummy expanded faster than I could overcome my fear of opening the pattern packets. Now, with only 2.5 months left of my pregnancy, I do not really see any point in making clothes that I will probably never get to wear again. So if anyone would like a set of this year's maternity sewing patterns, let me know and I'll pass them along!

My knitting bag containing a couple of baby projects is languishing next to the sofa and my baby sewing projects are strewn across my studio. Their progress frozen in time to the day that my MIL died. Today, I am supposed to be at the studio working on completing a present for my neice as I need to get it into the post to the UK while my sister is there (visiting from India) but I am taking time out to do this blog post. You know how it is - steal time from one activity to do another?

Instead, I have:

• attended to my MIL's funeral arrangements to save the Fella and his brother the upset of doing it;
  
• assisted a lot with the sort out, clean up and necessary cataloguing (of her house and its contents) identifying what things to keep, go to auctioneers or off to charity. Including taking proper photographs of all significant pieces (general view, artistic detail and any maker's marks).
  
  At this point, I should tell you that each and every room in her house is/was clogged, waist deep or higher, in belongings. So it hasn't been a small task and it is nowhere near complete yet.
  
  My MIL was not a hoarder in the current, reality tv sense, she had just worked in the collectibles business for the past 30 years. She collected things as stock and laid them down like wine in her house to accummulate in value. The problem is that she collected an awful lot of different things, individually none of the items were of any significant value and she had no coherent storage system. So it's been a shell game of moving things from one room to another, putting the same category of things together and then trying to work out what on earth to do with them all.
  
  This spate of activity at her house over the past month or two has led me to review my own belongings quite carefully. I recommend that you do too.
  
  Ask yourselves, is there anything that you own that you really would not feel comfortable with someone else going through after you die? Please consider that this person might be someone you love. Or else, it might be someone that you are not all that close to at all. I am not sure which would be worse?
  
  Since my MIL died, the Fella and I have each thrown out about 5 bin liners of clothes. In particular, I have been through my underwear and sock drawer and thrown out every last pair of old faithfuls in anything less than 100% perfect condition;
  
• liaised with the designer and the builder who were supposed to be renovating the basement of our house this summer to create two new bedrooms and a bathroom - one for us and one for Spud - allowing us to turn our existing bedroom into a home office on the main floor of our house;
  
• bitten down my deep disappointment when it became clear that Canadian builders are of a different yet similiar ilk to builders in the UK.
  
  Although we started this project back in March, were reassured that the basement part of the project could be done (just) in time for the arrival of our baby and threw out or put into storage all of the things in the basement in April so that the builder could start whenever the designer was ready, we still do not yet have the city permits that we need to start work. (Courtesy of the designer taking 6 months to come up with a new basement floorplan and a new garage floorplan, most of which I did myself in the end because his design was unusable...would you put a baby-toddler bedroom on the opposite side of the house from its parents and make sure that its route to the bathroom was a night time trauma creating assault course down a long hallway, around a corner and through a laundry room? No? Me either.)
  
  On top of this, the builder has confessed that he now has no time or resources to start our basement project properly until May/June 2012. So there will be no renovation this year, meaning no bedroom for the 1st year or so of Spud's life. I realise that Spud will be in our room for the first 6 months or so anyway. But still, it's disappointing.
  
  In the meantime, the builder does have time and resources to work on our new garage. So we might have that done by.....Christmas? The only good that has come out of this delay is that the emptied home office in the basement can become a temporary guest room over the winter for members of my family who may want to come over to visit Spud. So we plan to paint it white and put a sofabed, bed, garment rail and a chest of drawers (dresser) in there before the baby is born. Next summer the furniture will be dumped, the room will be demolished and stripped back to the studs. It's an idiotic situation but there it is.
  
• ordering some essential baby things - stroller (buggy), car seat and a crib (cot) that will work in a house with no nursery. We have the stroller but the car seat and crib are both pending. The ETA is 8-10 weeks, which is might be cutting it a bit fine. If the worse comes to the worst, I can bring Spud home in a taxi (no car seat needed for that I don't think) and the stroller has a basinette for Spud to sleep in at the start. Ikea seems to have run out of the Gulliver baby changing table that we like - it doesn't seem to be in stock anywhere on the West Coast of Canada and our local store have no idea when they will get it back in. So I am stalking their website weekly to see if we will be in luck. After all, I have 2.5 months and I can always change the baby on the dining room table if I have to.

I think that this just about summarises where I am?

Once I have my niece's present out of the way, I am hoping to settle down and work on some projects for Spud. So I hope to have some baby projects to show and tell in the near future.

I picked up a couple of baby clothes and accessory sewing books that look quite promising and might be a gentler route into working with patterns than maternity wear? Just on the basis that if things I make fall off my baby through my complete ineptitude, it might be less embarrassing than if they fall off me in the supermarket?!

This said, I'm not sure exactly how to achieve my list of things that I want to make before Spud is born. I need some kind of support or positive motivation to help me ring fence the time without interference from others. At the moment, it seems that it is too easy for me to be ambushed by those who do not think that my things are as important or urgent as the things that they want me to do for them.

It's very hard for me to say no when their activities are tied to something that is so emotional and upsetting for them. It makes me feel unsupportive, churlish and selfish to want to do my things rather than their things. I feel particularly guilty when I consider that part of my desire to do my things is that I get to do things sitting down, in clean, peace and quiet. Doing their things means that I have to spend my time standing, bending, kneeling and working in 30 years of dust, wearing a mask and plastic gloves in 25-30 degree summer heat.

The problem that I have is that I am more or less 3 weeks into month 7 and pregnancy is really only 9 months +/- 2 weeks either way. It takes time to make things properly. I don't want to end up not finishing the things that I want to make or making errors because I'm working in haste and feeling like I'm going to drop the baby at any minute.

But now I am starting to moan. So I am going to stop writing. Things just are the way they are. Onwards and upwards - off to do my niece's present I go!

Blindsided on an Idle Thursday

I think that most, if not all, of the extraordinary days I have experienced have started out as very ordinary days. Last Thursday was one of those days.


What was it that Baz Luhrmann said in that song to the graduating class of 1999?

“The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.”


