My favourite poem

Most people, even those who know us fairly well, would probably think that Karen is the less romantic of the two of us - not true! She often organises little romantic gestures, while I'm completely crap at that kind of thing. Instead, I show my love for her (and other important people in my life) via the things that I do for them, often just little things that are designed to make their lives easier. As such, they may go un-noticed, but it's just the way that I demonstrate love.

So this poem sums up perfectly my relationship with Karen, and how I show my love for her everyday. I'm thinking of reading it at our Civil Partnership ceremony in 3 weeks time.


ATLAS
By UA Fanthorpe

There is a kind of love called maintenance,
Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it;

Which checks the insurance, and doesn’t forget
The milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs;

Which answers letters; which knows the way
The money goes; which deals with dentists

And Road Fund Tax and meeting trains,
And postcards to the lonely; which upholds

The permanently ricketty elaborate
Structures of living; which is Atlas.

And maintenance is the sensible side of love,
Which knows what time and weather are doing
To my brickwork; insulates my faulty wiring;
Laughs at my dry-rotten jokes; remembers
My need for gloss and grouting; which keeps
My suspect edifice upright in air,
As Atlas did the sky.

Elusive sleep

Or in other words, I'm f***ing knackered. In the last 10 days, I've reached a stage where I'm only getting a maximum of 6 hrs sleep a night, and it's more usually only in the 4-5hrs region. When I get up for one of my bathroom visits, I then just can't get back to sleep. My mind starts racing, and I think about the most ridiculous things, but just can't stop myself. My homeopath has suggested taking a tissue salt, Kali Phos, which settles the nerves, but that hasn't had much effect as yet (although it is only night 2 trying it!). And I keep trying my yoga breathing, which usually manages to relax me enough to drop off again, eventually. But what I need right now is a big OFF switch for my brain. Tonight/this morning, I only managed to make it until 3am. I tried to get back to sleep, in bed, for 1 3/4hrs before admitting defeat. So here I am blogging.

Funny thing is, it is showing me that I will be able to function much better than imagined with the upcoming sleep deprivation. Only problem is that I stay completely wired throughout the day - I'm running on adrenaline at the moment.

(Still) in my pyjamas at 6.30pm on a Monday.

Yes, it's true, I've given in to my inner pregnant sluttiness, and simply not bothered to do anything in the least bit constructive today. Instead, I've had a really lovely time surfing all day - I think that I've now been on the laptop for almost 11 hours! Really must log off soon as my neck/shoulders are killing me, and my back is suffering somewhat too.

We had a very busy weekend (antenatal class Saturday morning, about which I'll post soon), and then lots of moving/re-organising, which has resulted in my study being transformed into a nursery, ready for Pip's arrival. We've just got the filing cabinet still to move out (when we can recruit some muscle to help Karen), but other than that, and getting the crib from my rather ditsy friend, it's essentially ready. I've only just ordered the fabric to make new curtains, but there's already a blackout blind in there. The long and short of it is that if I went into labour tonight, we'd be ready in terms of equipment (although we haven't yet collected the buggy/carseat from the baby store). Not quite ready mentally for labour yet though, so hopefully Pip will carry on growing inside of me for a good few weeks yet. I still haven't started practising the hypno/breathing I am hoping will help in labour - not much time left now, so I'd better get on with that soon.

The other key thing we did at the weekend was to go and view the shots from the portrait session that we had done last week. The framed prints are hideously expensive, but we are really pleased with the results, and we've never done anything like this before so we don't feel too bad about the cost. We wanted to capture us as a couple, plus some bump shots, at this very special time in our lives, and we think that they make a great collection (you can see the whole set of pics here although they are scanned from a black & white printout so aren't of great quality). And as my sister pointed out, we aren't having a wedding photographer or anything fancy for our CP, so that also helps us justify the expense. My absolute favourite is the shot at the top of this post.