Dirty Pants

Well not yet but soon! Yep, after going through all the stress of getting my business set up in Jan/Feb, naturally if there was ever a time to get pregnant that would be it. Unfortunately the pregancy had a very grim start, 4 months of being able to do nothing other than lie on the sofa, my only outings being little holidays to the hospital for rehydration and eventually a course of steroids to try to break the cycle. Bye bye new business, or at least bye bye for now.

We're still counting our blessings though. We can't wait to meet our new arrival at the end of the year and we've finally had some good news in the form of an offer on our house which has been vacant and on the market for 30 months (!), using up every scrap of savings we had which weren't being used for medical expenses.


It's good to have a little glimmer of hope again.

And we're still more and more in love every day, so it can't be bad. The moral of the story so far then - don't give up. As long as life goes on something will always happen next. Of course there's no guarantee it'll always be something good but it'll always give you a new perspective.

Business Pants

Well well well! Such an amazing amount of life has happened between the last post and this, and I don't mean new life either, just life life. We may or may not get back to that later.

So, Business Pants, what's that all about eh? Simply, it's the decision whether or not to go into business doing something I really love for a relative pittance or to try for a job in my old career which would mean next to no responsibility and at least double the salary. Can't believe I'm at this stage in my life where this is even a consideration, but here I am!

It's been almost 2 years since I completely gave up my life to move to the other side of the planet to be with my new husband and I'm finally allowed to start looking for work here now my visa's through, but what to do?!

This is gonna be a bumpy ride...

We're in it together all the way honey!

Swing My Pants

Conversations with locals in India tend to be very fragmented and often confusing. Despite the fact that nearly everyone has a grasp of English which puts my knowledge of Urdu in a shameful contrast there are huge gaps of understanding and I often use the Indian method of wobbling my head to pretend agreement with a deep and meaningful observation on the state of the world. Then pray that I am not expected to give a fuller reply.

So snippets are along the following lines.. My cabin boy as he was cleaning up the kitchen after our BBQ the other day asks if we have monkeys in Australia to which I replied no. He follows up with “They have dinosaurs don’t they?” My driver proudly tells me about his 5 year old son who he misses when he stays away with us as our assigned driver. Spontaneously tells me in the morning of our departure to Hyderabad “I am on holiday for 10 days – my son is having Muslim ….” A word he doesn’t have in English but illustrates with a cutting motion to his finger. Guessing what he meant I point to my groin and make slicing motion. Smiling he replies by pinching the skin on arm – “only skin”.

There was a wedding at the hotel we were staying over at Hyderabad and it looked like the full works on a large scale. The driver had to weave through the security gate dodging a steam of vehicles entering the hotel grounds so I commented “Its very busy tonight.” Stoping in mid sentence to swear as we sank about 6 feet under water into a pot hole we couldn’t see in the dark “Big wedding, 2200 guests, very important person.” Now I had a wedding with 80 people and thought that was stetching my ability to cope with numbers – but can you imagine that many guests. It was 9pm at night and they were still arriving – what sort of time does the 2200th person get his/her meal served and by that time have the other 2199 guests gone home already? There was a wedding band striking up almost every night in the officers quarters and the driver said “ Hindu wedding party, dancing, music”. I asked if he had the same at his wedding and he said – “Muslim, no dancing, music, just eating” hmmm know which I would prefer sounds very serious!!!

Anyway the good news is, if you haven’t already picked it up – is that I am on my home to my lover. Very Very excited and trying to make sure that I am rested properly cus there will be no sleep when I get home… Hey perve.. I am busy packing up to move to Brisbane remember! (whispered aside .. but between you and me I think the perve may be right).

So here I am sitting in the Singapore Airport business lounge able to tap away on the free wireless internet. Sorry if I sound smug – but I am. This journey would be very unpleasant travelling cattle class but the company pays for it and I just have to do as I’m told!

Only 12 hours and I will be home. Good wholesome food like a juicy steak is well up there on the list of things to crave – apart from the other. I am possibly one of the few people in the world who enjoys eating on a plane. So this move to budget travel which claims they have done away with food and drinks “For your convenience”!!! is an outrage and something I resent greatly as year by year the wonder and pleasure of travel is whittled away.

So honey here I come xx

Ants in My Pants

It just started to rain and its good old fashioned thundering rain. My god its pounding the roof of my cabin so hard I can hardly hear. Is this the start of the monsoon? - though I would love experience a monsoon I dont think I would like to do it here at this moment in time.

