Not a Fibroid

I dutifully trotted off to Warwick Hospital this morning in order to let the Radiologist play Hunt The Fibroid. I had complained to PhiloGynae of debilitatingly painful periods, occasional jabby-pain during sex, and tsunami-like menstrual flow – two uteri notwithstanding – and so we agreed it was worth another look-see around the old place(s). I’ve seen this Consultant Radiologist a few times before but not for a while, and we spent a little time catching up and agreeing that, what with close on 100 ultrasounds under my belt – kind of literally, too - I could probably have a fairly successful attempt at working the damn machine myself.

He hadn’t had the dildocam in place a minute before he candidly informed me that things weren’t looking right. His phraseology, in fact, was ‘There is some very clear abnormality here’. For a horrifying second or so I thought he meant I had grown some tumours, because I could see a collection of lumps on the screen.

As it turned out: I have pronounced adenomyosis in my right uterus, and a  reasonable helping of the stuff in my left, too. While not actually a major pisser on the fertility parade, it certainly won’t help. And - it seems to be found in increasing amounts in women over 35, probably because their progesterone level – ie, their fertility – is falling.

He told me frankly that the only cure for this condition is hysterectomy - was I planning any more children? I said Yes, but also that my periods have always been so dreadful that I have been happily looking forward to my eventual hysterectomy for the last 23 years. It doesn’t change my planned end game at all.

But it does change the here and the now. I am suddenly panicking and thinking that if we want another, we need to bloody get on with it before my uteri pack up completely. I’m struggling uphill here, people. I have two uteri, of which the left has a decent lining but has smugly finished off 3 foetuses and the right has crappy lining and tried its level best to exterminate Harry. I have a virtually dormant left ovary. My endocrine system appears continually up the spout. And now it appears that my uteri are trying to convolute themselves into solid lumps of rebellious bleeding muscle.

I have (possibly) ovulated 4 times this year – early February, end of March, mid May and early July – which is astonishing and unprecedented regularity for me and a comforting sign that early menopause may not actually be lurking as close as I fear. Despite the 8 silver hairs I have extracted from my head this week. 8! The other bit of bad news is that no pregnancy has resulted, and our original plan of Lets-See-What-Happens now looks a bit lame. I am 35 in February. 

But I am a lousy, lousy subject for fertility drugs. I respond quite comically contrarily, whether stimulation or downregulation be the aim, and I felt the resulting hormonal chaos played its part in extinguishing at least 2 of my 3 lost pregnancies. But (another but) I really don’t want another pregnancy in my right uterus. I want to give the left another go this time. Which does rather dictate IVF – which I swore I would never, ever do again. I don’t mind the needles or the procedures or the constant travelling, or the waiting room tedium, or any of the associated crap – I just don’t think it’s right for me and the unusual and idiosyncratic collection of organs I term my reproductive system.

So I’m sat here, head swirling, with thoughts of natural cycle IVF or IUI bobbing madly around in the current. I need to get my paws on a doctor that I can have a meaningful conversation with about what the bloody hell we do now. Consequently, I shall be asking my GP next week to refer me back to the Centre for Reproductive Medicine at Coventry; if the wait is months and not weeks I shall see one of the consultants privately to figure out a game plan, and be ready to go with actual treatment when the NHS catches us up – assuming that they’ll fund anything at all. I rather think I’ve already had my treatment allocation prior to Harry.

I’m not sure which consultant to ask for and I shall ask my Counsellor when I see her this coming Tuesday what she thinks – she still works at the unit and is more in touch with who does what these days. The chap I saw previously is a prominent and exceedingly senior Obs & Gynae - reassuring when you’re as weird as me - but he has a woeful bedside manner, as Bee Cee will also testify. The man is dry to the point of dessication and simply doesn’t speak to you. But he did come downstairs specially to congratulate us both when we conceived Harry with no help from him whatsoever, which he absolutely didn’t have to do, so I know the chap does have a heart. Somewhere. And then there was the time he was walking past the nurses’ station and picked the incoming line up because it was ringing its tits off – another thing you don’t have to do when you’re the boss. It was obviously a wrong number - audibly an exceedingly voluble woman on the far end - and I treasure his eventual remark after the shrill squeaking subsided. “I’m afraid I am personally unable to assist you with your erroneous electricity supply final demand, as you are not, in fact, speaking to TheElectricityCompany. You are speaking to Coventry and Warwickshire University Hospital Centre for Reproductive Medicine. If you would like to get pregnant - I can help you. Otherwise, I suggest you re-dial.”

We’re back on the Merry-Go-Round, peeps.

The Arabs Say: They Have Plenty Of Sand Already, Thanks

I have been looking for a job. An actual proper, paying job. Fruitlessly.

My maternity pay – comparatively generous here in the UK - dried up well over a year ago, and since then, we have all been living on Hubby’s income – and eating into savings. Inevitably, there is beginning to be a certain anaemia of the Hairy Exchequer, and when my credit card bill plops heavily onto the doormat each month, John’s hands start to churn through his hair whilst I watch him anxiously from behind the cover of something solidly mad-axe-murderer-proof.

And joking aside, this sharing-of-one-income thing completely sucks a clown’s balls. John never actually criticises any of my purchases – merely frets over the zeros - but nevertheless, I acutely feel all the consequent mental indignity of this imagined host/parasite situation - and having absolutely no money of my own is a hairshirt total pisser.

