Wedding (in brief)

Wedding was wonderful; the ceremony was short and sweet (just how I like them!) with a reading each from Chris' dad and our mum.

The meal was lovely and the speeches were short and sweet and meaningful.

The dresses were pretty and the flower girls had a brilliant time.

That night at the party there was a fantastic band who played covers of popular songs and really got the mood going - they even made a girls vs boys air guitar play-off with the wedding party which was tear-jerkingly hilarious!

And my father was drunk and my mother had her first drink since 1998 (as she kept pointing out) though no one in our house was hungover the next day - apparently!

And Tom's highlight was of course the hog roast...

Nearly there! And a history of life.

My sister's wedding is tomorrow and I'm so excited! I'm also so grateful not to be involved in organising anything but ourselves - and even that is a bit of a stretch as we're having to go down with Jo tonight instead of arriving a day early like we'd originally hoped.

My poor sister is trying to get all loose ends sorted so she can enjoy their day but at this moment I think my grandfather (from USA) is still getting here/ stranded across the pond due to bad weather, and so may only get here in the nick of time. Also there was a bit of drama with getting the music and chair covers sorted but I think that's mostly OK now.

I'm sure on the day she won't have to worry, and that it will be the best day of her life regardless.

So even today I have things I need to get (like waterproof mascara - just in case!) and organise having a few days at home. Sadly Tom only has the weekend free so I may be staying with the parents for a few extra days without him.

Anyway, in other news: I'm still reading A Short History Of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, and I'm now at the section where it explains about different eons and periods of life in the Earth's history. It's very interesting to be reading this as a Christian too, and I'm fairly sure Bryson isn't, but one thing he does well in his works is not to be too biased. All he has done in this scientific book (he's usually a travel writer but has branched out into a few other areas over the last few years) is present the arguments and evidence for what we have found out. Nothing in it goes against the notion of God (so far, I haven't finished it yet!)

What I find fascinating is that we are trying so hard to discover so much and the planet we're on is so much bigger and so much older than we can begin to comprehend in our minds. And to me it is seeing how we humans are starting to piece together how God has made this place we live in, and what came before us. Obviously scientists may argue that it is just the natural process of the chain of life we stemmed from happened to end up with us, but that in itself does not mean there is not additional dimension from a deity.

Lost in wonder...

Resting Time

I have had some time off recently - mostly over our birthdays but also in lieu for working a bank holiday next week (boo!) and I feel I've needed most of this time to just rest and try to relax - something I have found rather difficult recently in life.

It may seem a bit like wasting time, but I've felt recently that trying to do things just for the sake of it when you really don't want to is equally a waste of time. And by that I mean things like going out shopping when you don't want/ need anything and have no money. So today I have spent my time in my pit (aka my seat on the sofa) and job hunted with a live feed of footage from Springwatch on the TV. And I didn't even bother getting dressed as I have no plans to leave the flat - even the weather has gone rather dark and colder after the blaze of summer we've had recently.

Of course this means that a man sent by my agency to look at the boiler turned up unexpectedly.

"Hi there."

Ah well, it's my flat. If I want to sit around all day in my PJs eating biscuits then I can. Though apparently I may occasionally get an audience!

Another reason for lounging about instead of trekking off for no reason is that with my appetite being poorer in recent times I don't always eat as much as I should - a lot of the time eating makes me feel very queasy. So until that settles down a bit more I am more aware of the stresses of trying to eat outside my comfort zone, which is mostly at home, and as I walk everywhere I don't want to overdo things too much and end up having walked 2 miles for no reason and not eat because I feel more sick than usual. Not much fun.

It's been nice to be able to have time guilt-free to just sit at home and pick up a book [A Short History Of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson at the moment] and let my mind work on something other than worrying/ depression and not be stressed out. That approach doesn't always work, but it's still lovely to have some actual peace now and then.

I wondered if I'd get sick of it...

