29 Weeks Pregnant

At some point in a little over 70 days I will be having a baby. This is kind of a freaky thought.

I have to say, I've reached a point (which I didn't think would happen four months ago) where I'm actually loving being pregnant. I felt so rotten and awful in the beginning, I worried I wasn't bonding with Bo at all, that I was just going to feel ill the whole way through and would just have to get used to being miserable. But then I started feeling him move and something seemed to change.

Now it's like he's something which is entirely mine. Mr Click gets to see and feel the kicks, but I have to tell him when they're coming or he has to just be lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. But I know Bo. I can predict when I'll feel him and what will set him off wiggling. There's something so enjoyable about feeling him move, even if it is in the wee small hours of the morning, and knowing this is just been us.

It's going to be so strange not to share my body with him when he's born. And even stranger to share him with other people; at the moment when the hand drier at work startles him, I'm the only one who knows and reassures him, in February everyone will know when he's startled and anyone could step up and calm him.

So yeah, I'm going to miss being pregnant in 10-ish weeks time. But I'm looking forward to meeting my little guy and getting to know him in a whole new way.

This last week has been really busy, what with my mum coming to visit. I've also been really busy with work as well. I'm not complaining at all, it's been lovely having mum up and I've only got a little over 30 working days till my Mat Leave starts!

Last Saturday we finally took a trip into Glasgow, something I've been wanting to do for about two and a half months. We looked into baby carriers and have settled on the Ergobaby 360 which is a little costly but which ticks all our boxes for what we need. It was kind of weird seeing Mr Click wearing a baby carrier. Exciting too!

We then took a stroll down Buchanan Street to visit Primark on Argyll Street. At which point I realised I need to be aware of my limitations because no sooner had I stepped inside the warm and crowded shop, I felt really faint and had to have an impromptu sit down on the floor. It passed quickly and I relocated to the footwear area (where there were seats) and ate some sugary sweets while Mr Click went off to find the tops I wanted and my mum kept me company.

I think it was in part because of the heat and also because at work I graze all morning and I'd not eaten much that day, so my blood sugar must have dropped. I did figure it would bode well for my glucose tolerance test later in the week, since if my blood sugar was dipping like that, it probably wouldn't come back too high.

The glucose tolerance test was Monday, but I'll blog a little about that in another blog post.

I'll wrap up this post with a truly cute photo. I've been a little anxious about how Tara is coping with all the changes in our lifestyle both now and in the future. She's put up with Mr Click spending more time running after me, she's had fewer walks and trips out than she would like, and we're slowly filling our house up with lots of interesting smelling goodies which so far she's been allowed to sniff but not play with.

But I think she does really love the baby, since whenever we let her back up on the bed this is what she has to do!

Currently...

Drowning...
... in laundry.

My pets are out to get me.

I've got a fairly good laundry routine but since I spent last weekend actually dying, there wasn't a huge amount of laundry done. Mr Click helpfully put on a load for us on Sunday and so we started to claw back control. Until Monday when Fezziwig helpfully threw a spanner in the works.

I let the Mischief run around the bathroom while I shower. It's a fairly well-contained room so they can run and play and chase to their hearts' content and I don't have to worry about losing anyone. Except Fezziwig has learned to climb. A couple of weeks ago he ended up on top of the toilet cistern!

While I was in the shower, he decided to jump up on top of the toilet brush and holder. It wobbled for a fraction of a second, I realised what he was doing, barked at him just as it started to topple then Fez, the container and the loo brush fell over. We keep some bleachy water in the bottom of our toilet brush so that promptly spilled out all over the floor where four crazy rats (who were just recently introduced to the Fishing For Peas game) were having a ball.

I flew out of the shower, dripping all over the floor, fending off ratbags from the rapidly moving puddle and grabbing a wadge of toilet paper to mop it up. It quickly became clear that the paper was good for absolutely nothing in this situation so, still pushing away rats coming at me from all directions, I grabbed the bath mat and mopped it up with that.

So that then had to go into the wash.

It's all okay though, a slight delay on my catch up on the laundry, but I can cope with that. Until a Tara-related incident meant that the throw on our bed also needed to be washed today. The other laundry is going to have to wait another day or two to go in the machine.

And at least there were no ratties or labradorks injured in the making of this laundry!

Silent Sunday: Nurse

Walking with Seals

This morning Mr Click had to go out for a while so I decided to use the time I had to myself to take Tara for a walk. Originally we'd planned to walk her to Kerrycroy together, but once we left the house (after a false start when I forgot to put her collar on and only realised when I had nothing to clip her lead to) I decide to let Tara pick our route.

As you can see, she did a pretty good job of choosing the route. We had a little meander around the area where the bird hide is (right around the mile mark). Tara was desperate to get down onto the beach there but it wasn't a great spot; we would've had a bit of a jump and then there wasn't actually much down there except for slippery seaweed covered rocks.

