Rankish Teapants

.. not me!

Nope, I’m 30.  That’s right, I’ve just entered a new decade and left my spring chicken of a 29 year old husband behind. And guess what… I love it!  I do not care if I am turning 12, 30 or 75.. it is my birthday and that means it is THE most important day of the year.  In fact, it is the start of Birthday Week.  Well usually I do a Birthday Week. This time my Mom is coming to visit in 2 weeks, so it is Birthday Fortnight!

Unlike most women who dread their birthdays, there is no day I look forward to more. Yeah Christmas is cool because of the cheesy tunes and the decorations, but my birthday is THE greatest day on the calendar.  I wish I had more than one birthday a year!  Honestly I do.

The only thing that worried me when I was going to bed last night, was whether I was going to wake up looking older.  So I took photos to document “the change”.  I am happy to report I do not find myself looking older.  Looking slightly drunker, but not “old” …yet.

Me on my last day of 29 (completely exhausted)

And drunk at 30.

call my friends make some plans
findin’ out what time the party begins
hangin’ out for the weekend

Well this weekend didn’t turn out as planned, but we enjoyed it all the same. We had been invited to go back up to Stratford for Rob’s birthday, but seeing as it was Sally’s (not you, Sally..another Sally) first weekend here, we wanted her to feel at home so had made plans ages ago to meet up with her.

Friday night, we just relaxed… as far as I can remember!

Instead of sleeping away the day on Saturday we woke up and decided to get some stuff done. Since it was sunny, we’d have to come up with things that we could accomplish outside. Lee jumped on lawn duty (you know it had to be sunny for that to happen) which left me struggling. So I … I… washed all of the windows. It is times like this that I am thankful for all of the glass doors we have. At least I was for the first 5 minutes. But I got them done and then did some laundry while I waited for Lee to finish.

Then we headed off to Asda for a curry and some cheap ass nibbles. Seriously. Oh soooo close to Ikea, but I wasn’t going to push my luck two weeks in a row. When we returned we decided to eat outside and enjoy the rare English sunshine.

Check out the sexy blue tarp on the BBQ. Doesn’t it blend in well with the rest of the backyard? :/

After lunch Lee washed the car, I chatted on the phone (shock shock) and then we got ready and headed off to London. Woohoo!!

We got there early and walked around a bit. We decided to head back to the tube station early just in case Sally was also early. And we waited… and waited … and waited.

See… here is Lee waiting…

Of course I didn’t bring my phone because I figured as she doesn’t have one, she couldn’t call anyway. Yeah Yeah phonebooths/boxes.. Lee reminded me later. If I had brought the phone, I would have received the message saying that they were all hanging out in a different part of town and to head there.

So we decided to go ahead and follow the original plan and headed to the Maple Leaf for some beer and wings,

After we watched a little hockey and had a couple pints we decided to head back via a disjointed walk around Leicester Square and Covent Garden, whilst enjoying some strawberry filled doughnuts…

Yeah.. my camera handling skills were a little shot at this point.

The rest of the evening consisted of one hilarious train journey home ( we had the world’s most entertaining little children on board), but not after chasing Lee through Leicester Square tube station.

Sunday we awoke even earlier and headed off to the National Bowl. No, not for some awesome gig, but for what is supposedly England’s Largest Car Boot Sale. All I know is that we bought England’s Largest Tin of Expired Refried Beans and only for 20p!!! Can’t beat that with a bat!

Without going into the details of all of the chavs and general dirties we saw there, I will just put up some photos to tell it for me.

Here we are excited about our journey. See the anticipation in our eyes:

We felt safe because we found out that the Ghostbusters had thoroughly checked the area beforehand:

And then we just let ourselves loose on this playground of used shoes, broken vacuums and lost souls. And scored 8 mango/passionfruit KitKats for £1!

So yes, it may not have gone as planned, but gosh darnit, we enjoyed the Sleeman’s Honey Brown, the wings, the doughnuts, the pork and stuffing on buns and most of all each other’s company.

Now if only we had some more pickled onion cheddar left, the weekend would have been perfect!

Can’t see the light
And my heaven is a nice house in the sky
Got central heating and I’m alright

Remember when I posted that photo of Yoda on a bare bones bookshelf and waffled on about needing to put up shelving in the geek room? Well guess what…..

… if you guessed that the shelves were up: WRONG.

However.. we did go to Ikea today and buy two new desks instead. Well not so much instead, but more as a by-product of swining by for some meatballs. Hey, when a girl’s got a craving for Swedish meatballs and Lingonberry sauce it must be satiated whether or not a few hundred pounds of furniture is acquired along the way!! And my calendar got hung up, so all in all progress was still made.

