IVF and Equality

There's nothing like going through IVF, ICSI or similar treatment to highlight the yawning gap between the sexes. 

For example, I have to take drugs that make me bloated and put on weight. The hubby meanwhile is managing to lose weight and while I am lamenting the loss of my figure, he's buying clothes.

My hormones are raging, my estrogen levels are rocketing and my mood swings are immense. 

Hubby maintains calmness at all times, even when playing Battlefield while I attempt to get an early night (but fail to benefit from said early night because of the quintuple visits to the bathroom).

But the gap was brought home most fully today when Mr Mermaid got a beautiful, large hamper from East India Company as a prize for winning a competition.

East India Company gift

It was replete with teas of all flavours, different bars of chocolates, assorted jams, pickles, spreads and mustards, crackers, biscuits, fruit infused syrups and delicate glassware for teas and lattes, all packed in a gorgeous box adorned with a silken ribbon.

Today I also got a hamper. It was full of syringes, tablets, pills, phials and a gel to stick somewhere unmentionable, all presented in a tightly packed white box, adorned with some clear sticky tape.

ICSI medication

#Equality. Or in the case of Mr Mermaid, equali-tea. 

Coding and Saving

The other day I met with a senior spokesman from the Money Advice Service, who said, during the conversation, that as people generally find it hard to budget but like to spend, it is right to focus on helping people to spend wisely, joyfully and responsibly.

His view was that this would enable people to start making some savings each week that, over time, will go towards helping them have a more secure financial future, or pay off debt.

I agree with this actually. It is too easy to tell people 'stop spending'. You might as well try to reverse the ferromagnetic fields that keep the world spinning around. People like to have things. Nobody likes going without. So it is important to find different ways of budgeting and spending. Ways to reduce the food bill without reducing the number of items.

For example, I have recently employed the following:

• Swapping my £10:00 a time fresh chicken for £4.50 frozen chicken. Both British, both from Tesco, both good quality, but a saving of £5.50 a time. I always freeze the chicken anyway to make it last longer so why was I paying for fresh?

• Lingering at the Amazon till. I know, I know, tax investigations and drone technology aside, I am grateful for the computery cornucopia that is Amazon. You can get deals ... and if you leave your items in the basket without checking out, then log off, you will find that a week or so later, there is a 'price change' in your favour - sometimes £4 to £5 worth of savings by waiting with a full basket instead of buying immediately.

Voucher codes. I have always used these and printed off coupons for half price dinners or discounts on items I want at the till in supermarkets. However this time I trialled a use of PromotionalCodes.

This is basically a site that aggregates online retailers, keeps note of all the available discounts by said retailers. It provides codes to users to put in at the checkout to get additional discounts on goods. I have been wary of such things in the past because sometimes individual retailers still offer better deals to 'loyal' customers. For example mum gets Hotter discounts in the post which I found to be as good if not better than the ones via the site. However, PromotionalCodes can also obtain exclusive discount codes that you cannot get elsewhere; for example earlier this year, it had exclusive £20 off anything at AO.com and 10% off all hotels at lowcostholidays.com.

Therefore, like physical shopping centres, virtual ones need to be browsed. I found two very good deals through PromotionalCodes. One was from chocolatier Thorntons. While deals were available directly, the code I used for a discounted 'tea for two' set ensured that I paid no postage and packaging - saving me nearly £6.00. So not only half price but free delivery. I was not sure of the 'use by' dates however as you cannot check this online. I had intended this for a Christmas present for a young couple we know. It was fingers crossed for a 2016 use by date on everything, not a 2015.

Sadly one item was dated December 2015 but the rest were well 2016 so I shall buy its replacement and give my friends the set, and use the other one myself. No waste, no harm. But Thorntons should make it clear to buyers that all items need to have a long shelf life, or give people buying online the option to check the date before they buy.

The second item was a set of iridescent wine glasses in variegated colours. This was from Scotts of Stow - which does have sales from time to time. Again mum gets this catalogue so I had a frame of reference. But while Scotts was offering 10% off these glasses, the code I got through PromotionalCodes meant that I received a total price that was nearly £10.00 off the total - a 20% discount in total. As these were for an anniversary gift for friends of ours, and they read my blog, I won't give actual numbers!

Verdict so far
For Christmas and other occasional presents, this is a very good site. For those exclusive offers or discounts on delivery charge, I would recommend people to try it out.

However always shop around. Sometimes retailers themselves offer better discounts to their own loyal customers than they will offer through aggregation sites such as VoucherCodes or PromotionalCodes. That said, for time-strapped people such as myself, having something all in one place, like Amazon, really makes a difference.

