Under the Same Sky

I know I am deceiving myself, but I feel like if I could just get caught up, then I would be able to maintain my life without stress. It seems so easy. It's the same philosophy as the one where if I could just get liposuction, I could wear skinny jeans the rest of my life. If that were going to work, then I wouldn't need liposuction! Actually, you will never hear me talk about actually having liposuction. I am fairly strongly in the "no plastic surgery" camp for stuff like that. Also, I've heard of too many people dying from elective procedures like that. Isn't that a cheery thought? All this to say that I am really, actually working on my shameful clutter box today. I've put away recipes, stuffed Winnie the Pooh in the washer (here's hoping I don't ruin him), put away the DSL phone.. thing, whatever it's called, put away some linens that have been sitting out since September and separated some leftover Christmas stuff to be taken to the seasonal tubs downstairs. I've also packaged up something to take to the post office. I need to find a box that could contain a dozen diapers so I can go see what shipping would be to Sweden, but I've stacked the diapers in question together in the dining room. I am Super Organizer, hear me roar!

Evelyn was so sweet this morning. Picture it. It's five AM and your baby starts crying in the next room. Your husband gets up to go to her. She is not completely awake, but her blanket is crumpled up underneath her uncomfortably. He pulls it out and covers her up, and then pets on her head. You are listening on the monitor, preparing to get up and feed the little twerp... and then the husband comes back to bed. No feeding! No wakey wakey! Just a little girl who wanted her daddy to come love on her. :) Aww..

Our house has a sunroom that was built on after the house was constructed. The idea is good, and people tend to think it's a nice room, but it is not really connected to our central heat/air system. It is, but it is completely inefficient (there are nine windows and two outside doors!) and my husband likes to keep the vents closed. It is FREEZING out there during the winter. I'd like to stick a thermometer out there just to see. We don't go out there much... except that the laundry room is on the other end of it, and I do a LOT of laundry. Basically, the point here is that I had to go throw in a load of diapers and now I am cold. Yay for too much detail! And now I have realized that I have to go back. Bah, humbug! It is so cold lately. I am ready for summer. Or a nice long vacation somewhere with sun.

My grandfather, who lived through the Depression, always had a thing for buying toilet paper. When us kids would tease him about his stockpile of TP, he would just say that if you knew what it was like to not have toilet paper, you would always make sure to have some on hand. I think that was just something he said to make us to laugh, but sometimes I think that maybe M is the one that lived through some hard times as a youth. Boyo believes in stocking up. Recently, he has decided that Kraft mac-n-cheese is a food descended from Heaven, as you can greatly improve the meal-like quality of it by adding in chopped up sausages or hot dogs. He's a big meat fan, after all. So, every time we went shopping, he'd buy some and put it in our little room--it's a walk-in closet off the laundry room that is just lovely for storage space. We use it partially as a pantry for extra food. I went in there one day to get something and counted FIFTEEN boxes of mac-n-cheese. Fifteen. Dude! No one needs fifteen boxes of processed cheese food product! He's completely nuts. I wrote about the same thing over four years ago, with a picture. Boyo has exceeded his previous crazy now, though. I left him alone for JUST A MINUTE while Evelyn and I went to pick up something in another aisle. When I came back, he had SIXTEEN CASES of Pepsi in the cart. My jaw just dropped open, much to the amusement of other shoppers... who asked us if we were having a party. No, world. We are not having a party. We are having a problem weighting our floor down to keep it from blowing off in case of a tornado. Geez. At least the mac-n-cheese takes up almost no space!

I don't even want to think about how much crap I have left to do this week. We were cleaning/working this afternoon, when suddenly M stopped and pointed out that the house is in MUCH worse shape than it has ever been. We had everything pulled out while working on various projects, and also we got behind on the routine stuff like laundry. So, being a good little nerd, he documented the messiest living room with a picture. I added the commentary, of course. He's standing at the back of the dining room, facing the living room. To his left is the kitchen. I can't believe I am actually posting this on the internets. Oi.



