My Infestation, Let Me Show You It

A couple years ago, shortly before we moved from DC to the Stupid Suburbs, my recently-transplanted-from-California friend sent me a camera phone photo and a hysterical text message.

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS FUCK YOU EAST COAST

The picture was of the most hideous insect I had ever seen. Including the time I found a cockroach in my bathtub.

(Although cockroach encounters are almost like a bizarre form of street cred for City People. It reaffirms that yes, I am so hardcore in my desire to Walk To Things (translation: Starbucks) that I am perfectly okay with spending half a million dollars to live in a 800-square-foot hellhole.)

Anyway, this bug was ugly. It was obviously some kind of beetle but the kind of beetle that would eat ladybugs for lunch and then poop out some kind of flesh-eating disease. All over your face. While you slept.

I texted back.

HOLY FUCK KILL IT KILL IT I AM THROWING SHOES FROM HERE.

My phone was silent for a few minutes. And then.

FUCK IT CAN FLY IT CAN FLLLY FUCK

And a few minutes later, she called.

"Cilannnnntrooooo!" she wailed.

"WHAT?"

"Cilantro! I squashed it with Skip's shoe and now the whole room smells like rotten goddamn cilantro."

(Skip is her husband.)

We both got on our computers and started Googling "cilantro smelly rotten egg beetles" and quickly determined that it was a Brown Marmorated Stink Bug. A nuisance bug accidentally introduced to our continent from China, like a plague of mass-produced lead-painted Thomas trains. And we learned that by squishing the sucker inside her house, my friend had essentially broadcasted to every other stink bug in the area that her house was a nice warm place to infest.

"That's stupid," she said. "That's the stupidest thing I have ever heard. Come to this house, bugs! They have shoes! It smells like death!"

Then she fell oddly silent, and asked if she and her son could come over for awhile.

"Amy," she whispered. "There are like, five more of them on the outside of the screen door. They're just...sitting there."

"Oh my God," I whispered back, for some reason. "Grab your keys and the baby and get out of there. Don't worry about anything else. We have diapers and blankets and you can borrow clothes if you need them. Just GET OUT OF THERE."

When she arrived, I immediately told her about the time I found a cockroach in the tub. To this day I will never understand why she moved back to California.

***

And now we live in the suburbs. And every fall it's the same disgusting thing. Stink bugs all over the outside of the house and window screens, waiting, plotting, inevitably finding their way inside. Mosquitoes, too. They sense their imminent wintery death and go completely berserk in September, biting you through seventeen coats of DEET, making every trip outside to drop wine bottles in the recycling bin an exercise in terror. This year, we have a nest of yellow jackets in the flower bed right outside our front door and Jason found a dried-out snakeskin near our dryer vent. And then there's the fucking CRICKETS. And then! Three days ago I noticed some other giant (HUGE) mysterious beetle-bug-thing on one of our windows, and as I have considerable problem-solving skills, I simply closed the window to trap it, because it just looked entirely too substantial to crush with a tissue. As of right now, the thing is STILL NOT DEAD YET.

It's all so gross, this stupid nature.

This year seems like the worst one yet, though. Almost Hitchcockian. The stink bugs just all simultaneously APPEARED yesterday. I noticed one on the crown molding in the living room...right as I heard the telltale buzzing of another one taking flight behind me behind me don't land on me don't land on me gaaaah. I lowered the window shades and HOLY FUCK, they were everywhere, just sitting there. First-floor windows, second-floor windows. I checked all our screens for points of entry and armed myself with the Shop Vac. 

We have a service contract with a pest control company, and twice a year they come out and spray for termites and check the perimeter and windows and set out little sticky traps to see if we can figure out how the fuck all these bugs are getting in and twice a year the visit ends with a baffled shrug. 

Yesterday, I think I cracked the mystery.

(Oh hey, if you're still reading at this point but are like, itching from head to toe a little bit? You might want to finally cry uncle and bail.)

So ever since the Great Fertilizer Dog Buffet Debacle and subsequent shutting down of the Canine Liver Contingent, we've been diligent composters. Yesterday, however, I left the pile's offerings (bruised section of peach, apple core, lettuce) sit out on the kitchen counter for juuuuust a bit too long, as we've yet to buy a suitable indoor container. I went to toss a banana peel on top and OH MY GOD, a fucking mushroom cloud of fruit flies sprang from its depths. I gagged and grabbed the nearest bowl (Sorry, Dora the Explorer), swept everything into it and bolted outside to deposit it in our composter.

(EXHIBIT 28430290 OF WHY HIPPIES ARE STUPID, DAMN DIRTY)

As soon as I opened the back door, the stink bugs attacked. Five or six of them flew towards the opening at top speed. I shrieked and slammed the door shut. The motion once again disturbed the flock of fruit flies who were following me and my bowl of mush like the Pied Piper, and a stink bug ricocheted off the door frame and landed on my hand. I dropped the bowl and shrieked again, and the bug fell off my hand...and into my shoe.

