Smidge

Being in and out of the hospital and doctor’s surgery recently has seen one question come up time and time again – are you pregnant? No nurse, no doctor, no nurse, no doctor, I am not pregnant, nor am I planning to be, but yes, if I did accidentally get pregnant – it would not be a big deal.

Reactions to my response from the healthcare professionals have been a little awkward to say the least. They look askance that it would not be a planned baby. And if it was accidental, that surely I couldn’t be happy about it.

The only come back I seem to be able to muster is that i’m 31; it has to happen at some point.

(I don’t mention that my other favourite evidence that I am ready for child is that I can look after 2 cats. Even if one of them has now officially become a heifer. That is not my fault though; I didn’t introduce her to cheese, she sniffed it out herself).

I don’t know at what point you are meant to start planning to have a baby, rather than say, getting accidentally pregnant without really wanting it. The healthcare professionals made me feel rather weird for wanting to let nature take its course. Surely like anything – if you worry about it – then it’s more likely to not happen?

I guess an underlying point of this rant is that I also feel our so called health professionals push women into shoving their bodies full of chemicals all too easily. I have tried most of them, and all of them make my natural occurring, happy body do the weirdest things. Things I do not like it doing. Like being crazy. No drugs = no crazy. Win, win for everyone.

Yes, contraception is essential for young women who really would not like the responsibility of a child foisted upon them through a little accident. But for an adult like me, I’d like to be able to make my own choices about what I put in and what happens to my body.

I just don’t get why that is so difficult for people to understand. Is this just me though? Do you think this this should be planned? Do you feel forced into conforming to this?

It’s the return of the Monday sundries post.

Otherwise known as I’m rather brain dead right now and ill just update you on my life instead of writing anything.

Which if you follow me on twitter then you will mostly know already.

Anyways…

…The last two weekends have been mostly spent partying (the Chav party last weekend and then a friends leaving do on Saturday) which have seen me crawling into bed at 8am and 5am respectively. No, I haven’t seen the last two Sundays. I’m having a really quiet weekend this weekend before the blogging/tweet up in Manchester – two weeks to go girls!

…Work wise, I’m rather busy, trying to juggle being ill, work and uni is a bit of a struggle, but I managed to pass both modules last term with an A and i’m hoping to do the same again. I can’t let the Boy get a first and not me!

….the divorce forms are now signed. Woo. Just waiting for payday before I send them into the court. In 8 weeks time ill officially be ‘Miss’ Smidge again!

…Health wise, the Doctor is awaiting my files from the hospital before starting the tests I had last year all over again to find out if something has changed as my IBS isn’t improving. The lovely nurse at the surgery has signed me up for smoking cessation classes and hurried up the hospital for the check up for the other girly issue (I found out I had progressed from CIN1 to CIN2 in two weeks, why did no one tell me this??). I’m going for it tomorrow so i’m trying very hard not to be nervous about this.

…Holiday wise, now that the Boy has a job, we are planning a trip to Paris, Milan and Rome in June (whilst the world cup is on – haha) ending up in South Lazio on a beach somewhere riding around on a vespa in the sunshine….mmmm better get on a diet now, the Italians are so glamorous. If anyone has any suggestions of things to do, places to stay on the trip then let me know.

(…taking of gorgeous men, I was in heaven watching the Milan derby yesterday, not for the players, but for the managers….check out Jose Mourinho and Leonardo Araujo)

… and finally, this photo might represent all the reasons why my kitten is so fat. Check out that look! 

 Normal service will resume when my brain is back from its holidays…

P.S.. How are you?

It’s my 10 year wedding anniversary this year.

It actually lasted 8 months and ended with lawyers and recriminations and people going back on their promises and a strongly worded letter from my Dad.

I was always a Daddy’s girl.

And I thought I would marry someone like my Dad.

But I didn’t.

But I married a man with a drug habit, a staying out all night with out telling me habit, and; horrifyingly for a new bride trying to make things work, a cheating habit.

1 chance, 2 chances, 3 chances.

I left.

No, I don’t regret getting married; I married with all the hopes and dreams everyone has on their wedding day.

No, I don’t regret not trying to make it work; I left with my head held high and my dignity intact and hope for the future – that did’t go away just because he had broken my heart.

