Q and A Week 4

20th January

Are you holding a grudge? About?

A few small ones. All regarding things I've been ordered told to do or been pushed into like I'm a child.

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21st January

What are you looking forward to?

Seeing my NCT friends on Wednesday (weather dependent) and on Friday night!

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22nd January

Are you seeking security or adventure?

Argh. Um. Bit of both?

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23rd January

Do you need a break? From what?

I'd like a break from worrying about going back to work!

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24th January

If you were going to start your own company, what would it be?

A bookshop.

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25th January

What makes "you" you?

My past, my memories, my people, my books. And chocolate.

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26th January

Today you needed more...

SLEEP!!!

2012 in Review

I'm fairly sure that this is the kind of post that should be pre-written to be posted on the last day of the year, not typed out after a couple of glasses of fizzy vino while you spend a cosy NYE at home...again.

This year I have been a dreadful blogger. I really have. The giveaway was the fact that if you scrolled to the bottom of the first page, there was still a blog post from 2011 sitting there.

Shocker.

I'd say I'll try harder next year, and it might not actually be a fib. I still heart my Twitter, but I just don't get to use it the same way at the moment, no time for immediate tweeting of thoughts, so they may start coming out as blog posts again.

They may.

(no guarantees)

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2012 - and what I was doing when I should have been blogging.

January
After 10 weeks on bed rest, I went back to work. Despite being under doctors orders to take things easy, which meant sitting on a stool at the till for 7 hours a day and not a lot of actual working, I was consistently knackered. I had a look at my iPhone pictures to see if I actually did anything, and they are all either pictures of food or screenshots of Twitter. So that'll be a no then.

February
This is when I went to stay with my Mama for a week, successfully accidentally (sort of) met @kayels and @jayegan at Westfield Stratford, and came home to a newly decorated living room. Then had a bit of a rant about carpet.Also, @sarahanngreen had her lovely Michael which made me very grateful to be pregnant so that I could be properly happy for her rather than very jealous and tearful.

March
The F1 season started again after what had felt like a very long break, and we visited my Mama again. This was also the first month of my pregnancy where I didn't have a single scan! (I did have two in February though).

April
This is the month where you start getting pictures! (you lucky lucky things)Not exciting pictures though, just my starting to swell feet.

April was also the month we attended NCT classes, one of the best decisions I've ever made. There were eight couples in my class, and seven of us have met up every couple of weeks since our babies started turning up. As I don't know many people in Wolves outside of work, and no one with a baby, these ladies have been a proper lifeline.

May
My last day of work was supposed to be the 25th, it turned out to be the 6th. At my midwife appointment on the 8th she was concerned about my blood pressure and so dispatched me to the hospital. I was told to stop work and start taking medication.

On the 15th of May my feet looked like this:

while my stomach looked like this (Esme storing up cuddles):

This meant that I finished my Midnight Moggies cross-stitch in record time.

In fact I finished it just in time to get a good start on the second one when I spent the last weekend of May in the hospital due to worries about bleeding.

Before the hospital stay (above) and afterwards (below)

June
By the 1st of June, my ankles had vanished.

This meant that I got to enjoy biweekly hospital visits where I would spend an hour or so hooked up to a foetal monitor before being dispatched home again. This cost a bloody fortune as I not only had to get taxis both ways (no way could I manage the bus), I also bought an iPad at 2.30am one morning when I was convinced I was going into labour.
By the 11th of June the swelling was getting more and more silly. You could tell which side I'd slept on by my cauliflower ear!

On the 16th they gave up on my blood pressure and admitted me to hospital. I spent three peaceful days on a ward (single room, own tv), and three hellish days on triage (communal tv stuck on ITV and the two other beds in my room having new occupants every few hours as they went off and delivered their babies), the new iPad saved me on triage as I just played DiscWorld audiobooks constantly to drown out Jeremy Kyle.

On the 19th Megan looked like this:

On the 22nd she looked like this!

We finally got to go home on the 27th, after they changed my blood pressure meds and my systolic blood pressure finally dropped below 100!

July
Mostly a haze to be honest. Various visits from my Mama and sister and lots and lots from A's parents.
I spent a lot of time curled up in the armchair with a feeding/sleeping/feeding Megan. This meant I got to watch all of the Olympics with zero guilt unlike poor @unkn0wnvariable, who had to put up with an unpatriotic hedgehog!

