During my...

...sojourn in the armchair in July/August, I did quite a bit of online shopping.

Lots of it was fantasy shopping, filling up baskets and then emptying them again.

Most of the real shopping was things for Megan.

A little of it was for me.

One book I bought was a journal. The Q & A a Day: 5 Year Journal to be precise.

I wasn't sure when I was actually going to start filling it out, I liked the fact that you don't have to start on the 1st of January, you can start whenever in the year you are.

So I started on the 23rd of September 2012, the fifth anniversary of my fathers death. When it reaches the 10th anniversary, I'll have a whole book full of daily thoughts to look through.

Hopefully.

Anyway, as part of my plan for blogging more frequently, I'm hoping to post every Sunday with the questions (and my answers) from the previous week.

But to get the ball rolling, here is today's question and today's answer.

January 1 - What is your mission?

"To boldly go where no man...." oh hang on, that's someone elses mission.

My mission is to be the best that I can. At mothering. At loving. At being me.

-----

What about you?

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)

------------------------------------------------------

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.

-------------------------------------------------

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.

Miss you...

...dad.












I hope if there's an afterlife, that they pull a decent pint or three there.
I hope if there isn't an afterlife, that your component atoms have relocated themselves to suitable pints of beer. :-)

Seriously...

...prodding buttock.

I may have just found the perfect motivational tool for 99% of my days.

I've just managed to spend an entire hour on the cross-trainer (assisted by the wondrous Lady Gaga), my legs now feel like jelly and I'm worried I may faint in the shower, but I did it.

My motivational tool is below:

This is the baby jacket that my darling sister brought me back from Canada in 2005. In fact she brought it back exactly six years ago last Monday (20th). Unfortunately that makes tomorrow exactly six years since I had my first miscarriage.

We've got an appointment with the specialist at New Cross next Tuesday. Hopefully we'll get a few questions answered and get a few pointers for the future.

But I'm thinking that making myself sad and angry so that I blast it with the cross-trainer until I fall over will be an excellent coping technique.

As for the other 1% of the time when it just makes me want to eat chocolate, hopefully the 99% will help counteract it!

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.

History might just...

...repeat itself.

33 years ago, on the 14th of March 1978, a little football team called Leyton Orient won a sixth round FA Cup replay 2-1 against Middlesborough to get through to the semi-final of the FA Cup.

They had defeated Norwich City (1-1, replay 1-0), Blackburn Rovers (3-1), and Chelsea (0-0, replay 2-1) to get to the sixth round.

In the semi-final they unfortunately lost 3-0 to Arsenal.

But in winning against Middlesborough, the damage had already been done. I was born 9 months later.

In this years FA Cup, Leyton Orient have defeated Dagenham & Redbridge (1-1, replay 3-2), Droylesden (1-1, replay 8-2 aet), Norwich City (1-0) and Swansea City (2-1).

In the fifth round of this years FA Cup, Leyton Orient will be playing Arsenal for the first time since that 1978 match.

Here's hoping that allowing for prevailing winds and good luck and all that jazz, I can be embarrassing a child of mine with this story. Not quite in 9 months time (cos not pregnant yet, plus also, you can't embarrass a newborn) but hopefully within the next year.

Fingers crossed eh.

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!)

Sometimes...

...I really should know better.

I was Googling Arbor Day at Aston-on-Clun (which I went to twice a few years ago) and stumbled across this blogpost from one of them.

Very cool to remember it all again through someone elses eyes, as it meant I remembered all the fun we had that weekend and not all the crap that came out of it. Unfortunately I just couldn't resist the urge to read some of the other posts and that has made me sad.

Sad for the loss of some good friendships, sad for the amount of spite that some people have, sad for the lass that I was back then before the storms that arrived on that Sunday.

Then I went and played some WoW, which made me a little shocked as I remembered how long I've been playing (5 years at the end of this June).

It made me realise just how much I've changed in that time. Partly from the scarlet-haired supremely confident witch, partly from the naive girl who thought that people always spoke what was in their heart.

