Hi! Gosh I feel sheepish. It’s been 267 days since my last post. Sorry. I thought about coming on to say hi a few times. I thought about posting a ‘closing’ message by way of an explanation for my disappearance. But I didn’t.

This blog became obsolete, I guess, because I didn’t feel the need to say very much any more. I got really busy (I had some Bridezilla-in’ to do!) And now here I am, on the verge of the next stage of my life, and I decided to start a fresh new blog, one that I ALWAYS wanted to write.

The reason for writing somewhere else is that this is an anonymous blog, to my knowledge, none of my ‘IRL’ people knew/know about it, or at least how to find it. The next blog will be less anonymous, though I’m not going to be advertising it either. It’s about me and The Doc trying for a baby. We’re not, yet, but we will be. And I really want to document the highs and lows, the tears, the laughs, the meds and the tantrums of it all. So it needs to happen elsewhere.

I don’t know if this post will pop up on any of your radars, but I wanted to post it just in case. It would be great if you wanted to follow me on over to the next step. It’s pretty daunting, starting a new blog, writing without readers. It would be great if you would, despite the last 267 days 😉

http://chickshatching.wordpress.com/

Everything – it’s all happening!

Bullet points!

• We went to Spain! The town we picked is beautiful, little windey cobbledy streets, beautiful flowers hanging from wrought iron railings on the sides of unevenly skimmed whitewash buildings, restaurant after restaurant to sit outside and So. Much. Good. Wine (anyone else feel wine usually tastes cheap and nasty when they aren’t at home and the only option is red or white, dry or sweet?) 4 large glasses of wine before dinner = €8 = £6.50 = US$10! Mountains which look like they are queuing up to take their turn to slide peacefully in to the blue blue sea.  This is what we woke up to on day one – it didn’t seem such a problem then, that the hotel had bundled us off up in to the roof when we’d arrived at 11pm the night before:

So in Spain, we lived in the roof, with a roof terrace and a pool to ourselves.  Aaahhhh.  Gotta love being somewhere off season!

• We have our venue!!! It’s available on our date!  We’ve set a date!!!!! Arsh!  I need to save venue talk for a whole other post.  It’s … uh, it’s oh … so special.  Please ask your minds to step away from those shiny beach side hotels that are two-a-penny on the Costa Del Sol.  Take your mind as far from that as you can.  You’re almost there.

• Sunday we went to see The Hunger Games (AWESOME!) and then we went to the Christmas Markets and wrapped our icy woollen clad fingers around steaming mugs of Gluhwein and smiled festively at one anothers pink noses while the twinkly lights reflected in our eyes.   (Go on, click the link, see how mean I used to be, before she used her magic powers to melt me.)

• This weekend we’re off on an all expenses paid trip to London to start our training as carers which was only organised a couple of weeks ago but is AWESOME in timing as:

1. My best friend in all the world might be there Friday night and I haven’t seen her in forever and we need a serious wedding briefing.
2. One of The Doc’s very good friends is in Brighton has his 30^th birthday party Saturday night – we previously couldn’t go due to the cost and the five hour journey to Brighton from Manchester, now we can hop on a train out of London and be there in 50 minutes to surprise him!
3. I got an email from my oldest ‘friend I haven’t met yet’  who is American and who I’ve ‘known’ for … I don’t know?  Ten years? (from the myspace days, to blogging, to snail mail penpalling) that she is in London on business next week and could I make it down to meet her? Could I!?!? I’d have walked down there if fate didn’t have me there already!  It’s the most exciting (and nervewracking!) thing ever! (I’m getting excited and beginning to sound like a 14 year old valley girl.)

• Next Friday is The Doc’s surprise 30^th birthday party.  It’s killing me.  I can’t wait for it.  a) because it’s going to be awesome, but b) because my head is going to start spinning from the organisation and the keeping-it-secret of the whole thing.  She can be assured of one thing, this is the one and only time in her life that she’ll have a surprise party organised for her by me.  I’m also convinced she knows about the whole thing but is carrying on pretending not to, so as not to ruin it for me.  I am not basing this on anything other than pure paranoia.  I can’t wait for it to be over.  I have a spangly shimmery shakey jingly 1920’s style dress to wear for it though.  That makes it all better.