Thursday was just one of those ordinary, idle days - all the way through, pretty much. We were tired because Spud is keeping me up at night, so we oven roasted some ribs, ate, set aside half a rack for the Fella to take over to his mother (she’s 80 and she lives close by so we often make extra when we are cooking to drop off to her) and by 10:15pm we were in bed, lights out, congratulating ourselves on getting to bed early for a good night’s sleep.


At 10:30pm, on the dot, came the blindsiding. The phone rang. The Fella answered and I could hear his mother’s panicked voice, “I don’t feel well. Can you come?” My husband was already rolling out of bed and reaching for his trousers, “I’ll leave right now.” I stayed in bed to keep out of his way while he grabbed the rest of his clothes and he headed out the door, saying, “It’s probably nothing, you try to get some sleep and I’ll be back in a little while”.


I lay there in the dark wondering whether or not I should really stay put or get dressed. As I lay there in the dark, I heard 1...then 2...then 3 sirens. It was about 10:42pm. My heart sank like a stone – it could have been coincidence but we live in a quiet part of Vancouver and the Fella’s mother only lives about 2 blocks up and 1 block over.




The phone rang. It was the Fella. He was in tears, “It’s bad - about as bad as it gets. The paramedics are here, working on my mother. I cannot get through to my brother on his cell phone. Can you find another number and ring him?” I said, “Ok. Stay with your mother and I will come find you - either at her house or at the hospital.” He said, “I am not sure if they’ll be taking her to a hospital.”



By sheer luck, I had stuck my BIL’s (Brother in Law) house phone number to the fridge recently. So I got up, phoned and luckily, he was in. I explained. He said, “I’ll leave now.” Then added, sounding a bit perplexed, “But I spent all afternoon with her. I left her at 6pm and she was fine.”



It was 10:50pm. I drove over to my MIL’s (Mother in Law’s) house. I wasn’t sure whether anyone would still be there but as I turned into her street I could see a fire truck and two ambulances parked outside her house. The Fella was standing on the lawn talking to one of the ambulance crew and my MIL was on a gurney, being wheeled across her front lawn towards an ambulance. Her face and shoulders were so pale that they almost appeared to glow in the dark.



The ambulance left with my MIL for the hospital and we waited to lock up her house while the crew from the other ambulance cleared away all of their equipment and discarded medical supplies from her hallway. While this was happening, the Fella explained that when he got there, he found that his mother had left the front door open for him. She was waiting for him, sitting in a chair in her hallway - coat and shoes on, handbag over her shoulder and her house keys in her hand – ready to go. He thinks that she tried to say something as he walked in through the door but then her eyes rolled upwards, she lost consciousness and was struggling to breathe. He dialled 9-1-1 straight away. The time on his cell phone was 10:40pm. He said that the firemen arrived first and helped his mother until the paramedics arrived.


When the crew had tidied up, I drove us to the ER where we completed his mother’s registration at the front desk and were shown to a Family Room by a social worker who told us that my MIL’s heart had stopped twice on the way to the hospital but that they had got it going again and were working on her now to stabilise her. It was about 11:20pm.



The family room was a blue-grey carpeted box with two sofas, two coffee tables, a spare hospital bed and a very small, lonely looking box of tissues. The social worker bought us both a plastic cup of water and we waited. The Fella was in pieces – in shock at finding his mother, the trauma of seeing the emergency crews work on her at her house and knowing that the situation was pretty bad. My BIL phoned us twice to update us on his ETA and we explained where he would find us.


Just before he arrived, two ER doctors came in to see us looking very glum. They explained very carefully that the situation was very serious and that they were trying to stabilise my MIL but they were not certain what was causing the problem. They warned that she seemed decided to go, rather than to stay and they said that without the assistance of the paramedics, she would not have made it this far. In a little while they said that they would take us in to see her. They left. My BIL arrived. We waited some more.



Eventually, the social worker came back, warned us that my MIL was hooked up to a breathing machine and then we were ushered through the ER to see her. We walked into a brightly lit, busy area with 4 work areas, separated by dividers. It was just like walking into a hospital television drama set. I looked at the floor as there were other people being worked on when we walked in. The medical staff looking after my MIL had stepped back to allow us through to see her. She was almost unrecognisable - chalky white, naked (partially covered up by some kind of blue rubber pad), surrounded by machinery, intubated and her chest was heaving up and down mechanically with the rasping of the breathing machine.




I stood back to give the Fella and my BIL some space but they appeared as bewildered and disorientated as I felt. It didn’t look possible to get close enough to touch her through all of the machinery, so all they could do was stand and look at her from about 6ft away. The medical team ushered us back out to the Family Room so that they could continue working. The social worker said that they were preparing her to go up to the Cath Lab. We waited.


Two new people came to see us in the Family Room. One of them, a man, introduced himself as the Cardiologist. He asked who had found my MIL and asked the Fella some very specific questions,
‘Was she breathing when you arrived at her house?’


‘She was trying to.’

‘Was she breathing – yes or no?’


‘She was trying to, yes.’

‘What time did she ring you at your house?’


’10:30.’

‘What time did you call the paramedics?’


’10:40.’

‘What was her health like before today?’


‘She was on high blood pressure medication but she was very able and independent. She lived alone, still drove a car and ran her own business, working at weekends.’



The cardiologist outlined two options, saying that the Fella and my BIL needed to decide how to proceed.


The first option was to intervene further. It was thought that my MIL had a clot, a blockage, in her heart. They could take her up to the Cath Lab right away, prepare her for surgery and perform an angioplasty. The surgery would take about 15 minutes and the hoped outcome would be that her blood pressure would stabilise. However, he warned that her condition was considered critical, that there was a high risk that she could die on the operating table and it was not 100% guaranteed it would resolve the problem.


The second option was not to intervene further. He would instruct the ER team to step back and adopt a palliative care strategy. They would make my MIL comfortable and we could spend her remaining time with her. He confirmed that without surgery, there was no possibility of recovery at all.


As you can imagine, there was a lot of discussion at this point. I kept quiet except to ask clarification questions and follow up questions to elicit more information from the doctor. The penny dropped for the Fella and my BIL that the reason the cardiologist was asking all those pointed questions about breathing, timings and previous state of health was that he was trying to rule in or out whether she might have sustained some kind of brain trauma from lack of oxygen and whether she would be fit enough to recover from the surgery/the entire experience.


