Hurray for sensible Grooms

This weekend we attended the fantastic marriage and celebration of G&M. (My arms and shoulders are in agony from an over enthusiastic orcadian strip the willow!)

I wanted to share a moment that practically had me out of my seat cheering. During G's (the groom) speech he said - (I'm paraphrasing here)...

.....they say that your wedding day is supposed to be the happiest day of your life, and there is no denying I'm having a great time but I have to admit I'm looking forward to tomorrow when
a) I'm still married to my beautiful wife
b) We don't have a wedding to plan, order of services to print, bands to pay, kilts to hire etc etc.
c) We can relax and get on with living our lives together
I truly hope that we'll have plenty more happiest days to come in the future.......

And O did really well with his speech I was so proud

Pictures

My blog has been very text heavy so I thought I'd add some pictures

The Cat

The Owl

O's Great Aunt's ring which we are going to have remodelled

Our beach, where O proposed

This weekend

O is acting as best man for our friends G&M.

He is quite a shy boy and so isn't looking forward to giving his speech, I hate it when he is nervous because I get nervous too. However when he read me his speech I knew that he was going to be fine, this part in particular;

"G had to choose someone to complete these duties and I’m sure he would have loved to have chosen his best friend, unfortunately M already has an important role in todays proceedings so here I am."

Sometimes he amazes me.

Oh and he made me swoon when he tried on his kilt last night!

We're not having a Wedding

We're creating a marriage.

There have been lots of brilliant posts about not concentrating on one day, when you are creating a bond that will last the rest of your lives. I read them wanting to shout "hurray".

I don't particularly want a wedding, we've had a couple of friends get married with only their parents in attendance and it is sooo tempting. However I couldn't get married without my sisters and O’s brother and sister there and by the time all our family are there then what is a few friends for good measure and then the ball is rolling and it seems to get bigger and bigger.

Every time O and I talk about the wedding we get stressed and irritable, but when we talk about being married and our future we agree, smile and giggle.

So the word Wedding is banned from our house, we will have a marriage ceremony and hopefully a kick-ass party and then live happily ever after (or some other cheesy cliché).

Anonymity

So I’m struggling with my identity – ha-ha no change there I’ve been struggling with that since I was about 13.
But really what should I reveal or not reveal via my blog. I haven’t told anyone about the blog as I’m worried that they will find it strange and will laugh at me (seriously in my late 20’s and still worried what other people think – grow a pair girl, sorry inner dialogue not really helping with the identity crisis).
But when people comment (thank you Peonies* and Anna*) it feels rude not to sign off with my name or at least some sign off rather than My Spare Thoughts – perhaps I should have come up with a better name or perhaps I need an alias.
Anyway for now while I deal with my inner turmoil I’m just going to be R.

*updated links to these brilliant blogs please visit them and enjoy the loveliness

Blogs

I may have mentioned before that I have no self control, I have become obsessed with blogs - about weddings, marriage, babies, design you name it I'll read it.

I have also discovered Google Reader through a very wise wedding blogger and if I didn't now have so many on my reader I might be able to find her again and give her proper acknowledgement.

When I began my obsession I used to read the blogs from the beginning to try and catch up with all the details so I wasn't starting the story half way through, but I've discovered that this is actually going to drive me insane. There are simply not enough hours in the day to read all the lovely posts that are out there in blog land. Over time perhaps I will reduce my reading list but for now I'm trying to absorb it all - my brain may explode.

The Owl and The Pussy Cat

Went to sea.......

Well not exactly as they are cats and they don't like water.

We have 2 cats, 1 that looks very much like an owl because of her huge big eyes and face shape. The other looks like well, a cat, but she is the Peter Pan of cats as she is tiny and she'll never get any bigger.

This is a picture of the cat I'll need to dig out a picture of the owl.

Both our cats are from rescue centres, we got them separately having spent months trying to find the right one we ended up with 2 by mistake. The owl is incredibly timid she can not be picked up and will allow you to stroke her for seconds at a time. As she is a rescue cat I truly hope that her timidity is result of being an independent stray for such a long time and not because she was mistreated but we will never know. The cat is much more sedate, she will let you do anything to her and has yet to complain, she just doesn't understand sitting on your knee and being petted, if we want a cuddle we have to go to her.

Our cats love each other, they tolerate us to a certain extent, but the cat love for each other runneth over! To the extent that you walk into the spare room (where they sleep) and you will occasionally find them spooning. No seriously.

They also enjoy regular mini-breaks together they will often disappear for 3 or 4 days together and then return within minutes of each other as if nothing happened.

