Slightly stale, but a great treat – it’s not an urban myth after all!

Now I have all these questions though – are they made here? Are they made in Canada or US and shipped here? Why isn’t there any info on the Tim Hortons corporate site? And is Erin Rodaway the master mind behind this, thinking of her friends in the UK?!

Anyway, temporary madness for Canadian baked goods over, back to packing. Or rather 5 minutes of packing and then 55 minutes of recovery from packing in front of the telly.

Ohmygod. ETA of half a dozen donuts and 20 timbits – 1 hour and 30 minutes. Mark deserves an award for this. I am going to have to actually be nice to him for once!!!
AND he included at least one apple fritter! And chocolate glazed timbits! Hurray!!!

Only expats will understand my joy. I wouldn’t give two tosses about getting a donut if I was at home (now, a double double is a different story…).

Damn, I wish I had sent the camera with him. Would have been so excited to see the display. Like when I found a Coffee Time in Athens and took photos of donuts. Can’t wait for him to get here. He actually didn’t have enough money on him to get a whole dozen donuts – I am afraid to see the receipt now. We may have to remortgage (oh wait, we don’t have one anymore!).

It’s apparently going to be 21 degrees today – nice and sunny right now, anyway. I’m at home today (called in sick as my hips are bugging me and I didn’t sleep much last night) so it’s giving me a chance to put some laundry out on the line and do a few things around the house. Except not too much or I will injure myself.

I’ve been packing mostly breakables up but it’s getting to be a bit difficult to do physical things so Mark is going to have to do most of the moving house this weekend – with some help from his mum tomorrow and his dad on Saturday and Sunday. It’s very bizarre that we are leaving here this weekend. Mostly because practically nothing is packed and I have no idea how we are going to be out of here on Sunday! (The closure date on the house sale is actually not until the 4th November but we took the rental property early so that we had more than 1 day to move everything)

Actually I’m about to have a blogging identity crisis – Emma is no longer going to be in London, except for 5 more weeks of working during the day. Do I have to change the blog name to Emma In the Middle Of Nowhere, UK (a.k.a. Dagnall, Buckinghamshire)? I don’t even know what the place is like – I’ve been once to see the rental property and I didn’t actually think at the time that we were going to take it. I think it doesn’t even have a corner shop. Fun times!

Mark actually has a job interview today – he’s just left for deepest Kent, like a 2 hour drive away. Luckily he doesn’t actually want the job, even though it is for Bxxxxxxxxx. He’s just doing it to get some interviewing experience as he’s now in the ‘talent pool’ at work – meaning, you’re not sacked but there’s not a job for you in our giant Metronet restructure although we’ll pretend to look for one for you, since we’d really like you to take some money and leave.

If I am lucky he might buy me some Tim Hortons donuts on the way home. However I am not going to push my luck as it turns out that the service station on the M25 is in like the worst possible place, the farthest possible place away from us, and it’ll probably add 3 hours to his journey just to go there.

Speaking of wonderful baked goods, I made bran muffins again this week, except this time with raisins and dried cranberries. And they are good. Also, very very exciting, I had my first Eggnog Latte of the season at Starbucks yesterday. I felt compelled to go in yesterday afternoon, wasn’t sure why, but my intuition paid off. It’s lucky I only have a few weeks of work left or I would be bankrupting myself purchasing one of those every day.

Now this is a cool site: the Baby Name Wizard Name Voyager that looks at trends in names over time. Type in your own, it’s fun!

We have picked out names, did so ages ago, but we aren’t telling anyone what they are in advance. I think it’s just asking for opinions that may not necessarily be that helpful. I sometimes wonder about whether or not we are cursing it (depending on which way it comes out gender-wise) with a name it won’t like, but what can you do? I think the second kid (big IF there is a second kid here) will be easier to name. Seems less pressure that time.

I’ve ordered some wall sticker thingys in a woodland sort of them from Vertbaudet as I wasn’t sure about painting a rental property or decorating it at all, so I am looking forward to actually having something resembling a nursery effective next weekend. Right now we merely have a pile of baby-related junk (well, at least it matches the rest of the house).

I’ve just read some very exciting news on the blog Across the Pond!!

“Tim Hortons donuts and Timbits are now available in the UK and
Ireland! They are available for sale in self-serve kiosks. I know this
won’t make much sense to the Canadian readers of this blog but the
current sites are as follows:
UK:
—Road Chef, Clackett Lane, M25, UK (that’s the east-bound M25 Services)
—The Queen Medical Centre Hospital, Nottingham, England
—Metro Centre, Newcastle Upon Tyne”

(haven’t posted Irish ones as I won’t be getting there anytime soon…

I think it’s time for a road trip to check out the Road Chef (ew, like I would ever go there!), on the M25!!

Had a GP appointment last night where she asked me if I had been consciously not trying to gain any weight in this pregnancy. No, I replied, I also didn’t consciously try to continuously vomit for a number of weeks and have many food aversions. Everything else is good however – except that my blood pressure is actually getting lower, which they don’t care about at all in this country, but we think it’s what’s causing my funny whirling silver spots (a.k.a. visual disturbances). I felt quite light headed this afternoon at work too.

Anyway, I think I compensated for not eating much for the past 6.5 months this past weekend (just hasn’t had time to get to my thighs yet) as it was gastronomically successful comparatively speaking. I ate, and I ate a lot, and I ate a LOT of calories (but so did Mark – v. bad). I made roasted pumpkin & carrot & garlic soup and croque monsieurs for Saturday lunch, and a giant fishy pie for Saturday dinner. We had eggs benedict for Sunday brunch (me of the fully cooked egg kind alas) made by Mark and I did a pork tenderloin roast for dinner. Saturday’s meals contained about 50 pints of double cream. Bad bad bad. But at least I ate, and used up some stuff from the freezer which we are trying to empty. See main blog for why.