When they asked about this, the cardiologist could not offer any guarantees. My BIL asked whether they could check brain function before surgery, he said that they could but that would delay the heart surgery by a further 30 plus minutes. If they decided to proceed, then they needed to do the procedure straight away. He did say that he thought it was a positive sign that she’d been coherent on the phone to the Fella at 10:30pm, that the emergency services had got there very shortly after 10:40pm and that she had fought the intubation in the ER. Apparently, you have to be pretty much a vegetable if you choke that down without any resistance. Although, I think that the phrase the doctor was much more politically correct. He said something like, ‘they worry about whether someone has sustained neurological damage if they don’t fight the intubation.’


At the end of this part of the discussion, it was not clear that proceeding with surgery was the right thing to do or not. It might/might not help to stabilise her, she might/might not survive the procedure and she might/might not be okay afterwards.


So, the discussion turned to what my MIL would want if she was there and able to speak for herself. I can vouch for the fact that she’s a fiercely independent woman with a very strong set of views and a very particular outlook on life. As it happens, she had retired from working at this hospital some 20 years earlier as a Social Worker. According to her two sons, she wasn’t very fond of sick or infirm people and she certainly wouldn’t want to be one herself.


I think that the big worry for the Fella and my BIL (not for them but for her) was that she would survive surgery only to face a long recovery, be physically or mentally disabled in some way, be unable to live her life on her own terms and have the rest of her life overshadowed by the fear of having to go through something awful like this again. Very upset, they concluded that if she had been there in the room to speak for herself, she would not have wanted the surgery.


So they opted for palliative care. The cardiologist left to speak to the ER team. The social worker came by and said that she would take us through to see my MIL again before they took her off the breathing machine. This time, I opted not to go – I thought that her sons should be have some time with her on her own and I did not need to see her in the way that I had seen her before. When they came back, the social worker said that after they had taken her off the breathing machine, they would move her to a private room and we could spend as much time with her as we wanted. We waited again. What was the time at this point? I knew but I have forgotten already.


You know, in my naiveté and from watching too much ER, I thought that when they switched off her breathing machine, that would be it. I guess that I was preparing myself to spend time in a room with a dead body for us all to say goodbye to my MIL after she had died.


So it was with some surprise that I walked into the ER ward cubicle and found that my MIL was still alive - unconscious, intubated and hooked up to two drips and oxygen but still very much alive. She looked like she was having a rough night’s sleep but it certainly didn’t look like she was about to gasp her last.


The nurse explained that she was breathing on her own and was medicated so that she wasn’t in any pain. He said that we could stay with her for as long as we wanted. If she was still with us at the 7am shift change, that they would probably move her to a Family Practice Palliative Care bed. I cannot remember what the time was at that point but when the nurse said 7am, I remember feeling - courtesy of my regular bouts of insomnia – that it was a time on the clock above the hospital bed that felt like it was half a lifetime away from the current time on the clock.


So we sat, we watched her breathe, we chatted and, effectively, I suppose that we waited for her to die. We were not sure what else we should do - where else would we be?


It was a long night and after the initial drama, the rest of the night was quite peaceful. We sat around her bed and, at one point, we thought her colour had improved greatly. She was breathing so well, we wondered if she might pull through. We asked the nurse about her condition when he came in to suction her breathing tube but instead he confirmed that the way her breathing had started to change was a clear indication of her body starting to fail.


At about 4:30am or so, her breathing became more shallow. A doctor came in and told us that he was going to remove her breathing tube to make her more comfortable. The nurse who removed it was ever so gentle. She spoke to my MIL as though she was awake and conscious, speaking to her by name, telling her exactly what she was doing, what she needed to do and how she might feel the need to cough. After she removed the tube, my MIL breathing was more laboured, so the nurse raised the head of the bed so that my MIL could breathe more easily. Once the bed was raised up, a lot of her colour drained away again and it was clear that she was not doing well at all.


At some point after that, I went outside for some fresh air. While I was outside, I phoned my father to tell him what had happened. I must have been on the phone for longer than I realised as when I got back, it was 6:10am, my MIL had died and the social worker was there to hand us some information leaflets.


I think that the last time I saw a dead body was when when I saw my grandmother in her coffin at her wake. It took me a long time to get over that as she didn’t look at all like the grandmother I knew and loved. This time though, it didn’t feel odd or strange to be in the same place as my MIL’s dead body. It felt like a natural progression from the rest of the night. She had been breathing and now she had stopped. She was sitting up in the bed, looking distinctly grey with her eyes closed and her mouth ajar. I felt a bit relieved for her that her ordeal was over. I do not feel badly that I was not there at the very end. In some respects, I thought that it was right that it was just her together with her sons.


The social worker told us that we could continue to stay with my MIL for as long as we wanted. However, the Fella felt that he’d said his goodbye and now that she had gone, he felt that we should go as well. So I said goodbye to her and as we left, the Fella did something that he often does to me if he is up and I am still in bed - he affectionately wiggled his mother’s foot through her bedcovers and said, ‘Goodbye Polly’.*


‘Polly’, Fella's Family Matriach: 1930 – 2011.



Notes

*A pet name that he and his mother used to call each other. They used to have a parrot.


Written with many thanks to everyone from our local emergency services and hospital who worked on my MIL - your efforts gave us the extra time we needed to say goodbye properly.

We're all okay - the Fella is grieving and we are gently taking each day at a time.

On the subject of Spud...

Thank you for your congratulations!

I think that I should probably start writing some stuff down before I forget it all completely. I find that when I am in the middle of something, I get so caught up in what I am doing – or the problem that I am solving - that it exists to the exclusion of everything else. I certainly couldn’t write about what was going on, on the Spud front, at the time which may help to explain why my blog has been so quiet over the past year.

I thought about trying to draw a series of cartoons to illustrate some of the ‘stand out’ moments from the past year (I can even see them in my head) but I am not sure that I’d be able to realise them in the way that I see them and that would be a bit disappointing. I have also thought about not saying anything at all – simply focusing on the future and what lies ahead.