• Then … THEN … we go to Cuba for two weeks.  For her birthday.  For our anniversary.  For Christmas.

• I’m just now waiting to get wacked in the face by a falling aeroplane, because really, who deserves this much loveliness in their lives?  It’s sickening.

I don’t have the best relationship with my mother.  I was about to tell you about how we get on OK but don’t really have a mother daughter/relationship.  That would be lying though.  Almost everything she ever says out loud (or indeed with a look) makes me have to bite my tongue. 

It’s not one sided; I piss her off too.  Sometimes the looks she gives me that make me bite my tongue?  I know that behind those pursed lips she’s biting her tongue too.  She doesn’t like for you not to know that you’ve pissed her off though, so when she bites her tongue, she lets you know that she’s biting her tongue.  I’d like to think that I try really hard to smile and agree and appear genuine, when inside I’m screaming at her.  Probably not always the case though, I do bite sometimes, but it doesn’t go as far as it used to.

Ouch, all this tongue biting is making me feel like it’s 1999 and I just had my tongue pierced.

I’m not pouring my heart out over this – there isn’t really an awful lot to pour out.  I agonised over our relationship for years and years, I went to counselling.  We used to scream and shout and even ended up in a physical fight once.  And then one day I just woke up and accepted “This is her, it’s the way she is; this is the way I am, we don’t go very well together, it’s not personal.” And it all became a little easier not to react to her and let those snipey little tid bits turn in to full on screaming matches.  It’s really exhausting though, spending time with her.

My mother loves to be the hostess.  She loves having parties.  She loves for people to oooohhh and aaaahhh over food she has cooked.  Sometimes she’ll stand over you while you taste something and say “Well?  It’s amaaaaaaazing isn’t it?” (to which my usual reply is something like “m’kay” – see? Half my fault.)

One of her favourite hostessing events is Christmas day.  She has this made up vision in her mind of our family Christmas in which we all wake up and open presents together with Christmas cheer wearing fluffy new pyjamas (reality: we’ll be hung over, I’ll have makeup down my face my brother will smell of whiskey and be laying on the floor half asleep in his pants.) She and I will cook Christmas dinner together (reality: she is in the kitchen screaming and screeching at boiling pots and if you try to help, you’re in the way.)  On Christmas evening, when we’re supposed to be playing sharades and getting slowly piddled together, the reality is that we’re not allowed to make a peep while she watches Eastenders.  And Coronation Street.  And Downton Abbey.  Literally, we’re not allowed to speak.  All of this while mums aspergic partner has shut himself away up in his office with his headphones on listening to music.  For the entire day.  Except for when he joins us for dinner and spends the entire meal complaining that there are carrots on his plate.  I’m usually in bed by about 9pm.

Every year, mum asks earlier and earlier what our Christmas plans are.  She tries to pin us down to it early.  This year I think it was around May time, that she asked.  I spend most Christmasses at Mums, because I know how much she loves (the idea of) it.  There has been the occasional year that I’ve found an excuse not to.  One year I was dreading it so much that I signed up to work in a homeless shelter on Christmas Day.  That was a fun Christmas.

This year, my brother isn’t coming over.  We’re in Cuba until 27^th December.  Then the Doc has to go straight back to work when we get back.  There have been conversations back and forth and back and forth over what we’ll do – and I managed to get Mum to agree to come up to us as we also have to see The Doc’s family – so why don’t we all do something together at our house? I text her last week to say that as numbers were growing a little we can’t host everyone at our house so we’re thinking about organising a big family meal in a pub somewhere.  She replied “Oh, why don’t you just come down to me, you know I like to have a Christmas even if it’s not on Christmas day.”

