Other people’s good news and negative thoughts

Photo credit: deeplifequotes

The other day, I learned that a good friend is pregnant. She’s already mother to my favourite child in the whole world, who will be one on Friday. The new baby is due at the end of August. On hearing that she was pregnant again, my thought pattern went something like this:

• Aww, M is pregnant again. How nice! S will have a little brother or sister.
• S is going to be one soon. It’s been a whole year since we were welcoming him to the world. What have I done during that year? Nothing, that’s what. And now M is pregnant again.
• Other people my age are moving on to their second child. I haven’t even had one yet. When does it get to be my turn? Not any time soon, that’s for sure.
• What if it’s never my turn? It’s not like I’m getting any younger. I’m 30 this year! For all I know I’ve already left it too late! And even if I haven’t, by the time Jan either makes up his mind or I manage to find someone else it probably will be.
• Do I even really want a child? maybe I just think I do because it’s the next step in life. And because babies are cute. If I really, truly did I would probably have done something about it by now. Yes, Jan says he isn’t ready, but I can’t really blame this on him, can I? I could have left before it was too late.
• Anyway, newborns terrify me. I’m always convinced their going to break if I even think about touching them. And I have no idea how to change a nappy. I probably wouldn’t make a very good mother anyway. Maybe there’s a good reason I’m still childless at nearly 30!
• Who am I kidding! of course I want children. I always have! I can’t think of anything sadder than having to go through life never having a child of my own to love. And look at how happy all my friends with kids are. They get to lavish their affection on someone that they actually made, teach their babies everything they know, nourish and nuture an actual human life. How can that not be an amazing experience?  And just look at how adorable their little people are. How could I not want that?

Sometimes, I truly wish that I didn’t want kids. Life would be so much easier! And I wouldn’t have to feel horrible about being jealous of people I’m actually incredibly happy for.

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Oh, baby

I’ve finally managed to finish the birth announcement cross stitch I’ve been working on for a friend’s baby. Phew! Relief! About time too – this child could arrive any day now!I was starting to worry that it would end up being like the picture a stitched for some friends of mine’s wedding, which I ended up sending to them after they came back from their honeymoon as I wasn’t finished any sooner than that!

Check it out! All I need to do now is insert the name and date of birth in the sce within the cloud, which I obviously can’t do until I have that information. I’m actually incredibly proud of myself for managing to do all the French knots on the Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. I absolutely hate the things.

I also received word today that the gift I sent for my cousin’s baby girl (born on 5 January) arrived. I sent it over a week ago so was starting to wonder… don’t trust Deutsche Post or Royal Mail as far as I can throw them, and when both are involved anything could happen!

I can already see that this is going to be another baby filled year. Apart from the mammy of the lucky recipient of this cross stitch I currently know 5 other people who are pregnant – and we haven’t even made it out of January yet! I can’t wait to get started on my next new baby cross stitch 🙂 Hopefully I’ll manage to pick one without a million French knots this time…

Blogging fail

I know I promised to blog more after I received my prolific blogger award, and I’ve been meaning to post for nearly two weeks, but as you can tell I’ve failed utterly miserably. I just don’t have time to blog. Between all the overtime I’ve been doing lately (so many big jobs, so little time), the course I’m doing on Saturday mornings (10 finger typing course, bot interesting enough to write about) and all the usual cooking, attempting to spend time with my boyfriend and occasionally actually cleaning the flat, my poor blog just hasn’t had a chance. Sigh.

Soo, I’ve just found out a girl I used to be pretty good friends with, and whose family are friends of my family, is pregnant. Another one to add to the list. Currently I only know three people who are expecting, the fewest it’s been for a while. And another friend got married last week (an ex-boyfriend as it happens), which necessiated the sending of a gift to England. All these babies and weddings are going to bankrupt me! Baby clothes are so cute though, and it’s not like I’m going to be able to buy any for a child of my own for a while… or possibly ever, so there is a silver lining I suppose.

