Balls

Like most women, I spend most of my life juggling a whole load of balls and trying to keep as many of them as possible in the air at once. During the second week of my 2WW, as it became increasingly clear that our first IVF had failed, I pretty much dropped the lot, and this week has been a process of trying to pick up as many of them as possible and get them moving again.

The first was work. My boss was very understanding and told me to take as much time as I needed. Unfortunately, I'm in charge of this particular programme, the only other person who works on this programme was on compassionate leave for the death of his father, and work which is left tends not to do itself. Over this last week, I've picked that ball up and have already made up all the hours that I missed - but it wasn't easy.

The second ball is keeping up with friends and family. I've pretty much picked that one up as well - we went to our usual fortnightly pub quiz on Wednesday (and embarrassingly won it yet again - there's only been one occasion since the quiz started when our team hasn't won, and even then we only lost on a technicality) and met up with my brother and sister-in-law, brother-in-law and a cousin on Thursday evening to see my brother and sister-in-law's (amazing and absolutely enormous) new house. I do have a few phone calls to return, which hopefully I'll get round to at some stage today, but otherwise life is pretty much back to normal.

The third ball is keeping up with reading and commenting on my favourite blogs. I've done a little bit of that this week, but not as much as I'd like, and often I've just had time to glance and see what people are up to without leaving a comment. That ball will have to stay in the corner getting dusty until we get back from Lanzarote, so I'm sorry you haven't heard much from me recently, and you almost certainly won't over the next week. I am thinking of you all, though.

I have managed to keep half the blogging ball in the air by keeping my own blog up to date, and in fact I've tidied up a few draft posts and am in the process of writing a few more, so that a new post should hopefully auto-publish each day while we're away.

The fourth ball really has just been lying in the corner getting increasingly dusty, and that's the looking-after-the-house ball. I sorted out five loads of laundry this morning, but we're not going to be able to get it dry before we leave, so I think I can only do two loads today - which means a mountain of laundry when we get back.

And as for the dust bunnies - well, they can just hop around and breed a bit more while we're gone, because I've got a to do list as long as your arm today, and cleaning the house isn't on it.

Next time we do this, I think I'm going to have to work out a way to avoid retreating totally into my cave, because keeping the balls in the air is an awful lot easier than getting them back up there once they've been dropped. I've never been more in need of a holiday... so it's a good job we're about to have one.

See you in about 8 days - in the meantime, good luck to all of you going through treatments, and do keep dropping in to read the 'bonus posts'.