I told The Doc it looked like I was going to have to go down there.  Bearing in mind that between my holiday and New Year and going back to work I only have two days free.  And now I’d have to spend these on a four hour round train trip to a place I don’t want to be?  The Doc gave me a little reality check.

“What will I tell her though?”

“The Truth?” The Doc suggested.

So – I sent a text “I don’t think I will, I only have two days at home over Christmas and I’d rather be at home.  Please don’t be angry, I come to you every year.”

It’s liberating, telling the truth. Well part of the truth anyway.

And next year?  I have my excuses already.  I haven’t spent Christmas with my Dad in years.  He’s not overly bothered about Christmas and it’s usually pretty quiet at his house with the day being centred around good food (dad is awesome in the kitchen), good wine and lots of relaxation.  He’s just put his house up for sale so I’m guessing next year there’ll be a new house to christen.

I’m still awaiting the fallout of the last text to mum though.

You thought I’d got through a whole blog without mentioning the wedding, didn’t you?  WE’RE GOING TO SPAIN NEXT WEEK TO PICK A VENUE!!!!

She kept apologising to me profusely that it hadn’t been some massive orchestrated proposal.  She started getting upset with herself that she’d ruined it.  I told her the only thing that could possibly ruin the night, and the proposal for me, was if she got upset that it hadn’t been ‘right’.  Because it was.

You see – I may have mentioned once or twice before on here that I’d been thinking about proposing?  I think I may have hinted at it, anyway.  I don’t like to make announcements unless they are 100% solid in my mind.  We’d always talked about our dream wedding – it initially came up when someone else was talking about their wedding and we both blurted out what our ideal wedding would consist of – it just so happened to be the same thing.  We both wanted to get married in Italy.  We envisaged having exclusive use of a small hotel or huge villa, around 50 guests, lush green grounds, perhaps some water in sight, an unstructured relaxed day of good food and good wine and local live music and twinkly lights.  There would be no big white dresses or seating plans or schedules.  This dream belonged to both of us before we’d even met.

I was going to propose to her in Cuba.  I wanted to marry her in summer 2014.

So, a couple of months ago, we were outside a bar drinking wine and smoking cigarettes (you’ll notice a recurring theme).  I think the conversation started off about babies, and she was saying she felt she needed adventure before settling in that way.  She wanted to travel.  She’s sick with envy that I’ve been there and done that while she was building her career.  We had talked before about travelling to India and she brought that back up as a possibility for 2014.

“What about Italy?” I asked her.

She looked at me confused and said What about Italy?  That was as much as I needed to hear.  I needed to add 12 months on to my proposal schedule.  I wasn’t going to push the matter, there was plenty of time.

A couple of weeks ago, I went shopping for her 30^th birthday present.  I wanted to get her something special, something she could keep forever.  My Grandma recently passed some rings on to me and went through them telling me where they were from: “This is my eternity ring; Your Granddad bought me this one for my 50^th birthday; this is from our 60^th wedding anniversary” it really choked me up.  How beautiful.  Their life history in jewellery.  This was what was on my mind when looking for a birthday present for her.  I said to many jewellery sales assistants “I need a beautiful diamond ring, but it mustn’t ever be mistaken for an engagement ring.”  I didn’t want that awkward moment, as she opened up her present to find a ring box … I didn’t want her to take it as a proposal.  After all, I was convinced she’d already told me (subliminally!) that she wasn’t ready for that.

Fast forward to this weekend.  We were out for some friends birthdays – her friends.  People I’ve met before but don’t really know.  It was a great night, a great atmosphere.  We were having a great time.  We nipped outside for a ‘breath of fresh air’ (in to the yard of the pub – where the smokers pack themselves in like sardines against the bottle bins for a chance to smoke.)  We were chatting about the wedding plans we’d just been hearing from the birthday girl, who is getting married next year.  “If we ever get married…” she began – but I was already interrupting “Do you think we’ll ever get married…” I was about to begin laughing and back peddling when she said “Fuck I can’t believe I’m going to do this now” … and then I have no idea what she said … it’s like everything was in slow motion, or under water, or like I’d been wrapped up in cling film … but I was aware that she was proposing.  I’m pretty sure it was beautiful, what she said.  I know I was crying.

