Cooking -
Roasted vegetable and feta tart - The vegetarian student cookbook, Hamlyn
Vera's Salad dressing -
Apple Cider Vinegar 3 tbsp
Honey 1 tspn
Olive Oil 3tbspn
Water 2 Tbspn
Salt fingerful
Pepper fingerful
Green Stuff - basil, parsley, chives, spring onion (whatever you have) chopped up
Mix it all together and shake.
Piano - er, too busy.
Salsa - unable - more detail below
Pregnancy - more detail below.
My pregnancy goal - for those who want to know more.
The many many readers I have at this stage of my blog will be desperate to know where I've been. After directing the staged reading I found myself with a terrible deep tiredness. I knew that I would be weary, the little toddler was waking around three times a night and after a full day of looking after her I would then head off to direct a rather high maintenance cast for three to five hours.
But this was too much.
I eventually took a pregnancy test.
'oh', said hubby.
'I knew it', I said. Also feeling a little flat.
'It's just that I wanted our holiday to be really fun. I wanted you to get pregnant after our holiday. I know it's my fault, I'm just surprised that's all'.
'oh, well, it's just a bit earlier than expected. No drinking on our scotland holiday that's all'.
I'm also dreading the terrible nausea that I had with our first. It laid me flat from week six until week fourteen of the pregnancy. 'NOOOOOOOOHHHHH', my memory is screaming.
But we get into it. This is a wanted baby, and a planned one, just earlier than we thought.
The day before we are due to fly out Imogen is in daycare so I run around doing some last minute things before we go, like getting my bloods and my dating scan done.
'Can you wait around for a minute or two to see the doctor', a wide eyed woman asks me.
'Um, i guess, can't it wait till I get back in four weeks'.
'Well, its just routine, but it's very, very, very important you don't leave without seeing the doctor'.
She gets on the telephone to push the formal results for the scan through so that she can send it through to my GP. She asks the receptionist to call the GP to get me into his room immediately. I can see somethings up.
The receptionist peers at me through the glass window. She must forget I can hear her.
'And she thinks she's pregnant?', she says.
I call my husband.
It's not nice to tell him the heart beat stopped a couple of days ago, and not nice to say I'm not getting on the plane tomorrow morning. We're both calm and he rings the travel agent to rearrange my flight.
I have one moment of terrible terrible sadness when I'm waiting for husband to come in the door after work. We have a long hug.
The next morning I drive them to the airport and head home with purpose to organise my hospital visit. I've insisted they go. It's my husbands only holiday time and he hasn't seen his family in six years. They've never met Imogen. I call my friend.
'It's not a simple operation', she says. 'It's like what they do when you have an abortion. They put you under general anaesthetic and make you sign a form to say you won't leave the hospital unattended and they don't want you to be alone for 24 hours unless you haemorrhage or something'.
'Right. wow. Would you be able to pick me up from the hospital then? I ask.
'I'm not free actually, I met a really, really nice backpacker and we're going out for dinner. I've already cancelled on her once and I don't want to do it again'.
I feel the absence of my husband.
Fortunately my friend Kate who has a husband, a daughter, a job and not much spare time agrees to pick me up and have me stay the night at her house. I feel better.
'Are you ok?' she asks as I lie sleepily on the hospital bed.
I smile. I've just been thinking about the little person who won't be. I just want to get on that plane and get to my family.
'Yeah. Thankyou.' I'm lucky I conceive easily. I wonder about the poor women who take years to conceive and then lose a baby.
'You've got a fifty fifty chance of keeping a baby at forty', the doctor told me.
The rushed manner of dealing with it, the frantic fun filled holiday and then the serious plans to try again have kept me positive.
We're back home. And we're trying again.
