monstering

Me and my Rob, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

Me and my Rob in the sunshine.

surrounded by weddings

Here comes another one. Debs' wedding is barely passed and I'm getting ready for another one. My landlord, Ben, is getting married on Saturday and the house is a whirl of activity and packing. His parents have arrived to stay for the week, there are wedding cakes to be iced and all sorts of things to be done. I'm not complaining. It's fun. I'm going to at least two more weddings this summer, but not until August.

I've got a dress to finish if I'm going to wear it on Saturday. It's mostly done, just the (time-consuming) hand-sewing bits to be done.

HP was here over the weekend. I think she had a good time, mostly. We did a little bit of wedding planning and made plans for what we should do with all the pom poms we've been creating. Many more needed!

I am tired again. (Is that news? Maybe you just take it as read.) I'm gradually cutting down on the fluoxetine I'm taking since I'm feeling much better and I'm fed up with the sleep disturbance and vivid dreams I'm having. So far, there's been little discernible effect on either my mood or sleep. I'm hoping for slow but steady change.

catching my breath

Life's been a little hectic recently. There was New Word Alive, there was a wedding, there was Spring Harvest. This week, well the last three days (after getting back from SH on Tuesday afternoon) has felt like a breathing space. Before what, I wonder? HP's coming to visit for a few days tomorrow, I'm going to another wedding next weekend, going camping the weekend after that.

One of the things I thought I'd learnt last year was how to do less and be more. Reflecting on the last few months, I seem to have forgotten that lesson. I'm as busy as ever, and failing to find time for things that I want to do but find scary, like thinking about my future and preparing myself to go back to my dissertation.

On the upside, I am mostly happy. There are the odd blue days, like Thursday when I woke up from confusing dreams and felt grumpy and befuddled all morning. But I do know ways to cope now - like taking myself out for a bike ride to Beechwoods and talking to people. And there's Rob: just the thought of him makes me smile. :o)

I'd like to slow down and enjoy the ride a little more. Lots of lovely things are happening in my life and the lives of those around me and I want to spend time enjoying life and thanking God for all the good stuff. My resolution for 2009 was to have more fun, and so far, I'm keeping to that! I just need to make sure I take time out to breathe, reflect and be thankful.

Debs and Menard

Debs and Menard: first dance, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

It's been a lovely day. Here are Debs and Menard in their first dance. Ah!

Must sleep now!

wedding bells!

No not mine! My sister Debs is getting married today and I'm being a bridesmaid. Actually, bells are unlikely, as she's getting married in a cinema, where her church, Jubilee Church, Lee Valley, meet every Sunday. Debs and Menard and getting married as part of the Sunday morning service. It's going to be fun!

Saturday, saturday, what shall I do today?

Morning world! It's Saturday morning. It's raining. Rob's coming round soon. I need to go food shopping, Rob probably needs to go suit shopping. We're off to New World Alive on Monday. I need to make cake by then (probably chocolate brownies).

This has been a long week. I was ill-ish at the beginning of the week - a cold, probably caught off Rob, but it made me feel awful and very tired. Still, I managed to go home to London to do useful things like buy bridesmaids' dresses for Debs' wedding on 5th April.

I feel in need of a break. I hope Word Alive will be that, though I suspect it will be very tempting to go to lots of meetings and get no sleep. Not a brilliant idea, really. I shall have to make sure I get enough sleep. Still, I'm looking forward to spending lots of time with Rob and learning from God together.

I'm trying to think of some aspect of my life that isn't connected with Rob, but apparently I can't. I didn't want to become one of those girls who gets a boyfriend and suddenly has no time for anything else, but it seems I may have done. I'm sorry, my lovely friends! I do still love you and once I'm back from Word Alive and Debs' wedding is out of the way, oh and maybe Spring Harvest too, I shall try to plan in more time with friends. :o)

Wednesday again?

Hello there! It's Wednesday again and I haven't posted for a week. Life is going by in a bit of a blur at the moment and will probably continue to do so, what with a part time job, a boyfriend, two sisters' weddings to help organise, an MA dissertation to think about (if not actually start on yet), post viral fatigue still making itself a nuisance and umpteen other things to do. I need to practise saying no to stuff!

