2013 Durham/Teesside/Tyne and Wear greet, meet and eat thread

[ArrowofApollo]

Thought I would start a new thread as the old one is getting full.

Next meet up is on Wednesday 10th April, 10ish at the Durham Botanical Gardens. We will either be in the entrance or staking a couple of the picnic tables by the pond.
I will be giving Vikinglady a lift.

P has def seen Spiggy at her drunkest already, so I don't really think there is anything Spiggy could do that would be off putting enough!

She's having a piss up in a brewery? I like it!

sounds fun!

Do you think you can sneak us all along? Does sound like a good wedding .

I love ebay!

Getting excited about dd's party. Need to finish assignments first but I have a whole load of bunting which I bought on the basis that it will come out for every birthday party ever and cost no more to buy than any crappy throw away decorations, I have foam dinosaur masks for the party bags (they will get that and a piece of cake. No plastic crap) and I have sugarpaste dinosaurs for her cake (will be a volcano with dinosaurs roaming around) and rice paper printed with dinosaurs for cupcakes. Yippee! Found a great seller doing the sheets of rice paper toppers for 69p each for a sheet of 30 on 3 for 2! So have dinosaurs for the girl, angry birds for the boy and a sheet of Gruffalo ones just for kicks/in case we throw a party for the baby in March.

Itching to clean the house and get ready for birthdays and Christmas now. not that I really decorate until Yule but tis nice to start doing wintery things like snowflakes and stuff to put on the windows with the oiks.

I think school are under the impression we all have magic arses for pulling things out of. They have decided they want to support a charity that has helped the family of a child at school. Fine. Do they decide to have the raffle or tombola at the fayre for them? No. Do they decide to have the next cake sale for them? No. Oh no, they decide that next week there will be a Christmas jumper non uniform day. Next week. Written on Friday's newsletter. I don't HAVE any Christmas jumpers and I'm certainly not paying £50 to get 2 of them on next day delivery just so we can give £2 to the charity. I'd buy a ticket, bake a cake, buy a cake, make a silly hat but really? Do they just merrily assume we all have Christmas jumpers or the spare cash to buy them?

Wow - that school has ALOT of shenanigans going on. Frankly, I couldn't be arsed.

Further on my quest to be sporty (or maim myself) after my recent zorbing antics I have been on a ski-ing lesson today. Sadly I had forgotten that the person who I went with had been on a few ski-ing holiday a few years ago so he was practically whizzing away like a Pro whilst I had to take a 'little break' as had been out the night before and had forgotten how ridiculously hard work it was and nearly had a funny turn. Not helped by the fact that I was rather overdressed (literally) for a mild morning and the boots were crushing my admittedly chunky claves. Instructor very nice looking too. Awkward. Not even the most cringeworthy thing I had done over the course of 48 hours either, unforunately.

Was going to say Primark got a bunch of xmas jumpers but Durham hasn't got one has it? :/

Aww good going though goldenretriever god loves a skier trier

golden the ski champion. I'm very impressed at your efforts, especially post night out. However I feel you have another story lurking that we need to hear.

Sat in Miss Tina's with C. Just had the most divine sponge cake.

mmm cake.

made candied peel today for Christmas. writing assignment at same time. All gone well until the end. switched off but didn't turn them out and spread them to dry so now have a pan of stuck together peel in solidified sugar. Am warming pan in hope that the syrup melts!

Well funnily enough, I did hear tell of a nameless person who (I am surmising) couldn't be arsed to retrieve their pass from upstairs at work to exit the building. The person decided to find the door release button but being something of a boob pressed a red button instead. A very loud alarm sounded. At this point said boob managed to find the right button and ran. Very fast. It all turned out ok in the end, however. Red buttons - prob best avoided in a non emergency situation, I fancy.

Pahh I'm negative for both CMV and Rhesus so can't have any of the ones I wanted I think... Why am I so awkward!!??

Oh no, that doesn't mean we are going to have to waste hours reading that website again does it? .

That'll be a grand total of ZERO to wade through :(

Fuck. So... this rhesus thing, if I choose a positive donor, what happens if my baby is positive? I think for the first pregnancy it's fine, but any subsequent pregnancy I'll be having issues?

