Friday, October 26, 2007

Ups and Downs

Last night I had two activities at opposite ends of the "success" spectrum. First was Oztag. It had been raining all day, but not quite enough for it to be cancelled, and it of course got heavier as the kick-off time approached. The rain is wonderful for our garden so it's always welcome, but that doesn't mean I want to play football in it! We had a number of players out (Hamish, Geoff and Warwick), we didn't play well, and the other team was much better than us, all leading us being on the wrong end of a 50-0 drubbing (well OK it was probably closer to 15, but it sure felt like 50). I think the game was summed up nicely near the end, with Webby in the clear and about to get us on the scoreboard, before dropping the ball over the line.

When the final whistle mercifully sounded I rushed off to my poker night. Lady Luck had clearly decided to make atones for me getting thrashed in pouring rain by dealing me an amazing string of fantastic hands. At one stage I flopped 3 full houses in 4 hands, which was enough to make Andy and Al buy back in again. Poker is an easy game when you get dealt the best hand every time! I finished $100 up, my best result in the couple of years I've played with this group.

So I guess I had better watch myself at poker the next time our Oztag team is the one handing out a flogging...

Monday, October 22, 2007

My First Ante-Natal Class

With under two months to go until the birth of my first child (well under 2 months if Sophie gets her way) I'm going to be experiencing a lot of things for the first time. And I thought I should probably start keeping track of them all, which is what this blog will be all about. Plus anything else that takes my fancy, of course!

Tonight was my first ante-natal class. It wasn't Soph's first class; she went to the first class last week. I didn't go as Soph told me that the night's program was geared towards exercises to reduce soreness during pregnancy, and to learn about birthing positions, so it wasn't really going to involve me and she'd just tell me about it when she got home. I obviously didn't require too much convincing to stay home. However it turned out she was the only pregnant woman there without a partner... oops.

It wasn't the most organised class - it was in a different room to last week and there were no signs so a lot of couples were late after wandering around the hospital for 20 minutes. And the midwife had brought the wrong set of course material so it ended up being more of a group discussion than a lesson. The primary topic of discussion seemed to be "all the things that can go wrong with the pregnancy and labour, and what you should do about it". Things like the baby deciding to come out feet first, and... well lets just say that was low on the scale of terrifying things that could happen. So not the most uplifting evening I've had, but it's all information we need to know.

It was funny going around the room and hearing everyone's expected birth dates - most were in mid to late December, just like us. It seems likely that one of us will draw the short straw of Christmas, I just hope that Soph's visualisation techniques work well enough for it to not be us!