August
More Olympics, visits to NCT ladies, and Michael Green's christening.

September
We spent a lovely week in the Cotswolds with Mama, Emily, and Pete (her new(ish) man) and I optimistically bought the new WoW expansion, Mists of Pandaria, and then promptly didn't play it for two months.

October
Megan and I gave Anthony a week of peace by visiting my Mama again. I spent a very enjoyable evening in a pub with the NCT ladies, and Megan started Tiny Talk and Baby Sensory classes with much assistance from Kate from the NCT classes who helpfully kept giving us lifts!

November
Anthony got made redundant and was unemployed for a whole week before taking a temporary (permanent if he wants it) job. Classes and NCT hangouts continued and the lovely @kayels and @jayegan came to visit while Mama was staying too.

December
I finally got a SPD diagnosis, as well as it being confirmed that I'm suffering from over granulation (seriously, don't google it) so need an operation at some point early next year. (Although not too early, I start jury service on the 7th of Jan!)
Christmas was spent in Essex for the first time since 2007, and it was lovely.

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2013 is really going to have to be good to outdo 2012.

I'm all prepared for it though: I've bought my usual diary (and aim to fill more than 3 weeks in) and a brand new calendar for organising us all.

I'm due to go back to work around about the end of March (I think), and so Megan will be going to a child minder, probably full time. This makes me horribly sad, but financially is the only thing to do at the moment. I'm comforting myself with the knowledge that since her fees are more than half my wages, when we have number two (WHEN, NOT IF!!) it won't make financial sense then ;-)

So that was my 2012. I hope yours was equally exciting, and that your 2013 is even better.

In writing this post (for two hours) I have come up with a cunning plan for blogging more. If it doesn't work, I'll see you back here same time next year. xxx

Floor plans...

...are my new bestest friends.

Now these aren't as amazing and all-singing-all-dancing as I would like them to be. In fact, they're not properly to scale in any way, shape, or form. But they're working, so that will do for now.

Living room before.

Living room afterwards (eventually)

(the radiator isn't new, it was just hidden behind the sofa and not heating the room at all, the sofa will now be in front of the fireplace we never use)

Now the scale is so very off because our living room is nowhere near that wide. But I sketched out its previous layout onto graph paper and gave everything approximate sizes. Then we measured the important bits.

Then I just made sure that everything that needed to be on the second plan was the same size as on the first one.

The sofa is not going to be flat against the wall, but coming out from it slightly at the right hand side, probably slightly in front of that bookcase. The left hand chair will be a lot tighter in against the bookcase there, and the right hand chair will end up somewhere near that position but it really depends on where it looks best!

My main plan isn't actually for furniture.

It's for the books. (but you guessed that)

Before, the bottom left bookcase had Pratchett on the top three shelves, then some cookery and craft books, then craft boxes. A real mix of stuff that mostly ended up there because that was the easiest one to change about.

Now I'm planning to move the Pratchett books to one of the bookcases on the right, and to fill the rest of it with the non-Discworld Pratchett (that had been on the other side of the room) and other fantasy fiction.

Instead of three different bookcases all having non-fiction on, I'm going to group it all together. Depending on where I'm most likely to sit to sew, the boxes of sewing stuff will be on the closest bookcase. The two bookcases on the top right will be filled with fiction books, and the bottom three or four shelves will all be double packed with paperbacks.

I know how I want it, kinda. But it really will take the actual moving things in for me be to be able to get it right.

Before the new DiscWorld book...

...comes out on the 13th of October, I am attempting to reread all the previous ones. All thirty eight of them, plus the three Science of DiscWorld books (people miss these out, but if you don't at least read the story sections you are missing out on vast chunks of Rincewind and The Wizards).

I am partly reading, and partly listening to the unabridged audiobooks. This way even when I decide to have a reading break and go and do some jigsaw or some WoW or some stitching, I'm still getting through the books.

I might have to speed up a little though, I spent Sunday finishing off Reaper Man, which is book eleven.


DiscWorld Reading Guide

No news...

...is good news. Right?

Well in terms of me not blogging it is. I have been actually busy having actual adventures... a whole two of them.

Plus after phoning the hospital every day for a week following @SarahAnnGreen's totally fabulous news, I was finally told that although I wouldn't be getting an appointment to see the consultant, I did have a letter in the post.

Cue four days of worriting (our post is crap).