So we kept on going. At each break in the plants along the route to the beach Tara would stop and look at me as if to say 'can we go down now, mum?' and I had to shake my head because I didn't fancy breaking a leg on the walk.

Until she finally found a good spot to get down onto the beach. She practically took off and then couldn't believe her ears when I even allowed her to go into the water. It was pure coincidence that I let her go paddle just as it started spotting with rain; I figured if we were both going to get wet, she might as well have a bit of fun while she was doing it.

But what was a little weird was that she didn't seem overly keen to go too far into the water.

Since she's discovered that she can swim we have a devil of a time trying to actually get her out of the water. She bobbed in a couple of times to retrieve some seaweed but then decided she had had enough and started leading me up the beach.

And that's when I got that feeling like I was being watched.

Except I knew there was no one else around because the beach had been totally deserted when we got down onto it and no one had joined us there.

I looked back at the water and suddenly realised that a couple of the rocks in the water weren't rocks at all. There were about seven seals gliding by on the water, about fifteen feet away from us, and several of them had stopped to have a look at us.

These photos actually make it look as though we were further away from them than we were.

There was one very large one (who is in the centre of the first photo but bobbed under the water slightly), who seemed quite brave and didn't mind us taking a couple of steps back down the beach towards them. That was, until Tara had a little shake and startled them. Then they all popped down under the water.

We just stood there for a while watching them watching us. I think they were more interested in Tara than me, or perhaps they thought we were there to steal their prime beach lounging spot.

After a while Tara started leading me along the beach and to my surprise, the seals were following us. I think some of them fell behind but there were a good three or four who were with us right the way until we left the beach.

I think they were just escorting us away.

It felt truly magical.

Silent Sunday: Sniff

Silent Sunday: Walk

Teenage Tup Tup

We pay into a scheme at our local vet's practice. It's a neat idea. We give them a small payment each month and we get all of Tara's flea treatments, her worming treatments and booster jabs (and even better, we don't have to keep track of what needs doing then because we head in once a month and they hand over what she's due). It's great.

It also means that she gets a biannual 'service'.

In April and October we take her in, she's given a once over and any areas of concern can be raised. Traditionally this involves getting her Kennel Cough jab (because that one's an optional extra not included in the package), checking she's not overweight and getting her anal glands squeezed (if you don't know what these are, count yourself lucky).

This time around, along with her bottom issue, we'd noticed that she was looking a little spotty around her mouth.


On her chin and occasionally on her top lip below her nose, she'd get these little bumps. They'd develop a little head and then disappear after a day or two. You can see one of them here:

They didn't seem to bother her, but having things growing on your pet is never a good thing, so we decided to raise it with the vet.

And it turns out that Tara basically has acne.

I think technically it's caused by being a messy eater, which is why it cleared up whenever we made a big effort to wipe her face after every meal, something to do with bacteria on her face, which just sounds lovely.

But it's easily treated. Poor Tara's been on a course of antibiotics, which have done wonders for her face.

It's also done wonders for her energy levels. I think I've gotten a glimpse of Tara in five years time this last week. She sleeps a lot already, but she's been practically comatose since last Wednesday! She didn't even wake me up on Saturday morning (normally she lets me know when she thinks I've had enough of a lie in).

I don't think she's enjoying them a great deal, but she's become very good about submitting to Mr Click sticking his hand down her throat twice a day. She'll be thrilled to discover that after tomorrow the course is done and there's no more pills.

And fingers crossed she won't get spotty again any time soon!

Silent Sunday: Wander

Tara's Teddy

Meet Teddy:

He's Tara's imaginatively named teddy bear. We bought him for her fifth birthday (because we're those kinds of people who buy their pets birthday presents).

Tara's always loved cuddly toys, ever since we first got her. When she came home with us we brought the necessities from her first owners; food bowl, biscuits, lead, bed, and Bug.

She gradually dissected Bug until I carefully snipped off his remaining legs, wings and antennae, which kept him going for another month or so until she completely disemboweled him. Even after he was well and truly dead, we had to sneak him out and bin him because if she saw us with him, she wanted him.

At Christmas she got Santa who recently became her love of her life again and as she's been a lot better at not pulling his stuffing out we decided to treat her to another cuddly toy. We looked all over Ayr and as soon as we saw Teddy, one of the last of his kind, residing at the very back of Wilko's we knew that he was the one for her.

And we were right! She loves him!

I wish I knew what was going on in her head when she carries him around or snuggles with him. She's got a very particular way of placing him down and then resting her chin on some part of Teddy. Like so:

Chances are, if she's not snuggling him like this, she'll be carrying him around to show to people. In Tara's world you show people things by rubbing it in their faces. Teddy's only been with us a few weeks and he's already pretty smelly and crunchy. It's not pleasant.