I had a meeting at work today. The bosses are happy with my work, I was expressly thanked for putting in overtime last week and I got a positive response from a customer the other day (usually we only get feedback when someone wants to complain, so it was a nice surprise). So all is good on the unemployment front. And in 23 days I’m off on my holidays. Good times 🙂 The only cloud on the horizon is that Jan is away this weekend with his choir, and I’ve barely seen him all week as it is. It’s only a small cloud though, and we’ll have plenty of time to make up for it once our holidays start. The countdown starts now…

I wish it were simple but we give up easily*

Jan and I will have been together six years next month. Six whole years! I was practically still a kid when we got together. In those six years we’ve gone from being “in a relationship” to “in a long distance relationship” and then back to where we started. While every other relationship I was aware of has either moved on or ended we seem to have come to a complete standstill. Of course there have been changes in both of our lives, but they seem to have only happened to us as individuals, at different times as if we were two entirely separate entities who just happen to know one another (well, obviously we are two separate entities but you’d think there would be some mutual stuff in a relationship as well, right?)

So while all my friends are moving in together, buying houses, getting engaged, exchanging vows and having babies the two of us have moved out of our student residence and got our first flats separately, attended engagement parties and weddings as “boyfriend and girlfriend” (in what seems to me is the same sense of boyfriend and girlfriend that is uttered by 15 year olds) and bought dozens of gifts for other people’s children.

It’s not like I even want to get married and have babies at this stage in my life. I don’t even particularly want to get engaged yet. But it would be nice to feel like some day it might be my turn. What I would like is for us to get a flat together. I mean, I adore my flat, it’s the first place I’ve ever lived that was truly mine and it really is a nice place but only being able to have my boyfriend with my for some of the time… well, it gets a little lonely sometimes. I want to be able to wake up beside him every day (not just when he happens to be staying at mine). I want to know I’ll see him in the evening without having to ask. I want a bed that’s not mine, but ours. Is that really too much to ask?

Would he want to live with me if I cleaned up more often? (Photo: nanquimvirtual)

Sometimes I’ll find myself trying to work out reasons why he might not want to live with me, despite the fact that he tells me he dosn’t even know why. But it’s as if I need to have a cause so I can start trying to fix it. A while ago I got the idea into my head that once I had a proper job he would want to stay with me. Except then I found a proper job, moved into a flat (by myself), lost my proper job again and found a new one… and I’m still living alone. Now I occasionally think that maybe once I’ve got through my probation period things might start to happen. Then there was the time that I decided I needed to give him a reason to come home to me every night, so I started making sure tea was ready when he came home and he always had something clean to wear. He tells me he likes cooking with me though, so I guess that one’s backfired. A recurring theme (and something that I guess is always is that back of my mind) is thinking that he doesn’t want to live with me because he’s seen the state that my flat gets into, so every few months I’ll make a vow to myself to keep on top of the housework. Unfortunately, as I keep telling you (I am the proverbial stuck record!) my housewifely skills leave much to be desired. So I’ll clean and tidy the entire flat once and manage to wash the dishes immediately after we eat for maybe three days in a row, but then I get bored and the thought of the dishes waiting for me in the kitchen just makes me want to cry, and so I stop and once again Jan has to come home to a messy kitchen once again.

In my more logical moments I realise that whether he wants to live with me or not doesn’t depend on my job or my cooking or how tidy I am, but my logical moments are few and far between. Before long the crazy catches up with me again and I start obsessively cleaning the kitchen and dreaming up new and interesting dishes to win over my man’s heart (because we all know the way to that is through the stomach). And so it goes on, over and over again.

Sigh I know nobody said relationships were easy, but I wish someone had warned me it would be this hard…

*Title blatantly stolen from the song The Other Side of the World by KT Tunstall

In which I discover that I am an idiot

After 5 months of unlocking my mailbox every single day (except for Sundays) only to disover that, most of the time, there’s nothing in it anyway, I realised today that there are 3 little windows in the bottom so you can see whether there’s anything inside or not. Why has it taken me since March to notice this? Clearly I am a fool.

