baybeasts

There is a topic that has, until now, been neglected on this blog. It is a topic that is so dear to our hearts that I can hardly believe that neither of us has written about it. A topic that we spend many hours talking about, thinking about, researching, planning for, and enjoying with deep and heartfelt satisfaction every day.

Things that you put in your mouth - things that make you go mmmm.

(Get your minds out of the gutter, I am talking about food and drink, you naughty people!)

Bean and I are obssessed with food and drink, in all its many aspects - quality, quantity, combinations, sources, cost, and of course taste. I can forsee hours of happy blogging on this topic alone.

And we are perfectly matched domestically when it comes to food. It’s very simple: I love to cook; we both love to eat my cooking; and Bean doesn’t mind doing the washing up. (That’s not to say that she doesn’t cook and I don’t wash up - we both dabble in each other’s domains with usually very good results, but there is definitely a division of labour that works very well for both of us.) It’s true what they say about food and hearts - I am sure that there has been more than one occasion when a spectacular meal has convinced Bean to stick it out through some of my less likeable moments.

Even better, our tastes are remarkably similar. The only major sticking point is garlic – I love it, but Bean can’t stand it. Sadly, I have had to accept a greatly reduced amount of garlic in my diet. It is that or forgo kissing, and really, that is not a meaningful choice. She is amazingly sensitive to it – there have been times when I haven’t even noticed that that sandwich I had for lunch had a smidgen of garlic in the roast vegies, and I have got in the car at the end of the day only to have her groan and frantically wind down the window. It’s very sad, but a small note in the symphony of joy that food and drink brings into our lives.

There is so much to talk about that I don’t know where to start. A treatise on home-grown vegies? A musing on the joys of wine bought by the mixed dozen? An earnest sermon on our efforts to eat more sustainably? A homage to home-made desserts? A description of the superiority of organic fruit? Tales of my adventures in home-made staples such as pasta, jam, yoghurt and bread? Instructions on how to make the perfect cup of tea? Links to our favourite food blogs? All these topics and more will be explored under this new category, dear reader. Enjoy!

of course the football story is so much more complicated than i ever imagined. on sunday i just happened to be driving around listening to the radio, when i heard a story about the history of migrant soccer clubs in Australia, called Beautiful Game, Lucky Country.

The standard of play and the size of the crowds grew in leaps and bounds throughout the decade, yet to many Australians soccer remained ‘wogball’, a game for pansies. They also associated it with spectator violence, especially towards referees and a level of nationalistic fervour that new arrivals were supposed to have left behind in the old countries.

despite promising myself that i wouldn’t get up for the game last night, i found myself wide awake in bed at 1am, and so i did watch. it was still very exciting, even though we was robbed. Tim Colebatch wrote a prescient opinion piece in today’s paper. i have no idea whether he actually knows anything about football, but i almost always think his economics opinions are enlightening, so i’m prepared to take his word as truth.

in garden news, we bought a mini nectarine tree with the unfortunate name “nectazee”. despite the name, i think it will be a very sweet little tree! and we finally put in the avocado that i have always wanted. we harvested something like 25 pumpkins - we have given quite a few chunks away, but have still managed to store enough to last us for nearly a year (if they don’t go mouldy on us). i took a photo - i’ll post it when i download it onto the computer.

in ivf news, the lovely dr david is away this cycle, so we went to see his covering doctor. she wasn’t nice at all. it was all rather disheartening. normally the post-period visit to the dr in preparation for the next transfer gives us a boost, clearing away any lingering misery after the last failed cycle. dr david’s optimism, cheerfulness and careful attention is infectious, so that we feel excited and happy and optimistic all over again. this time, we just felt disrespected, stupid and insignificant. no surprise that it has been harder to bounce back. dr david definitely deserves a pumpkin when we see him next.

i seem to be changing in unexpected and strange ways. for example, this morning i got up at 5.30am - to watch the soccer! (i actually set my alarm for 5am but just couldn’t drag myself out of bed. i then fell back to sleep and had a nightmare that croatia was leading us 7 to 1, so i just had to get up to prove to myself that this wasn’t true. it was worth it.)

i have dabbled in watching individual sports such as gymnastics (my true love) and tennis, but teams sports have never drawn me in before. but world cup fever (and the desire to be able to join in the conversations at work) has touched even sport-hating me.

