the shorter weeks always seem long

It's sunny and warm and gorgeous outside, and here I am in the office. If I ruled the world, people wouldn't have to work on sunny, warm, and gorgeous days in the UK (and other grey, wet countries).



Pond update: we spotted Wayne today, but so far all I've seen is his tail as he dives underwater. He must be shy. There is some green hairy horrible stuff growing in the pond this year. Could it be algae? It's really gross, whatever it is. We realised that we can't revamp and clean out the pond until the tadpoles have grown into frogs. It's a lot like waiting for your kids to grow up and get out of your house before you can remodel, but on a much shorter time scale.



Even though I vowed never to walk 13 miles through London in my bra at midnight for charity ever again, I will be taking part in a much less strenuous (and during a more civilised time of day) walk for cancer research. A few of us girls from work will be doing the Race for Life 5k walk in Cambridge on July 4th. I'll post a link for online donations here soon, and we'll be harassing our workmates in person in the near future.



Have a lovely, sunshiny weekend, everyone.

a little patience

After a good cry, lots of hugs from Paul, and cuddles with Jasper, I do feel better today. I was starting to get excited about being pregnant and even though I knew it was unlikely to happen, part of me was convinced that it would. Being logical about it all, it actually makes more sense to wait until after the wedding to start trying again. For the two weeks that I wasn't sure if I was pregnant, I made the appropriate changes (major alcohol cutback, stopped taking allergy tablets/ibuprofen, etc.) and spent much of the two weeks anxiously looking for signs of pregnancy. I don't think I want to go through that worrying every month along with all the wedding and honeymoon planning. Also, I don't think it's advisable to do long haul flights in the early stages of pregnancy, so the honeymoon might have become a problem. Between now and the wedding, we only have 5 opportunities to conceive anyway, so it won't be that long to wait.



Which would be fine if I wasn't the most impatient person in the world.

unexpected

My period arrived today. Although I kept thinking that I didn't feel pregnant, I was very much hoping that I was. I kept waiting for symptoms to arrive, but confusion came instead when my temperature went back down to normal this morning. I was feeling so tired lately and was even nauseous today, but it had nothing to do with being pregnant. I was just tired and nauseous, full stop.



We did discuss the possibility of waiting until after we're married to start again, so it looks like this is what will happen. It's just so heartbreaking, even after only one month.

pond life

Paul waved to me from the backyard, telling me to come have a look at the pond. Hundreds of tiny, gelatinous sacs floated on the surface, each containing a tiny black fluttering speck. The frogs have been by for a visit, and a good time was obviously had by all. We kneeled next to the pond and watched the floating orbs for a while, wondering if the goldfish would eat them all and trying to figure out where all the frogs had gone in the meantime.



A couple of weeks later, the pond's surface is rippling madly with the frantic squiggles that have broken from the eggs. During the day, they hide under rocks or latch themselves on to the pond weed. During dusk and dawn, they swarm by the thousands at the shallow end of the water. Paul's spotted a newt, which we have named Wayne (think Wayne Newton, and you'll see where we're going with this). A small brown fish has appeared this year, which we have very unimaginatively named Brownie. Paul's removed the wire fencing that kept small puppy Jasper away from the water, but Jasper hasn't really noticed yet and shows more interest in eating grass and staring at the birds that sit on our neighbour's aerial.



Today, the squiggles are bigger (they look more like frogs with long tails and no limbs) and some frogs have begun to splash around the pond. We see Wayne very briefly; more like a glimpse of his tail as he dives underwater. Brownie is very hard to spot because he blends so well into the murky water. We're still trying to figure out how a brown fish got into a pond full of goldfish. A goldfish sucks a tadpole into its mouth and quickly spits it back out again. I guess they won't eat them after all.



We stand in the sun and watch the pond for a long time, and we'll do this every day throughout the rest of the spring and summer. When people talk about hidden features they only discover after they move into a house, surely they must be talking about things like this.

like we need more blogs around here

Wedding related info, fascinating (*cough*) planning details, and other related stuff can now be found here. The wedding section will contain info for out of towners coming to the wedding, all about our adventures getting to the big day, and other stuff that'll bore the pants off of most of the readers of my main blog.



So all you blokes can stop looking at that picture of Carrie Anne Moss now. Stop it.

look! behind you!

So I'm at Tesco last weekend and I decide to buy a pregnancy test kit...just in case. As I'm standing at the till, Pete from work comes bounding up to me congratulating me on our engagement (Paul was out front with Jasper and told him the good news). At that very moment, the cashier is trying to pry his way into the pregnancy kit, that's encased in several inches of bulletproof plastic. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch him pull on it, tap it against the counter, wedge it between his knees, and at same time, I'm showing Pete my ring and trying to keep his attention diverted from the pregnancy test. The cashier finally gets it out of the security casing, and the test trundles on its own down the conveyor belt towards Pete and I. Seeing the panic in my face, the cashier quickly picks up the test, and shoves it into my waiting hand so I can shove it in the bag without Pete noticing. Checkout relay at its best.



And no, I still don't feel pregnant.

HELLO! I'M AT A WEDDING!

From the ever so helpful Cambridgeshire Registrar's Office site:

Please remind all concerned (especially the groom!) that mobile phones should be turned off before entering the building where a marriage is to take place, otherwise you could have the "Flight of the Bumble Bee" or "Old MacDonald" going off part way through!



If anyone plays "Old MacDonald" at me on our wedding day, they will quickly discover the discomfort of a little plastic bride and groom lodged in a random orifice.