But Tara and Teddy are the cutest little double-act. I'm collecting a little host of funny stories about the pair.

Like the other day, when I was having a poor night's sleep because of wisdom tooth pain, Tara came up the bed, deposited Teddy in the crook of my arm for a cuddle, then retreated down the bed to go to sleep alone.

Or last night.

Tara has her own room. It's the small corridor between the living room and our bedroom. We've put a stairgate across so when you close the bedroom door it gives Tara the equivalent of a 'crate' but with a little more room. It's where she goes when we're eating or when she's being a nuisance and she needs a time out.

Last night Teddy must have done something which warranted a time out because Tara paced across the living room, deposited him in the 'bedroom' and left him there when she came back through to the living room. After a few minutes passed, she casually got up and retrieved him, before hopping up onto the sofa to cuddle with Mr Click and Teddy.

I'd love to know what he'd done to annoy her.

Tara's Tick

Tara has had a grand total of two ticks in the entire time we have had her. Not bad considering that we live in the middle of the countryside, surrounded by land in which deer frolic and leave behind their little buggy friends.

She got the first one within the first twenty-four hours of us getting her and immediately made me feel like the worst dog mummy ever!

Here's some photographic evidence of my complete failure to parent my puppy:

She had that sucker (no pun intended) for a couple of days because to begin with we thought it was just a wart and that she'd had it when we got her. Then it started getting bigger and she got all sad and lethargic and we realised what it was and took her to the vet sharpish.

That wasn't a happy day for Tara because not only did she get a tick removed, she got stabbed in the back of the neck with a microchip as well. She may have peed all over their floor in revenge.

And for the past four and a bit years we've been blissfully free from ticks.

Until Saturday, that is.

We'd gotten up, pulled on our welly boots and gone for a muddy walk with Tara and my camera up towards Calvary Pond, except we realised that getting back down might be a little tricky so took a detour to come down by a safer route and cut out the pond entirely.

Tara was having a whale of a time. I was happily snapping anything that looked remotely photogenic. Mr Click was enjoying himself. All was good until I tickled Tara behind the ear and discovered a little hitchhiker.

It was Tara's Tick 2.0.

And here's a little guide to getting rid of a tick.

Step 1: Panic
Freak out a little bit because there's some small beastie currently burrowed into the back of your dog's ear. Realise that it probably got there the day before when you let the dog roll in the grass and leaves because it was making her so happy. Feel guilty, ashamed, etc.

Step 2: Remember the Vaseline trick
It's something about how ticks bury their heads in the flesh and breathe through their bums so smearing Vaseline over them stops them from breathing and makes them fall off.

Step 3: Realise that making a tick fall off your pet means that potentially there could be a no-longer-attached-to-your-pet tick floating around your house
Freak out a little more.

Step 4: Decide to try it anyway
And start hunting your house for a tub of Vaseline.

Step 5: Realise you don't actually have any Vaseline
Despite the fact that those little pots seem to multiple like traffic cones in situations where you don't actually need them.

Step 6: Substitute Vaseline for lip balm
It's practically the same thing anyway. At least, it is once you've shaved some off the end of a lip balm and smeared it around a bit.

Step 7: Rub the Vaseline substitute onto the tick
Freak out afterwards when you realise you've basically just been rubbing your fingers all over a tick's bum. Wonder if it enjoyed it.

Step 8: Check regularly to see if the little blighter is still there
Due to the aforementioned no-longer-attached-to-your-pet tick thing.

Step 9: Decide that the thing needs to come off before bed and start googling
Tip: Don't Google 'tick on dog's ear'.

Step 10: Discover that the best search string to use is "how do I remove a tick from my dog?"
Answer: Follow the instructions on the WikiHow page.

Step 11: Gather tools
In my case this was a clean pair of tweezers, antiseptic, a bunch of paper towels and a bowl of boiling water (because I didn't have any alcohol to waste on killing a tick).

Step 12: Psyche yourself up
Give yourself a pep talk. You can do this.

Step 13: Go in for the kill
Have someone hold the dog steady and reveal the affected area. Hold the tweezers in one hand and with the other separate the fur so you have clear access. Don't squeeze the body! Grab it as close to where it goes into the skin as possible and pull it straight out without twisting or bending it.

Step 14: Dispose of the tick
Drop it into alcohol, or the boiling water, to ensure that it is well and truly despatched.

Step 15: Treat your dog
Dab some antiseptic on the affected area and double check that there's nothing left in the wound. Give them lots of love, cuddles and treats. Tell them what a big brave doggy they were.

Step 16 (optional): Cry like a big baby because you're so relieved it's over
Uh, yeah. This may have happened to me. Ticks are pretty much flesh eating spiders; this is a very big deal for me!

