Notes Of An Uninteresting Event

Back in the early nineties, in the estate where I grew up, three people had cancer at the same time over a period of about two years. It was a tragic time because one of my friend’s younger sister passed away, as well as an older neighbour who left behind his wife and three young kids. I was young when it happened, but my parents have recently spoken about how it shook everyone in the estate because they feared it might have been related to where we all lived. I vividly remember being in the local church for the young girl’s funeral, where her primary school friends sang Joan Osborne’s ‘One of Us.’

… What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us Just a stranger on the bus Tryin' to make his way home?

Since those tragic events over thirty years ago, unfortunately, cancer has come to affect those close to me. My mother received a diagnosis this past February, and although she’s responded incredibly well to her treatment, we all have a collective superstition that bad things come in threes. So, waiting for a second and third bad thing to happen, the news that cousin, who is only in their early thirties, was diagnosed with a brain tumour hit us hard. Finding a malignant frontal lobe tumour following a seizure she had, meant her doctors quickly removing the cancer but she has a long road of treatment ahead. Then to cap off the phase that bad things come in threes, only yesterday, I found out that a dear colleague of mine from work has a brain tumour and the outlook isn’t good.

At the time we found out about my Mum, I exclaimed to her and the rest of my family - Fuck cancer!

I want to shout it our as loud as I can :(

In the living room of a childhood friend’s home hung a framed aerial photo of their house taken from a plane. Their detached house stood alone on a large plot, separate from the rest of the semi-detached houses in our estate. Since the parents owned their own business, they had disposable cash to splurge on getting the image from such a height. Fast forward thirty years, and small battery-powered quadcopters with high-resolution digital cameras can create stunning aerial imagery, making a framed photo of your own house within reach of the average family. Note to self: frame the aerial photo of our house.

At 5 p.m. on Friday evening, as I was just leaving work, Kate from the solicitor’s office rang to say the sale had closed on the house we’d waited seven months for and that we were the new owners. I was jubilant and rang my husband to tell himself the good news, and that we were going to pick up the keys right away.

Opening the door for the first time was a curious experience because we’d spent most weekends over the last few months parked in the park across the river from the house and walking around the area. It was ours now, and the enormity of what we needed to do began to well up inside me. But it’s where our kids will grow up, when we have them, and where our families will visit for special occasions or anytime. Keeping an eye on that is going to help me get through and not be overwhelmed. One step at a time.

Watching Top Gun: Maverick a few weeks ago, there was a line of dialogue that Tom Cruise’s character uttered to himself in the cockpit of his plane during an amazing final scene toward the end of the movie, in reference to another lead character, he says, “Don’t think. Just do.” The character he was referring to had previously been paralysed by fear and unable to take action, but in this penultimate scene, he overcame his mental obstacle and triumphed. This got me thinking about my own fear. Around the time of the COVID lockdowns, I contemplated procrastination and whether my overthinking in my early adult years had inhibited my love life, social life, and professional life up until I met my husband. His support has helped me reframe my world, priorities, and sense of self to the point where I now say I’m a recovering procrastinator or that I’m able to better control it. I’ve read articles that outline how procrastination is a person’s way of protecting their precarious self-esteem, which I did, or that living in clutter is a sign, which I also did (photo from 2003), to humorously ‘Procrastinators: Leaders of Tomorrow.’ It’s also been linked to depression, which is something I’d never considered or fully know much about, but I’ll be digging into it. For years, I didn’t see any problem, but for an outside observer, it looked obvious. Now that I’ve been shown the mirror, I want to get better and be better for this next chapter in my life that I’m entering. Don’t think. Just ask for help.

One of my first jobs was working as a porter in the Cork Regional Hospital, helped by my mum, who worked on the switchboard, or “Switch,” and knew the head porter at the time. I remember starting during weekends in November or December 1999 whilst I attended college on the weekdays, but revenue records show that I officially started on the 2nd of February, 2000. Anyway, with zero training, I would ‘special’ people primarily in the GF unit (a ward for those experiencing brain injuries) or other wards of the hospital, which involved staying with patients all night so they wouldn’t move from their beds, etc. Oftentimes, it involved restraining them, and being 18 at the time, I had no idea what I was doing and regularly relied on the trained nursing staff on the ward. One person I sat with from 8 PM to 8 AM was Danny Walsh, who had been in a car crash in Cork back in 1999 when he was 16. He suffered severe head injuries, from which he has not recovered, and for those who are from Cork, today you’d see him around the city. I eventually transferred to work in the Accident and Emergency Department on the 9:30 PM to 2:30 AM shift on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays before I finished in the hospital. It was an experience I will always remember for both good and bad reasons (e.g., being present in Resus, seeing seriously injured people, and dead bodies at a young age).