(Gardening clogs, okay? That I promise I only wear for GARDENING. And picking up dog crap. And fine, maaaaaybe taking Noah out to the school bus sometimes but it's just because they are usually right there by the door and that's just really convenient.)

At this point I probably looked and sounded like I was being attacked by bees. Or sharks. Or hell demons. I kicked off my shoe and sent it sailing across the yard and stood there for another three or four minutes shaking my limbs and hair and clothing while gasping out stuff like "ew ew ew ew ew shit shit shit."

When I stopped to catch my breath and retrieve my shoe and Dora bowl (opting to allow the compost to stay where it fell, providing all kinds of essential nutrients to the wood of the back deck), I made the mistake of surveying the back of our house.

Stink bugs. Everywhere. On the brick, on the windows, on the gutters. I slooooowly reached for the screen door handle and I SWEAR, they all fired up their wings, ready to attack. 

I dashed in as fast as I could, slamming the storm door closed (AND LOCKING THE DEADBOLT, BECUZ I ARE SMARTER THAN THEM BUGS). I walked over to the sink to deposit the bowl...and felt something on my ankles.

Two mosquitoes. I smashed them, leaving smears of blood on top of the already-forming welts.  (FOUR BITES, already. FOUR.)

And that's when I noticed something in my hair. Multiple somethings.

You guys. They rode inside the house IN MY HAIR.

By my count, THREE OF THEM. I have since vacuumed up one, another is MIA (shakes hair shakes hair shakeshair), and I have cornered a third one inside the living room blinds, unable to coax it quiiiiite close enough to where my vacuum can get at it.

No, seriously:

The way we live now.

(And just for the sake of completeness, besides the two mosquitoes that used my ankle as some kind of illegal border crossing van, minutes later I found a third one, BITING MY BABY ON THE FACE. Without thinking, I smacked it off him [AND THUS, HIS FACE], which shocked him so much that he did the whole heartbreaking face-melting-sobbing-real-tears thing, and then STILL woke up this morning with EIGHT gigantic angry red bites on his face and legs. Obviously, the suburbs are dirty, disgusting and absolutely no place to raise children.)

Weekend Vignettes

For reasons that I believe can go mostly undocumented, we thought the dog had salmonella on Saturday. We found stray mussel shells from a disastrously ambitious dinner scattered in the yard; puddles of sick scattered pretty much everywhere else. She's actually just fine, but I just wanted to mention it anyway because I had to clean up a LOT of barf. You know. Just in case Ceiba ever reads this website one day. I cleaned up your barf, and I didn't like it. And now you never call! Ingrate.

*They ALL DIED before we could cook them. I set them on a paper towel for ONE MINUTE and every goddamn mussel decided to commit ritualistic suicide rather than face the hot pan of death. I was going to drown you in WINE, you bastards. WINE. We should all be so lucky to die such a death.

***
In other best-left-to-the-imagination news, we have a mouse in our kitchen. And clearly, the most useless-ass pets EVER.

***

Scene: Every Saturday Morning In Our House, Ever

Jason: Anything you want to do today?

Amy: I want to go to Ikea.

Jason: We're not going to Ikea.

Amy: (dramatic flailing)

Fin.

***

You probably know by now that I eat pretty much everything. Food is my hobby, since I don't know how to knit and dislike standing for long periods of time. I'm actually trying to think of something that I won't eat. Wait, okay, I've got it: raw onions, Cool Whip, head cheese. Tongue as long as it still resembles a tongue. I used to not eat rabbit -- because you know, bunnnnnnies! -- until we moved to the suburbs and a goddamn rabbit ate all my flowers and now I will eat the hell out some rabbit. I will eat that rabbit, if my dog ever stops gnawing on diseased mussels long enough to catch the stupid thing. (Hey, here's a recipe!)

Saturday night I ate pork cracklins for the first time -- fancy cracklins, apparently, since they were served on a charcuterie board alongside wee little pickles -- and for the first time in ages I was completely flummoxed by a food item. It was salty, crunchy and aggressively unhealthy -- my top three most favorite adjectives for food -- but OH MY GOD, IT WAS SKIN, RECOGNIZABLE SKIN, THERE WERE VISIBLE HAIR FOLLICLES. I could FEEL the skin-like texture on my tongue, I was Homer Simpson, sampling from the regenerative bacon buffet in the Garden of Eden.*

So instead of eating them, I lined a few up on my arm and asked Jason to get another few orders because the restaurant was chilly and I wanted a cardigan. Jason was all, "give those back, they're delicious."

*If you know what I'm talking about here, congratulations! We can be friends. We'll eat some deep-fried skin and then go get ice cream.

***

On Sunday, we went to a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. Noah loved everything about it, except for the animatronic Chuck E. Cheese, whom he eyed warily from the table, nervously eating bites of pizza. When the costumed Chuck E. Cheese (who was missing one furry glove for most of the proceedings) showed up, we had to retreat to a safe distance.

