happy birthday to me (for yesterday)

Yes I am now 25, that is 1/4 of a century! *panic* I had a great day, here is what i did.

David got me breakfast of eggs and soldiers in bed and i got to open my pressies whilst trying to stop the kitten from eating it! Davuid got me a great print with red flowers, a cabinet of a sort of shaker style, a beautiful necklace, a girly thrown and cushion and a star thing that hangs on door nobs. plus i also had cake, ballons and flowers and lots of hugs. i had to pop into both places of work, and when i got back i found out my car is booked in to be fixed on thursday, RESULT! I also got smellies from sophie, and money from my grandma and lots of happy bday texts.

we then went to a pub in old portsmouth, and watched the sun set, before metting my friend ali for a qiick non-alcholic drink, she gave me a necklace..... my mum and brother and karen his girlfriend then arrived (while i was in the bath) and we did more pressies. (i am spolit) they got me snufty pink jumper, argos vouchers (am ddef getting old!) a gardening book (to help transform the somme esq garden) a jamie oliver book (pukka!) and a necklace. Oh, and a calander of the yummy man from angel. which will be scoffed at by the academics at work who are cleaver than me haha!

we then all went out for italian food overlooking a harbour and i ate LOTS, a whole three coursemeals. I then couldnt sleep all night because the bean was kicking or doing the cancan, and i kept having weird dreams about winning the lottery and zombies. no more tirimsu for me!

it was a fantastic day, i am so lucky to have such a great dave and family. thank you! camera batteries ran out, but pictures will follow

brrrrr

its damn chilly down here. i know im a wussy southerner, but damn it is cold

having a gerat weekend, dont no work but quite a lot of swijming yoga and buying things for the bean.....

gotta be quick as in theiry we are going to the planetarium this afternoon.

boring

all i have done the last few days is spend time on the phone to car insurance people, mark essays, worry im not doing enough phd and talk about dennis rodman. i think i need to get a hobby. or maybe a new job, either way.....

anyway the car is now getting sorted out. the mad bint who hit me has admited liability yet, but i have a cover on ,y policy which means the car can get fixed in the mean time. it is costing a GRAND!!!!!!! poor my little micra. i have also had a fall out with a close friend as she wouldnt be a wittness for me, saying that she felt the accident was not the other drivers fault. i have taken exception to this, and i am really quite hurt, decided to give this frienship a rest for a bit.

knitting is going well, i am making a debbie bliss ickle blue hoodie. v cute. phs not going so well, done nothing for 4 days now except worry.

evidence of uses for knitting

here is the new baby, george. all together, AHHHHHHHHH.

and he is wearing a hat which i made. which although is not as cute as him, I still think is rather funky.

yesterday was spent marking (for a change) and then went swimming and yoga in the evening. then fell into a come like sleep post pasta dinner. maybe that might have been too much in one day.

today is more marking, but tomorrow i get to leave the house and go to a thing the PG Forum have organised called "grill a grad" this is where i have pestered grad students to turn up and be pestered about what it is like to be a grad by masters or 3rd year undergrads. i bet there are more grads than questions askers, but you cant say i dont try! the apathy of the pg coommunity is depressing at times, but i guess a few more months and i am shot of it for a while. anyway, the baby is cute enough to cheer me up.

a mixed weekend

Friday was great, we went to the hospital and i am still nbot having to have blood thinning injections.... good for me, as i am not into the whole fill your body with every known chemical to man thing... and we had the 20 week scan. the bean has:
2 arms
2legs
a brain the right size
eyes and nose and mouth and ears
kidneys
a heart
a bladder
a stomach
ickl ickle feet
all the right bones

the bean is just the right size and everything is great. my placenta is lying a little low (like a criminal! haha) but we get another scan to make sure that has sorted itself out in 12 weeks. (when i will be massive)

the exciting news it that they *think* it is boy.... a BOY!! I made a boy!!!!! OHMIGOD! Now i am resiging myself to a life time of smelly socks and football. dave times two. (not that he smells.) mind you, i dont know if poor david deserved a girl, can you imagine 2 of me??! (apparntly i am hard to live with.)