Take our garden, for instance. Had I been earning, there would, by now, be a summer house, a patio/deck, some nice stone steps, a soft lawn, a fence and a gate across the drive. Because the only avenue open to me (sans income) is to plead with John – and we’ve been having this row a long time now – to get all the ground work done himself (strong muscles, carpentry & stone-building skills, JCB-owner, etc) all we have is half a lawn and some step-shapes in an earth bank. It’s a sore point, and all I can do is get angry and worked up about it and tell him I feel let down at his lack of motivation. But rather than spend 18 months working myself into a frustrated lather, it would have been awfully nice to have been able to cheerfully raise two fingers to the procrastinating old sod and pay builder-chaps to do it myself. But I can’t, and it makes me feel – well, probably about like Harry feels when I tell him he can’t have crispies for breakfast. Sort of…tantrummy. And small. Low down the pecking order. Not a mover and shaker! But… I didn’t want to go back to work, so I entirely accept this has been a situation of my own making.

The need to inject some more funding into the household budget peaked concomitantly with my personal poverty pissing me right off, so a while ago I began to scan the papers and websites. My background is field sales and account management, but juicy jobs with generous packages, local travel, no shitty aspects and a max of 3 days a week… well, like I say, I’ve been looking awhile. My old employers sound deep in the economic cacky stuff, and have nothing to offer me. The Sits Vac column has been merely a collection of ads requiring people to sell recruitment ad space. I seriously considered re-training for something different, but that in itself takes money, particularly when you have childcare to factor into the equation – plus I couldn’t think of much else to do apart from patisserie (bad back & early mornings) - so I’ve spent a fair while whizzing around in ever decreasing mental circles, with the occasional hopeful progress enquiry from John to depress me even further.

I had advance notice of the 2nd birthday party of one of Harry’s little friends one of the kids we know through babygroup. I sighed and mentally catalogued how many 2nd birthday parties we are likely to attend in the next 12 months: I calculated about 15. I like WH Smith as much as the next girl and more, but at around £2.25 for a card, I was wincing at the sums even before the whole wrapping-paper-and-gift moneypit forced itself upon my thoughts. I decided to be organised (a minor personal triumph) and went online and started searching for the greeting card company I know who bypass the shops completely and sell direct to the public: a girl I used to work with had a sister who was a trader and the cards I bought from her were absolutely lovely and a mere quid each when you buy 10. Bulk buying didn’t look like being a problem for me this year. 

I found them and was looking through the various designs and cooing happily – I like art AND stationery - when I encountered the section about becoming a trader… and slowed down to pay more attention. Your very own home-based business, operated as intensively or as occasionally as you please, in entirely your own time. And I asked myself if, really, there was any reason I couldn’t sell cards. And there wasn’t. I’ve certainly sold stranger things. I once sold a bloke a ladder I didn’t have (I worked for a filter company) simply because he dialled the wrong number and thought I was Screwfix. I sourced a very nice one, sent it to him, and made a clear 45%. I like days like that.

So, I sent off for some information, and scrutinised it closely. I had bought the products over a period of some years and knew they were very nice indeed, but some direct selling firms have - justifiably – had some dreadful press over the years and I was very wary. But I really couldn’t find much to pick holes in. The product designs are lovely, and beautiful quality. The company are industry leaders and have an unimpeachable reputation. 

Admittedly - I would have liked a higher percentage profit to begin with, but the margins do grow exponentially with the business. The inevitable £6 carriage charge to receive stock makes it unfeasible to replenish stock oftener than once a month, but…  in essence, I liked everything I read.

So I showed it all to John – forced him away from the TV and made him read it all – and we talked. And I signed up. It cost me £150, which was £105 more than it had to, but I wanted to invest in some extra stock. That was 3 weeks ago; I have been selling for 10 days, and I’ve already turned over enough to replenish the depleted bank account – even if it has been about 25% due to my mother desperately trying to indirectly inject cash into her daughter’s coffers by stocking up on her entire year’s card purchases all in one go. Then, she tried to give me them all back again to hold as stock. Bless the woman.

Being an owner (temporary, MIL’s house, etc) of a nice view, which people are often telling me they would like to come have a look at, I thought I would make the most of the new situation and re-take the dining room back for my own purposes. It now looks like this:

and the boys are Not Allowed in my inner sanctum. I sit in there and drink coffee and lovingly pat my boxes of stock! The hall has been tidied. There are even pots of pretty flowers either side of the front door and all the trailer-park-trash has gone to the tip. I am now Open For Business on Saturday mornings; I am booked in for local fetes – a big earner, apparently, although I’m a little late in the year to jump on board with many. I am thinking whom I can persuade to do charity coffee mornings – I don’t mind giving up some profit to a good cause and building a customer base in the process. I have dropped brochures and samples off in my local villages and my doctor’s surgery. I have sent my best friend off to work this week with a nice wicker basket crammed full with cards, note cards and gift wrap - and a commission offer that she has kindly declined, because she loves me. I am tracking down WI meetings and ladies’ lunches and begging for a slot. I am planning card parties for the evenings, particularly as we move towards Christmas (Don’t groan! The season starts in September!). I have been to one of the bi-annual company roadshows which fortuitously fell last week, and met – and liked – the owners and directors. I have been working stupidly late in the evening, because I have a lot of initial set-up gubbins to busy myself with.

And I’ve really, really been enjoying it. I have a new interest in life apart from the family bowel problems, which are beginning to oppress me mightily. This is my very own business, it’s a job that I know, that I’m confident I can make work - not least because the things really do sell themselves most of the time; something to appreciate when your previous career has been slogging uphill selling either industrial products in an overcrowded market or expensive marketing services. Those jobs had chunkier salaries, it has to be said, and this project is not going to have a great deal of impact on our budget until I have established my client base – not much this side of Christmas, I judge – but I can do all this work without significantly deviating from the weekly routine Harry & I have. (I am donating 10% of all of my profit to BLISS, the premature baby charity, which pleases me as I’ve been able to give them very little of late). My own sponsor – my upline trader and moral support – does the majority of her business stood waiting to collect her two sons from school, scouts, swimming, etc.

