Belated happy Easter to all. We used the weekend to paint the spare room – the room that eventually, maybe one day, will be the nursery. We’ve painted two coats onto the ceiling, walls, window/door frames, door and skirting boards, and the room looks fabulous. Our next project is to restore the toy box I shared with my brother and sister when we were kids. It’s currently painted in two tones of blue but after careful thought and planning, I’ve decided to paint it in two tones of caramel-brown.

We got the results back for the husband’s plastic cup test. Our doctor didn’t tell me what any of the figures were, she only said that it was “brilliant”. Meanwhile I’m still not pregnant and I’ve been struggling to commit to the stop-start running-walking thing. My day starts at 5.30am and I’m effing exhausted when I get home. Last night I fell asleep on the couch shortly after 7pm then when the husband put me to bed, I read for half an hour before sleeping through to 9am. Finding time to exercise during the week is impossible and doing it once or twice at the weekend apparently isn’t enough. I don’t think we’ll ever be parents and I’m finding it very difficult to reconcile.

In other news, Kevin-No-Devon’s stimulus package arrived yesterday. Even after months of talk about this stimulus package, I still get the giggles when I hear it. We’ll be using it to pay for the anti-termite boundary treatment on the house. Thanks Krudd!

The husband and I saw our favourite medical professional on Wednesday and she has set up a hot date with the plastic cup for him, and a no-refined-sugar plus stop-start-running regime for me.  The cup is to check his swimmers in case that’s the reason it’s taking for-ever to conceive again, and the food/exercise thing for me is suppose to kick my endocrine system in the groin. Though I’m always moaning about wanting to lose 5kg, I’m not overweight but my cycles have been a bit off since having Max.  Apparently sugar is thy enemy, especially late at night and while I walk a lot anyway (up to 9,000 steps on a normal weekday before any exercise), she seems to think there’s something in the walk-a-minute-then-run-a-minute thing.

I enjoy walking, especially with the ipod but it’s too bulky to run with.  I’d decided to look for a cheapo compact mp3 player on ebay this weekend but the husband surprised me with an ipod shuffle instead.  Meet Kermit:

I’ve loaded him up with some suitable music, including my two new favourites Kaiser Chiefs and the Fratellis. Most excellent music for walking fast!  I even woke up early this morning with the intension of going for a run but it seems I’ve sat down to blog instead.  Oops!

In other news, work has been an effing nightmare.  A couple of months ago I interviewed and subsequently hired a permanent part time assistant.  She is great, except that she had a death in the family and needed a couple of weeks off.  She’ll be back Monday, I hope.  I’ve had a full time temp in too and while she started out brilliantly, my good opinion of her has since faded.  Besides a complete inability to work under pressure without snapping at everyone, she doesn’t like being told what to do and when to do it.  Big problem.  Then a couple of weeks ago, she announced that she was “burned out” from working a gruelling 6hr day, 4 times per week and that she required a week of stress leave.  No way was that shit coming out of our budget and since she is a temp, we just unhired her for the week she wanted off. I don’t think she liked that very much so she called in sick twice and got all mopey and sullen. I thought teen emo was ugly but jebus it’s ugly on a middle-aged fish wife!  Meow!  By Thursday, I’d had enough of her personality disorder so we declared her no longer required and sent her back from whence she came.  On Friday I interviewed for her permanent replacement.  Gawd.  I’m pretty sure the first rule of What Not to Say at a Job Interview is “do not bitch about your current managers and colleagues”.  The second rule should be “do not apply for full time positions if you only want part time work”.  I’ll be putting in an order to readvertise the position next week.  Why is good help so hard to find?

Recently my knitting time has been reallocated to study time but as I seem to be on top of my study load at the moment I think I’ll try to get some wips finished this weekend.  The weather has been total crap (another reason I’m blogging instead of running right now); grey, cold and wet but perfect for sitting on the couch while knitting, drinking tea and watching DVDs.  There’s a couple of inches left to make on the fingerless mittens (mittenless mittens?) and I should whip up something for my neighbour’s baby that is due pretty much now. I’m favouring the baby pumpkin hat for her baby as these hats are pretty successful gifts, they’re quick to knit and since I can’t remember if she said she knew the baby’s gender; orange is fairly non-gender specific.

OK, walk/run time. Now where did I leave Kermit?