A week until we jingle bells...

... and where is my Christmas spirit?!  Is this what happens when you get older, you don't get your Christmas spirit until a few days before the day?  If so, I wanna opt out of this growing up thing!

I have very little Christmas spirit this year.  I'm not quite at the Bah Humbug end of the scale, but I'm teetering somewhere in the middle.  I need to watch some Christmas chick flicks and crank up the volume on the Christmas CDs!  I also think it probably has a lot to do with the fact that the party planning side of me is pooped after arranging and keeping the secret of Dave's 40th for nearly a year, I don't have the energy now to feel festive about much else in 2012!  Not to mention the sad state of my bank account after all of November's festivities - has anyone yet found that money tree plantation? 

One thing that has lifted my status from Bah Humbug level is a family Christmas lunch with one half of Dave's family over the weekend.  It was a lovely day spent catching up with family who we don't often get to see, so it was a definite Christmas spirit-booster!  Seeing baby Summer in her knitted Christmas dress with reindeer slippers couldn't help but start us off on the right foot towards getting into the spirit of the season.  Compliments to the chefs who put on a gorgeous buffet spread of turkey & ham and all the trimmings.  I had my very first taste of Wensleydale Cheese and I'm hooked!  Sorry Lorraine and Andy.... I think I owe you a block of it after munching my way through it fairly steadily throughout the afternoon!

I am cooking a Christmas lunch for a few friends on Sunday, which should also kickstart my seasonal spirit if it hasn't already set in by then.  I can already taste the stuffing and the roast potatoes... YUMM!  A few years ago, when I cooked a Christmas dinner for our friends, I cooked a goose for the first time and it was absolutely delicious.  I had never, nor have I since, had goose, but it was so tasty that I'm thinking of doing one again this year - that's if I can find one!  I had to give up on my search last year, because there were just no geese to be seen on the supermarket shelves.  Add to the lovely food the fact that there will be crackers and table decorations etc... okay, that's making me get excited now!  It'll be a kind of dress rehearsal for the real thing 2 days later.

I'm incredibly lucky to have found such a fantastic mix of family and friends in this country, as well as having my biological back-ups in South Africa.  And by 'back-ups', I am in no way diminishing their order in my life, I just mean it in a way to say that I know they're always there, no matter what.  Because of a string of subsequent significant family birthdays starting in 2011, we haven't had a Christmas in South Africa since 2010, when my whole SA family spent an epic Christmas together on a wine and olive farm in the Cape.  We are hoping to get back to having a South African Christmas in 2014, but until then and in the years in between visits, our friends and family here ensure that this African is well fed and looked after and feels very loved on the day.

And so to decorating the house.... Dave and I always have a real Christmas tree every year, which is lovely.  When I first met Dave, he was a bit of a Christmas Grinch - or Scrooge, if you will.  He didn't like the season, he had never felt the need to celebrate it and was a little Bah Humbug about the whole thing.  While he still pretends to be Bah Humbug about Christmas, I think I've managed to sway his thinking slightly and he now - eventually - gets into the Christmas spirit and enjoys it, despite his almost constant daily question of ‘Is Christmas over yet?’.  I think my usual excitement during this time of year rubs off on him just a little bit!

Gerald and Geraldine have also had a Christmas makeover this year… tres chic, no?

And we can’t forget Cedric… poor little dude stands on the floor, constantly buffed by whichever of the animals feels like inflicting pain on him whenever they pass and stealing his pine cones, but he continues to have a smile on his face, despite the abuse!

And of course, Dave’s Christmas Meerkat… who he can’t remember the name of!

So just in case I don't post again before Christmas, I hope you all have a fabulous day, spent just the way you like it!  And if you don't celebrate Christmas, I hope you enjoy your day off and indulge and eat just as much as all of us - then we won't feel so guilty! :)

Oh... and Lucy says Merry Christmas too on behalf of the Ring pets... her brother and sister are still a little grumpy at having her around, so they're off sharpening their claws somewhere... or sleeping!

She has already made her list for Santa for next year - she has asked him to please persuade her parents not to embarrass her in Christmas gear in 2013!

Happy holidays!