We've survived without any ill-effects and I'm feeling pretty confident that I could do this again if it was absolutely necessary. Not that I want to any time soon, so you can bet Tara will be getting less rolling in the grass time from now on!

Dear Tara

This week you turned five years old.

Happy Birthday, Baby Girl!

It hardly feels like any time since I posted my Year of Tara blog post but it's been three years. Where's that time gone, Tuppy Tup?

I can still remember that day in April when we brought you home. You were so unsure of being in a car and did such a good job of travelling. At least, you did until we were about three miles from home and you puked all over the car seat. An auspicious start to your life in our family.

In the last four years and five months, I feel like we've got to know you really well. You're a total Daddy's Girl; you'll do almost anything for a 'bikkit', you are the most cuddly dog I've ever know and you sleep in the strangest positions I've ever seen.

When we got you, you really didn't know how to walk on a lead. You probably didn't for the first two years and then one day it clicked. Now we walk several times every day and you're happy to trot alongside us, and only sometimes forget and try to pull ahead. It's usually when there's something interesting up ahead and you just can't help yourself.

I love the way that when someone walks towards us your whole demeanour changes. Your doggy body language just screams 'pay attention to me, please pay attention to me'. Your ears go up and you tail wags at a slightly different pace. If they smile or stop to pet you then you dissolve into ecstasies; if they don't, your ears and tail go down and it's painfully obvious that you're the saddest dog in the world.

Other things that make you the saddest dog in the world include, but are not limited to; being put in your bedroom when you think you're missing out on something, having something you shouldn't have forcibly removed from your mouth, thinking you're going Calvary Pond on a walk and finding it's just a trip to the bump and back, and seeing Yoda getting a treat when you don't get one.

You love to help with the laundry. I think you know that's 'Mummy's job' and you don't think I'm very good at it. You're very good at sorting out socks from the pile (but not very good at giving them back), you could probably unload the machine if I let you (but given your unreliability with the aforementioned socks it's probably not wise), but you love coming out to the garden when I hang out laundry too (though you're usually more interested in exploring the smells out there than what's in the basket, this is probably a good thing).

I think your favourite time of day is in the evening, when we've all eaten tea and we've popped a DVD in the DVD player. Daddy stretches out on the sofa and you curl up on his legs. You can curl up pretty small when you want to (not when you're sleeping in the middle of our bed though, more's the pity) and the pair of you snuggle under a throw. Sometimes you dream and twitch and wiggle your tongue. You're always happiest when everyone is together, it's like you can't relax unless everyone is in the room at once.

Even though you're five and you're a grown up labrador now, you're still learning new things. You've discovered a love of cuddly toys (and you've almost learned not to totally destroy them now). You just learned to swim in the last couple of weeks (watching you in the water is one of my favourite things). The list of words you know seems to grow each month. Maybe I'm biased but you're pretty smart.

When I look at your face I only occasionally see the puppy I brought home, that gangly seven-month old bundle of teeth and fur and energy. I see it when you spot something new that you can't fathom, or when you're feeling especially playful, or when you're tired and they little puppy face pokes out from behind those grown up eyes.

More often than not, you're my big grown up girl now. You seem more serious somehow, more reserved, more sleepy and sedate. Part of me is sad for the bouncy excitable puppy that you're not now, but I'm happy too. I'm happy that I've played a part in you becoming this mature dog. I'm happy that I'm your person and when you got in the car yesterday you were so pleased to see me you leaned over the seat to kiss my fingers. I'm happy that when there are fireworks on the estate and you're scared, I'm the one you run to in order to make you safe.

I'm happy that I'm yours.

Happy birthday, puppy dog.

Swimming Success

One of Tara's favourite places to go is the beach. She's not fussy, any beach will do. It was one of the first places we took her back when we first got her; out to Ettrick Bay in the camervan.

Tara, circa 2012

But she's never really been one for the water, she'd go in and paddle but she was a little wary of it and we weren't always keen on letting a mad labrador get soaking wet and then into our clean car.

But these last couple of weeks we've had some nice sunny days on the weekends and my early finish Fridays so we've made an effort to take her to the beach. And around a week ago, Tara finally learnt to swim!

What's more, not only has she learnt to swim, she's also learnt to retrieve. Side note: my labrador retriever isn't so hot at the whole retriever part of her breed, she's very good at fetching and carrying but pretty awful at giving things to you once she's got them!

I'm fairly certain that it's because we coaxed her deeper into the water by saying "Look! Go get it!" and tossing stones into the water around the depth we were encouraging her into. She took this to mean "Look! Seaweed! Bring it to us!" so now she fearlessly enters the water, wagging and paddling the whole time, and grabs a mouthful of seaweed, then brings it back to us. Once her seaweed has been deposited at the sea's edge with us, she wades back in and does it again.