Something funny happened last night - I was awakened at 4 am by banging on the walls of my cabin. My mind went into overdrive and I was convinced I was being set upon by local thieves trying to break in. So I had my phone in my hand with the number of the local police station called up while I peered out the window into the darkness. Well it turned out that a freak gust of wind had billowed arounf my dwelling making everything loose rattle and shake. What a poof!

My wife and I have made a huge decision – we are going to move to Brisbane and try to start a new life together. I got a job just when we had given up hope of getting work in any of the places we had shortlisted and then out of the blue I got a job offer within 3 days of the interview. The ironic thing is H had just finished unpacking our belongings from the first move after living with them stacked in every room for a year – Just typical isn’t it!

So its like this .. I arrive back from India on the Tuesday then after a few hours of lusty face sucking it’s on with packing to fly out on the Thursday with just enough time to fit in the goodbyes to work on the Wednesday. Totally crazy but this is a chance to begin life together properly in a place with no baggage. So much to see and do and a whole life to do it.

I am amazed at how much we have grown and changed since we have been together. We have been talking together a lot since I have been in India. Our relationship really took off when we were apart in the same manner as this. We talk for hours about things which spawned from something that happened or popped into our heads during the day or maybe a memory from the past. The feeling you get when things spark between you is as good as sex (well almost). But this trip has allowed me in particular to separate myself a little from the spin that life had taken on so that I was able to think above the immediate necessities of life.

Before I met H I hardly uttered a sentence to anyone above practicalities. But from the first day I met H, over 10 years ago, I was driven by an urge to talk and I haven’t stopped talking to her from that day. But it took 10 years before we got together and I can’t believe it. I still enjoy talking to her – we just spark together. Communication is central to our relationship but it took a long time before I learned that difficult subjects were better discussed openly and not run away from. Gads we had many an upset across the miles because of my inability to speak of the bad as well as the good. This is one of the big changes in both of us. H is so much more relaxed now we are together and the reason for fights now almost nonexistent. Ironic really because if anything she has more to cause her angst in this new life than in her old. And the change in me.. I don’t hide from her angst and I find that if we talk problems through together they can be managed as a team.

So you CAN teach an old dog new tricks. I never cease to be amazed by what life brings and in the twists and turns the path of true love takes – My god I love her so much.

Training Pants

No, not babies - if only! More along the lines of something I always say: start out as you mean to go on.

My husband (it still feels foreign to say that, as if I don't deserve to be allowed to say it, to have such a wonderful husband) reminded me this morning of an incident that happened the day after we were married. We'd travelled to the other side of the world for the ceremony and were well prepared to be spending a lot of time both together and apart with our respective families. The night after the wedding however was a big deal. Having both been a bit poorly on the wedding day with the onset of colds and flu, we really pulled the stops out to keep as alive as we could, not that it was hard, it was the best day of my life. It meant however that we were pretty shattered the next day.

Long story short, I gave him some time and space to go and talk with some of his family while I sat downstairs in the hotel with his poor tired folks. Hours passed and it was getting near midnight, I was embarrassed by my inability to focus and chat due to my tiredness. Eventually his Mum could be kept out of bed no longer so went up to shoo him down only to find he'd actually gone upstairs and fallen asleep! Needless to say I was fuming. How selfish since we were ALL that tired but had to keep up the effort regardless!

We went back to my folks' house that night and my awesome husband acted just wonderfully in the face of my wrath. He didn't slope off and hide, which I suppose is what I'd come to expect from men, but stayed in the living room with me, my Mum, my sister and my brother's dog and faced the music. He sat through the humiliation of me explaining to them what had happened, through my sister's wicked sniggers and my Mum's careful downward looking not-remarking on it, with apt shame. But what he did that made me laugh today when I remembered it was to crawl over into the corner and cuddle up with the dog on her blanket. Truly in the doghouse he was!


I am extremely proud of his actions that night, going through that with me, for me, it must have been so hard for him. To my credit, to some extent, I chose not to hold that grudge and forgave him and we snuggled up on our second night of marriage, just as we mean to go on.

When I started writing this I thought "start out as you mean to go on" would refer to being in the doghouse but the truth is neither of us has revisited that place ever since and neither of us ever intend to have to go there again. All you have to do is just keep talking. There are answers for everything and even if the answers are bad at the time, you can work through them and get to a better place. Even understanding why something is bad is better than obliviously keeping on the same track without addressing the problems.

Love is worth the effort. Forgive and get over it. You don't even have to forget - it might turn out to be funny further down the line!

Baggy Pants

Well I have returned from the dead. The inevitable scourge of visitors to India .. Delhi Belly.. hit me and this in the middle of the swine flu pandemic where any temperature rise brings worries that the borders will be closed. My god, I don't think H would forgive me if I got sick and put in hospital delaying my return home to her.