If I can save time and money and get organised weeks ahead of Christmas, then this has to be a good thing.

The Valentines-Day Wash Out

I am exhausted. Getting to the end of the week seems a chore, a nightmare scenario each week. Going out in the evenings fills me with dread. Sleep evades me.

This is probably why I thought for once, on Valentine's Day, I might be able to have a little bit of a lie-in, at least until 9am. A romantic lie-in, I suggested. This is basically exactly the same as a lie-in but I thought if I threw the word 'romantic' in front of it, it might actually sound special and therefore acceptable as a Valentine's Day activity.

Well that didn't quite happen, as mom popped round to give us a little present and to collect hers, but as she didn't stay for breakfast, I thought I could catch another hour's kip until about 9:30. The intention had been to get up at 9:30, 10am and make pancakes. Then Mr Mermaid and myself could decide where we would be going for a day out. A nice walk in the countryside, maybe to a country pub, then back home where Mr Mermaid would have to do some freelance work.

I slept until 11am, and just about shook myself out of my stupor to create the below - Canadian style blueberry pancakes with Maple Syrup - while Mr M popped out to the shops.

I had just about enough time to make the pancakes and put the finishing touches to his gifts from me - wrapping his Penhaligon's candle, icing the enormous heart-shaped choc chip cookie I'd baked on Thursday, and writing on his card, which was also hand-made - when Mr M came back.

The feast was all we'd hoped. In fact, it was so good that we felt a little sleepy. After some lovely gifts from the hubby - a rose, some choccies and some Clinique make-up, I headed for the sofa, and fell fast asleep. I didn't wake up again until 4pm.

FOUR PM!

I was SO knackered, you couldn't even imagine. What a Valentine's Day wash-out! We managed to get to Tooting, to Honest Burger, and have a nice short meal, then come home again. An hour out of the house. Immediately upon entering, I made myself a cup of tea, re-entered my onesie and thereafter I lazed (and grazed) on the sofa again for a few hours while Mr M worked.

We did have a friend to put up that evening, as she was stuck for somewhere to crash for the night, so I made her bed, got a hot chocolate ready - and that is all I remember of Saturday. Hearing everyone's tales of wintry walks, pub lunches, days out on the Thames, shows or evening date nights has made me concerned for my physical well-being. Mental, too. I took a test yesterday on Facebook, probably one of those awful BuzzFeed things, which says my mental age is 53.

FIFTY THREE!

Frankly I am unsurprised, though I am shocked. I am always tired, always working, never resting. I do not want to go out with friends or with work. I want to stay at home and sleep. This week I am out three nights in a row and dreading it. It is the worst possible thing that could happen to me. I say no to going out on Saturdays because I just can't face how tired I will be afterwards. I literally do not want to do anything. Every time I get invited to something I groan inwardly.

So much for Valentine's Day, birthdays, Easter, etc etc. Might as well buy me one of those fat lady scooters now so I can just hum along to the shops and collect my pension.

PS  I also made a stack of pancakes for the office this week, cinnamon and blueberry American style (with the ubiquitous maple syrup). I think they went down well.

Easy chilli chocolate cake

200 grams of dark chocolate.

or 100g dark, 100g milk for a sweeter flavour

SAVING: You can get huge bars of lovely chocolate from Lidl for less than £1 that can make two cakes. Also, Sainsbury's basics offer 100g bars of dark and milk chocolate for about 30p each. Bargain!

150g of slightly salted butter

Melt the two above ingredients in the microwave or in a saucepan if you live in the Dark Ages.

When slightly cooled, stir in 5 eggs, individually. Stir well after each addition.

When even cooler, add a tiny pinch of chilli powder and one Tablespoon (yes, only one tablespoon) of plain flour

Stir, pour into a floured dish about 22cm in diameter, cook on gas mark 4 for about 20 mins and take it out when the sides are slightly spongy but the middle is a little wobbly (not runny, but wobbles).

Leave for 24 hours to set in a fridge, or for as long as you can without being tempted to dive in with a spoon.

Decorate with crumbled fudge pieces if you like or whatnot.

Terracotta Worriers Bite Their Nails

As mum said: What a day.

It started out so well- a lie in, nice sunny weather, got to mums at 11:30 (1/2 hour earlier than 12 deadline)... and then things started to go wrong. We were intending to go to see the terracotta warriors, well, they'd been inviting us round for ages but we were always too busy. We expected to have to queue up for tickets to get in, hence we wanted to leave before 12.

