Dear God,

I would like to thank you for the creation of the Paddling Pool. It’s a lifesaver.

🙂 Xoxo Me 

Seriously. Paddling pools were created for people like me who either don’t have the space or the money to drop an in-ground pool in. Ah… but someone out there had the brains to think of folks like us. Especially the use of paddling pools in the hot Summer months for pregnant women.

So other than beaching myself in a paddling pool, this is what I’m thinking about at the moment:

• I am extremely grateful to a friend of mine who read through my manuscript in record time and gave me oodles of feedback. It was awesome. Now I just need to make a plan of when comes first…. and what I can live without doing. The feedback was great, and extremely constructive. Everything that she suggested potentially strengthened the whole storyline. Brilliant. I’m still waiting for more feedback to come in before I make any final decisions on what needs to happen. At this stage though… I’m rather happy with how it’s going, and I’m really really looking forward to getting this all completely wrapped up.
• I was to plan. I am feeling the urge to plan everything at the moment, from the amount of writing stuff I need to do over the next two months, to the things that need to happen in my house, to what I need to accomplish over the Christmas period this year. (And I would like it noted that I am SO not ready for Christmas, but damn do I need the break!) I’m guessing that all this planning stuff is in preparation of what I need to complete before Bumpkin arrives into the world in February, and completing commitments that I have already made. John Lennon once said that ‘life passes you by when you are busy making other plans’. Well – I don’t plan on planning for too long… I plan on spending more time executing the plan.

  

  Self portrait 🙂

• I’m at the nesting stage where my Mum would probably call me a ‘Broody Hen’. It’s funny you know… I have never felt this way about my house before. I have always been rather relaxed on how it looks (to a point) and have never really ‘stressed’ out over it before. But now I have the most insane urges to sort through everything, and rearrange everything room by room, and heaven forbid, if anyone gets in the way or in the middle of it. (I bite.Sometimes not as hard as I really want to, but I still bite.) Stuff is happening in my house that has needed to happen for ages, but we just haven’t ‘got around to it’. Now it’s all happening, and it’s great. I just need to make sure people stay well and truly out of my way so they don’t get offended by my natural maternal instincts.  This is just the way that women and all female animals for millenia have prepared for motherhood. “The act of nesting puts you in control and gives a sense of accomplishment toward birth.” The bizarre thing is… I instinctively know that if I cannot nest properly at home, or if I feel threatened… then I know that I need to go somewhere else where I can nest properly. ‘Broody hen syndrome’, I’m telling you. (Insane!!)  
• Speaking of my Mum… it’s her birthday today, and I really wish that I could be there with her having brunch and hanging out all day. However… life just didn’t deal me the winning lotto numbers in the weekend, so it couldn’t happen.

There are many more things that I could write about today, but I fear that I would probably just be rambling. So, for the meantime, I’ll leave you with a little chicken to fawn over. Have a great week!