Whilst Lee spent time constructing and deconstucting furniture today and I awaited the fruits of his testosterone driven labour, I gardened. I am not even sure that “gardened” is actually a word, but it fits. Over the past few weeks I have looked out of the kitchen window over what I thought was a beautifully blossoming garden that was getting greener and greener every day (note: for all you Brits, by garden I mean flower beds as I call that area behind the house a backyard). Today I decided I needed to plant a few bulbs I have randomly collected, and well… came to the realisation that a good 50% of that lush greenery was weeds. Oh how my wrists are not happy with this find. Fair enough, neither are my knees or my ego. It would appear that the green thumb I thought I had is more from gangrene than my skills in the botanical department.

If I weren’t so exhausted from all of this action (I haven’t watched tv ALL day!) I would take some photos because I know you are all DYING to see the new purchases and the weed free garden. But tonight you will have to sleep without the visual evidence that sometimes we actually do spend our days sofa-free!

*****!!!!!!UPDATE UPDATE!!!!!!!*****

The photos are here.  No more waiting.  I present to you.. the all new Desks of the Geek Room!!

My little corner of colour and love (and General Hospital recaps on the screen):

Lee’s Mega Desk of All Things Geeky and I Shall Eternally Remain a Man-Bay Toys!!

What I went through just to get to you
I’m swinging from you
And there’s nothing I would rather do

Seriously, who knew?

Sure I am only a few days in to the new job and there have already been some people who have crossed my path and were immediately dismissed from my Christmas card list, but there is a lot of hope at the end of this tunnel.

I actually got to sit down (well to be honest I stood the whole time) with my “unit”, not team.. unit, and talk about how things will work when all the dust has settled and we are in the new office and I have a slight clue of what I am doing. They told me that they were totally PC and that there was no swearing in the office, to which one of the unit members said “that’s right. no fucking swearing.” The other replied with “shut it you old slapper”. It was at this moment that I felt a rush of emotion, my head all woozy.. and no not from low blood sugar… and I knew that I may have found a home. It is a unit constantly faced with madness and tragedy, but they are there to support each other and catch each other when they stumble.

Who knew.

I certainly never expected it. In fact I thought I got the shit end of the stick when they gave me position B over position A, but it looks like B was the big winner.

Finally I win something. It may not be £7,000,000, and the pay is nowhere close, but all I’ve ever wanted was a job where I felt like I was doing something that helped people.. today the Papa Bear of the office said to me “just remember the bottom line, we are here to save lives, and that is what we care about most”. It was like he knew what I needed to hear. And it sounded great in a slight Irish accent!

So cross your fingers and toes, I may have actually stumbled upon a job I like. We’ll see!

Clouds made of carrots and peas
Mountains built of shepherds pie
And rivers made of macaroni and cheese
But don’t forget to return your trays
And try to ignore my gum disease…

I have decided that if all else fails in my life, I am going to purse a career as a high powered lunch/dinner lady.

What do you think?

When they look on the horizon
Do you see dark clouds rolling in fast
Cos baby they ain’t gonna last…

For anyone that knows me well, you will know that I was not one of those brides who fussed about every last detail. I was more worried about the people interacting than ‘my colours’ or the flowers. The one thing that I did obsess about was the photos. I wanted amazing photos. Not family all line up like ducks in a row, but more of a candid capturing the essence fo the day and the happiness between us type pictures.

From the moment I entered the photographer’s sstore I knew that there were going to be issues. The photos looked like poses from the 80s, but I figured it must have been what the people wanted because they looked well impressed with what was going on. I raised my fears to my Dad’s secretary who was with me and she gave me a nervous gigle and said it was too late. She was right, so I ignored it until the wedding day.

He was late. He took the photos in the room in front of a cheesey curtain. He barely took any shots so if my eyes are open in one, they are closed in the next when the other person with me actually opened theirs. There is red eye galore and shots that are even crooked.

I was stunned when we got the cd with the photos. Stunned. Part of me was excited for getting to relive the day, but as people were happily commenting “oh remember this? that was great”, tiny pieces of me were dying inside. The itsy bitsy part of me that wanted to be able to remember my wedding as a great day. And after all of the crap that went wrong, all of my hopes for something to go right were hanging on those photos.

As the word spread people offered me copies of their photos. They offered to help me build a decent collection. Unfortunatley most of them had not viewed their own photos and sent them in one after the other with arms blocking the shot, red eye, over exposures, blurs, you name it. Everything other than that one photo that captured how we felt about each other and the day.

I will admit that I had given up hope. I cried myself to sleep night after night knowing I would never be able to recapture those moments. when people ask to see photos I will have to insist they were not taken on the set of Miami Vice. I will have to reassure them that we were indeed happy. That my mother’s side of the family WAS there (as the photographer only took pictures of the groom’s family and my father’s).

But… for me, there is a bright light on the horizon. We have booked an appointment with a photographer to take some shots of us in our wedding gear. Shots that can reflect how we feel and how we felt. Ones that can help us remember the good times and the bad times, and the fact that like everything else, even our wedding couldn’t go smoothly.

Let’s just hope I sstill fit in the dress!