When I was visiting a friend in the hospital recently, I came across one of the trolleys from the A&E department. It used to be my job to push, direct, and manhandle these trolleys with patients of all shapes and sizes, and clean them every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday when I worked there. I remember being able to get patients quickly to the X-ray department, if we were super busy, by almost using the trolley as a scooter (one foot pushing while my other foot was standing on the frame). There’s a foot lever on each wheel to lock the two front or back wheels in place, so I’d lock the wheels at the front so I could drift into and out of corners. They were heavy, so the pop-up handles were handy when a patient was on board. All that weight was in the base, so it lowered the center of gravity, and because they were narrow, there was no risk of toppling over. Seeing that trolley reminded me of how fun it was working there, the people I met, and with the department being un-recognisable today after undergoing renovations over the past 25 years, it was nice to reminisce.

Last week, a work trip took me to San Francisco, and for the first time, I experienced the 11 hour flight in business class. Spoiler, it was underwhelming to say the least. While in California, I worked, enjoyed the sun on my day off, got to try an ‘In-N-Out’ burger, and walked around our head office in stunned silence.

On the evening I’d flown in I got a burger from the 75-year-old Californian fast-food chain, In-N-Out Burger, that a colleague of mine had hyped up so much before boarding our flight from DUB to SFO, meant that I was expecting great things. I sampled the regular burger with fries from their eatery on Newhall Drive in San Jose. The burger was okay, and only because we’re so spoiled for great food, great burgers here in Cork. Instead, it reminded me of those burgers you’d get from a van at a GAA match or gig that just hits because you’ve drunk alcohol and need to line your stomach. The establishment itself, on the other hand, was proper Americana, with young people in paper hats and white polo shirts making hundreds of meals and shouting out completed orders over a tannoy to the awaiting public, ‘Order 95 please!’. It was a good experience, but I’d choose Bunsen, MK Burger, or Dacent Munch over the Californian chain.

San Francisco, on the Saturday was lovely and the beautiful California sun was very welcome on my very pale (factor 50 covered) Irish skin. The harbour, the Bay Bridge, the city skyline, the streets, the hills, Chinatown, and the Apple Store Union Square were all a treat. The famous fog had rolled in on Saturday morning that I took the Caltrain from San Jose, obscuring the view of Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge, making me miss a photo opportunity. I was not dismayed though because the walk through Chinatown with its vibrant colours and people was a feast for my iPhone’s camera. I headed through the Stockton Street Tunnel to the Apple Store, where I got to experience the architectural marvel with its 12.8-meter sliding glass doors that opened the entire store to Union Square, and there were a few Vision Pros on display too, my first time seeing them.

On the last day of my trip, a group of us went to the Apple Visitor Center in Cupertino to buy some merchandise. I went up to the viewing platform to see if I could catch a glimpse of the spaceship among the trees off North Tantau Avenue. It was well hidden, so I needed to take a close look. Our group was escorted by our hosts through the reception center into the lush gardens with the ring building at its center. I spent the 90 minutes we were allotted slowly circumnavigating along the outside walkway, and watching the giant sliding doors closing the cafe to the outside. I then went through to the center area to walk on the thick grass that felt like I was sinking into it, and toward a rainbow in the middle. It was truly an experience I will remember.

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Listening to the Fontaines D.C. song “A Hero’s Death” the other day, and this line from the lyrics, “Tell your mother that you love her,” made me reflect on how infrequently, or even how rarely, I would say “I love you” to my mum. In that moment, while sitting at work, I couldn’t understand why I had not ended every call or visit over the years with those three words. That has been one of a million things on my mind after my mum had her first treatment last week, with two more sessions in the next few weeks, followed by surgery in the summer.

I have been calling her more frequently to see how she is feeling, visiting her at home, and now every time I make sure when I leave or hang up the phone, that I say “I love you” because I want her to know how much I do.