I think we could've spent a few hours sitting at the beach on Friday afternoon just letting her clear the sea of seaweed.

And we took her again for a brief jaunt on Saturday morning as well. This time the tide was too far out for her to go swimming but it didn't stop her from having a good old paddle session, and yep, seaweed hunting too!

I'm Back

It's been a while, how are you all doing?

Here's a little catch up on what's been going on since I last posted properly:

• Had my embryo transfer (a beautiful, perfect, hatching one).
• Got my period five days later - for those of you keeping score, that's not what's supposed to happen.
• Called the hospital loads and loads of times until I was eventually able to get a follow-up appointment - in September!
• Had a migraine (and my first sick day in two years).
• Went to Oban for a charity shopping trip; came home with a nice black and white dress, a signed copy of Andrea Levy's Small Island, The Corpse Bride on DVD and a Katie Melua CD.
• Ordered broadband for our home.
• Completed Bertie Bloomer for my Father-in-Law for Father's Day. Bertie is seriously awesome, I find it hard to believe I created this thing:

• Spent about a week chasing the set up of our broadband after there were several bumps in the road of getting it set up.
• Started knitting a shawl, a baker and a Hobbit. At this point in time, I'm yet to complete any of them.
• Actually got our broadband set up. It is a wonderful, wonderful thing.
• Done an awful lot of colouring in. I've been working on my Johanna Basford colouring books, I'm trying to work through Secret Garden, Enchanted Forest and Lost Ocean as much as possible before Magical Jungle is released. I've got the latter on pre-order already.
• Nearly knocked myself out by standing up into a cupboard in the kitchen. This is a hilarious story (in hindsight, not at the time) and I may share it in a blog post in the future.
• Replaced my Fitbit after poor Trevor started peeling. Luckily the replacement was a freebie from Fitbit.
• Put together my first ever photobook of all my walks across Middle-earth so far.

• Went to the cinema to see The Secret Life of Pets. Loved it!
• Downloaded Pokemon Go and had quite a bit of fun collecting monsters which are invisible to the naked eye (especially as most of them seem to congregate in my bathroom):

 

• Took a trip to Ayr where I was very restrained and only came home with three new tops, twelve rolls of sparkly washi tape, two books and a set of The Secret Life of Pets stickers.
• Took Tara to the beach and threw her in the sea - she had such a good time that she didn't want to leave (though part of that may have been because Mr Click threw her stick into the sea and she was determined to get it back).
• Read all of the Harry Potter books in anticipation of The Cursed Child coming out yesterday.
• Booked flights to Wales for a family Christmas. Woo hoo!
• Read Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

I'm glad to be back. Now, what've I missed?

Weekly Rundown: Shopping. Again.

Well, we needed food, and so a trip to the mainland was in order and then the inevitable kind of happened.

Mr Click and up were up at our usual time yesterday, in other words, entirely too early for a Saturday. Luckily for us the boats are running back to Wemyss Bay now, rather than Gourock, which means that the journey to the mainland is back to being a little over 30 minutes (rather than a little over an hour).

And I had one thing on my mind. Stationery!

I will admit now, I do have rather something of a problem in this department. It's like I can't help myself. The plus side is that I am actually using it all. Back when I first got my massive stash of washi tape it took a lot of effort to use it, knowing that once I'd used up a roll there was no guarantee that I would ever get the same roll again.

But now I've got so much that I'm happy to use it. And if I run out of my favourite stuff, it's no great shame, because I've got plenty and another will just have to be my favourite instead. Using it is just an excuse to buy more.

I've recently gotten into writing letters to people. I've got a whole host of pen pals now, most evenings are spent penning replies to my latest 'happy mail'. Some of them I exchange little washi tape samples with (some I'm always on the look out for something cute in my collection that I can send on), and others I use plain lined paper which I jazz up with tape and stickers.

So while Mr Click was wandering round Lidl and Tesco looking for essential stuff like dog food and loo roll, I was looking at all the bits and pieces in the hopes of finding new pretties.

And I did!

First in Lidl where I scored six sheets of stickers. I have a bit of a thing for butterfly stickers and although you can't see it above, there's a sheet of butterflies on the other side of the dragonflies. Also, I'm totally organised for next Easter with all those Easter Eggs!

Mr Click had a discount voucher for Tesco so I also picked up some (more) new pens in Tesco as well as the only washi tape they had in the store (pink and green and pretty good value for money). Mr Click got the latest Pet Shop Boys album so he was happy too.

I talked him into stopping in Greenock for a trip to WH Smith, only to find it wasn't there anymore. I'd had my hopes set on buying a set of their brush pens so to temper my disappointment I got a preowned copy of Scribblenauts Unlimited in Game instead to make up for it.

Oh, and Tara didn't go untreated either.

