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this is one of my favourite pictures.. i can't believe it's almost a year old! it was taken in my in-laws back garden last august. we're headed back up there with my friend kate this late august as well - i'm looking forward to it very much. it's quite peaceful up there and it's always nice to be around family. mary catherine calls andrew's mom and dad 'ama' and 'ampa' - close enough.
speaking of family.. my mom arrives in london a week from yesterday and i absolutely can not wait to see her! sometimes you just need your mom, you know? i'm taking a few days off while she's here to spend time with her and i've planned lots for us to do with mary catherine. can't wait, can't wait, can't wait! there's a housewarming party on the 10th, if you're interested! 
it's tube strike day here in london... which means loads of people trying to get to and from work. is very frustrating. more later.
london love hate
today is one of those days when i could not give a flying flip about living in london. everything fabulous about this city is overshadowed with the traffic, dirt, stench and grime. as i was on my way to get my £2.85 mocha frappacino that i thought i absolutely needed after a morning of really bad traffic i passed a man sitting on the ground at a bus stop on oxford street. there, in the midst of one of the world's shopping havens, was a homeless guy with very large, bleeding holes in his legs. i know i've ranted about it before, but i hate homelessness. needless to say, i gave him two pounds instead of getting my coffee. my mind couldn't bear the thought of sipping on an overpriced item while someone was literally bleeding in the street.
did my £2 help? probably not. but it eased my mind and maybe that guy will (sterotype, i know) be able to buy a beer to ease his pain. man, i hate that. anyway - that's the way things go in the big smoke.
i would like to live in the middle of a green field in a lovely, breezy, lovingly restored farmhouse with chickens just outside, a sheep and a cow. of course, i would only keep them as pets, albeit free-range, because i can't handle the thought of animal slaughter. am i too sensitive? my children would wear white sundresses and ride their tire swing, hanging from the beautiful tree in our back garden whilst i hung out crisp, clean laundry in the sunshine.
i wonder if bleeding homeless man has these types of dreams too?
we're about 87% moved now.. all the 'big' stuff has gone to the new house and we're now in our third day of living there. there are things i like about it and things i don't. it is much bigger than what we're used to and that sort of cancels out the negatives (of which there are a few).
i'm very tired.. took no pictures of the moving experience. i have to publicly thank my good friend andy and andrew's sister louise and her husband rob. without those three people we would've been in a really bad way. so thank you, thank you, thank you.
more later..
i've started trying to cook for mary catherine now that we're 100% off jarred baby food. my newest creation has been (until this week) macaroni and cheese with brocolli, cauliflower and carrots in it. i like to call it confetti and cheese (how dorky am i?!) this week - i skipped the pasta and just gave her the three veg mix with a little cheese sauce in it as i'm really making an effort to make sure she 'eats a rainbow' with at least five servings of fruit/veg per day. she loves it. i also tried her on baby corn this week and she loves them, but only if they're NOT dipped in the cheese sauce i gave her for dipping. to her, the vegetables are the good stuff, not the cheese! weird.
makes me sick to my stomach..
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
President Dwight D. Eisenhower
April 16, 1953
this is not what i want to hear.
blue and biscuit - what's not to love?
andrew's just called.. the carpets have been cleaned and the sofa has been delivered. he has mentioned that they look horrible with the carpet that's in the living room. never even thought about it, to be honest. the rest of the apartment has neutral beige carpet, but the living room carpet is blueish grey. oops. something's telling me that there'll be a new rug in our future shortly.
andrew says mary catherine's been sitting in the new kitchen on her bean bag watching nemo on his computer. gosh bless nemo.
candidate for mother of the year...
ikea. now i like ikea. but going at 8pm on a weeknight with toddler in tow to purchase an entire house's worth of furniture (bed, wardrobe, bookcases) and thinking that it won't be 'too bad' is naive. actually, it's dumb. and to do it on your husband's birthday. well, that's just plain mean.
it took 4 ikea employees to help us push the four big flatbed trollies of flat packed ikea crap to the till. it took one very winded ikea employee to help us push said flat packed crap to the home delivery service where we then added a further trolley from the full service collection point. then it dawned on me as i was beginning to feel smug that we'd made it through the ikea gauntlet. someone's gotta put it all together! i'd sort of forgotten that part.