Tell your mother that you love her ❤️

There has not been a lot of movement in our surrogacy journey in the last six months. Although, since early March, we now have embryos and it was great to feel we were making progress. But it was short lived after we received the final count following the PGS or genetic testing we had done on them. My husband and I have needed to console each other, and on top of this, we have yet to find a surrogate to support us. Things feel like they are going nowhere, and it’s tiresome to stay positive whilst simultaneously trying to will the universe into giving us a break. I just wish the wind would pick up soon and take us away from this place.

My go-to confectioneries are a purple Snack, a package of BBQ Beef Hula Hoops, and a bottle of Tanora. I’d happily buy all if I’m passing a shop or purposefully pop to get them if the universe is throwing a few too many lemons my way. They have been my second, third, and fourth place comfort food, behind toast, since I was a teenager. From nibbling off the chocolate along the edge of a Snack, to popping a Hula Hoop on each finger or trying to chug a bottle of Tanora, only for it to come out my nose.

I have to say, I do love them and need the comfort more lately.

Mum ❤️

Last December marked the tenth year that I began posting on VSCO, a photo and video sharing website. It’s something I am extremely proud of and flicking through the six hundred plus photos I’ve posted I love seeing my progression as a photographer over the years. From getting a Hanimex 35KAF point and shoot camera before a trip to Boston with my grandparents in 1992, to buying a Leica M6 rangefinder recently as my film camera and using my iPhone everyday to take photos, I cannot wait to see what images I make in the years to come.

VSCO

Lately, I’ve enjoyed brewing filter coffee with a Hario V60 using beans from Imbibe, a roaster from Dublin that I love. The fruity and chocolaty tones are just wonderful in the morning, whether made at home or in the office. My go-to for years though had been an oat milk flat white from either my favorite coffee place Filter or from my Sage Bambino Plus espresso machine, a purchase made during lockdown. My journey with coffee, if you want to call it that, didn’t begin until my late twenties when I would drink caffè mochas, the chocolate helping mask the bitter and burnt taste, from places like Gloria Jeans, Insomnia, and Cork Coffee Roasters. As many coffee shops opened in Cork, and the various roasters popping up too over the years, there is an amazing coffee culture happening. The small coffee shops, local roasters, stalls at farmers markets, and horse boxes at the side of the road or at the beach are all at such a high quality and have enabled me to try so many different roasts. At least these days, there’s so much choice even my dad, who I will always remember cracking the paper seal on a fresh jar of Maxwell House on mornings before school to make his morning cup, has advanced to high-quality freshly ground filtered coffee.

I have not been taking photos much lately, partly due to the kids, the house, and the winter weather. Spending the darker evenings indoors in front of the fire with a Netflix show in the background, I came across the Voigtlander Nokton Classic MC 40mm f/1.4 lens for sale on MPB. I had been considering a change from the 35mm 7artisans f2 lens that I have on my M6, thinking I might want a 28mm lens because I watch a lot of street photographers on YouTube. However, I found that I prefer a tighter frame-line. Many of my shots taken on my iPhone use the 48mm equivalent lens, so I’m going to try the Voigtlander as it’s much more compact than the 7artisans lens. The weather is getting brighter as we head into spring and I’ll see how the images turn out when I get to try it.

We have an egg donor!

Back in November, a wonderful woman reached out through our agency after hearing about our bad luck in finding a donor. She expressed her desire to help. It had been an arduous journey over the past year since we started in January 2023. We had three failed attempts to secure a donor and had to say goodbye to our surrogate back in September. It was wonderful to hear that someone wanted to assist us in moving forward. After signing the legal contracts, following her medical clearance and genetic tests, our clinic informed us that she was ready to begin the hormone injections right away (this was last week). This meant she would be able to donate in about 10 days!

We had gone from months of nothing but bad news to this, along with getting a sale agreed on our house. So, we are elated. I’ve put my pragmatic hat back on until I have the keys to the house and a baby in front of me. ^^

We, my husband and I, live in a small mid terrace house in the centre of a city and it’s been great place for various reasons - no need to own a car, great amenities, entertainment, etc. Though with our future additions coming along (I’ve heard they come with a swathe of add-on’s from buggies to bed’s and toys to nappies) we knew at some stage the need to move to a bigger place. Flicking through Daft and MyHome was a nightly ritual, and whenever we would pop out to see my parents on the weekends, I’d retrieve the Irish Examiner Property paper from the recycling bin to try and find our future family home. As an outline plan we told each other we would have the first kid, then the second kid, still living in our teeny tiny city centre home and after everything had settled we would buy a bigger house. We save a high portion of our income so our ‘baby, baby, house’ approach was very practical in terms of being able to afford a deposit in the intervening years of our kids being born.

