Missing from today

And every day.

All The Little Ponies: Happy Birthday, my sweet boy...

Uh oh

You know how I carefully planned our caravan holiday to carefully avoid periods and whatnot?

Well, the period was a distressing 3 monster crampingly days late (NOT pregnant).

And I carefully forgot to plan the weather.

Hopefully monsoon season will be short over here and finish on Sunday evening.

I've still got washing outside dripping.

We borrowed Ray's friend's waterproof video camera. Waterproof. Ha ha.

As much as I mentioned that the sound of rain on a caravan roof was "nice" it doesn't mean that I want to hear it all next week... are you listening universe? Probably not eh? Why break a two year habit.

Oh yes and Ray broke a tooth.

Despite this I remain excited about getting away.

As of Monday, please send your very best non-rain-no-disaster vibes to us. I think we need them. Thank you.

A bit of chaos and Five good things

Ugh our house is a mess today.

We moved into the back bedroom on Thursday. We managed to fit in one king sized bed, my bedside cabinet and, in front of a stack of mirrors and pictures, one chest of drawers piled oh so high with stuff. I joked that it's getting us used to caravan living. Ha ha humph.

I had a moment of tears about the room that "shouldn't be ours" but it wasn't as awful as I thought it would be. In fact I slept almost peacefully. I say almost because I woke with a jolt after the open elevator I was on in Ray's game suddenly shot from beneath my feet and then it took me ages to relax again. When I woke up this morning I no longer felt as if we were trespassing. It was quiet and peaceful and sort of ok which is the best I hope for these days.

We have two exra chests of drawers in the living room along with another piece of furniture, the kitchen table is dismantled in the corner... in the kitchen is a large cupboard from the back bedroom and my wardrobe.

 Oh yes, I haven't shown you our new old cabinet with writing desk have I?

We travelled 20 miles with it tied to the roof of our car with rope. Fun.

I'm never going to find anything!

Oh the joy of decorating... we stripped the wallpaper in the hall today and one part of our bedroom.

The ceiling probably isn't coming down in the bedroom but it is going to have holes cut into it and heat/soundproofing stuffed in. No more sharing our heat with our neighbours upstairs. The Large Victorian terraced house was split in two many years ago, we get the garden half, nya nya.

Meanwhile Sketch knocked over a galileo thermometer while exploring the new living room layout and covered the place in some sort of petroleum substance... showering a cat is NOT fun, no indeed and he was most perturbed and I felt terribly guilty, but as soon as I sat down after wallpapering he was on my lap pounding and purring so I think I'm forgiven. I don't think Ray has forgiven him for breaking the thermometer yet though. It was a lovely big one we found at a boot sale.

Meanwhile Lyx spent most of the afternoon asleep on her chair.

Oh there's so much work to do!

And yes we will drop it and leave for our holiday on the 4th with nooooo problem!


::::::


Oh yes, five good things:


Being excited about going away. Being excited about anything at all is a really really good thing.

Seeing the lift in Ray's mood and his pleasure at receiving praise for his work.

Getting started with our bedroom. Finally.

Wallpaper coming off easily.

Winning a nice winter jacket on ebay for a bargain price.

Five good things

Ray sliding over to my side of the bed when I had to go the the toilet to keep it warm because I was feeling really chilly.

Maltesers: shared. Jelly Beans: not shared (but only because Ray doesn't like them and not due to meanness on my part, no).

Tidying the garden together and planning for next year.

Ray telling me of a conversation with my Dad about our babies while my Mum and I were in the kitchen. I can't tell you how happy this made me. Alzheimers is slowly and cruelly robbing us of the gentlest of gentlemen but he remembered our lost babies.

Sending quiet love to our Poppets on the cool night breeze.



What good things found you last week?

