Cold comfort

Our little flat is feeling on the chilly side this evening as our boiler has decided to stop working and we have no hot water or heating. Thank goodness the gas fire in the lounge is still working otherwise we would be completely freezing. On the plus side, tonight’s visit to the in-laws suddenly became a more appealing prospect, Michael has realised that the Christmas slippers were quite a good present after all and we are saving a little bit of money on our gas bill! Hopefully we will be able to get someone out to fix the boiler tomorrow.

Becoming a student again!

I’ve been meaning to get back into creative writing for a while now but with rehearsals and dance lessons, it has been difficult to go to any of the local creative writing groups as they clash with my other activities. I’ve decided it is time to stop thinking and start doing something about it. So I’ve registered for a short course on writing fiction with the Open University. It starts in May and as I’m intending to take a break from acting, I’ll have the time to really start focusing on my writing again. I’m quite excited about it all!

The key?

I’ve made a discovery today. I have always bemoaned my mercurial temperament and the fact that emotionally I can be quite up and down but someone suggested this morning that perhaps I have been giving myself too much of a hard time. That it is okay to have a fiery nature and to feel passionately and strongly about things and that perhaps my “mood swings” are just mis-directed anger due to trying to repress my natural personality. Something has clicked. It almost feels as if I’ve been handed the key to unlocking the invisible chains which have been surrounding me.

Media witch-hunt

I should really know better than to listen to Jeremy Vine in the car – it just makes me annoyed but today he was talking about whether home births are safe. It’s been triggered by a news story about a baby who ended up with nerve damage in one arm and a mum who was “butchered” because the baby got stuck during the birth. It sounded like the midwife actually saved the baby’s life by getting it birthed but it’s turned into yet another media witch-hunt against midwives and home birth. The same situation could have easily happened in a hospital.

Grey days

At this time of year, it always seems so much harder to drag myself out of my nice warm bed in the mornings. Today has been one of those days when I wonder if I’d have just been better off hiding underneath the duvet and not venturing out into the outside world at all. I am tired – emotionally and physically – and I am grumpy. It’s not a good combination although for the last week it has felt more and more like a normal state of mind. I need sleep and preferably a few days where I’m not feeling emotionally fragile.

Craziness on the roads

With all the driving I do, there are times when the roads seem to be full of crazy people. Here are some examples of the craziness encountered recently:

1) Cyclist wearing noise-reducing headphones whilst cycling along an incredibly busy road. Surely you want to be able to hear the traffic…?

2) Car driver doing a three-point turn on another busy road despite being about 50 yards away from a roundabout.

3) Female car driver in slow moving traffic who was plucking her eyebrows with the aid of the rear view mirror every time the traffic slowed to less than 10mph.

Catching up with friends

It is always good to be able to spend time with friends – going out for a drink at the pub, having friends over for dinner, having games evenings or just sitting and catching up with each other. Whilst I love spending time with friends, I also have a bit of tendency to draw into myself at times and so am not always very good at arranging to catch up with friends unless it has been organised some days in advance. Fortunately Michael is more spontaneous and outgoing than I am so is much better at making sure we see people!

Reflections on grief

Grief is a funny thing. You can go through a period of time of thinking that you’re learning to live with a loss and then suddenly there’s a reminder – a song on the radio, a passing comment that triggers a memory and then wham! The realisation hits you once again and for a short while, all is pain. Then somehow, you once again find the strength to carry on with normal life again. Sometimes those moments of devastation come close together, sometimes many days apart. Gradually you start to accept the fact that life will never be the same again.

Phoenix Jazz Band

I’ve been helping out again with another concert at church. Tonight’s concert featured Phoenix Jazz Band, playing lots of standards, such as “Georgia on my Mind” and “Pennies From Heaven”. It seems to have gone down very well – the audience certainly looked like they were enjoying it which is always good. I found it a little more difficult – I love the type of music they were playing but it was music that I associate very strongly with memories of my dad and particularly those of him playing the piano. They’re good memories but they make me miss him even more.

Hubby back home

It’s good to have Michael back home again – we’ve barely seen each other over the last couple of weeks as he has been so busy working on a big event which took place this week. It always goes a bit crazy when he is preparing for an event – he ends up working until the early hours of the morning most days in the run-up and then usually is away for a few days when the event is on. It has been nice to finally be able to spend an evening together and actually have the time to have a conversation!

