Five and a half weeks on

Firstly, thank you for all the congratulations on our boy's birth!

The following extremely self-indulgent post is mostly a record for me, so I can write down things about our little peanut's first few weeks before I forget them. So apologies is this is boring (unless you're one of the grandparents or something, in which case it probably isn't).



The Peanut is now five and a half weeks old, and we are starting to settle more into a routine. J took some extra leave from work, so he was home until the baby was almost a month old, which was a great help as we were finding our feet. As babies go, the Peanut does not seem particularly difficult (I may regret writing this later!) He doesn't sleep all that much, but most of his sleeping happens at night, which is pretty good. So although he's too little to sleep through the night yet, often he only wakes up once, which is not too hard to deal with.

Everybody tells you that babies change and develop really quickly at this age, and it's true (not that I thought they were lying...) When they're born, they don't seem to be aware of very much other than milk. But the Peanut started to "track" with his eyes when he was only a few days old, and we had a Skype conversation with his English grandparents when he was about a week old and you could clearly see him trying to work out where their voices were coming from.

At about three weeks he started to take some interest in objects, usually ones with high-contrast patterns on them (which is what the health visitor said would happen - young babies don't have great colour vision but they can distinguish light from dark).



Around the same time, he started to smile as if he means it.



He's also grown. A lot. He was 7lb 2oz when he was born, and now he's 10lb. One week he gained over a pound. As you might imagine, we are no longer having any trouble getting milk into him, although there have been many days when he has wanted to feed all the time. This makes it a little tricky to do anything other than read or watch TV with the baby in my lap. I haven't worked out how to knit one-handed yet (or blog...)

Here he is at four days:


And this is him at just under a month, wearing the same suit. It's now too small for him (but he has it in a bigger size!) Mum thinks it makes him look like a tiny wizard.



He doesn't look like quite such a new baby any more. His first fuzzy hair is just starting to fall out and his legs and arms are getting stronger. He's still not very chubby, but he's definitely both longer and sturdier.



And we love him.

Seriously overdue post

OK. I have been terrible at posting this last few months. For what it's worth, I've been a bit preoccupied...

J and I are having a baby.

You probably know this if you read my mum's blog. I have been finding it a bit tricky to write about, though. Which is why we are through the first trimester and halfway into the second before I've managed to do it.

We decided at the end of last summer that we were ready (if anyone is ever ready) to start a family, and then... decision made, in theory, we didn't start trying until the end of September. I had sort of assumed that we would need to try for a bit before we would conceive - perhaps because most of the stories one hears on blogs are about people having trouble - but we were lucky. I got a positive test at the end of October, just as we were about to drive down to see J's parents, which was a little strange for us as we'd decided not to tell anyone until the 12-week mark.

At that point, I was very tired, and having slight difficulty explaining why I was so tired. My father-in-law spotted this and I was convinced he was on to the reason why (but he says he wasn't!)

Luckily for me, I didn't have any morning sickness to speak of - I felt slightly off-colour and went off some foods I normally like, but that was all. For this reason I had a lot of difficulty convincing myself that everything was going OK. I don't know whether it was hormones, or what, but I stressed out a lot over whether the baby was healthy and what we would do if it wasn't.

The 12-week scan came as a great relief - the baby was actually there, moving, with a heartbeat! And arms and legs and things!



When this was on the screen, it was a moving image, and you could see the baby sucking its thumb.

That was the 28th of December. Yup, more than a month ago. Since then, things have gone remarkably smoothly. The occasional nausea went away, and I haven't yet put any weight on. I went back to see the doctor last week and all seems to be going well.

J and I are beginning to feel able to talk about this as if it is definitely going to happen. It still feels a little bit like tempting fate, but on the whole I have calmed down a lot. I thought I would get all stressed out again when the time came to take the triple test (for Down's, spina bifida and Edwards' syndrome) but I've managed to stay fairly calm; two weeks to wait for the results.

At the moment, we are 17 weeks along, and the baby is due in early July. We have plenty of time to get things ready before July... right?

The guinea pigs are all fine.