And now, of course, because I’m all bubbly and enthusiastic about it, I want to show you what I’m selling! And… I can’t! 

I have to box a bit clever here, you see, because – for some very cogent and responsible reasons – the company forbids their independent traders from advertising or linking to their products on the internet. They feel – particularly as a core part of growing the business is taking other traders under your wing as you become more established – that it is far too easy to start misrepresenting things, even with the best of intentions; they also know the UK direct selling industry has garnered a bad reputation for co-opting gullible people with unfounded claims of high earnings structured around hidden pyramid *pause to violently spit* selling. Blogs are not specifically mentioned, but certainly implied, and as I broadly agree with their point of view I don’t want to start making my own rules up quite this early in the game. 

But… should you wish to cut and paste www.phoenixtrading (dot) com then you’d naturally be ever so welcome to look about. The new illustrations that have appeared up top are from some of the cards and are made available for our use on flyers and posters… I am choosing, at least for the time being, to see this blog as a big ol’ flyer!

Now… I would hate for you to be recoiling in horror by this point, feeling all sticky and used, and thinking that I am about to start abusing my bloggy integrity boring you to death for the purposes of filthy lucre - so let me assure you that I will shortly stop banging on about this, and will return to my staple output of toddler-terror, and whatever other crap it is that I customarily waffle about.

I would, quite seriously, be mortified if you leave here with the impression that I expect anything other than your good wishes in my new endeavour – and I don’t actually even expect that, it’s just that I know a little about quite a few of you by now, and I appreciate your collective loveliness, moral support and kind comments.

However, I am not one to turn my back on opportunities, if opportunities there be – I drifted into sales in my 20s for a reason, after all, and there is just the tiniest element of CMOT Dibbler’s unrelenting greed about me, and I do need that garden fencing put up - so I will keep a tab up at the top there with some details on how to buy.  I do not exhort you, naturally! Some of you like spending more money than you absolutely must for quality products in this economic climate, I’m sure… Local customers are where this business is designed to centre, not the far-flung corners of the internet, but if any of you are extremely desirous of purchasing lovely (cheep! like the budgie) cards from Wifey – postage within the UK is not horrendous. Even with a couple of quid tacked on the total for Royal Mail’s cut, they are still significantly cheaper than the high street. I could include some genuine Stratford-upon-Avon air – the air that Shakespeare himself broke wind into! – in the envelope absolutely free, gratis and for nothing. If you live further afield, then the postage and payment element becomes significant, and I will likely be regretfully obliged to send you nothing more than my very best wishes and the news that if you live in the USA, France, Australia or New Zealand, you can buy from your own local traders. And I will make nothing! *lip quivers*

If any of you – UK, USA, or Antipodean – think that I might be onto a Particularly Good Thing here, and would like more information – then you must, of course, make up your own minds after careful scrutiny and consideration. I am very keen not to actually encourage you. All I can honestly assure you of is that the products are delightful and inexpensive, the organisation is well established, sensible and respectable, and that they do what they say on the tin. I can’t say that this would work for you: money generally has to be earned the hard way in this life, sales never achieve themselves and you always need a business head on you. It’s too soon for me to know how well I will succeed at this myself (although I am conceited enough about 1) my own willingness to slog hard at things I really want to happen and 2) the fact that I’ve succeeded in sales before, to feel confident) – but if you are the friendly type and have a wideish circle of female acquaintance/know lots of men who are prolific card-buyers – then you could consider having a go.

I mention all this purely because the way the company expands is fairly organic, with enthusiastic customers tending to be the ones who evolve into traders – and any new traders become the responsibility of the trader who originally introduced them the product. You would, therefore, inevitably belong body and soul to me, continually have me on your back, have to attend my monthly sales meetings where there will be cake, be a part of my team. I am not actively looking to establish my own team at all until I get my sea-legs underneath me - but anyone actually reading this who might genuinely be interested in selling the products, sends off for info -  and doesn’t quote my trader number - will oblige me to hunt them down with a large bowie knife and a exceedingly murderous look in my eye. I get my £25 registration fee halved next year if I sponsor anyone, and I’d really rather it didn’t have to be my mother!

And lastly: in case you’re sitting there feeling all awkward and uneasy and soiled, and thinking that buying cards from a random internet stranger is the last thing you want to do, ever, and you want to say something about something to break the tension but don’t quite know how to slide gracefully off-topic without, you know, actually saying no in any way, shape or form… here are cutesy photos of John and raspberry-stained Harry (the sweet, innocent, deserving family that I am attempting to ward poverty and incipient starvation away from) teaming up to build the new sandpit and discovering that raspberry canes are self-service yummies

so perhaps you could say something nice about them instead, if you wanted to?!

Couldn’t Hit a Cow’s Arse with a Banjo

HFF wifey has been busy; neglectful of bloggy chums (for which I abjectly apologise; I have still been reading) and a victim of faceless cyberspace malevolence. I am not glamourous enough for it to be the flamey-trollish kind of random malice – only the very best bloggers attract that sort of spineless venom – my emails simply quietly decided to stop appearing in my inbox, having got themselves thoroughly bunged up out in cyberspace. I have 3 email addresses and it took me some weeks to notice that I wasn’t recieving things that I should be. It took me even longer to get myself together sufficiently to report the problem to tiscali, no time at all for them to email back from India (incomprehensibly), another week for me to force myself to actually decipher their meaning and fire back another email, a further 2 hours for them to send their automated

Response

Thank you for contacting Tiscali UK Ltd.In an effort to improve the speed and accuracy of our email customer support we ask that all support contact requests now go through our online support area.Please click the following link access our online support Online Help

email requesting me to contact them via the route I was already using – and about another hour after that for me to realise that the only person who was ever likely to sort this out was myself.