When they first started disappearing together they went for a long break of 3 weeks, we were quite worried and contacted the local vets and our neighbours in case they had become locked in a shed. Everyone gave us strange looks when we informed them that we'd lost 2 cats - that is just careless surely?

A lovely lady saw our flier and phoned me to say her husband was back from walking the dog and thought he had spotted them on the river bank (presumably hiding their pea green boat) near our house. How we got them back is a long story including a dog, O being punched in the face, an animal trap, a cold few hours in a car and me looking out of the window in amazement.

We've learnt to worry less about their little holidays, in fact the only time I do start to worry is when one disappears without the other, I figure if they are together then they'll look after each other.

#1, #2 & #3 (Me)

I'm the youngest in my family and have the joy of having two older sisters, my Dad has numbered us according to birth order, you'll hear him handing the phone to my Mum - "it's #3";

#1 is 13 and a bit years older than me and she left home when she was 16 (to spend a year in the USA). We have never lived together (when I was aware) and spent a lot of time not really getting on, there was of course sisterly love but she lived all her life experiences so much in advance of me we never really connected (she got married when I was 13 and had my wonderful nephew when I was 15 and then my niece 18 months after that). She also spent 10 years of her life as an only child so you can kind of understand her not being over the moon to have 2 little brats breaking up her home. Over time we are slowly reconnecting and the gap between us is thankfully shrinking. We are finally becoming sisters.

#2 is 3 and a half years older than me - however she also left home when she was 16 (spent a year in Holland)

Let me just clarify my parents are the most amazing people and they were fully supportive of my sisters leaving home so young. In fact they both volunteered for the organisation which set up exchange schemes for young people to experience another country for a year - we used to get new 16 year olds living with us all the time.

So #2 and I have had our fair share of sisterly battles - we have stolen each others make up and clothes and fought like cat and dog. Having come through that time relatively unscathed we are much closer. Our life paths seem also to be practically in line, it's good to have someone to voice your concerns to that the world is a crazy crazy place.

We have asked #1 & #2 to be my bridesmaids, however as they are both older than me and glamorous independent women the word bridesmaid didn't seem appropriate so from now on I'm going to call them my Best Women.

p.s. visit Project Subrosa who also numbers her siblings but there are 6 of them!

Budget airlines suck!

HUGE BIG FAT SWEARY WORDS!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’ve just nearly had a frigging heart attack.

My sisters and I try to have a holiday once a year just the three of us. I love these holidays we barely talk to each other we sit in the sun and read trashy crime novels but we bond silently!

So this morning my sister asked me to check how much my flights had cost so we can share the cost of the holiday equally (they live in London so are on a different flight). So I go onto my emails to look at my flight confirmation. "Budget airline"* cretins that they are sent an email last week to reconfirm the booking I didn’t really think anything of it as I get an email of rubbish from them telling me about the latest deal at least twice a week. However on opening this one up I noticed (today!) that I’m flying Sept 22nd to return Sept 27th now an air raid siren started going off in my head. I’m fairly sure we are going on holiday on Wednesday and that’s the 23rd September. So I double checked the original booking email that I have and there it is in black and white 23rd – 27th. So phoned customer service (10p/min) trying to keep calm to be told that within all that spam that they sent me they actually sent me an email telling me that they've stopped flying out of Edinburgh on Wednesdays and now only fly Tuesday or Thursday!

Would I like to cancel my holiday! NOOOOO I want to fly on the day that I had booked to fly on, they sent me so many emails among which they changed the timing of my flight 3 times, they just snuck in there that they’d actually changed the DAY of the flight.

Well after all that drama I’m now flying out of Glasgow airport at the same time as the Edinburgh flight! Still need to persuade O to take me to the airport for a 6am flight?!

Apologies for the excessive use of exclamation marks I've only just stopped my heart racing.

Baby Shower

I threw a baby shower for one of my best friends on Sunday. She is the first of my friends to have children and is due in 19 days!! It is scary to think that we are moving into this grown up world of responsibility still not sure that we look after ourselves very well let alone another human being. But she so so wanted to be a Mum we were thrilled for her when she got pregnant, unfortunately she has had a terrible pregnancy so I think bubs might be waiting a while for a brother/sister.

Baby showers are a new thing to the UK, so it was really just an excuse to get all her friends together before little bubs arrives. We had far too much food but a good time was had by all. In future will hold the baby shower more than 19 days before the baby is due as Mum to be was shattered by the end of it all.