Girl's Weekend- Fun, Food, and Surprising Opinions

I got back yesterday from an amazing weekend in Brussels. It was ladies only and the seven of us had an absolute blast. It was so nice to get away. Nice to get out of London, get away from my daily routine, and take a weekend off from my grief. When you're out with seven lively ladies, there's not much time to think about grief and dead babies, and that's just what I needed.

We stayed at a great hotel right in the middle of town. We ate at some amazing restaurants. We slept late. We drank a LOT. We laughed and shopped. We talked about our families and husbands. We even ran into a bunch of people who work at the US embassy at a bar. Talk about surreal, we're in a bar in Brussels and we run into a bunch of diplomats and embassy personnel. They were a fun group and seemed quite happy to hear another American accent so far from home.

There was one interesting moment at dinner. In my last post here on Friday I was asking for advice about how much of my egg donation journey I should share with people. Most of you wisely advised me to keep things private for now as I can always tell more later but can't "untell" people. So I took this advice and didn't over share,,,, even after several glasses of wine/beer/champagne.

Somehow at dinner the topic of Kelly Preston and John Travolta came up. The talk was of the fact that she recently had a baby even though she's almost 50. One of the ladies in our group said, "I'm sure she used an egg donor." My heart dropped and I tried to keep a straight face. Another friend disagreed and said that women can get pregnant even in their late 40's. I am now listening intently to this line of conversation, trying to will myself not to say anything. In this group of seven, only myself and my two close friends know about my journey. The other four women at the table have no idea.

After a bit of back and forth about what types of fertility assistance the Travoltas may or may not have had, one of my friends says, "I think it's wrong to mess around with nature too much."

Wow, I think to myself, did she really just say that??? It never would have occurred to me that she would have such a surprisingly strong opinion on the topic of assisted reproduction. I don't know her that well, but considering she's the mother of three children I think it's safe to say that she has not had to deal with infertility. So where in the world does that kind of judgement come from?

For me it was a good reminder that people out there do have opinions. Even very nice people that we see and interact with on a daily basis. So for now I think I will keep things just between my family, my close friends, and of course all of you!

Other than that one conversation, it was a great weekend. I'm so glad I went!

Moving

Not moving on, just moving. As in we have to find a new place to live. Yuck, I hate moving. Is it slightly more glamorous that we're being forced to move because a celebrity is buying our place??? I'm not so sure.


One of the not so great thing about being a renter is that you are at the mercy of the property owner. If they want to sell then you have to move, it's just that simple. So when we got the call a while back that someone wanted to come and view our property I had a funny feeling that we would have to find a new place to live soon. Turns out I was right.

I love where we live. It's a cute (read: small) 2 bedroom flat in the heart of a lovely village here in London. Our flat is a small part of the very large house next door and there's even a door that goes from our place to theirs (kind of like adjoining rooms at a hotel). As a result of the properties being connected, we live on a very nice street with other houses. It's not a block of flats so we don't have anyone above or below us. We have our own front door and a small garden in the back. In London this is really hard to find.

We rent from the family that owns and lives in this very large nice house. For the past 5 years it's all been great. But they have decided to sell.  As it turns out, the buyer is a celebrity. I thought she looked familiar when they came by to look at our place but I wasn't sure. Afterwards I found out from the owners who she was. I also found out that she doesn't want renters living next door. This B-/C-list celeb wants the whole place to herself. I'm sure even my spectacular skills of keeping the extra key in case she gets locked out and ability to feed pets while she's away won't sway her decision. So we have to move.

Great, like we don't have enough going on already! One thing I can say about my life is that it is never boring.