And then, after who knows how long of the slow motion under water scene, we were hugging and one of us said “are we engaged?” and the other said “yes”.

Once we’d hit the earth again, that’s when she started getting upset with herself, saying she’d ruined it, and that I deserved something amazing.  She said she had been planning it for months and couldn’t hold it in any more.  She said she kept feeling like it was going to explode out of her chest. She had planned it for Cuba, thought about organising a flash mob at the airport, had saved up for a ring but she was going to get a locket engraved for me for the proposal as she intended to let me choose a ring for myself (she knows me so well!).

I could only point out to her that getting engaged standing in the yard of a pub surrounded by bottle bins was more “us” than any expensive, long drawn out orchestrated performance.  We are those girls by the bins.  It’s us.

Besides – the biggest shock for me was that she’d been planning it for so long.  I had no idea.  I had thought she was actively trying to delay things.

We got home, and I went to get her birthday ring from its hiding place as she made tea and toast.  I gave her the ring as we both sobbed in to one anothers hair.  I promised I would buy her a proper engagement ring, but wanted to her to have something to wear in the mean time.  She said she didn’t want any other ring, she loved the one I gave her.

The next morning, we woke up and went shopping for my ring.  You’ve already seen it, it’s beautiful.  The only downside?  I have the stupidest smallest thinnest fingers ever – so my ring has to be made from scratch for me.  It’s going to take six weeks.  I have to wait six weeks! It’s heart breaking!! The ring you saw in the picture was a full six sizes too big for me!

So – the planning.  I’m sure you’ll hear a great deal more about this from me, but we’re aiming for September next year.  Either Italy or Spain.

Everything is just … just perfect.  My dreams are coming true. I have the most perfect lady in the world by my side, and she wants to marry me.

It makes me dizzy.

 

EDIT 09/10/13:

She has now agreed to let me buy her a ‘proper’ engagement ring when i pointed out that she wouldn’t be able to wear the one she has with a wedding band … this is her ‘current’ ring:

 

It’s The Docs 30th this year – I’ve organised a surprise party for her – I’ve tried including her family as much as I can in the organisation and decision making process, but have ended up doing most of it myself.

Were also going to Cuba, and since she’s always wanted to sky dive, I’ve found a place there for her to do one, as a surprise – it looks amazing, jumping from an old war helicopter, brilliant views, landing on a beach etc.

Her mum text me last night to say the family are planning to club together for a sky dive for her, I said I’d already been planning one in Cuba but if they wanted that to be from them, it could be .. I feel like they are going to think I’m taking over a bit, and asked her sister what she thought, and she replied “I think mum just wanted to be there to see her land” …

So .. Do I back off and let them organise it for her here in dreary viewless England, or do I try to convince them how much better it would be to jump over a Caribbean island and risk them thinking I’ve commandeered her entire birthday??

Answers on a post card, could really do with some public opinion!!

I had a disappointment a couple of months ago regarding a job which I’d gotten my hopes up for.  You know when something is so close you can almost smell it, and then it’s whipped away?  I was told I was 2^nd in line for the job after the interview/assessment process and that they’d really like to work with me in the future.  Whatevs.  Great feedback, but at the end of the day I didn’t get the job.  The worst/most upsetting thing about that was the fact that I was going to have to continue on in my current job.

I don’t really dislike my job, there are days when I come home buzzing, feeling like I’ve done an amazing job, feeling proud of something I’ve achieved.  Those days don’t happen often enough though, my job is about 85% bore. I don’t dislike it, it keeps me occupied, I get to work with some really great people.  But I feel like I hit pause and have been living in achievement-freeze-frame since I’d mastered this job and couldn’t develop it any further.  That was about five years ago.  I don’t feel like I’m doing anything.  The ol’ grey matter went for a power nap years ago, and never woke up.