Still, I like having things to do, even if I get tired. I'm having fun. (And I am getting to bed at reasonable times, mostly.)

Spring has arrived! Hooray! And the clocks change soon. The time change will probably throw me out for a while, it usually does at the best of times, but I know that and can prepare by getting plenty of sleep.

On with the day.

My Rob!

Blogging has been a little quiet of late, and this man is the reason why.

This is Rob. We 'met' when he left a very long comment on my post about dating. We exchanged many many long emails, I found and read his blog and liked what I read. We met IRL for the first time at the City Church Ceilidh on Saturday 30th 31st January and got on very well! So well, that we started going out the very next day.

So far, it's lovely! I met Rob's family the weekend before last and they like me. Rob met a lot of my family all at once this last weekend and not only survived that ordeal, but enjoyed seeing HP in Yeoman of the Guard. My family like Rob too.

We are in love and very happy! :o)

Is this thing on?

My blog seems not to be showing anything on the front page. If this appears, it's working.

ETA: Now all is well again. Weird. Oh well, it proves I'm not dead.

Friday things

Today I had a meeting with someone who pronounces innovative in-NOH-vat-ive. Weird.

Today I ate peanut lasagne for the first time. It was pretty good, though Ben thought it would taste even better without chickpeas in.

Today, I didn't get to bed very early. Not that I exactly tried very hard.

Tomorrow, I am meeting some people on whom I would to make a good impression. Possibly I should therefore have made more of an effort to get good sleep.

Today, I am happy. Tomorrow I expect to be happy, if a little nervous.

Happy weekend!

lazy sheep

lazy sheep, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

I had a lovely Valentine's Day. I saw sheep and pigs and donkeys and rabbits and cows.

It was a good day.

sometimes life trumps blogging

This is one of those times. I am happy. Lots of lovely things have happened in the last week and a bit. Maybe I'll tell the blog about them, maybe I won't.

Today has been a cold sort of Monday. Cold and damp. I spent the afternoon tucked up in the warm reading Permutation City which, so far, is interesting. Tonight was Rev in a freezing cold Trinity chapel. Singing is always fun, but we were all fairly chilly by the end of the evening.

Tomorrow is a day off, which will probably get filled up with useful things like washing, with a fun evening to look forward to. Yay for friends!

the weather continues fine

Actually it doesn't, we've had snow and cold and nastiness. But yesterday was sunny and gorgeous and full of lovely things.

Today I saw a fox on the way home from work. I went the back way from the station, over the cycle bridge and then down the alley ways parallel to Mill Road. The fox was ahead of me in the last alley way. I thought it was a cat at first, but then I saw the ears and the white-tipped brush tail. I think it's the first fox I've seen in Cambridge. I used to see (mangy and unhealthy looking) foxes around the streets of Walthamstow (like the one Debs saw) but this one was rather more glossy and alert. Cambridge is obviously a nicer place to be a fox!

Where is this week going? It's flying past! I'm looking forward to lots of fun things this weekend and, I hope, in the days to come. Right now, life is good!

sleepy Monday

I've had a lovely weekend. Though I could do with a little more sleep. The ceilidh I went to on Saturday night has left my legs achy and stiff. I'm clearly not as fit as I could be!

Still, aches and sleepiness aside, I am very happy. :o)

paint box

Today I discovered that I prefer painting in watercolours to painting in acrylics. I like the subtlety and delicacy of watercolours to the brashness of acrylics. With watercolours, you can lay down washes and build up colour slowly, or let colours seep into one another. You don't have to be definite, if you don't want to, and you can easily wash one colour off your brush and pick up a new one.

I used to paint a lot in watercolours, usually drawing an outline in pencil and then colouring it in with paint. Today, that seems too definite. I'd rather start with the brush and a pale colour and see what happens. I can always make it darker, or wash it into even paler, or even wait until it's dry and paint over the top.

I am wondering what this says about me. Perhaps that I like subtlety. That I like starting small and getting bigger. That I like to be sure of the direction before I move, rather than jumping in with both feet. Hmm.

drifting

I feel like I'm drifting along through life at the moment. I'm not planning anything, it's just happening. I'm not sure that's a good thing. I'm drifting through work. It's OK, but I don't want to do it forever. I don't know what I do what to do though and I'm not particularly doing anything to work it out.

