It's not just me it's the drugs

I thought I was just upset because it would have been our son's first birthday a few days ago but I can safely say that the Norethisterone has a common side-effect of PMT.  I half wondered if that might be the case as I don't usually get PMT around the time my period is due.  Sometimes I feel crabby if I'm in the painful throes of a period but it rarely happens beforehand.

I am feeling better today, even though my period has started and I'm having a heavy day with strong cramps.  The upside to today is that I'm getting some Scooby Love.

Scooby is a bouncy 4 month old Border Collie bitch (yep, Scooby is a girl...  not that I can laugh at that, I called my cat Tina when I was a 2-3 year old...  Tina was a boy), she belongs to a Buddhist couple who live in my village.  They had to go to London today and needed someone to care for Scooby overnight.  I've already taken her for a walk along the top road and across a paddock (oops, sorry - it's a field here, not a paddock!) and she bounced around like a crazy rabbit the whole way, it was funny to watch until she started playfully snapping at my hand every time she ran back to me. 

I've just locked Scooby away in her "bed" which is a massive wire crate that gets transported from her owners' place to here or wherever they happen to take her overnight.  I think I'll have to take her for a super long walk tomorrow to wear her out a bit, she was still bouncing around after our 1/2 hour stroll this afternoon.  I had her sitting on the lounge room floor near me, then I got up and left the room for all of about a minute and when I came back, Scooby had decided that she preferred my seat on the sofa, so that was the line in the sand for me.  She loves her crate, I've draped some towels over it to make her feel safe, so she settled down very quickly and is having a nice quiet nap - I was half expecting her to kick off and start crying and carrying on but she's fine!

Andrew is due home this evening from his 4 day course in Cheshire, he is stopping on the way home to see Grandma and possibly the Daz Man aka Freaky Boy.  I think they were going to see a movie, I'm not sure.

I will have to take some pics of Scooby later and post them just to show you how cute she is.

Dickhead drivers

Allow me to pre-face this by saying that not all British drivers are idiots, most are very courteous.

Where we live in north Dorset it is very pretty, very hilly countryside with lots of narrow winding roads which are often lined with tall thick hedges (which make it impossible to see oncoming traffic when the road winds left and right).  So narrow are the roads that in some places cars can only go single file and if someone else is coming from the other direction there is usually a courtesy system where the first person to be able pull into a driveway or side street or even a puddle will do and the other driver will drive carefully past and give a quick salute to say thanks.

Not today.

I was coming back from doing some shopping in a town about 20 minutes drive away, and I decided to come home via the back road as there is less traffic.  I always drive so carefully on the back roads since a few months ago when I almost had a head-on smash with a courier van driver who thought he was the only person on the road that day (don't get me started on courier drivers either, I've had it up to my teeth with them!).

So today, a woman driving a big van saw me coming with about 30 metres to spare and we both stopped, unsure of who was giving way to who first.  She then pulled over to the side of the road as much as she could to let me pass her.  The problem was, there was kerbing on the other side of the road so as I tried to pass her my car's tyres were wedged up against the kerb on the left and my side mirror on the right was about an inch away from scraping against the side of the van.

I considered reversing back up the road (around a bend, mind you) but then I was suddenly trapped by another vehicle approaching behind me.  So I wound the window down and told this woman I couldn't pass and she would have to move back.  She and her boyfriend proceeded to have a go at me for not backing up, despite the other vehicle now stopped and waiting for them to pass him.

How can they expect me to reverse about 20 metres back when all it took was for them to reverse a whole three metres?  Twats!

Honestly, van drivers have such an attitude on the road here, I really think they believe they should have priority because they drive a larger vehicle.  No, the roads are there to share people, pull your fucking heads in.

British roads are not designed for carrying this much traffic, their "lorries" (they are not lorries, they are trucks) often take up the whole lane and then some of the opposite lane on the main road (called an A road - B roads and C roads are even narrower and in even shoddier condition than A roads!).  For the amount of traffic, the Brits are rubbish at maintaining their roads.  Australian roads are a luxury to drive on by comparison.