We got her a nice and shiny new collar for her at Christmas and it's been looking a bit worn out recently, so we stopped at Pets at Home. We debated replacing it with a regular red one again, before spotting a very smart 'luxury' brown leather one. And it was only £1 more than the other, so I decided to spoil her.

The only one who didn't get a treat all of his own was Yoda. But we had chicken nuggets for tea which he seemed pretty happy with.

What I Did In Wales, Part 1: Arriving & Shopping

My journey to Wales began on Thursday the 18th of February. I'd been up and at work early that day but I finished early to give me time for tea and to catch the second to last boat.

I had a bit of a wait when I got to the coach station, roughly two hours, so I used my time wisely, finishing one book and then reading a complete poetry collection while I waited for my coach to arrive. What happened when it did show up was possibly the most British thing I've ever witnessed.

The board said that the coach was to go from Stance 50, so we all dutifully queued up there, but there was another coach already at that stance so when our coach came in it had to pull up to Stance 51. Everybody shuffled over to the next stance over, then patiently rearranged themselves back into the queue we had been in before! It was magical to behold.

I managed to doze for part of the way down. Though I do have to admit, I kind of love watching the people out and about in the towns and cities we pass through in the small hours of the morning. Manchester is fascinating! There always seem to be hundreds of people roaming the streets, or sitting on them, and not wearing much in the way of clothing.

When I arrived I discovered something kind of cool about wearing my Fitbit. It showed how my heartrate spiked when I met my Mum off the coach in Cardiff:

Kind of cute, no?

Friday night was a family get together for my cousin who recently got engaged, so I chilled while my Mum baked and then I helped decorate the cake. Unfortunately, I didn't get a photo but you can take it from me, it looked good and tasted even better!

Saturday was for shopping in Cardiff with my Mum, Aunt and Nan. I treated myself to a squishy neck pillow for the return journey (for the princely sum of £1 in Poundland), and a shiny new Leuchtturm notebook (plus some black pens) for when my current Bullet Journal is full:

I visited the Pen and Paper Shop when I was in Wales around a year ago and before I went this time I looked it up to be sure I could get the journal I wanted. Obviously, I didn't go all the way to Wales just to get a notebook, but I did kind of plan on picking this up here... I certainly scheduled it into my Bullet Journal.

Sunday also saw me get in a little bit more shopping, in between generally relaxing and not doing very much. We headed off to What! and spent a good hour strolling round. I picked up a collection of stickers, plus a slightly phallic dog toy for Tara:

 

Since getting home the duck has had both of his eyes surgically removed (by our resident expert, Tara). He's also been christened Dick the Duck, because Mr Click and I are really immature.

Check back on Thursday when I'll share my trip to Gigrin Farm where we saw the Red Kites.

Wordless Wednesday: Cocoon

Weekly Rundown: Autumn Walks

Autumn is well and truly upon us and I love it.

For me autumn is sweeping leaves, getting cold and damp, warming up with hot chocolate and an old Disney animation.

It's cold mornings and blue skies and seeing your breath. It's woolly hats and welly boots and gloves and scarves.

It's going for walks with the people you love, kicking up leaves and taking photos of all the colours.

And there are so many colours in autumn. I mean, spring makes an effort, and summer tries hard, but autumn has really got it covered in the colour department. And they all change so quickly. The road you travel along in the morning might look completely different by the time you head along it in the evening.

It's like magic.

We've taken a couple of autumn walks this last couple of weeks. And I've brought my camera along with me for some nice autumnal photos.

Autumn isn't even my favourite season of all. I like winter best; but autumn is the prelude to winter. It's the build up to NaNoWriMo, Mr Click's birthday, our anniversary, Christmas; all of my favourite things.

Yesterday the weather was so nice that, even though the sky was a little bit grey, we were able to walk without jackets. I also got a whole bunch of photos of Tara as well. She's a really photogenic labrador, but you have to catch her at the right time; when you're on the way back from the walk is best, when she's too tired to be too playful.

Of course, up there I mentioned autumn being a time for hot chocolate. Well, in the run up to NaNo I've decided to give up chocolate (just because I can, I'm not addicted, I can stop any time I want to, see) but this is proper hot chocolate weather and it's making it hard to stick to my resolve (not because I'm addicted, because of the weather). I've also dug my knitting out again because it's the right sort of weather for that as well. The nativity is getting back on track after about a month off and I'm starting to make more plans for my next project after this.

I've fished my OU hoody out of my wardrobe (it's been nearly a year since I got it), I've got my thick socks on; neither of these things mean a huge amount since I live in Scotland and wear hoodies and thick socks year round. We've had the heating on and extra cups of tea and a hot water bottle in bed. The nights are getting darker and chillier.

I love this time of year.

