Somehow February just sort of slipped past without me noticing, and, good or bad, no particular intentions declared themselves, other than the day-to-day sort, so let us draw a veil over that, and particularly over the last sodding week, which has mostly been coughing, worrying about small child’s coughing, and then – oh yes – a bit more coughing, interspersed with quiet triumph as the garden became gradually less broken. Of course, it being February, it did rain a fair bit, which means that our dominion over the earthly bounty is not yet complete – rotovating heavy clay in pissing rain didn’t appeal even to Quercus – but we’re well on the way, and… and WE HAVE PLANTED RASPBERRY CANES! All of our very own. Largely because Quercus’s mother brought some with her, but still – an actual plant is inhabiting our garden! And it may even have leaves! (Soon.)(Insert small but energetic monologue on the delights of seed catalogues, and on the impending over-sowing in which I am likely to indulge.)

Anyway, the wheel turns, and once again we find ourselves on the brink of spring. This year spring seems to have taken a long time to arrive. More than any year I can remember recently, this winter, or, strictly speaking, the bit of winter which comes after midwinter celebrations are nothing more than the odd stale mincepie and memories of too much stuffing, has taken a long time to shuffle on its way. I love winter; as autumn turns colder and the stars glitter as bright frost descends each night, my heart sings for the creativity I feel as I shiver in my cardigan, for the prospect of hot water bottles and steaming mugs of chai, for furry slippers (of which more anon) and warm pyjamas (preferably with owls on them). But the bit after all that, well, it’s less appealing to me, somehow, or at least it has been this year. I am genuinely looking forward to warmer days, to greenery, to LESS MUD, thankyouverymuch. The notion of having a genuine, bona fide garden? Well, that just adds to the tantalising visions of spring which suggest themselves with every ray of sun which passes the window. I am that pillock buggering about on a 9°c day with bare feet and all the windows open, just because the sun is out.

Which brings me to my intentions for March.

• Felting slippers. I has bought me a pattern, I has, and I is licking my lips with anticipation at the thought of slippers of such wondrous hues. The colours! The patterns! The potential! Anyone out there actually done this? How resilient are they? (Though I doubt I could bring myself to care, given the colours! the patterns! the colours!) (For those of you who asked about my previous slippers, they are these; I’ve had them for, oh, about four years, but the soles are worn through, the inners a dim and distant memory, and the seams are coming apart despite three fixes. I’ve loved them, but had hoped they’d see a tenth birthday, given the price-tag. Meanwhile, Quercus has had a gorgeous pair of Celtic Sheepskin slippers which lasted four years or so, and is now just about coming to the end of a brief fling with some ‘Anton’ Shepherd slippers, and they’ve lasted only about fourteen months, which, given the sum involved, is pretty rubbish. Ho hum. We are both slipper-wearers given that we have a drafty house with a slate floor for our main living space; I cannot bear most slippers, particularly on men, so I am stupidly picky, I think. But still… One must have some standards…)

• Repairing my patchwork throw. I’ve had this since I was about seventeen, when I beat a friend to it across a crowded charity shop, elbowing several venerable members of the community out of the way in the process. It’s made of curtain remnants, which makes it sound rather hideous, but the overall effect is one of shining loveliness. It’s probably about thirty now, mind you, given how long I’ve had it, and the fact that it was far from its first flush when it came to me, and is, predictably, coming apart at the seams. Some rather helpfully-sized brocade came to me from our local charity shop, and thus I must embark upon what is frankly a slightly daunting task; I’ve already fixed the blighter once, but underestimated the overlap needed to avoid embarrassing coming-apart moments… Forth Bridge, I tell you.

• Finding someone to value my bloody piano. I’ve made the decision to sell it – in fact, I’ve made the decision to sell anything which isn’t nailed down, given the direness of the financial straits which this next year will see us navigating – and now I just want to get the fuck on with it, but so far the one person I know who does this sort of thing is proving deeply unhelpful in that they don’t respond to either answerphone messages or emails, and, in two weeks, have yet to fix a time to go and appraise the piano. So, back to Google, I think. I want this ball bloody well rolling this month. Carpe whatsit and all that.