Our main email address is fine. The email I recently set up as Harry’s name (my own was already bagsied) is fine. Hairyfarmer@tiscali.co.uk which (by what I’m sure is complete co-incidence. Almost) was set up by Hubby – was not fine. The emails that I had shouted at Stratford college that very morning for repeatedly not sending were (ahem!) all there – and I blush to think of what Shannon & Alistair must have thought of me, as there were 4 or 5 emails in among the 55 (not a spam among them! they were all ones I wanted!) I discovered, asking, in increasingly shy terms, whether I wanted to, you know, come to a party?!

So: Utter Mortification has featured highly on my emotional agenda this week. So has Frustrated Crossness, as all three of us are still horribly diarrhoea-stricken. I have also had more than a soupcon of Envious Angst, as the friend ( a nice and lovely friend, too) whose daughter was a mere 10 days older than Harry gestationally (although we regrettably pipped them to the birthing post by a month and more - an entire school year, in fact) has announced this week that she is entering her second trimester. Absurdly, all the ’left behind on the breeding! WAH!’ feelings that should have been banished forever by Harry’s birth have snuck in round the back when I wasn’t watching and bit me hard on the bum. I harbour no seething rages towards the lucky expectee, mind you - in distinct contrast to my usual reaction, prior to Harry – but I am officially Jealous as Fuck, can’t stop telling myself that she’ll have a bump when I won’t this time, and experienced significantly less hand-wringing and pointless vacillation than usual when my LH surged Sunday night.

Jealousy is not the only thing to bite me on the bum lately: I was delivering some flyers around my local village Sunday last, when an elderly canine denizen took a marked dislike to my face, even greater exception to my (calmly) departing rear, and launched itself snarling at my arse. How it missed the target is completely beyond me – major cataract affliction is the only explanation I can proffer – but it did, and my favourite shirt was the sole item left perforated. 

The owner – alerted by my issuing a loud bollocking on the topic of The Error Of Your Ways to his dog - was fairly apologetic and embarrassed – although I note he never actually left his doorstep – and I mentally had him pegged as someone who would respond to my flyer out of sheer guilt and desire to make reparations, and turn up on the designated morning in order to spend some money. 

I constantly misjudge the human race!

I was intending to explain why I was in happy expectation of an opportunity to see an open wallet, but there are wails from upstairs and I feel Naptime – that brief daily oasis – is Over. Tomorrow!

Shit & No Giggles

I have just found 55 unanswered emails. Hairyfarmer@tiscali.co.uk does not, it appears, come to my inbox at all. They stay out in webworld. Several of you have emailed me, and I have appeared unforgivably rude by not replying.

ARSE.

Smile, Please.

I have gone a little quiet just recently. I have – for exciting reasons I shall share with you just as soon as I can draw breath – been insanely busy. Also, Harry and I (and as of today, my mother too) have a mysterious, long-standing and highly unwelcome cyclic gastro bug, producing fluctuating levels of diarrhoea, and in my case, also inducing repulsively sulfurous vomiting every 4 or 5 days. I’ve had this particular digestive nasty before, in my early 20s, and I distinctly remember being off work for 3 successive isolated Mondays – rendering my employer enormously suspicious, naturally; I also retain a vivid impression of the hideously eggy burps and chunders. I know not what this thing is: Harry’s stool sample came back negative for anything interesting. I merely wish it would go. Go soon. Not let the door hit, etc.

I have been both blue-arsed-busy and feeling completely exhausted and washed out. So I could have done without spending an entire morning running around after my sleep-deprived (4 successive nights of screamy meltdown) and un-cooperative son, trying desperately to take a photo in which he is A) vaguely facing the camera B) in focus and C) smiling. I am sending in a birthday card to CBeebies - the UK’s digital pre-schooler’s channel – and to be in with even a tiny chance of a birthday mention, it needs posting today. I took upwards of 200 indifferent shots this morning.

Naturally, the best ones were all out of focus:

   

and I took a huge number that were idiosyncratically composed

 

or seemed to feature an invisible fist

   

closed eyes

   

or too many teeth for comfort.

He had his own ideas on outside activities: there was much utilisation of my car as a play area,

directing of (invisible) traffic,

imitating elephants,

and… balancing a pen on Daddy’s bike…?

(Seriously: the child’s achievements with cutlery? Slow. Balancing a tiny pen on an even tinier cable? No fucking problem!)

Then there were the expressions that were edging towards something a little cheerier…sort of…

 

 

and the basilik expressions that accurately conveyed the moment

and my absolute favourite: the potty FAIL pic.

Eventually, he condescended to twitch the corners of his mouth up

and I called the job done.

 

If the BBC don’t show it, I am cancelling my bloody licence.

Philogynae. In A Nice Way.

Or, Not A Misogynae At All.

Fact One

Attentive readers – which is all of you, yes? – will have picked up the fact that Dire Rear is currently doing the rounds of the Hairies. We are not incapacitated or in pain, nor is every visit to the toilet a sickeningly liquid one – yet we have a confirmed collective case of the Runnies. A stool sample from Harry - the most persistently affected and whose bottom skin status is hovering at Precarious - has migrated from its very own shelf in the fridge (because… well, just because) to the lab for testing.

Fact Two

I had an appointment with a consultant gynae yesterday in order to assess quite how much damage my dear child’s head actually inflicted during his emergence into the world.

Fact Three

Fact One impinged on Fact Two. 

I was sat quietly in the waiting room, minding my own Twitter, watching the various clinic nurses materialise from various far-flung corners of the building to summon their victims patients, when the unmistakable sensations began. I have 2 uteri shoehorned into a space that is only really designed for one; consequently I am extraordinarily sensitive to the peristalsis of the last half-foot of large intestine that runs behind my uteri. During period-time in particular, and whenever the uteri are feeling sensitive, bowel-filling (I can hear you clicking away in droves…) is a sensation which curls my legs up in pain. 

