Notes Of An Uninteresting Event

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)