The weather outside is frightful

Well, actually, not as frightful as it has been. But it's pretty cold. If you are reading in Canada or Alaska or the Midwestern US or Norway or somewhere (is anybody?) then you will probably be laughing hollowly at Britain's lack of fortitude and proper snowploughing equipment, but...

Currently we are not under a lot of snow, but everything is rather slippery, and we did have a lot in late November and the first half of December. I am almost the only person I know who managed to make it in to work all the way through this, so perhaps I don't have too much to complain about. (Actually, maybe my dad did. And Mum would have except that the college she works at was closed during the worst weather.)

Just to add to the dangers of falling over on the ice, we have had no streetlights in our road for a couple of days, which is not great when it gets dark at about 4 p.m. Though I can see that icy conditions may make the council less keen/able to get out there and fix the problem.

Struggling through the snow was made slightly more difficult by my not having any wellies. I haven't ever felt the desire for wellies since... probably the last time I was at Guide Camp, which could've been 1994 or so. But now I see the point. Unfortunately I can't find any that fit me - not even the expensive Hunter ones with extensible calf inserts - since I have average-sized feet but serious calves; I like to think it's the cycling that does it.

Ah, cycling. Yes. I haven't been out on my bike since before this weather started. Last year I kept on cycling in everything but the worst weather, but then I fell off three times on black ice and I'm really keen not to do that this year. J has kept going except on the snowiest days, but then his route to work is more along main roads. I am feeling somewhat under-exercised, which is a pity since generally the bike provides exercise that takes no time out of my day (if I didn't cycle, I'd have to spend at least as long on a bus). I shall have to think of something else. Walking gingerly over icy pavements doesn't really get the heart-rate up, or not in a good way.

Oh, moan moan moan moan moan. This is one reason I haven't posted since 23 November (really?) because all I have to say is a bit moany. Sense of perspective here! Our heating is working, and we now have boiler insurance (unlike last winter when the boiler broke in January) and the guinea pigs are fine and there are people with actual misfortunes out there. And I do now have some hiking boots, advertised as waterproof - reduced from £49.99 to £32! and in black, rather than lilac or turquoise! So if deep snow returns, I will be slightly better shod.

And I have now done considerably more Christmas shopping than I had this morning, although the house still looks resolutely unChristmassy. But I'm hoping this will change tomorrow.

I was at an educational/IT one-day conference on Tuesday and live-Tweeted it at the request of the organisers (not a special request to me personally, you understand, but to all the attendees). I now have about 200 new people who want to follow me on Twitter. I hope they won't be horribly disappointed when I revert to very infrequent tweets about my insomniac tendencies or the guinea pigs...

Oh, and Loth - I would happily knit you a Kindle cover. Any time.

Happy November

So the last anybody heard from me, I was in America, having fun at WisCon. Which I did. I don't have many photographs of the actual con - too busy having fun - but Madison looks like this:



While I was there I tried the local delicacy (tastes nicer than it looks), had my hair plaited up like this, met up with Mum and Dad's old friends J and B and their grownup children (who were lovely) and my internet friend Cabell, among others, and had many, many conversations about Doctor Who and Lois McMaster Bujold books. I did a lot of live-tweeting of panels and felt, for once, as if I was at the cutting edge. I also managed to win a book token and come home with all of these.

And then I came home and was reunited with J and my piggies.



In August I went to the Edinburgh Ravelry meetup and rubbed shoulders with lots of famous-to-me knitters, and some genuinely famous ones. I have been knitting lots of shawls, and a few socks.

Then in September, I went with my lovely in-laws on what has become our traditional British holiday. We were based in Bamburgh in the north of England, where we went for walks and I took lots of wannabe-arty photos.

We also went to Lindisfarne:


and to the Alnwick Garden, which I really liked.



A good time was had in general.


When I haven't been on holiday, much of my life has been spent at work. For various complicated reasons, work has been very busy this summer and rather more time-consuming than normal. I have been finding that I haven't had a lot of brain left to blog with, hence the silence. I am thinking about what I can do about this.

In the meantime I have mustered enough braincells to make a boyfriend for our sock monkey:


to knit some ghosts:


and to make a pumpkin lantern for Hallowe'en.