• This month, I’m going to make a real effort to remind myself that there is no deadline. I am not living some sort of test. No-one will fine me if things aren’t done when I’d thought they would be (with the exception of my tax return, which I smugly managed a full week before the deadline). Our house is not falling down (I hope…), and our garden, while not finished, will be, sometime soon. I must learn to be more zen about all this, frankly. I have spent quite a lot of time since finding I am pregnant fretting about the house, and when we’ll do the ceilings and the internal plastering, and all those other million tasks which stand between us and a declaration of ‘complete’. But… I don’t want to be so busy fretting about all this that my life slips by. I will only be pregnant (with this child!) once, and I will only spend the small girl’s third year with her once. We live through these years now, and only now, and I am learning, slowly and sometimes painfully, the value of recognising and celebrating this. So, with this in mind, this list is staying at three – oh. Ahem. Four. Four things.* The list is staying at four for this month, and this last one is the most important of all. SLOW THE FUCK DOWN, and lighten up already. Or a less American version thereof.

And you? Have you plans for world domination? Minor invasions? Major overthrows? Or just perhaps a spot of seed-planting?

* Maths was never my strong point.

• cough, cough, cough • sniff, sniff • grumbling small stomachs • back ache from too much standing and a lot of rocking of small persons who are not very well • cement mixing • homemade stepping stones x 40 • incredibly garlicky hummus • lentil, cheese and tomato loaf • a lot of salad • a small girl who loves her grandma (thank god!) • not enough sleep • not enough fun • knit, knit, knit • ‘MAMAAAAAAA!’ • ‘You mean and horrid, Daddy.’ • again? it’s 3 A.M… • Sherlock Holmes • Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (why has she not written more books yet?) • tea in the sunshine • a cleared-out greenhouse towards which I have not lifted a finger • a clay-covered garden path • fizzy water, only drunk when pregnant • the tired-and-broke desire to spend LOTS OF MONEY on treeeeeeats • silver earrings? • why can’t I find new slippers that aren’t hideous for less than £40? • muddy pawprints • cream throws dyed brown look a lot less disreputable • the workshop now full of our things, and the borrowed garage storage now empty •

And you?

Meanwhile… Normal life continues, in a gently reassuring manner, and once again, I’m reminding myself of all that’s right with the world by actually pulling my finger out and posting a few reminders of what is in many ways a very exciting time, in so many ways. Not least as this morning’s sixteen-week trip to the midwife was very positive: my persistently labile blood pressure behaved impeccably during a series of readings, and my midwife is happy to support our tentative plans for a homebirth!

The most marvellous sunset t’other night, complete with bright stars.

That marble sound-tree has been a thing of wondrousness. You can put blocks in to create a queue of marbles, resulting in marvellously plinketty-plonk modern music effects. Roll over Stockhausen: your crapulous days of woe are over.

The patio and indeed the outdoors indeed is more and more popular as the light increases and the days lengthen.

An impromptu butternut squash fox, as you do.

Some building porn: lots of gorgeous cob houses, and wood houses, and, well, even a paper house, and all made out of bugger-all with a budget of less than that.

Life is good, dagnammit! And you?

Isn’t it always the way that the weekend sees rain non-stop, and then Monday morning dawns bright and sunny?

Ho hum.

This weekend, Quercus has been trying to get back into the swing of working on our house. The current project is to get the garden work finished (as much as is seasonally possible) by the end of February; we have a block of time set aside for just this very thing, beginning on Friday, and Quercus’s mother is coming to lend an extra pair of hands, which is probably just as well given that this weekend saw me with the first twinges of a back pain suggestive of SPD.* So, Saturday was spent with the small girl and I pottering about the house, sorting out laundry (thrills! deep joy!) and house stuff, and pootling on the patio for tea-breaks with Quercus, who was otherwise engaged in making shelving for the workshop so we can get our tools and general shed paraphernalia sorted out, prior to doing more intensive work as the year goes on.