The letter arrived, was hastily ripped open...and then I burst into tears.

Good tears, as you will know if you were on Twitter about 10 minutes later to read my joyous tweetlings.

I need to start taking folic acid and low-dose asprin as soon as I start trying to conceive again, then as soon as I get a positive test it's off to the doctors for a course of progesterone.

I get to choose between this and this.

I'm choosing the second one, I bruise far too easily even without the aspirin!

I'll keep you informed better in future... promise ;-)

Well...

...that was number 4.

A few of you might remember this post about history repeating. (If you don't, follow the link and read it).

Well it did.

The day after we got back from our lovely Lanzarote holiday I peed on a stick. And it told me that I'd probably be avoiding chocolate for 8 months or so.

Unfortunately last Tuesday there was another little bit of history that repeated itself.

Namely, this bit.

Once again we went for the first scan, and once again there was no heartbeat.
The plan then was to go back in the following Tuesday (tomorrow) for another scan, and then to be "surgically managed" on Wednesday. My body had other ideas and tomorrow's scan is now to check that it's done it all itself with no help from any doctors.

I have spent the last week in a bit of a fog, well to be honest a lot of a fog. Anthony is pretty much the same, he just doesn't know what to do with himself or how to help me. Therefore when he hasn't been at work he has been getting himself hooked on The Walking Dead or having mad organising sprees in the garden.

I have been lucky enough not to have to go into work (fat lot of use I'd have been there anyway) and have instead been blasting through some achievements on WoW.

This had its own side effect, the PC had a fatal error on Saturday morning and we had to go and buy a new one. But that's another post

However every terrible thing brings good things in its wake. In this instance it has brought postmen bearing chocolate gifts from fabulous people, it has had me giggling at links on Twitter posted by people trying to get me to smile, it also had me in tears with surprise when the person knocking at the front door turned out not to be a salesperson, but instead a Kayels bearing flowers and cupcakes.

These people are my real true blessings from this. The people who may not live just round the corner (and those that do and offered to post me bread through the letter box one slice at a time so as not to disturb me) but who are no less my friends because of their geographical distance.

You have all been real heroes this week, thank you so SO much.

One of the things...

...I'm doing this year is taking part in a Photo a Day (PAD) project as inspired by the lovely @sarahgb

My photos are all going up on my Flickr in a PAD collection but I'm also going to try and post them here weekly too.

But so I don't suddenly overwhelm you with posts and you faint with shock that I'm blogging again, I shall set the backlog to appear over the next few days and then attempt to do each weeks batch on a Sunday.

Probably.

Barring the week a month from now when I'll be on holiday.

Squuueeeeeeeeee.

*ahem*

Merry Christmas...

...and Happy Birthday to me :-)

NaNo Wordle...

...so far.

I've suddenly realised...

...why 2010 has felt a bit weird.

Nothing has happened.

Well I mean, obviously things have happened, but nothing huge and life-changing.

I mean, let's go back a few years.

• 1999 - realised that the uni course I'd wanted to do for years, was not for me, so left uni.


• 2000 - split up with my uni-boyfriend, moved in with a friend who became a boyfriend, got dismissed from my job and had my first acknowledged episode of depression.


• 2001 - split up with James and moved home.


• 2002 - met The Yeti and moved 150 miles up to Wolverhampton with him after knowing him 3 months.


• 2003 - both my grandfather, and the eldest son of one of my mum's oldest friends died. (Granddad was a bit of a shock, George was a hell of a shock, he was only 28. Killed by a drunk driver.) Two days after finding out about Granddad and George, I tripped off a kerb and broke my arm.


• 2004 - The group of friends that I socialised with was split asunder by someone who we all trusted. While a few of them still see each other, I have hardly seen any of them since. (one of the reasons my social life is work folks, my ex-neighbour Angie, or Twitter folks).


• 2005 - I had a miscarriage the day before my wedding.


• 2006 - I have a second miscarriage. A week later, The Yeti left. Two months after that, I met Anthony.


• 2007 - My father died and I had to take a month off work over Christmas as I couldn't get out of bed.


• 2008 - Obvious repercussions at work at the beginning of the year. Miscarriage number three at the end of it.


• 2009 - Mum is told she has breast cancer (grade one, she's had the all-clear barring the 5 years of meds), the Monza trip, we buy a house.

