I was supposed to start a pregnancy blog but...

I am now 38 weeks pregnant and its a bit too late. So now instead i'm starting a end of pregnancy/baby's first year blog instead.

Being the compulsive person i am, i am trying to get everything ready and finalised in advance. (i have three weeks left till my due date!) Working with a husband like mine on achieving that goal is a bit of an impossibility! He's the type of person who leaves things till the last minute which in my case just increases my stress levels.

Why is it hard for men to understand that there is more to having a baby than popping the cute thing out of your privates! Yes women have been doing it since the beginning of time but we are at an age where we have conveniences and all sorts of things to make it easier for us women and we - well most of us anyway - would like to get all the preparations out of the way now so we can focus on all the other difficulties that come when the baby comes - breast feeding, sleepless nights, child development, plus all the changes occurring in our bodies afterwards that we need to deal with. Imagine having stitches for one thing! But these things men don't know and don't want to know about. I for one would really not want to go around looking for things we still need while i'm trying to get baby into a routine!

Anyway, that is my whinge for the day. Overall though my husband is being quite good. While he might need a massive push and a bit of arguing to get him to understand that some things are definitely needed, he has driven me around to all the stores without complaint. Not once. He tries to take care of me as much as he knows how and admittedly at one stage was giving me back massages every night when my back was in a bad state and while there have been complaints there, he never stopped giving them to me. :)

The other big issue i'm having is baby names! i never thought it would be this difficult to name your baby. It is one of the hardest things. I used to write stories all the time and coming up with the names was one of my favourite parts. But trying to come up with a name for an actual person whom you know nothing about and don't know how they will look is very hard! We have decided to pick a shortlist then wait to meet the baby before we pick one for sure.

You are also probably wondering if we actually know the gender of the baby. Well we do but we're not telling :)

i'll stop now but i'll be back! 

fear

What do you do when fear dictates your life? When your mind creates dreams and goals that are never pursued and never come to fruition. When the things you do try to achieve fall around you like broken shards of glass and with time and constant failure you give up. Give up and crawl to that comfortable corner of your life where nothing happens. Where your life is meaningless and apart from being close to the one you love, you have nothing to share with them or yourself.
How do you find the way out of that when fear continues to dictate your life and there is no breaking free?
Where loneliness is your friend and failure your constant companion.

What do you do?

Jasmin

What a day!
I have been trying to motivate myself to go out and sort out that damn garden of mine for some time, but i have been extremely unsuccessful. That is until my husband left me to watch tv and went in to do some computer stuff. I didn't want to sit all day in front of the box and zone out like i do a lot of the times during the week. So instead, i finished my show (it was the old Charlie's angels - come on!) and then went out with my garden gloves, the large trimmer and proceeded to hack away at a giant orchid plant that never seemed to want to flower. I think it was dying really. I chopped off all the leaves and then called the husband to help me figure out how to remove the plant from the pot. What an adventure! There was barely any soil in the pot by the time we'd managed to remove the thing. I got some very good arm exercise trying to cut into the roots! (In the hot sun mind you)
ANyway, exhilarated by our well earned success at removing this plant we decided to tackle the jasmine bushes at the front of the house. To explain. We have three biiig jasmine bushes running down the side of the driveway on the fence. Our poor neighbours have the overgrown bushes peeking cheekily onto their side and they have some beautiful hydrangeas in their front garden that i really wouldn't like to see our jasmine bushes strangle (as they did to our lemon tree in the backyard!) Each of the big bushes had sprouted sisters and brothers next to them so that the entire length of the driveway was filled with these plants.
Now don't get me wrong. I don't like killing plants. I seriously wanted to pull one of the jasmine bushes out and plant t in a pot and then just regularly trim it. I love the smell of jasmine in spring. But it didn't work out and we had to kill one of the plants and one of its sisters or brothers/..not sure what the gender would be hehehe.
The point was, we filled up our garden bin to the top and i just wanted to keep going. I felt amazing! So exhilarated and excited and motivated. I felt like i'd just exercised and my serotonin levels were high. I felt so happy. I guess in a way it was exercise, considering we were pulling and pushing some of the time (especially with the orchid) but it felt like something else. I loved the smell of the earth and the being in control. I love the feeling of erasing mess and sorting things out and thats really what we were doing. Removing jasmine bushes that were literally spreading far and wide and latching onto any nearby plant to ensure its survival. A parasite taking over other plants and strangling it of its space and nutrients. It was so hard to even find the main root of the bush since my husband kept finding many under one bush!
In any case, I am certainly looking forward to my next gardening session. I can't wait for our garden bin to be emptied! :)

Anger

I don't think i ever used to be an angry person when i was younger. I might have been easily irritated at times, but otherwise i remember friends telling me that i was too cool (not in the sense of being cool and funky - but more in the sense of being calm and not bothered). Yet the past few years i have found myself becoming a crazy, angry person. I'm controlled in front of strangers and in public, but insane with those close to me.

