The Big List

Things are happening in our household.  Big things.  We (meaning Nick) are about to start tearing down walls, painting, tiling, and generally making a huge mess.  Again.  But for our grand master-plan to work, everything needs to happen in a very specific order.  Which is why I made a list - we'll call it "The Big List".

1.  Bathroom Renovation
This includes:
-Removing the old desk and chair from our bedroom so building supplies from the bathroom can be placed here.  Selling everything on Craigslist.  Making the space Nick needs for the toilet, vanity, sink, walls, tile, floor, lighting, etc.
-Gutting the bathroom top to bottom.
-Replacing what was gutted.

I'm sure there is more to that, but I'm staying out of it.  I'll give you more details about that fun adventure at the end of this week.

2.  Bedroom Renovation 
This includes:
-Finishing all of the painting and molding that was never completed last year.
-Deconstructing my work desk to be a bit smaller so it will fit more appropriately in our bedroom.
-Moving my desk, chair, and all KSY supplies from my office to our bedroom.  Reorganizing my closet to hold my supplies, cleaning under the bed to store my shipping materials, and figuring out a way to add 300 more square feet to my house in order to store all of the bouquets that litter the floor of my current office.

3.  Office Becomes Nursery
The big one.  This includes:
-The big switch from pink paint to a new color.  Guess what it is.  I bet you can't.
-Finishing and painting all the molding.
-New furniture - Crib (purchased), dresser (needs to be purchased), new carpet, new curtains.
-Decorating extravaganza.  I just ordered a changing pad cover, need to buy fabric for the crib skirt (because paying over $100 for one is ridiculous), need to buy wall decorations.
-Finding a space for all the other baby stuff we're slowly accumulating.  Did you know that babies come with a lot of stuff?  Surprise!

4. Finish Everything Else
Everything we let fall through the cracks.  This includes:
-Finishing the tile in the kitchen.
-Finishing putting up the molding in the rest of the house.
-Lots and lots of touch-up painting.
-Switching out power outlets and light switches.

Do you think we can finish it all?  Me neither.  But as long as I don't need to go more than a week without a toilet, I'll be happy.  That's right - next week we won't have a toilet.  Like, at all.  Good times.

The Best Day

Yesterday was the best day I can remember for a long, long time.  One of the best days of my life.  While the morning started with some dizziness, the intense need to nap at 10am, and Nick's assistance to sit or stand, all of which cancelled our pre-planned trip to Maine, after some sleeping, take-out, and a couple hours of Bridezillas, we were ready to make the most of our first Mother's Day.  

I know I told some of you to punch me in the face if I ever did this, but I'm doing it.  I expect the hit.  I deserve it. Here we are at 24 weeks - exactly 6 months along on Mother's Day.

There were a couple rounds of flowers from Daddy...

The cutest card I've ever seen from Baby...

Delicious cake...

And an impromptu trip to the ocean for dinner.  

 I woke up and went to sleep crying.  I didn't think a day like this would come for us.  But it did.  Thank you all so, so much for the cards, texts, and phone calls.  They meant so much to me.  We didn't think this day would be so emotional for us - both the sweet and bittersweet.  It's hard not to remember this day a year ago, a day that also began and ended with crying.  But this year I can say that I spent the day just as I wanted to - with my two boys, just the three of us.  The very best day.

Happy Birthday, Nick!

I run out of words when trying to describe how special you are.  There aren't enough

You're my best friend.  You can read my mind.  And over the past two years you've held strong so I could fall apart whenever I needed to.  Nothing in my life is possible without you.  I'm blessed to have you as a husband, and your son is blessed to have you as a Daddy, in a way that only the three of us can ever really know.  Happy birthday, Sweetness. 

Falling Apart

I used to cook a lot.  I used to meal-plan like a crazy woman.  I used to only go grocery shopping once every two weeks.  It was like a game - how well can I plan the next two weeks out, stay within my budget, and have enough food for three meals a day? 

I also used to keep our house pretty clean.  I vacuumed every single day.  I mopped once a week, and had all the dishes clean for when Nick got home.  I made the bed every day.  I dusted regularly. 