So I was on the verge of applying to continue a counselling qualification I started a few years back.  I saved up the money (a lot!) and had myself booked in for enrolment.  It would be 2×3 hours per week in the evenings.  The Doc noticed that every time I mentioned it I was groaning a little – about the time and money I would have to invest.  She asked me if I wanted to do the course and I said yes of course.  She asked me why I wanted to do the course and … <fast forward through a lot of deliberating> … I realised that I don’t want to do the course, I just want to do something.  I want to wrench my feet out of this mud they are stuck in and dance about a bit.  Stretch my legs and my mind with a challenge.

Subject switch: I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that I have worked for many years with a charity who look after young homeless lgbt people?  When I say homeless, this could mean anyone who is sofa surfing, living in a hostile environment, at threat of homelessness following ‘coming out’ or in danger because of ‘coming out’ to family.  I’ve worked with them as a mentor, creating relationships with young people, meeting on a regular basis to offer emotional or practical support.  A gay big sister, if you like.

This charity have carers, they put young people in to supported lodgings when they might be vulnerable, need that extra bit of ‘live in’ support.  The Doc also started volunteering for the charity as a trainer, she trained the carers in psychological stuff, attachment theory, recognising and managing mental health difficulties, that kind of thing.

She comes home from these training sessions and says “I would love to do that, to take someone in, watch them grow, make a difference to their lives, give them somewhere safe and nurturing to call home.” I respond “Yes, I’ve always thought that too.”

So there we have it.  We talked it over for a few months, put in our application, and had our first home visit by a social worker a few weeks ago.

It’s daunting.  I’m more nervous of the assessment process than I am of actually having someone come to live with us.  It’s pretty much the same level of assessment you go through to become a foster carer; you have to lay yourself and your life and your relationship and your family and friends bare.  I’m in the middle of writing my life timeline at the moment, the first bit of homework I’ve been given.  It’s bringing up all kinds of crap and making me realise what an unconventional background I have, despite feeling like a cardboard cut out of a human being.  Then it goes to panel.

Placements are usually with a young person aged 16 or 17 (but can be up to 19) and last 6-18 months.  The application can take 16-12 months before you’re approved.  The Doc and I had agreed to apply now, despite the fact that we wouldn’t yet be ready to have someone move in (as we only moved in to our house a couple of months ago) thinking that by the time we get to approval, will be about the time we’d probably be ready to share our home.

Now that we’re in the swing of things, we’re really excited about what is ahead for us.  Really excited.  We keep talking through scenarios together, how would we react if this or that happened, how we would approach caring for a young person who is over the age of 16, what our stance will be on certain issues, how we’ll manage as a couple.

Through talking it over (and over and over) and filling in the application, I think we’ve both realised that the bottom line of this, our motivation, is that we were both so lucky to have been so well supported by friends and family through coming out, and that this has had such a positive impact on our wellbeing, our self esteem – that we owe it to our little brothers and sisters to look out for them, when they have been let down by the people who were supposed to have loved them unconditionally.

I know this sounds a little like I’m saying ‘I’m bored and need a project so I’ll get me a damaged teenager to look after’ … it’s not like that.  I’m a firm believer that we shape our own lives.  I tried going down the route of changing my job in order to feel like I was here for more than just shuffling bits of paper around a desk, but my options were limited by experience or the kinds of pay cuts I’d have to consider.  So I’m making my days more worthwhile, doing something that will hopefully make a difference to someone’s life,  to my life, to my relationship … I hope it’s going to be rewarding, I hope I’m doing something I can look back on and know that I did something good.

It’s going to be hard.  I don’t even want to think about the person who moves in with us coming home hours later than they should, drunk and accompanied by an unsuitable suitor.  Or worse still, nicking my eye liner.  And that’s just the boys.