sand dunes

I can’t believe it’s nearly September and I’ve only written 5 times this year.
I don’t really know what’s going on with me, I just haven’t felt inspired. 

I’m busy housesitting for a friend. I’m home alone in a really old farm house in the middle of a field and miles from anyone. I’m having to watch the tv and faff on the internet just to keep my mind off the fact that I might as well be in a scene of Jeepers Creepers. 
Hence this entry, it’s mostly a distraction, but also it’s about bloody time I wrote something. 

I guess the big stuff first. 
I became an auntie in February. Baby Sophie is now 6 months old and the whole family is smitten with her, she’s just such a cutie. 
Such a smiley baby too! 
And to top that off, my brother proposed to his girlfriend last month, so I’ll be gaining a sister in law! They’re such a happy little family.

Ben’s sister has also announced she’s pregnant, and due in March. So it’s only early days but still exciting. Ben and his brother are having a silly competition to see who can come up with the stupidest names for the poor kid. I think Carruthers is still topping the list. 

2 of Ben’s closest friend got married a few months ago, in an incredibly posh hotel overlooking the Bristol suspension bridge. It was beautiful, and there was no shortage of food! They honeymooned in Mexico and I’m insanely jealous.

In January we went to Portugal for a week over my birthday, but I think I wrote about that already.
In May I went to France for a weekend. My roller derby team had done some fundraising to pay for us to go to France to play the team in Brest. The whole weekend was lovely, we caught the ferry so we had 6 hours to drink in the sun and socialise, on the sea! 
Once we got there we were paired up with one of the girls from the Brest team, and my host was awesome! Her english was perfect and she had fresh pastries ready for us every morning. 
We lost the game, but the weekend was so much fun we didn’t even care. 
The after party they organised for us was something special too, 80s prom themed, with garish hall decorations and strong cocktails.

In other travel news, we’ve booked a city break in Warsaw next month. We’re trying to save money, but really needed a few days away so Poland seemed like a cheap option. 
The staff discounts I get at work means flying anywhere in Europe is much cheaper than driving pretty much anywhere in the UK.. which is a little crazy. 
Krakow and Gdansk would have been my first choice destinations in Poland, but we were a little restricted by the days we had off work and the days the flights were on, so Warsaw it is- I’m sure it’ll be lovely. 

I attended Bristol Gay Pride festival last month as per tradition. Tradition also meant we marched in the parade with melody pops and stalked drag queens. I saw so many good friends through the day and drank gin in the sunshine. Ben even made an appearance for 2 hours even though he had a shift that night and pride isn’t usually his sort of scene. The whole day made me feel content. We’d hoped to make a big night of it too, but we’d be drinking all day and we got to about 9pm and decided to call it a day. I’m depressingly nearly 30, I can’t party like I used to. 

We’ve been so lucky with the summer this year. UK summers are notoriously cold and cloudy, but we’ve had scoops of sunshine this year. I feel warm and happy. 

As far as roller derby goes. I made the Bristol B team last season. The redraft was announced yesterday and I’ve been redrafted for next season too, so that’s all I could really hope for!
We’ve just had a season break, all of August off.. No bouts, no scrimmages, no practice, no admin. As a league we’ve never done anything like this before and we really really needed it. 
I’ve also injured myself. Fell over and twisted my ankle on 17 July. Over a month later and it’s still swollen and still sore.
I saw the phisio 2 weeks ago and she said I could go back to skating when we return from season break as long as I take it easy, I’m really not convinced though. I want it fully healed, and I’m getting scared that I might be looking at months of rest. 

My previous entry was paragraph upon paragraph of moaning about the situation we’ve found ourselves in with the house we’ve bought.
Ben and I had a chat 2 days ago and we’ve come up with a plan! 
We’re going to try really hard to pay off our credit cards by next summer. We both agreed we’d be able to zero them in a year, but know we’d be better off if it happened sooner. 
Then save. Save our little hearts out for 16 months. 
Sell our house in September, put all our stuff into storage and go travelling from November 2015.
We’re hoping to be gone for 4 or 5 months.
Initially we were either going to save up enough money to pay the mortgage while we were gone, or rent the house out and we’ve decided that neither of those options are favourable. 
We want to go travelling, and we also want to move out of this house, so it makes complete sense to just combine these happenings.
This will also make buying a new house when we get back much easier as we won’t be in a chain and relying on our property to sell in order to buy somewhere new. And with 3 years of equity we might actually be able to buy somewhere we want to live!
At the moment this seems a little optimistic, however one must have a plan in order to feel fruitful, we will have to just see how it goes and hope that things fall into place. 

Tv wise, I’ve falled into the pit of 2007 and can’t get out. 
I’ve become utterly addicted to 90210 and gossip girl on Netflix. I’m not ashamed of it either.
Ben and I are also completely absorbed by the world of Breaking Bad. 
This comment on Whitney made me properly laugh out loud.

(I can’t get the video to embed 🙁 But here’s the link)

And on that note I think it’s time for bed, it’s 1:45am and I hope I’m tired enough to go straight to sleep and casually ignore all the old creeky and groany noises this big old house makes. 

With promises to write more often..

ttfn