So maybe I'm back. Hello.

Metaphorical whirlwind

Now that the con is in full swing, I am not finding much time to sit down and write a proper blog entry. I have, however, been using my Twitter - over there in the right sidebar. Possibly everyone who reads this blog either already follows me or has no interest in Twitter, but there it is!

Zoom

I’m sitting typing this on my laptop in the departure lounge of Edinburgh airport, about to go on a holiday I haven’t told you about because frankly, I had difficulty believing it was really going to happen. This has been a very busy month, one way or another, not least because of the last-minute nature of this trip.

I’m going to WisCon, which is a speculative fiction convention with a feminist slant in Madison in the USA. I have various Livejournal friends who have been to the con on a regular basis, and I was hoping to go last year, but I was involved in a project at work which clashed with it. However, this year I am really going. I’ve never been to a con before, but as they go, this one is meant to be small(ish) and friendly.

Anyway I can just about count on having enjoyable conversations about the minutiae of books that I like but which the general public have probably not heard of. Once you get me started, I can talk about books for hours, but unless the other person is at least interested in the same genre, it quickly becomes self-indulgent.
J and I have several interests in common – music, visual arts, languages – but our taste in books, film and TV doesn’t overlap all that much. J has nobly read various books by Neil Gaiman, and even came to see him read once, but otherwise he maintains a fairly strict “no spaceships, no pointy ears” policy. He prefers comedy to drama and non-fiction to fiction, and I go the other way. My family are all readers, but are not particularly drawn to fantasy or SF – the word “piffle” has occasionally been bandied about. This is fine. There are genres in which I have no interest (straight romance, the kind of crime novel that has lots of information about different types of ammunition, horror). But it will be nice to meet some people in real life who know what an ansible is or how to get a dragon to do what you want (it seems you need his true name, and nerves of steel...)

It will also be lovely finally to meet the LJ friends in real life. As it happens, some old friends of my parents live in Madison (total coincidence) and I’ll be meeting up with them too.

This month has been a bit of a rollercoaster of stress, followed by relief, followed by stress. One of our guinea pigs is still not completely better, which has been taking a lot out of both of us (although she seems to be responding to treatment). And it is such a long time since I have been away that I’m totally out of practice (also, last time there wasn’t a volcano). I think next time I go abroad I’ll go somewhere within the EU – much easier!

Turmoil

April has been a pretty rough month. I have been putting off posting until things evened out a bit, because I don't like to write a big dollop of self-pity - especially when so many other people are going through trying times as well...

At the start of April, J's grandfather died. He had been unwell a few times recently, but had only just been told that he couldn't go on living alone because of his Parkinson's. He'd agreed to this, then took ill, was taken to hospital and died a couple of days afterwards.

So the news wasn't totally unexpected, but we hadn't realised he was as ill as that (I'm not sure if anyone did). We have been bearing in mind that this was a reasonably merciful way to go - Gramps really didn't want to move out of his house, and in the event he didn't have to, and he wasn't confused or demented and he didn't linger on suffering. But it's still sad.

We went down for the funeral and spent some time with J's family, who are, as ever, lovely.

That was the first week of April. About a week after we got back, we noticed that Pumpkin, one of our guinea pigs, was making a noise and looking uncomfortable when urinating. J had noticed this a few weeks earlier, but I hadn't been able to catch her in the act and was rather inclined to put it down to his OCD - he does get very worried about things, often without much cause.

However, we could now clearly see that Pumpkin was in pain, and thought it was likely to be bladder stones, which are common in guinea pigs. They're caused by a diet too high in calcium, which some guinea pigs have difficulty excreting (it's genetically linked). The stones can be fatal - two friends of mine have recently lost guinea pigs to them. We took Pumpkin to the vet, who thought this was a likely diagnosis and admitted her for ultrasound scanning to confirm it, then possibly surgery to remove the stones. Pumpkin is a little tiny thing, so we were quite upset at this prospect; but the alternative would be putting her down, which we couldn't bring ourselves to face.

We returned home. That evening, Brownie started showing the same symptoms as Pumpkin.