As I made a brief mention of a few weeks ago, Tom and I have got engaged. Naturally this period leads into planning our wedding. I noted to my mum a day of two into my engagement, "everyone seems to be keen to give me advice, even before I've actually asked..." Her reply was, "they will."

And so, a few weeks later, Tom and I took our birthday weekend off from anything wedding-related because we'd grown sick of it. I can't wait to be married, but the whole planning of a huge event (with no money) and lots of people was starting to drive us mad.

Things we have not yet decided on: venue, date, church, time of day, budget (currently at zero) etc etc.
Things we have decided on: bridesmaids, best man, grooms men, theme.

This is not it.

If I weren't a Christian I would probably pressed more for eloping to somewhere like Gretna Green before now. But I want to be married before God as I believe this is the way to do it. Everything else is just extra decoration as far as I'm concerned, and great as having it will be, I don't want the main point of things lost in a whirl of flowers and name places and cake issues.

I'm sure once things are a bit more in place I'll be having more fun.

Is my birthday

So I'm going to try and have some fun (something I have been lacking of late).

Fun is currently consisting of going to Pets At Home and Sainsbury's but hey, at least it gets me out of the house :)

I'M SO EXCITED

Because...

I'm getting married!!!

Tom asked me to marry him a few nights ago (he was meant to wait for my birthday in a few weeks but couldn't!) and we haven't stopped bouncing off of the walls!

Attempting to plan things on a budget of approximately £0 is both hard and easy - hard because we need to have a serious think about what we each want, where to have everything, who to have there, etc, and easy because we have no money so everything will have to be done very creatively.

Surprisingly this all feels so right. I'm usually the princess of doubt, and I'm not saying there haven't been any negative thoughts slipping in there once in a while, but I am actually so, so happy!

And now back to thinking about dresses...

Hello Money, Goodbye Money

This past month has been the first in a long time that I've had disposable income and been able to (carefully) buy things not considered essential to my longevity. Though those luxuries include lunch because we never have much to take in that I actually want to eat. But one example is I finally, for the first time, got some flowers from Tom!

They looked a bit like this.

But I'm considering some options that may leave me back in a similar position of being broke in the future. Hmm. This economy has been a bloody hard one to be living through with there being very little for households like ours to be falling back on if things go wrong. At the end of the day, the rent needs to be paid so the landlord can pay his mortgage so the bank don't take his house off of him. It's a strange kind of position to be in; we are surrounded by objects of various wealth that such a huge amount of the world just doesn't have (eg the sofa) but we're always about a month's loss away from no food. 

Now logic would say if that were the case then why not just sell all the big expensive things so you can get by? Good point. But our home revolves somewhat around this sofa; its function aides us in so many tasks we don't even realise until it is not there. When we first got our old flat we didn't have a sofa. It was annoying and caused more backache than you'd imagine - floors are hard. So the way we have our lives, our functioning lives, requires having some things not everyone in the world has.

This is not a thing to be guilty about as it fulfils such a practical use. What I would argue is extravagance is wasting a lot of money on a sofa when you can get an equal one at less cost. Some people in our society get into this strange habit of filling rooms - having a place they live in which has more rooms than they need, so they decided to furnish them with the hope of... what? They don't want to use them, because they have other rooms which they use for the same thing. It's just to fill the space.

When we got our flat, the second bedroom was a blessing because we could put all our excess stuff there: spare lizard tanks (in case of quarantine or a new addition) a dining table (redundant by the sofa) and as storage for new things like the mountain bike.

And the next chapter was us reducing stuff down because the room changed its use, but again for a practical reason. Personally nothing screams EXCESS like having rooms you don't use but keep pristine because, hell, you can.

Anyway, one thing I'm trying to do with my money is to use it on appropriate things: we don't have the space for me to just buy cool crap. You can't get around our living room without an airer attacking you (good thing it's weighted down by the never-ending amount of washing on it). So now I may be using money more to do things - takeaways, trips, drinks, feed pets. I want it to be my tool, not master.