Noah: THAT BUNNY NEEDS TO GO AWAY.

Amy: He's a mouse, sweetie.

Noah: THAT BUNNY MOUSE NEEDS TO GO HOME.

***

As we drove home, Jason and I had a 20-minute unironic conversation about minivans and the many, many attractive features they offer. We're certainly not in the market for a new car or anything, but Jason rode in his coworker's Odyssey and like, maaaaaan, that thing was sweeeeeet. You don't even have to fold the stroller or anything. I remembered the same thing about a friend's minivan in a fit of retroactive lust, shaking my head at my naive young ATTITUDE towards minivans, back when I knew NOTHING about the world and what happens to all your "adequate cargo space" once you have two children.

Amy: I mean, just THINK of all the stuff we could buy at Ikea!

***

We never made it to Ikea. We went to the Big Box Baby Store instead and bought additional baby gates, because our 9-month-old does not have the sense God gave a bunny mouse. While shopping, I was approached TWICE about the Ergo carrier and whether I liked it (yes, oh God, yes), what age I started using it (31) (haaaa, I'm an ass), and then approached again by someone trying to decide between two different floor gyms and which one was better (is it for your baby? no? okay, get whatever one blinks and makes noise.)

Less than an hour after that, we stopped at Whole Foods and a timid young thing in high heels asked me what the difference was between brown eggs and white eggs, and if she hard-boiled the brown ones would they like, be the same? With a white part and a yellow center? She then admitted that this was her first grocery-shopping trip out on her own, and I noticed that her shopping list contained the instruction to "open egg carton and check for broken shells."

Amy: Wow, I must look like, really extra helpful today, or something!

Jason: I think it's more that you just look so much like a mom.

Amy: Do I look like I drive a minivan? Because I don't. Yet. Seriously, the back seats FOLD INTO THE FLOOR, OH MY GOD.

***

We've been pricing up laptops for awhile now -- the Macbook's motherfuckingboard was going to cost a motherfucking fortune to fix, plus it seemed like the water damage was pretty damn catastrophic, and the repair couldn't guarantee that other inside-techie things hadn't shorted out -- and I was resigned to buying a cheaper non-Mac, because. Well. Cheaper. I officially put off the purchase waaaay too long, leading to lost posts and enormous amounts of frustration once the mouse key broke, randomly moving the cursor to different parts of the screen while I typed gaaaaaaaaah kill.

So on Thursday we went to the Big Box Computer Store and I glumly pecked on some keyboards and finally declared one "pretty okay." I knew we could get it cheaper online though, so we didn't buy it.

On Friday -- before any of this other stuff happened, even though Jason probably knew it was a pretty safe bet that I would make stupid jokes out in public, that I would bug him about taking me to Ikea, that I would wander around stores looking like a frumpy, frizzy, minivan-lusting mom -- he came home from work and pulled a brand-new Macbook out of his briefcase. I was stunned.

Jason: You use it every day. It's what you do. It's important. You should have the one you want.

Our anniversary is in a few days. Eleven years. Our life is nothing like the one we thought we'd have once upon a time.

(I still have the one I want.)

Lists. The Final Blogging Cop-Out Frontier.

THREE MOST AWESOMELY ESSENTIAL BABY TOYS

1) Munchkin Mozart Magic Cube, gift from sister

2) Spare toothbrushes, gift from dentist

3) OMSORG shoehorn, Ikea, 99 cents

TEN THINGS MY PRESCHOOLER WILL EAT

1) Pizza crust

2) Grilled cheese sandwich crust

3) Bread, but without the crust

4) Macaroni & cheese fromabox fromabox thatisnotfromaboxnoooo

5) Sticker Cheerios (Honey Nut Cheerios)

6) Pananas (bananas)

7) Nolabars (granola bars)

8) Trader Joe's Vegetable Masala Burgers

9) Anything you liquefy in a blender, pour into a sippy cup and call it "juice"

10) Air, probably. Does it have a crust?

THINGS MY BABY WILL NOT EAT

1) Uh.

2) Hmm.

3) He didn't seem too fond of that lettuce leaf the other night?

4) But then he grabbed some parsley leaves right off the plant in the garden and ate those?

5) Yeah, I'm stumped. He eats everything.

THINGS MY PRESCHOOLER SAID "I LOVE YOU" TO TODAY

1) Plastic DVD case, The Polar Express

2) Toy boom box from Yo Gabba Gabba playset

3) Thomas the Tank Engine packpack (backpack)

4) Book dust jacket, Knuffle Bunny Too

5) Sippy cup of "juice"


THINGS MY PRESCHOOLER SAID "YOU ARE NOT MY FRIEND!!" TO TODAY

1) Mama

THINGS MY BABY WILL MIMIC

1) Tongue-clucks

2) Clapping

3) Waving

4) Rasberry-blowing

5) "Da da"


THINGS MY BABY WILL NOT MIMIC

1) "Ma ma! Mmmmaaaa mmmmaaaaa. Come on. WTF. MAMA!"


