Watching What You Say

I´m going to have a little bit of a rant here, so before I begin, a bit of good news is we´ll FINALLY be moving into our new house in the next 2-3 weeks, hopefully we´ll find out tomorrow the date to finalise the sale!! My pinterest House folder is growing by the second and i´ve already mentally spent more money than we´ve got so it´s safe to say i´m pretty excited to be in our own space again!

Now here comes the rant...

At least once a week I/we get asked the question "When are you going to have kids?" Now, i´m a person with A LOT of patience but ENOUGH IS ENOUGH, it has to be the least thought through, most insensitive question i´ve ever been asked in my life.

I´d like to say to the people who ask this:

• You don´t know if we want to have children or not.
• You don´t know if we CAN have children or not.
• You don´t know if we´ve spent the last year trying, but not getting pregnant.
• YOU DON´T KNOW ANYTHING...

I obviously don´t say this, i´d like to, but I don´t. I usually do one of the following:

• Smile falsly.
• Say something along the lines of "Well, we don´t even have a house yet..." (Officially can not say this anymore)
• Change the subject. 

The truth is, i´d love to have a baby, we´re planning on trying as soon as we´re settled in the house but i´m not going to tell every Tom, Dick and Harry my business, what am I supposed to say? "Well actually i´ve spent the past year and a half with the alarm on my biological clock stuck on ring and I can´t find the snooze button!" or "Well actually some days I can´t even face to see children because I want one so bad, and isn´t it ironic that i´m a teacher and i´m with them all day?!" 

You should never ask someone when are they going to have children, you don´t know what that person is going through in their life in regards to that subject. I don´t go around asking single people "And, so when are you going to get a boy/girlfriend?" It´s insensitive, not every single person wants to have a partner, just like not every person who has a partner wants to have children.  

A little word to the wise, i´m getting close to snapping. Yesterday after being asked that question twice in the space of half an hour I plucked up the courage to say something i´ve been dying to say for a long time, I didn´t go full on crazy but the conversation kind of went like this:

Them: "So, now you have a house, when are you going to have babies?"

Me: "Do you know how often we get asked that?"

Them: "Yeh but when I ask, i´m only joking..."

Me: "Yeh, EVERYONE is only joking, it´s not funny..."

It stopped the conversation and we were able to carry on talking about ANYTHING other than the B word. Maybe I should pluck up the courage to speak my mind more often! 

"Feliz" Navidad...

I just had the worst Christmas of my life. Worse than when my brother and sister both got new bikes and I got an Enya CD, worse than when I worked as a waitress on Christmas day until 3pm, worse than that because I expected great things.

I don´t know why I expected great things to be honest, we´re currently hauled up in my father in law´s house, feeling like teenagers, jumping up from the sofa everytime the front door opens, and not very much like an adult, married couple.

But anyway, i´d been looking forward to Christmas for a while, we´d have fun, spend time with the family, have a few drinks and just enjoy not having to work or think about the new house for a few days (two months down, two to go!)

Then I got sick. It´s not surprising really, working with kids, 1/3 of them having bronchitis, or laringitis or faringitis or something along those lines the past two weeks, my job has basically been ferrying kids back and forth checking temperatures.

So after a few days of feeling a bit crappy, Christmas day on Santa brought me a headache that lasted three days, swollen tonsils, aching joints and of course a temperature of 37 degrees.

While everyone was off enjoying their Christmas dinner with the family, I was alone in bed with a bowl of baked beans and Modern Family on Netflix.

On top of that, I was súper emotional, missing my family, the British Christmas, British TV, Christmas decorations! A plate full of prawns and some half hearted mistletoe does not a Christmas make...

Now it´s two days later, and i´m still not 100%, but trying to focus on better things, putting this Christmas behind me knowing that 2017 is a new year, with a new house and hopefully some other new beginnings for Mr and Mrs Millennial. More in the New Year.

Merry Christmas and Feliz Navidad

No Bun in this Oven

Right now, as I type this, one of my friends is in labour. It´s funny because until I met Mr. Millennial I never wanted the whole marriage and kids thing, I have 11 nieces and nephews, I work in a school and I never saw it as being part of my future, in fact I came to Spain as the first step on my journey alone around the world teaching English. I came here to do a six month TEFL course, met my husband two weeks later and never once thought again about travelling further. (without him anyway)

I don´t know exactly when I changed my mind on marriage and babies, but I know it was pretty soon after we met... I remember seeing him with our niece and thinking he´d be a great father.

And here we are, recently married, waiting to get the go ahead that we can go to the hospital to visit our friends and welcome the new baby to the world, and i´m trying to work out if it is an amazing thing to have kids, or if everyone tells you it´s great and rewarding and everything else but is it for everyone? Is it for us??

I´ve been asked probably a hundred times or more since the wedding (a mere TWO MONTHS ago!) when we´re going to have a baby, are we thinking about it? Do we want kids? when? my mother in law even thought I was pregnant when we suggested having a family lunch one Sunday! Also it doesn´t help that I work in a school and all the five year old girls think that getting married automatically means you become a mummy, I get asked almost every day if I have a baby yet and if not, do I have one in my tummy? and if not, when?! I hope i´ve explained that it doesn´t happen like that, and that first we have to decide if we want to have a baby, then when, and then it has to grow for a really long time. Five year old girls really aren´t all that patient!