So we took her to the vet too, and spent the rest of the evening wondering if we were going to be down to a single pig, and feeling that it was all our fault for feeding them the wrong things. All this was complicated quite a lot by the fact that we don't have a car and were obliged to rely on Mum for lifts to the vet - which she nobly provided. In the midst of this, my great-aunt fell and broke her hip and was hospitalised, and my grandmother hasn't been too well, which put yet more pressure on poor Mum.

As it happened, Pumpkin did have stones, but they were relatively small and she passed them on her own before she was due to have surgery - when she was scanned again, they'd gone. Brownie didn't appear to have stones, but she had calcium buildup which is a precursor, and she had it flushed out (as did Pumpkin). Both of them came home a week ago, and although Pumpkin has been a bit subdued, she's beginning to perk up. Brownie seems to be completely recovered.

All this was very stressful. We love our animals, but hadn't previously come up against the moral dilemmas of having a seriously ill pet. A lot of people would find it silly to go to so much trouble over a little rodent, and I can hardly blame them - but I don't think we could have decided not to.

This week has mostly been taken up with squirting antibiotics and vitamins into the pigs' tiny little mouths, letting them lick slimy drippy invalid food off my fingers, and making sure our well pig didn't chase the others and make them panic. Training for parenthood, maybe?

Things are starting to calm down now. The pigs seem to be recovering on course (the vet said it may take them six weeks to return to normal, but they improve every day). My aunt has had her hip pinned together and seems to be doing OK.

I think we might take a while to recover completely, though.

Upward dog, inhale

Sorry about the pause! I have had a rather busy and exhausting couple of weeks, but am now recovering.

I have been so exhausted that... shock horror... I have done hardly any knitting. I finished off these socks on Boxing Day, but the ones in the previous post are still languishing. I messed up one of the heels, didn't notice until the sock was nearly done, and am still psyching myself up to rip it back.



Still, you don't care about my socks. You want to know how the yoga is going.

My sister and I have now had four classes and are enjoying it. We are doing Ashtanga yoga, which is fairly energetic, although not so energetic that you seriously break a sweat. Our teacher is very nice; she's Spanish, and as a consequence we are probably learning all the words for the different positions with a Spanish accent.

To begin with, we both found it quite tough going: after the first class, I couldn't raise my arms for a few days, while S had a sore, um, gluteus. We seem to be adapting, though I wouldn't say I'm precisely graceful yet. Most of the others in the class are students, although one girl has started bringing her mum, so I'm no longer the oldest in the class. Probably still the chunkiest. But I'm managing OK.

On Monday evening I tried something new: I made a sock monkey.



Sock monkeys have a whole history in the US, but they're practically unknown over here. I think they're cute, though. And surprisingly easy and quick to make. I also like the fact that you do almost all the sewing before you have to cut into the socks, and that one monkey uses up one pair of socks, with hardly any wastage. (These were cheapo knee socks, cost £1.49).

The instructions I used are here.

Sock monkeys are very good at yoga.



I don't know if anyone noticed (other than Mum), but the comments on my last post contain one from J! A rather scathing one, frankly, but still. He excuses himself by saying that he's never commented on a blog before and doesn't know the etiquette. (Honestly. You'd think it was 2003.)

Busy busy busy

I have been grinding on with various useful tasks today, none of which were terribly exciting until the evening, when I went to B&Q to buy materials for a Mystery Piggy Project. The boy and I then did some sawing and sanding. Pictures when we finish!

(See what I do to try to induce some dramatic tension?)

Then we built the Billy Bookcase which has been languishing in our spare room for two weeks. It looks beautifully empty now, but I promise it won't stay like that.



The books in the picture are not in any kind of arrangement - they were hanging about on the landing waiting to be reshelved. I keep all my fiction in alphabetical order, which may be a little mad as it means that if I buy a new book by Margaret Atwood, everything after "Atwood" has to be shuffled along. Still, I can always find everything.

Other things that happened today: some yarn arrived in the post and I spent some time admiring its beauty:



It's going to be stripy socks. I need to finish my current socks first, though!

And the Christmas Elf arrived. A little late - he should really have been here yesterday, but he's a busy elf. Every home should have one.