THINGS I DID THIS MORNING

1) Spent hour transferring contents of refrigerator in kitchen to much-older-but-at-least-mostly-consistently-working refrigerator in basement and several coolers in preparation for the delivery of our new refrigerator, purchased last weekend after finally giving up on:

        1a) refrigerator in kitchen to magically fix self, stop randomly letting everything in the freezer melt while everything in the fridge turns to ice, and yes I already suggested putting the ice in the fridge and the milk in the freezer but Jason wouldn't let me so WHATEVER

        1b) appliance repairman who made several hundred dollars in useless repairs to give us our money back because...because...I don't know why, it just seems like the sporting thing to do, but then again, we did this to him

        1c) randomly coming into a shitload of free money so we wouldn't have to pay for a new fridge with the credit card, but apparently it takes a LOT longer than I thought for the widow of the Former Prime Minister of NewZealandTown to monetize four hundred million American dollars through the Bank of Nigeria.

2) Waited all morning and afternoon for call about the delivery of the new refrigerator.

3) Scolded preschooler for smearing mustard in his hair.

4) Noticed even larger dribble of mustard down the front of my own shirt.

5) Dug up receipt for new refrigerator in order to call and Get Huffy About It.

6) While on hold, noticed the bolded, all-caps, circled delivery date on the reciept said "7/17/09"

7) Hung up phone, sheepishly.

8) Shrieked in terror when phone immediately rang afterwards, like omg I hung up on Sears and now they're mad at me!

9) Realized that the downstairs refrigerator is leaking all over the floor, our washing machine no longer recognizes the 2nd Rinse function and our stove thinks the broiler can go fuck itself.

10) Nobly and selflessly rescued bottle of Yuengling from certain spoilage in busted-ass fridge.

It's Input, It's Input Time

Okay, so a lot of you demanded to see photos of the headband. A lot of you do not have much goin' on for you, these days, I'm guessin'. Anyway, I wasn't intentionally holding out on you, I just...um...haven't been washing my hair much this week, in order to test out some new dry shampoo and various oily-scalp things for the Advice Smackdown. Results have been...mixed. Helmet-head-ish, with a side of Ye Olde Timey Powdered Wig. You know, REALLY PRETTY. Really ready for a close-up self-portrait to be published across the land.

I bought it at H&M after watching entirely too much Top Chef, because that one girl always wore double headbands like this one, only not really like this one at all, as you can see close up:

Even the girl on Top Chef had re-thought the headbands by the reunion show. I should have learned a similar lesson, including the fact that this fucker HURTS MY HEAD.

Anyway. The glittery headband is just all around Bad Idea Jeans, I realize that now. Moving on! It is now time to talk about how ugly my kitchen is.

See, when we moved into this house, we were completely thrilled with the kitchen layout. The previous owners had knocked down walls! Installed a breakfast bar! Extra cabinets, lazy susans, built-in wine racks, A SPONGE CUBBY! Huzzah!

As for the actual look of the kitchen...well. The previous owners had also used the cheapest, crappiest cabinets and countertops possible. We planned on eventually replacing the counters and at least refacing the cabinets, but...well, again. That's not going to happen for awhile, what with our current state of brokeassness. We've also (obviously) scrapped any talk of moving back to the city, since Noah (obviously) needs to stay here in this school district. Thus, we're trying to do that whole "make the best of things" (uh) THING. So while I can't afford to really change the kitchen, I believe we can afford a couple gallons of paint.

But I am TERRIBLE at this stuff, Internet. Seriously. I read those design/decorating blogs and it's like there is a hole in my genetic code where that sort of talent should be. I mean, I can look at a photo and be like, THAT, RIGHT THERE! I LOVE! But then I have no idea how to make my actual house look like that. I go for "eclectic" and the result is "cluttered mish-mosh." I go for "modern" and the result is "Ikea." I go for anything else and the result is "Amy got this because it was on sale, and it was on sale because HOLY GOD, LOOK AT IT."

So. Here. Help me. I know this is spectacularly boring, but I am clueless.

We have your typical plain white laminate cabinets and a black-and-white-and-grey laminate countertop. There's kind of a tiny bit of a brownish-putty color in the counters as well, but it's really nothing I'd want on the walls. The current paint is a really terribly blah shade of yellow that doesn't look good with the white AT ALL in real life (it looks oddly more neutral in photos, not so much in person). Besides, I've pretty much utterly destroyed the paint job anyway.

I can't really judge the chooser of this color though, because I know EXACTLY how it came to me: the stark cabinets and black counters and modern handles ended up looking a little cold and boring, so yellow was chosen to "warm the room up," or some other great idea that only works if you have any real eye for color. Which they didn't. (400 different shades of beige! Every wall a slightly different shade of beige! That's not a color scheme, that's an obessive compulsive disorder!).