The thing is, I went through about a year of really wanting to have a baby, I love my husband, I know he´ll be an amazing dad and I wanted us to grow our family, then we got engaged and I still wanted a baby, I probably mentioned it at least once a week! (God I must have been annoying, but he married me anyway!) Then we got married and... I calmed down a lot. (which Mr. Millennial is really happy about because he kept telling me to wait! Haha)

Also our sister in law is pregnant, his brothers girlfriend. It´s their second baby so the pressure is kind of off right now, and the kids in my class are REALLY annoying right now, there are three weeks left before they leave for summer and they´re tired, and we´re tired, so i´m re-thinking the whole let´s have a baby NOW thing. When you´re surrounded by three year olds all day, it´s kind of nice to be able to go home, put the telly on and not have to keep someone else safe and fed and clean... What am I saying, i´m married, I do have to do all of those things when I get home, but at least Mr. Millennial can wait five minutes or half an hour for dinner, whereas the kids in my class can´t even wait two seconds for me to give them a snack!

All I know right now is that we´re enjoying being married, and babies are on the back burner, at least another year free of nappies and vomit and screaming in the night, but it won´t stop me enjoying the cuddles later when our new nephew arrives!

The Name Game

My Facebook page has been filling up recently with articles about weddings. Not inusual, as it´s now spring, we´re officially in wedding season. Usually this doesn´t interest me much but seeing as i´ve just got married some of the titles have caught my eye, especially those on the topic of name changing.

I understand that changing your name after getting married can be a difficult decision, you´ve had your maiden name for your whole life, it connects you to your parents, brothers and sisters, other family members... But please don´t drop the F-bomb when talking about why you don´t want to take your husband´s name!!

Being a feminist should not be the reason why you don´t want to change your name after marriage. We all know that men don´t own women anymore, and i´m getting tired of the abuse that men get from these so called feminists that can praise a woman for posting a naked photo onto social media, UNLESS said woman is steriotypically beautiful with big boobs and a tiny waist (How stupid was all the Kim Kardashian hate?!)

The poor men of today can not be blamed for what men did in the past, nor can the mayority be blamed for how very few men treat or think of women.

Feminism can not be the excuse. You can not say: "I won´t change my name because I am a feminist and not owned by my husband" because if you feel like that, you could say: "I have to  have a name which is completely unrelated to anyone in my family because I am not owned by anyone"

It´s the exact same thing. Your surname at birth is usually that of your father (and your mother if she changed her name after marriage) so are you owned by him?? NO!!

My personal opinion is that my surname shows which family I belong to, who are the people who I love and who i´m closest to in the entire world, which is why I chose to take my husbands name after we got married, and I didn´t have to, here in Spain women DON´T take their husbands surname after marriage, they keep their own and the children take their first surname (they have two) from their father, and the second from their mother.

This can cause a lot of names like Juan Fernandez Fernandez popping up but it´s the tradition here, such as traditionally in England women take their husbands surname.

Sure, hundreds of years ago it probably was to show possession, but times have changed and I for one am proud to use my husband´s name, we are a family, and when we have children they will take, as is traditional here both surnames, they will have a Spanish one and an English one, something we have discussed as I am quite happy to relinquish my surname and use both of my husbands, but he would like them to have part of their English herritage in their names too.

I completely agree that everyone (women and men included) has the right to choose whether they keep their surname after marriage, or change it and take that of their new husband/wife, or to change it in any other moment of their life. But don´t think badly of your new husband, don´t say you won´t take his name because you are not owned by him, it doesn´t make you sound like a strong and independant woman from a Beyonce song, it makes you sound like a paranoid bully. Men are not the enemy, and if you felt like that you surely wouldn´t have married one in the first place.

Rant over. Sorry feminists...

Becoming the Best Mujer Española

One little piece of information that you need to know about me if you´re reading this blog is that i´m an English woman, but... a Spanish wife...

Let me explain, my husband is Spanish and we live in Madrid, outside of work I NEVER speak English and i´m trying to be the best spanish wife (or la mejor mujer española) that I can be.

Part of this is learning how to cook all the typical Spanish dishes that will make the hubby happy and impress las señoras. 

So I decided to start my Spanish culinary journey with an Empanada de atún! It´s basically a tuna and tomato pasty but it´s pretty delish so I gave it a go.

Now i´m not going to give you a recipe here, it´s pretty simple to make and you can easily do your own google search, plus i´m more of an inventing things and chucking it all in kind of a cook than the weighing out ingredients kind, but here are a few photos to prove I did it, and that i´m on my way to becoming the perfect Spanish wife!

This is the filling mix, and although it doesn´t look that appetising I promise it´s full of yummy things! (Tuna, red and green peppers, onion, garlic and tomato)

Next, you fill the pastry and put a hole in the middle, which i´m guessing is to let out steam and so it doesn´t blow up in the oven. (by the way i´m pretty impressed with the edging on my pastry, all done with my own two hands)

And here is the finished product, served with vegetables and cauliflower rice (which is basically cauliflower whizzed in the blender until it looks like rice) 

I think I did a good job with my first ever empanada, the hubby said it was "muy rico" (very tasty) and he even ate two pieces and took some to work today too, but I think after letting out my inner domestic goddess yesterday i´ll go back to chucking ingredients into a pan tonight...