Tall Pipi

Taking a leaf out of Jaksta's book and doing a bullet point.

It's been a while...always is when I am working. Holidays are great.

• I am sick at the moment - laryngitis and croup. No talking allowed for 2 - 3 days. It has really brought to my attention how important being able to communicate is. A couple of interesting observations: When I lost my voice to a whisper, people would reply by whispering back. That was funny. Now with no voice, I am using pen and paper. I write notes to DH and I have to remind him that he can talk back instead of writing back - which is what he goes to do. Weird. I guess that we connect through speech and one way to connect is to reply in kind.

• I was going to do a month of being grateful. I was going to do this in June. Hmmm. Might start in July now. Of course, I am grateful every day, but I just mean actually blogging every day about it.

• Croup - just a note on that. It is awful and excruciatingly painful and scary. If you are a mum and you've never had croup and your kids get croup, give them lots of cuddles and love. It is truly frightening. The first night that I had gotten really bad, I was scared to go to sleep in case I stopped breathing. It feels like you have something stuck in your throat that you can't cough up. You don't want to cough because it jolly well hurts, and you can't get enough breath to do a decent cough anyway. Poor kiddies. I really don't wish this on anyone, let alone kiddies.

• I bought a new camera - eeeeeeee! I have been looking for months and months, inspired by all the lovely bloggers at the Around the Table bloggers conference. All that click, click, clicking...I was in awe. It is such an art to take a really good photo. I have always loved and appreciated other people's shots and I have taken a few good ones in the past on my smartphone, so now I think it's time to up the ante. Sadly, since I bought the camera, it has been raining. Sigh. And for some reason, I am too scared to use it in case I get really dumb, nothing shots and start to feel despondent. Perfectionist much?

• DH has had a change of heart and has asked me to take down the posts about Aspergers and our marriage. That's okay. He can change his mind. In a way, it is really his material. I am still going to do some posts on coping with Aspergers in a marriage but from a less personal point of view - more practical. I will still get DH to approve these before posting though. I haven't been posting at all recently about anything, let alone that. But we have been a bit on the dark side of Aspergers and marriage due to other stresses such as exams and infertility, so, 'nuf said.

• I have been to a specialist, I have had some surgery (day only), and there are things happening, things are moving along. Boxes are being ticked off. We are fairly normal it would seem, except for my low progesterone in the second half of my cycle, which can be dealt with. Not sure what to feel about that. It is good to be normal but I am still left with questions that don't have answers. At the same time, I wish I was innocent and didn't know so much about fertility, infertility, miscarriage, ovulation, etc, etc. I have been shoved into a world I never wanted to be in. But who does?

• I am sewing and loving it. I am making some beautiful cushion covers for a special friend and her gorgeous girls. It is lovely to be taking something I learned and repeat it with the knowledge I have gleaned from the first time. It is so much easier this time round, and the satisfaction is greater. I will share when I am done and they are in their new home.

To finish, here's a couple of pics from my new camera - just trying out that 'shallow depth of field' from inside while it rains on and on and on outside.