Putting on the armour of God

In the past when trying to regain control over my mood swings, I have focused on the psychological and emotional issues which seem to trigger them – and somehow I still can’t quite seem to stay in control. Over the past few days, as I’ve refocused back on God, the mood swings have returned. Coincidence? Or could it be that actually this is spiritual attack? I’ve generally tried to battle my demons by myself – for some reason, I’ve never sought God’s help to try to conquer my moods. It is time to put on the armour of God and fight back.

Little Miss Mercurial

There are days when I feel in complete control of my emotions and other days it feels almost as if they control me. Which is fine when I’m in a good mood – or at least a stable mood – less good when I’m veering between hyperactive, frustrated, moody, angry, giggly, silly and bored. No wonder some people are a little bit wary of me – when I’m riding the emotional rollercoaster I must be a bit of a nightmare to deal with – unpredictable and mercurial. I’m learning to recognise the warning signs, but haven’t quite worked out how to act upon them.

Long lost friends

“Friends” according to Facebook covers quite a wide mixture of people. Of course, some are friends, some are family but there are a fair few people on my “friends” list who are people I went to school with, weren’t in my friendship group then but we have added each other as friends just because we knew each other. It was quite a nice surprise today to discover that my best friend from primary school was on Facebook – we lost touch when we went to different secondary schools. It was good to be able to make contact again and catch up.

Avoiding the scammers

I had a phone call this morning from a company claiming to help refund mis-sold payment protection insurance. All I needed to do was to give them my name, address details and account details and they would send me a claim pack. I never give personal details over the phone unless I can verify who the caller is so I asked for their number (01253 750929) and said I would call them back if interested. A quick search online showed my suspicions to be correct – they were indeed scammers. It just goes to show, you can never be too careful…

Celebrating church unity

We’ve been celebrating 20 years of church unity today as people from various churches across the town got together for a meal to celebrate the fact that our local Churches Together group has been running for 20 years. It has been great to spend the afternoon with lots of people from the different churches in the town, meeting lots of new people and praising God. In the few years since I’ve been involved, there have been times when church unity has been a struggle but today has made it clear that we are so much stronger when we work together.

Tricky timings

Trying to work out the best time to call a second midwife to attend at a labour can be quite tricky sometimes. When a woman has a history of previous quick labours, it seems like a good idea for both midwives to head over together early to minimise the chance of the dad having to step into the role of midwife. Labours are so unpredictable though – sometimes the baby’s arrival is at a much more leisurely pace that anticipated and then other times when a long labour is anticipated, the baby sometimes surprises everyone by arriving quite quickly after all.

Resting in the Father's love

My list of resolutions for the year is growing. Resolution number 2 is to undertake a journey. Not a physical journey, but a faith journey. Since my dad died, I have been relying more and more on Michael to provide support – he has been wonderful – but it has now got to the point that my sole focus for helping me through my grief has been Michael and unsurprisingly, he’s not able to provide all that I need. It’s time to shift the focus back to God where it should have always been and seek some rest in the Father’s arms.

Slush and slow traffic

The snow is starting to melt, and the world no longer looks pretty and wintery – just slushy, patchy and dismal. Everyone seems to be going back to work again – having got used to the roads being quieter, it was a bit of a shock to the system to get stuck in full-blown rush hour traffic this morning. The lack of snow also means that the kamikaze bikers are now back on the road again swerving in and out of impossibly small gaps in the traffic and doing their bit to make my drive to work that little bit more challenging.

Tap result

Tap classes started back last night after the Christmas break and we are now working on learning the new routines for level 6. As always with a new level, I find myself wondering if I will ever be able to get the steps right and in time but it always seems to come together somehow by the time we get to the exam. And talking of the tap exam, I have got my result and am very pleased to say that I managed to get an A in my level 5 exam and scored 80 which I’m really happy with.

More snow

We’ve had a reasonable amount of snow where we live, but it wasn’t until I went down to visit my mum and twin sister that I realised quite how much snow has fallen elsewhere and understood why my mum was so worried about me driving down to visit her. It’s been a week since the last significant snowfall there and the snow is still several inches deep and driving through residential areas quite challenging! I don’t think I have ever seen quite so much snow – like I said, not much fun to drive through but very pretty to look at.

Thank you, Michael

Michael and I have been married for exactly six months today. It has been, without a doubt, the toughest six months of my life with having lost my dad, and Michael has truly been a tower of strength during this time. I don’t think I ever really realised quite how strong and supportive he was until I needed it. It has made me really appreciate the wonderful, caring man that I married and I am so thankful to have such a fabulous husband. He might have a few faults (doesn’t everyone?!) but his good points far outweigh the not-so-good ones.