I also had a full-time job and then worked for myself when I got home.  And when I was done with that, I managed to blog five times a week.  My productivity was at an all-time high.

So basically I was setting myself up to eventually fall apart.  Because doing all of these things, all of the time, while remaining relatively sane is completely impossible.  And I think that I am a living, breathing example of how falling apart sometimes is probably the best way to go.  Because at this very moment, I'm sitting in my house in the middle of the day.  Everything is a mess.  I've barely gotten any work done today.  I'm in the living room surrounded by a new toilet to my left, and a vanity to my right.  I'm attempting to make a grocery list to last me the next three days, and I just can't do it.  And I can't do it because I just don't cook the same as I used to. 

Now, more than ever, I know that everything is going to be okay.  So what if this is the third time I will have gone to the grocery store today?  So what if Nick is going to be home in fifteen minutes, and the front door is blocked by three boxes of flowers I failed to move six hours ago?  So what if every surface of my kitchen is covered with something?  Life will go on.  Things will get done. 

My previous expectations of myself have fallen apart.  They weren't sustainable.  They weren't realistic.  And they probably weren't as productive as I once thought.  There have been a lot of life changes for us over the past seven months, and our little world is about to be rocked again.  My priorities needed readjusting.  Rather, they needed minimizing.  And in 3.5 months, I'll have two priorities - taking care of the three people in this house, and taking care of KSY.  All the other stuff will fall into place.  Maybe that will mean forgetting how to vacuum.  Or maybe I'll surprise myself and be an amazing, super-productive wife/mom/business-owner/housekeeper.  The first option sounds more realistic. 

The Other Woman

Because of some of the complications we've experienced over the past six months, every few weeks we find ourselves in the waiting room of a fancy-schmancy ultrasound facility, excitedly waiting to see new pictures of Baby bouncing around, sucking his thumb, and repeatedly kicking me in the bladder.  We really look forward to these visits because we get to see how much he's grown, and it makes us feel like the dark days of December, January, and February are long behind us.

The thing about this place, however, is that it serves patients all across the pregnancy spectrum - people who are at the beginning of the process, and those of us closer to the end.  Which means while I'm sitting in one chair, fat and happy, the woman across from me could be there because things are not going well.  Or have stopped going at all.  And this is where we are all sent to see our fates.  I've walked out the doors crying because I'm happy and thankful.  I've also seen many couples walk out crying because something terrible has happened.  I know the look.  Distraught husband.  Inconsolable wife.  Extra-nice staff taking care of them.  It brings me back to the dark days whenever I see it.

And then I remember how sad it made me to see pregnant women on the street.  How waking up in the morning and functioning like a normal human was almost too hard to bear.  All of the insensitive things people said to us.  The jokes, the intrusions, the constant need for explanations.  A lot of pain, wrapped up in one tiny secret.

And then, sitting in that waiting room, fat and happy, I realized that I'm now the other woman.  I'm the one that has the potential to remind others of their loss and pain.  And there's no partition wall here to separate us.  It's hard to admit, but women going through fertility treatment generally hate to look at pregnant strangers.  I know I did, and it's a feeling that was expressed repeatedly in my support groups.  It's incredibly painful, because it reminds you of what you don't have.  You want other people to be happy, but you don't need any reminders of how unhappy you are.  And seeing that bump on a smiling stranger often sends those emotions into overdrive when you are least expecting it.  And it sucks.

This awareness makes me want to take them by the hand and say, "I understand.  I was there.  It's horrible.  It can get better."  But I can't.  I'm a walking advertisement for pregnancy, and no one can see or hear my disclaimer.  But what I've learned through this process is that many people have their own scary disclaimer.  And maybe if I ever had to return to that dark place, sitting on the other side of the partition all over again, I'll remember that.  And maybe I'll hate the other woman a little bit less.