See? There's been at least one huge event a year.

I mean, plenty has happened this year: tweet-ups, book signings, Anthony winning DotY again. But nothing super major life-changing.

I really do hope I'm not tempting fate here...

(unless it's a nice thing!)

I am a terrible person...

...I really really am.

Two years ago Anthony won his works Driver of the Year competition. The prize was a weekend away anywhere in Europe. We chose Monza.

What I thought I had blogged last year, but didn't (this is why I am so terrible) was that he won it AGAIN. This time they'd changed the prize so we got £500 of Co-Op holiday vouchers instead.

Well guess what...

THREE BACK-TO-BACK WINS!


(his prizes: the wine is all mine as he doesn't drink it; holiday vouchers in the yellow card, the iPhone (8G 3GS) means he may appear on Twitter, the FoleyCat we owned already.)

Last year there were plenty of jokes about him being better than Lewis Hamilton, this year he's better than Fernando Alonso and joins Ayrton Senna with his three titles.

Since we hadn't yet spent last years vouchers, we're now trying to decide if we want a totally free 4* holiday in Malta, or if we want to use some of them towards a long weekend in Valencia.

The other week...

...we both took a weeks holiday and as well as doing some decorating we also popped down to Essex for a few days.

We went to see my dad on his birthday, and I gave him a haircut.

I also went digging through the photo albums to find a picture of myself with longer hair (as I'm kinda trying to grow it out a bit) and came across this beauty.



I can remember this picture being taken. It's the summer of 1997, I was 18 and I'd got engaged maybe two/three weeks before. I'd been at a party at my friend Pami's the night before and then I went into London with my parents to visit some family friends. I was sooooooooo hungover it's untrue.

But oh. my. god. do I look lovely here.

(as you know, pictures of me that I like without reservation are few and far between) (90% of the ones I do like still always have something in that I dislike).

Words cannot express...

...just how much I love this song.



A's parents are Mail readers... ;-P

Now I haven't actually...

...been tagged by Caron for this meme but her post made me giggle so I had to do it myself.

Just like her I could also choose Lewis Hamilton (Red means stop you twassock!) or Ashley Cole (I don't even like Cheryl much but Ashley is scum), I could even have chosen the dreadful Katie Price, mainly because I'm fed up with selling books with her face on them.

Instead I've gone for a man who makes my blood pressure rocket. A man who has the job of passing on other peoples whiny comments on a Saturday morning.

(and please bear in mind the torment I went through to find this!)

BBC Newswatch

I'm sure he's a lovely man really, but his voice is like fingernails on a blackboard to me!

I have always loved...

...mucking about with spreadsheets. That is until recently.

The changes at work resulted in two redundancies, we lost a full-time position and a part-time one. Another colleague had her hours reduced. She opted to leave and so Don has stayed, although he now only does 16 hours a week rather than full time. The three part timers that we used to have were all working overtime to do full time hours anyway since we are a full time member of management short. These changes mean that we have gone from having 4 full timers to 2 part timers and since we still have that vacancy...it's all a bit of a nightmare.

In order to free up some of Richie's valuable time I volunteered to take over doing the rotas.

I now loathe spreadsheets!

Here are some lovely photographs of what I have gotten myself into.




(sorry about the quality, had to use my phone camera - and they're not worth looking at in detail anyway as THEY MAKE NO SENSE!)

Once we have filled that vacancy the rotas will work well, in fact I have already worked out the base daily rotas. The problem at the moment is that because of the vacancy we can't use the base rotas as it would result in there being nobody there to open the shop...hence all the crossings-out and bizarre extra shifts.

Apart from me now being not so keen on spreadsheets it is also making me want to stay as far away from any type of typing as possible (and putting me behind with my OU work, but that's another (eventual) post).

So many apologies (yet again) for being a crap CRAP blogger.

I will be back with you at some point, probably once I have started sleeping properly rather than lying awake worrying about only having 4 staff on a Saturday.

(and I also spent most of this afternoon being convinced it was Wednesday...)

Over at...

...the beautiful Tollipop, Kirsten is having a giveaway to mark her one year blogiversary.

She is giving away these three beautiful young ladies


as well as three Tollipop lockets (made by Polarity)



Go see, go see! (and fall as much in love with Tollipop as I have)

I didn't cook...

