Planning for the future

I have  been very busy lately.  Gathering offers for the house, deciding, making financial projections, doing the strategies for dealing the price is stressful. But overall it is great. It feels good - to take the destiny in our own hands and plan for our future.

Somehow I am grateful that we didn't have enough money to build the house when we got married. We have learnt so much from then. For example: a) that we don't need much space, a small house will do just perfectly for the two of us   b)  house will  already be equipped with a  bedroom and a bathroom for guests in the ground floor. We hope that this will serve this purpose for many decades to come . But this is also a back plan for an old age - if one of us won't be able to walk the stairs any more, we will simply move to the bedroom downstairs. So when a young sales person tried to persuade us that it is much better idea to have downstairs just a huge living room, my husband and I looked at each other and smiled. It felt good, taking destiny in our hands. We really don't want to be dependent on anybody when old.  

Have you read Mali's post from the beginning of March? I just loved it!
http://nokiddinginnz.blogspot.si/2017/03/being-alone-or-not-in-our-old-age.html


... And it feels good knowing, with whom I want to spend the rest of my life.

Choosing or Accepting a Childfree Life After Infertility

Few months ago I had a written interview with a journalist, Mrs. Rachel Gurevich.  Here is her beautiful article:

https://www.verywell.com/childfree-life-after-infertility-4129051

I am not quoted, but it is lovely to see my thoughts in the article. For example here:

Some feel the term childfree doesn’t reflect the emotional pain that brought them to this life situation. Childfree, they argue, is for those who actually chose to be without children from the beginning. Childless is the term for those who wanted children but could not have them.

Wonderful news

I have some wonderful news. We managed to arrange some unsolved issues with the land that we bought many years ago. So now we are in the process of choosing the right prefabricated house for the two of us. 

If everything goes well (please, do keep your fingers crossed) we will move to our new home by Christmas 2018.

We are both very happy and very excited! 

Lovely video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZRM1guRKfY

So, who hasn't visited me yet :)

Image that haunts me

I have been planning to write down some beautiful news today, but the only thing that I have in my mind is something horrible that I saw yesterday.

I had a lovely 2-hour-long walk with Wolfie. I love walking with him so much! When walking to a neighbouring village, I heard some animal crying. I looked ... and saw people slaughtering a pig. The pig was hanging with back legs from the ceiling, trying to free itself. Obviously it couldn't.

The picture of the pig haunts me.

This is so sad, all the animals suffering.

Do you know what is the worst part of my business trips to Italy? Seeing hundreds of trucks, full with living animals from cheap European countries, headed to west Europe, where they are then slaughtered. I find this extremely sad - that in European Union this is allowed - transport of living animals, also in hot summer, and distances over thousand kilometers.

Emotional Labour & Childless Women

Infertility robbed me of many things. But what it brought me is the feeling that I am connected with lots of kind souls  all our the world.

I read this morning Loribeth's post about Emotional Labour and Childless Women.
http://theroadlesstravelledlb.blogspot.si/2017/02/emotional-labour-and-childless-women.html 

I just love her list:

• If women's time is considered less valuable than men's, childless women's time is devalued even more so. For example, there is an expectation that we will cheerfully pitch in to cover for parenting coworkers who need to stay home with a sick child or leave early to attend their child's school event.  Our own requests for flexibility are often deemed less important or "legitimate".
• In the same vein, there's an expectation that childless women will be available to care for aging parents, help them with errands and take them to appointments, more so than our siblings with children (even if they live closer to Mom & Dad than we do).
• Parents assume that, because we don't have children, we have a lot of discretionary income to spend as we please.
• We are expected to show interest in the children of our siblings, friends and relatives, and to listen attentively and sympathetically to parents' problems and stories about their children -- while our own interests and problems are often dismissed as less worthy of attention or ignored completely.  
• We are expected to defer to parents in all matters related to children, even if we have our own knowledge and experiences to guide us and to share (e.g., childless teachers are often told they don't know anything about children, even though they spend the entire day a room full of them, 9 months a year, year after year).
• Parents expect us to attend gender reveal parties, baby showers, christenings, first communions, confirmations, graduations, weddings and birthday parties to celebrate their children and the milestone events in their lives (oh yeah, and bring gifts!). Yet our own birthdays or other milestones are not always marked or celebrated in the same way.  
• If we decline invitations to these events or fail to show sufficient enthusiasm for them, we are expected to provide explanations and/or made to feel like something is wrong with us. 
• We are expected to justify our decision to continue living without children, while parents are rarely expected to justify why they decided to have children. Similarly, we are expected to explain why we didn't pursue this or that path to parenthood ("Have you thought about adoption? surrogacy? donor eggs?") -- even within the infertility community, where childless living (still) remains an unacceptable outcome for many pursuing treatment or adoption.