My course is drifting. It is officially on hold, but if I want to finish it, I need to get back into the habit of studying, starting by teaching myself how to read properly again. And if I'm going to finish my dissertation, ever, I probably need a plan of how that's going to happen.

My weight's drifting upwards, gradually, but inexorably and I don't seem to be able to muster the will power to do anything about it for more than half a day at a time.

I don't feel able to plan. I'm living week to week, financially, never quite sure how much work I'm going to do and therefore how much money I'll earn. I'm just about OK, but it's easy to imagine sudden emergencies for which there's no slack.

There's no end goal, no time line. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm fighting wars on several fronts at once, trying to deal with stuff the last year has brought to the surface. It feels like there are too many things for one person to deal with all at once. Plus there are plenty of other people around who need looking after.

Oh dear, I seem to have made myself sad. :o( What on earth am I doing in this mess and how do I find my way out of it?

Monday morning strikes again

Ben loves Mondays. He's always happy and excited about getting back to work.

Poppy loves Mondays. She has a day off since she works on Sunday.

Bekki does not love Mondays quite so much. She has to get up and go to work. It is, however, only a morning (10-2) at work. And there's Rev to look forward to in the evening.

on dating (or the lack of it)

So, I'm single. (You don't have to read this blog for very long to find that out). And I'm thinking I'd quite like to do something about that. And I haven't got a clue what to do. In yesterday's Guardian, there was a guide to dating (which, cynically viewed, is an extended advert for their Soulmates site) which made some interesting reading. I've never done 'dating'. Well, I've never really had a love life which existed outside my head. No, that's a bit harsh. But there's been a lot of unrequited longing and the occasional attempt to do something about it, all of which ended in disappointment of one sort or another.

I tried speed dating in October 2007. It was an experience. Not necessarily one I wanted to repeat. I'm glad I did it, but it's not exactly fun, trying to make a decision on a bloke in 3 minutes and knowing he's doing exactly the same with you. It probably didn't help that I was among the youngest there and most of the guys were a good 10 years older than me. Not that's necessarily a problem. I just didn't hit it off with any of the guys I met.

Last year, I wasn't terribly sociable. Being single was one of the many things that bothered me, but I knew I wasn't really in a fit state to do anything about it. Now, I'm feeling better. Mostly. A bit more confident on a good day, at least, and wanting to do something. Yes, the fact that both of my sisters are attached probably has something to do with that. And the fact that I'm not terribly good at waiting and want to make things happen. But, what can I do?

I feel like I have no idea. It's the eternal cry of the single Christian woman that there are no single Christian men, but I don't think that's entirely true. My main problem is not so much finding a man, but what to do if and when I do find someone I'm interested in. I have no idea how to go from being friendly and smiley to making it clear I'm interested in seeing if there's something more between us. I suppose I could say it in English with words, but I'm so expectant of rejection that that feels too scary. (Yes, I know that attitude's wrong, I'm working on it with God's help.) I can do friendships with guys (mostly. Occasionally there's had to be some negotiation of the boundaries. Mostly when I'm interested and they're not. (I can't think of a single successful friendship where it's been the other way round. I can, though, think of some guys I wasn't interested in who I put down pretty ungraciously. If any of them are reading, I apologise. Hmm, I think I've got a lot to learn from some of my lovely Christian brothers)). Anyway, you can't survive as a female physicist without learning to be friends with men. But I don't know how to go from friend to potential girlfriend. I think the idea of being attractive scares me.

So, right, where does that leave me? With no idea of what to do. Any suggestions? Any single male Christian friends you can set me up with? (Preferably local, rather than say, across the Atlantic). Anyone out there want to say hello?

learning to read

I don't remember learning how to read. I just did. I remember reading Spot books to myself before I went to school and I remember coming home from school with my first reading book ("The big red lorry went up the hill..."). I've always been a book worm, always the one tucked away in a corner, lost in a book. I read voraciously, anything and everything, had the usual phase of finding a book I loved and then seeking out everything by the same author. I think when I went to secondary school, my first method of assessing the school library was to find out how many P G Wodehouse books they had that I hadn't already read.

