Leaves

One thing this week I loved: walking through piles of nice dry leaves. So childish, so much fun! Crispy crunchy swishy noises....

Socks

Why is it things start needing to be replaced when you have no money?

At the moment my big problem is socks. I can never have enough of them. As I write this at work (I've finished for the day) I am wearing one short one from a set decorated with owls - very classy - and the left foot has a random Christmas one belonging to Tom. I am becoming that crazy person who hunts down a viable pair (not matching, just similar lengths and elasticity) and finding about a million rags which slide constantly down your ankles to sit about the gaping hole of your heel. And toe holes; worst things ever! Hate them.

Everything about this picture is wrong.

It's the sad reality of needing to do more washing, but trying to get cycles done when you are drying things in your flat in autumn/ winter takes ages. And thus the sock shortage commences and hasn't ended yet. Thankfully I have lots of pants so that's not an issue.

I've also needed some more shoes recently. I hate shoe shopping with a passion. I'm one of these people who will only wear shoes they can walk in and feel remotely comfortable, so for my trips to and from work each day I need shoes that will survive. My walking boots have pretty much bitten the dust and now let the water IN, and my other work-friendly shoes aren't quite comfy enough to powerwalk 4 miles in. Mum found a pair of boots which she gave to me last week, and nice as they are I am now realising I need longer socks with them because they really cling to my calves and warm everything up. Nice!

So as I sit here trying to figure out if I can go enough places sockless this weekend (no) until payday and scratching my sweaty calves, I'm regreting all the rubbish I may have spent my money on this month before I realised my clothes would disintergrate around me. I also want to get some silicone bakeware - very rock n' roll, I know. But I'm actually enjoying having a go at baking recently. It would seem sometimes cakes can work even if it's me making them.

CWP, wedding crap, zzzzzzzzzzzz

Oh yeah, I still have a blog to write. Ahem...

So after that last post I felt an immense release, like all the grief it was about was lifted. Suddenly things were all ok again. On a practical note, we have booked our reception venue and reserved the chapel for the wedding, so the rest of the stuff can be done in the new year. No more wedding stress for a few months!

Work has been rather relaxed recently. I have been mostly finishing my work by early afternoon and spend the rest of the day reading/ dicking around on the computer and demolishing any jobs that get given to me. It's nice to be in a place like that. Also I make a lot of awesome cuppas so people are happy.

Last weekend my parents came up on Saturday so Mum could make us walk around the shops in the rain and buy something she didn't travel fifty miles for (a lucky find though) and we took them to the pub where we are having our wedding reception and they were suitably impressed. A quickish drive (Dad) back to Bicester for a nice curry in the Jaflong and then on Sunday we did the Plowman regular at the Cotswold Wildlife Park. True to our word we took pictures of the penguins for Jo, as well as pictures of everything else. I think we have more photos than the Park archives itself...

We put this as Jo's Facebook profile pic just so she wouldn't miss it.

One of my many fetching hats, it was cold!

One thing we're all complaining of this week is being tired. No one I know seems to have slept well recently, and we're putting it down to the seasons changing. I accidentally overslept this morning thanks to my alarm being a twat and got extra sleep, though I was half and hour late, oops.

Anyway I need to go and buy more food for the lizards and fight temptation to leave Pets At Home with all the baby bearded dragons...

A Quick Confession

With my job one of the things I have to do is plot inception dates on a calendar, as opposed to just typing it in.

There are always a few dates that will be lodged in our minds. Sometimes they are more apparent at certain points of the year.

But for me, every time I look at the calendar on my work computer I always think of 21st May 2005.

She's been on my mind a fair bit lately, I'm not sure why.

One thing at the moment I could really use is her advice. I'm so excited about getting married and keep getting marred in all the details. I could use a close female friend who watched me through the years and should be helping me and sharing in everything right now.

I wish she was here looking through all this with me.

I wish she could meet Tom.

I wish.

October already

And don't it feel it? Weather is horrible - very wet and windy recently and the temperature has really dropped too. What is beautiful is the grass is still striking green, and all the brown and red shades of leaves dropping onto them make a dazzling carpet. Even the mushroom by the wall is starting to die off, which is pleasing Tom.

I did learn today that you can apparently train magpies to speak, so need to get me a magpie and check this!

Life is going ok, work is alright, I'm still very attached to being in bed though. Getting up is a massive challenge. But what's new in that camp?