This week will be lots of fun! ;)

How is it possible that I am home all day every day every week now and I still have a to-do list that is a mile long? My baby gives me at least one super nap a day, and sometimes two. Occasionally even three! I don't know how she established this pattern, but she gets up in the morning, goes back to sleep promptly, and sleeps until around eleven. I have the entire morning to do stuff! Conveniently, I am a morning person when it comes to productivity (not when it comes to getting my ass out of bed) so this should be perfect! For a brief moment there a few weeks ago, I thought I was actually going to finish up with all of those things that I need to do. I was crossing things off right and left. And then.. it became time to really contemplate the fact that my in-laws are arriving in September, and we should prepare for that. For one thing, we should hang up anti-creepy curtains in the sunroom. We have agonized over this choice of window treatments since we moved in, but we actually bought curtains last week and have started putting them up. Five out of nine rods are in place, but the curtains all need ironed. (Something else that I have thought of doing this week without actually doing.)

By the way, I was really surprised to find that my insurance company had paid for the delivery appropriately, and with only a few scattered phone calls and glitches. Of course, that was before the $4,300 bill the hospital just sent, claiming that the insurance company didn't pay for anything related to Evelyn's stay in the hospital. Oi. The fact that I have an Explanation of Benefits from the insurance company with the amount paid clearly stated? That means nothing to them. And, I'm sorry, dear hospital, but I am not about to pay you four thousand dollars when the insurance company has already paid you. It just isn't going to happen. You know, I thought having insurance made it easier to pay medical bills. Silly me!

Brag about a baby's super nap and she will invariably wake up early. I hear her talking over the monitor.. best go check on her.

I used to be so posty! Now I sit here with a blank screen up, trying to think of something to say. It's not just LJ, sadly. M and I are lacking in the fun, happening conversation department as well, lately. We used to never shut up, most of the time. I'm assuming that it will gradually get back to normal. I'm hoping that it will, anyway. While we happen to find Evelyn endlessly fascinating, there is only so much that we need to tell each other about her. As for you all, mainly I'm just embarrassed to have nothing else to say.

The three of us left town to do a bit of shopping today, and the girl was so good! I carried her in the sling through Bed Bath & Beyond and the half price bookstore, which makes this my first public babywearing day. It was very nice. We also went to the big scary baby store to get an extra cover for the changing pad, and I also bought a diaper bag for a little more than I wanted to spend, but not so much more that I feel too terribly guilty. Most diaper bags are not made for cloth diapers, by the way. Cloth needs more room, and I'm hoping this one will do better in that regard. We're still using the hospital freebie, and there are many things about it that I don't like. I wanted to look for one online but I am a pretty touchy-feely person when it comes to picking out bags. Actually, that goes for most things. I order surprisingly little stuff online for being such a big geek. Books, mainly.

We have a room decor dilemma. Our sunroom has no window coverings. It's been easy to leave it that way, for a lot of reasons--we're not ready to tackle that room, as it needs extensive work on the floor, walls, doors and ceiling. You can see pictures of the room on this page. The room has nine windows on two walls, and we really need some way to cover them when we want to. Right now, we're using it as a guest room, and it has a certain fish bowl feeling at night. It's kind of creepy. Our original plan was mini-blinds. We bought them, but never hung them up, and finally returned them to WalMart because we decided we were never going to do it. I'm not in love with the blinds option because I love the natural light in there, and I know us well enough to know that if we hang blinds, we are never going to leave them open. Nine windows! It would take forever to open them all, and it's not like we spend a lot of time out there, so we wouldn't bother that often. Keep in mind that with nine windows, it needs to be pretty cheap per window because it adds up fast. Also, the windows meet in one corner, which makes it difficult to attach things together there (that was the first problem with hanging the blinds.) Oh, and of course, curtain rods spanning the entire length of the set of windows are out of the question, too. We have been ignoring the issue so far, but M's parents are supposed to be coming to visit in September, and we really would like to have it fixed by then. My parents have stayed out there, but it hasn't bothered them at all. Anyone have any great ideas? I suck at window treatments. We have up three curtains in the entire house right now. Something that does not involve duct tape, sheets, blankets or aluminum foil would be best. If it matters, we're eventually going to paint that room yellow, with a nice wood laminate floor, no ceiling beams and white trim.