Also, for the past hour I’ve been trying to make an origami star, like this. The author of the article says “they are quite easy (for origami) but I don’t think I’d try them with children under 10”. Well, I don’t know about 10 year olds but I certainly can’t fold the bloody things. Even my pentagon shaped, flattened knot thingy doesn’t look anything like the one in the picture, and that’s before I’ve even done any folding. So once again I prove that any creative/artistic genes that may exist in my family were clearly not passed on to me…

And, I spent 20 euros on a wedding present today then another 6 euros to send it to England. The same friend is having a baby in January, as is the son of friends of the family (well, obviously he’s not) and an old school friend is getting married in October. Then there’s a whole bunch of babies due in January and another 3 (so far) weddings taking place next year. I wish people would stop getting married and having babies already… my bank balance can’t take much more of this!

Wishlist

I wish…

• I could write as well as I thought I could when I was 10
• I knew what I wanted from life
• I could get my Master’s without having to write a thesis
• My flat would clean itself
• I understood the German tax system well enough to start working as a freelance translator (I have to do taxes every month for the first year? What?! But I can’t even remember to do my taxes at the end of each financial year!)
• Crumpets existed in Germany
• … and Hula Hoops and Heinz Cream of Chicken Soup and Red Leicester Cheese
• I had a washing machine
• I could afford to buy this… or this
• I could do something creative. I totally admire people who can paint or sew or even take great pictures
• Everyone I know would stop getting married/having babies (I’ve heard about two pregnancies in the past week and have known about a third for a couple of months)
• It would stop raining

What’s on your wishlist today?

The year isn’t over yet…

Some of you may remember me mentioning that this year appears to be the year of babies. Everyone’s at it. Family friends, acquaintances, people I went to school with…
Today I found out that my oldest friend’s baby has arrived. Not the oldest person in my group of friends – she’s only 2 days older than me! I mean the friend that I’ve known for the longest. We met when we were three years old, lost touch for a while after she had her first child at 17 and I started university the following year and recently found each other again through Facebook. I know 3 to 18 is only 16, which probably sounds like nothing to many people, but when you’re from an army family and regularly have to leave your friends behind (when they’re not leaving you behind!) 16 years is a bloody long time! Now we’re both 25 and she’s just given birth to son number 2. The 10th child to be born to someone I know this year. Yes, really, 10! Just to emphasise my point I shall list them by name in the order they were born:

1. Jamie
2. Eliza
3. Dylan
4. Isaac
5. Logan
6. Daniel
7. Emily
8. Chloe
9. Imogen
… and of course number 10 is the new one. Named Beau in case anyone was wondering.

It’s not over yet either. A girl from my building was supposed to have her baby on 8th November. As far as I know it hasn’t arrived yet. When it does that will be 11 babies. Eleven! Is it just me or is that a lot? I’m just glad I don’t know anybody else who’s due this year, otherwise we’d end up with an average of one baby a month. Scary stuff.
I do, however, know three people who are due next year. And considering we still have 13 months until next year is over and a pregnancy only lasts 9 there’s still plenty of time for more announcements.

Is this the way it’s going to be for the rest of my life?

Babies, babies everywhere

Yes, I am aware that I blogged just a few hours ago. I’m also aware that my life isn’t so exciting that people will want to read about it several times a day. But I’ve just come back from work 5 hours early. I’ve taken the afternoon of to do a practice translation for a company who I’m hoping will offer me a job. I have an hour and a half to wait before they send me the text to translate and I’m very nervous. I have to blog if only to keep me sane!

Jan got an email yesterday. Some friends of ours (who used to live in the student residence) had a baby girl on Sunday. Emily Lara. Cute name 🙂
This is the fifth baby to be born to someone I know this year. Three people I know are still pregnant and due this year. That will be 8 babies. Eight! Just four more and there would be one for every month of the year! Between my relatives, people I went to school with and friends from Germany this is starting to feel like the year of babies.
I just hope there are still some good names left by the time I get round to having kids, otherwise I’ll have to call mine things like Winifred and Pineapple…