The dark cloud

I started my PhD a few years ago, but had no idea what I was meant to be doing. My supervisors weren't very involved, and doing it by distance, I figured that didn't matter. I'm a pretty good writer, with over 40 published articles and 2 books, so a PhD? Piece of cake?!

Except that it wasn't. My response to that was basically to pretend I wasn't enrolled, scraping by with the bare minimum of work on it. But it always hung over me like a dark cloud. This year I changed where I'm doing my PhD, changed supervisors, and now I'm seriously working hard. I have a light at the end of the tunnel, a manageable timeline, and I seriously think my supervisors are wonderful.

As a result, I haven't been blogging a lot. And I hate blogs without new posts, so I apologise for this. This is mainly because I'm so engrossed in writing academically that writing about my wedding seems a little ... frivilous, perhaps. We have nearly everything planned, but there were few difficult decisions in our wedding planning. We spoke to one baker, and accepted the quote. One reception venue, one photographer and so on. The hardest decisions so far have been about the guest list and whether or not to have a videographer. We hired the videographer, jury's still out on those friends of mine, but I'm leaning toward inviting them. Not because I think they deserve the invitation, but because I'm not quite ready to close that chapter of my life. And C supports my decision, whichever way I go.

And so that's where we're at. There's about two months to go til the "big day" and things are still really good. I feel lucky to go home to my girl each night, and a weekend with her is simply never long enough. This is in direct contrast to my last experience as a wife-to-be when the relationship seemed doomed even before we said I do. We work well as partners.

I see this increasingly as I work on my thesis. Last night I worked, while she silently sat at the table doing a jigsaw. Some people complain when their partner works long hours, but she seems to enjoy the time to herself, and looks forward to me putting the books down.

She's a wonder, that girl.

The shoes

I've been such a slack blogger - my PhD is heating up for one thing. But first the shoes! They're sky high, though the picture doesn't really depict it because of the angle of the shoe on it's side. It has a silver heel! And they're black, which means I can wear them again and again.

That is, of course, assuming my body doesn't hate me after the big day!

Because I had an ankle injury this year, I'm planning on having another pair of shoes for the reception.

I nearly bought the shoes (above) in red, but the red didn't match our bridesmaid dresses... it's a shame. I kind of had my heart set on red shoes poking out from under my white dress, but black is a good enough substitute. I wore white shoes for my first wedding and have never worn them again!