What's That All About?

What is it about a skip? Obviously when you have work done at your home you generally have to have some way of disposing of all the accumulated crap that gets produced by the job.

When the skip showed up on the first day of the job I have to admit to being a bit surprised by the size of it, I thought to myself there will just not be that much rubbish coming out of this... but now I have worked it out it's quite possible that they don't order a big skip by accident, that maybe just maybe they know what will happen once it's outside your house... that the skip gremlins will sneak along in the dark of the night and chuck their crap into the skip you are paying for!

One night we went to bed and the skip was half empty when we got up in the morning it was full to the brim, we'd inherited someone's broken down washing machine or is it a dryer? Some empty boxes that weren't anything to do with us and assorted other junk dumped by people in the dead of the night.

Why do people do that? Would it kill them to knock on the door and ask? It's not like we bite... well actually I do but only when asked nicely! It just seems so sneaky to me to creep around at night just to dump stuff in someone else's skip, specially when the local dump is a 10 minute drive away.

I was glad when they came and took it away in the end, I would have been mightily pissed off if they had said "sorry we can't take this because it's been over filled."

Dream Office - Part Four

Finally my art room is finished, after several days hard graft painting the walls and the ceiling, it has to be said the ceiling was the worst bit, specially when my husband got a bit of an electric shock from the lights when he took them down to let the ceiling be painted... lesson learned... turn off the electricity even for the simplest of jobs, it's not worth the panic attack. Several days later his fingers were still slightly numb and covered in odd white spots!

I am loving the white walls, I was worried it would look really clinical but the addition of a cream roller blind and touches of colour, like the bright hanging pots on the wall, from Ikea stop the cold feeling and the brightness of the walls really does take advantage of the daylight available in the room, making it a pleasant working environment even late into the evening.

I'm trying to be careful and not rushing to bring every bit of craft stuff I own into the room, it's so tempting but if I do that I will just be surrounded by "stuff" and then it will be too difficult to sort it out. We've put in two white Billy bookcases from Ikea and a sofabed and I can see where I will be putting my filing cabinet, which will one day be modgepodged... it's on the list of "to do's".. once I finish the rest of the house that is!

And I think there is going to be one more bookcase in the room... trust me, every shelf will be filled, I have so many art and craft books it's untrue and I can't wait to unleash my creativity, however that is going to have to wait until the practical stuff gets done... oh the trials of the frustrated crafter!

Dream Office - Part Three

The builders have gone and the art room is done, I had the lino put down and the plaster is thoroughly dried out and waiting for painting, I am planning on bright white paint all over just so that the light bounces around the room. If you are going to be doing lots of work that involves close work light is the most valuable thing you can have.

I've chosen a really pale linoleum for the floor, I wanted something that had the look of wood but obviously laminate flooring and paint doesn't always go well together, specially oil paints, so after weighing up the options I thought linoleum would be the best bet, easily clean, not terribly expensive and easily replaced if it all goes horribly wrong and I drop a pot of paint that can't be wiped up.

On the whole theme of light I chose these eye shaped lights with four separate lights all of which are independantly positionable. All in all that gives eight spots that I can position in different corners of the room or directly onto the work table.

I couldn't believe how difficult it was to choose lights, I knew what I wanted when I went into B&Q but wow the light section was so confusing, every set of lights I liked was either horrendously and unnecessarily expensive or they didn't have them in stock... they had them on the display, twinkling down... but reach into the numbered spot where said lights were supposed to be resting and.... no not there, just an empty space. Very very frustrating.


But now the lights are up on the ceiling I am really pleased with the choice I made and because the room is so well insulated the heat rom the lights actually seems to warm up the room... bonus!

Dream Office - Part Two

I keep calling this an office but it's not really, it's not what will be happening in this space, it's going to be an art room really and a spare bedroom when we have guests, the plan is to put a sofabed in there but mainly it's going to be my sanctuary, why is it when I say the word sanctuary I hear bells in my head... in a cartoony voice?