By the way, if you are currently elfless, my mother is having a giveaway at her blog which includes this elf's cousin, among other Christmassy prizes. The deadline is the 8th of December.

And now I must go to bed as it's midnight!

(In answer to questions in comments: they're silicone muffin cups, from our local budget supermarket - for some reason they do really nice cookware! And the potatoes are Pink Fir Apple and you don't need to peel them; they're the waxy type that are best boiled.)

Happy Advent!

Or, if you're not contemplating the advent of anything in particular, Happy December.

Sorry. NaBloPoMo was a resounding Fail this year. I don't know quite what happened, but I lost the rhythm somewhere there.

Still, new month, new attempt to blog a bit. Two weeks ago, rather to my surprise, I managed to sort out my annual leave for the year. Because of various events beyond my (or anyone's) control, I had a lot left - more than I had working days left this year, in fact.

And they're letting me take them. I don't have to work again in 2009 :)



This is something of a boon as I have this thesis to finish. The original plan was to have a first draft in by Christmas. I don't know whether I'll manage that, but it's looking a lot more likely than it was.

In addition to which, I have had time to do things like dig up our homegrown potatoes (see above) and make chocolate-cherry cupcakes.



The cupcakes are very good indeed. Possibly not health food. Oh well, chocolate has antioxidants in it...

(clears throat) Is this thing on?

Hello world!

I haven't felt like blogging for ages and ages. But since it's November, month of Nablopomo, I feel inspired to give it another go.

In the interim I've been away twice (to Crieff and to Norfolk) and spent a lot of time thinking about Freedom of Information for my thesis, knitting and playing with my guinea pigs.

OK, maybe that's not very exciting. So I'm going to set a goal for November, which is to do (at least) one fun and interesting thing every week, and write about it. It may be generally interesting. It may only be interesting to me. We'll see how it works out. I'll tag the relevant entries "Thing".

This week's Thing may have to be quiet and gentle as I'm recovering from a nasty virus, but I have to start somewhere!

Socialising

In the past few weeks, I have had something approaching a social life. I spent a lovely day with Rosemary Riveter and her parents, and we went to the current exhibition in the Queen's Gallery (The Conversation Piece: Scenes of Fashionable Life. It was good, especially as Rosie looks at pictures for about as long as I do.)

Then later in the week, I went to the knit night at K1 Yarns, which was very pleasant. I met lots of lovely people, including Wendy aka Tartanqueen, who I know from Ravelry. I also got quite a lot of sock knitted simply because I could knit uninterrupted for a couple of hours. I wasn't able to go back last week because I had to collect my bike (it was in the workshop - I managed to break the axle!) but I'm sure I will return. And I'll bring my crocheted guinea pig as requested.

Last weekend my parents-in-law made a flying visit. J took Friday off work to entertain them, which was just as well since somehow I failed to realise in advance that they were leaving on Sunday morning. (Whenever I think I'm getting better at knowing what's going on and organising myself accordingly, I do something like this.)

Despite this, we had a nice time, I think, if somewhat low-key.

All this socialising is very nice, but it is causing me to think that I am on holiday. Which I'm not. Soon I will have to get seriously going on my thesis (I'm still in the writing-vague-plans stage) and this is making me a bit nervous.

However, this week I will genuinely be on holiday at least some of the time. We are going up to Crieff for a few days. Crieff has the advantage of perfect, perfect familiarity; there is plenty to do if you want it, or you could just go for walks. Or sit and read books. No pressure.

We are taking the guinea pigs with us. I'll let you know how that goes...

Time passes

That was not meant to be a nearly three-month hiatus.

I didn’t feel much like blogging for a while. I was doing a big project at work which was stressing me out, and was working late a lot and then coming home and feeling that I had no brain or energy left to blog with. Yeah, I know; I only work three days a week. There we go.



2009 has been a depressing kind of year in so many ways, which has probably contributed to making me feel that I want to draw my head in, like a tortoise. It’s not had too much of an impact on J and me; we still have our jobs, and we’re doing OK. J has been feeling well enough to go to work for much of this year, as well, which is fantastic, although tiring in its own way as he has needed a lot of support. We’re beginning to feel we might be able to do grown-up things like book exciting holidays and actually expect J to be well enough to go, but we’ve been so tired out by the daily round that we just don’t feel like it. Yet. Things are getting better.

