Lily's First Birthday

My sweet girl's birthday is tomorrow. It's also Fireworks Night in the UK, which feels appropriate, as Lily can be a little like a small firecracker at times, jumping about or zooming around in the house or garden.

I've only known her since February this year, but it feels like forever. Sometimes I get so sad thinking about what life will be like in 5, 10 or fifteen years time when she has died. The chances are, of course, that she will before I do. At that point I have to shake myself, tell myself not to be so silly, and move on to whatever is next.

So this evening, I'm going to put together a list for now and the future of all the things my girl does that make me love her so much.

1) The way she turns around and grins at me when we're out for a walk. It's like she's saying 'isnt this the best fun!'

2) When she comes and sits next to me when I'm working. At the end of the day she sometimes gets in the way of the laptop, to make sure I know it's time to pack up.

3) How her body moves when she's running fast and playfully. She somehow gets low to the ground and just goes for it. She corners really well too.

4) The eyes she makes when she wants a treat.

5) The noises she makes - the sighs, the occasional grunts, and the little whiny noises when I have failed to do what she wants me to.

6) The softness of her fur and the small of her head.

7) How she and W have built their own relationship (which mainly seems to be based on 'puppy judo', a game that I don't fully understand.)

8) How she follows me around, as though she just needs to know where I am.

9) Her joy on seeing me again when we've been apart - she is so excited that she can't keep still!

Lily, thank you for your love and sense of fun this past year. I'm looking forward to feeding you your cake tomorrow, and spending many more years together.

Rhubarb cake and a pilgrim

 

Last night W and I had dinner early so that we could take Lily for a walk on the beach by Oostvornse Meer, a nearby lake. As we drove out of the gate, a young woman came up to us and asked us whether she could stay in our garden - she had walked, she said, from Edinburgh. She was French, from near Versailles. 

Feeling slightly nervous, but also thinking of the times when we have camped around Europe, we said yes, and showed her places she could put her tent up. We went off to the beach wondering whether we were crazy to trust her. However, we have comparatively little worth stealing, no valuable jewellery or electronics. My stereo is 12 years old, and do people even steal stereos any more? My iPad is a second generation one, and incredibly slow. Still, people will steal anything. I was most scared she would take Lily! 

However, we felt we were probably ok. When we came back from the walk, we asked her whether she wanted to come and have a cup of tea. 

This is where the cake comes in. W hates rhubarb, and I like it. I've not had much in the last 10 years because I rarely cook things he's going to turn his nose up at. But this spring I've decided twice to cook with it, because the stalks on sale in the supermarket have been so temptingly, lusciously pink-and-green. The first recipe was a bit of a disaster, but the second was this one for Danish rhubarb cake with cardamom and custard. 

It took longer than expected to cook, and the custard definitely didn't float, it ended up in streaks through the cake, but it tastes great. It may be the first time I've properly creamed butter and sugar to light and fluffiness as well, as usually I'm a bit slap-happy with that. This cake makes me think that really I should do it properly more often. 

I offered our pilgrim a piece of cake to go with her tea and she accepted - in the end she had three! So I feel fully justified in making cake and fairly pleased with myself. We talked about her trip, and it turns out that she is a genuine pilgrim, taking the different paths through England, the Netherlands, Belgium, then going onto the Compostela way through France and Spain. After that, she will travel back and perhaps head onto Greece and Jerusalem, she was unsure. I asked what she would do afterwards and she said she thought about becoming a priest, having converted to Protestantism. 

She was 23 and very happy that on the trip thus far she has rediscovered her faith. She fairly glows with it, almost enough to rekindle mine, but I struggle too much with the historicity of the Bible at present. 

This morning, I waved her off after breakfast with an apple and a tracker bar, and coming back into the garden saw a single poppy. Now, there are poppies alongside the Erasmus hospital where I've been having the fertility treatment, and on Monday I walked past them feeling so sad and wishing that I could be pregnant with poppies in my garden. I put too much faith in signs and portents, so I'm trying not to go overboard, but perhaps this is a little nod in my direction. Maybe a 'hey, things will be ok. You will have poppies'. 

It was good too to help someone a little, to give them shelter and food, to hear their story and to wish them 'bonne chance' on their journey. Perhaps there's also a lesson there to learn about how helping others feels good, and how I can take care of something as a substitute for taking care of a child. I don't know, of course, but I hope so. This chance encounter has left me feeling slightly more hopeful. 

IVF again

I've just spent the last two weeks going through the stimulation process for IVF. I'm on the point of turning 43, which is the latest point at which insurance in the Netherlands will pay for IVF, so this was the last opportunity to do that.