The proverbial straw

Last night, I was sat happily on my train, on my way home to my husband on what was our 3rd wedding anniversary - 12.12.12, how cool is that?  I was looking forward to a lovely celebratory dinner with him, a chilled evening eating really good food.  About 5 minutes before I got to the station, I received a text message which upset me so much that by the time we pulled into the station, my face was all blotchy, I was puffy-eyed and on the verge of bursting into tears again.

What could someone have possibly written in a text message to send me over the edge like that?  Well, not much, as it turns out.  And my reaction was in no way, shape or form, directed at the person who sent me the message.  The intention of the message was to clarify social plans, which would now include a baby.  Not exactly something to cry over, right?  Which proves that I was closer to the edge than I realised I was and my reaction really surprised me.  It was completely irrational and I knew that.  I was very well aware of the fact that I was sobbing away about something I could do nothing about.  I was still bursting into tears at regular intervals during the 5 minute drive to the restaurant for dinner.  Oh... and at the bar.  And at the table.  Dave was getting predictably embarrassed and even though I knew I needed to stop, I couldn't.  The floodgates had opened and I just needed to get it out... whatever 'it' was... I still had no idea myself!  I was trying my hardest to explain to Dave that it was just simply something that he could never fully understand and the more I tried to tell him that, the more I cried!

Since last night, I have spoken to a handful of friends about my reaction, most of whom are currently dealing with infertility themselves (something that I cautiously discussed in a previous post) and it was at that point that I realised that my reaction was incredibly normal for someone who is having to endure any form of infertility.  It sucks, it's not easy and although 99% of the time is spent going about your normal life, without it affecting you at all, all it takes is a pregnancy announcement on Facebook, or a picture of a foetal scan or indeed, a simple text message, to make that seemingly false bravado fall away and say 'That's it, I'm having a time out'.

On my forums, I used to read accounts from women who couldn't stand to be in the same room as a baby, who complained about the fact that everyone in their circle was falling pregnant except them, or cried at every Facebook baby announcement.  I read these with a low level of sympathy, but I couldn't relate.  I just couldn't understand why these women got angry with their loved ones and their friends, simply because they were falling pregnant or having a baby.  After all, it's not as if they were doing it to spite them.  I just didn't get it.  And in the midst of my overreaction last night, my mind floated back to thoughts of these women and the irony didn't elude me.  I knew that I was reacting exactly as these women had, the difference is that I - for the second time on this journey - made a vow to myself right then and there.  That I won't ever let myself react like that again. 

Along the way, I've realised that you can be stressed about something and not even realise it.  I have gone through my entire life believing that I'm not a naturally stressy person and that I don't tend to let things get to me.  And that may still be true to a certain extent.  The irony is that whether or not we have a good reason for being stressed, our bodies react to stress in exactly the same way.  Our bodies don't care if we're right or wrong.  Even at times when we feel perfectly justified in getting angry - when we tell ourselves it's the healthy response - the body's response is the same.  Stress doesn't allow you to pick and choose which situations will push you too far, you just have to be ready to deal with the fallout when it happens (maybe the Scouts make a really valid point with their motto).

Does that justify my reaction to a simple text message?  I'm not sure, but it certainly explains the possible reason for it.

So while I have not turned into someone who feels the need to block every pregnant friend, new mother friend - even more experienced mom friends - on the plethora of social networking sites out there, I now can sympathise a whole lot more with those who feel they need to.  To each their own, after all.  Again, it doesn't mean that I agree with it, but I empathise with their reasons for feeling the way they do.  I understand their occasional need to scream at the top of their lungs that life isn't fair.  I just hope they can eventually come to focus on the positives and be happy for friends who are in the position they so want to be in themselves.  Because after all, we all want the same thing if - and hopefully when - it happens to us.

Be positive.  No-one ever said it was easy, but slapping a smile on and lifting your chin a few degrees helps make the outlook seem a whole lot brighter.

A weekend in snowy Slovenia and all things Christmas!

