The Mission

I have been focussed on little other than meeting Pickle's needs and trying to conceive for a very long time. Now that I have an eyelash being or two meshing with my body, I find myself uncomfortably aware of the silence when I shake the coffers. In a bid to remedy this, I am determined to organise my little business so that it actually produces an income, rather than taking up lots of happy hours and producing lots of art and writing no-one ever sees. So, already I have listed four new things in my Etsy shop which had previously been languishing in my livingroom. I have been known to sell from my kitchen wall before, but that really doesn't work as a business plan.

I have a new small ink-on-canvas work called Reaching For The Light. The metallic inks do weird things to the light when I photograph them, but hopefully this gives you an idea of the verdant, abundant feel of it:

And I have had three more designs made into greetings cards.

Poppy:

Tree in Sunny Field:

and Reaching For The Light:

My health is better than it has been for a while, so I will keep working and keep posting about my new creations, human or otherwise.

And thank you so much for all the love and good wishes. It takes a village to raise a child, or do any much, I find. Thank you for being my virtual village x

Broken Shells

So, six weeks of injecting hormones and thousands of pounds later (keep breathing Lunar; just breathe and mention your shop), my good friend and neighbour drove me to the clinic to welcome one of my snow babies home. 

Sitting in the waiting room, my phone started to sing. Two missed messages, both from the embryologist asking me to phone her. I had a cold couple of minutes to wait before she led us into her office. No snow babies. No transfer today. Both protective shells had broken in the freeze and the thaw and those precious cells inside now had no hope of life.

As she spoke, my own shell cracked open and a chill draught touched my heart. You might not have known, though. I calmly listened to her explanation, asked sensible questions, insisted on the earliest possible date for the next step and left with smiles and thanks for the staff, because I didn't want them to feel bad. I'm very good at taking bad news. (I actually cut short the commiserations of the nurse who rang to say Thomas had died because I needed to be with Pickle while she had breakfast.) Life just goes on. Except for when it doesn't.

Halfway down the corridor some tears found the exit and I stopped for a hug. We talked in the car about what I could do next, but my brain wasn't really engaged. At home, I sat on my bed and just stared out the window for half an hour, no thoughts or emotions, just a subtle adjustment to the new world order. Then I had a nap and made Pickle's tea. It was the next day, glancing up at myself while brushing my teeth, that I really cried.

I will try again, but first my body needs a month to let this batch of hormones go and be ready for more. And I need this time to be ready for more too. No-one said it was easy and they were all right.

But it is a lot easier for having my girl with me. We are leaving love notes for each other to find,

spontaneously charging each other for hugs

and enjoying the sun when it shines.

Pickle has made progress in her career as a paleontologist, excavating fossils including a chick in its shell and in the process learning why paleontologists traditionally work outside:

There is always hope.

Capers

A call to caper craftily and getting totally folked up on Dartymoor.

Brushing aside yesterday's tangly bramble of thoughts (this may take some time and require protective clothing), Pickle and I have been off adventuring again since I last wrote and more is afoot.

We've visited my parents again. We're seeing more of them lately because Pickle is such good medicine for her Granny as she goes through chemotherapy, and the upcoming surgery. They're off to medical appointments almost daily, so Pickle and I get the run of the place. We give their fat cat Smoky a bit of exercise as Pickle trots after him, oblivious to his disinclination to be stroked by a small person and, at every break in the rain, we explore their lovely garden, trying not to compare it to ours.

When Mum's feeling relatively energetic, she likes to use it all up immediately on something fun. This is very similar to Pickle's policy, although Pickle gets up a lot earlier the next day. This time we had a scenic drive and a little walk to a boating lake. We entirely failed to interest Pickle in the boats (tractor obsessed, that girl), but she had a fine time leaping over a gulley with Granny.

Here we are, taking shelter under a huge tree on our way back. Only Pickle knows what the joke is, but it was definitely funny.

On our last day we just wandered along the road so Mum's friends could meet Pickle and I. We walked back in the gloaming and admired some beautiful skies.

The next morning we drove home and I performed my unpacking/packing trick in under an hour, then off we set again for the wonders awaiting us at Dartmoor Folk Festival in South Zeal. 

The dancing started at the pub at the top of the hill. At this stage there was plenty of humour, but also serious discussion around the importance of holding traditional dances whilst allowing evolution and creativity.

Then, in a trail of stovepipe hats and feathers, tankards clanking at the hip, the dancers led us down the hill to the next pub. Pickle was delighted to get a prime seat, but what I assumed to be absorption turned out to be the beginnings of heatstroke. Scary, but all better now.

The thing about the second pub is that the hill really is quite steep and a fair glug of ale has been consumed by now. It's the same every year.

