A Minor Loss and a Major Gain...

It was shiny and sleek and it saved my bacon many a morning when my otherwise feckless source of transport - the number 33 bus - would turn up late, early or not at all.  Oh how I miss the number 48 and it's express counterpart.  I used to have a choice of buses to come home on but now I must stand around for up to 20 minutes at a time waiting for the next overcrowded 33.  On top of this ridiculous reduction in the availability of bus services in my area, coupled with the fact that the whole of Princes Street remains closed along with now the East and West Ends of town meaning I require an hour to travel the 4 miles to and from work, is the hugely aggravating fact that they have dared to raise the cost of the monthly pass!

This loss pains me so much more at present given that I'm not able to choose to walk to work (a feat which used to take just fifteen minutes more than my current bus journey) or to cycle, which used to take half an hour.  Both options FREE!  With the City Centre road closures you really would need to be confident dicing with death to get amid the buses on 2 wheels without crash bars.  

MC doesn't feel my pain.  He works about a mile from our house and he doesn't drive.  He has never owned a car.  I beg and plead to be allowed to buy four wheeled transport and he makes sensible noises about the price of petrol, insurance and road tax.  I kick and scream and he points out that even if we had a car, I can't take it to my work and so I'd still have to pay the exorbitant rates for a Lothian Bus pass and put up with the miseries of the daily commute on the number 33.  We'd be poorer.  Even hormonal and irrational I have to see the logic in his arguments.  I don't have to like it.

Everyone who commutes rants about public transport.  It didn't used to get to me so much, honest, but I'm very frustrated at the moment by my general lack of mobility.  I need the buses, depend on them because I can't just take off walking if I don't want to wait.  I have now gained over a stone in this pregnancy.  It's all within the healthy boundaries for someone my height who is after all about six months pregnant but added to the evil entity relaxin I've got some hypermobile joints that are misbehaving.  The pelvic joint at the base of my spine that I'm not even going to try to spell is literally chewing up my tailbone and the surrounding ligaments.  Nice.  As is the fashionable brace belty thing that I have to strap my bones together with in order to walk anywhere.

The upshot of the post I guess is that I'm a cranky round pregnant waddler who thinks that Lothian Buses are pants and that they should bring back the (X)48 immediately or reduce my monthly pass accordingly - half the available buses should mean half the price right?!

My ups and downs have all largely come in pairs since my last post.  At our twenty week scan appointment we were delighted to learn that we are having a girl.  We got to spend a good 40 mins gazing adoringly at her little form while the sonographer tried to encourage her to stop being obstreperous and get her head up out of my pelvis so that she could measure it.  Finally she tilted the table so my feet were above my head to have gravity help out but I ended up a little woozy on coming back to rights.  I went to the doctor this week and he gave me Nasonex and eye drops to combat the hayfever that's been rattling my brain loose one sneeze at a time which was lovely but he also asked me with a perfectly straight face if they'd ruled out twins because in his opinion the bump is quite pronounced for just shy of 24 weeks.  They really should keep obese balding middle aged male doctors away from hormonal teary women.  Grateful as I am for the sneeze banishing solution I did not need it affirmed that in his professional opinion I look like a Weeble.

MC's been great.  Not only did he tell me (post run in with the doctor who has never known a gym in his existence) that he thinks I look great (and hey, I can live with the lie so long as it's kindly meant!) but he's been busy in the nursery.  We finally found a joiner and have a new, fifty-year-old-carpet-free, built in wardrobe.  Our garden looks like the MDF rejects yard but we are finally able to crack on with feathering the nest in white emulsion.  The fresh plaster is taking a couple of coats to cover up but it's looking so much more like someone might be able to live in that room again!  Wall stickers have arrived and I will do a nursery progress post as soon as I can take pictures.  MC has banned me from the wood painting because even though we have non-toxic non-gloss almost solvent free stuff it still smells pretty pongy.  So, I'm going to be busy making some funky bright curtains to cover up the hanging sections and he's going to turn some boring MDF into something pretty.

The only other major goal of the weekend is to do slightly less than I did last weekend.  I seem to perpetually suffer on a Monday the backlash from my weekends.  To that end, I bid one and all (except the powers that be within Lothian Buses) a happy weekend as I take my twin-proportioned belly off to bed to dream of the bygone days of better public transport for the peoples of the Inch.  