The snow itself is lonely or, if you prefer, self-sufficient.  There is no other time when the whole world seems composed of one thing and one thing only.  Joseph Wood Krutch

One thing I learnt this weekend is that snow has the ability to make something of anything.  No matter how dreary, broken or out of place, a blanket of snow can give new life to even the most mundane things.

Because our anniversary lies in the middle of December, it has become somewhat of a tradition - 3 years in - to go to a Christmas market somewhere in Europe at around this time.  The first year we went to Tallinn in Estonia, which is still our favourite place at this time of year and last year we went to Venice in Italy.  So this year, it was Ljubljana ('lubiana') in Slovenia.

After arriving at the airport in Ljubljana, it was hard not to notice the rundown buildings, peeling paint, unfinished buildings and steel structures on the drive into town.  The outskirts of the city indicate that what lies ahead is a very industrial city which seems stuck in a bygone Soviet era. 

I was very surprised at how the landscape changed once we entered the main town - not at all industrial, but reminiscent of a quaint European city with a cobbled pedestrianised zone filling the whole centre of the town, which lies straddling a lovely, winding river.  First impressions were that it was a typical European city, another Amsterdam or Bruges.

We had a very short walk to our hotel and were shown to our gorgeous Suite - my husband doesn't do anything in half measures!  It was beautiful, with an antique writing desk in the sitting room, contrasted with very new and modern roof windows in the bedroom.  Enormous pillows awaited us - I have never seen pillows so big in my life - and it would have taken more than our combined willpower, after a late night and 5am start to get our flight, not to fall into the folds of the luxurious bed and fall blissfully asleep for a couple of hours.  Which we did, quite happily and without complaint.

We ventured out early afternoon to grab some lunch from a market stall and explore the pedestrianised part of the city which, as it turned out, was the only part of the city that we ended up exploring!  All of the things that are worth seeing are contained in the part of the city where no cars can go, so it was a weekend spent lazily sloping around the cobbled streets, not having to worry about which way to look before you cross.  After being served the most enormous hamburger I have ever seen in my life - and palming more than half of it off to Dave because I couldn't face finishing it - we indulged in our first mulled wine of the weekend. 

Now normally, me and mulled wine are not friends.  I don't drink, therefore I very seldom enjoy wine.  Mulled wine is a very small exception, but I normally have to wait until it cools down almost completely before I'll drink it.  I hate tea simply because drinking hot water gives me a gag reflex, not to mention the smell of it, but there was something different about the mulled wine from this market stall.  I'm not sure if it was the cold making me delarious, or the gorgeous spiced smell, but whatever it was, I drank the mulled wine, boiling hot, as it is intended.  And it was delicious!

There are some interesting things in Ljubljana, unlike anything I have ever seen, but which make the town unique.  Shoes of all shapes, sizes and colours hanging off a telephone pole and locks locked around the railings of a small bridge are some of these things.  Music streamed throughout the town on large speakers mounted on the sides of the buildings - sometimes belting out Christmas carols, at other times playing instrumental music, but always pleasant and always, inevitably, inducing everybody in the town to sing along to the same thing.  I did wonder on a few occasions who had the responsibility for changing the CDs and whether they ever take requests!

Oh... and speaking of unique...

Apart from being a getaway for our wedding anniversary, we chose to go to Ljubljana because we'd read really good things about the Christmas markets.  And it didn't disappoint.  At around 5pm, when the sky was dark and the snow clouds were pulling in, the city lit up.  Every tree had twinkle lights draped over it and most lamposts had lights wound around them.  Nothing escaped the Christmassy feel of the lights and it was fabulous.  Dave and I soaked up the atmosphere in the main town square, standing on the triple bridge, just as the snow started to fall.  We then took a wander around the Christmas market stalls, before going in search of a restaurant for dinner.  We had left it a little late and not made a booking, so the wait time was around 45 minutse for a table.  We spent those 45 minutes walking around in the falling snow, popping in and out of shops to thaw out for a few minutes at a time, until it was time to go back to the restaurant.  We both had a gorgeous steak dish served with traditional Struklji (a cheese dumpling) and I'd purposely laid off the starter, because I'd spotted chocolate souffle on the dessert menu!  I can't be the only person who does that, surely?  I always look at what's on offer for dessert before deciding on which 2 courses I'm going to have, if we're only out for a 2-course kind of evening.  Just as I'd finished my last mouthful of steak and was looking forward to my chocolate souffle, I heard the waitress tell the table next to ours that they had no souffle left!  GUTTED!  Ah well, I decided to save my waistline for the following evening's dinner and we went back to the hotel.

