Pottery and House-hunting!

After my spate of rather negative posts lately, I'm really pleased to be able to write a much happier one.

I'm in an unusually positive state of mind at the moment. It's unusual because I always get depressed and agitated around the end of October and beginning of November. Every year. I don't think it's related to SAD or anything like that, though the weather does affect my mood a little. I think it's more related to the fact that mid-October would have been the birthday of a very good friend of mine, who died of a brain tumour when we were 16. She was my first friend when we came to the UK from Nepal  - I walked into school on my first day, halfway through the term, full of nerves, not knowing a soul, and as soon as this little girl clocked me she detached herself from the huddle of other little girls, came over and took my hand and announced "I'm Lizzie, and I'm going to be your friend!" And she was, for the next 9 years, until she died. Every October it comes around to her birthday and I think of all the things I've done and learned and experienced during that year and am saddened that she missed out on so much. The end of October is also the time that the baby would have been born. I'd never connected that to this annual low period until I read somewhere that, even if a post-abortive woman isn't consciously thinking about the abortion, sometimes her body still "grieves", kind of. It seems it's not uncommon for a woman's mood to change around the anniversary either of the abortion or the due date. I don't know what the science is behind that, but it's certainly borne out anecdotally in my own experience. Even before I'd read anything on the subject I was conscious that I always felt on edge around the end of October, and other people even commented that I was worst around that time of year.

Anyway, this year it seems to have passed much more quickly than usual, and I'm extremely grateful for that.

I have a couple of things to be excited about at the moment, too :)

Tonight I start my pottery class, which I'll be doing for the next five weeks. I'm looking forward to having something creative to work at, to producing something tangible, and to have an evening out of the house meeting new people.

A and I have started house-hunting in earnest, in preparation for our move to London. My boss has confirmed that they'll be able to keep me on until next May, possibly until next September (I'm employed on a rolling contract), and has agreed that I can work from home two days a week once we're living in London, to cut the cost of commuting. A is looking at a couple properties this week and we're both going to look at few on Saturday. I'm really excited about having a place of "our own" (even though we'll be renting, at least it'll be a neutral place without any previous memories or associations for either of us; at the moment we live at his parents' place), and about living in London again.

The job extension is good news in itself, actually. I had been expecting to finish at the end of December and was a little nervous about trying to find a new job in the current economic climate, so this is really something to be thankful for. And... I'm *hoping* this extension means I'll get sent to our annual conference in Dallas next year, after which I could hop over to Tulsa to visit my sister and her family. She will have had her second baby by then, and being able to visit her would just be the icing on the cake :)

I hope things are going equally well for all of you, and that you're blessed with the things that make you happy, weight-related and otherwise. I'm getting my scales "fixed" (that is, I'm buying a new battery, haha) on Friday... wish me luck for my first weigh-in since about August...! *nervous face*

Lots of love, Sophie