Yet that didn’t feel fair or right to Spud, the team of doctors and nurses at our local hospital and all of the other women out there who are going through, or considering, some kind of assisted reproductive treatment. In the end, this decided me:

Pregnant women are smug - please enjoy, it is a funny song! It also happens to be so far out of touch with the reality that a lot of women experience that it is really quite hilarious!

As it turns out, an awful lot of us find that getting, and remaining, pregnant is a lot harder than indulging in a whole lot of ‘ho'ing’. I mean - who knew?! It makes me laugh out loud when I look back on all those years of contraceptive pill taking and the panic that would set in if I forgot to take one. After two unsuccessful years of following all of the usual conception advice and a number of comedic scenes reminiscent of those from the 1999 Ben Elton novel (film) Inconceivable (Maybe Baby), the Fella and I handed ourselves in to the local medical profession.

After a series of tests last year, we were referred to the Reproductive Health Unit at our local hospital in November and we had our first cycle of IVF between January and February. I may choose to tell you a bit more about the process another time (so that I don’t forget it) but the long and short of it is that we were successful and Spud is an ICSI-IVF baby. The two links that explain what these are will take you to Wikipedia.

The women that I have run into on the road to Spud have not been at all smug. Mind you, none of us were pregnant either (although I really hope that everyone is now). Depending on whether it was a first or subsequent cycle and whether a previous cycle had been successful, I observed that we were a mixed bag of the quietly anxious, unsure, hopeful, afraid, optimistic and/or resigned – women who were doggedly working their way through a process that they had been through before.

What I will never forget is the day that we went into the Reproductive Health Unit for our 8 week ultrasound and the doctors found Spud’s heartbeat (after a very anxious minute or so when they couldn’t locate Spud at all). As we were leaving the hospital (feeling relieved but a bit like we’d been run over by a bus) another couple walked out in front of us and got into the car that was parked next to ours. We got into our car and glanced across to see whether it was safe for us to back out of our parking space. The couple in the other car was hugging. They were both in floods of tears. We quietly backed out and left them to their grief. This really brought it home to us that for every couple who leave the hospital with good news, many others go home absolutely heartbroken.

I am pregnant. I don’t feel smug - I just feel very lucky that Spud stuck. You see, we were told that our chances of success were rated as being less than 20%. The doctors were talking to us about the likely need for a second cycle of IVF before we’d even been through the egg retrieval process.

This is likely to be the only time that I will ever be pregnant and I fully intend to enjoy it - as much as anyone can who is pregnant, only just getting over their nausea at 21 weeks, has acid reflux and now suspects that that there is a litter of very active, squirmy puppies lodged in their abdomen rather than a single, small, prospective human being!

No, it does not matter to us whether Spud is a boy or a girl and we cannot tell you about names because we haven’t chosen any yet (also, it feels odd to discuss names with others before the baby has arrived safely). In fact, we have asked not to know what sex Spud is so that we have a surprise to look forward to in October - we just want Spud to be healthy, whole, intact and bright enough not bounce off the furniture too much.

I give no apologies at all for being an irritating cliché!

Introducing Spud...

It-is-so-frustrating-not-having-a-camera!

I would love to show you the completed, fabric part of the presents that I have made for my new niece Lorna and another new arrival in Italy (Bianca, who arrived about a week after Lorna). I would also love to show you the WIP images of the knitted part of Lorna's presents.

However, I am stumped by the lack of a camera - my Samsung is still in hiding and I refuse to resort to a crappy camera-phone image for a finished object. Basement - yes, textiles - no.

So, how about I share these images of a different, but no less special, WIP with you instead?

This is Spud at 12 weeks. I am now 18 weeks, so our little potato will be fully baked by the end of October. I would have said something sooner but I could not say anything because we were waiting for the results of some chromosome tests.

P.s. Does this explain how I managed to persuade the Fella to tackle the basement clear out?!

P.p.s. This is why I was out while our house was being burgled on the 13th April. I got home after this scan to find the house had been broken into - it was both a very good day and a very bad day.

A Good Reason to Knit

My new niece, Lorna, arrived safe and sound on the 29th March 2011 in India.

So I have bought supplies:

100% Organic worsted & multi Cotton.

The colours are very off on the left - think fresh, neon 'Shrek' and you will be much closer!

All I need to do is find my ball winder and knitting needles.

One aborted attempt at a pair of socks aside, it's been a very long time since I last used them.

I wonder if I can even remember how to knit properly?

1st Wedding Anniversary

Happy Anniversary, Lovely.

I can hardly believe that it has been a year already. It's been a big year (or so) of change and adjustment for us both. Do you know what? I think that we are doing okay. I guess that it helps that you happen to be one of the kindest, most lovely men on earth. Yep, you:

I am really looking forwards to the next year with you.

Gx

Ps, posted a day late because our anniversary weekend included a quick trip over to Salt Spring Island. We arrived home late last night. I am delighted to say that Salt Spring Island delivered my first ever viewing of a sheep on Canadian soil:

I spotted quite a few Suffolk sheep (with new lambs - hurray!) on the island, plus this breed. I am not sure which it is. I am sorting of hoping that it is a White faced Welsh Mountain sheep.

December Download

December was a slightly weird month, split neatly in half (almost) between being here (Canada) and there (UK). I am not sure that I recall a great deal of the run up to our departure as it sped past in a frenzy of making. In fact, I was making gifts up until 1 hour before we left for the airport and snapping quick documentary shots of everything that I had made until 15 minutes before we left for the airport (more of that later).

The second half of the month whipped past in a series of short visits with as many family and friends as we could shoehorn into our short trip to the UK. I remarked to the Fella that it was peculiar, only having time to see some of my friends. Also, only seeing those friends once, when I was used to seeing or speaking to them every 2-3 days ordinarily - I felt very sad about it, actually.

We did get caught up in the bad weather during our trip. We had to pull off the road during our return trip to London from Hereford. It was the night that snow hit Reading, Newbury and Basingstoke and as we were in a rental car with summer tyres (effectively), we decided to bail and stay overnight in Swindon. I worked on a big project in Swindon for about 6 years once, commuting 150 miles (round trip) by car almost daily from my home in London. It was a fantastic project to work on with brilliant colleagues but I am not sure that I would want that commute now. It was strange and slightly nostalgic to wander around the shopping precinct in the snow, seeing what had and hadn't changed. Yes, I made sure that we entered and left Swindon via the Magic Roundabout (mostly to terrify the Fella)!