What happened in the past three months? Let’s see. We redecorated the entrance hall/stairway/landing of our house, and hung some pictures up. I did quite a lot of work in the garden, mostly on the lawn (boring) but also growing vegetables from seed and some flowers.



We did a lot of cycling and fitted panniers to J’s bike so that he can carry more stuff on it – I’ve had panniers for a long time and they do make a bike a lot more useful. We visited my brother in Dumfriesshire, which was lovely and very relaxing. I read quite a lot of books and did some knitting.

I completed the six-month fitness course in the gym; at the end of it, I still hadn’t lost any significant weight, although I was running a good bit faster and lifting heavier weights. A couple of weeks later, feeling my motivation starting to sag a bit, I had a couple of sessions with a personal trainer. This resulted in a new programme which relies almost entirely on free weights rather than machines, and a different sort of interval training (much shorter intervals, but higher intensity).

The new programme is interesting, and I enjoy it while I’m doing it, but it is definitely more demanding and takes longer to do than my old routine. Instead of having different days for upper and lower body, I do all the muscle groups every time. I know that the old programme wasn’t having quite the impact I wanted, but sometimes the new one feels like a lot to tackle in one session.

For that reason, a few weeks ago I took a break from it until my big work project was finished. I know that exercise is supposed to give you more energy, but if I’m too exhausted to do anything else, then it’s not working. I’ll be resuming this week, but if it continues to be too difficult to keep up, I will think about following the same basic outlines but splitting up the exercises into upper/lower body days to make the overall routine shorter. It won’t be as high-impact, but it will have more impact than not doing it because it’s too much!



The piggies are in good health and are not suffering from exhaustion in the slightest.



Summer has arrived in Scotland and last weekend we went to the beach and swam in the sea. No photographs were taken of this. This is what the sky looked like that weekend, though. It’s not so hot now, but still feels like summer – maybe the second half of 2009 will be a bit more promising?

A blogless month

Yes. OK. I don't think the February daily posts were meant to be. It's been a while since I've gone a month without posting at all.

February was a rather depressing month in many ways. The weather was horrible. Lots of credit crunchiness on the news and on everyone's blogs, and the Australian bushfires. We are lucky not to live in such a flammable country; we're also lucky in that we, personally, haven't felt the effects of the economy in any serious way.

Lucky in many ways, in fact. I wish everyone else wasn't having such a bad time, though. (We're also worried about J's grandfather, who hasn't been well.)

What have I been doing while I wasn't blogging? Well, J's brother visited and we went for a snowy walk at Vane Farm, a nature reserve in Tayside.


(Click to go to my Flickr and a lot more photos - it was a beautiful day).

Then his parents came up for a weekend and we went to Crail (in Fife). J's grandfather was stationed there during WWII, so it has a bit of historical interest for the family. (This photograph does not fully capture how cold and windy it was.)



Apart from that, I did a lot of knitting:





This is my latest - the Halley's Comet Hat designed by Marnie McLean. It has a pretty flower (or comet, I suppose) on the top:



It's the first lacy pattern I've knitted and I'm very pleased with it. I also went to the Woolfish festival in St Abb's on Saturday and bought lovely handpainted and hand-dyed sock wool, so probably more socks are on the way...

The other thing I did this month is get back into the gym. My old gym is offering six-week basic training programmes, including a free one-hour induction. I've been out of the gym long enough that I felt I needed a refresher course, so I signed up. The induction was excellent (thanks, Bob) and I'm now halfway through my second week of weights and interval training on the treadmill.

I'm somewhat irritated by how weak and slow I am, but nonetheless, I've now been running more times than in the whole of 2008!

My fourth blogiversary was last week. 2008 was not a good year for fitness, mostly because I was working too hard (I seem to remember this happened last time I did a Master's degree...) Let's see if 2009 can be better.

Better day

The snow was all gone by the morning. I'm sure that the high spirits were just because this much snow is so rare, as Anna said in the comments. It's not often that there's enough snow for a snowball here (and there still wasn't really enough for good snowman-building).