Giggling breaks out among the performers at the slightest stagger and knuckles are rapped by sticks. Pickle and I had a hilariously clueless go, having claimed a stick just after the dance had been explained to the other children. Below are Molly dancers. A close kin of Morris dancers (his sister?), but accompanied not by accordion, fiddle, guitar and whatever else someone in their local can play, but by a lone singer - a woman in this case. Beautiful and surreal amongst the chaos of sticks and kicks.

Down at the main field there was the same but more so, plus men in very silly (by these standards!) trousers making happy fools of us all and some great Appalachian music and the champion broom dancers gave a joint performance.

In South Zeal's sibling village, Sticklepath, the annual Fireshow is holding its Crafty Capers Summer Workshops from August 20th. Info here if you can get there. It's a great way for kids to explore puppetry, costume creation, clay modeling and whatever else takes their fancy, and for adults to do the same. At Thomas's funeral we gathered coins instead of flowers and split them between GUCH (Grown Up Congenital Heart Patient's Association, which supported Thomas towards the end) and the Sticklepath Fireshow which represents the kind of creative community spirit which Thomas loved to be part of - and which had the fire element so important Thomas. He was part of the build for several productions, his puppets often taking a front stage role, even this last year when he was feeling awful. They have used his money for the Crafty Capers Workshops, so Gappy, Pickle and I will be checking it out and getting messy.

And while I've been gallivanting about, there's been a bumper crop of babies delivered. So, welcome and much love to

These are on their way to you :o).

Happiness :o).

Yesterday, I was reading The Economist. That sounds ever so intellectual, but actually I found a word I didn't know in the first few pages. Since you ask, it was 'jeremiad': a long, mournful list of complaints or woes. Quite the opposite of this post.

Anyway, one of the articles was about happiness; who has most of it? You can read it in full here. Much of it was what we would have guessed. Health, wealth, marriage and employment all bring us happiness. 

Children are more complex. When asked broad questions about general contentment, people living with children report much life satisfaction; more than those who live in ordered, quiet houses where sometimes there is a pause between loads of laundry and whole tracts of floor are visible.  But, when asked about the day before, parents are more likely to report feeling angry or anxious. I would guess they are also more likely to have tickled someone, laughed out loud and deliberately made animal noises (as opposed to my dad getting out of a low chair and unintentionally impersonating a cow in calf), and what's not to like about all of that?

From my own experience just this week, within two hours I went from almost crying with frustration at a stupid raincover which was designed not to fit any buggy (My husband put it on quite quickly, but then he may have had breakfast and I was pre-coffee; always a dangerous zone,) to almost crying with soggy mummy soppiness as my little daughter met Father Christmas for the first time (even though she cried when he tried to give her a present!).

None of the above was the point I was aiming for. The big deal with happiness, across the world, is age, in a kind of u-bend. The mid-life crisis is real and makes us more mopey than ever before... but then we cheer right up until we're as happy at 70 as we were at 18... and then we just keep getting cheerier! Hooray! So those curmudgeonly old sods who grumble at all the spangly splendour of Christmas are actually having the time of their lives. Ha! Tie that to your hat and jingle it!

"I am in no way enjoying this, you know."

And what I'm really trying to say is, that maybe this works on a smaller scale too. I have a deep faith in the fractal nature of everything (but let's not go there now.) Maybe that golden glow effect when we feel nostalgic about something is a symptom of the same cause. As we age, we become so much more skilled at finding the joy in life.

So here's my New Year's Resolution: I shall attempt to be pre-emptively nostalgic about life as I live it. I made a good start this morning. (I know it's not the New Year yet, but it would be foolish to delay a good idea for calendrical authenticity.) It was very early and I was trying to feed my daughter to sleep. She was having none of it and I was getting sore. (If you didn't just wince, be grateful.) I was wishing it would hurry up and be 7:00 so I could stop breastfeeding and continue re-reading of The Little Prince while we played. And then I remembered my resolution and realised I'll be nostalgic about such times spent snuggled in the dark, just the two of us, as soon as I stop breastfeeding. The comfort we can share together is so much greater than a little bit (well, it was quite a lot, but still) of soreness. So I pretended I was reminiscing about the present moment (a dubious past in the company of a chemistry postgrad may have helped here) and relaxed into gratitude. A much happier start to the day. She still didn't go to sleep though.

And now there is a foot and a half of perfect snow outside; I have a cup of tea and a packet of chocolate biscuits and the anthology containing my story November has come out. Just in case you're short of a Christmas present, you can buy it or download it for £4 here. 

And my final word on happiness is that if this doesn't make you laugh, please seek professional help.

Ho ho ho!