Nathan's Day

I hate September, it's a bit childish to hate a month, but I dread it and every year right on cue it comes round and there is no escaping it or the welling of painful memories and emotions that inevitably come along with it.  Today is the day when our dream of having a child together officially ended. Today was the day that Nathan came into and went out of our lives... Can you say was born? Does someone who never had any chance of survival count as being born?

I ask myself why his loss, one out of so many, should be the one that hurts so much and why so many years later this day should still hold so much pain? Maybe it's because his loss really was the end of our road, even if we didn't allow ourselves to believe it, or rather I didn't want to believe it, but it was, the infection after losing Nathan really did put paid to any further attempts, I just couldn't accept that then.

Maybe it's because he was the only one I thought was going to make it, when you get to the magical 12 weeks you start to think 'yes! We're ok! Danger zone past!'  By 16 weeks you're telling people and beginning to plan and becoming attached to the little person in there, so the blow is all the harder to take when it comes.

I hadn't really let myself get attached with the others, more so after Nathan, by then I had realised there was no 'out of the woods' point in a pregnancy for me, it was always going to be an exercise in terror and I should accept it, but with Nathan I was already enraptured, he had a name, I knew he was a 'he' and we already had that connection, that bond, that love. Or at least I did, who knows what he felt.

Maybe in Nathan how I feel is accumulation of emotion surrounding all the miscarriages, maybe it's the tangible experience I had, perhaps this grief is for all of them, just he is the one with a name, he is the one that I wasn't alone for. He is the one we got to sit and hold and cry together over.

The last few weeks have been difficult for me, its not that the ache of loss ever goes away, it doesn't, but most of the time I absolutely refuse to let it rule me. I don't want to be defined by the losses, the pain or the sadness. But once a year I let myself feel it because if I don't I feel that the depth of these emotions will drown me and I couldn't fight my way back again.  Like a release valve on a pressure cooker. 

I was feeling so low last week I took myself off to the cinema alone,  I purposely picked what I thought would be a sad movie, Anna Karenina, I thought I can sit under the cover of darkness and cry and no one will question it. Didn't work,  film was not very good, I shed no tears, no release was had but I did cry all the way home in the car listening to sad songs.  So thats a lesson for me... Just sit in the car next year and listen to Tracy Chapman.

So today is Nathan's Day, today is the day I grieve and mourn the dream that never was and tomorrow I will dry my eyes, lock away the pain and get on with the business of living... Until next year.

400 Knitting Stitches

Love this book! Whether you are a completely new knitter of a very experienced one this book is invaluable.

For the newbie knitter there are pages and pages of how to's to get you started and teach you how to knit from scratch and for the experienced knitter instructions on 400 different knitting stitches including both written description and charts.

Why is this handy?  Well let's say you've been knitting for some time and you want to have a go at designing your own patterns this book describes the stitches per repeat which makes it so much easier to develop a pattern.

Using this book you could make endless afghans of patchworked patterns.  Definitely worth buying and having in your library, you will refer to it often.

On Demand ~ Justine Elyot

Now I have always been a fan of erotic fiction.  Well written erotic fiction that is, not your 50 Shades of Badly Written Crap, properly structured, grammatically correct erotic fiction, stuff that titilates the senses as well as entertains the mind.  Strangely bad writing is an utter turn off for me.

I have always thought that written erotica was a female province, women are much more "in their heds" when it comes to sex, we seem to be much slower to get the engine running and we take our time getting to where we need to go, whereas men, it seems, only need a flash of breast and they are off! No need for a starter pistol there.

I guess the one good thing about 50 Shades of Tripe is that it has mainstreamed erotic fiction, I am giggling at his point as I keep mistyping fiction and it's coming out as fuction.... Freudian slip perchance? Given the blog topic it's kind of apt.

Anyway, back on point, by having a triology of erotic fiction novels hit the shelves of Tesco has really opened the door for so any other, better, books to come out from under the counter, I can well imagine Amazon are seeing a surge in sales in this genre as well.

Well for those of you that have been switched on to Erotic Fiction let me suggest this book as your next foray.  On Demand is a collection of... shall we say "adventures" based in a hotel and written in the form of 'scenes' or short stories if you will.   It isn't a love story although there is love of many kinds to be found within the stories and all the scenes link together and have some central characters that you follow.  But the stories are very sexy, racy, risque but written in such a classy, mature way that no matter how depraved the story none of it reads as tacky.

Definitely worth a read and partners everywhere will enjoy the side effects from their ladies enjoying a little late night reading, even if does mean they get woken up at odd hours to deal with the consequences.

A Little Bit of Cakey Goodness to share

Who knew running a cake stand could be so exhausting!!!  I went to help my friend Cathy woman her stand at the Whittlesey Festival (great day out by the way, loads to see and do!).  Sounded a simple enough endeavour.... cakes after all aren't all that heavy are they?

So we arrive and set about setting up the stand, we gather tables and chairs from Cathy's office and put up the canopy (genius piece of kit I must say!) and we lay out the cakes as attractively as we can and they did look pretty marvellous and mouth watering. 

And we stood back and waited for the hoards to arrive and arrive they did.  During the day there was a steady stream of people picking up their delicious Pattiecakes treats.  

It was only at the end of the day we really could see how much we had sold because all day long we were refilling the trays and displays from cunningly hidden boxes filled with more cakey goodness. 

It wasn't all completely plain sailing however, quite a few lessons were learned during the course of the day... most importantly that weights for the base of the canopy were important accessories to have as when there was a massive gust of wind the thing almost blew away and we had to pounce on the legs to keep the thing from blowing over.

We also discovered that the sun is not always your friend... we had to scuttle around changing the side panels on the canopy to keep the sunlight off the cakes... chocolate toppings don't react well to sunshine, however even when they started to melt the chocolate ones sold out faster than any other!

I had a fantastic day helping Cathy but I will admit to being completely shattered by the time I got home carrying my box of left over goodies... believe it or not I only got 1 out of the whole box, the rest were snarfed down in good order by teenage boys.  but glowing praise from them... Conor says that Cathy's cakes are "amazeballs"  some new teenage terminology that means great apparently.

Cathy does take commissions on cakes of all types, so if you have a special event and need a fabby cake her website is http://www.pattiecakes.co.uk/