I have a feeling that is a completely futile request but it can't hurt to try, right?

I feel like I should point out that last night's contractions faded away, and so I went to bed. I slept for eleven hours. I had pie for breakfast. I showered, and then took a nap. (!!) By one o'clock, neither of us were even dressed yet. This has been the laziest day of my entire pregnancy, I think, but I am so well-rested! At one, I realized that today is a gift--a pre-Ducky weekend day, so I had better get a few things done, so we ate lunch, and I've thrown laundry in and started picking up the house while M goes out and plays with his new toy. At the moment, I'm waiting for the tylenol to kick in so I can get some work done--I have a catch in my back that will not allow much walking without it.

About the mower, would you like to hear a cute story? M goes out and mows the lawn last weekend, front and back. Our lawn is very hard to mow. It's in terrible shape for several reasons--moles, neglect from previous owners, almost total shade, weeds, tree roots from massive trees, randomly placed greenery, etc. To fix it, we really need to get rid of the moles, first of all, or it will all be a waste of time. Last year was devoted to mole elimination, which was a failed project. To make things even more fun, we have lots of steep slopes and hills. We had a self-propelled push mower, and it still took him hours, and most of the day's energy, to get the mowing done. So last weekend, he comes back inside after making the yard look very pretty, and he is semi-irate at the world and tells me that we are going to have to do something, because after Ducky gets here, he is NOT going to spend all weekend every week mowing the lawn, because he will want to spend time with the baby. I don't think he even did it on purpose, but of course my heart got all melty, and I pulled out my checkbook and we headed off to Lowe's to buy a more-time-with-baby device as soon as my parents were here with their truck. We've talked about buying a riding mower since we moved in, but originally, he was keeping an eye out for a used mower, which my dad--who, the possessor of six acres of mowed lawn about which he is fanatical and therefore has bought more than his share of riding mowers--wasn't too thrilled with. He's been after us for a while to buy one. I have been telling M that we might as well just do it, since we are going to be spending that money eventually--might as well do it sooner rather than later. He's been resisting because he hates the idea of spending a fortune to make his life a bit easier. But, I'm personally glad that he finally gave in and let us buy the thing, because it should save him a LOT of time and energy, and that will mean the grass will get cut more frequently and the yard will look better when it is cut. On the down side, one of the blades has already bent from the travesty that is our yard, so he has to run out to the store to finish up. Figures.

Anyway, I felt obligated to say that there is no baby here yet, but now my back is feeling well enough that I can go change the laundry over and put away some junk, so I should go take advantage of it. And find something to eat because it's been like, two HOURS since I last ate! The horrors. Anyway, unless something happens that makes it urgent, I will quickie-post before we head off to the hospital, because that's the kind of thing I do. I am also planning on having M do a voice post, if we get around to it, so we might use that while we're AFK. Maybe. M wants to know why he has to do a voice post in my journal, and clearly, the answer is.. because I don't want to. :) I will miss having pregnancy as an excuse for being so annoying.

The bedroom/bathroom renovation is officially done! I stopped writing about it because it was so close that it was impossible not to call it done, and therefore there wasn't much to say, but I couldn't actually say that until the floors got scrubbed of stray paint drops. Since M was sick last week, he lacked the inclination to come home and scrub the floor. I thought I could help, but reconsidered due to sickness, and then the general knowledge that sitting cross-legged on a hardwood floor that I can't get up off of by myself for hours would be a bad idea. I've had some trouble with my hip lately, and my back is worse... and doing the same thing in the other bedroom when I wasn't pregnant crippled me for two days. I will look through pictures tomorrow, maybe, and upload some. I'm not sure when we're going to officially move the bed in there, but I'm looking forward to it. Right now, having a bathroom seven steps away from the bed sounds great. Is a pregnant blogger writing about how often they go pee the equivalent of a mommy blogger writing about poop?