Escape plans

We're finally going away - on 4th October - only 3 weeks to go we have to wait nearly 3 more weeks!  Arranged carefully to avoid periods, carpet laying and decorating. Yes, I know, the universe laughs in the face of careful plans, hoped for sunshine and indeed, babies. It's an act of faith.

We're staying near Rye in Sussex. A seaside town which lost the sea. We're staying in a caravan. It was stupidly cheap and we get many more nights for our money than staying in hotels (I was planning on fancy-shmancy hotels but the miser in me won out). I haven't stayed in a caravan since I was little and I sort of hope it rains just for the noise on the roof. We're going to an area that is flat and marshy, wide and wild. Big skies, long beaches, sand dunes and lots of history. Names like Frenchman's beach, Ypres tower, Wish street, Cinque Ports street and Mermaid street intrigue me. And then there's Dungeness which I think will suit my mood and maybe help blow away a few cobwebs.

I've been desperate to get away since we lost Little P.

I need to get away from the blanket of gloom that has settled about me. The one so heavy and itchy and uncomfortable that it stopped me from getting myself an in-real-life hug.

If I could just leave it behind... or better still, drop it along the way...

Ray has an ulcer. Probably. Unpleasant tests. I worry. He stresses.

But we're not cancelling this holiday for anything.

5 good things about the worst thing in the world

Finding out just how much love we have.

Finding out what really matters: not that much actually, but what matters, matters HUGELY.

Seeing the magical mix of him and me in our son's beautiful face and oh he was SO beautiful.

Finding out who our real friends are(n't): Few and very far between.

Finding you and finally being understood.



But I'd gladly give up these good things in a heartbeat (Probably goes without saying eh?).

They seem to know

when warm cuddles are needed.

Five good things?

Ray finally finished painting the back bedroom. And I can't bear to go in it. It's now a neutral blank room with no hint of what it might have been. Not that there was ever a hint of what it might have been. We never had a chance.

It should be full of little boy things. It should be filling up with new things.

As I watched Ray painting the soft white colour on the wall a sudden rush of tears sent me from the room and since then I can't quite seem to stop the weepies and the why us's. I broke our £1 recycling centre bathroom cabinet find while drilling screw holes into it, burst into tears and didn't stop for 20 minutes. I feel like a train wreck.

We have to move our bed into that little room soon so that our bedroom ceiling can be re-soundproofed, new carpet laid and the walls painted. I feel as if I will be trespassing in our children's never-space and I wonder if I will dream of my little lost babies. Perhaps they will haunt me there.


If Little P had lived we would have been 19 weeks. I only know that because I made a note of it in iCal and forgot to delete it.


I don't have five good things to end this week with, but I hope you do.


I will make next week better.

Stop it

Yesterday we were waiting in a small queue and the couple in front of us were trying to stop their son (about 8) from "cheating" and skipping to the front. The man turned to us and "ha ha, you should get a kid, it makes everything take twice as long ha ha". Ha. Ha? I think we both gave back a blank look and the man didn't say anything else.

"I could think of several responses to that" I said.
"Me too."

But we don't speak these responses because we're polite English people and we don't let "outsiders" into the world of babyloss most of the time. It's too horrific and we don't want to ruin someone's day, or their lunch, or their ride on a victorian cliff railway by letting them know that yes, we would "get a kid" if we could, in fact we have tried but our kids died long before they could be amusingly annoying.

Really, dear Universe, that wasn't fair. Stop it please.

:::

I had two dreams about pregnancy tests and the results of which over the last couple of days.

In the first dream the result was positive and then Ray shook my hand. In the second dream two nights later the dip-in-the-pee stick was absolutely the longest dip-in-the-pee stick in the world, metres and metres of dip stick and I ran along side the stick as the pee was travelling along it. It seemed to take forever but eventually I got to the end where I found the second line.

And then I woke up from the dream, went to the toilet and my period started.

We weren't trying, I wasn't hoping or expecting. So really. Seriously. Subconscious. For my sanity's sake. Stop it!