So my ideas begin and end with: Let's paint it white. At least white won't actively clash and bug me so much. But then there are the floors, which are a darkish reddish hardwood, and ALSO kind of clash with the modern black and white. We installed the floors back when we were so sure that a kitchen makeover was next on our to-do list. Back before everything went, you know, BOOM.

(We also wanted floors that matched our dog, just so she could camouflage herself for maximum Getting Stepped On. Success!)

So there you have it. We need a new paint color. The appliances are all white, and will likely be staying that way (see: BOOM, etc.). Would you paint the walls white? White with an accent wall? Totally not white but some other awesome color that I'm too stupid to think off? (And one that we also wouldn't have to paint over in the unlikely even that we DO move in a couple years, like the crazy bright blue we had in our old kitchen that we thought was SO AWESOME until we painted it white before listing our condo and then were all, "Oh. This looks much better. Huh.")

Also, please know that I am not handy enough to attempt anything like a tile backsplash or really, anything other than paint. Although I AM incredibly tempted by shit like this, which seems cheap and easy and thus guaranteed to end in disaster.

Thank you, dear one Internet, for any help you can provide in this clearly very important matter.

Sincerely,
PRINCESS AUDITOR GENERAL AMALAH SPARKLE HEADBAND OF THE NIGERIAN AMALAHALAHS, ESQ.

Pansy

I spent all weekend planting things. OUTSIDE things. OUTSIDE, where there are bugs. Worms. Dirt. Nature.

After working diligently for two whole minutes I commented to Jason that this wasn't so bad. This wasn't so bad at all!

We've spent the last 10 months or so going back and forth about whether we really want to stay out here in the suburbs -- we kind of hate it, honestly -- and we were *thiiiiiis close* to making an offer on a condo in our old neighborhood (hell, practically in our old building) right after Ezra was born (hell, he was still pruny and gory) but then waffled for five minutes because HELLO, pruny gory baby and our house wasn't ready to sell (despite our best psychotic nesting efforts) and then the condo went under contract and All The Stuff With Noah happened and finally we both admitted that yes, we really really really do want to move back to the city but it's just not the right time yet, maybe next year, in the meantime, let's get outside and plant some goddamn tulips.

So there I was, planting things -- some bulbs for next year, some shrubs and groundcover and a million and four purple and yellow pansies -- and after I planted the third bulb and STILL hadn't gotten bored and/or irritated enough to wander away from the project, I degreed that yardwork really wasn't so bad.

That's when Jason noticed that I was planting two-year-old dead and dried-out husky shells of bulbs instead of actual living bulbs that would...you know...grow. He suggested I move on to the pansies.

I spent hours planting pansies. Yellow, purple, yellow, purple. We dragged Ezra's Jumperoo out onto the lawn with us, using him as bait to Finally Get Our Neighbors To Talk To Us, while I planted and planted and every exposed inch of my skin broke out in various kinds of rashes (when I was in elementary school and was quizzed on my extremely long list of allergies I usually gave up halfway through and simply said I was allergic to "OUTSIDE").

(Photo not actually representative of this story, but inserted anyway because HELLO TALKY.)

When I was done, I had several garden beds of somewhat pathetic little lines of droopy pansies -- nothing like those landscaping shows that I watch whenever I'm in a "let's make the best of the suburbs!" mood. (Whenever I'm in a "screw this, let's move back to the city!" mood I watch shows about real estate, and whenever I'm in a "we probably couldn't move even if we wanted to because goddamn this economy!" mood I watch the Food Network for 76 hours straight and order a lot of pizzas.)

We still decided it was a Good Start, since the previous owners hadn't exactly exerted a ton of landscaping effort either -- when we visited an area nursery soon after we moved in we found a clearance table all the way in the back that featured every single plant and shrub currently residing in our yard. Next weekend we mulch, or something, I don't know, and then after that we start on some serious vegetable container gardens in the backyard. Or something. I don't know! Last year we grew herbs and tomatoes and this year Jason bought a book and is growing salad and peppers and is promising me all sorts of amazing things and I think he may very well have lost his goddamned mind.

Meanwhile, every indoor plant we brought here from our old condo has died of root rot. I feel very responsible. My misguided belief that we really needed More Closet Space led to plant genocide, including my favorite jade plant, which was the first one to die, and at the time I was all, "oh well, who cares, I have extra bathrooms!" but I've never stopped thinking about that plant, because I loved that plant, and I miss that plant, and how lovely it always looked on the windowsill at our old condo. And while I'm no gardening expert or a pyschologist, I get that it's probably not REALLY about that plant.