Last winter, as our journey to start a family trudged along and during an evening of us sending each other WhatsApp messages with links to houses for sale in West Cork as we watched Netflix, we found one. Our search criteria was determined by himself having always wanted a garden because our current one didn’t have one and my love West Cork, specifically around Clonakility. The house ticked all of those boxes and very much piqued both our interests. We had developed a pragmatic outlook on everything since our surrogacy journey had fumbled a bit so didn’t think we would buy it and organised to drive down to take a look anyways.

‘Fuck!’ I kept saying to myself as we walked around the area where the house was located and he kept coy but I could tell her liked it too. A modern house, built in early 2000’s, unfinished inside, set on a good bit of land, and adjacent to a river. Oh, and it’s 10 minutes from Clonakility and all the beaches we love. I rang the auctioneers to organise a viewing and the receptionist said, ‘Oh Frank’s on leave this week, and viewings will begin next week. I’ll get him to give you a call, whats your details?’ A viewing appointment was booked in for the following Friday at 10AM.

All the way home in the car I kept saying ‘Fuck, fuck, bollix!’ and hoped we would absolutely hate it after our viewing but we didn’t. We only fell in love with it more which they say never to do. I rang our current mortgage provider in earnest to find out if we could get a second mortgage and we could. We put in an offer and after a tense bidding process, we were accepted at just over the asking price. We’re now at the stage between ‘Sale Agreed’ and ‘Sold’ that could take weeks or months but we’re both committed to moving our lives to West Cork. I guess it’s now going to be ‘house, baby, baby’ or ‘house, baby, nothing for ages and then baby’ because we’ve got so much to do! ^^

I feel like there’s been a disturbance in my procrastination force lately, or maybe it’s been happening over the last few years and I’m only paying close attention to it now. Starting a family seems to have a way of focusing the mind to achieve previously unachievable goals in a very short period of time, well for me. For instance, today I applied for a job and I didn’t overthink it! Dusting off a resumé from the last job I applied for in 2015 to help craft an up to date version, tailored to the role I was interested in. A chat with a colleague from the team I’d be applying for and boom, I applied online via the job advertisement. No sweat.

Admittedly, I have been noticing a subtle change over the last few years but it’s when we began our surrogacy journey that I’ve applied myself to drive that whole endeavour forward, and now noticing that I’m not as perturbed with buying a new house, getting a mortgage or applying for a new job. It’s apt that I titled this post as ‘New Manley’ because I’ll be doing that officially too, soon although that decision did take a long time in contrast to the ‘do not overthink’ above relatively quick decisions. Let’s hope I get an interview. (End)

The past few weeks have been arduous, with work getting busier, the winter nights closing in, me not feeling well following a chest infection I had a few weeks ago, and in the background, our surrogacy journey not working out according to our expectations. As recently as last week, we received an email saying that the third egg donor we had matched with decided they did not want to proceed. She had informed the team at our clinic in Toronto that the process was going to be too much after remembering the last donation she had done and how her family was concerned for her well-being. The realisation of how much of a sacrifice this woman, whom we never met or knew, had gone through was really tough. This was on top of us losing our surrogate, an amazing woman we had been talking to all summer, when a test revealed we would not be able to continue on our journey with her. We’ve both, my husband and I, pushed on trying to find a new surrogate and we’re working closely with our case specialist to find another egg donor but it’s unsettling.