But some things never really change, this is why I still have a blog, six years after first starting one. This is why my day off has involved laundry, the computer, reading and cross-stitch. This is why I am still really really me.

Now for 15 minutes on the cross trainer with some very loud rock on the iPhone and then some tv & stitching. Oh, and putting a light on cos I just realised I can't actually see the keyboard.

As a citizen...

...of the United Kingdom (being over 18, not a member of the House of Lords, not in prison, and not an idiot) I went and voted today. In fact I went and voted about 10 minutes ago.

And I was amazed.

I handed my small white polling card to the man at the desk and he ticked my name off a list and then handed me a folded yellow piece of paper.

I walked to the little wooden booth and unfolded the paper. And unfolded it again. And again. And again.

There were twelve parties listed on my yellow piece of wallpaper roll. I considered each one carefully.

1) The British National Party - not a hope in hell of getting my vote, racist hate-mongering bastards.

2) The Conservative Party - hmmmm, that Dave is rather convincing but I still don't think a lot of them.

3) Christian Party-Christian Peoples Alliance - see party no.1.

4) English Democrat - Never heard of them, never even sent me a leaflet.

5) Green Party - Ahhh, heard of them, they like hugging trees and saving whales. According to the note on the paper they are "A Vote Against Racism".

6) Jury Team - People who were once on a jury? (see no.4)

7) The Labour Party - Don't even go there, and especially don't take your travel expenses out of my taxes.

8) Liberal Democrats - Well...Vince Cable's book is selling quite well.

9) Libertas - Aren't they something to do with that awful orange Kilroy-Silk man? (Nope, having checked, he set up Veritas)

10) No2EU - well yes, but do you stand for anything else? And can you spk prpr engsh?

11) Socialist Labour Party - underneath this it said "Leader - Arthur Scargill". *silence*

12) UK Independence Party - Ah yes, the OTHER party associated with the orange racist.

------------------------

So, 12 parties...who could I possibly choose?

In the end I decided to vote for Mrs Swinburne because, "We are on the brink of a new era, if only..."

and if you know what that means, not only do you know who I voted for, but you have very good taste in television comedy.

This week I was supposed to have...

...four days at work before then having nine days off.

Then I got a letter from the hospital informing me that my appointment time had been changed AGAIN!

So I phoned them up and ranted a bit (and cried quite a lot) and the end result was that I could either take the new appointment time or wait until July for a new one.

So I then had long confabs with Anthony and with RichieFingers (who is a Rota God, seriously) and the end result is that Anthony and I will be at the hospital for our appointment time of 10.55.

I am stupidly scared and nervous. Although I know that it is very unlikely, my mind is already running through all of the worst-case scenarios that it can think of. The stupid thing is, even if one of them happens it won't have prepared me for it.

But we are prepared.

Anthony has Series 6 of Pokemon, I have Ashes to Ashes, Numb3rs, CSI:NY and Eleventh Hour (which I haven't seen any of yet, but it's got Rufus Sewell in it!) on the V+ box. Of course, we both have WoW for when the other one is watching TV.

I also have this:


It was in the Thornton's sale for £10 (from £30) and I couldn't just leave it sitting there...

Update: Home now. Got to see consultant a mere hour and 15 minutes after appointment time. Then she made me cry when she demanded to know why I wasn't currently taking folic acid.
Her - "But if you're trying to get pregnant you need to be taking it."
Me - "I'm not trying bloody anything til I know what went wrong last time, and that's what this appointment is for!"

The blood tests were all fine, the chromosome tests were also all fine. The only one that was slightly iffy was the blood protein one and so off I trooped to have some blood taken.

So basically, no idea what went wrong. But at the same time it's not a case of "give up, there's no chance".

Now I am going for chocolate egg and beer (the sun's past the yardarm) and since it's sunny I shall probably sit in the garden too.

It's been...

...a very strange two weeks.

Center Parcs was bloody brilliant. Lots of chilling out in the spa, lots of reading, far too much wine consumed on a couple of occasions - thoroughly good fun.