And, No, I don’t regret leaving it so long to get divorced. He who could have been next, well, wasn’t. For good reasons, I have come to conclude. He who came after that couldn’t see past the past and became the past too. He, who is now, sees me, but i’m not doing this for our future, but for mine.

I’m finally ready to be free from the past.

The papers are getting signed at 4pm on Friday.

….and about bloody time I hear you all say.

MD2020 and Thunderbirds under the canal bridge with my friends. Naf Naf jackets and LA Gear trainers. Permed hair. Smoking like a chimney and throwing up in back gardens. A boyfriend 8 years older than me with a car. We used to sit in car parks. My first big club at 16 with fake id wearing the shortest skirt i could find and a scrunchie in my hair. Joggers from the market – fake adidas with poppers up the legs. Vodka and whiskey mixed with orange in a fanta bottle down the park under the climbing frame.

Fitting in.

I was told recently that i could never been a ‘chav’ because of my ‘upbringing’.

I’m not so sure.

Perceptions are often wrong….

How do you think you are perceived?

So… do you like it?

The Boy thinks I look very ‘French’.

I’d love to be French – in my opinion, French women are officially the most stylish on the planet. Look at the evidence – the first lady of fashion – Coco Chanel is French, as is Vanessa Paradis, Audrey Tautou, Bridgette Bardot, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, and Emmanuelle Béart – all ladies whose style I wish I could emulate. I lust after a Chanel jacket, just one pair of Louboutin shoes and would die if I owned just one Lanvin dress. Instead I settle for the chicness of Sessun and worship my one pair of Chloe boots.

I feel at home in a country where you go to a shop to buy one thing –boulangerie, patisserie, charcuterie. A country where the philosophy is to have exactly what you like, as long as it is in moderation, a spoonful of jam so solid with strawberries it would stick to the ceiling, a square of cocoa rich chocolate, garlicky creamy daupinose potatoes, decadent rillette and foie gras, saucisson sec, and sweet madelines.

The LTE was half French and we spent summers visiting Lyon, Avignon, and staying in little towns like Manosque and Greoux les Bain, driving between fields of lavender to eat at tiny restaurants with set 3 course meals of onion tart, duck cassoulet and crème brulee (or eggs in aspic, never again) and then spend early evenings reading on the porch, bonsoir-ing the locals before strolling to a bar to drink rich red wine.

I’d love to be French, oh to be sitting right now in a little café with my Café Noisette smoking a blue Gauloise cigarette just watching the world go by.

If you could be any other nationality what would you be?

Coffee is not helping my hangover, I wonder if throwing up might.

Yes, yes it does.

Is it really 9am, if so, why is it still dark – Edinburgh?

I hate the boy for getting to stay in bed until 11am this morning.

Switching the light on every 5 minutes helps this anger go away pretty quickly though.

Good. my new fringe hides my wrinkly forehead; I wonder if I could develop a fringe that could clip over the bags under my eyes.

My trousers wouldn’t be so tight if I didn’t eat roughly 4 chocolate biscuits from the team tin every day.

Must not eat biscuits today.

The boy thinks my hair cut makes me look ‘hot’. However he thinks I look hot in my cow print jammies so I’m not sure if I should believe him.

Are fringes meant to stick out at 45 degrees?

Where the fuck are my straighteners?

45 minutes is far too long to take to walk to work when it usually takes me 20 minutes, tops.

I hope the boy’s sister liked the ring I bought her for her birthday and wasn’t just being polite.

I will never ever go to a club night called ‘Couture’ ever again. Ok, I might go to point. And laugh.

Edinburgh yahs really get on my tits.

I wonder if my work would let me bring lily the kitten to the office for use as a hot water bottle for my alcohol induced poorly tummy.

Greggs or Soup?

Soup is crap at getting rid of a hangover.

I wonder if throwing up will help.

Yes, yes it does.

Carrot and corriander soup tastes no better the 2nd time around.  

My boss must think I’m slightly gay as he just said Smidge will know if Claire Balding plays for the other side. That or he knows I am a qossip queen. (She is)

I should stop googling people. I now my ex doesn’t blow his own trumpet according to one news article. The ex’s fiancé is a really boring tweeter.

Why does the director’s office at my work have a rhino on the window sill?

I’m really looking forward to a huge fry up for tea tonight.

Is it home time yet?