...Cheese and Corn Pudding or Ragout of Venison with Wild Mushrooms or Creamy Tarragon Chicken this weekend. I didn't cook Beef Wellington either.

Instead we had roast pork with roast potatoes and parsnips. Lovely. Not photogenic though, sorry.

As well as that we also broke a world record - "Shortest Amount of Time Spent in Ikea and Actually Managing to Buy What You Wanted".

This is a picture of my old desk back when I'd just moved into this house (note hideous rental curtains and the evil pinkness of my uncovered armchair).



This was OK back when I first got it, but now it was just annoying. The top was all warped, the whole thing wobbled like hell whenever you typed and the chair wouldn't fit under it properly meaning that you couldn't actually get close in.

So I have been hunting for desks and failing to find one that I liked. Then some clever person posted a link to Ikea Hacker on Twitter and there I got a few ideas.

Then I went on the Ikea website and plotted and planned. I had to do lots of this so that Anthony would think a trip to Ikea was actually a good idea.

We went on Sunday morning and got there about 10.30...we left an hour later. (They open for browsing at 10 and for sales at 11, there were only about 20 cars in the car park when we got there and no dawdling people AT ALL).

That hour saw us locate the table top, table legs, shelf and kitchen cabinet legs that we needed. It also included the obligatory hot dog and trip to the food shop for pink mushrooms and a bag of Daim bars.

Sunday afternoon was spent creating a masterpiece (hence the no faff roast for dinner).

May I present for your viewing pleasure, my new desk.



(Note lovely cream curtains, throw disguised armchair and also new blue rug to try and protect the hideously cheap carpet from dying under the chair castors).

All solid pine which has made the living room smell absolutely lovely.

It's also made me much more confident about creating the desk space I will have one day when we actually own a place and can build proper fixed-to-the-wall things.

I really am...

...the luckiest girl in the world.

I had a really bad day at work today. We were short-staffed, every customer had an idiotic question that took ten minutes to answer/explain to them that we couldn't order them a book that went out of print in 1983. I also had to explain to three people that we didn't have any job vacancies and could they now please move along so that I can serve the queue behind them as I have no colleagues free to help.

Instead of my usual hour and 30 minute breaks, I had three 30 minute breaks. This did chop the day up amazingly well, but also meant that although I wasn't hungry on my first break, by my second and third ones I'd gone past hungry to feeling like death.

This meant that today was fuelled by chocolate and coke.

Then I came home.

I came home to my beautiful bunches of red roses and red tulips and my limited edition pack of Marmite containing a Paddington Bear.

I came home to a fridgeful of food, all the laundry put away and a load ready to start.

I came home to a house that won't have my man back in it until 2am Friday night (silly 5-1 shift), but he is here all the time in the things he does for me.

I am the luckiest girl in the whole wide world and that is why today has been a VERY GOOD DAY.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...

...oh look, it did.

Reading through my Google Reader I notice an awful lot of people who have been off work/college today because of the snow.

Jammy buggers.

I must admit that work was ok today because it was so flipping quiet as anyone with any sense has stayed at home/gone sledding. This did mean that the customers we did have were as mad as a bag of snakes. Oh, and Gavin popped in. But it was his birthday (25) so we'll let him off.

Today I wished I was between the ages of 6-11 again. In fact we could stretch that slightly to 6-18 as my senior school would have shut due to the snow too.

But my memories of playing in the snow are from 6-11. Building igloos in Melanie and Lauren's back garden (proper high walls and everything). Building forts in the front garden and engaging in snowball fights with Calvin and Martin.

Instead I pulled a few returns, informed people that the cookery book published by "someone named Marjorie, used to live next door to me, it was about Black Country recipes" was out of print ("so how long will it take you to order it?") and was generally rather bored.

Sometimes I wish I lived further away from work so I could say I couldn't get in. Sometimes I wish I was 6-11 again. Sometimes I wish I had kids so that they'd be off school so I couldn't go in.

Here's hoping for two out of three (since I ain't gonna get younger).

One Day.

My dragon...

...is on the TV.

When we went wandering about London in September to take pictures of the statues from Stoneheart/Ironhand/Silvertongue, one of the statues I needed to find was the Temple Bar City Dragon.

Here it is as photographed by me.



Here it is in the rather fabulous BBC trailer for... City Season. (Pause it right at the beginning to see the same shot)



Too much to hope that some sensible person had chosen to televise Stoneheart. One day maybe...