Feeling glum today..

Writing down a few thoughts from work here,

Its so tedious at the moment as my muse is away. Been consoling myself by writing reviews on ciao.co.uk (will include a few more for your pleasure soon) and monitoring my financial status. Making plans to try to improve things further.

Ellen and I really are poles apart. She gets her pleasure from the creature comforts in life. Little treats give her enormous pleasure, be they chocolate or the latest episode of 'Brothers and Sisters'. I on the other hand seem to have an infatuation for financial security. There are considerable lengths that I can resort to in order to make or save a few quid. Its funny, being single, I never really thought about it. But Ellen has given me the insight to realise the way I am.
Some of this has been rubbing off on Xander too. He has seen my collection of silver and gold bullion 'my treasure' and now has a couple of pounds to call his own. Hopefully it won't become his raison d'etre but I guess sensible financial stewardship is a good habit to pick up from an early age, right? I look forward to discussing money matters with him at a later date... Sad but true I guess, need another hobby besides tracking the price of silver I reckon...


Have been doing little in the way of exercise in the last couple of weeks so feel very tetchy and pent up right now. The flood of serotonin after exercise will cure that, but a comment from one of visitors to the gym really stuck with me. She said 'you're used to speaking to children arent you?'. I've always been a bit sensitive to the way people regard me, but this has driven me into a bit of a mini crisis. Am I communicating with people on the same level as I do with Xander??? My dream would be to be a polished, confident communicator who can hold any audience in my thrall. If I'm talking to folks in the same way I do to the little dude in my life, there's problems!!

Anyway, if you two want to be thrifty like me (God help you!), check out the Topcashback website. You get free money back when you spend it, which is nice.

My favourite little devil turns five..

Great day yesterday. X had his buddies around for munchies and bouncy castle action. Now we're recovering from the sugary excesses that party food can cause. Full on hangovers all round I reckon.

Xander changed into his 'lounge-wear' halfway through the party

Spent the morning getting the garden in order, putting up the awning, cutting back sharp pointy bushes out of the way at eye-level. All that kind of stuff.. X had a fine old time, he was pestering us for cakes from about 9am and proceeded to change into his pyjamas half way through the day (?!!). The presents were a pretty special haul (did I do as well when I was five??!), but I'm saving what I believe to be the best one for his birthday on Tuesday. A gift which will be a fusion of two of the most important things in his world (bar his Mummy, of course): Spongebob and Lego.

We'll be finding the pieces in furniture and the cat's food bowl for weeks, but it'll be worth it, I hope..

Responsibility is...

.. telling a young child to take their shoes of as they race into the house...

They ignore you, of course...

Next weekend is X's fifth birthday party. I'm on gardening detail today to clear a space for the bouncy castle which is due to arrive Saturday morning. Festivities start from 2. Sure we'll be up from about 7am getting things ready.. its never that simple, is it?

Things have started to move on the miscarriage front. Sporadically anyway. Ellen seems to be faring well, but had a very hard day Friday. She told me about a conception regimen called 'egg meets sperm' or something like that, which is supposed to be the perfect way of "getting back on the bike" (..know what I mean!!!!???). The regularity of the activity sounds a little bit too draining for me.. I don't come to bed for toning and cardio.. that's what the gym is for, surely!!??

A roller coaster of sorts..it's not over yet..

I have a feeling that Ill be blogging about this for a while to come..

Some of people who know me may be aware, others not. After a harrowing ectopic pregnancy in August last year, Ellen and I had been trying for a child. Following the initial panic last summer, Id come round to the idea of giving my parents the good news. Sadly, it all culminated in a late night visit to A&E for Ellen which I to my shame missed. Even now I have trouble forgiving myself that....

Anyway, fast forward to last winter and this time we're actually trying to conceive. She buys some of those pregnancy monitoring sticks to pee on and wows me with all the science involved. I provide the very willing support.. if you know what I'm saying..

There's some false starts as the New Year begins. E presents me with different numbered pee sticks and explains in detail what is happening with them: 'the indicator line is too vague on that one' 'it took to long to appear on this one'.. I nod my head in what hopefully looks like sagely understanding...

However during our Spring half term trip to the Isle of Wight there is some hope. She disappears to the toilet at 4am for a worryingly long period of time before returning to bed. Success! The indicator line appears where it should, and in the right time period. Ellen does a little shimmy of joy lying next to me and we both fall asleep again.

And so it goes. E thrills about her changing appearance, teaches me (and recently Xander) a little about the miracle of pregnancy. Being a bloke, its the mystery of mysteries to me. I watch as she digs out the maternity clothes and the baby bump band (holds it safely in place, you see) and we discuss baby names and due dates. We had the first couple of scans in the last two weeks which showed little. That concerned E, but senior sister Lee put her mind at rest "We never see anything after 4 or 5 weeks anyway". The bottom line is that nothing is showing in Ellen's fallopian tubes so we are both relieved. Still, with the absence of anything on screen, a viable pregnancy cannot be ruled in.

We have the blood tests to focus on though, once again Ellen explains the science to me... I pick up a smattering. The hormone levels are supposed to increase 66-100% every 48 hours, and initially they hit the lower end of the scale. They tail off to 40% and we lose heart, they rise back to 70% and it seems we're back in business! According to Ellen's research (she'll make an expert one day) its not that unusual to see a low hormone count, providing it eventually picks up again all hope isn't lost.

Last Wednesday E visited Kingston hospital for another scan. It was unclear but an indisctinct something could be seen in the womb. She was thrilled and I couldnt help but have her enthusiasm rub off onto me. The following Monday would be the clincher, a scan and blood test was planned and hopefully we'd see little junior with some clarity. I held E's hand and screwed up my eyes looking at the computer screen whilst the consultant manipulated the pregnancy scanner, we saw.. near enough exactly what we'd seen before. The indisctinct something was still an indistinct something, it seemed development had ground to a sudden halt. The blood test results were equally disappointing, according to Ellen's maths she expected them to rise 4000% or so, they rose just 70%. We left the hospital feeling broken, for Ellen this hadnt been entirely unexpected, her symptoms had seemly been on the wane she later told me. But I was feeling bereft.

So now we wait to see what goes down. We're pretty sure the foetus is in the right place, its just failing. The docs were threatening to do some harrowing stuff to Ellen to find out what is going on, but thankfully have relented. In the meantime we wait to see how things play out. She has further scans and blood tests to see how the hormone levels wind down. Seems like we'll always be looking at the numbers, watching their descent till the inevitable occurs. The idea of a miscarriage sounds like the most terrifying experience a hopeful mother to be can go through. I can only speculate and give E as much support as I can when it does.