How married life should be...

After a busy day at work, it is nice to come home and put my feet up. Usually I get home and end up rushing around doing all the little household chores and cooking dinner whilst Michael tends to come in, put the TV on and crash on the sofa until I tell him that dinner is ready. Tonight he has surprised me by reversing the roles – it is me crashed out on the sofa watching the TV whilst Michael is cooking me dinner. This is definitely how married life should be - I could get used to this quite easily...

The miracle of birth

It’s been a busy few days on the baby-catching front – one of those weeks when I start to wonder whether someone has put castor oil in the water or was Sunday’s full moon to blame? Either way, it seems that half the October clients have decided this week is a good one for giving birth. I was lucky enough to be at a lovely water birth last night and get to welcome a gorgeous baby girl into the world. It’s not every day you get to witness the miracle of life in such a beautiful way – even in this job.

Little and large

There’s quite a height difference between me and Michael – I am 5ft and he is 6ft 3 which is very handy when I need to get something down from a high shelf. Sometimes I forget that we see things at different levels – I once tried to hide chocolate on the top shelf of a cupboard and was actually surprised when he opened the cupboard and spotted it straight away. Unfortunately, he keeps his chocolate stash at the back of the top shelf in his wardrobe which is very effective as I can’t quite reach it even standing on a chair!

Scary, moi?

My role in Fiddler on the Roof requires me to shriek and scream and then sing (which is all surprisingly difficult) and generally be scary. Apparently I am succeeding in the general scariness factor – which is fine when I’m in character, not fine when I arrive home and my husband cowers on the sofa as I walk towards him after he has dropped a chocolate bar wrapper on the floor. On the plus side, it shows he is realising that chocolate bar wrappers belong in the bin and not on the floor (husband training is working!) but honestly – scary, moi?

The joys of web-spinning

I’m not particularly good at website design, but somehow I seem to have volunteered myself to create and manage a website for a local group of churches with information about each church. The trouble is, not only am I expected to create the website itself, I also seem to be expected to provide all the content for it! People are very quick to grumble that there is not enough information about their church or church event but very slow to actually provide me with any information that I can use. Clearly I need to brush up on my psychic abilities.

Birth music

One of the things I often do when preparing a birth room is to put some relaxing background music on, although often women will bring an iPod to play their choice of birth music. I was a birth partner for my twin sister when her first daughter Ebony was born and her choice of music was Celine Dion. When Erin was born three years later, we had the music channel on and just as Erin entered the world, “My Heart Will Go On” came on. It seems my nieces are destined to be born to the sound of Celine Dion.

Martha vs Mary

I love my church – it is fairly small which means that everyone knows everyone else which makes it feel much more like you are part of a church family. The disadvantage of being quite small is that once you start volunteering to take on things, sometimes Sundays can feel a little hectic. This morning felt like I was rushing about trying to do too many tasks and being Martha when what I really wanted to do was to be Mary instead, to sit down and just enjoy spending time with God. Sometimes serving the church can distract from worshipping God.

Helicopter havoc

One of my husband’s hobbies is flying radio-controlled model helicopters and planes. This wouldn’t be a problem – except he has an indoor helicopter which he likes to fly around the lounge. At best, it’s somewhat annoying, particularly when I’m trying to work on something and suddenly have a helicopter whizz past my head, but it’s now resulting in breakages – fine when it’s the helicopter, not fine when it’s photo frames and ornaments. It’s even more reason to try and find somewhere with a little more space – and preferably a garage so he can shut himself in there and fly it.

Things I quite like about London

My friend Bryan has recently started a blog on things he loves about London. “Love” is a bit too strong a term to describe my feelings (usually either negative or ambivalent) about anything London-related but there are a few things I quite like about London:

1) The view from Lambeth Bridge looking over towards the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben.

2) Driving over Albert Bridge (although since doing “Follow That Girl”, I can’t drive over it without thinking about jumping off it!)

3) Free museums – great way to spend a few hours.

4) The West End – so many musicals…

Identity crisis

I’ve been gradually changing over to using my married name. The trouble is, I’m now at the stage where some things are in my maiden name and others in my married name and I’m losing track of which name I’m using for each. It didn’t help that I’ve been trying to juggle work calls (having kept my maiden name at work) with non-work calls (mostly in my married name). I’m beginning to realise that there is some sense in changing my name across the board. Still at least I wasn’t having to sign things too – now that would be confusing!