I guess firstly i would like to sincerely apologize to everyone close to my heart for all those times i have just lost it and went crazy angry. It was never out of disrespect or lack of love or consideration. It was just that something inside me just clicks every time something bothers me or if i get really upset or if i get hurt. It is impossible for me to hold it in because i begin to deteriorate inside - it eats at me in such a destructive way that in the end it just comes out anyway.

I've been told i have to have control but there is no capacity for control. I know a lot of people will not understand this but even i don't fully understand it. Sometimes i feel so blinded by this rage and all i want to do is grab things and throw it or i just want to scream and sometimes when its someone who has hurt me, i just want to hurt them back. I can't walk away from the problem because i hate things being left unresolved. I can't hold it in because it eats at me inside. The thing is i need to understand why i have this rage in the first place and maybe that will help me to control it. So anyone with suggestions as to how i can figure this out. Please help.

I don't know where this rage comes from and i have no idea how it developed. I don't understand it and i have no idea how to deal with it, control it or heal it. I always end up hurting those around me who i love so much and yet they forgive me and continue to love me, possibly with a little more caution or fear when dealing with me. I wish it wasn't this way. Although i am constantly grateful for this continual love and support.

I don't want to end up being the angry bitter old woman like the ones we see on tv. I want to be the kind fun cute old woman who bakes and plays games with her grandchildren.

It will be a continual struggle to try and figure out why i have become so angry.

Things we take for granted

Now this is a pretty broad topic but the main thing i was thinking of when i wrote this title was air conditioning. I grew up in a country where air conditioning was a necessity. There was not a single building that was not air conditioned whether it was central, ducted or units. In a desert climate where temperatures rise to 48 degrees celcius in the summer, A/C was a must. Especially when winter took up a third of the year with the rest of the year being a warm - hot summer. A/C was switched on 2/3 of the year where i grew up. It was only when i moved to a different climate where winters were cold, autumns were cool and summers were hot (but not as hot as the UAE) and where A/C was a luxury and thus not available everywhere, that i realised how much i had taken air conditioners for granted. With the climate changing drastically around the world, i've found that temperatures are rising higher and higher in summer over here. A city where A/C was a luxury, i believe, is slowly turning into a city that will need A/C as a necessity in a few years time.

We just moved into our newly purchased home and i am trying hard to be environmentally friendly. Its very hard! I try to save water as much as possible and i try to recycle and we deliberately put insulation in our roof cavity to regulate the temperature inside the house. Recently we had temperatures of 35 degrees celcius which by desert standards is not bad. Thanks to the insulation, the house remained cool-ish inside, but still hot and stuffy, even with all the windows open! Now we are looking at ducted air conditioning. I know i know, the energy we waste etc etc. the electricity bills... but i see no other way out. Fans are useless in the heat considering it circulates hot air around the house. There was recently an incident with portable a/c units where it blew a circuit and burnt the house down. So that was not an option (and in any case, we have old wndows that wouldn't work with the portables) We had a split unit but that also fizzled out (on the hottest day ever - see next paragraph)

Before we got the insulation, we had the hottest day ever at 41 degrees celcius (That was teh day our existing split unit fizzled out). What a nightmare. I was so desperate for some coolness, that apart from having cold showers to cool me down at regular intervals (at night by the way not even during the day) i resorted to melting ice on my bed so i could lie down on cool sheets. Now if thats not desperate i don't know what is. At least during the day i could have gone to an air conditioned mall and spent the day at a cafe drinking iced chocolates and fruit juices. With all the windows wide open and the air so still, you would not believe my joy when i was woken up in the middle of the night with gale force winds banging our blinds on the window sill. It was heavenly. I stood in front of the window and let the air wash over me. What a relief.

So i survived a 41 degree day without A/C or insulation but to be honest, i do not EVER want to do that again. EVER. EVER. EVER!

So all you people out there with A/C. Appreciate it. Bigtime!

My first blog - ever!

Congratulations to me. I have finally taken a big step and started my own blog. I will now be exposing my inner thoughts, feelings and opinions to whoever will be reading. (My sister will probably be the first) I must say it was my sister's encouragement and inspirational writing that encouraged me to do this. So thanks sis. That and the fact that its good practice for writing.

I am hoping to be an author and the first step is to practice, practice, practice.To actually declare that to the world without knowing if you're actually any good at writing in the first place - what do i think i'm doing?! It is extremely difficult to open up and just expose yourself to the world. Ok maybe not difficult to write it down, but knowing that other people will read this is probably making me more cautious with how or what i write. I'm hoping with practice that will change. For now, please endure the formal technique with which i am writing.

I've also got a million things swarming through my brain. So much, that my writing feels unstructured to me and probably reads pretty badly. But thats ok. This is my first ever blog and i have no specific topic to talk about but the fact that it is my first blog. Oh well. More will come. I have now moved into unchartered territory for me and the world is now my oyster. Till next time...