Weekly Rundown: The 50mm Lens

Last Saturday I ordered a shiny new lens for my Canon DSLR camera the expected delivery date wasn’t until Friday so I didn’t imagine that I’d have much to say about it in this week’s weekly rundown post.

Then it showed up on Wednesday, completely unexpectedly, giving me lots and lots of time to play with it and figure out how to use the damn thing. It’s a 50mm f1.8 lens which basically means that it has a fixed focal length and can’t be zoomed; the f-number refers to the size of the aperture which affects your depth of field. This lens is great for portrait photography because you can get a nice sharp image, with the background all blurred.

I’d class myself as an enthusiastic amateur, when it comes to photography. I’ve played around with different settings on my camera, I know how to change them, and most of the time I can work out what settings I need to change to get the effect I want. But this knowledge has largely been acquired through trial and error (and the occasional tutorial online). And ever since I got my camera, I knew I needed to get one of these lenses.

I did briefly put my camera into the Full Auto setting when the lens arrived, took two photos, realised how little control I had over what I was doing and switched out of it. I’m still learning, but I’m in love with this camera lens already.

The above photos are amongst the first one hundred that I took, but I’m very pleased with them (they’re not even my favourite ones, I’m saving some for my upcoming Wordless Wednesday posts). Tara has always been a willing victim, half the time you point a camera or phone at her she’ll pose for you (my labrador is a diva) and I love how that photo of her came out. The focus fell on her nose instead of her eyes (which I’ve got the hang of fixing now) but I think it’s a cute photo nonetheless.

You can probably expect to see a bit more of my husband’s ugly mug on here while I practice my portrait photography (one of my reasons for getting a 50mm lens). It’s so easy to use (since you don’t have to worry about the zoom) that I’m hoping to train him up so he can take photos of me. This means I might make an appearance on my blog occasionally!

I’ve also found it great for photographing my ratbags. Wicket is scared of most noises and Yoda is very fast-moving so I don’t normally get many pictures of them, something I’m hoping to remedy now I’ve got this lens. Wicket’s still not a fan of the noise the camera makes, but he’s tolerated a few photos. Yoda on the other hand is quite the little ham. It’s such a fast lens that most of the time he’s in the frame and I’ve even managed to get him in focus a handful of times. ;-)

I know that I’ve still got an awful lot to learn about using this lens to its full potential. I’ve taken it to the beach already and I’ll be going away to a local festival soon so that’ll be another chance to practice with it. I’m also hoping to find some more victims volunteers to help me practice my portrait photography. For now I’ll carry on making do with Mr Click and Tara:

This is officially my new favourite photo. I know it's not perfect by a long way, but I still can't help feeling a bit proud of myself every time I see it.

I hope you haven't minded this week's slightly photographic interlude. Let me know which pictures are your favourites and if you've got a 50mm lens, share your tips and tricks in the comments.

Weekly Rundown: Wet Walk & Another Appointment

This was originally just going to be a post about my trip to Glasgow on Friday for another hospital appointment, but then on Thursday morning I took Tara for one of our new and improved early morning walks and we got drenched. I thought it deserved a mention, purely for the picture below:

Look at that face! You can just hear her asking ‘why me mummy?’ She is so wet that her fur is just clinging to her sides making her look about half the size than she actually is as well.

Labradors are supposed to like water, and Tara is no exception, as long as that water is on the ground. Puddles and the sea at the beach is all good. The shower and rain is not good because she doesn’t like the water actually touching her face. So a torrential downpour, whilst walking under trees is a not good thing.

As soon as I opened the door on Thursday morning Tara headed out onto the patio in the rain, stopped and looked back on me with this look on her face like ‘you cannot expect me to go out in this’. I did. And we toddled home half an hour later looking like drowned rats.

I suffered too. My jeans were wet right up to the tops of the legs. And it took until lunchtime to warm up again.

On the whole it was a pretty nice walk.

Then on Friday we had a trip to Glasgow for our next hospital appointment. I was slightly alarmed when we were arrived and were told that we weren’t in the book. Luckily we showed off our appointment letter and soon had a lovely nurse come out to see us.

We went over all of my test results (that they had back) and got information about the protocol I’ll almost certainly be on. I really enjoyed having the whole process explained over again because I can’t help but feel I’ve spent so much time looking up information online that I’ve lost touch with what it actually involves. I was able to ask questions and have them answered which helped to make some things clear for me (like just how they go about collecting the eggs on retrieval day).

There were a whole bunch of forms to fill in and then we got our dates for when everything will kick off. I was hoping for April to start but it doesn’t look as though my dates are going to work out for then. So we’ll be having another appointment in May and then it’ll be all systems go once we hit June.

And to celebrate afterwards we went for all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet and then I splurged my winnings from the horse racing sweepstake the other week on two new notebooks.