The walls in the room have been insulated and plasterboarded and the electrics have been run, these will provide the sockets for all my sewing machines and my heat gun in a few days time and the window went in a week ago. Obviously we had our own personal drama going on but the work continued and Danny the builder has been brilliant. Now the window is in the room is incredibly warm even with no heating in there... Mick the gentleman from The Garage Conversion Company, had told us that it would be warm, but boy was he ever not kidding!

The day I saw the window go in was a really good day for me, even in the midst of feeling crappy and sad this was a highlight, knowing we were a step closer to me having my dream space.

From the outside of the house you can see a slight difference in the brickwork but it's so slight and the bricks are so similar to the original brickwork of the house I can already tell that within a very short space of time the bricks will weather in and it will be very hard to tell that the house wasn't built with this extra room already in place the company has been so careful to colour match the bricks and matching the window pattern.

The Power of Words

Over the last two weeks I have been recuperating from our sad loss, it's not easy being upbeat, although you do have to try, children don't always understand loss and sadness, they generally haven't had to experience it and why should they, they're children and shouldn't have to face these things until they're all grown up, the flush of youth is gone and they discover how truly shitty life can be. Let's not rush them into that one eh!

So I have been having to hide just how sad I feel from my sons mostly because I can see how sad my sadness makes them. I can see how worried they are about me and it was brought home to me just how scared these miscarriages make them when my 14 year old said, "you won't be doing that again will you mum". I thought he meant the miscarriage bit, but he was actually talking about trying to get pregnant again! It's one thing when Conor says it, being dyspraxic I kind of expect him to come out with things like that. But when my older son Daniel said something similar I realised just how frightened they are and how much they understand about the process I go through.

I couldn't really explain to Conor why it was so important to me to try again, he just doesn't understand but I gently pointed out to Daniel that if I hadn't kept trying the five times before he stuck, he wouldn't be here and how empty and sad would my life have been then? I think he "got it" but who knows, the workings of the teenage boys brain are a mystery to me. I often look up, ignoring the loud cracking in my neck and wonder how this beautiful 6ft 5in creature ever came out of me and then being ever so grateful that I inherited my fathers stubborn streak and kept on plugging away trying to have a baby.

I have managed to secure my health insurance companies support to go and see Dr Shehata at the Miscarriage Clinic in the hopes that he will be able to find out why my pregnancies are ending the way they are. He seems to behaving some success with women who have recurrent miscarriage. I am hoping to have a test for Natural Killer Cells which could be the reason I am having such trouble.

I wonder if I am crazy to hope that they are...? If they are then there is a reason for this to be happening to me and also a treatment, both of which would be a good thing, a step forwards instead of the 10 steps backwards I constantly seem to be taking.

The worst part is not knowing... not knowing means you can't make decisions. Not knowing means you run around in stupid circles blaming yourself for some imaginary thing you think you did to cause the miscarriage, cursing your body for failing you or just feeling an utter failure for not being able to do something so natural, something every woman's body is designed to do.

So roll on April, I am not looking forward to the trek into London, I hate going into London but small price to pay for an answer.

Letting Go.

Last week at a scan I was told that the baby I was carrying had stopped developing and that no heartbeat was detected. It's strange but I can't say I was surprised when the technician, a very sweet lady called Louise, told me, I think I had already known something was wrong. The fact that I could suddenly eat chocolate again had made me suspicious, whereas just a week earlier the sniff of a bar of chocolate was enough to make my stomach turn over and lurch.

By dates I was 10 weeks pregnant but by the size of the baby only 6weeks, so there was obviously something not working properly.

I have a couple of blood conditions Lupus Anticoagulant Positive and Antiphospholipids which mean that my blood is too thick and prone to clotting, which probably doesn't sound so bad when you hear the usual term for it "sticky blood", sounds kind of cute doesn't it, sticky blood... but what it means in reality is that my blood doesn't travel properly and develops micro clots which make me miscarry.

This pregnancy was my 14th miscarriage, 14? What a ridiculous number... how crazy am I to keep doing this to myself? Perhaps I am an advertisement for the word...persistance...

We just want to have a child together, you think it would be a simple issue of two people getting together, getting the timing right and bobs your uncle, but sometimes it's just not that simple.