We’ve had a few weeks of not doing very much around the house, somehow. There are lots of things to do, of course, but somehow, the slump around Christmas just took a while to wear off… so that despite his having worked really hard for a week in early January, we still find ourselves with a list which includes many tasks identified quite a while ago. I think the thing is that it’s difficult to sustain a really brisk pace over a long period of time, particularly when you’re also working, living in a house which requires a lot of just ordinary cleaning and maintenance even to tread water domestically, and bringing up small children on top of that. So, from time to time we just sort of collapse into a small heap of lethargy. Well, I do, at least, and I’m not even the one doing the majority of it. (I like to think of myself as er, ahem, a facilitator.)

But as the weather improves – and we did get some sunshine on Saturday, albeit followed by gale-force winds and pissing rain – and the days lengthen, we remember that somehow, I am fifteen weeks into pregnancy, and before we know it, this whole managing-a-house-with-one-child-plus-jobs-and-renovation malarky will seem like child’s play as newborn chaos reigns and we find ourselves back on rations of sleep which are expressed in minutes with perfect validity. So, the things we’re going to do by the end of this month include:

•  laying the stepping-stone paths (we’re now thinking about using meaty cordwood rounds instead of paving slabs, simply because we can’t seem to find something we like and can afford, despite months and months of hunting) down to the bottom of the garden;

• finishing off the workshop and bringing the contents back from storage;

• rotovating what will be the lawn, which is the largest of our three terraces;

•  grass-seeding;

•  sticking in decent quantities of manure and topsoil where the new growing beds are going to be;

•  planting a few things!

•  clearing out the greenhouse;

•  sorting a waterbutt or two for the workshop;

• plugging gaps in the hedge where necessary.

This, of course, is only half the story – the other side of our garden, which is about the same size as this piece, is completely broken. It’s covered in a combination of a goodly-sized woodpile (which will one day be housed in the barn which Quercus will build for wood storage, but probably not until next year), building supplies and general crud, but we’re thinking sufficient unto the day and all that, so for this spring, it’s the kitchen garden, effectively, which we’re hoping to finish, so that we can then try to work out a way of sorting two of the four rooms in the original house. (For ‘sorting’, read ‘taking down the ceilings; stripping the walls of their crumbling plaster; working out minor details like woodwork, doorframes, cupboards, shelving; reinstating plaster, skirting boards, ceilings and so on’.)

It’s quite daunting, truth be told, and I’m struggling with the feeling of being unable to help beyond the facilitating bit. This is a bit of a recurring problem for me; I like to be in control (‘what? you!? Nooooooo.’) and not being able to be in control does not bring out the best in me. I like to make lists, and to tick things off, and to move swiftly on, and whatnot. And I just can’t, really, when it’s not me who’s doing the things on the list. And it’s not fair of me to want things to move more quickly, and I know that, and I know it’s not helping to chivvy, but oh. It is not easy to park a lifetime of twitchy must-try-harder mental habits.

So, I am hoping that Quercus and I can write a list together, so that I know what’s likely to happen when, and so that I don’t get unrealistic expectations of what might be possible. I can do things to help, of course, like making sure there is cake for a break with tea, and food for dinner which doesn’t take much thought, and enough to drink, and clean working clothes. I can ensure the small girl is happily occupied, and I can make sure that I’m eating well and taking care of myself so that I don’t enter that horribly emotional state which for me often goes with tiredness in pregnancy, meaning that Quercus can Just Get On With It without having to worry about how I’m doing, and whether I’m about to sprout snakes instead of hair. But I so so so wish that we just had pots of money, so that we could get someone to help us do this, so that we could wave a bit of a magic wand and just make some of the list go away, preferably with time enough to spare that the last months of this pregnancy might not be such a balancing act, such a divide-and-conquer approach to our time as the two adults in the house. When you’ve got limited funds, where is that point that decides you on prioritising just getting things done over keeping the small quantities of savings that you’ve accrued…? And did I mention that Quercus may be made redundant at some point in the coming months, as part of UK government cuts to the civil service? Let us not speak of that, actually – we knew that this was a possibility, and I’m hopeful that with careful management, we’ll do just fine. I prefer to be positive about these things, after all.