Meanwhile, I have a splinter in my foot and my back hurts and I couldn't sleep last night because I was stressing about how we need to cover our new plants with some sheets tonight so they won't freeze and do I have enough clean sheets? But I suppose that's preferable to stressing about April 16th, the freshly-set date for Noah's evaluation with the school district -- speech, motor, hearing, vision, social skills, sensory issues, the whole shebang -- an evaluation that will likely decide for us whether we belong here or elsewhere, whether the district will help him or if we remain on our own, whether it's worth staying where we're unhappy or time to move on, Montessori vs. special needs vs. something in between, public vs. private, suburbs vs. city, whether or not we'll still be here next spring when the periennials return.

Housekeeping Not Involving My House

Honestly, I could do an entire photo essay about nothing more than the various large, gaping holes in my walls and ceilings at this point. There are at least seven of them, and I am getting better at ignoring them every day. It's like hands-free breastfeeding. It just takes practice.

Anyway. Website housekeeping! Exactly the kind of post everybody hates, but please. I just had a baby. I bought clothes and diapers for a linebacker and gave birth to a peanut. I thought the two Miracle Blankets we received as gifts (thank you Michael and Amy!!) would be enough but now! I know! You can never have enough Miracle Blankets! Miracle Blankets are a gift from God himself! The gift of sleep and silence and showers -- all in a miraculous blanket form!

I came into the bedroom this morning to find the dog sleeping on our LAST! CLEAN! MIRACLE BLANKET! and I nearly killed her right then and there, but then I remembered that Ezra is our second child, and that I could maybe use the lint roller on the blanket instead of rewashing it, but then I couldn't find the lint roller and just sort of shook it out real vigorously for a minute before reswaddling His Delicate Preshusness.

Wait. I was not coming here to write anything today. Was I? No. I was not. I was coming here to say:

• That I will be back posting at Mamapop as of today. Hooraaaaay pop culture drivel! And subsequently getting my writerly ass handed to me by all the other amazing authors over there! I've missed you, babies.

• Guest authors continue over at the Advice Smackdown, for just a little longer. But I really doubt anyone is missing me over there, because the guest authors have all been supremely awesome and interesting. This week: Holly from Nothing But Bonfires writes about how to maximize your pre-trip neuroses (and possibly, How Not To End Up In Newark, AMALAH), Isabel from Hola Isabel reviews some super extra crazy cheap lip glosses, and Nicole from Not Perfect returns to talk about knocked-up bridesmaids.

• HOWEVER, lest you think that I have just been laying around eating Halloween candy for close to three weeks now while I let other people care for my Internet Empire, I somehow got talked into writing stuff over at this site for Luvs. It's a once-a-week thing for two months, and I'm supposed to write about valuable tips to help save you money and time. Which is probably not my forte, since it is currently 11:41 am and all I have managed to accomplish is four nursing sessions, two cups of coffee, seven emails and adding fourteen more Miracle Blankets to my Amazon cart. Miracle Blankets that I CANNOT PAY FOR, UNLESS YOU VISIT THE LUVS SITE AND LEAVE COMMENTS AND YOU WOULD IF YOU LOVED ME! WHY DON'T YOU LOVE ME? IS IT THE CAPS LOCK SCREAMY THING? IS IT?

• Ahem. My money-saving tip for this week involves stealing shit from the hospital. Free maxipads, people! Shove one package in your suitcase and pretend you used them all! And then they'll bring you ANOTHER PACKAGE!


• You are welcome.


• (I really have been eating a lot of Halloween candy.)

• (He also really does love the Miracle Blanket. Usually.)
  

Four, Three, Two Days

Yep. Still pregnant. TiVo has two more days to come out peacefully before we go in after him.

(Comparison shot at 40 weeks from last time, although slightly more STRAIGHT-ON CLOSE-UP OH-THE-HORROR.)

And yes! These were taken in the same mirror as every other belly shot I've taken over the past year. The completely different furniture? Yeah. I did that. It needed to be done. The itching and the leg twitching and the terrible, terrible screaming wouldn't stop until I could say that truly, we have officially rearranged the furniture in every damn room in the house.

(Last night I had just upended both of our bedside endtables [the doors were opening the wrong way and each needed to be swapped to the other side, but of course that meant the contents needed to be swapped and while I was there I MIGHT AS WELL completely purge and reorganize them, I mean, really] when I realized that I was supposed to be meeting a bunch of bloggers who are here for the DC BlogHer mini-thing going on, which of course I didn't register for because hello! Still pregnant on October 13th? Fuck that idea and you and everything else in the entire world grrrarrr.)

(I made it to the dinner on time. I'm sure I was fucking DELIGHTFUL ray of sunshine. I ate a burrito and later woke up at 4 am timing what I hoped were contractions but were probably just gas.)

Now.

I know we've all had a lot of laughs at my expense regarding the crazy, crazy nesting thing that I do. I fully own up to the fact that I go way beyond nesting. Fuck twigs and feathers and dusting the baseboards -- I'd probably up and build a house from the ground up if you'd let me. Unhappy with your home renovation project? Don't hire just another contractor to take over -- get yourself a nine-months-pregnant lady in there. Extreme Nesting: Hardhat Oh-My-God-How-Am-I-Not-In-Labor-Already Edition.

