Number 19. Sam Gilbert, apparently.

It's Monday morning, and for once I'm not resentful of the fact that I'm at my desk instead of somewhere else. The weekend was full of sunshine and lazing and getting a few things done (a card! a hat!), and I wouldn't say no if someone offered me another day not here, but actually, I'm not that fussed.

9km on Saturday morning, not much slower than the 10km last year. Which was probably a bit fast considering I spent most of the day afterwards in bed. I know I need to sleep and eat and drink properly on Fridays in preparation for these long runs, but I never seem to be able to get the trifecta sorted. I ate and drank really well this week, but spent Friday night with the boys, and didn't get off their couch to drive us home until after 11.


Sunday was lunch with the fam for Dotti's birthday, and then some freaking domestic labour. Holy crap, we live in filth. Not a dish had been done all week, I don't think.We popped upstairs to J's 30th for a bit in the evening, and hadn't seen them since the news of the bump (since everyone's been hibernating all winter), so it was nice to fill them in.


Dinner with M & S & FJ & the lovely K on Thursday night. It was so good to see all those girls again. And the dynamics were just right. My life goes on mostly separately from them all, but I do appreciate settling back in with them once in a while. It's been almost 20 years of friendship... How can I possibly be old enough to be saying things like that?


The football on Saturday, while I mostly don't care at all, somehow tapped into my 12-year-old self and gave me palpitations and a heart rate no pregnant woman should be anywhere near, I'm sure. We listened to tiny bits on the radio now and then, and I resigned myself to the heartbreak of a St Kilda fan at half time and went back to bed. But I could hear, a little later, the roars of people around us as the game progressed. We're in the heartland, so I knew St Kilda must have been pulling something out of the bag. The Boy came in with the radio on his laptop and said scores were level with 7 minutes to go. Quick as a flash, I pulled on my boots and was out the door, cardigan flying before he'd finished the sentence. I rapped on the door of the girls next door and we blundered in to watch the last few minutes on their TV. I haven't paid attention to football in so long that I knew the players who wore the numbers a generation ago, but none of the current crop. So the ghosts of Nicky Winmar and Stewart Loewe took on my cheers as the boys who wore their numbers on their backs saved the die-hards from another year of heartache, at least for the time being. I was shaking like a leaf afterwards. I think if I had actually paid attention at all this year, there's a good chance I might have had a baby on the neighbours' living room floor.

The bean pokes me, somersaulting, all day long. Possibly later it will be more invasive and uncomfortable, but at the moment, I LOVE it! It's weirdly alien and gives me a fright every now and then, but it puts a big dumb grin on my face that makes me look like a leering idiot on the train. Heh. Bean. See you soon, my little one.

It's oh so quiet.

It's Sunday morning and the world is still asleep. I had to go to bed last night halfway through the film we were watching, but still somehow woke up at 7 when the kitten wanted to go out and didn't really go back to sleep after that. So I'm sitting here wrapped in a blanket with my icy toes poking out, wondering how long I can ignore my growling stomach for, and trying not to wake The Boy with the clattering of my keys.

The butterfly flutterings have become blunt little nudges, and I feel them a few times a day now instead of once a week. It's definitely an active little bun in that oven. Which isn't really surprising given the ants in my pants. Every day my belly gets bigger. People at work do double takes when they haven't seen me in a few days. My mum was astonished at how it had gone from a little bump on Tuesday to a pregnant belly on Saturday. I'm going to be a huuuuge bitch.

I still feel pretty good, though. There's always some little thing that niggles or pinches or twangs, but I feel like me. I didn't even realise before how much I wasn't present during those first exhausted months. Even when I did make it out of the house and into social situations, I was content to let other people's chatter go on around me. I am most definitely back to yammering away at my usual deafening pace now, and interjecting, and laughing and generally trying to direct the conversation towards me at all times. My poor friends.

I spent yesterday with mum writing Poppy's name into his clothes so they can go into the home's laundry system. It's funny, sometimes he seems completely fine and with it, and then in an instant he's asking bizarre things like when did I come down to Melbourne (even though he knows we don't live at the farm) and trying to get in the lift to get on to his floor when we've just come out of it and are where we need to be. I think maybe I hadn't seen him since the wedding (ack! Really?), and he was pretty good then, except for the part where he asked Aunty Bev who that woman sitting next to him was. Yup. That's your ex-wife.

