Category: microblog Monday

Microblog Monday- reading and audiobooks

I have been listening to a few audiobooks recently. Partly because my old phone is now basically an mp3 player on our alarm clock and I also now have audible on my phone. So far it has been mostly re-reads. I have been listening to various Discworld books at night. They are quite good because the story is only part of the appeal, it is the insights and the characters that I enjoy, so I can listen until I fall asleep without worrying that I have missed something.

On my audible account, I have started a couple of new books but also listened to ones I read years ago. Listening is a very different experience from reading. I think I prefer re-reading books in audio because of my other reading quirk.  I often (usually) will read the end of the book before the rest.  I need to have an idea of what is coming up to fully enjoy the book.  I don’t like overly suspenseful stories.

I find it really interesting that there has been such a boom in audiobooks recently.  Is it because we all now carry around portable players (phones) so we are used to listening? Or was there always this pent up demand that no one was catering for? My mum preferred to listen to books when we drove long distances, so consequently i “read” quite a few interesting books.  I can remember sneaking out to the car for the final tape of “far from the madding crowd” because we arrived home with about 20 minutes left. For a long time, I preferred just to listen to music, but podcasts have lured me back.

A good narrator is important.  I am ambivalent about one author, I like her books, but the narrators she has don’t work for me and it is putting me off her books.

Microblog Monday- musings

Just general thoughts. I read the Guardian article on miscarriages (in part a response to the Zuckerberg announcement) and it made me think about the things we do during pregnancy to keep it “safe”. 

I just got back from Japan, where I ate sushi, drank a bit of alcohol and generally enjoyed myself.  I am pretty sure that there is not a positive test in my immediate future (not that we didn’t try, but my most fertile hours were spent in a flying tin can).  But what would I have done if I thought I was?  Not sure.  

After my miscarriages, I come to recognise that a lot of the safeguard activities don’t really make a difference if there is something fundamentally wrong.  All the bed rest in the world didn’t stop the miscarriages.  The acupuncture, the staying calm, the vitamin taking- none of it helped.  The constant refrain of “it’s not your fault” is what I remember. The pregnancy that lasted the longest featured me walking quite a bit, being at an onsen in the early stages (hot bath) and sashimi (also early). 

Yes, there are things that can actively cause damage, but most of us don’t sniff pennyroyal even when not pregnant. 

Those of us in the TTC circle of hell spend so much time being told what to do and what to avoid, to the extent that it shrivels up some of our life.  But how much of that is needed and how much of it is a form of bargaining? “If I give up coffee and wine and do thirty minutes of head standing a day, will I be rewarded with a baby?”

I have lost track of how many people I know who, based on their test results, should not have gotten pregnant, or struggled, but now have at least one child.  And there is nothing in my test results to say I will have issues.  But I do.

So maybe what I am saying here is that there is no magic factor- either for getting there or staying there.  It is all a fluke.  Appreciate the magic you received, but stop telling me that there is a ritual I must follow- I have been there and done that and it does not work.