Colour query

When you mix blue and white you get light blue.
When you mix green and white you get light green.
When you mix yellow and white you get light yellow.

So why do you get pink when you mix red and white and beige when you mix brown and white?

Do we just need some new names for the lighter shades of other colours?

Finding a house sounds soooooo simple in the abstract.

So here we find ourselves, house hunting. If only it were as easy as traipsing through the wet heather at dawn with a stiff whiskey warming you from the inside, sending your damp, smiling Springer Spaniel off and then firing a gun into the sky and feeling somewhat relieved that you managed to miss actually hitting anything as you don't eat meat anyway.

No, it is far, far worse. It is cold and barren path we tread, aided only by real estate agents. Ahhhh, see, now that's your first mistake - real estate agents don't help you, silly, they are there to suck the life essence out of your still warm body. Honestly, if one more real estate agent tells me that the turquoise "feature wall" really "lifts the room", I will not be held accountable for my actions. So far we have seen hideous, hideous, filthy, hideous and "oh my god, does this house not include a garden?".

At first I thought house hunting merely horrible, not actually hellish as such. But it turns out that Dante knew what he was talking about. The entire process of house hunting is so closely aligned to the eight circles of hell that it can't be a coincidence. Dante must have been looking for a house to buy - he must have written The Divine Comedy between open houses and inspections.

1. Limbo - Apply for finance and then wait, and wait, and wait.
2. Lustful - Try to find a house that you love (or at the very least, don't despise).
3. Gluttony - Realise that the house you don't hate, is listed at an unrealistic price and backs onto the motorway.
4. Concern for material goods - Reassure yourself that you don't want a palatial, nine bedroom monstrosity, all you want is a house you don't hate - is that too much to ask?
5. Wrathful - Begin to feel wrathful with the world at the injustice of real estate pricing, and the rarity that is the walk-in-robe.
6. Heretics - Realise that there is no higher power - how can such wrongs bring no fire and brimstone from the heavens?
7. Violent - Feel yourself becoming violent at the mere mention of real estate agents.
8. Fraudulent - Accept that all you are told is untrue.

Obviously I accept that my eight point summary of the circles of hell is somewhat rudimentary, but the preliminary findings are encouraging.

Eggs

In my new found role as an Earth Mother, it is now part of duties to do the grocery shopping and I have to confess that I find eggs quite stressful. I mean, of course, that there are so many different types of eggs that one finds it difficult to choose the correct eggs.

I know for sure that I don't want cage eggs - I don't need the bad karma from 4 billion unhappy chickens. But are the free range eggs better than the barn laid eggs? Will I get bird flu from free range eggs? I can choose to purchase barn laid eggs that are fed non-genetically modified food but is it better to select the free range eggs that are antibiotic-free? And finally - are the organic eggs laid by happy chickens?

What I need is an instruction book.

I can hear you now

22 weeks - the bones of your baby’s inner ear will have hardened by the end of this week and his sense of hearing will be developing with his ability to detect sound vibrations.

Buster told the triplets that the baby can now hear them if they talk to my stomach and they got very excited and started pushing each other out the way to all shout "you're adopted" before collapsing in hysterics at their own hilariousness.

It's all about ...

My sister lives next door to a family of Sudanese refugees and they have a little girl, Ester, who is about the same age as my niece, EJ. EJ is often to be found playing next door and recently EJ has been going to church with them on Sundays. Last time I saw EJ she was all excited because she was going to church with Ester on Sunday. I asked her if she liked going to church with Ester and she said "yes Aunty, but it's all about Baby Jesus you know".

I just finished reading ...

If you haven't already read it, I strongly suggest that you lay your grubby little hands on a copy of Oryx and Crake by the ever amazing Margaret Atwood. I just finished reading it and really enjoyed it. It's got a kind of a post-apocolyptic thing going on but is a proper book. This is the kind of book that I would use to beat Dan Brown around the head.

Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back ...

So here we are. Back safe and sound in Brisvegas.

Thankfully everything is going well with the baby stuff. We had our ultrasound a few weeks ago and everything looks fine - although we are apparently having a very modest baby as the sonographer wasn't able to see if it's a boy or a girl. We also have an obsterician and are booked into the hospital. Am very relieved to know that Buster probably won't have to deliver the baby in the bathtub at home.

I'm now 21 weeks so I'm just over the halfway mark - our due date is 13 June 2007. The baby is still developing his/her brain and immune system and is now about 19 cm long and weighs 300-400 grams. I am starting to feel the baby moving around and every day my stomach is a slightly different shape depending on how the baby is lying. During the day, the baby is mostly quiet but at night when I go to bed, he/she starts up with the kicking and the tumbleturns. The movements are just getting strong enough that Buster can feel them too. It's a really weird sensation to be just sitting there quietly and have this tapping sensation on the inside.

I've also been spending a lot of time catching up on my reading so I'll have some non-baby stuff to post in the next few days.