Having a crowning head stuck half-way out scores a 10 on my personal scale. The worse of my contractions were probably a 8. This is about a 4, and gets my undivided attention. And it was happening in the bloody waiting room. My appointment was at 3pm,and it was already 3.05pm. What to do?! There was no receptionist. I would have to ask a random stranger to inform any nurse hollering my name where I actually was. And they could disappear for their own appointment any moment – so they’d have to tell someone else! It would be Chinese Whispers! Pass it on: Mrs. Hairy Farmer is in the toilet, folks! And it wasn’t as if I could pretend I was just vanishing for a quick wee; I could tell I had serious business – of uncertain consistency! – to attend to that today (a warm day), of all days, should not be hurried or skimped. Or could I actually get away with putting it off? I’d surely not be in clinic long…? I could hold on…

I had just decided that Out was better than In, turned to my neighbour and braced myself womanfully for the inevitable embarrassment – when my nurse rocked up and announced cheerfully that ‘the doctor will see you now’! Aaaaiiiiee! Too late! I walked briskly behind her, sending stern Be Still! messages downstairs. Sensations subsided. Definitely not a liquid offering; I relaxed a little. Panic over.

So, I sat and talked to Gynae-man, who was lovely, gigglesome, courteous, articulate, and clearly knew his didelphic onions. I explained my various symptoms – I shall spare you the details, any of you that are still grimly hanging on – and then it was time for The Examination.

I have never had a exam from… ahem… the rear before. Being asked to lie on my side and bring my knees up to my chin: I could cope with happily enough. It was the subsequent elevation of my leg towards the ceiling that gave me the cringes. It’s not dignified, is it? At least there was a handy bracket for the anglepoise lamp that I could rest the waving-in-the-air leg on for a while before he decided he needed a… umm… wider angle, and Cheerful Nurse had to earn her money with some sterling prop-work.

The difference between a skilled Speculum Driver and an unskilled… sigh. At no point did I squeak, hiss, draw breath, stifle a groan, or let out a small moan of entirely the Bad Sort. I think I did, however, let out a small and silent fart when he, watching the area in question closely, asked me to cough. My feelings on this would usually be a hot mess of shame, but in the circumstances, considering what I was holding back, I feel the man got away lightly.

The only tricky part came when he asked me to really… push. Push hard. Push like I ‘needed a number two’, God bless his euphemistic heart. I gave it as much welly as I could – a fine judgement call, I assure you – but I feel the full extent of my bulgy bits may have gone undiscovered. Which fact, I consider a reasonable exchange for avoiding abject humiliation in front of a very nice man, for whom I felt a vague moral obligation towards of not instilling a phobia of women’s bottoms.

I left the clinic and managed to get as far as meeting my troughing menfolk in the canteen before a leg-wobbling wave of OMG, PROPER DIARRHOEA NOW attacked me and I was obliged to take noisy refuge in the nearest ladies for 10 minutes. These? Good invention.

The upshot: Harry’s cannonball passage from north to south has caused some mild vaginal prolapsing (*Listens carefully to the deafening silence. Yes, that’s my last reader vanished*) but nothing to be concerned about: he’s confident it’ll go the distance if I attempt another. I need to work on my… ahem!… vaginal muscle tone, apparently. He gave me a mark out of 5 (a test! and I didn’t revise! stuff of nightmares!) that I do not feel quite inclined to share. Hubby will read this and clamour to know what it was. He can bugger off.

The occasions when I – literally – piss myself laughing are too rare and minor to warrant his concern; he advised me to ‘finish my family’ and see how my bladder is coping with life then. He is referring me for an ultrasound scan by a consultant radiologist I have seen a few times before (and trust his wanding ability) to see if the mysterious Kraken that appears on some scans and not others is, or is not, a fibroid. And he is also – and this is the one that makes me gulp – surgically adjusting things a little.

The lovely midwife that stitched my bloody great tear up did a conscientious job. Too conscientious. My topography has changed noticeably; in particular I now have a smallish web of skin that never used to be there; it splits open and bleeds a little at every… ummm… leg-opening occasion. Horse-riding type activity can present a small challenge to vaginal integrity. Sex – and you can probably hear Hubby preening - is a large challenge. Philogynae jokingly said that he’d just do it under a local, as he’d ‘heard I was brave’. I promptly winced, and requested that he do it without an injection altogether, and just bloody get on with it quickly. 

No, I’m not actually mad, or masochistic; I find that local anaesthesia needle infiltration often hurts more than the procedure. I had a particularly awful injection in my armpit once for a skin-tag I’d quite happily have snipped off with scissors myself, had I known what their plan was. Dentistry is an notable exception to this Just Bloody Get On With It rule, but I’m buggered if I fancy a needle being mined about in my perineum. Now, freezing-type gel, on the other hand, I will be enthusiastically requesting, plus whatever other topical assistance I can get my paws on. If anyone has any relevant advice for me here, don’t sit on it. So to speak.

He ummed and ahhhed what to call it on his surgery sheet, and we eventually plonked down ‘perineum re-shaping’ because I was too nervous to suggest ‘Designer Vagina’ - which I find darkly amusing, redolent of the increasing global trend towards absurd-surgery-that-you-dont-ever-actually-physically-require.

Anyways, he’ll be approaching my undercarriage with a scalpel. And no drugs.

That’s to look forward to, then!

Hi-ho!

I was going to kick this off by comparing us all to a different dwarf  – à la Snow White – but as soon as I really began to think about it, I realised that we are actually all Grumpy and Sleepy. I leave you to apply a judgement re: Dopey, yourselves.