Disconnected, and a Vision of my Future

My computer needed a little TLC.  It has the bad habit of shutting down just at the moments when we really, really need it (or really, really want to watch Anthony Bourdain on Netflix).  So I brought it to the Apple store last week.  The good news is that it's a known issue, so the $500 fix is free for me.  The bad news is it takes 3-5 days to complete.  So that means a 3-5 day vacation around these parts.  No computer means very little work for me.  I imagined days of productive cooking, cleaning, and catching up on miscellaneous to-dos.  What I've gotten so far is a day of napping, a visit to CT...and that's about it.  It's been pretty glorious.  I plan to continue the laziness for as long as I can, and then have a whirlwind bout of work to do when my beloved technology returns to me.

In other news, on our trip to CT I found myself visiting with some of Nick's family, which currently consists of four boys ranging from the ages of 9-13.  Let me start by saying that they are very sweet, very smart, very polite young men.  Let me finish by saying that they scared the crap out of me.  I saw my future ten years from now.  There were no footy-pajamas, outfits that matched Daddy, or books at bedtime.  There were iPhones, serious discussions about the pros and cons of rap music, and an obvious boy's club that no one over the age of 13 could enter.

Their mothers assured me that boys were easier than girls.  Maybe I believe them.  Or maybe I believe they are just trying to make me feel better.  On the other hand, there wasn't a smidge of attitude among them, they were incredibly laid back, and I didn't see a single eye-roll all day, so perhaps at that age they are significantly easier than girls.  Talk to me in ten years.

Karma is a Nasty Bee

The alternate title to this rant is "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you got 'til it's gone".

Or more appropriately, "Car salesmen hold mean grudges".

Let me back up.  Five weeks ago when we bought our new car, we negotiated with a weekend mechanic at the dealership.  We told him (truthfully) that another dealership had offered us $1000 for our old Stratus.  He, in an effort to negotiate back with us, offered us $1400.  Without driving it.  Or wiping all the snow off of it. 

You know, $1400 for the car we called the coffin-on-wheels.  The one with three cracks in the windshield.  The one with a body-sized dent on one side.  The one without heat or AC.  It's also possible that parts of the under-carriage were secured on with zip-ties. 

But we heard $1400.  $1400 for a pile of poop.  And we immediately wrote a check for Mommy's new car. 

Here's the thing - two days later, we came back to pick up the car, and the owner of the dealership wanted to look at the Stratus before giving us the keys to the new car.  Nick and I started to panic.  This guy was going to take one look at the Stratus and know he was swindled.  So we gave him the keys and prayed.  And he came back quickly.  He came back mad.  But he came back and told us he would honor the mechanic's word because "we seemed like good kids," and he wanted us to have a nice car. 

It may have helped that he knew I was pregnant, and I told him our carseat wouldn't fit in the Stratus.

This was before he found out about the lack of heat or AC, and the zip-tie situation.  We ran out of that place like we had stolen something.  And swore never to return.

Fast-forward to today.  I had been hearing funny noises with the brakes, and as it's under warranty, I wanted the dealership to fix the problem.  Which meant going back to the dealership.  And talking with the owner.  And giving him the keys to my new car.  And taking a loaner car while he fixed mine.

It wasn't pretty.  He clearly doesn't like us.  I knew it the second we locked eyes.  Because now he knows.  He knows how crappy the Stratus was.  He knows about the zip-ties.  And now he needs to fix my new car for free. 

And that son of a bee-sting got me.  He got me good.  Because I, out of ignorance, expected a loaner car of equal value to the car I am used to.  But you know what I got?  I got a CRAPPY DODGE STRATUS.  A Dodge Stratus that made Nick's look like a Cadillac.  A Dodge Stratus, circa something around 1987, with no AC, an empty gas tank, and a window in the back that won't roll all the way up.  Try and tell me that wasn't on purpose.  Just try.  You know this was premeditated.

And now I know what it is to miss a car.  Something just five weeks ago that I managed to live without owning for 28 years.  And never in a million years did I imagine driving another Dodge Stratus, let alone something ten times crappier than the one Nick used to have.  And now I'm the one behind the wheel.  No turn-by-turn navigation, no warning beeps when other cars or people get too close, no tissues or snacks conveniently placed in the glove compartment.  Just me, a tank of gas I had to pay for, and a window that doesn't roll up.

Pray for me tonight that it doesn't rain. 

And never, ever, ever cross a car dealer you ever want to see again.