Speaking of pregnant, there is now no question about whether I'm fat or pregnant most of the time. I think sometimes I stand in such a way that one might not notice, or my clothes might hang straight, but even the most tactful of my friends confided that it was pretty obvious now and she would try not to stare. (Hi, G!) This Saturday is our day-long prepared childbirth class--I'll be 27 weeks exactly, which is the beginning of the third trimester (according to who you ask, I've seen weeks 25-29 listed) The third one? That's the last one. Yikes. I asked M a while back, while writing an email to his parents, if Swedes generally do the childbirth classes. He informed me that he had no idea, because he had never been to one. Well, thanks, dude. I'm glad to hear that because if you sprung "I actually have a kid that I've never mentioned" on me at this point, we are going to have major problems. His mom said that they had been to one when he was born, so I guess they do after all even if M (thankfully) doesn't know about it.

A couple of people have said that they like reading what I have to say about the baby, but there hasn't been much going on lately. My belly is sore most of the time, especially if I walk around too much. She's started kicking me so hard that my whole body shakes sometimes, and she occasionally does something that makes me think of her scratching at me at my waistline--no idea what she's actually doing. I waddle when I walk, much like a duck, and my forehead has been broken out with small, un-poppable zits for weeks. I have pretty clear skin normally, so it's fairly noticeable. M thinks it's cute because it's so very pregnancy-related, but he does so silently because the last time he mentioned it, I twisted his nipple off. Life as usual in the Yayer household.

On a baby supply note, we have a Furniture Plan now. We had one before, too, but this one is different and makes more sense. We were going to hand over most of our tax refund and buy a gorgeous crib and dresser/hutch item at an overpriced baby store. We had convinced ourselves that we should do that because it would be a quality item that would last a lifetime. Then we started the process of talking ourselves out of it in the time it took us to get back there. (The store is out of town and we have had other things to do for the last few weekends.) It's expensive, and not quite what we wanted. I love cherry furniture, but this particular company's idea of cherry is weirdly dark, and missing that lovely red tone to it. Our floor is all about the red tones, so we were afraid it would clash. And yet, if we bought a different crib, we would have to buy different furniture and we wouldn't find anything to match exactly. That's when we started talking about buying a white crib.

And, I'm feeling a little dense for saying that this had never really occurred to us, but.. did you know that we have a full bedroom suit of white furniture with gold trim? The kind that one envisions for a little girl? We moved it out of the guest room and it's been taking up space in the sun room until such time as we figure out what to do with it and/or we have someone here who will help M move it down the stairs to the basement. My parents paid a ridiculous amount of money for this furniture when I was ten years old because my mom had always wanted a bedroom suit like that. It needs repainted, which may take a bit of time, and a couple of drawers need re-done, but.. all we need now is a white crib. So then we went to K-Mart yesterday and found this crib, which is a) almost half the price of the one we were going to buy and b) even has the decorative scrollwork (which kind of fades into the white in the picture, but it's there) that would kind of match the stuff we have. So, it appears that we are buying our child's furniture at K-Mart, which is just peachy since we were all about buying the quality pieces this time around. Oh, well. Poor M, he keeps getting these big projects assigned to him, whilst I sit around cataloging receipts, and sewing tiny toys and just generally sitting on my ass.

You know, some days you're just sitting around thinking, "geez, I have too much money. What could I possibly be spending it on??" Those are the sort of days that you should go to Lowe's and Home Depot, because that is the only possible time that it makes sense. Unfortunately, we do NOT have too much money, so forking over what we did today--that hurt. But, we have now purchased a new bathroom vanity, counter, mirror and cabinet, light fixture, towel holder and toilet paper holder, bathroom faucet, new register covers for three rooms, caulking, floor stain, door threshold strip, and two lamps. Oh, my aching wallet. The vapid girl behind the counter at Home Depot wished us a good day as we rolled a cart and a flat pallet away, after signing over Ducky's inheritance to her, and I looked at the carts, and looked at my wallet, and then said, "No." M laughed, as he is wont to do when I am funny, but Vapid Girl just blinked and looked confused (as she is, apparently, wont to do.) Jokes just don't work as well when you have to explain them, you know?

