C's parents were in London for the weekend. We ate 3-course dinners (with wine) on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and my body is punishing me for it. I feel fat, and worse than that I think my digestive system has seized up. Today so far I've eaten nothing but fruit and soup, and have been drinking litres of water. Bleh. It's funny how your body gets used to only having certain things. I feel quite stupendously ill.

Last night I had to sit through a fairly crap, overpriced, Italian meal in Kensington with C's mum's cousin and C's mum's cousin's wife. C's mum's cousin is typical West-London posh snob, who jeered a little upon hearing I lived in Battersea ("South of the river? Oh dear"). Then his wife said "Battersea... that's quite a nice area, apart from the South of the River thing". I resisted the temptation to use my Fist of Death and instead smiled in the manner a girlfriend meeting the relatives is probably supposed to. Apart from that, they were nice people.

I also got to listen to a couple of hours of catching up with various branches of the family. Since my own extended family totals eight people, and all but one (me) live in Woking, Surrey, we never have those discussions. None of us are marrying or breeding anyway, so there's nothing to talk about (and we'll all be dead in a generation or two ;-)

On Sunday afternoon (which is actually Sunday 'morning' in our house), C & I had a bit of a crisis of self-confidence. We're both feeling fat and ugly and think that no-one will ever fancy us. Our exercise intentions are good, but I feel like I'm getting nothing out of my semi-regular puffing sessions in the park.

Plus the fact that the flat remains in an absolute state (almost un-livable at the moment) is bringing me down. I guess it's going to take me a while to get used to the fact that it's not just solely my home any more, it's his too. I usually go through regretful feelings like this whenever there's a big change: after C & I started going out I spent ages wishing I was still single; when I bought my flat I wished I was still renting (especially when things went wrong). Now I'm having nerves about things not working out between him & I, that I'll wind up pushing him away for some reason, etc etc. I suppose it's just natural cold-feet type things. I've spent the last couple of weeks convinced that I'm going to lose this job, and wishing that I hadn't quit the last one. I suppose I'm just not good at handling big changes.

C and I are going to try and make a big push to tidy things away this week. We have the shelves from IKEA all in pieces in the middle of the room - we just have to assemble them, take the stuff out of the cupboards, put the shelves in the cupboards, put the stuff on the shelves... you get the picture. Fun.

Another thing getting us down is our lack of social life, which is mostly due to a lack of money. Reading Time Out is depressing, because we don't have the funds to do most of the cool-sounding things in there. However, our finincial situation should pick up soon, as both of us sharing my flat should work out very cheaply. I also reminded C that we have the whole rest of our lives to go clubbing / to the theatre / to restaurants, since we'll have no rugrats to deal with ;-)

We decided yesterday to hide our personal ads. The sheer volume of responses are too much to keep up with, and the almost-universal crapness of the respondents is getting too irritating. However, we had a response on Saturday from a gay couple (a bi man and his gay partner), which is a first. The guys don't look eye-catchingly handsome, but we're going to write back because they're the first gay couple we've heard from; and because they make a big change from the legions of "I guess I could suck a cock if I had to" married men we've been getting replies from.