The day after, we whizzed down a quiet M4, remarking on all of the cars abandoned on the hard shoulder, and cut across Bracknell to Farnborough where we went to visit my Removal Company's warehouse. There, we tackled the belongings that I have had in storage since October 2008. We have probably spent more on storage costs over the past year than any of my things are actually worth. We went through my things, knowing that we needed to reduce it all by 50% in order to make the shipping costs to Vancouver viable.

Frankly, my hat is off to them - I think that removal men must possess the same sort of skill and tact as undertakers. We stood in their freezing cold warehouse with my two opened storage containers and they very quietly, tactfully, efficiently and good humouredly helped us to separate my things into three piles: to ship, to give away, to throw away. I thought that it would take all day. Nope. It took 1 hour and 30 minutes to unpack, sort and repack all of my worldly possessions (which looked extremely pathetic on the concrete floor of their warehouse).

I am sure that people will tell me that it was good for me but it was really hard to give and throw so many of my things away. Particularly the ones that I remember saving for and appreciating very much when I could finally afford to buy them. Of stuff kept, some went to my father's family house and some went to my youngest brother who has just moved into a flat. My father's family put us up while we were in the UK and it was really strange to see some of 'my' belongings dotted around their house. In truth, it was quite hard not to snatch some of them back and hide them in my suitcase. Even though I knew that we had no room or use for them here. Mind you, I think that there might be more bed linen here in Canada than we originally planned to bring back in my suitcase!

So as I type, 250 sq ft of household goods (reduced from 500 sq ft) are on their way towards Vancouver. They were shipped on the 12^th January and we have been told that they are expected to arrive here on the 31^st January. It's quicker than I expected.

I am glad that my stuff is on its way. I realise that it is a silly thing but it has been very strange living with the Fella in Canada without any of my belongings around me. I have felt a bit naked and uncomfortable about it. It is not that any of my things are nicer or smarter than the Fella's - in some cases, quite the opposite. However, it will be good to have some familiar items here e.g. to have a tea or coffee out of one of my own mugs (assuming that they survive the journey) and to have my own, familiar bath towel in the bathroom.

Sometimes I think that the Fella doesn't notice but it turns out that he does.

One of the things that upset me the most to throw away was my old bed frame with its really comfy mattress. It was not worth the cost or hassle to bring into Canada. Besides, the Fella prefers to sleep in a larger bed. However, his bed has to be one of the most uncomfortable beds that I have ever tried to sleep on. I cannot begin to count how many wretched, sleepless nights I have had since my arrival in Vancouver in October 2008. It has been thoroughly miserable – I have either paced the house, sat at the PC or lain in the dark, listening to the Fella breathe while watching the clock tell me how slowly the night is passing. It is so very hard to survive the next day when you have had very little or no sleep. I have been like a zombie - I cannot tell you how many classes I have almost fallen asleep in or had to apologise because I am yawning constantly and felt horrible.

So watching my lifeline to a good night's sleep being moved over to the disposal pile was quite tough. Made worse by the fact that the beds that we slept on during our trip were either completely trashed (hotel in Hereford) or extremely small and hard (parent's house in London) where the two of us were kipping on a ¾ size bed.

So I may have mentioned my heartache at letting my bed go - perhaps I mentioned it more than once, if I am honest.

When we got back to Canada, out of the blue, the Fella confessed how old his bed was. Put it this way – my stepson (almost 16) was likely conceived on it. He then marched me out to his truck, took me to a stretch of road with bed shops and refused to come home until we had picked out a new one.

It was delivered last Saturday and I made it up with some of the freshly laundered bed linen that I had brought back in my suitcase. Our new bed is so comfortable that I didn't get out of bed, all day on Sunday. I propped myself up, surrounded by my lovely, old, familiar bed linen (just some old IKEA stuff) and I read 'Kafka on the Shore' (at last). I have even had a couple nights since then when I have slept all the way through the night. In fact, the Fella tried to wake me with a cuddle this morning and he got told very firmly where he could stuff it for waking me up!

I think that the Fella is worried that he has unleashed a beast - that I am going to, 'take to my bed' for days at a time, as ladies used to do in the olden days.

I don't care. It is very selfish but I like how I feel after I have had a full night's sleep.

Tick Tock...

Well, we might be married now but surely I can still expect a little bit of romance on Valentine's Day...?!

The View From The Rear

Yesterday, the alarm went off at a most unwelcome hour for a Sunday. I noticed that the Fella ignored it. Instead, he buried his head in his pillow and snuggled deeper into the duvet. If I am honest, he threw an arm around me and promptly went back to sleep.

I lay there for a bit and listened to a CBC radio programme (over the Fella breathing in my ear) - I heard one presenter commenting on how lovely the sunrise was and listened when the follow-up weather report forecast 10-15mm of rain, due shortly after sunrise.

I groaned and poked the Fella awake again, "We've got to get up. Rain is forecast - we'll need to take some wet weather gear."

His face was a picture of misery at the prospect of losing both his Sunday lie-in and going outside when it was due to tip down with rain - simply because I was determined to fulfil a promise to my sister. Now she lives in India at the moment and has probably forgotten what rain and 9 degrees Celsius (without wind chill factor) feels like.

Ok, my promise to my sister? To get off my backside and do some more exercise. My sister decided - in her infinite wisdom and after some googling - that participating in a 9.5km run around the Stanley Park Seawall would be the perfect way to kick-start my exercise programme.

In horror, I told her that I have never been able to run anything in my whole, wide life. She laughed (somewhat gleefully, I feel) and told me not to be so ridiculous. In the end, we compromised on me entering the 'walk' category...this year, at least. Plus I got a promise from her in return. If I do my walk; she has to fulfil a promise to me in India.

Now the problem for the Fella is that he tends to get roped into the things that I do. So if I am going to walk 9.5km on a Sunday morning in Stanley Park... then so is he. Hence the wretched expression on his face.

"Okay, tell you what," I said, "you make coffee; I'll make bacon sandwiches."

His face brightened and he rolled out of bed. I called out after him, "Although, in view of the occasion, I realise that I should probably give you a healthy bowl of cereal or a bowl of oatmeal."