Friends have been talking to me since I said that I’m pregnant, telling me of the importance of networks, and of local friends upon whom one can rely for emergency childcare, cups of tea, bolt-holes. I do know this, of course, but it’s hard to cultivate these networks when you’re generally always occupied doing something, be it commuting from work or freelance editing or spending time with the small girl or debating paving slabs and heating solutions. I am trying, though, and I’m trying to find out about things like pre-school, and whether or not it is right for us, and other groups to occupy small people, and ways to manage my time which make household-running easier.

Sometimes I’d like to just be pregnant, you know? But then, does that ever happen, I wonder? Or is it just that most people seem to have children at a time in their lives when change is inevitable? Moving house, changing jobs, having other children to think about…?

So. There you go. And you? What are you up to on this (hopefully) sunny Monday morning?

* SPD – to those happy uninitiated readers, this is basically where the ol’ pregnancy hormones get a bit carried away, and your pelvis loosens, meaning that the joints aren’t terribly comfortable. Sometimes this means audible clicking, sometimes ‘just’ aches and pains. Sometimes it means hydrotherapy helps, and sometimes it means crutches. In my last pregnancy I had SPD from about 22 weeks, so it’s not particularly surprising that it may be thinking about starting a bit earlier this time. Tell you what, though: it can fuck right off.

Ohhhhh. You know how some days feel as if the edges are fraying, and you’re clutching at those threads while juggling an armful of energetic frogs all hell-bent on escaping your dubious attempts at captivity, AND you’re doing all this while walking over hot coals and reciting German verbs in all sorts of challenging and deeply un-Anglo-Saxon-seeming tenses?  Today has been one of those.

If I’m honest, it’s not so much the various miniature traumas of today that has me feeling a little beaten, though. I think it’s the cumulative effect of a few weeks or so that seem to be one step forward, two steps back. Sometimes things just seem like a bit of an uphill struggle.* The small girl is feeling quite clingy towards me at the moment, it seems; not sure why, but only I will do when it comes to a variety of ostensibly fairly superficial tasks, like, say, being helped out of the bath and got into pyjamas, or holding someone’s hand to cross a road, or being carried from our bed to her own in the evening. Part of me finds this utterly endearing; part of me dreams of a day when Quercus could do the end-to-end bath and bed routine without me necessarily being there, and without utter meltdown being the inevitable conclusion.  Of course, the irony is that it’s not so very long ago that I withdrew from a return to pottery evenings because I didn’t feel ready to let go of the small girl’s bedtimes; it’s not so much that I feel differently, now, but rather that I’d just like to have the option, I suppose.

Also, I feel constantly that if I could just get a better grip on things, life would flow more easily. Today, for example, the small girl and I came back from visiting a lovely friend and we were probably half an hour later than we normally would be for her tea. This meant, together with her not having had a snooze this afternoon for some reason that the gods of humour deemed viable, that she was pretty much done in , and not feeling at her most sociable, by the time we ate, and by bathtime, she was really at the end of her tether, not least as she was getting in the bath at about the time she’s normally heading upstairs with me for a feed and a snooze before she goes to sleep.

Oh, I know, I know. I’m tired, I’m hormonal, and I’m skint. That’s never a good combination, really, is it?

Things keeping me sane at the moment, as I trudge blearily through this week:

• David Bowie, in a variety of guises from ‘Station to Station’ to ‘Somebody Up There Likes Me’, including ‘Lady Grinning Soul’ and ‘A New Career in a New Town’

• The acquisition of some large samples of fabric, which have patchwork cushion written all over them.