But.

If you want to know why there is currently about five or six inches of a metal drill bit sticking out of my roof, let me assure you that I had NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.

Okay, maybe a little bit, since it was my idea to turn our cluttered, unused office area into more of a dressing/walk-in closet area, and this meant we also needed to rearrange the rest of the bedroom furniture, which meant moving the TV, which meant the cable outlet was now on the wrong wall, which meant a visible curling cable wire snaking across the room, lying in wait to jump up and snag you in the ankles, POSSIBLY WHILE YOU WERE HOLDING A NEWBORN, which meant we needed to run cable into a different wall.

Jason was all over this job, because POWER TOOLS. In particular, his BIG FUCKING ASS DRILL BIT, long enough to drill through walls and God knows what else. Lesser men's egos, perhaps.

It actually seemed simple enough, what with a closet on the other side of the wall and the attic above and he started drilling through the closet ceiling and then heading up to the attic to check for the hole to drop the cable into and...hmm. No hole. Must drill more! Harder, deeper, MOAR.

This went on a few times. No hole in the attic flooring. More drilling. Then...the drill bit got lodged in something. Jason guessed a two-by-four. And he couldn't get it out. The drill's motor coughed and choked and then gave up the ghost.

"Goddamit," he said. "I think I have to go buy a more powerful drill."

Needless to say, I was annoyed, because we really don't have the money right now for a more powerful drill. In my mind, since Jason told me we didn't have the money right now for a trip to Ikea for Storage Solutions (thus necessitating the relocation of old beat-up dressers instead of the actual walk-in-closet coordinating system of my organizational wet dreams), we don't have the money right now for ANYTHING. Especially drills that I will never use and will not help me categorize my shoes by heel height.

Jason left to go the hardware store. I continued sorting my pajamas in nursing-friendly and non-nursing-friendly categories, then got to work on my annotated and footnoted list of things that need to go into the hospital bag right before we leave.

(Samples: iPOD & HEADPHONES --> buy that damn Kid Rock song off iTunes first okay shut up; PILLOW & NURSING PILLOW --> pack in shopping bag for swiping hospital supplies later.)

A few minutes later he came back inside.

"Well. Okay." he said. "I realize why I couldn't find the hole in the attic now."

"And?"

"The hole is...in our roof."

So. Yes. While drilling through the closet ceiling, my husband drilled too close to the edge of the house and into a front vestibule-ish thing and THAT is why there is a drill bit sticking up out of our roof right now.

(Alternate caption: Luuuucyyyyy!)

I think that's all I need to say about that, except that I laughed and laughed until tears poured down my face and I could only barely manage to tell Jason that while I don't think I've ever been this furious with him, the thought of him having to call a professional roofer and explain this one makes it all so completely worth it.

Eight Days

So hey! Let's tear the shit out of the house.

And tomorrow a plumber is coming to tell me how much it will cost to completely fuck up the guest bathroom. Impeccable timing! We has it!

(We also has a LOT of holes in the ceiling, suddenly. That's at least two more than I bargained for right there.)

But! Properly centered light fixtures, new wall outlets, a motion-sensing lamp for the backyard and a ceiling fan that you can actually control using the WALL SWITCH instead of the SWITCH THAT IS BEHIND THE INSULATION UPSTAIRS IN THE ATTIC AND I AM NOT EVEN KIDDING ABOUT THAT are all essential things that you MUST have before they let you bring a baby home. Which we will be doing. Next week. At some point. After he is born. In eight days. Oh my God.

He has a name, finally, at least. I SUPPOSE that's almost as important as wall outlets. MAYBE.

Famous Last Words

FRIDAY:

"I don't think I've got the nesting thing as bad this time, you know?"

"Oh yeah, you're much calmer. You haven't even said a single word about replacing the kitchen cabinets."

SATURDAY:

I made us drive two states and like, four counties south to look at houses, because I thought we could cut our mortgage in half and get a single family home with a garage and a whirlpool tub in the master bath and you know what we could do with all that extra money every month? We could replace the kitchen cabinets! I am brilliant! This is a brilliant plan! I've got a stack of realtor.com printouts and a good feeling about this one zip code, which is ridiculously extra cheap and I'm guessing it's just because other people have never HEARD of this zip code and not for like, a real valid reason like you need to keep a cattle prod handy to keep your neighbor's herd out of your tomato garden.

SUNDAY:

Okay, so that didn't go super well. I'm not ready to give up. I have a NEW stack of realtor.com printouts and a few different neighborhoods triangulated on the GPS. We won't drive QUITE so far out this time, and I have a really good feeling about THIS zip code, which is also strangely cheap even though it's really close to an area we totally can't afford, and again I'm just going to assume that this neighborhood simply hasn't crossed anyone else's mind as an option and not because of like, rapes and shootings and gangs and drive-bys. Or tractor-bys. Look at this little yellow house! It's precious! It's adorable! I know there aren't any photos of the inside and we've heard crazy stories about people pooping in the appliances and pouring cement down the pipes when the bank repossesses their house but NO ONE would do something like that to such a precious little house like this one, right?