Resolving to start writing

Having said that I don’t tend to make New Year’s resolutions, I have in fact made a couple this year. The first is to try and get back into creative writing. I keep bumping into a guy from my creative writing group in the pub. He’s written a couple of novels now and every time I see him, he asks me how mine is coming along. The answer’s always the same: it’s not. Do I still write? Er, does my blog count? Apparently not – it’s pure froth and just makes me feel like I’m still writing without really doing anything.

Refund result

Since July, I’ve been battling to get a refund from a coach company (having booked a coach for my wedding and then being told the day before that the coach was off the road resulting in a last-minute panic trying to book another coach). It’s taken endless phone calls, emails and letters – all resulting in me being told I’d receive a refund in the post until finally I threatened to take them to the small claims court. Surprise, surprise, they’ve now finally got round to refunding my money but needless to say, I won’t be using that coach company again.

An ice romantic moment

I occasionally grumble about my husband not being the most romantic of men so I was rather surprised today when I went out to de-ice the car and go to work and discovered that he’d written on the windows. On the front windscreen, he’d written “I ♥ U” and signed it (just in case I had any doubt that it was him!) and on the back “♥ U, take care.” I really didn’t want to de-ice the windscreen after that, but it would have made visibility rather poor and the drive to work rather dangerous if I’d left it there!

Ice, ice, baby

It took me almost half an hour to remove the ice and snow from my car windows this morning so that I could go out and do my visits. Thank goodness I wasn’t having to head out in response to someone in labour otherwise they might have given birth before I could get to them. My road is like an ice-rink at the moment which makes it a bit scary to drive down but fortunately the main roads are generally not too bad - it just took me a little longer than usual travelling from one visit to the next.

Semi-snow day

The snow has been falling today and so the postnatal care study day originally planned for today has been postponed. Not that we can really have a snow day within our practice – babies don’t stop arriving just because there’s been a flurry of the white stuff – but it at least meant that the midwives who didn’t have any other visits didn’t then have to go out in the snow unless they were called out. It’s not too bad where Michael and I live, but I think some of the other midwives have been a bit more affected by the snow.

Wanted: cleaning fairy

My husband is a wonderful man and there have been many times, particularly during the last few weeks, when I honestly wonder what on earth I would do without him. That said, I do wish sometimes he was a little more proactive on the domestic chores front. Like many women, I feel that very little happens in that department unless I do it. For instance when I was ill with swine flu recently, the washing up piled up waiting for me to do it when I was better, as did the laundry. If only the cleaning fairy really did exist…

Fire outside the flat

There was a bit of drama outside the flat last night. Michael and I were just about to have dinner when we heard a noise outside that sounded like a car horn being continuously pressed. After a few moments, the noise got a bit annoying and so we looked out the window to see a big van on fire at the end of the road (about 3 houses away). Within about a minute, the fire brigade were there to put it out – no idea how it started but it was a bit too close to the flat for my liking.

Dreams

For the past few weeks, I’ve not really dreamt much – perhaps as a result of taking Nytol to help me get to sleep – but now I’m dreaming again. I dream I see my dad – not that he is alive – but that I see him, talk to him, cuddle him. And then I wake up, and it hits me that I will never do those things again. I have spent most of the last few weeks feeling numb, almost being able to retreat into a shell where the pain can’t get to me - now I can’t seem to hide from it.

Sitting target for winter bugs

After a brief period of feeling normal after recovering from swine flu, I’m now back to being dependent on Lemsip (possibly one of the most disgusting substances known to man but essential since I’ve run out of paracetamol capsules) and endless quantities of tissue thanks to a particularly nasty cold. Recent events have clearly made my immune system somewhat less efficient than usual – I’m usually quite good at avoiding winter bugs and colds rarely hit me hard for more than a day, but this time I feel fairly knocked out by it all. Hopefully I’ll get back to normal soon!

Looking ahead

Happy New Year everyone! I don’t really tend to make New Year’s resolutions (being more someone who continually makes resolutions throughout the year and still continues to constantly break them!). I do have one aim for this year though – for Michael and I to finally get around to buying a house, as the flat is a little on the small side and as we keep accumulating stuff, it seems to be becoming increasingly so. I’m not entirely sure when we will actually get around to house-hunting but hopefully by this time next year we will have found a new home.