My driver, Shakil, was somewhat concerned about my stomach and suggested I get some remedy from the chemist which is marketed as a cure-all. Add a few drops to water and drink. Well, I'm not saying it cured me, because I had been taking drugs from the travel doctor prescribed for that purpose, but all I'm saying is that I was feeling much soothed and better the next day. The claims for this potion are somewhat amazing and to quote from the leaflet in the box..
"Internal uses.. Coughs, colds (as a rub), Throats, stomach, dysentery, malaria, cholera, breathing trouble, headache, toothache, ear trouble, pains and scorpion sting!! Now cus I know you will be interested, the treatment for scorpion sting is "Rub 4 drops on the parts stung and apply heat from embers. Repeat until relief."

Did I already say this.. H and I want to have children? However the course of hot lust never runs smooth :D

I have 2 children already and never thought I would have any more but I developed this powerful urge to have children with H, who I should add desperately wants this too. I am 48 and should be looking forward to a quiet settled life. So I observe an interesting facet of humanity (or is that maleness) that the urge to procreate isn't something unique to the teenager. I am as rampant and as (at least mentally) virile as I ever have been. Well, sometimes, the body is weaker than the mind, and I can't claim to have the speed and strength of youth, but like a wily veteran sportsman I have stamina and staying power using the skills acquired through age. I'm getting off the track a little but I have found in H a partner who is as eager and passionate as I am. This is a must for a stable relationship. There are no sexual tensions, except for the ones that make the blood hot, and potential for future roving which can cause problems over time. I still fancy H as well as love her and my return from this trip is going to be very messy after 3 weeks of "you can look but you can't touch" (Referring to the use of skype to stay in touch across the globe.)
Anyway the point I'm making is that eagerness and desire does not always result in procreation. In fact after a year and no success we have sought medical advice and after a lot of very embarrassing tests what do we find .. we are clinically infertile! Not a good result - fortunately this doesn't mean that its impossible, just improbable. What? You ask. Surely this offers hope? you cry. Well, I reply. It means that every month becomes another disappointment. Nothing to show for another month of denying ourselves caffeine and alcohol so as to make healthy sperm and eggs. Another month of carefully controlled coitus so as not to deplete the sperm count too much before reaching the window of opportunity. I believe H has read so much on the subject of reproduction that she could easily provide medical advice herself on the subject.

Needless to say, my trip to India was not popular because it denied us 2 months of possible fertilisation opportunity! To be honest Bob down the road may be called on to do the business. It seems quite likely that we will pursue IVF on my return because it looks like the only route to find out if we can produce enough healthy eggs/sperm to make fertilisation possible.

So whatever happens - we are throwing ourselves into it TOGETHER and we will follow whatever path life throws us.

Missing Pants

No, I'm not going commando, it's a story of two hearts currently far apart and longing to feel the heat, comfort and love of being together again.

This is a guest post. I'm Nick's wife and I thought that since he's been a bit poorly with a dicky tummy in India I'd offer him a break and write a post for his new blog. I love the pants theme, I guess it's indicative of our daft humour that we came up with such a thing when first talking about blogging.

This morning, through the wonder of modern technology allowing us to be less apart than ever before even though half a world separates us, we touched on the subject of contentment vs happiness. We both agree that neither of us has ever been happier but I'm not sure we could extend that to being content. There is no doubt that I am completely content when I'm relaxing in his arms of an evening or welcoming him home to mine after work but in general there are many aspects of our lives which mean our current position is very far from being content. These are all things outwith our control and we've done everything we can to aid their conclusion so that we can move in directions we choose but sadly we've been seriously affected by the Global Financial Crisis and the timing of circumstances in our own lives.















You know the really good thing though? We are in absolute certainty that we'll come out of this together. We've learned a lot about what we can expect from each other during times of hardship and we're not disappointed. Knowing there's finally someone in your day to day life that will support you and comfort you is just outstanding after many years of feeling like you were doing everything alone. I'm not sure if I'll ever get used to the idea that we're going to get to snuggle up together every day for the rest of our lives, that we come home to each other because it's where in all the world we want to be, not because we have to or feel obliged to or because there's nothing better to do.

I urge you all, stop, step back, take stock. Imagine how lonely it would be if you never had that warm comfort and companionship from your spouse. Get over the cross bits because they'll only bring you down further if you don't. Most of all, remember what brought you together in the first place. Remember that you're together because you love each other. Never ever be afraid to show it or say it. Think how nice it is when you hear those 3 little words. Live by example. Strive to be happy.