Houseless

Posted on 06/06/2011 by

At the start of the year (as I’ve blogged before) we were in the sticky situation of owning 2 houses, but living in neither. They were the properties that Jane and I owned before we married, but been unable to sell due to the crappy housing market.

So we rented them both out and used the money we were making to rent a place big enough for our new little family. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but over the months we realised we were effectively stuck: reliant on the money we were making on the renting and never able to afford to buy a family house for ourselves.

So early this year we grasped the nettle and put both our places back on the market. Incredibly, almost miraculously, both our properties sold within days of being available. It took a while for all the necessary legal stuff to happen, but a couple of weeks ago Jane’s sale went through and we were finally houseless.

This is a great weight off my mind: it means no sudden out-of-the-blue demands for us (as landlords) to fix expensive faults in 2 properties. Getting a bill for a £600 heater you’re never even going to use can take the shine off Christmas a little.

So we’re houseless, but not homeless. We’re still living in rented accommodation, trying to stop Tom from destroying the place. The builders seem to be throwing up the house we’re moving into in next to no time. Unfortunately their legal people aren’t as nippy, they still haven’t sent our solicitor a contract yet.

But all things being well we should be moved in by the end of August. Hopefully before the little bundle of joy turns up, but that’s all a bit up in the air at the moment.

It does mean we can start properly planning though. The other day we met with the sales agent for the house and chose things like carpets and kitchen designs, we’re finally going to get that dishwasher that Jane’s mum promised us as a wedding present!

Speaking of kitchen stuff, the Fairy Hobmother from Appliances Online visited me and promised a £25 Amazon voucher if I gave them a plug. So consider them shamelessly plugged!

And speaking of appliances, our little Washing Machine Inspector turned two yesterday, and Jane wrote a really nice blog post about him.

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Summer Blizzard

Posted on 31/05/2011 by

It’s snowing outside. It has been, on and off, for weeks now. A slowly wafting blizzard of fluff.

Possibly due to the spring drought (the worst in this region for 100 years, I hear) the dandelions seem to be having a bumper year.

The lawn is carpeted in fluff. Great clumps are accumulating in still corners. Tom finds it fascinating.

I made a little video, but it’s quite hard to capture how strange it looks.

Summer Blizzard from Simon on Vimeo.

UPDATE: I’ve been reliably informed it’s not dandelions but poplar trees that are generating all the fluff!

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Harold Camping’s Judgement Day Progress Bar

Posted on 24/05/2011 by

Activating Rapture

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Tiny Dancer

Posted on 21/05/2011 by

Every week that passes gives the surviving twin a better chance, so much so that (fingers crossed, touch wood, etc.) we’re now on track for a relatively normal pregnancy. I don’t even really think of the baby as one of twins any more, it’s just The Baby. We can stop worrying about it’s future and start worrying about all the other things. The normal things. The things you always worry about. This is good.

There was one last large-ish worry left over from the complications with the acardiac twin; after we had the operation to remove the blood supply from the parasite twin, it was recommended that we get an MRI done on the live twin to check that there hadn’t been any brain damage caused by the operation.

It was a small likelihood, but it still played on our minds, especially as we had to wait several weeks for the scan, which could only be done at a hospital in Sheffield that specialises in the more sensitive scans required to capture images of a baby’s brain while it’s still in the womb.

It was a bit of a trek up to Sheffield, but the MRI was a relatively untaxing affair, and the results were available in no time at all. They confirmed what we’d desperately hoped: no visible brain damage.

It wasn’t until we’d got that news that we really realised how much it had been weighing on our minds, and the minds of parents and family.

The consultant conducting the scan was amazingly helpful and informative, he even emailed us some of the scans he’d taken, which I’d like to share.

MRI scan

In this first picture you can see the baby’s brain. It’s not yet begun to develop “folds”, but the consultant could see small wrinkles beginning to appear.

MRI scan

Different materials show as different shades. Liquids like the liquid in the eyeball shown as white, and harder materials like the lens of the eye show as black, hence the Simpsons-esque appearance of the eye in this pic!

MRI scan

This scan from a different angle clearly shows the placenta. At the bottom of the image, pressed against the baby’s back, you can see what remains of the failed twin, now slowly fading and being re-absorbed.

Amazingly, the MRI didn’t just take stills. Here’s a short video of our tiny baby, dancing in the womb.

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From the local paper…

Posted on 03/05/2011 by

20110503-015348.jpg

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A guide to the NHS for foreigners

Posted on 18/04/2011 by

Ask any Daily Express reader and he’ll tell you that not enough foreigners are streaming across the Channel to use our wondrous free National Health Service. But it is any wonder? The idiosyncrasies of the English language must act as a formidable barrier to non-British types wanting some NHS-style free drugs and limb replacement.

So, with those people in mind, I present a simple 6-point guide to the entire British health system, with particular emphasis on our entirely logical native language:

  1. Doctors work in surgeries, but they don’t do surgery.
  2. Surgeons do surgery, but they’re not called doctors.
  3. Surgeons work in theatres, but they’re not actors.
  4. Actors also work in theatres, but they’re neither doctors nor surgeons.
  5. The most famous doctor in Britain is THE Doctor, who is an actor, but he doesn’t work in a theatre.
  6. The Doctor is not an actual doctor.

Simple!

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sʇɐq

Posted on 14/04/2011 by

I couldn’t work out why Tom was persistently trying to turn this book in my hands as I was reading it to him.

And then I realised, he was trying to stop me reading it upside down.

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I need to explain to him about bats.

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