The good news is that my washing machine works. The bad news is that the washing machine repair man’s contribution was to demonstrate HOW the washing machine works, gently point out that reading the manual might have been a plus, and add for good measure that if you overload it, the tumble dryer will never manage to get the clothes dry.

And, with the benefit of his insight, it does now seem to work fine. Still, he considered me too stupid to charge the full call-out rate, and only took twenty quid off me. It was a pity gesture, but I accepted it.

I’d like to point out that I have two degrees. Honestly, I’m a clever person. I am.

Kevin is laughing at me quite a lot.

Or is the idea of suppressing the appetites of tiny babies unspeakably stupid and dangerous?? Tiny babies have appetites so that they don’t stay tiny babies!? You spend the first six months of your child’s life (at least…) obsessing over whether they’re growing properly, because if they’re not? it matters.? It becomes potentially catastrophic very quickly indeed.? You can’t just spike their milk with hormones so they won’t want as much!

On Wednesday, our bible study group decided to plan to be spontaneous on the fifth Sunday afternoon of any month with five Sundays in it…

*snigger*

The thing with nesting, is that I’m not that good at doing actual housework. Most pregnant women, from what I’m led to believe, channel their nesting instincts into cleaning, tidying, decorating and generally rearranging their homes. I tend to channel it more into wishing Kevin would do all those things, because I simply don’t have the energy, but have this biological need to see it all done anyway.

That may speak significantly of our relationship. Apparently, I’m much worse pregnant, so there’s light at the end of the tunnel for him, in that sense.

Anyway, I’ve spent most 0f the last two to three months strongly suspecting that I was anaemic, but desperately trying to avoid nasty horrid iron tablets. I have eaten iron-fortified snack-bars for England, along with apricots, brown bread, and spinach, and lots of orange juice (the vitamin C helps you absorb it, apparently). It helped a little, in the sense that I stopped feeling the urge to pass out if I stood up too quickly, but not enough, apparently, because when the midwife took my blood last week, she declared it substandard, and put me on the tablets.

I’m sure the effect takes a good few weeks to be noticeable, but I have actually had a great deal more energy in the last two to three days than I have managed to muster since… well, January, come to think of it. And as a result, the almost physical pain of being in the squalid hovel that we’ve been calling home has suddenly become something I could see a way to solve. Kevin and I have worked very, very hard, this afternoon. We have Tidied the whole of the downstairs of the house: entirely cleared the dishes backlog; cleared all forms of homeless clutter from the mantlepiece, dresser, microwave and other flat surfaces of the kitchen area; put away a stack of things that were lying around the dining room; and put away ALL the toys in the living room, including the ones languishing under the furniture. Then there was extensive hoovering (again, including under the furniture in some places), followed by mopping, and a couple of bins got emptied for good measure.

I am very proud of us. We even got carried away and cleaned a couple of windows, after tea. I am exhausted, and the baby is doing somersaults at the excitement of so much exercise, but the downstairs of my house is a place I don’t mind being, for the first time in months. So I’m going there now - the less said about the upstairs, at this point, the better, but celebrate the successes, I say…