Bows, bells, baubles and beads

“I don’ wan’ nuffin’!” *Door slams*

You’d expect that to be a teenager, but it was Ro this morning. He has an alarming habit of throwing teenage style tantrums. I really was hoping that we’d have 10 more years before dealing with this.

Mostly though, today, I’m just glad that he’s woken up feeling well (if rather grumpy). His daddy is sick and currently barely able to move from his bed (asking Ro not to kick daddy in the head was what prompted the outburst above). Ro looked like he was heading the same way, which would have been bad, given my big work deadline on the 10th. I’m already having to take tomorrow off for a funeral (which I hope mUrt is feeling better for).

I did a deal with my sister. If she set up a blog, I’d update here at least once a week. Well, Charly set up a blog here, and now she’s bugging me to update. So I am. In the meantime, those of you who know my sister, or anyone who might like to read about a British family living in South Africa, head over for a visit, I know she’d like more readers than just me and mum.

I slept oddly last night, and now my shoulder is killing me.

We’re getting geared up for Ro’s birthday on Thursday, and party on Saturday. It is hard to believe he’s going to be 3. I shall try and take lots of photos and make a post about it. Eileen came for a visit a couple of weeks ago. I meant to post about it, but time got all away from me.

My couch to 5k is still going strong. I’m now running alternating 3 and 5 minute intervals, which is something I definitely couldn’t have done a few weeks ago. I don’t seem to be losing any weight, but I’m so much fitter. I don’t get out of breath as easily and my tummy, whilst still large, is much less floppy. I’ve been thinking about what to do, exercise-wise, if I finally get pregnant again (I’m on what is known as the 1 week wait, I’ll know one way or the other by Ro’s birthday). I can’t continue with the couch to 5k, because that is about pushing yourself, and that isn’t something you should do whilst pregnant. I think I shall switch to going for brisk walks, with maybe some short, gentle intervals. All depends on whether I’m actually pregnant or not. I’m trying not to obsess too much over this month’s graph, but it is tough. It’s silly, because the graph really won’t tell me anything for the moment, until Wednesday.

Recently I’ve started feeling inspired. It is spreading to all areas of my life. I have just started doing a management course at work, which I think has something to do with it. It is making me want to be efficient and organised.

I’m not there entirely (I have the time management software picked out, but haven’t got the To Do lists set up), but I cleaned the bathrooms yesterday, instead of leaving them to Sunday. As an extra, I did the stain treatment on the washing, and cleaned the oven.

I’ve been putting on a lot of weight recently (I was overeating because I wasn’t getting pregnant, overeating because I was pregnant, then overeating because I wasn’t pregnant any more). I’ve never been overly fit, but I’ve discovered that the extra weight really lowers even those low fittness levels. So yesterday I started the couch to 5k programme. I have to say, I don’t think I could cope with trying it without my handy iPhone app, but that app is excellent. It tells me when to walk, and when to run. It also lets me know when I have 30 seconds and 10 seconds respectively to go. They say in the programme that the first week (60 seconds running, followed by 90 seconds walking) is something easy that anyone can do. Well, I did make it, but only barely. This morning I ache all over. It is a good ache though, so hopefully I’ll keep going and in a few weeks I’ll have something resembling a decent level of fitness.

The other area I’ve been inspired in is spinning. I’ve finally got my pay it forward spinning done for Cassie. I really hope she likes it (though it should be pointed out, I was aiming for sock weight and hit worsted). Annoyingly, it isn’t all in one skein, because I ran out of space on my bobbin. I shall take a picture of it before I send it, and post it here once it has arrived.

I’ve also been working on my Rampton Spinners project. We were all given the same fibre, which we had to blend, spin and knit into a bag. Thus far I have done the blending and part of the spinning and have come up with a bag design. It is the first bag I will have knitted and the first pattern I have designed myself from scratch. We’ll see how it goes.

I have no real idea how to embed sound, or whether, if I do, it will play automatically and annoy you all. I’ll try, but it might end up a link, and if it does play automatically and annoy, let me know.

A song came on the radio today, which appealed to my son, and we were treated to the following at the dinner table.

Rohan%20Sing%20a%20Song.m4a

As you can hear, his diction isn’t quite there yet. We were sent to see the speech therapist a few weeks ago, which worried me, when I hadn’t been worried before. Thankfully, the speech therapist agreed with me. It’s just a developmental thing, because he’s gone for quantity over quality in his speech. I can’t wait until I understand everything he says.

Oh, and one final thing I saw something that made me despair for humanity whilst my blog was offline. I saw it again when I was shopping the other day, and remembered how much I wanted to tell you all (OK, mostly Amy) about it. They have released an edition of Wuthering Heights, dressed up to look like a Twilight novel. It has a tag line on it declaring it Bella and Edward’s favourite book (though I thought Edward didn’t like it, myself). It just felt so wrong.

Today, whilst I was at work Ro and Martin had some fun, making new friends.

Just in case you come to visit and the site looks rather strange, I’m playing around, learning how to write my own theme, so things may look a) basic and b) odd. At least if I muck things up, I can’t lose much at this point.

So, I have this neat little app on my phone (which started this whole blog switching debacle in the first place). I thought I would try it out. I don’t think I can blog pictures with it, but otherwise I quite like it.

Have I mentioned how much I love my iPhone? Well not since I’ve started blogging all over again, so I’ll say it now. I love my iPhone, more than I ever believed I would before I bought it. Next post today will have Ro pics and knitting pics. I have to show you my latest finished project. I am so proud of it.

Update: it turns out that I can’t post from the app, only write a draft. On the plus side, this means that I can write a post whenever I think of it. On the downside, you won’t see it until I get to a computer to post it. I did find photo posting though, which will make it much easier to post pics from my phone, so I’ve attached a quick one of Ro for your viewing pleasure

Second update: I am a numpty and can in fact publish from phone, which I shall do now.

OK, my first comment reminded me that I’ve actually only explained this to my mum and Claire.

I’ve been meaning to change my webhost for ages, but I finally got round to it just over a month ago. Unfortunately, it got screwed up somehow and so I’ve been offline ever since and have lost all my old posts. I’m still working it out to get everything set up how I’d like again, but for the moment I am at least here.

Well, I finally got my blog back. I’ve lost all my old posts, but at least I’m able to blog again.

I’m trying to remember all the things that have popped into my head the last month or so whilst I’ve wanted to blog but couldn’t. Now that I’ve got my blog back, my mind is blank.

Oooh, mum is in South Africa at the moment and Claire has moved to Vietnam, so the other day I got tours around 2 different apartments in other parts of the world.

We’ve also done some decorating, in the living room and dining room. The dining room isn’t quite done yet. Ikea will be here in about 20 minutes to deliver the last of the furniture. This is a picture of the living room.

Living room

The wallpaper is only on that wall.

As part of the decorating, I’ve sorted all my worldly belongings (at least most of them). I feel I can safely say that, whilst I have a nice, yarn stash, it isn’t that big. It fits in the 4 baskets at the bottom of this picture.

Storage

I love this storage. I finally feel like I have things under control. Everything isn’t quite finalised yet, but it is getting there.