Category — Uncategorized

I found this a very moving essay about miscarriage, especially the note in the title: “The out-of-office message I struggled to send.”

After she takes some time off following her third miscarriage, she feels she needs to explain her out-of-office time to people, but she doesn’t want to say too much. She writes,

I simultaneously explain and obfuscate the reasons for my absence: Some unnamed “matters” did not “resolve” on “quite the timeline we expected.” Almost everyone responds the same way to that line, perfectly polite and mechanical: “I hope your situation has resolved.” Thank you. It hasn’t at all!

Though I love the simplicity of what she writes at the end, which maybe should have been the out-of-office message: “Thanks for your patience with my delayed response. I’ve been dealing with a difficult miscarriage.”

Because if we can talk about birth, we should also be able to talk about loss or infertility. If we can figure out how to give people medical leave for delivery, we should be able to figure out how to give people medical leave for a miscarriage.

I very rarely buy new clothes. Most things in my closet are 10 to 20 years out of date. But I look at clothes online a lot. I bookmark things I think I would like but don’t follow through and acquire new clothes.

Mostly because clothes shopping is rarely a happy, positive experience, and it’s hard to talk myself into doing something I know will bring me down. Plus, I don’t want to order online clothing unless I know how the brand fits my body. So it’s clothing stores or nothing, and I’ve opted for nothing for many years.

But ChickieNob and I decided to try clothing shopping while we were in Antwerp. I picked out a few dresses, she picked out a few bottoms, and we made our way to the dressing room. The woman working the room told us we weren’t allowed to share a changing room, which meant that I stood in my dressing room for a hot minute before I gave up, too scared to try to get into a dress by myself in case I needed help getting it back off. We left the store feeling defeated.

We decided to give clothing shopping another try, and we opted to go to the Boden store on the outskirts of London because we knew people with curves who shopped at Boden. The two experiences were day and night. While the first store had pounding music, unhelpful employees, and clothing for only one body type, Boden was brightly lit and quiet. An employee came over and asked if she could start a dressing room for us and if we wanted to share one. (Yes!) ChickieNob said, “I’ve never been to a store where there were so many things I wanted to try on.”

Me too.

I felt pretty.

I ended up with two dresses and a top that goes with an old skirt I have at home. I walked out of the store feeling so good about it myself. I can’t say that I’ll do it again any time soon because I mostly live in sweatshirts and cargo pants, but I’m still smiling about the positive experience.

Kate Moss turning 50 has churned out numerous op-eds about turning 50, middle age, etc. It’s interesting because I didn’t remember articles like this when she turned 40, but a quick Google search shows me I’m wrong. Though in the case of 40, her milestone birthday was newsworthy because the festivities went on for multiple days. Ten years later, the articles are not so much about Kate Moss but using her birthday to opine about growing older in general.

Kate and I were born in the same year, so these articles align nicely with my life. Or maybe “nicely” is the wrong term. This comment gave me pause: “The proximal moment of becoming 50 is, in the end, a lot less terrifying than the point it marks in your life, a whole half-century lived, probably somewhat less than that to come.”

Oh.

Who wants to think about the downward slope?

And this: “Time has more consequence when it’s running out … You thought you were playing Scrabble, but actually you’re playing Boggle.”

I don’t like Boggle. I don’t like the timer on the New York Times mini crossword. I just want to play my word games and not think about time passing.

A final story from the trip. Many years ago, when we were in Montreal, I took a photo of Velvet Moustache pillows in the window of Conseil des Metiers d’arts du Quebec.

I am not a great flyer, and I took a pill to get through the flight. I have no memory of the flight itself, but in my hazy state, I informed the ChickieNob that I wanted to make her fox stuffed animal that could house a hot water bottle so she could have a warm stuffed animal. I apparently crooned this very earnestly and pulled out that photo to illustrate what I meant by a fox.

This has been a family joke for many years.

When we were wandering in Mechelen, Josh commented that he wanted to take a random left turn — that he just had a good feeling about the street. And then moment we turned, there it was: A fox stuffed animal with a pouch for a hot water bottle.

For 15 euros, I am now the proud owner of a fox hot water bottle holder.

And it is every bit as wonderful as my drugged mind imagined. You lift the mouth and there’s a little water bottle inside that you can fill with hot water.

The life lesson: Take the random left turn.

After Amsterdam, we used Antwerp as a base to see the Flemish region of Belgium because we did the French side a year and a half ago. Our only wish is that we had known how much we would love Antwerp.

When we checked into our hotel, they told us they had plenty of masks behind the desk in case we ran out of them. Run out of masks? The Fords do not run out of masks. But that moment summed up the perfection of Antwerp — kind people, slow bicyclists (in comparison to Amsterdam), great waffles, great street sculptures, and the best museums. Our two favourite: KMSKA and Plantin Moretus.

It’s a gorgeous city.

But the next day, we took the train to Ghent. We climbed the tour (and saw the dragon that guarded the city for 500 years), ate Liege waffles, saw Graffiti Alley, and totally by accident found Lena, Nestor, and Luna (Ghent’s equivalent of Brussel’s Manneken Pis).

The day after that, we explored Bruges. More Liege waffles, unaccompanied horse carriages, and art art art.

The day after that, we went to Mechelen. That may not seem the obvious choice, but the ChickieNob and I love this virtual walking tour of Mechelen that we found on YouTube, and it was strangely emotional to be in the city and follow the same path. There were (you can probably guess) more Liege waffles.

Back in London, we climbed the 528 steps to the top of St. Paul’s, where I flipped out from the height.

We visited their stone at the Tower of London (we bought them a stone in the tour for completing their college applications) and visited Anne Boleyn’s grave in the chapel. We saw a show — The Unfriend — and bought so many books. I had to squirrel them away in everyone else’s suitcase. We closed off the trip pretending to be spies at Bletchley (but really saw a lot of super cool computers, including a recreation of the original Bombe).

All in all, a great trip.