Tree

At work we got a voucher for a tree. One area of the parking lot was filled with trees and people giving out hot chocolate milk. All trees were in a net, a green sausage if you will.
Because the new house is so large and the living room plenty high enough I said to DP "let's take the biggest tree they have"
HB was kind enough to let us fill his car with the tree and suffer the needles after he dropped it of with us. We fed him dinner for it ;-)
It took a while before we got around to unpacking the tree, and DP decided it should be in a corner. First after taking the netting off, nothing much happened. The branches are ever so slow coming down. Now it is standing quietly and dark and very wide. It is a beautiful tree. No one seems in a hurry to decorate it and that is fine by me. It wouldn't make the tree any more beautiful to me.
Somehow it makes me feel like we have a giant teddybear in the corner of the room, keeping watch.

Sending you hugs for this time of year.
VV

Talking too much

I talk a lot.
My mother talks more. (and starts to repeat her stories too)
My mother is almost 73. She has a busy schedule, most of it involving activities with other ladies, no matter if it is volunteer work, charity, tennis lessons, choir, museum visits or lace making.
At lunch she told me that one woman said to the group of talking women they were with that she has no husband or children and found it painful to have to listen to the rest of them constantly chattering about their husbands, children or grandchildren.
I'm not sure what kind of reaction my mother wanted from me (yes, she did want me to say something). I'm hoping she didn't want an explanation, so I just said I was aware of this possibility while we were still considering treatment. I think even BambiEyes did point this out to me, that after other people getting pregnant comes the next generation of other people becoming grandparents, that I would have to deal with that later on.
I took that as encouragement. Now or Never. and while 'Now' seemed to slip away, the Never seemed to grow ever longer.
Maybe that is what my mother wanted to share, the future pain that I will miss. (I hope so)
But I'm a bit afraid my mother thought it was strange or not polite from this woman to say this out loud.

Also.
I have a new temp boss at work. He wanted an introduction get-to-know-each-other conversation. In which he not only asked if I met DP at work but also if he was already separated or not when we met. It's been a couple of weeks now, and it still bugs me.
The other gem was him first suggesting his own first child came 9 months after a party, and when I said it is not that easy for everyone he said he had 2 couples of friends that are in the process of adopting or doing DE. I did say politely it was amazing he still had friends.

777

When I got back from my trip I was overwhelmed by how big our new house is. When we first moved here it was after months and months of being involved in many details of the renovation, so it was more of a project. I was feeling proud of what was achieved, of the realisation what we had set out to do.
Then one month trying to get settled wasn't really enough.

On the trip I had very little time or space to myself, and just enough energy for scuba diving and keeping my milk production going.

Getting back was a bit of a shock in more ways than one.
Halfway through the flight home (in the middle of the night) there was a call for medical assistance. The doctor from our scuba group and 2 other people got up to offer help.
I checked the inflight map system and saw we were above the big nowhere between Ulaanbaatar and Novosibirsk and did a silent prayer for the person in need. I tried to doze of and later saw we were heading for Moscow instead of Amsterdam.
We did a quick stop to get the poor passenger to a hospital, and arrived home with just 2 hours delay. we met up with the doctor who told us the passenger in need was a woman who was only 24 weeks pregnant. They found out there were contraction inhibitors on board they could administer, and with help from 'ground control' Moscow was picked as best option. I'm trying not to think about what it must be like getting stuck in a Russian hospital with contractions at 24 weeks.
It was ever so reassuring that DP came to the airport swinging Suzy about to pick me up. So happy to see them, even if unshaven (him) or covered in dried snot (her).
Still hard to adjust from hot to freezing temperature.

And suddenly the house felt so big! It is 'the new house', not yet our new home. When I say house keys I mean the keys of the old house, I say keys of the door in the ally when I mean the new ones.
This morning I had a new shock: I looked at the gas meter. (Our central heating and hot water system works on gas) 777 m3 in a good two months, roughly 500 euros.
And winter has not even begun.
The doll house had an energy bill of 1000 euros a year......
We've adjusted the thermostat programming as soon as we got home, shaving of degrees and hours of the heating schedule, and we will keep a sharp eye on that meter for the next couple weeks.

(depending on how that goes I might think of curtains. I do enjoy the view so much though)

It was fine

As always with the news, it's different when you are there. It was all fine and nice and paradise.
Maybe 200 km north of us disaster had struck, but the most we noticed was more power outages. But the diving resorts are out in the sticks most of the time, and had their own generators.

Missing DP and Suzy wasn't bad (as I had feared) but the whole 'wow I'm in paradise' wasn't as soothing as other years (as I had hoped). I guess the biggest difference was: this time I didn't want or need to be away from my daily life.
One afternoon, on a rare occasion spending time with HB alone, we listened to the soundtrack of 'Once', a movie we watched together almost 3 years ago. It reconnected to the sadness I felt then. And it made me so sharply aware of the differences between now and then: HB's father died, Suzy came into existence, HB's mother is no longer (she doesn't recognise him anymore, can't even follow simple conversation).
It was good to see HB enjoying paradise.

It is good to be back home.

Lighting candles

December 8, 7pm

remembering our miscarriages, and yours.

I've lit more than a dozen candles in total (because there are 10 little candles for May&H)


(On youtube some videos from last year. Someone said 'remembering the children who lost their lives too soon' As if there are children who lost their life just in time?)