the good news is that the home delivery service is based on number of shipments, not number of items. so my 47 heavy boxes of soon to be modern miracle furniture cost the same to deliver as someone's lone bookcase they couldn't shove in their car. hardly seems fair, huh? i think they do it that way to give you a break. they hadn't forgotten that it all has to be put together.
so tomorrow is new sofa day. and ikea delivery day. and carpet cleaning day. andrew and mary catherine will be handling the lot while i'm at work. anyone any good with an allen wrench/ikea tool?
here's a snap of us from saturday night.. doesn't andrew look great in a tux?
send in the clowns.. there ought to be clowns. well, maybe next year.
i'm feeling better this morning. i've decided that moving blows and once we're in the house and have made it a home, things will be fine indeed. i'm trying to focus on the positives now - like, did you know that my daughter can sing most of (if not in the correct order) twinkle twinkle little star? of course, it's more like treacle treacle diddle dar, but still.
and did you know that i have great friends? and an amazing family both here in the uk and abroad? and most importantly, did you know that i have an incredible husband* who works very hard, is extrememly funny, puts up with me and is always there with a kind word and a hug, even when i'm being less than lovely? i am lucky. so i'm going to buck up, put the best foot forward and get through this move one day at a time. so there.
*speaking of said lovely husband - it's his birthday today. Happy Birthday Andrew!
well - it's official.
we own it.
i am now severely in debt.
i am a homeowner for the second time in my life.
the carpets need cleaning.
i think the stress of the purchase made today a bit of a downer. not sure why.
i also think the stress of not being fully packed to move
nor having anyone help us move is getting to me.
i had a great day with mary catherine today. she is an incredible child. she is, however, starting to show signs of shyness. which i, as an extrovert, have problems identifying with. i'm sure it's a phase. and even if it's not - that's okay.
tomorrow is andrew's birthday. it is also 'go to ikea buy a lot of furniture' night. birthday meatballs. lucky andrew. more later. am very tired, stressed and a bit glum. i think i suck - why aren't i more excited?
tomorrow is a mommy day for me... hurrah. not only do i get to spend the day with my fantastic daughter - i also have the joy (and first time experience) of completing the purchase of our new apartment. that's right - tomorrow (fingers crossed) we will officially own the place. it's taken since last week in march until almost the last week in june. i'll be gloriously happy when the sale is complete and the keys are in my hand.
of course, i'll be gloriously happy to the nth degree after all our stuff is packed, moved and unpacked. but that is another story for another time. slow and steady wins the race, i suppose. i've packed four boxes today. i rule.
went to a nice party on a boat cruise down the thames last night.. andrew wore a tux and looked quite dashing. i spent the entire night wishing for a tidal wave to sweep my painful shoes overboard. alas, no such luck. but i did walk back to the car barefoot. classy, i know.
ooh - this is great. i'm not a big phil collins fan - but who can resist that drum part in his most famous song?! even i, normally head air keyboard player, can not resist!
 i finished The Da Vinci Code last week - many thanks to sarah for loaning it to me. hmm.. i thought it was good - i certainly enjoyed reading it but i thought it was really let down by its ending. i'm not normally into those types of novels - so it could've just been me.
and can we just talk about the hoo-ha going on in Big Brother at the moment? read more here. once again - i'm hooked!
so we're moving... you know the drill, right? you plan and discuss how you're going to be really good this time, and throw stuff out and not pack a bunch of crap you swore you'd use the last time you moved but haven't. i'm currently fighting this battle. with just over a week to go until we move most of our stuff - i'm really really really trying to be good.
my goal is to tackle sort of one area at a time. the past two nights i've been sifting through clothes (winter clothes that i know we won't need for a long while) and i've stuck with the rule that if it hasn't been worn in the past winter season, it's outta here. i don't think there was really anything i can't live without and i must've made the right choices, because as i sit here i can't really think of anything i've thrown out. good sign, i think.