The following morning we woke up to a winter wonderland.  Completely snowy in every direction we looked - it was gorgeous!  I'd woken up vaguely hearing bulldozers shovelling snow earlier that morning, but dozed back off to sleep without giving it a second thought.  We went down to the breakfast room and looked out and not only was there several feet of snow on the ground, but it was still coming down.  It was a very pretty sight. 

We had decided to go to Bled for the day and so set off on the walk to the bus station after breakfast.  It was cold, but the evenings were colder, so I decided to wear my next-to-warmest outfit, saving the warmest outfit for that evening.  BIG mistake!  I should have worn my next-to-warmest outfit under my warmest outfit and gone shopping for an even warmer outfit to put on top!  Off we drove, in near-blizzard conditions, to Bled.  As we passed the same buildings from the day before, which looked rundown and in need of some serious TLC, I was absolutely amazed at how renewed they looked with a new white coat on them.  Instead of looking vaguely industrial, they now looked like something from a postcard - beautiful bent structures frozen in time.

And so we arrived in Bled, where the main thing to see is a church on an island in the middle of a lake.  A lake which, when we got there, was barely visible through the snowfall.  The church on an island in the middle of the barely visible lake, however, was nowhere to be seen.  But having said that, there was something magical about the place and although we had an icy wind blowing gently which we could have done without, it was still pretty spectacular scenery to be looking at, even though we couldn't see what we'd come to see.

We started walking around the lake towards where the church on the island was and didn't pass another soul for quite a long time.  The snowfall on the ground was unspoilt and our resulting photos of the walk were completely unblemished by people, footprints or anything other than simply what was there to be photographed.  It was absolutely beautiful, despite the freezing cold.  We eventually managed to get a few shots of the island in the middle of the lake, albeit through a snow haze, but that just added to the ambience!  Dave then, helpfully, noticed a sign pointing up the hill towards the castle, which is the other thing to see in Bled.  And so we started up the hill, in deep snow, with snow coming down on us, without anything other than a sign at the bottom of the hill to guide us.  Needless to say, it was beautiful - absolutely breathtaking - scenery and we were even lucky enough to have a deer leap across the path in front of us, which I unfortunately missed.  However.  And there is a big however here... we had NO idea where we were going!   The path wound up the side of the mountain and anyone who knows me, knows that I don't hike.  I don't do it.  Ever.  And this, eventually, turned into a hike.  I was hating it.  I was frozen to the bone, my legs were completely numb by this point, we had been hiking for about half an hour and still couldn't see a bloody castle.  I mean, for goodness' sake, castles are huge!  If it was closeby, surely we'd have seen it?!  And then finally, blissfully and after some moaning on my part (okay, a lot!), it emerged out of the clouds - we'd found the castle!  I duly apologised to my lovely husband for being in such a mood and we then went into the castle.  Which was rubbish.  There was absolutely nothing to see - no signs, no helpful explanatory boards, a restaurant that said it was open, but had a large bolt on the door and a museum which was apparently about the different types of rocks you can find in Slovenia.  Either that or something about how to smelt iron.  Utterly riveting.  Thankfully, the top of the castle afforded us some lovely panoramic views across the lake which, to give them their due, were beautiful.

We then left in search of some lunch and a warm place to sit before catching our bus back to Ljubljana.  Well, we found lunch, but didn't find a warm place to sit and neither did I manage to find a toilet anywhere!  Thankfully we didn't have long to wait before there was a group big enough to fill up a private taxi back to Ljubljana, which shaved about 35 minutes off the bus journey we were going to take and the driver was even kind enough to stop at a petrol station for me to be able to go to the loo! 

On our way back to our hotel, we stopped off for some mulled wine and roasted chestnuts - just what the doctor ordered after enduring -10 degree weather all day!  I wasted no time in running myself the deepest, hottest bath ever and soaking for about half an hour to thaw myself out - absolute bliss!