He said something that I didn't catch but from the indignant tone, I think that it might have been something rude.

* * *

A short while later, the Fella sat at the dining table, one hand clamped around a hot mug of black coffee and the other gripping a substantial bacon sandwich. I was similarly equipped (albeit with a smaller portion).

Over our carefully considered pre-race breakfast, we discussed the improbable fact that we were up, dressed and about to take part in a 9.5km run (okay 9.5km walk). The improbability is probably summed up well by the fact that the Fella does not even own a pair of trainers, we have not done any practice walking and the fact that we are have this conversation while munching on bacon.

I can just tell that the Fella was really and truly trying to look on the bright side of being dragged outside on a cold, grey Sunday morning when he said, "Well....at least we aren't doing this for erectile dysfunction.*"

I reassured him that it is really only 9.5km; hardly a marathon. The expression on his face suggested that 9.5km may as well be 26 miles, as far as he was concerned.

*Notes: Film: Run Fat Boy Run

* * *

Now if you are any kind of serious runner, you will know that it is essential that you skip the bacon sandwiches and get yourself to a race venue early - at the sparrow's fart, preferably. Not just to avoid the intake of bad calories and do your pre-race warm up but also in order to park close to the race Start/Finish line. Otherwise you are just going to end up parking with the rest of us amateurs, quite some distance away and sad in the knowledge that you are likely to regret your tardy arrival later.

We were oblivious to this, of course. We simply rounded the last corner from our gentle 0.8km warm up walk from the car, saw the race registration tent and focused on the realisation that we had just arrived in a very strange land.

We were in the Land of the Enthusiastically Fit and Lithe. The land where lycra is your flattering friend and the toned body may run free. People were happy and excited; some were even in fancy dress. They were not hunched up against the cold, swaddled in raincoats like we were.

They had that happy glow of people who are familiar with, and happy to be, up early and about to do something that they love. There was even a DJ pumping out high energy versions of tracks like, "It Hurts So Good" while some competitors improvised warm-up routines that other runners were joining in with.

Now please excuse the expression but I cannot bring to mind a different one that would sum it up as well - we felt about as out of place and uncomfortable as a packet of sliced ham delivered wrongly to a bagel shop. Here is the picture that I snapped of the Fella, just after the majority of runners had left the Registration area to go to the Start Line:

When you look at this picture, you need to know that "The Eye of the Tiger" track was playing very loudly in the background. At this point, I think that I am just lucky that the Fella has not turned on his heel and headed back to the truck! As for me, I just started to giggle nervously.

Now this is the view ahead of us in the race line up, just before the start:

This is pretty much the same view, just after the start:

I would like to point out that this was about the last time that we saw the majority of these runners. Not only were we the last two people over the start line, we were walking. The only other participants visible in the distance ahead of us was a family group with young children.

As we left the start line and walked up the road, we became aware that we were being tailed by a woman on a bicycle (apologies that the picture is blurred). She peddled up to us and introduced herself as the race sweeper official:

The Fella voiced discomfort in my ear and asked why we hadn't just walked the Seawall on our own. To make matters worse, the cyclist was joined by a Transport Authority patrol vehicle (which looked like a police squad car, complete with emergency lights going) who wanted to reopen the roads.

After a bit, the patrol vehicle caught up with us and the official started to make small talk with us out of his passenger side window. First of all, observing our speed, he jokingly suggested that we cheat by taking a shortcut via the totem poles.

When we rejected that suggestion, impressed by our determination, he suggested that we seek to improve our efforts by joining his running group. It meets every Sunday morning at 08:30. This group, apparently, includes a lady of 76, who doesn't run when conditions are slippery.

We nodded like there was a cat's chance in hell of us taking him up on his offer and walked on, studiously trying to ignore him as he announced to other passer-bys and drivers that he had to escort us, the very last people in the race, safely off the roadway before he could open them back up to the general public. The Fella increased his speed, expressing discomfort and embarassment (through gritted teeth) at being followed by someone he kept referring to as 'the police'.

Plus under all this close scrutiny? It meant that he felt that he couldn't have a cigarette. Now if you know the Fella, you will realise that this is a serious, deal-breaking issue. It simply had not occurred to him that he might have to endure a 9.5km walk without a single cigarette. Luckily, we moved onto the Seawall footpath and lost the patrol car before he had a complete snit.

However, to his chagrin, we could not shake the woman on the bicycle. The poor love was doomed to spend the whole race peddling as slowly as she could behind us. In the end, she realised that she just could not peddle slowly enough without falling off her bike, so she tailed us the rest of the way on foot:

The Fella's mood worsened - her prescence eliminated any kind of cigarette stop. I noticed that his walk became very purposeful. To the point where I was almost jogging along beside him to keep up. After about 4km, I asked if he might consider slowing down a little.

He glanced over and said, "We cannot slow down. We are gaining on the kid."

There was a short silence while I digested this news. Then, "What kid?!" I asked, scanning the horizon.

"That one. The one with the fairy wings. We are gaining on them. I am not going to be beaten by a kid in a pair of fairy wings!"

Yup, one of the children in that little group ahead of us. After 4km, we had gained a few feet on the family group who had been ahead of us at the very start. Only a few feet, mind you. It seemed that in order to ignore his cigarette craving, the Fella had decided to focus on overtaking a child aged under 10 years old and adorned with fairy wings.

I thought that this might not be the best time to tell him that he was being ridiculous.

By this point the child had handed its wings over to a parent to carry. The race wore on and each time we crept a little bit closer to the family group ahead of us, I caught a glimpse of this little smile on the Fella's face:

In the end though, to his credit, the pace that he set us did mean that we eventually caught up with them. Mind you, it took us about 8km to do it.

Actually, I have to be honest and tell you that the real reason we overtook them is that they actually stopped in order to take photographs of each other at some rocks by the path:

However, the smile on the Fella's face was still like this after we passed them:

Hmm, not a man who can hide triumphant joy very easily - I must remind him never to play poker!

The family group had been joined by two male runners somewhere between the 5 and 6km markers (one of them is the tall person wearing black and a bright red wig). Basically, they had run the race, finished it and run back to find their families trailing behind them - just in order to accompany them back to the Finish line. At one point, the guy in the red wig even ran back to us and offered us some kind of 'Power Energy Bar' that they were giving out to runners at the end of the race.

