clearbluecup

i know it's been a long time since i wrote here. i was absorbed with work, and then we went away to amsterdam for a week, and now i'm trying to pick up all the bits and pieces that i dropped somewhere along the path a few weeks ago.

getting absorbed in work isn't always a bad thing. but it makes for very boring (or absent) blog posts. long story short = there was ONE trainer position advertised internally (there are seven of us who were training in the autumn), i tried my best, i didn't get it. now what?

it's springtime here, the daffodils are blooming and the first hint of warmth can be found in the afternoon sun. louis caught a mouse while staying at andy's, and went for a walk with him and chloe down to the river and back. i've started a dressmaking class, applied to do my masters and my bike is in the shop for repairs.

I've realised that I have trouble recognising the end of things, determining when the conclusion has been reached. Sometimes I give up too soon, other times I keep hanging on and hoping for more. I'm trying to be moderate and rational right now by looking at all my potential options, my responsibilities and current freedoms, and not looking for a hard line that says THE END or THE BEGINNING.

more photos will be up this weekend...

click on the photo to see the rest of the album.

last weekend we were sitting around the kitchen table with gavin when we saw louis out in the back garden with a big, white and black splotchy cat. the intruder sat there while louis crouched down into his "I'm a fearsome cat" attack pose. then out of nowhere louis went flying across the grass, paws splayed, and bit the other cat's bottom.

when the splotchy cat did nothing but turn around and flick its tail, gavin said "it's a girl!"

we've spotted them hanging out ever since, sitting together on the windowsill or knocking over the potted plants on the patio. looks like louis has his first girlfriend! it's a good thing (or a bad one, depending on your perspective) that he just got back from being snipped at the vet's...

Tom's sister oona called by this afternoon for a cup of tea and a chat, and i had the day off work so we sat around for a while in the spring sunshine. Her daughter was with the childminder, and her son was watching simpsons in our living room. she went to roll a cigarette and pointed at the package, which said, 'smoking can damage the sperm and decrease fertility'. "That's ok, isn't it?" she said to me, "mine usually say 'protect children, don't make them breathe your smoke'". I looked at her. "You have no idea" I said, then corrected myself "Actually, you probably know how i'm feeling quite well".

I decided just before christmas to stop taking the birth control pill. There were a lot of reasons for this - it was a time when I was moving around the furniture in my life, so to speak, and this change fit in quite well with all the rest. We decided it was worth a try, just to see if letting my body make its own hormones helped the stability of my moods. It had gotten to the point where for 10 days every month i felt like my clothes were made of sandpaper and everybody around me was poking at my ego with hot forks of displeasure. 10 days out of every 28! That proportion was too high to accept any longer so we started investigating the other options available.

Three months down the line I'm pleased with the decision, but have discovered one thing I wasn't at all prepared for: the complete and utter irrationality of the power of hormones. I'm a fertile, fully ovulating woman for the first time in an undisclosed number of years, and suddenly i'm thinking about babies ALL THE TIME. To go from fretting over the responsibility of caring for a cat for nearly a year to thinking about pregnancy as one of my "career options" has me feeling quite disoriented. Every now and then, when I realise that my thought patterns are drifting towards dangerously obsessive, i have to take a moment to blink and look around. I have started making mental lists of all the reasons why now is not the right time for a baby. Peace. Quiet. Sleep. Sanity. Thesis. Money. But hormones have no rationality. They continue surging recklessly.

What's a girl to do? Sandpaper clothes and hot forks of displeasure for 10 days out of every 28 or obsessive baby thoughts?? Getting busy with a new job or entrepreneurial project might help, i think. But an instinctive, animal part of my brain is telling me these thoughts are only going to get louder as I get older.

yikes.

today i woke up and rolled over and looked at the alarm clock and rolled over again and hid my head beneath the duvet and closed my eyes tight against the world.

i can't.

two dangerous little words. almost as dangerous as i must.

i'm reaching the breaking point here. something's got to give. several people have said to me "don't make any snap decisions" when talking to me about my job. but i don't know - what makes a decision a snap one? is it snap when it's decided in a split second, decided over spilt tears, decided without looking at the weather forecast when you haven't got your umbrella? decided based on your emotions and not your bank balance? or decided based on selfish desires and not the greater good?

in any case, something's going to snap and i feel like the best thing would probably be a decision rather than my sanity.

on a lighter note, i went to see "The Life Aquatic" last night. it's excellent. I recommend it highly. when we emerged from the cinema i felt like i'd awakened from a dream full of technicolour jellyfish and fairy lights.

so, on closer inspection this afternoon, i discovered that louis' "girlfriend" is actually a big tomcat.

hrmm.