tonight i tackled the guest bathroom. loads of body shop stuff that was already gathering dust when we moved here two years ago. it's not that i meant to leave at least 3 nearly used bottles of green olive shower gel under that sink. i don't know what i was thinking.
anyway - so this is what's on my mind. well - that and why won't mary catherine go to sleep easily like she used to. the princess is calling - must dash.
left out.
today i found out that one of the blogs i like to read sorta regrouped elsewhere and i wasn't invited. that makes me a bit glum. i don't think i did anything to offend - so it's a bit of a mystery to me. oh well.
mary catherine modelling the UGA bulldogs shirt the grand hubs gave her... now if i can just teach her to bark!
how i feel on mondays
okay, it's official. almost everyone i know is pregnant. and i'm not. and it's not that i really want to be... BUT. i have to admit that i'm about 60% jealous. i think it's because all my friends already have children mary catherine's age and now they're all going to have new second babies around the same time. i think the best way to sum up how i feel is 'left out'.. they all get to have their, what i term, 'the new baby mummy hang out time' together and i'll still be here at work, plodding away.
the facts are that we can not afford to have another child and i'm not sure we want one. however, something in me just isn't accepting the finite 'we are not having another child'. another fact is that i wasn't supposed to be able to have children, so it's quite possible that once we made the big decision to 'try' it would be all for naught. so, i'm clueless.
but if we did have another - harriet elizabeth is my front runner for a girl's name! gah - i'm such a dork.
i've been a bad blogger the past two days - i know. and it's not that my life has gotten any better or any worse or, better still, more interesting to the point where i have to ignore you.
i'm currently beta testing gmail from google. . i must say that i love it and have abandoned my yahoo and hotmail accounts. (not that i was ever superuser for those) and since my .mac address only receives and doesn't send at work, i've really been using my gmail account.
i can invite a friend to have an account - so if you're interested and think you really could use it, let me know. it is, of course, controversial because it does employ a machine to scan the texts of your incoming mail so that it can place subtle, content matched advertisements (not like the blinking click the monkey to win a prize crap you see on other free email accounts) ... read more. in my opinion, why do people think it's ok for service providers to scan for spam but feel threatened about scanning for ad content?
if you want to be concerned, be concerned that with a gig of storage on gmail you'll most likely (unless you're a serial deleter like me) have emails older than 180 days which can be obtained from a provider without a wiretap warrant. if you're doing dodgy stuff via email, maybe gmail isn't for you. anyway - one account invite up for grabs. lemme know.
fun yet functional.
don't piss off your parents...! man, i'm glad ebay wasn't around when i was growing up!
i love this tool - helps me find answers to anything. the one that you install on your machine so you can just alt+click a word to find out more is mucho mucho helpful..
shameless self-promotion
it dawned on me today that i am skilled.. and maybe if i'm skilled enough i could one day grow wings and fly right outta my corporate life. ok - that will most likely never happen - but a little dosh on the side wouldn't be too bad! did you know i have a store? what blogger doesn't, eh? anyway have a look if you like - i'm also available and very willing to do custom work! :)
the shop
my mom bought mary catherine a small 'pool' when we were home in georgia last... the packaging makes it look really big and fabulous - but it's really well .. look at the picture above! small, but perfectly formed, i suppose. on friday, i put lots of towels on the living room floor and filled up the pool for mary catherine. she had a blast! excuse the nudity, but it was a private beach!
some mothers do 'ave 'em
i'm having a blergh day. big time. not mean or bitchy. just kinda sad and blue. i feel disconnected. today i miss mary catherine terribly and i find myself locked into wishes along the lines of 'if only i could stay at home with her'.. i just hate saying goodbye to her in the mornings and i get sad after she's gone to bed.
i know i have to work. there's no way around it excepting a major lottery win. and i don't play the lottery. so, uh. yeah. stuck. i think that might be the best way to sum up how i'm feeling ... stuck. i'm so happy with my marriage and social life, it's just work that's really got me in the gutter at the moment.
i'm sure like most things - this too, will pass.