John is grumpy because it has been raining on his grass, and some of his tractors are poorly sick. I feel I don’t blog often enough about farming: perhaps I should bring you up to date. His current excuse for not fencing the garden or digging out the steps is haymaking and silaging. This involves, firstly, praying for dry weather, secondly, mowing dry grass (if you are pollen-sensitive, cue: Sneezy), thirdly, tedding it about while praying really hard and meaning it for more dry weather, and lastly, dashing out with your baler mere minutes ahead of the towering black cloud and driving at breakneck speed around your field. Naturally, this injudicious speed results in a bunged-up baler, so you must repeatedly crawl underneath and perform grass midwifery. Off you go again, only to hear a sinister thunk followed by a symphony of tearingly unpleasant machinery noises. The rain begins to fall faster.

If you are the wife of the owner of said machine, this is where you quietly disappear.

The core priority is to remove your stricken object back to the yard as soon as possible; you must, if you value your reputation, conceal the affliction at all costs from your farming neighbours. Apple, let me assure you, has nothing to teach UK agriculture. 

These type of mishaps can presage a lengthy spell parked in front of the workshop. Panels are removed. Exploratory surgeries are undertaken. Hands blacken further in filthy oil. The mechanised equivalent of femoral head pinning is discussed. Dog-eared parts manuals are consulted. Phone calls are made. Wives are dispatched to collect the Vital Transplant Organ.

Of course, if your yard is already populated with agricultural engineers who are repairing the tractors that you don’t actually have time to tackle yourself, then your chances of keeping the latest twist in your machinery misfortunes quiet are pretty much nil. Hubby has, I believe, one key tractor due to be broken open into two halves in order to fix an oil leak, and another yard tractor parked up sans steering ability, awaiting fettling. He came home Friday lunchtime to find that I had given Harry a toy tractor to play with that was a scale replica of a rather swish new model – a distinct improvement on any of John’s current collection. I caught him looking wistfully at the New Holland website a few minutes later (he is a diehard blue-tractor man. Speak not to him of green ones, even if they are the only company servicing the farm-mad toddler market) and sure enough, he has now announced that he wants a new one. These things can cost £50,000+ for a used one. And the farm profit is currently our only income. Yikes.

I am grumpy because I have a gynae hospital appointment tomorrow afternoon with a Mr Sorinola, as opposed to Mr Steven Olah, the other consultant gynae, or Mr Savonarola, the 15thC Dominican monk I initially confused him with. There was a time when I used to whip my undercarriage out for medical inspection with nary a qualm, but this will be the first time someone has looked - I am discounting my young googling locum GP’s vain attempts  - at my cervi since about 2 hours before Harry emerged from one of them, and I have gone a bit Bashful. I’m also rather nervous about what he will be telling me.

I will be obliged to schedule a lengthy and awkward session with the the razor around my sadly uncared-for pubic area later this evening – lengthy because of the sheer level of neglect, and awkward because, despite 2 weeks of dieting savagely and exercising like a demented thing, I have only shed a measly 4lbs. Hence, I still cannot see what I’m actually doing down there.

Harry is grumpy because he has had intermittent diarrhoea for a couple of weeks which is worsening; he is being carted to the drs tomorrow. We have gone 22 months with hardly a day of nappy rash, but over the course of today his poor beleaguered bottom has gone, yet again, from delivering a turd the consistency of a housebrick, to shooting out spoonfuls of watery squits; his skin has gone from palest pink to abraded and ever so sore. He is a tough little shoot when it comes to bumps, cuts and bruises, but he’s coping badly with this.

I didn’t know my heart could wring itself into such a sad little shape until I saw him waddle towards me, knees bent, clutching his sore little bottom in waily distress. His skin has deteriorated astonishingly quickly: he was left in a dirty nappy while we were at my parents’ house early this evening – possibly for the best part of an hour, because the contents were weirdly undetectable by nose – and that has unfortunately been responsible for his skin breaking open. I have kept his nappy off since and slathered him in Bepanthen once his skin was dry- despite his violent, heart-rending struggles and hoarse shrieks - but the poor little lad kept pooing every 20 minutes and undoing my good work. Sigh.

Hopefully he will have a quiet, crap-free night and I will attempt to sneak a dry nappy onto him when I go to bed, too. Which may not be late, as the little bugger decided that 4.30 was the new 7am this morning, hence we are all Sleepy. And probably Dopey.

PS. John wants me to tell you that he is actually a Brand New dwarf called Frisky. And I am not the only one with a neglected undercarriage, hint-hint.

That is all.

He Can’t Join The Army

Agriculture starts with an A: so let’s start there. The BIL/SIL farm was bid to over £1.5m, but didn’t quite make the reserve they had set. They were attempting to sell their fairly small farm, which has suffered mortally from floods and bovine TB, complete with a cottage and huge moneypit 18thC manor house in a state of moderate disrepair, in order to hopefully buy something larger, better situated, with a modern farmhouse that doesn’t burn such swingeing holes in the balance sheet. Despite having some deep personal reservations about how badly a farm move could work out, John and I felt anti-climatic afterwards; we were vaguely hoping they might buy somewhere nice near the coast where we could leave our battered caravan, reducing the linear mileage of our Towing Shame.

B is for Bar – which is where we got stuck after the sale with a bunch of assorted idiots. We had arranged parental babysitters (C is for Cloud, which is what appears to be sitting over my parents’ marriage currently. They turned up in separate cars, FFS.) for the evening, but we clearly should have made an early escape from the auction room to the pub. D is for diarrhoea, which I what I was obliged to scurry away from the bar to attend to an attack of, my son having kindly passed on his affliction of unknown origin.

E is for total fucking Eejit, which is an undeservedly kind label for the man that designed Warwick Hospital carpark. F is for Fit, which is what Harry promptly threw when we infringed his civil liberties by attempting to measure his height – when we finally arrived, breathless and carpark-stressed, at his appointment. G is for little Git, which is what I hissed at him under my breath, before realising the children’s clinic nurse could totally hear me.