You just get anti d jabs during pregnancy and after birth of baby is positive. It isn't an issue. I'm neg, dh is pos and all dcs are pos.

When baby is inside your blood circulation and his are separate. But if baby is pos and you are neg then if there is any blood mixing for any reason, perhaps a fall for example then your body can make anti bodies against the baby because it recognises the pos as foreign. Having the anti d prevents that. so if you were to fall etc in pregnancy or have a bleed you would have extra doses too on top of the standard ones just in case. There is a bit of a risk of mixing in labour too, especially if forceps or anything are used so they test baby's blood group right away and if neg no problem, if pos you get a jab. That way you are safe for future pregnancies.

Simple version anyway. With anti d rhesus problems are very, very rare. info about it should be on the nhs pages. But I don't see why using a pos donor would be a problem, they don't ban the rest of us from mating with people of a different blood group!

Okay great! I did ask why it was so important but I have the worst memory.

There's possibly another single woman at my hospital so I'm hoping to share postage of the sperm as it's $300 dollars otherwise!

local.mumsnet.com/sunderland/group-meet-ups/washington

I've arranged this if any one is able to come as back up

Oh that is actually on my non working day! I'll come!

I would if I could, but it is too far to deal with a grouchy brat on public transport. Sorry!

if you could get the train to Thornaby, Viking, I could drive you the rest of the way? Is V still in a rf car seat? I still have DD's which will save you bringing yours.

Can I have a self indulgent rant? I will head it up with the warning that I am being incredibly selfish but I can't moan at dh so you lot have to suffer...

You all know that this year has been incredibly busy, well it got worse with the new job. The thing that has been keeping me going was the 5 whole days we were closed over Christmas. I struck a deal with my mother that we wouldn't visit her until after boxing day so we could have a nice relaxing Christmas. Well as relaxing as it could be with 3 kids. Dinner was to be m&s and I wasn't planning to get out of my pjs until at least lunchtime. In fact we were going to have extra days off and have the 23rd and Christmas eve. Proper family time.

So then dh announces he had to work the 23 rd. Ok, can cope with that. Oh, and he has to do a half day on Christmas eve and won't finish till 6. Not great but we'll still have 5 days off to relax.

Then father in law announces that he's arranged to have an operation on Christmas eve which will involve several nights in hospital. He is the main carer for mil and his marvellous plan was to put her into a nursing home. Clearly we are not going to do that. So no m&s and pj Christmas day, I'll have 3 children at mil's, eating food I don't like (because that's what they like). Loads of other people popping in and out and having to make polite conversation and trying to stop the kids getting wound up. Dh will have to sleep there in case she needs help in the night and we won't get to see my parents unless fil recovers quickly.

And I've just realised that either I spend Christmas eve with mil and 3 kids or I fill in for dh at work and finish at 6. Neither of which involve me putting up our tree which always is done Christmas eve.

I'm just so upset that the one thing I've been looking forward to isn't going to happen. Instead it is going to be yet more fucking stress. This isn't an urgent operation but dh won't ask fil to postpone. Which he shouldn't have to but its such shit timing. I want to cry in fact I did this morning when I realised about Christmas eve

You go ahead and rant. That's rubbish that your plans have been spectacularly overthrown.

Thanks babsmam. I know I am being completely unreasonable because fil will have to have the operation sometime but I want my Christmas to myself (and dh and the kids )

I've worked pretty much non stop for 18 months, through annual leave and weekends. I think I've just hit my limit and snapped.

Oh spiggy I'm not surprised you've snapped, I'm sorry . Tree up and dvds with the dcs on the 23rd? Not that it makes it any better.

Oh how irritating :( can you at least hit the alcohol and get dh to do most of the caring.

Its the loss of time just to be that's got to me. Where I wouldn't have to do anything, there would be no expectations so we could go with the flow, no polite conversation to had. I'm going to be on edge the whole fucking time. I don't think I can cope. I've got a proper Christmas to organise and no time to do it. I'm in London tomorrow then Birmingham for two days. Meetings on Thursday and Friday is the Christmas party.

I just wanted some time just for us.