Greetings from Narnia

Well hello!

I make no excuses! I'm a shit blogger, and a shit blogger with a wedding to plan. That is my only excuse... I'm shit... and I probably will be in the future too. I'm sat here alone at home, being made a golf widow for the weekend, so I thought that it was about time I updated all you lovey folks (if anyone's still out there!?!)

Since starting planning this wedding I seem to have entered a different world. A world where £1500 is an "average" price to pay for a dress you 'll wear for a few hours, a world where you scrupulously analyse the lyrics of your favourite songs, not enjoying the melody as you once used to, but where you're assessing their suitability as a first dance song! Man this is madness! I still keep pulling the "Let's elope!" card but Dr D's having none of it at all. He's bought his new kilt and he wants to show it off.

So where are we... well apart being from in a parallel universe so far we've manged to:

- find a dress! God that was an ordeal! I thought that the dress shopping was supposed to be the fun part? I've be prodded and pinned and hoicked into all manner of nice and monstrous dresses by women ranging from the manically drugged, to really nice to lily savage in a wedding shop... I went for a dress from the manically drugged woman in case you're interested.
- we booked a venue - lovely wee place in the Lake District
- got a date! March next year, A year after Dr D proposed!
- a good and fairly cheap photographer

And I've enlisted the help of friends and bloggers alike to do many of the other important details. And I've managed to lose half a stone to boot.... though that might have been offset by the mammoth Chinese I've just had....

I am reading others blogs, and will post when I can. But I make no promises.... I'm shit x

Going to the chapel and we're....

GONNA GET MAARRRIED!!!

How exciting is that?! Dr D and I are actually going to get married! I'm so happy I can barely contain myself.

I had a dream last night that DietGirl came to work and told me off for being a bad blogger and not telling you guys sooner... so here I am, regalling the tale.

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The Proposal Tale


After all the clues of last week, by Friday I'd just about worked out that it might be Paris (though Smidge threw me off with suggestions that it might be Copenhagen zoo). We travelled down to London on the Saturday morning and Dr D said when we arrived that he'd booked us in for lunch at the St. Prancras Grand. It served the most gorgeous fish you've ever tasted too, it was absolutely delicious. After lunch we went across to the Champagne Bar, underneath the magnificent ceiling of the station. (see below).

When we were seated with a glass of champagne he produced a beautiful ring from his pocket and right there asked me if I'd marry him! I was so shocked and dazzled that I didn't really hear much other than the "marry me" part. But he assures me that he said more than that.

Of course I said Yes! I'd always thought that I'd cry when he proposed to me, but in reality I was so shocked that I didn't. I just kissed him and said "Of course I will".

After another glass of champagne, it was 1st class to Paris on the Euro Star, followed by a day of sightseeing, and an evening of dinner and show at the Moulin Rouge.

I've had the most amazing weekend of my life, and can honestly say that I'm so in love with Dr D right now.

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So now it's down to planning. Nurse B and Cupcake Queen are to be the bridesmaids. Lady Sutcliffe's on the case for hair, make up and dresses. I'll try not to let this turn in to a wedding blog over the next year, I'm sure I'll gather some entertaining stories when I've come down from the ceiling! :0)

Surprise Surprise

Another quick update. Things are still hectic at work, but I can contain myself no longer. I simply had to share this excitement with you.

It's my birthday next weekend, and Dr D's arranged a surprise mystery weekend away for us.  I have absolutely no idea where it is.  All I know is that I need my passport and a posh frock. The frocks sorted, after much frantic searching around the streets of Leeds.  Why is it that shops think the only time you need a posh frock is at Christmas or in Summer?  Idiots...  Oh, and then there's the horrible shapeless T-shirt style dresses that make you look like a sack of potatoes but with slightly less shape.  Have frock manufacturers failed to remember that women have waists?.... Grrr.

Anyway I found the perfect one in a wee shop called Rose & Co. If you're ever in Leeds I can't recommend this shop enough.  It's main shops in the lovely village of Haworth, of Bronte fame, it's filled to the gills with Ye Olde remedies, toiletries and various other vintage style lovelies.  Anywho, the one in Leeds sells the most gorgeous 50s style dresses too. Perfect if you've a bit (or a lot) of shape.  I settled on this darling purple satin number. Complete with rouching around the tummy to hide the bulging stomach, in case we go for a meal.

I enlisted the help of Lady Sutcliffe for advise on shoes and all things make up, and we descended on Superdrug armed with my credit card and instructions for her to "sort me out". She rose to the occasion and I now have a fully stocked make up bag.

 

As if this perfect excuse to shop for nice dresses wasn't exciting enough, Dr D's ramping up the tension by giving me a clue every day that I'm at work, right up until we go away.  He knows I'm having a crap time at work at the moment, so it's supposed to be a distraction. It seems to have taken on a life of it's own though.  With all my real life friends on the case trying to work out the clues, including their friends and their work colleagues.  My phone bills going to be huge the amount of people I have to text with the next clue.  I won't list them here, because if someone googles them all (as I have been doing every day), they'll be directed straight to my bog, which wouldn't really be good news :0)

 

If you want to be updated on the clues though, then feel free to email me and I'll let you in on the game (see right hand side bar for my email).

 

So, it's all very exciting, and I'll be sure to blog about it when I get back :0)

Phew! It's a Busy One

Well hello! I've not disappeared off the face of the Earth and I've been meaning to pop by the blog and thank everyone for your suggestions about the friend. Thank you!