When I've done this before, I learned that I over-react to the hormones. My ovaries produce lots of eggs - probably of low quality - rather than a few eggs of good quality. So I ended up taking on masses of fluid, feeling like a beached whale, and producing 18 eggs, which is really unusual for someone my age.

It all feels like a mean trick my body is playing on me. Of those 18, only 4 good embryos were produced. Because I had over-reacted and felt so bad, I was at risk of ovarian hyper-stimulation syndrome, and they were unwilling to put any back into me, so the embryos were given an extra day and then frozen. And only one made it. When I found out, I cried.

18 eggs to one embryo. I know that some people go through IVF to even less effect, but I had hoped for better. To lose 3 out of 4 almost overnight was almost physically painful. I am mourning those little chances at life.

I am trying to look on the bright side - we have one little embryo left, and in a couple of months we will go ahead and roll the dice again with that one. And maybe, just maybe, this will be our chance. I don't know whether I believe in prayer, but it you do and you read this, please pray for that success. We need all the help we can get.

So I'm back in limbo, trying to be grateful for the things I have: my wonderful W, who has been like a rock over the past weeks; my beautiful Lily-dog, who is lying with her head on my foot as I write; my lovely house and garden; the security of a good job and a good brain. I we don't have children, these are the things I will focus on, and continue to be grateful for. So many people have so much less than me.

But I still wish I could have a child.

Our girl, Lily

 

I'm writing this in the garden, after having it confirmed that we won't be doing an embryo transfer today. My ovaries are still too large (7 x 8 x 10 cms to be precise) and I don't feel well enough to do this anyway. So we're freezing our four little embryos tomorrow (fingers crossed that they do ok) and I am focussing on chilling out.

The weather is helping. It is warm and sunny and will be for the next few days, and our beautiful garden is giving me chills. I may not have babies (yet) but I have all this green. Plus our Lily under the table.

Lily has now been with us for about 3 months. She is a chocolate brown Portuguese Water Dog and she has become such a focus for us. It may not be altogether healthy for her to be the centre of attention, but I see that both W and I had love left over to give from giving to each other - we needed a dog. And I knew this deep inside the whole time.

Persuading W to get a dog took time, basically about 3 months. In the end, I think he decided that it was non-negotiable, so I flew out to Budapest and picked her up. PWD breeders aren't exactly thick on the ground. She was then just over 10 kilos, and is now 19, and I struggle to remember how small she was. But she certainly fit in my lap, whereas now (although she thinks she can) she can't.

My first really sunny day in Rotterdam and a burger review

Since we moved to Rotterdam just over 2 months ago, it has been cold and windy. Every time I've gone out and the sun has been shining, I've been lulled into a false sense of security.

I've not been stupid, mind. I know that in March, bare arms or legs are a bad idea in the Northern Hemisphere. I mean that I've gone out without a hat or gloves, or occasionally thought that a flash of bare ankle might be a good idea. 

In London, this would be fine. It's unnaturally warm there, so going out in the middle of winter and showing flesh other than the face is do-able. Even if it's chilly, unless you are waiting for hours at Clapham Junction or another frigid Network Rail station (Balham, anyone?) you're going to be ok. You can pop into a cafe if your ankles get really cold. 

Sometimes I've looked askance at the American bloggers I like reading. They post these great photos of snowy New York/ Washington/ Michigan somewhere and about January they start moaning about how bored they are with the cold. At that point, I think to myself 'Oh give over!'. For someone used to the relatively light temperature swings of the southern UK, the thought of temperature extremes is quite exciting. 

However, Rotterdam - while not offering me snow in abundance - is proving to be a tricky place. It's typically a couple of degrees lower than London on any given day, but much windier and colder somehow. I have seen people bundled up as though we were in New York in double digit negative numbers (Celsius) and after a couple of months, (yes I am quite slow to catch on) I realise why. It's just chuffing chilly here. 

So over the past week or so, as it's been warming up, I've really been enjoying it. We went on a walk in the dunes last week which was both sunny and windy. And today has been like early summer. We walked in Het Park and had to take off our coats. I had bare legs. Then I began to think I should have worn short sleeves. I took photos of the tall ships lines up along the riverside for a race, and of W in front of the most lovely magnolia tree. 

Burger review: Hamburger

Following on from my considerations on flat whites in London, I decided to review burger bars in Rotterdam, as we eat there. Yesterday we went to Hamburger on Witte de Withstraat. I had a skinny burger with cheese and W had a triple cheeseburger with fries. 

Let's start with the fries - of course I pinched some. Stolen fries don't count, everyone knows that. They were just so good, dark golden and crispy. I think they may have been double fried. 

