Gilberts' Fridge

Lincolnshire / Yorkshire drama...

It's been raining in England.

I know, I know, that doesn't sound like too much drama. This is ENGLAND, right? That's what it DOES here, right? Well, not as much as it has in the last 48 hours!

We've been having some flooding problems. Not so much on the Lincolnshire side of the Humber river, but Yorkshire had some major issues! Yesterday was mental--roads turned into rivers, raw sewage backing up into the streets, cars swept away, kids paddling canoes in their back gardens. Somebody even DIED!

Barton was a little more tame--we had a couple of road closures (one of them was just two streets down from us) and our roof started leaking like crazy. Martin has called to make a claim on the home owners' insurance, so hopefully things will get sorted out really soon. It was pretty much raining inside our stairwell (the steep one, for the people out there who've been to our house before). I actually left work early due to some impending road closures, and it was a fairly white knuckle drive home. I went a different way than I usually go to avoid some really low lying areas. Luckily, the Humber didn't spill her banks. Even if she had, we have some major tidal defences near our house and because we are in such a high risk area for flooding, flood insurance is automatic in our home owners insurance policy. That river was pretty high on my drive home though, I'll tell you that! I was really happy that the tide was on its way out and not in, or we could have been spending the night elsewhere!

But all's well that ends well. The storm finally blew over us (thanks to last night's gale force winds, which also downed a few trees and left some parts of the county without electricity) and today the skies are somewhat clear. Hopefully we'll have a chance to dry out a little bit before the next big storm hits. And all this while they're experiencing record temperatures in Greece--major heat wave on the Mediterranean!

Weather--there will always be something to talk about!

And in pregnancy news...

Last night I felt the baby actually pressing on my bladder for the first time. I have to say, it was quite possibly the strangest sensation I have ever had. I had only peed about 10 minutes earlier, and then all of a sudden (inconveniently enough, this happened in the car), I got the feeling that I had to go IMMEDIATELY. Then the baby moved, and I was fine. You really take bladder control for granted, until you kind of lose control of it! I also got some really healthy kicks and punches, and the little one has started to stretch a lot, so I get fists on one side and feet on the other. That's a weird sensation, too.

Come to think about it, pretty much everything about being pregnant is weird. Nice, but weird.