I’ve started doing my blogging in Alex’s studio recently. Its extremely quiet in here and with no TV or kids or dog to distract me, I can write a lot better.

An office is something I have always wanted in my own house. I can picture it now; a huge oak desk with my laptop on and loads of other space for me to write things down. Wall to wall bookshelves and french doors opening onto a big garden so I can leave the doors open in the summer. Hopefully, I will actually have that one day!

Anyway, this room isn’t a proper recording studio yet. He has it at my house because there is just no space at his house. He has the smallest room in the house and all the other rooms are taken up. Since I moved both kids into the bigger bedroom, we had the space available for him to use it for his recording. He has his Mac set up along with his guitar, keyboard, stereo and drum kit. There’s just nothing to distract me from writing it here. Not even Pet Society since the internet speed up here is terrible so I don’t even try to play it! I really should phone up the insurance to see if I need a new home insurance quote with having all this equipment in here. It shouldn’t effect my price but its worth getting it checked out.

Alex got the job I was talking about the other week! He had the interview on the Wednesday, the trial day on the Sunday and was offered the job the same day. He started work last Monday and he’s currently working different shifts around twenty hours per week. This job is definitely something new for him. He’s only ever worked in offices or in warehouses and this is at a restaurant! I think he’s enjoying it though.

He’s had to buy a couple of new things for work. He gets a company t-shirt and baseball hat but he has to wear jeans and black trainers. He already has enough jeans but because he’s working on the grill, he’s getting quite greasy so he’s decided to rotate between his two oldest jeans that he rarely wears any more so his decent ones don’t get ruined. He didn’t have any black trainers though so today since we were in town, we went on the hunt for some black trainers. He saw some he liked but they were £30 and in my opinion, they were definitely NOT worth £30 and especially for work where they are only going to get dirty anyway. We eventually found some really nice ones for £12 in a sale that I actually liked a lot better than the more expensive ones!

His usual work gear shopping was for things like overalls and safety glasses or shirt, trousers and tie so it was nice to buy something he could actually wear out of work too!

I’ve been thinking about getting pet insurance for both Daxter and Jak ever since I got them both. I worry about Daxter more than Jak as he’s a pedigree dog and also because of that fact that if he ever ran out of the front door and straight into a car, I don’t know how I’d be able to pay out for it. He’s ran out twice the whole time I’ve had him but thankfully he’s never gotten very far and also, I live on a quiet street so there’s only the mornings and between 5-6PM that cars are constantly coming in and out of the close. I have gotten an insurance quote for both of them a couple of years ago online which was followed up by a routine phone call but I never excepted it. Its not that it was expensive, its just that I could only just about afford what I was already paying out for and I said I would consider it again in the future when finances were better. I’m still in the same place I was at that time financially but I’m not sure whether I should put it off for much longer. If the worst were to happen, I need to be able to pay the veterinary fees which I wouldn’t be able to do outright. Its something I need to reconsider in the very near future.

I used to have some door hangers on the back of my bedroom door but they all broke because I put too much weight on them. I really keep meaning to replace them because I have no where to hang my dressing gown any more. Its just one of those things you never get round to really. Like all those other bits I keep meaning to do – buy frames for my photos and hang them on the walls, repaint the window ledge in the living room, buy a blind for my bedroom and the bathroom. I’ll do it eventually.

I have suffered with very dry hands for a couple of years now, pretty much ever since I became a stay at home mum and had full responsibility of the cleaning. Since Alex doesn’t live here any more, I do 95% of the housework and he occasionally washes the dishes for me if he sees that I’m tired. With the combination of washing the dishes, cleaning the sides down in the kitchen, dusting, hoovering, handling wet clothes, cleaning the bathroom and the normal daily washing, my hands are just horrible. I moisterise every night before I go to bed as its the only time I can really put it on without needing to do anything afterwards but I really need to look into other skin care products. My hands feel nicer when I’m going to bed but in the morning they are just as dry as they were the previous day. I need something intensive. Or just go on a cleaning strike.

I love it when I get paid blogs like this one which has to be about the herpes simplex virus. It makes things a little more interesting! Thankfully I have never had it and even though I know its not only a sexual disease; it can be caught from sharing drinks and kissing, I’m still glad I’ve never had it. A family member once had it on their mouth quite badly and the first thing I said when I saw them that it was herpes but they didn’t believe me until they went to the doctors. Too much kissing different people I think! I try and steer clear of people with it because once you’ve caught it, it just keeps coming back.

I used to post all my blogs and websites to weblistings and free web directories when I first got into blogging but now I don’t think I’ve submitted any of mine to anything. I know the internet is a public place and anyone with a computer can view what I write but I liked to keep myself as private as possible. I don’t really like anyone from offline reading my blogs – apart from very close family – and I quite like that I don’t get many comments on all my blogs just because I know the world isn’t reading it! The point of having a blog for me is to share my day and thoughts with the few people that do read my blog and for me to keep a journal for later on in life. I don’t do very well with a written journal and blogging has always come easy for me. I’m just going to carry on as I am and enjoy the few comments I do get.

You see anti-ageing  products – creams and gels – all the time on the TV. There is an anti-ageing advert on pretty much every single commercial break it seems. I read something about hgh supplements which reduce the hormones that make you age. I was talking to Alex about them too and we both agreed that we would both never touch them. You never know what long term side effects there are and even short term ones. I’m happy to grow old naturally with a little help from basic moisturising creams and good old healthy eating and exercise. I’m lucky since all the women in my family seem to look young for a long time. I think its showing now since everyone seems to think I’m 18 and not 23!

My weight is up and down right now. One day I do brilliantly and the next day I’m struggling. This week is half term so I don’t have a lot of chance to run and also, I don’t have enough food in to keep me sustained enough to keep doing the amount of exercise I have usually been doing. I had less than half of what I usually do in the bank this Monday so I could only get a little amount of food. I managed to get the bare essentials to last me until tomorrow but today, I barely have anything left in the house and the things that I do have aren’t exactly the best things to eat when you’re trying to lose weight. I guess having no food in is good for quick weight loss but I can’t stand being hungry so it doesn’t work for me! I end up filling up on bread and anything with carbs in just to keep me going. I can’t wait to go shopping tomorrow.

Sometimes I think about what I would like to do differently if I ever got pregnant again. I think all mothers think back to what they should have done and what they do if they had another baby so I know its not just me. There are a few things pregnancy wise that I would do. One thing I stopped doing pretty much at the beginning was I stopped taking my pregnancy vitamins. I beat myself up about it towards the end as the birth got closer thinking that something would be wrong with the baby because I didn’t take them. Obviously she was fine and not taking my vitamins wasn’t a huge deal but its something I would make sure I’d do next time. Other things are stuff that would be second nature now like not drinking and not eating junk food all the time. I only drank the one glass of wine a week that I was allowed but pretty much as soon as I gave birth they made the guidelines that you couldn’t drink at all. I also struggled with eating healthily and pretty much lived on takeaway pizza. Nowadays I eat very healthy anyway so my diet would be perfect for the baby.

I probably won’t have another baby but these are the minor details that I would change that I didn’t do last time. I would love to do the whole pregnancy and new baby stage again but I don’t know if I’m ready (or will be ready) for another child. I’m so happy with Meghan and financially I probably couldn’t manage anyway right now.