Due and Over-Due

My due-date, Friday the 18th, has come and gone and now it's just the waiting game. People keep asking me if there is "any sign" which I understand means "do you think it'll be soon?" but is literally "tell me about your vagina" and thus making me twitch. My mother says you lose all sense of privacy about such things by the time you've had the baby but I'm pretty sure I'll still be uncomfortable with the idea let alone the reality. So, yeah, no updates about my nether region beyond possibly "I think things are starting" or "It's time to go to the hospital". We'll see how extroverted I'm feeling when it happens.

Speaking of my mother, she arrived safely on Wednesday afternoon having left her house around 11am our time the previous day. I do not envy her that trip. The weather held clear until after she got here though it snowed most of Friday and hasn't yet melted. She's from Chicago originally and seemed charmed by our millimetres/day snowfall, being more accustomed to inches/hour. She's not well pleased by the cold. I had advised her to bring at least one pair of thermal long undies but she figured I'm always cold when I'm at her house and she wouldn't much go outside so she didn't need to find room for bulky warm things. I couldn't tell her what temperature we keep our house as we don't have a thermostat (our heat is on a timer) but Chris and I do spend most of the winter wearing long-underwear in the house. When I moved over my mother gave me a bulky Aran sweater she'd bought on her Ireland trip which I've now returned to her use. I wore it once as it's too warm to wear inside and when I go out I prefer a coat, but she's worn it every day. She did warm up enough that I could turn the fire off. I do think jet-lag affects one's ability to regulate temperature, so it's not just that she's unused to the cold. And I have a space-heater strapped to my torso and have not been the coldest person in a given room for the first time in my life, so it is possible that the house is as cold as my mother thinks and I'm just not noticing.

In knitting news, my mother has decided that she wants to knit socks for herself, and toe-up ones at that, so I loaned her circs (she had DPNs but not the right size, plus I couldn't figure out how to start Judy's Magic CO with DPNs), cast on for her, and explained Magic Loop. For the next sock I'll teach her the cast-on but I didn't want to throw too many techniques at her at once.

My baby blanket is almost done. I'm about halfway down the last border and could possibly finish today. I no longer have space in my house to block it properly (I used to use the floor of my office, now the nursery-cum-guest room) but I can wash it and at least stretch the stitches into evenness and shape. I hope. But if Yarn Harlot is right that an unfinished baby blanket can keep the baby from arriving, then the end is in sight.

If I do finish and have time before Little Djinn shows up, I'm going to switch back to the socks for my mother though I've still not had her try on the one I'm convinced won't fit. I did start the second sock though, so that's something. I think it's big enough around but too long and too tight to go over the heel, so working on the up-to-gusset part of the second sock won't be wasted.

That's life in the largely-pregnant land. Chris is working through the weekend, "up until Little Djinn arrives" so he can have some hours stashed for when Little Djinn is here plus his two weeks' paternity leave. My mother has cleaned a few little things around the house which I know is meant as "I'm here to help" but feels like "you don't keep house to my standards". Plus I am uncomfortable with the idea of sitting around while someone else cleans which means even though I'm tired I have to get up and do something, too.

Next weekend is both my husband and my father-in-law's birthday's. We're hoping to go to a seafood restaurant with my mother for Chris' birthday and have Aged Parent over on Sunday for his. Chris wants a chocolate mouse cake with coffee custard. There's always the chance that one or the other of them will get a child or grandchild for their birthday, though I think we're all hoping for sooner rather than later.