I was told on a number of occasions today that I really have a bump now. It was really just the shirt I was wearing as it’s no different from yesterday.

We actually have quite a few items purchased now. Behold the chosen stroller and car seat. Mark’s dad has the moses basket, I’ve got the bedding to go with it, and we have a number of bits of clothing. Including all importantly 2 different sizes of Roots Canada hoodies, from birth. There’s still, of course, about a hundred other items to get but at least I feel slightly more materially prepared.

And I have decided not to use this blog to discuss leaky boobs…

Back from Reading – actually about 7 miles into the countryside, stayed at Wokefield Park. Never would I expect in the cheap world of adult education to stay somewhere so nice for training! Had a bigger hotel room than on our spa break, for heaven’s sake.

I ate very well (food and hot drinks at every turn), slept very well (no snoring lumps or animals to bother me), and it was a good management training course. Don’t always get to meet that many people doing very similar jobs to myself, and the tutors were great too. Was great to share similar experiences and put some new things in the tool box. Dreading actually having to go in to work tomorrow. Catch up on 3 days of email and phone calls? Ugh.

Still a bit chesty but no hope of a GP appointment till Monday when it will be gone. Oh well.

Oh, and what happened while I was away? House is finally sold, deal is finally done and signed tomorrow, and we’re moving in 2 weeks, with closing date 3 weeks away. Oh great. An ALI inspection (like OFSTED) at work the same time as moving out of London to the country side (looks like the small town of Dagnall is where we’re headed). Fun fun!!

Turkey’s in the oven, it’s my mini-Thanksgiving dinner. Even more low key than usual this year as I don’t think I have it in me right now to make pumpkin pies from scratch. I’m all coughy and icky right now. Didn’t sleep. Feeling blah. Thankfully Mark is slicing and dicing veggies to go with.

I did, however, take a cue from Sainsburys and tried something new on Saturday – pumpkin chunks stir fried with pancetta, onion, garlic and pine nuts (my addition) then mixed with pasta. Pretty good actually. Now I only have about 2/3 of a giant pumpkin still to use up…soup’s next I think.

But I am off tomorrow for 2 days, on a residential training course to learn how to be a manager as someone thinks I’m not a very good one. Well, my team thinks I am doing pretty well so what can you do. Anyway, Managing Better is being run in Reading so I am off on a hotel adventure by myself till Thursday, would be looking forward to it more if I wasn’t sick. As I cough up a lung as I write this.

My whole family was in Ottawa this weekend for the festivities and it would have been nice to have been there. Maybe next year.

Okay Jamie, your wish is my command. I never did get around to getting any proper photos taken so I have just pointed the camera at myself with not very good results (so yes I have managed to fill the embarrassment quota). It’s a story of two halves – I should have photoshopped them or something:

So anyway, we are having a hell of a time getting a car seat (on its own or as part of a travel system) as nothing seems to be kosher with either the BMW back bucket seats, or the Mercedes estate’s slightly dipped back seats. We basically are going to go to Mothercare on Saturday morning and make them bring out every single brand of car seat they have until we find one that’s good. We have already attempted this at Babies R Us and Halfords and we are pretty sick of it! We thought that a Graco with its base would be okay but then it wasn’t. We liked a Mothercare brand travel system but then the car seat wasn’t going to work out at all. Basically, there’s not going to be choice based on styleishness of travel system – there is going to be whatever the hell we can get approved to fit in at least one of the cars!

I did something very silly last week. I accidentally won an auction for the world’s most expensive baby changing bag – the Fleurville Mothership (in the pink stripes). And, okay, ebay means I didn’t pay full price, I saved quite a bit of money, but I did pay WAY too much! It’s being shipped from the States. If this kid turns out to be a boy, it’s going to have some serious issues as now the sling and diaper bag are both extremely feminine in pattern. Oops. I don’t even have a good excuse. I’m likely not spending much time in London after the birth or anywhere interesting at all with our likely move to the country side so why do I even need such a nice bag?!

I’ve realised that actually my hair HAS stopped falling out and damn it’s really long right now. It’s crazy long. Like it hasn’t been this long in literally 14 years – grade 10 I think. I need a chop.

Lots and lots of kicks, as has been for the past few weeks, but nothing else is really new bump-wise. I have seen my sparkly swimming spots a few times, such as today in the car after Mark picked me up, but I am not sure what they mean if my blood pressure is fine. Have another GP appointment next week so I will discuss.

Mmm must run. It’s time for some dessert. Last night I discovered that if I eat some chocolate brownie Ben and Jerry’s at about 7pm, it gives me enough sugar and caffeine to be able to stay up late enough to watch both episodes of Lost! And it finally got really good last night…

It’s Piper’s first birthday!

Have been looking at old photos (the kind that make you go ‘awwwww’) and can not believe how much this dog has grown in a year.

We heard from the breeder today, a happy birthday email, and we haven’t heard from her in months, so it was nice to be able to catch her up on all her holiday adventures and such. Took some photos today for her – which make a very interesting comparison to last autumn and winter!

So in honour of the dog’s day, a flickr photo bonanza can be found here to show the big puppy and how she has changed!

We got her a rawhide bone, which she’s never had before, and she’s pretty much spent the evening chewing on that and not much else. Ah, a dog’s life.