I've got something - not much but it could be a life form

...aaaaaand we're back.

The short-lived love affair with Livejournal is over, I think. I'm fairly sure it was basically the equivalent of some kind of blogging midlife crisis, but really, it was always you Blogger, I swear darling, I'll never stray again. Now that I've actually made myself a livejournal, I may as well cross-post there as well or something I suppose, but we'll see.

26th June last year was the last post here, it seems. Now we're in August this year. How did that happen? I'm not entirely sure. Quite a few things have happened since then and I am in NO WAY going to attempt to go back over them all in this blog post (maybe later in some kind of sepia-tinged nostalgic recap blog...or probably not). Suffice it to say I find myself those 14 months later in a considerably more empty Christchurch with what appears to be my child growing away in Karen's womb. I say appears; actually I'm fairly damned sure that it's my child, and in further good news, I have been promised by Karen that if the baby does come out black, I'm totally allowed to name him Lando, so really it's a win-win situation there.

Karen's not having much fun with the first trimester (possibly to be officially named the Feeling Like Pants All The Time Semester), so the sooner that's over and done with (in 3 to 4 weeks from what my dull male brain can gather), the better. On my side of things, impending fatherhood is probably yet to really sink in, I think. So far it's more been a case of "...oh". Last night's two hour meeting with Karen's chosen midwife served to bring things into focus a little bit more - apparently if we move the television, there should be plenty of room to place the paddling pool Karen intends to give birth in into our lounge - but really I'm waiting for some kind of proper freak-out to occur. I gather this "...oh" period is fairly typical initially, and freaking out comes later. I'll let you know how that one works out.

So what with offspring coming into the world and all, travelling is now pretty much off the menu for the foreseeable future. I've been thinking about how I feel about that and to be honest I'm pretty OK with it. In fact had probably given up on it before we knew Karen was preggers. I've always had vague intentions to do the O.E. thing but really, if I cared about it that much, I'd have got off my arse and done it by now. I know a few (travel-loving) people that have told me "Quickly! Go travelling!" or how terrible it is not to go anywhere and how I'll end up regretting not having gone, etc., but honestly, I'm not worried. I know my hometown can tend to make certain types of people flee it screaming, but I wouldn't have stayed here all this time if I didn't really like it, basically. So don't cry for me Argentina, or London or Baghdad (especially not you, Baghdad) or anywhere else. If I get there sometime, I get there; for now here is fine. However, I can't help but notice that a great many other people have buggered off. London in particular seems to have become some kind of suburb of Christchurch. This certainly frees up some social time. What better to do with it than read unreasonably scary pregnancy statistics on Wikipedia and write the occasional blog? Why not combine the two? Did you know my child has about 1 chance in 10,000 of having Amniotic Band Syndrome? Welcome to Ben's brave new world, in which he regularly discovers things like Amniotic Band Syndrome exist. Tune in next week when he desperately hopes Labour wins the election so that Working For Families will still exist when Karen actually gets around to having the baby (geez, what a slacker).

Anyway. It's late, but the important thing is I wrote a blog post. And hopefully will again some point in the near future. It's a theory, certainly.