One Hot Rabbit, Business with Meerkats & Puppet Humour

It’s been an eventful few weeks.  Actually, maybe it only seems eventful to me because for the last two weeks I’ve been out my bed exploring the wonders of the world beyond daytime TV.  I am well.  Yipee!  Excepting the emergence of even more BELLY, I am almost my completely bonkers usual self again.  

So, as well as work, MC and I have been up to stuff.  A week past Thursday we went to see ‘Avenue Q’ at the Playhouse after a nice bite to eat at the Ghurkha Brigade over the road.  I can’t believe I’d never heard of it before.  It was immensely entertaining.  It was MC’s call to get tickets with our Christmas money from Mum and seen as I usually instigate our musical outings I was happy to go along with something of interest to him.  I knew nothing about it and as per my pregnant scatterbrained self, didn’t ever remember to get to with the Googling.  I assumed it was some pseudo-sci-fi-geeky-thing but curiosity eventually surfaced and I asked MC what we were going to see.  “Sesame Street for grown-ups,” was the reply.  

OK.  I was a huge fan of Sesame Street as a kid but wasn’t otherwise convinced that we were about to embark on a stonking evening of entertainment.  I was very happy to be wrong!  It was great fun.  I nearly ended myself when ‘trekkie monster’ started his ‘Internet is for Porn’ song.  Excerpt here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6eFNRKEROw&feature=related

The puppets are endearing, the handlers can sing and there’s a great energy about it.  Definitely not for the PC conscious and definitely not for children, but this is a brilliant bit of musical theatre – Go See It!

Last weekend was a bit of a laze fest.  Being back on my feet full time kind of wiped me out.  I was content to do not very much bar waddle to the shops on Sunday afternoon for some supplies.  It has started to occur to me that soon, after a week of work, my weekends will not be for relaxing: indeed they will not be for me at all.  I’m guessing it’s very normal to worry about becoming a parent.  When you’ve been responsible for only yourself for going on thirty years it’s hard to imagine letting go of your selfishness enough to be solely responsible for another being’s health, welfare and happiness.  But on the other hand I’m really looking forward to teaching the munchkin to play, talk, sing, dance and read, to going to soft-play and visiting with friends and family.    

On Valentine’s Day MC gave me a rabbit.

It’s not just any rabbit, not even just a cute rabbit - you put it in the microwave and heat it up and it smells of lavender.  It sure beats into the attic my ten year old bobbled and frayed hot water bottle.  In return I got him a mouthguard.  Who said romance is dead?  That’s exactly what he asked me for though.  It protects his nice straight white smile while he’s rolling around in those limb, elbow and knee jambalayas at Jiu Jitsu, so it’s a good bit kit in my book.

In other less exciting news we just sorted this year’s home insurance.  Not as groovy as singing puppets or as comforting as hot rabbits but it comes with a free meerkat toy which adds a delicious sense of immaturity to the otherwise arduous grown up task of spending money on something you can’t see and may never use.  We almost halved last years’ premium into the bargain too so I’m considering it one of the ‘ups’ of the week.  The fluffy toy arrival will mark the second in our family of meerkats, my Dad having provided the first at Christmas as a ‘just something to put to one side, not wanting to make it for anyone in particular in case it was bad luck or superstition or something’ kind of gift.  Obviously they will be the first of what I expect will be many soft toys for the munchkin.

The nursery is the next order of business.  Just waiting for some joiners to quote to sort the built in wardrobe and then we (well MC if I’m realistic) can start the fun bit of painting.  When we’re all cleaned up we can go cot and nursing chair shopping in the wonderful world of Gumtree.  

In the meantime, some more relaxation is on the cards: it’s Babymoon time.  We’re off this week (bar a day in my case) and we’re doing lunch with my Dad, a visit to the midwife, a visit to my friend and her new baby boy and two days at the Dunblane Hydro (as was – is now a ‘Doubletree by Hilton’ or some such thing).  We plan on swimming and reading and having a massage and eating and wandering the grounds and not drinking.  And we will have great babymoontastic fun doing not very much at all really.  It’s come at a great time as it’ll make this week fly by and then next week we have our 20 week scan where hopefully we’ll find out the gender of the munchkin!  Here's the just shy of 19 weeks belly:

And just in case all that talk of lazing around being pampered made you at all jealous, fret not.  Next week I’ll be sure to share with you news of our spa, but also of my visit to the dentist.