This is so exciting. mind, they went 100% sure, so hold of on the blue knitting.

then on saturday a mad women drove intot he side of my car at a roundabout. no one was hurt but i cried for about 4 hours in total. it turns out i dont do well with shock. i had just about recovered (more than i can say for my car door) whn my brothers girlfriend asked if the seat belt has dug in on the impact. it had. i rang the midwife and had to go straigt to the labour ward to be checked out. it was the longest and most nervous drive ever. thankfully, the bean (who now needs suggestions for boys names) is fine and we heard the heartbeat.... am so relieved, dont think i would cope well if any thing was to happen to him now. as a side lide, i think david may have been somone who dealt with panic in his last life, as he stayed cool as the proverbial cuecumber. thank you david.

minor irritations

1-my fish keep on looking more and more ill. All i can summerise is that they are only happy when money is being spent on fish medicene which does no good at all.
2-the room booking people at uni are all on some sort of brain numbing drugs and have put me all over campus next semester. (i will be so much fun walking/running 20 mins) for each class when im 7 months gone!
3-the kitten peed on the chair AGAIN despite it being doused in the anti-cat stuff
4-due to my own brain deadnesss no ebay clothes have arrived, ergo i have nothing to wear.
5-the chap whose office i am squating in at work has come back before i was told he was due back. so i have to move all my stuff out. bloody typical
6- wool is still not free on the nhs.

good things:
1-debbie is so happy with her baby, and everything is ok.
2- i got my hair cut and it looks nice.
3-portsmouth have offered me "one or two" hours next semester a week. it turn out that the students felt i was "good at teaching" shock horror!
4-david put the dishes away before he went to work.
5- ultra sound on friday
6-i am still alive.

6 all.

picture is of fish before they all started to get the plague.

writing

used ot really like writing up my phd, i saw it as my chance to be creative in what can be quite a stilted and affacted world. I think i am honest in what i write (spelling is better in thesis honest) and on the whole i enjoyed working through my ideas and coming to a synthesis of thought and research.

not any more. now i am totally sick of it, i knew that editing for a whole year (or more now with the bean) was a bad idea, and i am getting the academic form of cabin fever. The only time i get to leave the house is to go the teach, yoga or to take the sodding rubbish outside! i know that this is to other people impressive that i can force myself to sit and work all day, but it doesnt means that my sanity is slowly slipping away. take yesterday for example, i spent 5 hours approx writing about a filom i have not yet seen. this isnt as bad as you might think, as i havent actually seen much of what i write about (as in the gulf war, friendly fire victims etc) but i really think that may have been a waste of time. okay, so i was only writing about plot devices, and meg ryan is horrid, but still! please no one tell my supervisor!

on a lighter note my friend debbie had her baby! after 16 hours of PUSH PUSH she had an emergency c-section, but everything is okay now. baby was a boy as expected, and instead of being called daniel is infact a george. well done debbie!

I am an idiot!!!!

I bought a load of bump firendly clothes on ebay and then got the lady to post them TO THE OLD HOUSE!! what the fuck is going on with my brain at the moment, it is llike 90% of it has decided not to work....!!!! How do I fix this? WIll the post office give me things that are addressed to somewhere else??!!

GGGRRRRR
me minus brain!

roast dinner

for me tonight at my mums, yummy. still seem to be way better in the yunny stakes than mine! i have had a nice weekend... yoga on friday and i made david come with me. the silence was broken on the odd occasion by him going "ooouuucchhh." which was quite funny. david has been away in london working this weekend again so on saturday i went to see my brother and ate his food for a bit, then in the evening managed 1 hour at a party full of salsa wankers, who refuse to talk to you uless you go to their slase class. i do not go to their salsa class, so it was a dull hour. i would have been better off indoors watching csi. today i am swimming them off to my mums to eat her food. this food thing seems to have become a bit of a theme, but i am still being very good, lots of fruit and veg!

may even get some knitting done today....

Friday!!

