Dashing about...

Over the course of the past ten days, I have:

1. Driven from York to London.

2. Coped with my mother-in-law for three days (coping with Mr H's mother in fact warrants a separate post in its own right, or even a separate blog - possibly entitled 'You'll never believe what my mother-in-law has just said').

3. Been asked a series of intrusive and insensitive questions about our forthcoming fertility treatment by Mr H's friends, who are henceforth to be known (with a nod to Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary) as 'the smug fertiles'.

4. Held & admired the smug fertiles' six month old baby.

5. Dealt with nos. 2, 3 & 4 without losing my temper or crying.

6. Taken a group of 15 students around the Louise Bourgeois show at Tate Modern.

7. Driven back to York from London.

8. Spent a day battling around the shops in York looking for something suitable to wear to a funeral.

9. Spent £50 on a black jacket I didn't particularly want, and couldn't particularly afford.

10. Been awarded a £30 parking ticket (suddenly, that jacket got even more expensive).

11. Driven from York to Shropshire in order to attend a family funeral.

12. Driven back from Shropshire to York.

13. Prepared for and taught a four hour class on women's art practice in the 1960s & 70s.

In the midst of all this dashing about from one end of the country to another, I have lain awake at night, my mind racing with all the things I have to do and places I have to be, my body tense with stress. I always thought that I would reach some magic place where I felt physically & emotionally ready to undertake IVF. Instead, I'm going into it exhausted from a term's teaching, and worried about the fact that I have been too busy teaching to make as much progress as I would have liked on my PhD. So now I'm lying awake at night, going over and over the possibility that, if the IVF doesn't work, it will be because I'm too stressed... and if Mr H's mother tells me once more that, maybe if I just relaxed and stopped working so hard, I would somehow magically manage to conceive, then I really will find it difficult not to tell her exactly what I think of her!