Which brings us to H, for Harry.

Harry’s Paed appointment was… hard work. He simply didn’t seem to fully comprehend the nature of what I was describing. He clearly doesn’t see what we see (Harry walked beautifully in the clumsiest sandals I could find to put on him, damn him!) and we could discern his politely concealed scepticism. He looked less than delighted when I produced my list, but he’s essentially a cheerful chap and dutifully noted everything down. It was quite apparent to him that we were not accepting a brush-off, and the fact that Harry’s SALT had already referred him elsewhere for mobility assessment helped give our standpoint a little more gravitas. He then gave the little lad a thorough going-over.

The upshot: Harry has some hypermobility in his joints, which would clearly account for some of his wobbles and clumsiness. I can feel Shannon wincing from here, but he is thankfully unlikely to be suffering a very acute form of this condition - the Paed gave Harry’s joints a pretty intensive mauling about, and any extreme double-jointedness would hopefully have been rather more apparent.

John and I realised afterwards that we often feel his wrists and ankles click when we are rough-and-tumbling. However, I have today discovered that I can easily bend my own thumb back far enough to touch my forearm – and remembered that my pregnancy physiotherapist (obtained when my pelvic ligaments went ffffflllhhhhueeeurrrrppp [yes, it sounded just like that] at 20 weeks) called me ’ever so bendy‘ (‘for a knocked-up total fatty’, was the end of her sentence that I heard being left unspoken) but, flexi-mother (and John was sorely disappointed to have an Officially Bendy wife who was far too complicatedly pregnant to DO BENDY STUFF with) genetics notwithstanding, there’s something more than some wobbly joints amiss here.

The Paed ordered a hip x-ray which we attended straight away – with a now-tired and uber-screamy toddler who thought being held down under the Big Scary Device was Not Nice, and signally failed to share his Mother’s amusement at seeing Daddy wear a tabard - but there was no-one around to interpret the results on the spot (hhhrumph!) so we’ll have to wait and see. We’re not expecting dreadful news; I hope we’re right. He also referred Harry for physiotherapy in order to try and work on his balance, which is the outcome I am most pleased about.

He lay flat on the floor to have a close squint and declared Harry’s feet to be flat as pancakes – I assume he meant even by the toddler-species usual flatfoot standard - and he thought some arch supports may be useful in correcting his gait. Which was missing the whole unsteadiness point by about a million miles - but we’ll give them a trial anyway.

He briskly dismissed our concerns about Harry’s height – 78.5cm – out of hand, as he is following his percentile. The 0.4th percentile. He noted his complete lack of clear speech, but didn’t linger on the topic.

I told him straightforwardly that I was absolutely convinced Harry had taken a neurological knock during pregnancy. He told me that he could see no subtle markers to suggest such a thing, although he did ask me again about Harry’s assortment of strange tic-like repetitive movements I had earlier described to him.

I can’t agree with him. I just can’t. But neither am I particularly wound up about it, because I think the question is currently of academic – and parental - interest only. We got our x-ray. We’ve obtained some physio input, which will surely identify that Harry has Issues, and help to overcome them. We have a comprehensive home assessment due this month, which will presumably be done by people who can spot Wobbles when they see them (and have Clever Solutions up their sleeves, probably called More Physiotherapy). We’re not discharged. I’m happy with those results for the time being.

Our next-door neighbour, R, dropped by today to enquire how it had gone. She is a darling neighbour, a close friend, a senior anaesthetist at the same hospital, and her daughter is Harry’s Godmother. Her husband, as I have said, is a GP. They are on Our Side, and it is highly reassuring. As we stood in the doorway and watched Harry slowly topple forwards into a plummeting nose-dive off the caravan step – a nose-dive which we agreed any normal toddler would at least have attempted to correct – she told me that she is convinced that low muscle tone is actually where Harry’s balance problems stem from, and, having read around the subject this evening, and given myself neck-ache from nodding furiously, I am certain that she is right. Mild trunk hypotonia with a judicious sprinkling of hypermobility and a soupcon of toddler-judgement FAIL would be a diagnosis I could totally get on board with. Perhaps a small prize would be appropriate for the first medical professional to formally give it?

Harry, of course, thinks his falls are absolutely all par for the course, and has IN NO WAY (and oh, dear God, how I wish that I had more emphasis available to me here than coloured bold capital italics) learnt to exercise more care, take things slower, look where he is going, or avoid blatantly unstable surfaces. He blunders straight into, over, under and through everything in his path with blinkered, Light Brigade determination. He is not one of those children who, injured, retire cautiously into immobility. He is, it seems, his own best physician as he ceaselessly patrols his little world, searching vigilantly for virgin ascent routes to the bookcase / worktop / fridge / dining table / woodburner / desk / windowsill summits. The only direction he wants to travel in is Up, and he lets nothing short of plummeting, blood-letting disaster hold him back.

And sometimes not even then.

However all these issues work out, he will plough on, utterly regardless, following an agenda that is entirely his own.

I like my son.

Viscous Giraffe

In a desperate attempt to distract myself from A) the fact that John’s sister and BIL are selling their farm at auction tonight and the family is on tenterhooks, B) the fact that Harry’s Paediatrician’s appointment is tomorrow and I’m nervous already and C) Harry is resisting his nap today with OMG so much intensity and noise, I thought I would borrow an idea from the wondrous Geode and regale you with some of my more delightful search-engine referral terms.

The vast majority of my referrals make sense to me: over a thousand of my visits have been from people looking for Thelwell images, several of which I have featured here. They are absolutely and uniformly delightful, and I seldom need an excuse for another one.

There you go. Most horses I try to ride react pretty much like this one.