Today i might actually get some work done on my phd. Yesterday was SO busy, when I got home i felt like i was in a coma. I spent all mornign seeing students with essay/personal issues, then ate lunch at my desk while i did research, i then spent the afternoon listening and assesing student presentations. In addition i have done most of the admin for the unit i run and some research on gulf war films.

pheww! really didnt want to wake up today, but at least it is quite an easy one. I have an hour of teaching, then lunch with a friend, then some serious research in the afternoon with yoga tonight actually today should be quite fun.

david had the day off yesterday, and "did" the room for the bean. It looks so amazing! and not at all over cutsey or sterile. It is painted cream (kinda a yellowish cream if you ask me) with a boarder with bears and dogs on (nicer than it sounds). we have a cot, a changing table, a wardrobe and a rocking chair in their... with a few nice touches like the patchwork throw david brought at ikea. it just looks like it was put togehter with so much love.

i am awaiting the arrivial of my email win (like pressies only you get a credit card bill!) of maternity clothes so i can wear more than one outfit. Its not like i dont yet not fit in my clothes, just the make me look SO SO pregnant. (which due to my existing roundness is not a good thing!) haha

thank you everyone!

just a quickie to say thanks for all the emails today, i am feeling way less self pitying..... i think i just go into panic mode. of COURSE everything will be ok!

hopsital visit

So yesterday I had to go to hospital to a thrombophilia clinic, to see a blood specialist due to my embolism when i was 17. suprise suprise! I will have to go ontot some form of medication for the rest of the pregnancy, most linkly in the form of a daily self administered injection. i really wanted to have as natural a pregnany as possible, and i am feeling quite gutted now.

in fact gutted doesnt touch it. i know i should be happy that everything is going well, but i still feel like a sort of failure, as on a level i cant even do propreally whan most women do naturally.

fed up with job

I teach at two places, both take advantage and i can happily exapand on that for hours... but i wont here. the place of work with lesser hours rang the other day to say they wouldnt require my teaching services in semester II, this is despite them assuring me at the start of the year that i would have hours all your through, and i quit my permanant job to go and teach there.

apparently there are not enough pt hours to go around and they have given it to one of their pg students (no teaching expereince when i have 3 years) i understand, but perhaps they are not so clear on the pressing finacnical commitments that i will have soon, this job money was really needed.

swimming and stuff

yesterday i managed to aviod my phd all day, if only i put as much work into doing it! i went swimming in the morning with my friend kevin, and then to the fish shop (for keeping not eating) then to my friends yvonnes house. i MADE her rent the film the 6th sense, and reveled in glee at her astonishment at the end while we stuffed our selves with fajitas. life is good.

today more swimming, and the phd work in the afternoon, for sure! i am also going to cook david a massive spag bog for tea as he has spent all weekend freezing to death on london bridge running his mamas kiosk while they are away on holiday. so i have to run him a hot bath and then feed him up.

bridget jones music...

all by myself....... dont wanna be..... all by myself.....

david has gone to london to work for his hollidaying parents for the weekend, and i am a solo rachel. i should be using this time to get some work done, but instead i am kicking around feeling sorry for myself. plus i was sick this morning, for no obvious reason what so ever, which was horrible. yuck.

but good news! yesterday my amiga janet passed her viva and will now be called, DR JANET!! yippee for her. it is the reward for staying focused during hard times and i cant think of any one who deserves it more than her. so congrats!

next week i have to go to the thrombosis clinic, to see if my blood is going to be ok to have a natural birth with no nasty injections being needed everyday. i had a PE when i was 17, and so now i am a medical freak of anti natal!

Knitting group

My friend sarah has formed a splinter knitting group, and the first meetins is tonight.... should be a small group, I think the problem is that we hold the meeting is someones house and not in a public place.... i cant think of any where non smoking in portsmouth that is open in the evenings and would have us. dammit. anywaym this is the rowan wool i am starting my new project with tonight. It is SALE wool, and so good for my soul and davids bank balance. I am going to make a baby blanket out of it, maybe striped...

the cat peeing situation has been folied by putting a blanket on the chair. why did i not think of this sooner?

bad smitten

in our house there are 2 cats. one is the older calm and loving rescue cat broc from battersea. The other is a force for evil in the world, and is planning a take over that would leave to smitten world domination! (smitten= rachelesq for kitten) he keeps on peeing on my favourite chair, and now it is stinking. how do i stop this? i have tried shouting at him, poping him in the litter tray, everything i can think of and now i am running out of ideas...

observe his evil kitteness....