Anthony spent quite a lot of time playing with his new fancy camera, Brychan liberated Paris (Blazing Angels on the Wii), Emily had an argument with Professor Layton ("I put in 5 AGES ago and it told me it was wrong, BLOODY GAME!") and Mum got us all hooked on Tyrrell's crisps.

This week I have had a migraine. And that's about it. It started as a headache on Monday afternoon and progressed on Wednesday to me not being able to see out of my left eye and being sent home from work. Yesterday I slept pretty much all day and then today I've alternated between dozing on the sofa and sharing various woes with my lovely Twitter peeps.

The only thing that's been a constant for both weeks was an attack of the green eyed monster.

Well not really a monster, more a stab in the heart and lots of tears kind of monster.

The only problem with going to Center Parcs when it's not a school holiday is the other people who take that opportunity. Like the 17 million couples with babies/toddlers who seemed to make up the rest of the guests there. Oh there were a few older couples there too...but they all seemed to be there with their kids and grandchildren.

Babies are bloody everywhere at the moment and it's really bloody hard.

I was supposed to have had a doctors appointment last Tuesday to discuss my miscarriage. About a week after I got the original letter I got another one to say they had to change the appointment to April instead. At the time I was just glad that I was getting seen, now I'm sad that this means no baby for me in 2009.

I am looking after myself though. Any blogs I've been reading that have unbelievably adorable new babies on I have deleted from Google reader (not you Keris, for some reason reading about Joe is ok), I'm trying to avoid the updates on Facebook from the 8-9 old school friends who are either expecting or have just produced, and I've been avoiding watching anything on TV that could get to me.

CSI:NY clobbered me though. I knew there was an episode coming up where Lindsay told Danny she was pregnant, I didn't expect her to whip out an ultrasound photo to prove it.

My brain seems determined to protect me by making me feel that it didn't really happen. Same as with my dad I guess. Silly coping mechanisms. The one thing I wish I had done was get the ultrasound photo. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it would be proof that I got to that point for the first time.

Gonna stop now cos none of this is making any sense. Thank you for listening.

Third Strike...

...and I'm down but not out.

I haven't been blogging much recently because I've been absolutely wiped out with a combination of extreme tiredness and nausea. Also because the reason for the tiredness/nausea was really the only thing I wanted to blog about.

I didn't want to blog about it til after Christmas, until my birthday in fact.

Then I could announce the fantastically good news that I was expecting a baby in late June and then everything was going well.

And it was.

Right up until the point during my first scan yesterday when I was lying there looking at the screen and making out the shape of my baby and the ultrasoundographer (is that even a word) said sorry. She said she couldn't find a heartbeat.

So I'm afraid that instead of joining the many blogging friends and friends from school with happy baby announcements, once again I have to buck the trend and be the one with bad news.

I'm off to the hospital this afternoon for what is referred to as "surgical management". Anthony is here and proving yet again exactly why he is the Yeti's polar opposite.

You know what? Next year I'm going to have a bloody fabulous Christmas, cos last year and this one are just too pants to count.

And if anyone would like to buy me an early Christmas present? I'd like this please. *grin*

Love you xx

This evening...

...has been a relaxing one.

I have finally caught up with reading all the lovely blogs captured in my Google Reader. I also found some delightful new blogs after playing with the Black Boxes widget a little more. Plus I went delving back into the archives of one new discovery and read some things that really rang true for my life at the moment. So I'll be thinking on those a bit more.

I've tatted about with my sidebar a little, and added a hopeful something at the bottom of my blog.

I also finally added notes to my blog header picture on Flickr, so if you ever wanted to know what anything was in that shot you can now find out. (Added bonus - if you go to the next item in the photostream you get to see live action kitties being funny and cute).

My statue photos are still very much a work in progress but I have a day off tomorrow so will do some more organising then.

Oh dear, watching that video has given the little darlings ideas, WWIII has just broken out in the hallway - I'm off to break it up.