Final Flings

Last night, with much apprehension on my part, we drove to Newcastle for the evening to see Mr Eddie Izzard in his new stand up show, Stripped.
We bought the tickets oooh, about nine months ago... I'd been umming and ahhing for ages about whether to sell them. We even had someone prepared to buy them right up to the day before if things should happen. I'd been keen, then I wasn't keen, then I realised how keen Husbink was so I was keen again then all the migraines and bad weekends and all the rest of it happened (I may not have blogged about that...in a nutshell, my lovely smooth pregnancy got a little less fun and every weekend got ruined for a while with one bout of illness or another. I was unimpressed and it also made me feel a lot like giving up and just hibernating until he comes out.). So I was pretty much sure that we shouldn't go and wouldn't go and that it would be a really bad plan to go.
Part of the reason that I thought it would be a really bad plan was because Husbink had been on nights all week and so neither of us would be really up for heaps of driving. However, Husbink got a better sleep at work than I did at home on Thursday night and so...I was persuaded.
I'm glad we went, I'm glad we didn't give up and get tied to home before we really had to. We took my hospital bag in the car so that I didn't have to worry and we went. It was fun. We saw the last night of the Sexie tour so this was pretty much as close to back-to-back shows as possible - six years apart. I couldn't enjoy it as much because my bump isn't all that keen on uncontrolable laughter and when you have to stop yourself from finding things funny...
Anyway, this isn't meant to be a review of Mr Izzard (though it is tempting, it was very good in places, slightly off-on-one in others and for me a little sad in others - but overall very good, I've chuckled to myself quite a bit today); this is meant to be about final flings.
Husbink and I are living in hope that we are going to find the time to go out for dinner and have a real date thingy before we become three. We are hoping that we will find time for enjoying each others company (in amongst the getting-the-house-ready and Husbink starting to revise again stuff). But who knows? It could be tomorrow. It could be another five weeks. But I'm glad we went last night. I'm totally wiped out today, but I'm glad we went.

A really weird coincidence...

A lot of the time at the moment, I can feel the little one wriggling around in my tummy. He's a busy lad and whenever the midwife says "is he moving ten times a day?" I just laugh - he's often done at least half of his quota before I get out of bed...
I can't however guarantee what is going to make him move (though Husbink's hand on my belly often makes him stop...he's showing signs of being a little difficult!) but there is one thing that I'm sure is just coincidence but it has happened too many times now and is frankly a little weird...
My ankles have a bit of a tendency to lock (they always have done, or for years at least, this isn't a special pregnancy issue like all the others I could witter on about) and I have to strain a little and make them crack.
And he jumps. Not just after the crack but as they crack, he jumps. He can be totally still, having a little rest but an ankle crack equals a jump. He'll then go back to sleep. My elbows click but he doesn't jump for them. Just my ankles. Crack-jump.
It has to be coincidence but it's happened so much and it is really rather bizarre!

It's a miracle!

So.
I used to have lots of trouble with my hands when we lived in Leeds. Lots of trouble with dry skin, cracked, bleeding, ow... Mostly I blamed this on the OCD at the time.
We left Leeds, the OCD got better and so did my hands.
After a few years we moved back to the same lovely county and the same lovely water board. And my hands.....OUCH! For the past year and a bit they have been getting worse and worse. I concluded pregnancy wasn't helping. But all it takes is a few days away from here at my parents' or even better at Husbink's. My hands clear up amazingly quickly.
I'd pretty much given up on the hope of them getting better while we lived here and just resorted to using a huge amount of handcream day and night.
Two days ago, I ran out of soap in the bathroom and found a random bar of moisturising soap in the drawer. It is a miracle! Yesterday and the day before I forgot to put handcream on during the day and my hands were only really dry at bed time rather than destroyed. At the moment, there are just a few little patches that aren't quite supple...
I've used various different soaps while we've lived here (it all comes down to what is on offer, right?) and various different degrees of super-moisturising handcream but nothing has worked like this! Woop! I am no longer in danger of bleeding on people's tablecloths (this happened at a student's house last year).
Ok, not the most exciting post in the world but one of the most exciting developments for me!

Running a Marathon at 34 Weeks Pregnant

I was at the starting line...I was running faster than my really rather sporty cousin...I was halfway through and it was getting dark...I stopped to go to the loo and got lost...I never quite finished...

So I'm having a lot of weird dreams at the moment! Many of them I can't remember when I wake up, I'm just left with the emotion (to be honest, it is usually a yucky/stressed/upset feeling...) and then perhaps later in the day I'll get snippets of it (like the dream with someone telling me that if I was going to drink during pregnancy it was better to have a proper glass of wine than the occasional sip of Husbink's whiskey/beer and that the occasional sip would probably kill the baby...) and then I'll understand why I've been so upset...

So it was kind of nice the other morning to wake up the other morning having just had a fairly straight forward crazy dream like I'm used to. I always dream a lot. I always remember my dreams. They are often fairly entertaining (for me anyway...) The most confusing part of the marathon running dream wasn't that I was managing a marathon with this huge belly...it was that I was already pregnant for the second time...so I had my current baby at 34 weeks and baby number two was at about 12 weeks at the same time...clearly my dream had gone a little sci-fi/fantasy at this point!

Ah well, back to the real world of Bargain Hunt, Home & Away, Diagnosis Murder and making very good use of BT Vision...

Keeping up with the news...

It's been one of those weeks.
Story after story knocking the previous one off the "top spot".
Sometimes, it feels like news hangs around too long, a story is dragged out and we know every tiny detail possible and that can really be pretty yucky.
This week however it seems like we've been rushed, one thing to the next and what was the top story may not even feature in the next bulletin.
Particularly it was the Philippines that made me feel that. Lots of devastation, lots of need, lots of horribleness and then it was totally gone from the news - not just from the headlines but the whole news as first the tsunami and then the other earthquakes took over. And then the distinctly unsavoury more local news.
So what is my point? I don't know. I "felt bad" that the Philippines were being forgotten. I "felt bad" that they weren't getting the attention any more. But is it right or wrong? Or neither? I find the obsession that comes with some stories far worse because it doesn't seem to be healthy or helpful but in this case I feel that if the headlines are gone too quickly then will people be less likely to give money or time or whatever to helping.
Since being nasty to the Oxfam man, I've been thinking a lot and wondering a lot about what the nation as a whole does in terms of giving time and money to whatever cause it might be. Do "chuggings" (have you heard of that? can't remember where I heard it, "charity muggings" - the ones who stop you in the street) or door knockers stand the only chance of getting donations from most people? Or what about the often horrendous NSPCC adverts? Do people need to be properly shocked?
I wasn't intending to start going into that yet as I'm still pondering. Hmm...