The one on the left is my new journal while the one on my right will be my new book journal. I was going to just go for a plain black one, but they had lots of pretty colours and I decided that the time had come to branch out into brighter book journals.

I’ve got a while yet before I start using either one. I’m about twenty books away from the end of my current book journal. I’ll get to my new journal-journal just as soon as I’m done with the old one.

This week I'm trying to get ahead of my blogging for April. I've got posts planned for every letter except Y and Z now, so I foresee some time spent perusing dictionaries and lists of words for inspiration. I've got my first week of A to Z posts written so hopefully I'll be able to use the Easter weekend to get well and truly organised.

I'm looking forward to April hitting and getting stuck into reading lots of new blogs!

Weekly Rundown: Eclipsed

Friday was a very exciting day for me. Not only because there was the highly anticipated eclipse but also I GOT UP AT 6AM TO WALK THE DOG!

This never used to be a big deal. When we got Tara I would take her out for walks at crazy o’clock in the morning in all weathers until I discovered that neither of us actually liked this very much. We live in the grounds of a large stately home which is illuminated from the base in darkness, it’s a massive gothic mansion so it looks like something out of a Hammer Horror film. Plus the road is surrounded by trees and bushes, either on one side or both, which means when it’s dark it looks darker.

Tara’s a bit of a baby. And so am I. So as the weather worsened and the mornings stayed darker we decided we much preferred having a lie-in. So we did.

Except the weather has improved hugely and the mornings are way lighter than they were a month or two ago. I can’t count the number of times I’ve gotten up in the last few weeks, looked out the window, and realised that it would have been perfect dog walking weather. So for the last week or so I’ve been trying to drag my butt out of bed when the alarm goes off at 5:45am.

Well on Friday I did it. And it was a lovely walk. A little cloudy, lots of birdsong and it felt like I was the only person in the world. I actually took a photo and posted it on Facebook with the caption ‘The world is quiet here’; I was thinking about A Series of Unfortunate Events blog posts as I walked.

Unfortunately I did get to take any photos of the eclipse but I was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of it. This was unexpected because as I mentioned above, it was cloudy, and also I was at work when it was scheduled to be visible over us. I’d spent Thursday night wracking my brains trying to work out if I would be able to see it out the window at work (if the weather was okay) and convinced myself that I was on the wrong side of the building.

Once at work I reassessed my location and realised that I was actually perfectly situated, if it wasn’t for the clouds. However at quarter past nine the clouds thinned enough for us to get a good view of a crescent shape. To be honest, it looked like the moon, though when you looked at it carefully you could see the darker patch covering the sun. It was only for a few minutes and then a thicker patch of cloud moved across and blocked it out completely but I was thrilled to have seen anything at all.

Outside it got darker as well, though not as dark as I was expecting. Our area was supposed to get 95% coverage so I was expecting it to get really dark, but it just came over like we were going to have a really heavy downpour. A few weeks ago, one afternoon at around 3pm it got about that dark, chucked it down for about five minutes, then lightened a bit before darkening for the evening. It was weird but quite similar to the eclipse we just had.

I had a pretty busy day yesterday as well. The weather looked set to be lovely, so I hauled myself out of bed at 7am, stuck my mp3 player on and walked Tara to Calvary Pond. It's her favourite place to visit but the track gets pretty muddy in the winter (and it's quite steep) so we've not done it for about five months. Every time we walk past the turning for it, she heads over the little bridge only to be called back (with droopy ears).

Yesterday she was trotting ahead of me, she sniffed the bridge and then kept going but I turned. The look on her face as she realised we were going on her favourite walk was so cute. I wish I'd caught it on video. She flicked from confused about why I was calling her to pure excitement and charged up the track.

Above are the photos I took on the walk. The selfie was so I could post proof to Facebook that I was actually up and about at seven in the morning. The top one shows the water like glass; it was so still and quiet, just us and the birds. And that bottom photo was on the way back down the hill. I caught sight of our house across the field. You can just make out our bedroom sticking out the back of our little cottage. In a few weeks the trees will be all full of greenery and I won't be able to see it anymore.

We also spent some time clearing up the spare bedroom. We've been storing boxes in there, in case we need them, pretty much since we moved in. Over time we've gotten rid of lots of them, but I decided that the time had come to clear them all out. So we filled up two recycling bags of cardboard breaking them all up. And we also finally put the headboard onto the spare bed:

It was a perfectly adequate bed before but the headboard has finished it off nicely, making it more comfortable if someone's stopping and wanting to sit in bed and read. It couldn't have fit better either. I was a bit nervous about the sloping ceiling making it a bad fit, but it's perfect.

All in all, it’s been a pretty good week. It began with some information from Fil @ Fil's Place about my mysterious German zeppelin photo and it definitely ended well. We just have to see if I can keep up the dog walking at 6am. I’ll let you know how that one goes.