I’ve noticed myself drifting, forgoing running (the weather hasn’t helped), not eating as well as I should, and seeing my to-do list, important for a recovering procrastinator, not getting any shorter. My subconscious led me to music, like I’ve always done, to soothe my unsettled mind. In particular, I’ve been listening to Kishi Bishi’s ‘Violin Tsunami’ on repeat, a haunting piece of music that grips the racing heart, yet the words have the ability to soothe*. Although the song’s lyrics are about hard-learned lessons of history and reckoning with America’s past internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, the melody and, in particular, Kaoru’s violin playing which begins slow and crescendos in the middle to a satisfying plateau then settling back down as the singer sings the final few lyrics to reduce my anxiety. The song is uplifting, beautiful, and it gives me goosebumps too, which is what I need when I feel everything is a bit too much. I can think clearly and feel a little more optimistic, especially about our surrogacy journey and talk more openly with my husband, who has been amazing over these last few weeks. I’m sure everything will work out.

When our faith was on the edge

Of the weight of summer days on end

Memories of the setting sunlight

Would tell a different way to be

To be, to be

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*REVIEW: KISHI BASHI – VIOLIN TSUNAMI via musicvein.co.uk/2019/07/0…

This week, I was reminded of the time I played basketball as a teenager with the rest of my family at the old E.S.B Sportsco on the Curraheen Road, here in Cork. The building is gone now but it was the sports and social club for E.S.B’s Cork based employees, with a main sports hall for indoor games, changing rooms and pool tables downstairs, a bar and function area upstairs and two football pitches outside next to a carpark. Our Dad would bring us kids, myself, my sister and two brother’s there every Friday night during the school year to run around and arriving around half six we’d often have to wait for the men to finish playing indoor soccer before we’d be allowed in. The basketball nets would be winched down into position by hand and in the colder evenings during Winter the hall would be freezing due to the lack of heating, which was no bother since we’d be running around during practice. Boys and girls of all ages, kids of the employee’s and their friends, we’d bring our friends too, would turn up every week and a flurry of activity would always ensue. In the early years, we’re talking the very early nineties it was usually two or three of the dad’s who would be our basketball coaches for the evening getting us to do lay up’s, shooting practice, running, etc. As I got older we had a proper ‘coach’, a guy by the name of Freddie who had played with the Blue Demons team in the eighties, and with a few older kids joining our Friday Night’s, it began to turn into a proper practice. We were doing ‘suicides’ to warm up, drills and everyone would join in a full court game to finish out our 60 minute time slot. It was great!

After every session finished we’d all move upstairs, tired, sweating and go straight for the bar to get a pint of ‘rasa’ along with a package of Tayto crisps, and maybe a KitKat. It was almost a staple to get the same combination of ‘pint of rasa, crips and a chocolate bar’, that I still love the same to this day. Usually there’d be no one in the bar when we’d arrive as a group, so we would spread out sitting at those small bar tables and stools, drinking, talking and eating and maybe watch a game if it was showing on the old CRT TV’s hanging from the ceiling. The Dad’s would come back from cleaning and sorting out the hall to ensure all the kids were well behaved. All of us would stick around and then finish our drinks after which we would bundle ourselves into the car so our Dad would drive us back home. Sometimes we’d pickup a few bags of chips from The Fry in Ballincollig and watch the VHS pre-recorded episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer when we got in the door at home. My Friday Nights at the E.S.B Sportsco stopped when I went into fifth year, and I have great memories of that time because of how positive effect it had on my life.

ESB Group - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESB_…

It has been a tough few weeks on our surrogacy journey, and last Thursday, we made a difficult but inevitable decision to end our relationship with our surrogate. We had matched back in May and had been getting to know her, and her partner during the summer. As part of the process she needed to be medically cleared by our clinic before we’d sign any contracts and it took a few weeks before that could begin. Over that time we were brought into her life, and her into ours, so it was the worse feeling ever when one of her test results revealed something serious. It was something she had not known about and wouldn’t of if she’d not begun the journey with us. It felt like a breakup when we said we wouldn’t be able to continue with her and in my heart I felt she wanted us to, after the devastating news she’d learnt about her own health. We’re taking a few days to recover from this but have to move on and hope another woman, our future surrogate, will find us and do the most amazing thing ever, help us start a family.

We’re experiencing some usually hot weather in Ireland this week, for September and I’m conflicted by it. On the one hand we had such a shit summer that I feel we deserve it but on the other hand, it is evident our climate is changing. It was balmy at 6AM each morning when I walked up the hill to work and difficult then to keep our house cool with our living area being upstairs. Today, we drove down to Red Strand and a sea fog hung over the beach. The weather is due to break tomorrow but it was nice to have a few days of delayed summer.