Saturday, February 14, 2009

The Sheer Glamour of Birth

With the weather warming up, the snow is now nothing more than melted squelchiness - though still, I am sure, there will be children who'll head to the farm slopes just beyond with their homemade sleds! As my due date gets nearer and nearer, the danger of icy roads recedes into the past as a thankfully distant memory and exists no longer as an possibility!
All that needs to be done in Layla Rose's nursery is for Craig and Gary to put up the blind - a lilac, thermal, black-out blind.(After months of confused pottering, I've at last discovered how to add a hyperlink - so if you see text that is blue and underlined, it means you can click on it and it'll take you to photos or something else to juice up the story!) Otherwise, my TO DO LIST has only my hospital bag to shop for and then pack. (Sleep eludes me as I chase down all these niggling things I still need to do... Even my dreams are saturated with obsessions relating to birth, bodily fluids, crying babies...) Unfortunately, going shopping for the contents of The Hospital Bag, is not a glamorous affair -- and you will know this only if you are a)a midwife, b)a mommy or c)someone with rather sick, sad interests! From ultrathick maternity pads to those see-through gauze disposable knicker-things. Blech. Perhaps it's a shopping expedition best accomplished in solitude? I don't think Craig will ever look at me the same way EVER again...

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Wishes DO come true.

Alone all day long with just my belly
to talk to, the days can be treacherously long - and I find myself counting down the hours and then minutes until Craig arrives home. Fact: men need to speak less than women do - and by the time Craig gets home from work, he's all talked out and ready to just chill out. But then like a tourist at a zoo, I poke him verbally as though he were a sleepy wombat to perform. Ya. Poor guy. I know. But hey - I get lonely!

THANKFULLY, I made a couple of very special friends when I taught at that little school in Kettering. The one is Tamara - another South African- who came over to the UK with her husband in August last year. She has been a Godsend - and has visited me twice on her way home from work even though she has an hour long schlep home to Peterborough from here... And then there's Wendy.
From the very moment I met Wendy, I hoped we would be friends - beyong the confines of colleagues' politeness and school hours. She just has this incredible warmth - like a glowing hearth-fire I craved to warm myself before. She was an absolute Godsend at work, literally being able to help with any situation or answer any, however random, question. (Personally, I think she should move her talented behind outta there and start her own company! She is DYNAMIC!)
Last Wednesday, in the pitch blackness of 4pm, Wendy arrived at the front door to what must surely have been an avalanche of far too many words - but bravely, she took it all in her stride (lol!) Hanging up her coat, she managed to get a sentence out inbetween all of mine: "Oh, and here's a little something for you."

She handed me a camera.

What?

A camera. I didn't know what to say. I didn't understand. Was she loaning it to me till I could get one of my own? Eventually, I understood the depth of it all: Wendy was actually giving us this camera - and it was gleamingly brand new, stocked up with the very best rechargeable batteries and a 4GB memory card!!! Gobsmacked. Flabbergasted. Completely and utterly blown away. I felt like a bit of a fool - inadequacy of verbiage for once paralysing me into silence. I could hope I appeared as grateful as I felt...
We had a couple of cups of tea, a few nasty little sugary biscuits I discovered in Craig's corner of the tea/coffee cupboard -- and altogether the most wonderful conversation I've been treated to in simply ages! (Craig looked grateful seeing someone else have to absorb my daily quota of words.)

I guess what I'm really trying to say is THANK YOU, darling Wendy, for the most incredible gift - a gift with long-reaching meaning: Layla will have her childhood lovingly archived because of YOU.

(To showcase all my latest photographs, I got us set up with Google's Picasa! Here is the link to my 'Nursery in Progress' album. As usual, I would LOVE comments!)