The response was largely that I should tell her about herself. Which I kind of thought I'd do anyway. I would class her as a good friend so I thought I should gently point out to her that what she's doing might not be so healthy. Thing is she's in an ignoring me stage and wouldn't answer my phone calls etc all last week. So I left a message on Sunday telling her that I wasn't going to call again, was quite worried about her, and that she could call me. We'll have to see what happens on that one.

I haven't got much time to write a long post here. Work's suddenly got terribly busy and in all honestly I'm feeling mildly depressed at the moment and haven't really got the motivation to write a long post. My weights bothering me again, which is now securely in the overweight range, and creeping scarily close to the obese range. So I'm focusing on bringing that down but trying to keep a healthy mindset in the meantime. My job still sucks. Good friends are moving on too. To the deep "darn Sarth" which is great for them, but means I have one less allotment friend to play with; Dr D's still not heard about a job he's applying for, and so I don't even know which country I'm going to be in in the next year. It's all quite unsettling. I KNOW there are worse things going on, and more important things happening, but this is what's bothering me now, and making me quite down.

So I'm having a wee break, at least today anyway. Tomorrow might be a different story.

How To Be A Good Friend...

Before I begin, I should probably say that this has nothing to do with the drunken ranting on Saturday night. This is an entirely different dilemma. One which I could actually do with your advice on. It's about how to deal with a friend, and what a good friend would do in this situation.

I have a friend, Finance Gal. Finance Gal and I met at University when she'd just broken up with her financee. He left when he'd decided that the single life was more to his liking. All the time I've known her, Finance Gal has swung from one long term relationship to another, all of which (from the outside at least) have looked just plain destructive. The last one put her down all the time, was possessive, jealous and very controlling. (And no, we're not talking about me here before you jump to conclusions!). In the end he cheated on her and she got out of the relationship. Throughout that relationship she cheated on him many times, which some might say she was right to.

Now, the current boyfriend, at least from the outside, takes advantage of her. Financially and emotionally. Nearly every time we meet she tells me tales about the things he's done; how unhappy she is with him; how she's planning on leaving him and how she's cheated on him (again numerous times). At one point she was even planning on moving to the other side of the world to be with a bloke she'd met on the Internet.

Here's the dilemma which I need advice on then.

I appreciate that I only get to hear one side of the story. And I realise that when you want a moan you moan to your mates, you don't necessarily go on about the good times. BUT when things are good with him, when they're getting on, and when he's "changing" she avoids me, ignores my calls etc - I can only assume that she's embarrassed by her earlier ranting.

So, What would a good friend do? I'm genuinely torn. Would a good friend sit it out, hold her hand, be there for her when / if it goes wrong, keep her mouth shut and let Finance Gal get on with it?

Or would a good friend tell her straight (again! but seriously) that she needs to respect herself a little more and get rid of him?

I'm genuinely torn about what to do here. The whole things complicated further by the fact that she's been advised by the docs to have children sooner rather than later because of a medical condition. She wants children, but that condition's worsening and that "later" is getting closer.

Growing Me Some Veg

I'm not going to bother explaining what the whole drunken ranking thing was, one day I might, but it's a pretty boring, tedious and pathetic story, so I'll save it until I'm really stuck for blogging material. Dr D and I, coupled with our neighbours had been to see Witches of Eastwick - The Musical with the sexy if slightly annoying Marti Pellow in. His character (played by Jack Nicolson in the film) became a cross between Ace Ventura and Hannibal Lecter, the results being quite disturbing, which coupled with other things led to me necking a bottle of wine after the show.

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Sunday was spent down at my allotment, which is now resembling more of an allotment rather than a random patch of wood. Back in October the first time Cupcake Queen and I went the weeds were 6ft tall, seriously. The allotments are set in a reclaimed bit of woodland. A group of hippies haphazardly "manage" the site. I say that in inverted commas because they're never actually there. It's a community garden and the whole idea is that the plots merge into the wood. Everything's organic and the plots are supposed to help attract wildlife. That's not easy to achieve though when the weeds are higher than you. What do you do? Just trim them a little so that the butterflies still come.

It's taken us since October just to cut the weeds down and create some (semi) viable plots. We even got to use a scythe which was pretty cool, pretending to be the grim reaper and all. Anyway, numerous backaches, barrow loads of weeds later we're left with something that resembles 4 patched of mud.

Sunday was spent in the spring sunshine giving the soil another good turn, laying some manure and planting our very first raspberry bushes. The flat resembles a nursery at the moment with every spare surface covered in seed pots. I'm sure there'll be more about the allotment in time, and the hippies in particular, but feel free to send me any gardening tips in the meantime :0)

Learning & Struggling

This is my first attempt at drunk blogging. Apologies in advance for the spelling. I checked my feedburner first and found a woman from Minnesota had found my site by googling "struggling with my life 20 something woman". If that Minnesota person comes back, all I can say is talk to someone, anyone, please.

In other news, today I learned a little about true friends. True friends forgive you when you fuck up. When you say something stupid, and you hurt them, then they forgive you when you say sorry. They accept that apology, forgive you and move on. If they don't forgive, don't talk to you about where you went wrong, aren't willing to listen to your apologies, then they weren't your friend in the first place.