today was a good day. lunch with andrew at the bbc... then a coffee at jubilee place.. then a romp at home. homemade macaroni and cheese for dinner which everyone loved and a sleeping baby at 705pm. man if i could bottle and sell how i feel right now - i'd be rich. happy weekend.
well it seems that my tension from yesterday is pretty much all an ugly memory. some good news and a long talk with some good friends pretty much set me on the path to better mood-dom.
it's nice to have friends, you know. and it seems that the people i'm choosing to surround myself with know me well. my friend andy seems to really know what makes me tick and that is scary. he's a doll and i'm thankful we've become good friends. so, cheers andrea!
ooh i like!
do we think this profile is correct?
totally borrowed this from nuala
you can do one too..
Your Brain Usage Profile:
Auditory : 52%
Visual : 47%
Left : 47%
Right : 52%
ebeth, you are one of those rare individuals who are perfectly "balanced" in both your hemispheric tendencies and your sensory learning preferences. However, there is both good news and bad news.
A problem with hemispheric balance is that you will tend to feel more conflict than someone who has a clearly established dominance. At times the conflict will be between what you feel and what you think but will also involve how you attack problems and how you perceive information. Details which will seem important to the right hemisphere will be discounted by the left and vice versa, which can present a hindrance to learning efficiently.
In the same vein, you may have a problem with organization. You might organize your time and/or space only to feel the need to reorganize five to ten weeks later.
On the positive side, you bring resources to problem-solving that others may not have. You can perceive the "big picture" and the essential details simultaneously and maintain the cognitive perspective required. You possess sufficient verbal skills to translate your intuition into a form which can be understood by others while still being able to access ideas and concepts which do not lend themselves to language.
Your balanced nature might lead you to second-guess yourself in artistic endeavors, losing some of the fluidity, spontaneity and creativity that otherwise would be yours.
With your balanced sensory styles, you process data alternately, at times visually and other times auditorially. This usage of separate memories may cause you to require more time to integrate information or re-access it. When presented with situations which force purely visual or purely auditory learning, increased anxiety is likely and your learning efficiency will decrease.
Your greatest benefit is that you can succeed in multiple fields due to the great plasticity and flexibility you possess.
i've found a fellow young harris college alum in london! what a blast we're having talking about the old purple and white. we're both married to an english andrew. man, the world is small.
simply put...
i have pms. or pmt as they say here in england. nothing is right. everything is irritating me. i feel like a single parent. i hate taking out the trash but no one else notices the smell when we don't. all my clothes are ugly. my child is adorable and i love her more than i can say but i don't like changing all her nappies. especially the poo ones. i don't like being the only one who loads the dishwasher and empties it. i don't like bearing the strain of buying this apartment all myself. i feel bloated. i'm craving salt and chocolate. i dislike only having 18 minutes to get ready in the morning when others have 45.
want me to continue? cos i'm full of the bitch today.
i nearly forgot
to pass judgement on big brother 5... so far, i have to say that i like it! i know kitten is annoying and victor 'my DNA stands for 'dis negro is attractive' really tempts me to turn it off - but all in all.. well - it's engaging to watch. we shall see how things progress.
what a great bank holiday weekend we had...
friday night we headed over to m & a's house to watch the last ever friends (to my surprise i'm kinda glad it's over) and to have pizza. it was mega-relaxing.
saturday we had our last swimming lesson of the term (we have a week off before the next term) mary catherine is becoming quite the swimmer and enjoys hanging on to the safety bar on the side of the pool without any help. she will also turn from that and 'swim' to me for about 2 seconds. it's really cool.
we also hung out at our friends s& d's house saturday night - they've just redone their patio and bought new patio furniture. i love hanging out on soft summery evenings outside with good friends and good food. so that was right up my alley. big time.
sunday we hung out at bluewater and had a good lunch at nando's. i bought an outfit for a party we're going to in june and mc got a new top and a new pair of shoes.
monday - glorious bank holiday - we went to a national trust property with friends (s&d, & c if you care!) and had a really lovely time. old house - old paintings and a lot of dusty furniture. oh and gobs of deer.
so today i'm back at work.. but i guess it had to happen sometime. a few snaps from the weekend.
   
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