I have been meaning to do this post for a long time.  We all have to believe in something, and I believe in a lot of things.  Like the propensity for humans to be wonderful creatures, and that we could do so much more if we strove to do it.  So in a nutshell, these are some of my beliefs.  Some weird, nonsensical or daft, some very real and rooted in who I am as a person.

• I believe that human beings are capable of the most wonderful things.
• I believe that there is so much more to this world than what can be studied in a lab or seen with our own eyes.
• I believe in ghosts and souls, that everyone and everything has a soul, and that everything is sacred.
• I believe in second chances if the person deserves it, and I believe in letting go if they’re not.
• I believe you can love more than one person with a burning passion so great you feel you’re going to burst - mothers do this every day.
• I believe in trying your best for something, but knowing when to stop.
• I believe we should always know when to stop, and when to continue.
• I believe that life of those alive is sacred, but I believe in a woman’s right to choose.
• I believe we should all have the right to choose, and not to judge others based on their decisions.
• I believe we judge too much, but I believe one day we’ll know the follies of our ways.
• I believe in greater being(s).
• I believe that music was given to us as a way of surviving the downsides to life.
• I believe in soulmates.
• I believe that you have to try to find your soulmate, but that fate will help you to do so.
• I believe in aliens.
• I believe, more than anything else, in fate.
• I believe in Love, as an almighty force for good and change.
• I believe our world is the best place in the universe.
• I also believe that greed is behind the motives of every big business, at the cost of other people’s safety and well-being.
• I believe that there are a few well-placed men, in seats of power, who control on a daily basis almost everything we do.
• I believe eventually we’ll be free.
• I believe in clean breaks, and the ability to let go.
• I believe you can run away, but the past will catch up with you.
• I believe that the things your mother tells you are true as a child, are actually true.
• I believe it took me 22 years to realise this.
• I believe that the world is overpopulated, and that like the very famous experiment with rats, the more of us humans are packed into a town, the more unpleasant we become.
• I believe, like the dinosaurs and millions of ancestors, there will be a devastating event to put our numbers right.
• I believe we should all do more to help other people, and that charity starts next door. Help a neighbour.
• I believe that we get pointers, little things, from another place, to give us faith when we’re at our lowest.
• I believe in rainbows, and their accompanying pots of gold.
• I believe in our ability to adapt to difficult situations.
• I believe we trust too much in science, and it will be our eventual downfall, because scientists simply don’t know enough about what they’re playing with.
• I believe Calogero has one of the loveliest voices, and is very good to listen-to at any time of the day.
• But I believe that Ed Harcourt is my favourite singer ever, and his EP Maplewood, came just at the right time.
• I believe that colours in nature never clash. Red poppies next to orange wallflowers. Divine.
• I believe in gay marriage, and that love is love, whoever it comes from.
• I believe in evil people, they exist, and if we don’t have faith enough to defeat them, the world could be a bad place.
• I believe in silver linings.
• I believe in dragons.
• I believe that the closest you’ll get to the stars without leaving Earth, is to lay out in the middle of a desert at night.
• I believe that we are children of the stars.
• I believe in magic.
• I believe that the mass-media is tainted and controlled, to make sure we feel desperation.
• I believe we each have gifts unique and individual to ourselves.
• I believe in red lipstick and 1940’s heels.
• I believe in a little bit of powder, a whiff of perfume and freshly laundered blouses.
• I believe housework can soothe you when you’re stressed. Try ironing.
• I believe in clean but untidy houses.
• I believe that to bake a cake is to soothe a soul, both in the baking and in the eating.
• I believe that many people don’t see past the end of their own noses.
• I believe in better prisons for serious criminals, and that life should mean life.
• I believe you should be married to have/ adopt a child, but if you’re not when you get pregnant, you shouldn’t necessarily marry for the child.
• I believe in single mums, and how hard they work.
• I believe we all need a shoulder to cry on, even if it’s your pet hamster’s (or in my case, dog’s).
• I believe in someone’s right to choose death over life, because life is only sacred if it’s lived well.
• I believe in apple orchards and old lichen-covered apple trees.
• I believe I’ve found heaven on Earth.
• I believe in Saturdays when it rains.
• I believe in piano keys and guitar strings.
• I believe we are too scared to live, and we hold ourselves back. Take a step, breathe, and jump.
• I believe we hurt ourselves to try and make sense of an extremely difficult situation.
• I believe that if you’re in a difficult situation, the only person who’ll get you through it is yourself. With a little help from a friend.
• I believe it’s bad to rely completely on anyone to get you through something. Have faith in your own ability to cope and adapt.
• I believe we should all ask for help, but not rely upon it.
• I believe we should make the most of every day we have, because you’re a long time dead.
• I believe you learn more from the world around you, than you can ever learn in a classroom.
• I believe we should all have the ability to read and the interest to do the same.
• I believe being close to the land, and working with it, is as close to a perfect work-life balance as anyone will ever get.
• I believe in being tactile.
• I believe in hugs given with love.
• I believe kissing is the most intimate thing you can do with a person, second only to trusting them.
• I believe in love ever after and once upon a time.
• I believe in smoky jazz clubs and Ella Fitzgerald singing a sassy number on stage.
• I believe everything sounds better on a crackly old record than it does in perfect high-definition quality.
• I believe you should give freely. Give all of yourself, because it’s the only way to be happy.
• I believe we should live like it’s our last day. Because it might well be.
• I believe what goes up, must eventually come down.
• I don’t believe in madness, just a temporary change of circumstances.
• I believe beliefs should never be written in stone. Pencil is much better.
• I believe I’m old beyond my years, yet there is so much more still to know.
• I believe in you, and him and her, them and those.