What I don't understand is how the need for a nursery caused us to remodel our guest room. M and I, we are loony. I also don't understand how this whole project necessitates M buying more power tools. He says his belt sander is now "broken" and so he needs to stop and buy one tomorrow. I think he is "lying" because he likes buying tools. No, I'm kidding. If he was going to need to buy power tools, he probably wouldn't have picked something that he already had. It occurs to me that if he's buying tools for it, refinishing the hardwood floors in that room will no longer be the cheapest solution to the floor situation.

I am getting more and more anxious to see this room and bathroom completed, because it's looking really, really nice at the moment. It's going to be frustrating once it's done, because we need to give it at least a few days to air out before we can move our bed in there. It's so flipping cold right now that we can't exactly open the windows, either. Right now, it's fourteen degrees at our house (M got one of those indoor-outdoor thermometers for Christmas, so I am kept very well informed on the weather statistics these days) and that is cold enough for even the Swede in residence to curse bitterly about the temperature. He wants me to add that it is zero, Fahrenheit, with the windchill. I am really missing those balmy, sixty degree January days right about now. I may have been fretting about global warming along with the rest of you, but it sure would be nice if it came back...

M is, as we speak, dismantling our guest room and carrying all of the furniture (by himself!) into the sunroom, where I suspect it will linger for months. He was planning on moving it directly to the basement, but I really don't like the idea of him carrying furniture down the basement stairs on his own, and I really can't help him. The plan right now is to attempt to fix the paneling with drywall mud and then paint over it--Renovation Expert Google says that's a valid plan, and it sure would be cheaper and easier than ripping out the paneling and hanging drywall (plan B), so that's where we're starting. I can't believe we have started taking the first steps towards creating a nursery. For like, a baby. M told me that a second Christmas present for me is that he will do whatever I want done in the nursery, even if it includes Precious Moments wallpaper. (He detests both Precious Moments and wallpaper in general, so it's a bold statement.) That's not going to be in the finished product, but it's hard to figure out exactly what we should do. I love the idea of a fully coordinated baby room, with a rocker in the corner and tasteful wall hangings--adorable but not too cutesy. And yet.. the more I think about it.. the less I can envision this final product being something in our house. I'm just not sure we're adorably coordinated nursery people. Also, do you have any idea how expensive this stuff is?

Seeing as how it's now January, it's also time for us to start making lists and planning what we need to buy and what we don't need. I think we might be making our first shopping trip this weekend, or sometime soon, anyway. We were going to wait until after the ultrasound, but it has come to my attention that my pants are very close to not fitting anymore. Oops! Is there anything I cannot live without or something that is a total waste of money? Because things that are little and cute are really, really hard to resist, and the more info I have, the better. I had a document of notes that I had been compiling for a long time on things of that nature, but I lost it in the hard disk fiasco last month.

Speaking of nothing, I would just like to revisit a few things I said this fall, during the time of the leaves falling and burying our yard and lots of things going on that we needed to get done. I made several jokes about how I wasn't going to be helping M because it sucked and I didn't want to. It made me feel like a bitch, so I tried to stop referring to it at all. Can I just add now that I was just barely pregnant and forbidden to do anything at that time, especially stuff like rake? I just couldn't say that at the time. This is a really obnoxious thing to say, but M has rather treated me like a princess the entire time I've been pregnant, but never more so than when we first found out and were scared that it would end badly. If he had had his way, I would have spent most of my day doing nothing more strenuous than napping. I would have felt better about that, too, but apparently they don't like it when people nap at work. Imagine that!

And, as if he knew what I was writing and wished to prove his point... I just completely ruined his little surprise. He went off to do dishes, and he came in here once looking for empty glasses. A few minutes later, I realized that his empty popcorn bowl from last night was sitting by his desk, so I took it to him before he came back in here and realized that he had missed it. I went in, failed to notice how he was trying to subtly usher me back out of the kitchen and had shady answers to all my questions, and then I finally ruined it all by asking what was in the oven. He has a batch of homemade potato chips sizzling in the oven as a surprise treat. Isn't marriage grand?