• The quiet debate about dreadlocks which I’m still having with myself, this time prompted by the fact that, well, not brushing your hair for a really, really long time, together with a no-shampoo regime, does create a really quite strong tendency for dreads to form of their own accord. Ahem.

• A vaguely tidy kitchen which includes my first attempt at lime marmalade, a superbly large loaf of homemade bread courtesy of 2lb silicone moulds, and a ginger cake where ‘ginger’ = ‘dynamite strength’.

And you? What are your sanity preservers this week?

* Yes: I am officially a privileged white person living in a western country and bitching about how terrible life is despite my two-salary household (at least in theory; let us not speak of our actual salaries at the moment). I say all this, as ever, with the clear knowledge that I am being an ungrateful trout. But hey – this is my blog, innit, so I can whinge if I want to. Or something.

With thanks to SouleMama, my rather more verbose attempt at ‘a Friday ritual, a single photo, a moment to savour’. (Well, in this case, three photos, but the same moment, somehow. And let’s gloss over the whole ‘no words’ bit, shall we?)

The small girl has had a hacking cough for the last week; Beatrix Potter is the best cure, specifically regular doses of ‘Old Mr. Tod’. Shifty though I feel about small children and screen hours, I am trying to remind myself that less than an hour a week is probably not going to squarify her eyes.

The tiles are finished, and have been for nearly a month, yet still I marvel at their shiny brightness every day. Cream-coloured grout, since you (didn’t!) ask.

One of the things I love the most about our new kitchen space is the light which comes from having windows in two walls, together with rooflights. The rest of our house is north-facing, so the light in here never fails to amaze me. If only I could get the kitchen table clear, things would be just dandy. But hey – for now, I’ll settle for the light.

This weekend, I mostly made marmalade. How is it that so few oranges can contain so many pips, and what sort of bending of the laws of physics takes place in order to allow one to end up with far more marmalade output than the constituent ingredients suggested might be the case? Somehow I have eight pounds of the stuff. Not that I am complaining – at the moment, marmalade on muffins is about right for me. I’m also going to make lime marmalade later in the week, just because I can. I’m a devil, me. (Just don’t ask about jars, because I haz nun.) Making this stuff, though, prompted a quick overview of the things I made last year.

We have a cupboard full of jam:

• ten jars of spiced apple jam;

• eight jars of quince butter;

• six large jars of sweet and sour spiced plums;

• eight jars of dark Seville marmalade;

• seven jars of apple and herb butter;

• four jars of plum jam.

And the booze:

• four gallons of sloe wine;

• two gallons of quince wine;

• two gallons of plum wine;

• two gallons of elderflower wine;

• a gallon of greengage wine.

And then there are clothes:

• trousers in brown velvet, brown cord and cornflower blue cord for the small girl;

• a turquoise fleece dress for the small girl;

• two sundresses for the small girl, one with a bell closure;

• a sun bonnet for the small girl;

• a reversible quilt… yes, for the small girl;

• a knitted hat, in Noro’s gorgeously soft Kochoran yarn, together with scarf and legwarmers… for the small girl;

• two pairs of pyjamas bottoms, for Quercus;

• a brown fleece goblin hood for the small girl;

• clothes for Bluebell, the doll I made for the small girl’s second birthday;

• knitted wristwarmers for Quercus’s birthday.

And then there are, well, things:

• a seat cover for the small girl’s high chair;

• a felted wrap for our coffee pot;

• more felted pumpkins than I care to number;

• several sets of felt dreadlock-style hair ties;

• more felted acorns than is strictly decent;

• a baby.

EEK.

Ah. Yes. I realise that last point may require a little explanation. Ahem. Thirteen weeks down, twenty-seven to go: our second child is due in early August, if all goes to plan. We’re delighted, and, predictably, knackered, terrified and skint, not necessarily in that order. Did I mention that this is the year when we plan to replaster the rest of the house?