Earlier in the day I had walked into town along the bike path. I wouldn't have dared to bike in the snow, but some hardy souls evidently had, from the tracks. It was fairly pleasant walking, as the track had hardly been used, so the snow was still white and "dry". There were a few footprints, covered over a little; by the time I had been to Homebase and returned, my outward footprints had disappeared under more snow. (This probably doesn't seem unusual if you live in a snowy country.)

I was buying matchpots (for the ongoing hall-redecoration project), tie-back hooks, and two underbed storage boxes. I slightly regretted this as I was trying to walk home carrying two unwieldy plastic boxes - fortunately not heavy. But it's worth it. I now have a tidy bedroom. When I got home I hemmed the new red curtains for the spare room and hung them up, and they look very good. So it was a pretty productive day, really, up until the trauma.

Today wasn't quite so productive, although I did manage to paint the matchpots on to the wall (they look completely different in the light conditions at the top and bottom of the stairs - it's so confusing). And I made this carrot cake. I like baking, but we tend to make the same three cakes over and over, and they're all out of How To Be A Domestic Goddess. Time to branch out.

My brother-in-law is coming at the weekend, so we had an excuse. I hope he likes carrot cake. This is a BIG mixture - we got a loaf tin and nine largish cupcakes out of it. The icing is delicious, though we haven't actually tasted the cake yet! Aren't we restrained?

January doesn't bring the snow yet

We didn't have a terribly wonderful start to the New Year - J was feeling very down after we got back from his parents, and didn't manage to get in to work all week. But he seems to be recovering from this setback much more quickly than he normally does.

He hadn't seen his cognitive therapist for a couple of weeks because of being away, and was beginning to feel that the therapy wasn't really helping. After his session on Thursday, he was considering not going back. However, he IS going back. She said at the session that he may need to accept that there are times when his depression will be bad enough that it gets in the way of making progress, and to learn to wait it out, rather than blaming himself or despairing.

He's also supposed to build something enjoyable into every day. This would be easier if he weren't so tired in the evenings, but we're working on it.

Last weekend he decided that he needs to do things that will have a visual result, and consequently has started painting the woodwork in the hall as a preliminary to redecorating the walls. This is excellent. We've been meaning to paint over the multitudinous scrapes and handprints since we got here, but put the hall off till last since it's an awkward area - the stairs are narrow and it's pretty much impossible to go up or down if someone's painting there.

He's finished the banisters already. Now to start thinking about colours for the walls. He fancies pink, which I have some trouble envisaging, so I see shade cards and test pots in our future.

Apart from this impressive progress towards an Ideal Home, he's been really pretty sanguine and resilient, has gone into work twice - well, it's only Tuesday - and has recovered quickly from daily frustrations (such as phoning Orange customer services) which would ordinarily cast him into gloom. I'm cautiously optimistic about the rest of the week.

For the last few days I've been very tired, partly because it's been that time of the month, partly... I don't know why. I've been to bed at a decent hour and everything. The past couple of days have been spent mostly in desultory tidying, the kind that doesn't have the visual result J finds so important. (I really don't like tidying, but it will be worth it.)

Which is to say I haven't been to the gym yet. I am going to at least phone them about renewing my membership before the week is out, though.

Resolution time

Happy New Year, everybody (only 8 days late!)

I got back to Edinburgh on Sunday and rather hit the ground running - Monday and Tuesday were spent frantically springcleaning the house (or removing the pall of very fine sawdust that the guinea pigs generate) and since yesterday I've been back at work. I had a very nice restful time over Christmas and New Year, but the restorative effect has worn off rather quickly.

I have an awful lot of New Year's resolutions. It's more like a to-do list. This is probably bad.

