Author Archives: worldenoughandtimeblog

Holiday of a lifetime

Aside

Well I’ve just gotten back from an incredible holiday of a lifetime in Cuba, which was totally amazing.

Cuba has been in my top ten places I’ve always wanted to go for years, and I’ve been planning to go ever since Obama lifted the embargo, in case it all changes. I almost went in 2016, but left it too late to plan and organise, and then in 2017 my boiler broke down and all of my spare money went into a new boiler instead, so this was the year I finally went!

It was also my last big mega holiday before I have kids, as I suspect I will be restricted to camping and cheaper holidays for quite some time to come!

It was amazing, and I’ve had to divide all the photos into several posts so get ready for the onslaught of pictures that will make you extremely jealous.

Oh, and for future reference, here is my current list of top ten bucket list holiday locations (ok, fine, top 11!)

Polly the Polo

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As part of my preparation for a family, I decided it was time to get rid of Tina the tiny clown car, which I inherited from my mum, and upgrade to something slightly bigger, with you know, back doors and such, in case I need to grapple with child seats and things.

Here’s Tina, being all tiny like the hilarious clown car that she is….

And here’s Polly, my shiny new VW Polo (not so new, she’s about 13 years old, but she’s lovely and very pretty!)

I picked up Polly a couple of weeks ago, and on our maiden voyage home around the M25 I was amazed at how lovely and roomy she is! My head didn’t even touch the ceiling or ANYTHING!

Basically she’s fab and I love her. Looking forward to all the adventures we’ll have together!

Adoption prep part 2 and 3

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I have now finished my adoption prep training, and I must say there was a lot of useful stuff in there. I mean, don’t get me wrong, not all of the social workers were natural facilitators, and one of them in particular had a tendency to read aloud the text on every single powerpoint screen, and speak in a very patronising tone (I suspect she is so used to speaking in a cheery, slow voice to children that she’s forgotten how to address functional adults).

However, I got some real insight into the adopted child’s perspective of the world, and how I might need to adapt my parenting style to their needs. Continue reading →

Reflections and Preparation

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The Reflections Workshop

The Reflections Training in the end wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be.

It was interesting to learn the reasons people adopt, beyond the obvious failed IVF/Infertility. For example, I discovered that some couples had already had a child, and an difficult birth/emergency hysterectomy meant they couldn’t have any more. Some couples had tried surrogacy instead of IVF, and some hadn’t bothered with IVF at all, just tried naturally for a while and then decided to adopt.

I was the only single adopter there, which rather threw off the groups a bit (“get into pairs and….. oh, also one of you will be a three….”), but it was fine. I quickly realised there are things I will have to consider that other people won’t, as all of the couples will have each other in the house for support during a crisis. I’m going to have to get friendlier with my neighbours instead, as I don’t have many close friends or family living nearby for help in an emergency. Most of the couples blew past this, assuming if there is a crisis one of them can support while the other deals with it, etc. It’s making me realise how lucky couples are to have someone else always there to help, to give each other breaks, and how much harder it will be for me, to be on my own all of the time coping with each disaster as it comes along. Continue reading →

How much does it cost to adopt in the UK?

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In theory, nothing.

Except that of course that’s not really the case.

There are no official fees to pay, but there are some other related costs, which I thought I would keep track of here, more for my own curiosity than anything else, and in case anyone out there thinking of adopting is curious. Obviously if you were adopting overseas there are often lots of costs and fees (I don’t know what they are, I have merely heard this on the grapevine). Therefore this summary is merely based on my experience of an adoption process in the UK, and I should stress that these costs so far are very low and relatively minor. Continue reading →

A year in the life of a potter…

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Well, I started my first pottery classes in January 2017, and at my class last Monday I reflected how far I have come.

Here’s my very first efforts from last January/February:

Even though it has been a year, I still make fairly wobbly things, and so each week when you come into the class, the first thing you tend to do is search the shelves for your pieces to see if they have been bisque-fired or glaze-fired etc.

There are some people who are BRILLIANT and make perfect things, and so usually I’m searching through all the perfect things looking for the slightly wibbly ones which are likely to be mine.

So last Monday, I was searching through the shelves, lifting up all these perfectly-round bowls to see if my wobbly ones were underneath. I searched and searched, and at some point, I lifted up a really good bowl, and was shocked to realise my stamp was on it!

I was so surprised to realise that my bowls are actually pretty damn circular!

Very chuffed indeed, and I may just have to keep some of these for myself…. just hoping the glazes come out looking alright!

Pork Stroganoff

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Felt like trying something new, and a friend had recently been talking about a mushroom stroganoff, so I had a little browse for recipes and decided to try this one out.

It was DELICIOUS.

Very simple, quick and easy, and utterly scrumptious. I prefer it with rice instead of mashed potato, and my favourite is a mixture of brown rice and wild rice, which goes really well with this.

Funnily enough I hardly ever cook with pork, (aside from bacon or sausages) as I have memories from school of eating incredibly tough and chewy overcooked pork stir-fries and stews, so never really loved it that much. However the nice thing about this recipe is that it’s quick, but cooking the pork first allows it to rest and tenderise before eating it – it was really tender and juicy! Continue reading →

The Fraud

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So here’s a very interesting thing that happened to me during my recent work trip to Berlin.

I bumped into a LOVELY woman who I worked with a few years ago. We were close buddies for a while until she moved away, and although we aren’t in touch very often, and don’t see each other much (she moved to New York and I am in Oxford), the minute we saw each other we jumped up and down and squealed and hugged and nattered away at each other as if she never left.

(Actually that’s not quite true – the minute we actually saw each other, the conference had already started, so we discreetly nodded to each other in a totally professional manner, and then in the first morning coffee break we dashed over to each other and squealed and hugged and jumped up and down etc). Continue reading →