My bed is in the dining room.

M and I have been living with a bedroom in a horrible state of disarray. Back in March, we started peeling wallpaper, and then we (surprise, surprise) stalled out. In our defense, we have had a lot going on. Around that time, it started getting warm and it became necessary to do at least some yard work. Meanwhile, we have had the ugliest walls ever. We had finished peeling the paper, but for some reason, we did not get all the tiny pieces of white paper off while we were at it, leaving the touch-ups for a separate round. That was.. why the heck did we do that? Anyway, that's where we got off course. Four weeks ago, I decided on a course of action: we would have all the little bits off and the first round of drywall/spackle on by a certain date. That date, of course, was two weeks ago. However, having consulted our calendars and finding that we are going to a wedding next weekend and to West Virginia to meet up with Carrie, Mike and the adorable MrE, and if we don't do something NOW we are going to live with peeling paper forever, we decided to get back on that.

So, last night we were scraping paper until ten, and today we not only finished scraping the paper, we lit a fire under our tails to get it done by moving our bed into the dining room. The next phase is going to be messy and dusty and a bed would only be in the way anyway, so we moved it out right away. After we were finished, M says, "wow, we should have done this weeks ago. We would have made ourselves finish by now!" And then I threw rocks at him because four weeks ago when I made that deadline? That was a compromise because M did NOT like the idea of jump-starting the process by moving the bed out. Men!


We also made the trek out to Home Depot and wandered around staring at everything. I used to hate those kinds of stores with a passion but they are so much fun now that we have the house. I bought myself three hanging ferns for the front porch. I don't know why, but ferns are what I envisioned hanging there, and I decided against talking myself into flowers, even though they were cheaper. It's really cute. We also replaced the light on the porch because we found one for $11 and M hated the old one with such a fiery passion that I was becoming concerned about his blood pressure.

In any case, I guess it's time to go put sheets on my dining room bed. There's something you don't say every day...

The chimney sweep is coming tomorrow at ten. Seriously. A chimney sweep! I am barely adjusting to home ownership, but we have people coming out now whose sole function is to clean out fireplaces? That is awesome. Although that must be one of the worst jobs ever. But maybe tomorrow night we'll be able to light a fire for the first time.. we've been afraid to before. Of course, we still have no furniture in the living room so I'm not sure what good that will do us.

I have a lot of things to say but there is a clog in the pipes somewhere that is preventing me from doing so. I guess sometimes the struggle between disclosing the Things that you think about and NOT disclosing them is harder than it is at other times. I don't know, that doesn't make any sense. Pretend that it does and we'll be fine.

Our bedroom smells like easter eggs. The vinegar water solution for stripping wallpaper seems to be working really well, but it certainly does give an.. interesting.. aroma to the room. The overpowering smell of fabric softener from the solution we were previously using was making me queasy, though. We only have one wall plus a bit left, except that tonight we remembered that the closet has wallpaper, too. We are contemplating leaving it as it is.. it was painted white, so it's not that obnoxious blue color, and stripping paper in the closet will be a pain in the ass. On the bright side, I perfected my stripping-angle technique tonight, and there is less drywall paper peeling off now. Somewhat less, anyway.

Boyo is lingering over my chair, waiting for me to post this mess and go to bed. Mustn't disappoint the boy, who actually fell for it when I suggested that cleaning the standing freezer downstairs that came with the house was his responsibility because it is in the basement, which is totally his domain. Yay! But I think perhaps that he just realized that it needed done pretty soon because he so cannot be trusted with going grocery shopping alone, and this weekend when he went? He opened the freezer and a bunch of bags fell out. So he bought them, and instead of coming home with a bag of frozen broccoli, he came home with approximately eight bags of frozen vegetables. It was a very tight fit, but we managed to stuff them all in. (Love love love the fridge we bought.) And so, it is going to be very necessary very soon that we have additional freezer space, because I am married to a dork who apparently believes in massive quantities of frozen produce. Actually, he will buy anything he can in bulk if I don't stop him.