I carried on reading. I didn't plan to take English Literature A-Level, but when I picked it up a month into sixth form, I discovered I'd read more over the summer than people who had planned to take it, which made me wonder why I hadn't thought of it in the first place. I loved English and the lessons kept me sane through my A-levels. They were discursive and thought-provoking in a way that Maths, Physics and Chemistry just weren't.

I read less during my Physics degree. There just wasn't time in term, but I did still read lots in the holidays. I wrote some poems then too, even got elected JCR Poet Laureate for a year.

Jump forward a few years, and I started studying with the Open University while working. At first, just for fun, but as I started to find my feet and get into the course, studying literature become something I loved doing and was good at, something I wanted to pursue more seriously.

But something changed as I studied. By my third year of OU, a sort of panic was beginning to set in whenever I had to read for study, especially text books. I'd look at a page and find myself speeding up, getting faster and faster and more panicky, wondering how much I much I was taking in. I rarely read anything that wasn't for my course, and when I did, I felt guilty about it. I dismissed the panic as pressure of time. After all, I was also working full time and studying had to get squeezed in between working and the rest of life. I'd work in short bursts, often relying on the pressure of an approaching deadline to get myself motivated to write.

When I left work to start my MA, I initially enjoyed the freedom to read. My course texts were varied and interesting, especially the 20th century ones. I tried reading Ulysses in one day (didn't make it, but got quite a good way through), read in the library, at home, in bed, at work while waiting for videos to process. It was fun. But the panic was still there, especially when I sat down to write an essay. I sailed closer and closer to the wind with my deadlines, producing things at the very last minute, and always conscious that they weren't as good as I wanted them to be.

By the time I got really ill, books just weren't working anymore. Although I did read (and love) Bleak House during a week in bed, that was probably the last time I managed to read something complex. A few weeks after that, I couldn't read, couldn't think coherently, couldn't do anything much. Somehow, over the summer, I managed to read and write enough to produce an essay on The Water Babies, a review and a dissertation proposal. I'm not entirely sure how. As my ability to concentrate came back, I read a bit - mostly detective stories, old favourites, the odd bit of fantasy fiction and not too taxing comic fiction. I'm not sure how I'd define it. Not quite chick lit. The sort of novels with tragi-comic families and adolescent heroines. Lots of Kate Atkinson. I didn't feel up to tackling anything big, say, Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy, which I've wanted to complete reading since I studied The Ghost Road in my OU course, or Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day, which has been sat on my to-read pile since I found it second-hand, or Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell which I've been halfway through for over a year. There are lots of books I've started and failed to finish - Nights at the Circus, Lud-in-the-Mist, A Confederacy of Dunces, all of which sat by my bed for months, waiting for me to feel up to reading them again.

I still don't. There are signs of hope. I read Coraline in one go on a train journey at the beginning of January. I'm slowly working my way through Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, when I'm not feeling too sad to read it. But I haven't yet approached anything relevant to my MA, or even re-read my dissertation proposal, or properly read the marker's comments. I'm scared. Scared that I'll never re-capture my love of reading. Scared that some part of my identity is gone forever. Scared of pushing myself too hard and becoming ill again. I know I need to retrain my brain to concentrate and that I can't go straight back to tackling big serious books again, but I don't quite know where to start. I'm also not very motivated to get back to my dissertation. The topic is too close to my heart. There are too many aspects of it that are important to me, that I want to get right and say something worth saying and thought-provoking about, and yet I'm also sick of it because I've been living with those same issues for the past three years and I'd really rather do something else, that mattered less. I don't know whether to give it up; pick another dissertation topic (if I can) or just plough on through the difficulties. I feel like I could do with a reading coach. My supervisor, I suppose, might fulfill that role, but I'm scared of her. And I'm not good at asking for help.

I don't really know what to do. Pray, and live and try to do what I can. And ask God to help me conquer my fears.

mellow Friday night

It's been a funny week. I was in a pretty bad mood for most of it. Sad and not really sure why, if not actually bad tempered. Today I'm fine, happy even, despite a pretty long day of taking minutes for meetings. No idea what made the difference. Which probably proves just how subjective feelings are and how little relationship they can have to reality.

I was going to go out to see some contemporary dance this evening, but I'm not really awake enough. Instead, I shall stay in and relax.

Nothing very profound to say.

I love the sound of a guitarist's fingers squeaking on frets.