it was a pretty exciting game. poor calvin suffered. he’d taken advantage of my unusual early rising to have a few biscuits and then curl up on my lap (it’s cold outside). but when australia got that second equaliser goal, he was most unimpressed as i bounced up and down - he leapt off and gave me the evil eye in that way that only cats can do. i think bean was also pretty unimpressed when i whispered in her ear that we were through to the second round as i kissed her goodbye. i am alone in my house in my soccer fever.

i think one of the things that i’ve been enjoying about the soccer is the way it seems to stuff up some of the more established norms about national identity. i’m sure other people will be able to express it more clearly than i can - it’s a bit of an unformed thought. but i’m loving the way that the australian team is jam packed full of folks who have had a lot of crap thrown at them in most other contexts in this country. what i would really like to know, though, is are the players paid to be in the world cup? or do dual citizenship players pick their side based on whichever nationalistic fervour grips them the hardest?

the other show that i am loving at the moment is the documentary about the kids competing to represent australia in biology at the International Science Olympiads. it makes me cry to see nerds like i was find other kids like them (something that never happened for me). it bites especially hard because biology was my subject…

I think Parker Posey is hot. Look at her here with Blade - she’s all bad and vampirey.

and Adam Ant…

he’s hhhhhhhhHOt
yeah

And now, I’m feeling pretty crap so I think I’ll blog about poo.

I blame whatever strange toilet training methods my mother engaged for my odd compulsion to poo just before I shower. It happens almost without fail and irrespective of time of day. I strip off ready for a lovely hot shower only to be thwarted and diverted onto the loo, shivering and cursing (it’s freezing at the moment).

Ever so lucky for me, this bona fide Pavlovian response only happens just before I shower. Not when I strip off at bedtime, um, etc…

Eleven days and a few hours after ovulation, the bleeding always starts.
Man.
We’ll have one more transfer and then we’re out of frozen pips. It’ll be back to the pill and the sniffing and the injections to grow some more.
We’ve had a lovely week off together, but what a horrible way to end it.
And S can’t take up the excellent 12 month job contract because (at the eleventh hour) her boss won’t give her leave without pay.

So… I’m bleeding and cranky.

and I have to go be nice midwife to glowing new parents
man

We are now two days into our fourth year together and it feels like we have crammed quite a bit into the past three years…
In may 2003 we met and 4 months later we moved in together. 5 months after that, we found and negotiated an agreement with our lovely donor. (His name isn’t David, but we wouldn’t swap him for anything).
At our one year anniversary we were caught up with buying our first house, and then spent the next 6 months doing minor renovations and getting the garden established (there was only concrete and evil grass when we arrived).
At our two year anniversary we started trying to make a baby, first using the DIY method, and now IVF.
It has been a pretty hectic three years, but we’ve weathered the hard stuff amazingly well.
Go us!

Transfer on Monday was not quite as smooth as we’d hoped. After the Doctor squirts the embryo into the uterus, the scientist takes the catheter and checks that it was not left behind. Unfortunately, an embryo was still stuck in the catheter, which meant that it had to be re-loaded and my cervix re-catheterised, none of which is great for pregnancy potential. We are pretty resigned to doing one more transfer in a month, and then starting the two month drug regime all over again. The up side is that because I’m so much less hopeful, I’m correspondingly less worried about sneezing and caffeine and the odd glass of wine…

I have to say a thankyou to those who have contacted us about the acupunture/ivf trial. I’ve only had one go at acupunture (last year), and will be keen to give it a proper go if I need to do another round of suppression/stimulation/retrieval. Thanks for thinking of us.

On a more gardeny note, the time and money we have invested in this back yard has paid off. This is the view from our back door. We no longer feel so frantic about living near (lots of) heavy industry. We have made a little haven where we can ignore the whooshing of the traffic and the screeching of the factories nearby. Sadly, the smell is still depressing sometimes.

A couple of weeks ago, S and I went to the Brownless Medical Library at Melbourne Uni and spent all morning printing out recent articles from medical journals about embryo quality and transfer success rates. I went off to work that afternoon armed with about 25 of them. I was in luck and it was pretty quiet, so after much pink highlighting and excited star decorating, I presented S with my findings…

We are going to transfer two embryos on Monday. This is because we are near the bottom of the barrel. We have a couple with 5 cells and a couple with 2 cells. The 5 celled ones are ‘ok’. The 2 celled ones are most probably shite. So we’ll transfer a 5 and a 2. I just couldn’t bear afford to keep transferring one crappy embryo at a time, given that the best 3 didn’t stick.

We were scared that our Dr David would talk us out of it, but he thinks it’s a grand plan.

Our deck and lawn are looking finished. The grass is stripey but alive. The BBQ is rebuilt but yet to be tested.