So Miss Au Pair 2007 is busy sleeping the morning away because she was up all night with the yucky sinus thing and I don’t have the heart to kick her out of bed and put her to work. It also gave us, the Hubz and me, a remarkable chance to take the kids in to the crèche together—for the first time ever—and that was a nice family moment, something I have had far too few of in the past three years. (But something that has, in the past three weeks, gotten exponentially better, don’t know why, but do you hear me complaining?)

We are slowly getting into a type of routine. There’s so much more crap to organize than I ever thought possible, and I am really thankful for the help (and motivation) my niece has brought with her. I still have her in slave mode, helping me organize, clean, and shovel out years of crap stuffed in boxes—things I have never taken the time to do. I never claimed to be a good house wife. So far we’ve managed the kitchen (and those of you who have been here can understand what a giant feat that is), the kids’ room—where she’s now installed as a semi-permanent fixture, complete with real bed and everything, and most of the living room where we’ve taken out furniture and replaced it with other furniture so life seems a little more comfortable—oh, and did I mention the space and light? Wow. The only thing left is our bedroom, which we’ve technically started as I have gone through (and consequently tossed out) a ton of boxes containing papers from 2004 until the present. Old magazines, old newspapers, old everything has all been heaped into the recycling bin, which to date has been emptied three times. If I haven’t used it or found a home for it in the past six months, it’s gone too. I need to simplify and God knows if I don’t purge now, I never will.

My excuse has been that one day we’ll have space for it in that big house of ours. But honestly, when are we going to get to move? No one knows at this point, so there’s no sense in holding on to four years of Time magazines because they may one day be useful. Useful for what? C’mon Doc, you’re not a pack-rat, remember?

Today’s goal was going to be attacking that bookcase of mine, the one that is so over flowing that I have books EVERYWHERE (no exaggeration there, you can ask my Exaggeration Censor). I hope to pull out those books that I probably won’t be re-reading in the near future, pack them into boxes, and hide them away somewhere for a future Christmas-like reunion if and when we have a place to live. I also have boxes upon boxes of old clothes that are either worn out, stained, or just plain old too small anymore to take down to the recycling place (along with those three bottles of used fry oil that I’ve been putting off for, what, six months?) that I need to go through again, and in-between I need to find a space for the TONS of bedding we have. We have a king-size bed, something not common here and impossible to find sheets for, so every trip home, I’d buy a new set. Chances are the mattress will wear out before our sheets ever do. And to give you an idea of how much fabric we’re talking about, I can change my sheets daily for more than a week, but less than a month, without ever having to worry about doing laundry. It’s frightening.

That was the plan, at least, until Miss Au Pair 2007 decided to get sick. Like I said, she was up all night, so I was up all night. And now, I just feel like a big fat legume. And even more so than usual, because, while it is nice to have someone to do all the ‘real’ work, the moving of heavy objects, and the cleaning of various surfaces, there’s a lot of stuff that only I can do, like actually going through the boxes and figuring out what must stay and what really should go. And there’s just so much of it. And it never ends. And an older, very pregnant women does not work at the same pace as a much younger, unpregnant one. The day she did the kitchen I honestly though I was going to end up in the hospital. No lie.

And I am taking it easy, I swear. Which is why today I am letting the cleaning demon sleep a bit late while I revel in my vegetableness. And catch up on some bloginess, because I’ve really missed that.

And I’ve missed sharing things like how this guy here

turned into this guy here.
Three years have flown by, so all you new moms out there, man, hold on to all those little moments. Because even bumpy headed Klingons with not-so-gorgeous expressions
turn into precious little angels in the blink of an eye.
See, I’m getting all sentimental and crap and that’s not good. In fact it’s boring. Well, for me it is. And I hate being boring. I’d rather shock you. But there’s nothing shocking going on around here, unless you count the fact that Mr. Manthing has been absolutely…wonderful (for lack of a better word) lately. I’m wondering what’s wrong with him. It’s so unlike him. But, yeah, no name for baby 3.0 yet, so I guess I can complain about that. But he has been extremely nice lately, and that can be a bit of a bother. Is he dying and afraid to tell me? Is there another woman (riiiight)? Whatever it is, I hope it continues for a long time (including the other woman thing, because that’s just like that much less work for me, right?) because it’s nice being a bit spoiled. The only thing I don’t like about him at the moment is that he still refuses to get up in the middle of the night and go pee for me. Just one tiny little thing, and he refuses. Which is why he’ll never be perfect.

I’ve got six whole weeks left to walk like a deformed duck, and honestly I have an entire post of emotions to write about as far as that goes. I need to do it too, so I can look back one day and laugh at how stupid I am. Not that I’d need that particular post to point out my stupidity, but….Am I rambling again? Man, blog withdrawal is like the worst thing evah!

So I’ll stop here, before I OD. And I’ll try to be better about pacing myself. Really. Because I’d hate for you guys to have to stage an intervention or something.