The burger was also great - if a little on the small side. Very juicy and well formed, with good processed cheese on top. It came with a pleasant salad instead of the bun, and the price was reduced by one euro, which is unusual! 

W's looked good - but he is not able to say why. He says 'it was a good burger, with nice cheese. And I liked it'.

Hamburger is a nice little bar on the first floor above another restaurant. It has a wide range of beers, including my favourite Brew Dog Dead Pony, although we had wine on this occasion. The decor is mostly in the hallway and on the stairs, and it is kind of psychedelic. 

I think I'm going to rather the following 5 attributes - and by skinnification, I mean: how successfully have they made a burger low carb? 

Service: 9/10

Decor/ Atmosphere: 8/10 (nice decor, menus a little grubby.)

Burger: 8/10

Fries: 10/10

Skinnification: 8/10

Musings on moving to the Netherlands

The tail end of 2015 and the beginning of 2016 have required focus and project management of my life in a way I didn't think was possible. The reason? W and I decided to 1) do IVF again; 2) move to Rotterdam; 3) rent my London flat; and 4) get married.

Getting married and IVF deserve posts of their own, and renting the flat was time consuming and mostly boring, but moving to Rotterdam - that deserves some musing over!

Rotterdam is W's city. It's where he was living when we met and he grew up fairly nearby. He has always wanted to go back. He hated the smell and the people of London. It's true that en masse, Londoners are a bit much. It's hard to feel a sense of community with over 7 million other people.

I've always said I would be willing to move - hey that statement is even in my old 'About me' section! Now that I'm out of debt and in a place with my job where I can move to another country but still work back in London, it seemed like the perfect time to do it. So we made our decision in November, in December W finally left the job he had also hated, and we began to pack.

Looking back, my London flat had a surprising amount of storage! I always felt that it was a fairly poky place, though I had done my best with it. But when you think that I had the attic above with nearly as much floorspace as the flat itself, you realise that I was pretty lucky. Our new flat (at least for the next 6 months) is spacious, but folks, there is So. Little. Storage. Space. It feels particularly hard as I spent so much time getting rid of stuff as we packed - I must have junked 20 or so boxes of books, clothes and things!

I am taking this as a challenge to live with fewer clothes. I'm not quite doing a 30 for 30 [LINK], but I have pared down my wardrobe to the clothes and shoes I love and really wear, and that will fit in the space we have. In a slightly masochistic way, I am enjoying this, and it is making it very easy to pack for work. It helps that I am flying with a carry on every week and that I seem to be going through a black and neutrals phase.

Unpacking is the hardest bit. We ended up with about 130 boxes and things coming over, and of these a large number are books that will go into storage when we find somewhere. But there are so many boxes still to go through, and a number of important things missing:

• my hair straighteners
• my good hairdryer (i.e. not a travel hairdryer)
• the European flex for the Bose Soundtouch (this thing is amazing BTW)

I don't understand how my careful packing still led to these things disappearing for nearly 3 weeks now?

I see moving country as being like repotting a plant. It can be done without too much trauma, but it takes care and nurturing. You need to separate the roots out to ensure that they can grow freely in the new soil (this is the uncluttering bit). You need to repot carefully in the right pot and the right soil. And you need to water carefully. You probably don't want to repot too regularly, you want the plant to adjust to the new pot and grow new roots. 

Not being unpacked leaves me feeling somewhat anxious. It's hard to relax when almost every view has a pile of boxes in it. And I know that once we are unpacked the real challenge begins. I want to grow roots in Rotterdam, cause I need to make friends here and find the places that I had in London: running with ParkRun, a gym where I can do heavy weights, a Pilates place. Maybe some favourite places to eat and shop. So it's back to the boxes. Who knows, maybe I'll find the hairdryer. 

Oh my aching legs...

A while back I signed up to do the Peckham Rye 10k. For some reason, I miscalculated, and thought there was loads of time to train, and then I got really sick during January and February this year. And then it was just there, and I could either do it with practically zero training or I could DNS.

I chose doing it, although I promised myself that I would run for 3 minutes and walk for one, which is where I'd gotten to in training. Cue an hour and ten minutes of that. I started right at the back, so being overtaken by everyone wouldn't be too demoralising, and I managed to overtake 3-4 people myself, so I was reasonably pleased. The run itself was hard after the 3/4 mark, but I stuck it out and nearly cried when I reached 9k. That sign seemed to symbolise so much to me!

I finished up and waited to cheer on the people I overtook at the end, as there weren't many people left by then. And then I picked up the cheapest race t-shirt and medal I have EVER seen.

And now my legs are really aching...