As I say, most of the terms either appertain reasonably clearly to words and phrases I have used here - or originate from that dedicated little section of the population who have a constant and unrequited passion for hairy porn. I have had significant numbers of people arrive here packing (presumably) an expectant semi, in the hope of encountering 1970s pubes* being bent over the straw bales. Hairy porn. Hairy wife. Hairy fuck. Hairy groans. Hairy cunt. Hairy hot. Farmer’s daughter. Hairy Farmer’s daughter. Hairy pregnant. Grandmother hairy. Hairy insertion. Etc. Et-slightly-alarming-c. I’ve had to look in the fabulous Urban Dictionary for some of them.

To my horrified disappointment, I recently realised that WordPress only retains referral summaries, and I have lost forever some of the stranger ones that tickled me pink. Hairy Granny Gash was probably the one that John and I theorised most about: we eventually decided that it was probably best if we thought of that particular surfer as a Hairy Grandad. I have just subscribed to site meter, in the hope of never losing another gem.

Hairy humongous bosoms

Viscous giraffes

Wifey anal play

Bust him in the mouth pics

22 euro hairy sofa

Farmer boobs

Rayol wedding

Hairy woman like big cook (I feel this one may, possibly, feature a typo)

Giant suppository

terlwell bilder (I have No Idea what this means, and neither do Google or Yahoo, but I’ve had 7 referrals for it. If you know, please do tell me!)

Uttering didelphys

And, my absolute all-time favourite orthography FAIL:

Nashnel Trust

 

*They’re closer than they realise on that one.

Fright Night

Well, I dunno about you, but even I’m depressed by this blog at the minute. Shall we change the record?

The sun is out, and this always cheers me up no end. We all went into Stratford shopping this morning (Stifle your gasps. I was taking John whiskey-tasting in order to buy his belated birthday bottle. The man had incentive.) and we had an ice-cream each; Harry managed to consume the lion’s share of both of them. Not bad for a child who didn’t much like the stuff last week - today, it was like feeding a large and highly opinionated baby bird.

There are a number of things I should really do instead of being sat here. Top of the list is clean the blasted tortoise hutch out – the computer is right next to the frowsty thing, and the fumes are choking me. I imagine Marina isn’t too chuffed, either. The chicks need a bigger enclosure making. I am supposed to be painting an old table with roads and associated gubbins for Harry to drive his cars on. The ‘lawn’ needs the gaps seeding. The steps need digging. The dishwasher needs emptying. The office needs tidying setting fire to. Every room in the house has a bargain assortment of detritus thickly strewn across the floor. I have an engagement to party to attend (Alone! Knowing only one-half of the couple in question! Social nerves!) this afternoon, for which I have forgotten to buy a gift, and friends coming for dinner this evening, for which I only have half my ingredients. I think they are coming to stay, so the spare room will need the bed excavating from mounds of outgrown baby clothes and toys. The lawn needs mowing.

I think I need staff.

Or a cattle-prod up the arse. Either would work.

Antonia has been posting about ghost stories this morning. I love ghost stories. I have the psychic ability of a sack of spuds - which is to say, not much – and yet I think I still managed to see one once. I’m not sure. It was a while ago, and I’ve told the story so often I can’t remember which parts I’ve actually embellished.

I used to be the administrator of a small, 22 bed geriatric hospital in a local market town. The building was a 1899/1900 workhouse infirmary, a long, narrow, two-storey building with old-fashioned nightingale wards at either end.

You could stand with your back to one end wall, and look through numerous double glass doors all the way along a hundred feet or more of corridor to the other end of the building, providing the patients didn’t amble into your sightline. The wards were downstairs, the physio department and my office were thinly populating the enormous second floor.

One winter evening, about 5.30pm I left my office (the furthest sticky-out piece of building in the photo) and crossed the corrider to the staircase, noticing that the physio department (at the other end of the corridor, out of photo-shot to the left) was shut-up and the corridor was dark. (At 5.3opm in England, in winter, it is black as arseholes.) I was downstairs for a minute or two before leaving the light and bustle of the wards, returning up the dimly-lit staircase, crossing the corridor, and stepping back into my neon-strip-lights-galore office. As I walked away from the stairs, something caught my eye and I glanced down the dark corridor towards the physio department. I didn’t actually break stride until I was two steps into my office.

I stopped. I backed up and leaned my head out into the corridor. Blinked. And began to walk down the corridor in search of the – I assumed - wandering patient I had briefly glimpsed at the far end of the – dark and deserted – corridor. I got half-way down the corridor – I’ve told you how dark and deserted it was, yes? – and it suddenly dawned on me that A) this was weird, B) I was walking down a veerrrrry long dark and deserted corridor from the comparatively light into the bloody dark, C) lots of people die in workhouse infirmaries and geriatric hospitals, and D) I was a big, fat, hastily-retreating wuss.

I scarpered back downstairs into the light and noise and went in search of the Alzheimer’s Wanderer patient who had a habit of breaking bounds and having a mooch about. She was placidly eating her tea. Everyone, in fact, was present and correct. All the patients. All the staff. There was no-one upstairs except me and my… thing that I saw. A dim, human-shaped figure glimpsed briefly from… 80 ft away? Barely counts, really, does it?

My Dad did rather better when he was a young man. He used to work in a building in Birmingham that had been bombed at one end during the war, killing the night watchman who was on patrol on the top floor, watching for incendiaries. The building had had its end wall re-built afterwards, reducing the original building footprint size significantly. All the draughtsmen used to regularly hear the sound of footsteps crossing the now-abandoned top floor. The footsteps could be clearly heard walking directly over their heads – before continuing straight off the modern end of building, onto the non-existent part of the ceiling that had been demolished 20 years before.

 It’s not the bump in the night that gives you the fright,

It’s two holes in the head and the absence of light.

Or something.

Yours?