I used to have a reoccurring dream where the LTE would dump me in more and more excruciating ways. All of which would take place in the most public place possible.

My subconscious mind obviously knew something was up as sometimes dreams can come true, because the final straw of our relationship came with him having spent an entire afternoon in the pub getting drunk and flirting with a female friend (and a major source of worry) and then when challenged on it, questioned his feelings for me in front of an entire pub.

Nice.

I had the same dream the other night, apart from this time it was the Boy doing the dumping, not the LTE.

I’m trying not to draw any conclusions with regards to this one. There have always been doubts in my mind about us, especially as, as regular readers will know, that we have broken up roughly every 6 months (and we’ve just passed that milestone again).

I feel like a whiney attention seeking child every time I ask if things are ok. But get a drink inside of me, I have to ask, I have to stick my tongue into the sore tooth and root around looking for something to hurt me.

(Yes i did just compare my relationship to tooth decay – too much of the good stuff can eventually leaves you broken and in pain…)

I know one coincidence doesn’t reality make. Sometimes, coincidences are just that – things that should never happen ever again. But yes, I can admit I am a little scared…

Have you ever had a dream come true – and by this i mean a sleeping dream?

UPDATE….a HUGE thanks to the over 300 of you who took the time to visit my little site too read about the plight of the Manchester Adoption Society. Raising awareness of the work of such organisations is just as important as raising money to save them. So a huge thank you from the bottom of my heart to all of you. If you have yet to sign the petition, the link is here: – http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/SaveMAS/

I’m adopted.

Its’ something I have always known, in fact I still have the book “I am adopted” that my mum gave me when I learnt to read. I produced it recently. It made my mum cry.

Adoption used to carry this big stigma with it, before Madonna and Angelina got in on the act and started to adopt their rainbow babies. My adopted grandma was incensed when my parents told her they were going to adopt me. Bringing a council estate kid into their perfect middle class world.  That despite their upbringing, their values, every bit of love and care and attention that they could give me, that it wouldn’t work, that I would always be a product of where I came from.

Prejudice was still alive in the 1970s. I really want to believe it isn’t still around today.

Before them it was just children like me, mistakes, accidents, children that whilst loved, shouldn’t really have been.

Born.

But I was and of course i’m thankful for this. But I’m more thankful that I found a family that needed me, wanted me, that could look after me and bring me up with all that I had.

And I had a lot. A lot of love, a lot of dreams, a lot of hope.

Things that that my real mum had for me, but wanted someone else to be able to give to me.

Because for whatever reason she couldn’t.

Babies are born all the time into circumstances beyond their mother’s control. Babies that need help to find a family, to find a home.

Mother’s need somewhere help them, to provide them with the support to do the one thing, that as women we would never dream of happening to us. To give up a part of ourselves to someone in the hope that there is something more out there for them.

Families like mine, need hope that one day a child will be theirs. That they can hold a child in their arms and through all the pain know that child will look back at them and call them mum, dad, when they are able to speak.

Without help, this couldn’t happen.

I was adopted 31 years ago through the Manchester Adoption Society.

Without them i wouldn’t have the life i have had, the hope, the dreams, the real love.

Sadly, next month, the Society is to close. The society depends on voluntary contributions, the kind my family has been making for the last 31 years, as have many others. These financial contributions in these tough times are no longer enough to compensate for the distorted inter-agency fees which are deterring local authorities from using voluntary organisations to place children.

A campaign has been set up to save the Manchester Adoption Society and protect of the future of all the children that need their help.

How you can help… JOIN OUR CAMPAIGN

Register your support and complete the on-line petition at

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/SaveMAS/

Join the Facebook site: Save Manchester Adoption Society

(http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=198235743506&ref=nf)

DONATE or PLEDGE: You can donate OR pledge funds to help raise the £250,000 required to maintain the MAS services for the next 12 months and beyond.

Donations to: http://www.justgiving.com/manchesteradoption

Cheque payable to Manchester Adoption Society and send to: MAS 47 Bury New Road, Sedgley Park, Prestwich, Manchester M25 9JY

Pledges info@manchesteradoption.com

You can read more about this at

http://www.manchesteradoption.com/

Thanks for reading and lets hope that we can help other children like me.

If anyone would like to Retweet this, re post it on their own blog – it would be much appreciated.