At least he's closer to mum and dad now. There was no chance of us getting down to Patterson Lakes to see him, between the farm and all the other things that need to happen on weekends. But being 20 mins away makes it much more likely. He's very keen to see The Boy, so perhaps when the running is over in a few weeks we'll pay another visit.

8km yesterday. I ran with one of the slower girls, and bullied her up the Anderson St hill, but we walked quite a bit on the way back. Think I'll slot in with a couple of the faster ones next week so I get a proper 9km into my legs before the race. It's hard to tell whether I'll keep running afterwards. At the moment I still feel like I can do it pretty easily. (At training on Wednesday I was kicking all their arses. Really? The pregnant woman is the fittest person here?) Maybe its just stubbornness that makes me keep going. I'm hoping that's going to be helpful in labour.

I worked from home on Friday, and will need to get a bit more done today to make up for the part where I went out for lunch with Nellie and then somehow it was 3pm. Oops. We had dinner at the Castle with the boys that night, and it was lovely to see them and reminisce about J-town together. They brought The Boy back some terrible boy-band pop music, and for the bean, a whole lot of cute Japanese bunny rugs and wash cloths and things as well. There's a suggestion we should go back there together some day. Apart from the fact that we're going to have a tiny baby and be living on a teacher's wage next year, it sounds like a great idea!

I'm having brunch this morning with C while The Boy goes to aikido, and then there's a card to make for Dotti's birthday, and the spare room to pay attention to and wedding thankyous to write (Aagh! Still!) and a million other things to do as well. But for now, it's just me in the dark and the quiet whirring of the laptop on my knees. In tiny moments like these, I realise how completely our life is going to change when the bean arrives. And I know that I have no idea what it might mean to be ready.

Bring it.

I had lunch with mumma today (who I do think we will call Dottie!), who called to see if I was free so that she could talk to someone who didn't have a walking frame and could hear her without her having to yell. I don't know how the hell she does it. So much of her life is spent taking my elderly relatives shopping or to the doctor's, or this morning, to casualty to have a broken wrist seen too. Sheesh. Lucky she's got babies to distract her. She's commandeered my help on the weekend to write Poppy's name on all his clothes so that the new home he's in can wash them instead of her doing it. It'll be good to see him. Although strange, I think, in that context. He's been so independent for so long. Still, 92 is a pretty good age to be finally accepting more help. And at least he's somewhere where he can still come and go a bit, so long as he signs himself in and out. I imagine it might be something like being back in the army.

I've started looking into birth classes. M & A are doing a calm birth one, but I don't know... I'm not sure how enthusiastic I am about the CD and visualisation bit. The idea of calm blue oceans overriding real, excruciating, very present pain just doesn't seem all that likely to me. I guess with that attitude, it wouldn't work, and obviously I'd need to go into it with a bit more of an open mind, but really... Although it seems like something that does work for some people, I just don't think my tolerance for hippy shit is high enough. I can't imagine wanting to listen to a CD of dolphin noises at the best of times, but when I'm in labour? Very high chance of throwing CD out of window. Breathing exercises I'm all for, relaxation techniques ok, I'm just not sure I could sit through someone telling me to 'visualise the opening of a flower' without snorting. Am I destined for an epidural? N has recommended another one which sounds a bit less wafty, so we might give that a go.

I may regret my early spring yearning for heat when I'm 40 weeks pregnant and it's 40 degrees, but oh my, I cannot wait for summer. It's been so grey for so long, and just now it's beginning to brighten up. The sun sets later, and with a yellow warmth that smacks of promise, and the days are clear and dazzling compared to a couple of weeks ago. It's still nippy on the platform at 5.30, but ohmygoodness, it's coming, kids! The sun!

17.

17 weeks snuck by on Saturday, in between sleeping in at the farm and knitting and snacking and babysitting little O. It was Z's birthday on Sunday, and their night out was the first they'd spent alone together in almost a year, since O was born. I guess it's harder because neither of their families are here, but lord I hope that doesn't happen to us.

So they went out for dinner and a few drinks and a band, and we stayed in and watched Conan the Barbarian on their tiny TV that makes our laptop set-up look positively luxurious. It's a terrible film. But quite epic in its presentation. They don't make sets like that anymore. Who knew the dizzying heights that awaited Governor Schwarzenegger all those years ago?