We refused them on the basis that we were only doing the race in order to shed a few pounds. In truth, I think that we were more worried that if we consumed any runner chow that originated from the 'Land of the Enthusiastically Fit and Lithe', that might be it! There might not be no return to the 'Land of the Sofa Bound Slobs' that we know so well.

At long last, the Finish line came into view and I was not at all surprised when the male runners plus the children, picked up their pace to pound past us down the home stretch - after all, the Fella might not have wanted to be beaten by a kid in a pair of fairy wings but can you imagine how the kid might have felt about being beaten by some old guy who doesn't even own a pair of trainers?!

Our official race time? The timer above the Finish line said something like 1:54 as we crossed it. I promised my sister that I would try to complete the race in under 2 hours and we just about managed it. Here is a shot of the Finish line that I took after we had passed through and handed in our ChampionChip timers:

Our actual, personal times were 1:53 something. We came 946 and 947 out of 949 runners!

Ho hum. Well, race done, we stood there and looked at each other. The prize giving had long been held and most of the real runners had pushed off home. It was all a bit forlorn. It was probably at that point we realised that we still had to limp another 0.8km to the truck along Lost Lagoon.

It felt like a very long way. Mind you, it did provide the Fella with an opportunity to chain smoke a good number of cigarettes. The final part of our walk it was very peaceful - no race officials and no patrol cars. We came across a whole family of racoons and we made it back to the car just before it really started to pound down with rain.

When we got to the truck, I suggested a light lunch at Cardero's in honour of the race's Rear Guard Couple and I was rewarded with this tired but grateful smile:

Fella: I love you for being just so bloomin' supportive. Last night and this morning, we even discussed working a good long walk into our weekend routine, rain or shine. Yes please.

PS, Little sis'? I did mine - now it's your turn. I believe that we agreed on something that might be a stretch for you? Now, wasn't it something like a 10 mile/half marathon run?!

Wedding: Act One, Scene Three - The Wedding Ceremony

Our Wedding Day was on 1st March 2009, which happens to be St David's Day too.  I hope that this may help to explain why you will spot daffodils, rather than roses, in both my bouquet and the Fella's buttonhole in our wedding pictures!

  

My bouquet adorned with my something borrowed from the lovely bitchnstitches 

It was fairly quiet day, really.  As we were not getting married until 3pm, we went for a bracing stroll along the beach after breakfast, spoke to both my parents and then headed into Tofino for lunch and a hair appointment. (I am incapable of blow drying my own hair well.)  

One blast with a hair dryer and two bowls of seafood chowder later, we were back at the hotel with just enough time for the Fella to change and then set up everything downstairs with our photographer.  He was scheduled to do this while I did my make up and worked out how to clamber into the White Polyester Dress of Doom.  

When I say, 'set up everything downstairs,' we recorded our ceremony using the video feature on my camera.  So the Fella set my camera up alongside two laptops for my parents to watch us get married over the internet via Skype.

The Fella sets up the technology before the ceremony

Now, remember those cast iron underpants?  I did put them on.  However, I had to bloomin' take them off again!  It is one thing to try them on in a department store changing room.  It is quite another thing to put them on in a very warm hotel room, when you are as nervous as hell, then ask the Fella (he was blindfolded) to do up your dress, have him struggle ridiculously (well, he couldn't see what he was doing) and not manage it.  

At about that point, in a panic as the clock was ticking ever onwards, I could actually feel the sweat running down the back of my legs.  Running, I tell you - not dripping but running...

...sexy, huh?!

In a panic, I pushed the Fella out of the bathroom (where this had all been going on) and I gave in.  I asked him to go down to Reception and ask the nice hotel Events Cordinator lady, Martina, to come up and help lace me into my dress.

I had been trying to avoid this as I really did not want to stand there, in my knickers, without a bra (my dress did not seem to allow for one) while some strange woman tried to lace me and my bosoms into my lovely plastic mess without giving me excessive overhang (back or front).

Now, as I was all hot and sweaty, it took me every single minute that I had between the Fella leaving and Martina arriving, to struggle my way out of those flipping death trap pants.  It was like a scene out of a comedy film - they had stuck like glue to me.

I twisted - I contorted - I prised at them with my fingernails (thanking the powers that be that I had gone for a clear nail varnish) - I tugged and I rolled them off, bit by bit.  I just made it out of them, into my no VPL thong and got my dress half dragged up my body again before an urgent tapping on the door let me know that the lace-up cavalry had arrived. 

Martina, the poor woman, had no idea what she was in for - I was one very flustered and decidedly sticky bride who had to be downstairs, pronto, where my groom was waiting for me with my parents looking on!  

Well, it took her three attempts to do up my dress.  Poor lamb - I wish that I could have rolled in talcum powder to make her job easier.  Alas no, Sweaty Betty here had jumped back into her lake of plastic and the damned thing kept sticking itself firmly to her body.

So every time she did my dress up?  Well, I was cooling down so, as soon as I moved, the dress would unstick itself momentarily and sag downwards my knees while gaping at the front.  So she had to try again, making the dress tighter each time.  

By the time that I had dragged on my mother's arm-saving shrug and Mel's fabulous garter?  I was 10 minutes late.  Luckily, the situation was so ridiculous that I had regained my sense of humour.  So Martina thrust my flowers at me, we laughed and bolted for the Great Room.

Mind you, by the time I had scooted energetically down the stairs (just as fast as my high heels would allow me) the only things not sticking to me like something made by Loctite were my mother's shrug and Mel's garter (both made of silk).  

In actual fact, Mel's garter had given up any pretence of staying put on my thigh - it was hula-ing attractively around my ankle, a delicate, pretty blue and white trip hazard (photo later)!  Very luckily, I had requested no music.  Else, the groom would have caught me in the doorway to the Great Room, dress hitched somewhere around my midriff and battling my garter back into place to the tune of 'Here Comes the Bride'!

From there....?  Well, if you click here for the wedding slideshow on Flickr, it should give you a fairly good idea about how the ceremony and the rest of the day played out!  

Yes, yes:  there are some pictures of me in my dress in this set.  Looking at these photos, I am fairly sure that our photographer bumped up the image exposure settings afterwards to make the pictures a bit more flattering!  