Sometimes I want to scream at the unfairness of this... I had given up, this pregnancy was a bit of a surprise, when we moved house I had given up on the idea already, new house, new start but my husband thought a little differently. He proved there is an App for everything including getting your wife pregnant as he used ipod to track my cycle, sneaky little devil. Now if only he can find an app that will keep me pregnant we could be laughing....which would be hugely preferable to the crying we are doing at the moment.

You probably are wondering how I can find any humour in this situation... and to answer you honestly, I don't know, all I do know is if I cry anymore my eyes will fall out of my head and I might actually lose my mind. If I don't find a way to smile or some form of humour I may not hold on to my sanity and I need that, I really need to keep it together.

The sadness we feel is so deep and so all consuming you do feel like there is no way out of it and if my husband and I weren't so close and such strong support for each other I think we might struggle even more with the sadness than we are.

Strangely whilst I had given up on having a baby, losing this one has somehow reignited my desire to try again. Perhaps the difference in care and the support I have received here in Wellingborough has something to do with that.

I do feel angry, I see the stories in the papers about the children hurt by parents who didn't deserve them and I look at us, good loving people and reponsible parents, my sons are testament to the kind of parents we are and could be again and I rail at the powers on high at how cruel and unfair they are.

All I do know is that I am not a quitter, yes the daily injections and the tablets and the scans are uncomfortable and unpleasant and the miscarriages are devestating, painful both emotionally and physically but the end result, a baby of our own, made from the two of us has got to be worth the price.

Information about Lupus Anticoagulant Positive and Antiphospholipids can be found on Google but a useful starting point is the Hughes Syndrome website. Hughes Syndrome is much more widespread than currently known and most GP's are not even aware of it's existence of how easily it can be tested for and treatment is very simple and can be very effective. If you are a victim of recurrent miscarriage or know someone who is, get tested. http://www.hughes-syndrome.org

Dream Office - Part One

I have been dreaming forever of having a space that I could work in that was wholely my own, that I could put all my doll kits, my fabrics, my sewing machines, somewhere I could spread out a project and work on but not have to pack it up at the end of a session and put it away because the space I was using needed to go back to it's usual purpose. The number of times I have sighed heavily and packed up my paints off the dining table and put them away long before I was ready too, sucking back the urge to whine "but I'm not finished!"

Or having to move my craft table completely out of a room because we've got guests and my craft stuff was "in the way".

So one of our main reasons for moving was to be able to afford to convert a room into a space for me, my own little domain that no one could tell me I was messy or in my sons eyes "embarassing".

This was supposed to happen in the previous house but unfortunately finances meant we couldn't do it.

But this time... it's happening, we've deliberately started the work as soon as we moved in, before the money started to get used for other things...

We asked several companies to quote on the job and finally settled on a company called The Garage Conversion Company, they weren't the cheapest but they weren't the most expensive either, Anglian won the crown for the most ridiculous quote ever at £12,000 and that was INCLUDING their endless discounts and preferential deals!! But we were very impressed by the knowledge of GCC's salesman who talked us through the entire process and was happy to answer all of our questions before giving us a written quotation.

It has been a fascinating process watching a room develop out of a freezing cold garage, the first thing that happened was a flurry of activity on the first day when Danny the builder arrived along with a huge truck filled with building materials all of which was deposited on our drive. This was closely followed by a skip... we wished we had known that was coming... would have saved us 20 odd trips to the local tip! But hey ho, we recycled.

It was strange seeing the garage door just propped up on driveway, poor thing seemed so lonely.

Danny, the builder has been lovely, friendly, funny and very reassuring, telling me every step of the way what is going on and double checking the positions of fixtures to make sure he's getting it right.

In a week I have seen this empty room develop with a new floor, framework and insulation to the walls and the ceiling.

There's still about a weeks work to go until the room is completed and I can feel my excitement building and building. I can't wait to get in there and pop my table in front of my window get my paints out and revel in having my own space.




Roll on the day when the Rubber coverings come off and a beautiful room is revealed.