Rant over.

Today would have been your birthday

Today would have been our son's first birthday, but he isn't here with us, we lost him at 10.5 weeks gestation in September 2008.  His due date was the 24th of April 2009.

Whenever someone tells me they had a miscarriage and they just can't seem to get over it, I truly sympathise with them and say "it is never easy, but it does get easier".  In a sense, it does get easier.  But on days like today, it's not easy.  It is painful.

Painful because I still have flashbacks of the miscarriage.

Painful because there will be no birth story for him, no joyous announcement, no happy visitors to welcome him into the world.

Painful because we aren't able to hold a warm, squirming little boy in our arms or breathe in the sweetness of him.

Painful because I know that thousands of other women with one year olds are celebrating their babies' first birthdays.  All those exquisite little things to plan - the party theme, the cake, the guest list.

Painful because every day we are missing out on watching our son grow and develop his personality.

Painful because I have visions of him crawling, pulling himself up, taking his first steps, reaching out for me and falling on his bum, only to stand up and try again.

Painful because I will never know that little boy who grew inside me for those few precious weeks.

And then there is the pain of not knowing if I will EVER experience those things.  It's bad enough that it was all stolen away from me four times, but the boot gets laid in even deeper, the knife twists even harder, when I realise that may never happen.  The real kicker is when it happens so easily for other people, especially if they hadn't planned it or they already abuse the children they have.

I think of our little boy every day, without fail.  There is a part of me that will never fully heal, I feel like my life is incomplete without him.

Slow down!!!

Bloody hell, where is all the time going?  It seems like only two days since I updated here, can someone please stop the clocks for just a while?

I've got another busy week, one of the milk recorders is very sick at the moment so farms are being shuffled around and a few have been thrown my way.  So what started out as a quiet week with two farms has expanded to five.  Ah well, at least it means more money in the bank.

I have had some big orders for my Wikaniko products, and one customer has given me a repeat order for a friend of hers in Spain!  I didn't tell her that there is already a distributor in Spain (the owner of the company!!), but I don't think it would have made a difference as she is going to take the products with her when she flies over for a holiday.

Andrew has gone away for tonight, he's gone to Cornwall to check out a cattle sale (not that he can buy anything, he's just going for a stickybeak).

We have bought me a wee little car, it's a Vauxhall Corsa (for the Aussies, it's a re-badged Holden Barina), it's pale metallic green and has a sunroof.  It's about 10yrs old and has less than 50,000 miles on the clock, manual transmission, and I think I'll get around 450-500 miles from a tank of unleaded which is good enough for now.  We probably want the car to last a couple of years (hopefully less if I can save enough money to upgrade).

I suppose you want to see a pic of the car now that I've told you about it.  I guess I can arrange that a bit later today or tomorrow.

Flat out like a lizard drinking

Andrew has been plodding along with his job on the farm, he can't wait to give his month's notice so he can get started in his new job as a sales rep for a sire company. 

I finished my training for my Embrace Eco business today, and I have managed to collect over 200 pounds worth of orders in my first couple of weeks, just from showing the catalogues to a few people in the village.  Hopefully today or tomorrow the orders will arrive.  I am expecting some more catalogues and stationery, and once I have those I can start door knocking and building up a customer base.

For the last week or so I have had trouble winding down and going to sleep at night because my mind is constantly on Embrace Eco, I haven't stopped taking notes and brainstorming.  One of my "routes to market" is holding a market stall and this is probably the most exciting opportunity.  I need to buy some equipment and stock up on some products to merchandise, so this isn't something I can rush into, it requires alot of planning and more importantly, money which I don't quite have at the moment!

I went for a lovely walk a few days ago, we don't get clear sunny days very often so when we do I try to get outdoors and get some exercise.