Mind you, even though he did that, please note that there were another 150 pictures or so that hit the editing floor (with the Fella's agreement) due to their less than flattering, oil-tanker-as-bride, nature!  

My favourites are the one that I have already posted, shortly followed by the following two images:

The demure and sensible couple...

...sporting essential West Coast Bridal Footwear!

The photographs during and just after our ceremony were taken by Jeremy Koreski, who was both our wedding photographer and one of our witnesses.  A really smashing bloke:

 

Jeremy a.k.a Brideshooter signs the register.

Our other witness was Martina, the Hotel Events Coordinator:

Martina signs the register, relieved that she'll never have to lace me into a dress again!

The loveliest thing of all is that Skype worked.  So although it was 11 pm in the UK, my parents were able to watch us get married in real time.  My mother and stepfather stayed up with champagne plus my father's family all got together at my sister's house with champagne and popcorn!  After the ceremony, one of my brothers bumped my mother off Skype so that he and his girlfriend could toast us with champagne too!

Voila!  My families toast us with champagne over the internet!

Saying goodbye to my families before we have more pictures taken.

The Marriage Commissioner was a lovely, patient lady but I am not completely certain that she was sure about our use of technology - I suspect that she is used to couples eloping to Tofino in order to escape their families.  She asked us why we had chosen Tofino and we mentioned that we had come away to be married on our own as it was not possible for all my family and friends to make it out to Canada.  She gestured to our laptops and quipped that we need hardly have bothered, as we'd brought everyone with us on our computers! 

Yes, we both cried during our vows although this does not show well in our photos.  Yes, we did get covered in sand plus soaked to the skin with rain and seawater out on the beach afterwards.

In fact, my carefully blow dried hair ended up in rat tails around my head and I had to pour seawater out of my welly boots!

However, that was the perfect excuse for us retire to our room - where we found a huge bouquet of white roses from my family, a bottle of fizz and some chocolate dipped strawberries from the hotel.

So we hung up our glad rags*, jumped into our twin bath with a glass of champagne to warm up and afterwards, we retired to bed...

...where we both just simply fell fast asleep!  Well, what did you expect?  We are married now!

We were both out cold until 5 minutes after we were due back downstairs for our wedding dinner.  So the few stray photos of us at the end of our wedding day (where we are cutting our cake) were when we were both half asleep and had dragged ourselves downstairs to go through the motions of having something to eat!

The very last photos in our Flickr wedding set were taken in Tofino before we returned home - we took one of the rainforest trails, another walk along the beach and took some more pictures of our flowers before we headed home.

Just in case you are wondering where we stayed, it was the Long Beach Lodge Resort hotel.  They were so kind to us throughout our stay - the hotel, our room and the restaurant were all fabulous. 

So all in all, Tofino was the perfect, and a very memorable, place to get married!

His and hers: my ring is exactly half the size and dimension of the Fella's ring, oddly enough.

End of Wedding Act One:  The Civil Ceremony

* * *

*Notes

I thought that everyone was fibbing but it was absolutely true.  The sand and the water at Tofino is so clean that you could probably roll around on the beach in your wedding dress, then swim in the ocean, hang your salt water and sand ridden dress up to dry, then shake it out and there will not be a single mark or a stain on it...

...mine certainly didn't.  Not one single mark.  

Unless, at last, I have discovered the one true benefit of a plastic dress?!

Wedding: Act One, Scene Two – Snooping Around!

I will try to keep this post short after my earlier one!  The day before we got married, on Saturday 28^th February, the Fella and I spent some time settling in and finding our way around Tofino. We also met with our wedding commissioner and our photographer.

Even though there were some people about in Tofino, I always find holiday destinations a little strange and desolate out of season and this will probably show in the pictures that I show you.  Tofino itself is a quite a small place but it is quite well equipped with a couple of grocery stores, some interesting restaurants, gift shops, coffee places and a little arts centre which puts on theatre and cinema viewings etc.:

In the picture on the right, you can see some of the two most popular modes of local transport after large trucks - bikes and skateboards.  Some people rode bikes with their skateboards strapped to their backpacks.  The coast road is quite flat and a dedicated cycle path runs along the road between the holiday parks and Tofino, which I think is excellent.  

On one of the days that we were there, the wave warning danger was increased from High to Extreme and there were not many surfers out in the water.  Instead, as we drove along the road into Tofino, I spotted a skateboarder practicing his surf moves as he travelled along the cycle path.  Now, that's dedication to your sport, eh?! 

We went for a decent walk along some of the beaches:

I drew a cutie heart in the sand to mark the date:

So the Fella decided that he would outdo me by doing something on a bigger scale.  He raced off with a big stick...

...and I watched with interest as he started to carve my name into the sand.

...Um Fella?  You seem to have spelt my name wrong!  Wha'?  Where?!

Opps, just let me correct that:

No really hun', I think that the tide may have a better solution?!

Here is the Fella pretending to walk away in shame...

I did extract a promise that he would get my name right on the day!

After that, we headed back to the hotel to meet with our marriage commissioner, who happened to be marrying another couple at our hotel that afternoon. So we settled into the Great Room, met our marriage commissioner and then, with a copy of the ceremony and vows in our hands, we snooped on the other couple's wedding!

On one hand, this was brilliant as it gave us both a chance to see what to expect and how the hotel set up for the ceremony.  There were 12 people there for this couple's wedding and it was short, relaxed and actually, it was absolutely perfect.

On the other, it might end up serving you right if you snoop on other people when you happen to feel a bit uncertain about your own appearance and outfit (like me).  It was not exactly confidence boosting to watch a gorgeous, slim, happy lady getting married in a stunning, slinky white dress!  In fact, I was so worried about it all that I burst into tears over dinner that evening and ended up described my wedding outfit to the Fella.  After seeing someone looking so lovely in their wedding outfit, I just did not want him to be disappointed when I trundled down the stairs the following day, looking for all the world like a beached, whitewashed oil tanker, shrink-wrapped into a plastic fantastic dress. 

Now - the Fella might have spelled my name wrongly in the sand but there are some very good reasons why we got married - he knew exactly what to say to reassure me and make me feel a whole lot better!