That night, we went for dinner at a restaurant called Marley & Me.  I was quite interested in the name, so I asked our waiter what had inspired the name and his response was 'Marley is my boss.  And Me is me and my other partners'.  'Nuff said then!  After dealing with my disappointment that the name had no obvious Jennifer Aniston/Owen Wilson/Marley the labrador connections, we turned our attentions to the menu.  My beady eye spotted panna cotta on the dessert menu.  Yum!  I tucked into veal (of the rose variety!) and Dave tucked into pork.  Then it was dessert time!  Panna cotta for me and Gibanica for Dave (which he now reckons is the best dessert ever).  Except.... no panna cotta available!  ARGH!  It was the second night in a row that dessert wasn't available - I was not impressed.  I settled for tiramisu, which I really shouldn't have, because I actually don't like the stuff!  I always forget why I don't like it because I leave it for so long between tastings, but now I know... it's the soggy biscuit.  Oh my goodness, there is nothing worse than a soggy biscuit.  You know those crumbs that are left in your coffee or tea at the end of a massive biscuit-dunking tea session?  Like that, only more gross because there's more of it.  (That's one reason that I have never ever dunked biscuits in any form of hot liquid - eeeuw!).  But even the lack of a decent dessert couldn't dampen my night and we left feeling nicely full, but not rolling out of the restaurant.  A quick glass of wine and a hot chocolate in the hotel bar was enough to get the chill from outside off us before we went to bed.

We had a lazy Sunday and because we had requested a late check-out, we were in no rush to go anywhere.  The sun was shining beautifully and we went downstairs to breakfast.  I love scrambled eggs when I'm staying at a hotel.  I have no idea what it is about scrambled eggs at hotels, but I love them.  I'm not fussed by the bacon or the sausages or the toast or hash browns, but I love my scrambled eggs.  The creamier, the better.  Except that this hotel really fell down in my scrambled egg estimations.  By the time we went to breakfast on both mornings (well within their serving hours, mind you!) there was no scrambled egg left.  On the first morning, I asked about it and the lady duly brought some more.  On the second morning though, I saw both servers checking the scrambled egg levels and assumed that they'd give the orders for more.  But no.  We waited and ate bread and cheese and cold meats and waited some more.  No scrambled egg.  Damn!  I was not doing very well culinary-wise!  We decided not to wait any longer and left to enjoy the sunshine. 

We wandered around the town for a while and made our way up to the castle on the top of the hill, where again, there wasn't all that much to see.  Personally, I don't see the point of castles.  They're stone structures where someone powerful may or may not have lived some hundred-odd years ago.  Unlike Hampton Court Palace or the castles in this country, castles in Europe go for the 'barely there' factor.  No furnishings, no explanatory wall plaques, not even an old guy in a chair to point you in the right direction - nothing at all.  Just cold, stone structures where, I guess if you had a brilliant imagination, you could imagine the kings and queens and courtiers and ladies in waiting and all that poncy stuff.  But the saving grace at this castle was the lovely view out over Ljubljana.  The sun was streaming down and it was reflected off all the snow that had fallen the previous day, so it was very pretty.  I made my own snowlady, complete with flower hat.  Her name was Henrietta and I left her looking out over the city.  I miss her.

The rest of the day was spent slowly wandering around the city, grabbing a hot dog from a market stall for lunch, drinking mulled wine (and jagertee, in Dave's case) and hot chocolate.  Oh... and eating cake.  Lots of it!  Well... I was making up for the lack of dessert for 2 nights running!

All in all, a gorgeous weekend, which we'd both been looking really forward to and we weren't disappointed.  (Well, except if you count the fact that I didn't get dessert or scrambled egg.)  We were cold most of the time, but that certainly didn't detract from the cosy atmosphere of this lovely, friendly city and we both said that it is somewhere that we'll add to our 'visit again' list - which I think I mentioned before, is getting longer and longer with every trip we make!

All thanks goes to my lovely Bub for arranging it as a pre-anniversary treat - he really spoilt me... again!

For all the photos, click here