1) by the time we got to the bus stop, I noticed mum's shoelace was undone. I knelt down -in a massive swab of gooey lung cookie and without thinking, went to wipe my knee with my finger, thus ensuing much panic and overuse of baby wipes. Yuck yuck yuck.

2) Victoria station underground was closed. We got on a bus

3) Bus got stuck in traffic for an hour near Piccadilly

4) The Terracotta warriors were booked up. Until JANUARY

5) We booked January but the lady got the date on the tickets wrong and so we had to wait again in the queue to get the right ones

6) Too jaded to look round the b-mus, we decided to get a bit of food. Although we were nearly the first people in the restaurant, EVERYONE was served before us and the brie in my "gourmet sandwich" was tasteless and salty. French cuisine, my foot.

7) The tube on the way back home caught fire. As soon as we got on at oxford circus I could smell burning rubber. I asked anyone if they were slightly perturbed by this. The couple opposite said: "if there is smoke, that is when you have to worry." Three tube workers were in my carriage, I asked them if they knew why there was a really bad smell of burning rubber. They just shrugged. By now mum was getting embarrassed by my harrying. Thankfully I was proved right when, at pimlico, the tube driver announced with characteristic understatement: "ladies and gentlemen, I have been informed there is an apparent defect on this train. Please get off here."

As we got off, there was billowing smoke from a few carriages up. "Apparent defect?!" I yipped, a little like a Westie, it has to be admitted. "The ruddy train is on FIRE."

The tube workers just laughed.

Mum and I decided to get the bus - but NOBODY else left the platform. Are people IDIOTS? There's a ruddy train on fire, there is no way it is suddenly going to open the doors and let people on again. All trains are going to be held up for hours to come, so WHY were they all (and I mean, at least 100 people) standing there gormlessly looking on? Are they complete and utter gooseberries? Did they drop out of the silly tree and hit every branch on the way down? Were they all at a convention for the protection of total plonkers? When they were born, did the doctor squeeze their heads a bit too tightly?

What if it had been a bomb? I cannot express my utter disbelief at this sorry batch of humanity. What morons. They deserve to have been blown up to prevent the gene pool being further diluted by these brainless imbeciles. Really, the case for involuntary sterlisation gets harder to argue against each day. When we exited the station, there was a worried-looking mother who came up to ask us whether there was a train on fire as she could smell the smoke from the foyer and was worried about her son, who she was meant to be meeting. I said: "Yeah, its on fire, but everyone else decided to stay down there and watch instead of coming up." It's like those horror films - people hear a creepy noise, the lights go out and they go to investigate to see where that unearthly shrieking and running water is coming from. Not me, matey. If I heard a scary noise I'd be out of that house like a shot, running hell for leather until I was in a crowded place, most likely a police station where there are lots of strong men and women with guns and things to protect me. "He who lives to run away, lives to run away another day." Curiosity will not kill this cat, no siree.

8) We finally get home and nip to Sainsbury's, where mum forgets to get cash back and then goes back for a second try. After which she is convinced that the dopey man serving her has memorised all her card details because she can't find her bill, so even though she actually has her card, she cancels it in case the man has stolen her identity. If he were really able to memorise all the numbers on a card in less than 20 seconds, he would not be a 30-year old Sainsbury's till assistant. Yet somehow it is MY fault for giving mum a nectar card and I have to listen to a whole saga about why he would not have given her a bill (my suggestion - that he just forgot - was considered "parochial" and "missing the point").

Seriously, you can't make this up. Mugabe himself could not imagine such torture for me. All because I cursed the person who swabbed on the ground. I bet that person has been having a wonderful day. I would damn him again, but I can't deal with any more bad karma. Seriously, Old Testament dudes cursed people all the time and they were blessed. Elisha was mocked by loads of asbos for being a baldy, so he curses them and a bear comes out and mauls 42 of them. I curse a pavement spitter and it's me that gets a shoddy day. Why couldn't a bear have come out of the sideroad and bitten that gobbing chump on the rear, just to assure me that there is retribution on this earth? Well, maybe not a bear, but perhaps a dog? Even a pigeon. Just anything.

9) At last I get home, with my Tiffin, hot chocolate drink and double-bill of Friends. I get a phone call from mum, where she informs me that she was chatted up by a local shopkeeper, but when she left the shop she realised her fly was open. It's not really retribution but it helped.

At the time of writing, it's 11:10. I don't think anything else can go wrong, but just in case I hear a creepy noise, I've got the police station right behind my flat. I take no chances.