Je crois.

The garden this year, which looked so wonderfully weed-free at the beginning of May has now become an unweildy behemoth, with weeds now outnumbering everything else.  I struggled to find my broad beans and squashes underneath the towering grasses, nippleworts and dandelions.  As you can tell, I’ve also struggled to find my Inner Zen Gardener… *sigh*

But the beds I can keep managed to an extent are the flower-borders.  They are pretty things.  The first thing you see as you’re entering the garden is William Morris (Auswil), one of the first roses we bought when we moved in, he is resplendent in colours of pinks, soft peaches and creamy yellows.  He smells delicious, and makes a wonderful cut-flower too.  For the first time both Rosemoor and Felicite Parmentier are doing really well, I think it’s because I pruned them, they seem to be growing well and flowering profusely.

The newest bed we put in looks lovely, too.  It still needs filling out a bit, but it’s getting there, and the rose we bought at Lytes Cary Manor in Somerset?  It turned out it was neither yellow, nor white.  It is in fact a Rosa Gallica officinalis, or the apothecary’s rose.  It has the most stunning pink flowers with a spicy, heady scent.  It’s stunning and has already put out many buds.

[Rosa gallica officinalis - the apothecary’s rose]

I don’t know about giant sunflowers, but I think my lovage could out-do everyone else.  It’s currently somewhere around the 8-feet mark, and still growing.  I am, as always, amazed at nature.

The foxgloves are still out, and have a couple of weeks left in them, and even though they are biennial plants, we always have a good number.  This year there are around 60. They are never weeded out, because I like them too much. So our ice-cream-hued plants stay where the wind scatters them.  They look very pretty next to the lupins, of the same ice-cream hues.  Ours is a messy, busy garden.  But it’s our garden, and it’s a wonderful place to watch red squirrels and relax.

It would be at a completely random time that my body decided to start working again, wouldn’t it?  Last Friday we went for our hospital visit and got the same doctor who told me to have the HSG.  At that point I could’ve laughed, because I was sure that we’d have to undergo another battery of tests before we’d ever get the prescription for the magic medicine which would (hopefully) do its job.  Though we both got the shock of our lives when said doctor told us that, as my tubal patency test came back fine (phew), she would happily prescribe said drugs.  We were given a date to start the tablets (Friday 4th July) and sent on our way, clenching the prescription with both hands.  I’ve had to jump through a lot of hoops to get this far!

There was a big to-do with the prescription, which was a hospital-pharmacy-only prescription, and our hospital has a policy of only giving one cycle of medication per prescription (the doctor had prescribed a 6-month course).  The pharmacist said take it to my GP, which I did, and discuss it with him, where he said he’d happily put it onto a usual form, but not to expect many pharmacies to have the tablets in stock.  Though they’d be able to order them in.  We thought this would be fine, as I wasn’t due to start any medications until Friday, we’d have plenty of time.  Little did we know that my body would take things into its own hands, meaning I had to start the medication yesterday.

As you can imagine this lead to a flat panic, which saw me pleading blue murder with the receptionist at the GPs surgery, until she found the prescriptions in my GP’s pigeon-hole, and pleading some more to allow me to also take the original prescription in case all of the local pharmacies didn’t have any in stock.

I am incredibly pleased to say that the first pharmacy I tried, and one closest to us, did indeed stock said tablets.  I could’ve hugged the guy.  It was their last box, and originally they didn’t think they had them in stock.  Talk about lucky!  So at 9.15 am I took my first step, with a glass of water.  Due to the side-effects of the tablets (many and varied, none of which very nice) I’m going to be a lax blogger for a while (saying this usually ensures I’m not).  If I’m lucky it’ll just be really bad headaches and hot-flushes, not any of the manic mood-swings I’ve heard about.  Though I’m going to buy Mr. VP a hard hat, just in case.

We’re not expecting miracles, as these tablets don’t have the best success rate until later cycles, at higher dosages. At day 21 I have a serum progesterone test, to see whether it has done anything, and at some time between day 28 and day 38, we will know if it’s worked or not.

2 doses down, 3 more to go.