Nearly End of April

Jo has been living with us for a month now and it's going extremely well for all of us. Despite my initial reservations of having another person living with us, everyone has settled in nicely and we seem to have worked a routine around most things (such as mornings). She tidies and cleans without being asked, too!

One big practical thing we had to was clear out the spare room and find a place for all the stuff we'd shoved in there over the year and a bit. This prompted a large clear out of that room, our bedroom, and some of the stuff from the living room. I absolutely hate doing stuff like this because it's one of those jobs that turns out to take AGES and it dawns on you after about an hour that this job is bigger than you had anticipated. So I rearranged all the drawers and wardrobe space in our room, found a load of stuff to throw away and things to take to the charity shop, and somehow Jo's room became a lovely, neat bedroom.

The mountain bike is now in our bedroom though, much to my irritation.

It's also been a stressful period in regards to work for some of us (Tom's job is going from strength to strength, lucky boy!) as Jo's team are a bit low on numbers and as we do pretty much the same job but in different places, I know some of how she's feeling. But hopefully things will start to work themselves out more with each of us and employment, though there's no news on the horizon for change.

One thing I am looking forward to in the near future is my sister's wedding in June. It seems most things are in place though as I'm not around her much of the time I have no idea how much planning and setting they have actually done. I know that some people create massively complex days for themselves, and some people have simple days without much fuss. I think there's will be a combination of the two as Michelle is very creative with whatever brief you give her. It's so weird to think my little sister is 1) getting married, and 2) getting married before me! But she's eclipsed me in most areas of life by now at the grand old age of 21 so as a big sister I'm used to it...!

Another thing this month threw at us was the Spring Cold. I succumbed to it first, with a sore throat, achy chest, coughing, sneezing... and ended up having a day sick from work as I just felt rubbish. About a week later Tom finally got it too and now Jo's feeling it creeping on her. I'm getting the blame for this one which in turn I point to my workmate maliciously giving it to me (that's how colds work, right?)

And a final news item: Tom's stepdad Shaun ran the London Marathon last weekend, and made a time of approx 3 hours 30 mins - staggeringly fast! He was raising money for Sense; a charity helping people who are deaf/ blind. His JustGiving page is still up and running (pun not intended) so please visit and donate accordingly: http://www.justgiving.com/shaun-goulding

Brief Update

Our internets have been slow recently (prob in part due to now having a third person using it) so not had as much opportunity to be on here. I'll write more soon.

Today's adventure was to the zoo!!! Bristol Zoo Gardens to be precise. Not been there before but it was much fun :) Now unwinding (and possibly rewinding) with a chilled out night in with Asti.

Relationships are tricky...

In life we have so many different relationships with people that it can get confusing and difficult at times.

The obvious relationships, such as family or partners are often clear-cut boundaries where the mere existence or an agreement shapes it and makes it official. But when things aren't as clear, it gets confusing.

As Christians we try to maintain a relationship with God. It is arguably the easiest and hardest thing to do because on the one hand, God is accessible any time and anywhere. We are called to pray as often as possible about everything; nothing is too small or impossible. But on the other, human hand, we are lazy creatures. It can be difficult to motivate yourself if things aren't going too well or we don't see the results we are after as we want them.

But that's where faith comes into it. We are told that God will hear us, even when we cannot see or hear Him, and that His timing is not always our timing. We want things NOW all the time, but God's plan will be done as He decides. We just need faith to believe He will not leave us and we need patience.

But with people things aren't always simple. We need to be patient without knowing that the other person has things in control because they too are only human. Sometimes things can be too hard in the situation and we make mistakes and hurt people. Sometimes we are hurt without it being our fault.

We then need patience with life to know that things will, in time, get better. But sadly there is no quick way of speeding that up. It's not a lesson learned easily but a time to pass.