SUNDAY NIGHT, AFTER WE GOT HOME AND INSTALLED A NEW LIGHT FIXTURE IN THE DINING ROOM WHICH MEANT WE HAD TO REARRANGE THE DINING ROOM FURNITURE AND HANG NEW PICTURE FRAMES, AND NOW WE NEED TO CALL AN ELECTRICIAN BECAUSE I WANT THE LIGHT FIXTURE CENTERED OVER THE DINING ROOM TABLE'S NEW POSITION AND OH MY GOD WE ARE SOOOO REPLACING THAT UGLY RUG AND AFTER WE RELOCATED THE LIQUOR CABINET AND REARRANGED THE LIVING ROOM FURNITURE TO ACCOMMODATE OUR NEW COFFEE TABLE THAT WE GOT AT THE POTTERY BARN OUTLET AND PULLED EVERYTHING OFF THE BOOKSHELVES TO MAKE THE ROOM SEEM LESS CLUTTERED AND I MADE JASON ORGANIZE OUR DVD COLLECTION WHILE I IRONED THE DRAPES:

"So what if we just REFACE the kitchen cabinets?"

33 Weeks, Stuff & Nonsense

At this week's OB appointment, my doctor announced that the baby is starting to measure...and hold the fuck on to your fucking hats..."a tad big." While I've always known that another big baby was likely, I was a little surprised to hear this. (Although really, with my half-assed approach to nutrition, my European approach to a glass of wine with dinner, and the many many voicemails from Target Pharmacy's auto-fill program reminding me AGAIN to come pick up my damn prenatal vitamins, I'm not sure what else I could do recklessly wrong to keep the baby at a manageable size. Smoking, maybe. Some hardcore drugs. Cutting back on the 1,500-calorie burritos. You know, INSANE AWFUL THINGS.)

I just remembered being much BIGGER last time, so I went through my archives in search of a 33-week belly photo.

33 weeks then:

33 weeks now:

So...not so much of a difference as I thought. Bring on the 3-6 month onesies!

While I was poking around those entries, three things occurred to me. 1) I was really very annoying back then and you should not ever read back that far, 2) in spite of that, I'd still say this blog has gone downhill in a big way, so you should probably not be reading now either, and 3) OH MY GOD I'VE NEVER FORCED YOU TO LOOK AT NURSERY PHOTOS YET.

I probably devoted three freaking months' worth of entries to Noah's nursery. The nursery we ended up leaving behind, the nursery that is now a plain white room that appears to be a very cluttered office of some kind, and what? Like it's MY FAULT that the new owners of our condo never pull the blinds down?

So. Uh. Look! We have room here that is slowly starting to look like something a baby might live in one day!

I waited until a nice dark rainy day to take pictures, lest you start thinking that I'm not still half-assing everything around here.

The theme is "The Green Paint That Was Here When We Moved In, A Bunch Of Yellow Stuff Leftover From Noah's Nursery, Plus Black & White Butterflies That My Mother-In-Law Painted, Because Black Makes It Like, Manly And Stuff."

There will eventually be dozens and dozens of butterflies, but my mother-in-law wanted to do more RESEARCH about different SPECIES first.

This is a rough mock-up of what the room would look like if I attempted to decorate it myself.

I'm hoping Noah gets his eye for detail and design from his father's side of the family.

(By the way, since so many people have asked about sending preemptive-strike sibling-rivalry gifts to Noah, rest assured that we're on it. That six-pack of FLOR carpet samples may very well be the GREATEST TOY WE HAVE EVER PURCHASED.)

The Bumbo chair (courtesy of the truly awesome Redneck Mommy) is also just a bottomless pit of entertainment options.

The sense of humor he clearly gets from me. God help us all.

(Also please note uncovered open electrical socket in the background. We're going for kind of an industrial look this time.)

Now please direct your attention to the HIGH-TECH DIAPER PAIL OF AWESOME from reader Sarah. It's fucking INFRARED, people. It opens and closes with a MOTION SENSOR. Is that not the most ridiculous, over-the-top thing you have ever heard of?

Needless to say, I'm so enchanted with it that I've been making a special trip from Noah's room into the nursery just to dispose of his mostly inoffensive night time Pull-Ups, and Jason rushes in to witness the process and then we stand there oohing and aahing for a good 10 minutes. And I wish I were exaggerating that in the slightest.

That concludes today's installment of Dr. Horrible's Snooze-Along Blog. Have a lovely long weekend, everybody. I will try to go out and injure myself in a not-harmful-to-baby but relatively-amusing way to make up for this crap.