* Finish my degree
* Redecorate parts of the house (paint the hall, get rid of the awful dirty-beige living room carpet)
* Sort out all the stuff in the cupboard in the study, ditto the spare room, and rationalise it
* Go on holiday somewhere that is not Britain
* Spend more time making things
* Revamp this blog so it looks less 2001 (it didn't even exist in 2001...)
* Read more widely
* Eat more healthily, avoiding chocolate biscuits
* GET BACK INTO THE GYM THREE TIMES A WEEK

Yes, the last one is deserving of those capitals. 2008 was not a good year for fitness in the slightest. I spent the first half of it with sore feet, and once I got my insoles I went running twice. Not stellar. I hardly did any weights and basically depended on cycling to remind me that I like to move, and it wasn't enough.

That, combined with spending three days a week in a room with a constantly replenished tin of chocolate biscuits, has not been good for the body. Weight-wise, I'm about back where I started back in 2005 - slightly fitter, perhaps, but still. It may not be a coincidence that at this point I had not long finished a postgraduate degree, and that during my university career I had depended largely on cycling as my exercise. I am somewhat frustrated to be right back wher eI started. (Maybe I should have called this blog something indicating that I intended to learn from the past?)

Anyway. This period of my life is over. The biscuit tin at work officially no longer exists. (That red thing over there? Just an optical illusion.)

As for the exercise... well, I managed to hurt myself on Monday in an incident involving a fully loaded drawer. I pulled it out too far and then leant in and grabbed it, preventing it from squashing my feet and kneecapping me on the way, but wrenching something in my lower back. Not my finest moment. However, it's feeling a lot better now and if all goes well, I'm hoping to get back on a treadmill by next week.

The frozen south

Hello, people! I am blogging from the frosty Midlands, where I'm staying with J's family.

I came out of the other end of Assignment Time and was instantly plunged into finishing up my Christmas shopping, and then socialising with my friends and relations. So I haven't had a lot of time to blog. But I had a lovely Christmas in Edinburgh with J, my parents, siblings and cousins, and then came down to Worcester to spend New Year with the in-laws. It's very chilly, but we've been out for walks and around the town, and seen some friends and their children.

I got lots of lovely books for Christmas:

Diplomatic Immunity (Lois McMaster Bujold)
The Ghost Brigades (John Scalzi)
Beauty and Spindle's End (Robin McKinley)

I've read the first two already, and reviews may be forthcoming shortly on the other blog. Meanwhile I am rereading Bellwether by Connie Willis, as I need a break between all these new stories.

I am being summoned to have a cup of tea - a major part of activities when staying with my in-laws. I'll be back home on the 5th.

Busy busy busy

I have two assignments to hand in on Saturday, so have not had a lot of time to blog. Or a lot of time to do things that are blogworthy. Or to do any Christmas shopping.

There's always time to cuddle the guinea pigs.


On the other hand, I got an early Christmas present yesterday when my Bookbloggers' Christmas Swap parcel arrived from Mariel of Troubles Melt Like Lemon Drops. Thank you very much, Mariel!

(You may contend that I am not a bookblogger. However, if you look to your right, there's a link to something called Bibliomane, and I do sometimes blog about books there. I'm hoping to have more time and brain to write proper reviews when I'm finished with all this studying.)

As you can see, my parcel contained a copy of The Gift by Alison Croggon - an Australian writer and poet I haven't heard of before, but the book sounds like my sort of thing.

It also contained these fabulous digital socks.

I have something of a sock addiction which goes beyond a desire to have warm feet. In the winter I particularly like knee socks, which these are (moreover, they're knee socks which stay up). So I'm very pleased with these indeed. They are also so very loud and cheery that I smile every time I look down.

My last day of work is tomorrow, but from then until the weekend, I will be determinedly writing essays about Scottish Local Government. I'll see you on the other side. I can do it, with the help of my new socks -


- and my lovely assistant.

Took a week off

I didn't mean to. I think the first week in December must be relatively unblogged, since so many people are recovering from NaBloPoMo.

I don't have any terrific excuses, other than being up to my ears in work (but then I always am).

My parents-in-law came to stay for the weekend. It was good to see them, and also good that J could show them, in person, that he's making progress. It's been very difficult for them over the past months, being at a distance.

J is still plugging away at his therapy, and does seem to be getting somewhat better at leaving the house with less checking. It's still there, but it's not taking him so long and he's managed to stop some checks altogether.

I have nothing profound to say. Here, have a video of a talented mouse.