When we finally got home at about 1, the neighbour's door was ajar, which is never a good sign. I listened to two intermittent hours of the dear bogan screeching 'Where are ya? When are youse coming over?' into her phone on the balcony before I cracked it and opened the door to tell her to put a sock in it. Turns out I didn't have to say anything at all before she guiltily mumbled 'Did you want us to keep it down?' and disappeared inside. It was Saturday night, but still, 2.45am. Shut up.

I had to get out of bed before 7 to be at the race on Sunday, and ran with one of the slower girls the whole 5km. We did it in 39 minutes something, which was hard work for her and barely pulse-raising for me. But that's ok. A swiftly wolfed-down pancake followed, and then I was home in time for The Boy to take the car to aikido. I went straight back to bed, and didn't stir for 2.5 hours. In the meantime, my boobs conspired to nearly fill the new, enormous bras, and my belly expanded to a never-before seen girth. I think of tiny V's belly at their wedding when she was 5 months, and I cannot believe I still have three weeks before I get there. She did spend the first three months puking her guts up, and also is a titchy little bird of a girl, but I am WAY beyond bump now. Strangers offer me seats on the train.

We had our first serious conversation about names on Friday night. We do not agree! There's still ample time to reach a consensus, of course, but we're on two completely different aesthetic wavelengths, apparently. I find his names bland and run-of-the-mill and he finds mine ridiculous and either vomit- or laughter-inducing. And he's moved on from threatening the wildly impossible 'Javelin' and 'Crystalise' to much scarier and hopefully no more serious options like 'Nathan'. Ugh.

I have a new boss, and do not like the feeling of being required to work. She seems good, though - a far more suitable person for the job than the last catastrophic wanker-embezzler. How that man even got past the first interview, I will never understand. Still, I had become quite used to doing not very much when it suited me, and that will not do for the time being. The Boy was moaning this morning about the one more week until the school holidays... I have maybe four more months of paid employment to think about and then a whole new adventure awaits. We will be poor and I may go crazy, but I have already begun to disengage from the conversations about the future that go on here. I am not interested in the slightest.

But, this book will not edit itself. Back I go, for now.

Sweet 16...

Where have the days gone? And what happened in them? My brain is even more sieve-like than usual, which is worrying, to say the least. I stand not a snowball's chance in hell of making it to a ripe old age without first hitting senility square in the nuts. Oh well. I imagine I'll be enjoying myself, flashing my knickers at christenings and swearing at the dinner table.

I did go to Sydney, and took the bastard weather with me, thanks very much Neil. It was 15 degrees when I got off the plane, and I only just made it through the back streets of Potts Point to the launch before a wall of water descended from the heavens. Still, nice to be somewhere where a storm feels tropical rather than arctic for a change. I forget each time how lush and green and moist Sydney is. I do love its winding, hilly streets and will be sad to have no friendly couch to sit on when K & P finally leave - the last of the northern friends to head of to London or New Zealand or Melbourne or wherever.

The launch was fine, the author was lovely in person, and the bean did a sterling job of distracting me from terribly important conversations with terribly important people by fluttering about in a most reassuring fashion. Good job, old chap. (And no, my love, this feeling is definitely not my bowels. I have lived with my digestive system for 30 years now, and it does not feel like this.)

I went shopping for *ack* maternity bras on the weekend, and what GINORMOUS, hilarious pieces of fabric they are. I only had one bra left, which only half fit me (the cup runneth over, if you catch my drift), so the time had definitely come. The only trouble is that buying more bras in that size will only solve the problem temporarily. So I went up a size. To the end of the line. I'm not kidding, if these babies don't just sit tight for another 5 months, I am going to be off the charts. Where do people go once the alphabet splashes past 5 letters? How can I possibly have boobs this enormous? Will they really get even bigger once the baby and/or milk arrives? Because they're already giving my head a run for its money.

Random acts of kindness continue. A woman at work has given us clothes for me and a high chair for the bean. A cousin of The Boy's (who I have never met) has offered us a cot and a change table. A woman at dad's work has sent him home with a bassinette. The hand-me-downs have already started from the nephew. I think all we need now is a car seat and maybe a pram, but I'm quite content not to think about them at all for another three months or so. Can't believe it's 4 down already!

Also, hooray Julia. Or at least hooray not-Tony.

Goodness me, the world keeps turning.