One month left. One Month Left. I am really looking forward to being able to touch my toes without cutting off access to one vital organ or other, to not having super-uber-swollen feet. Oh man, to wear ‘real’ shoes again! Who’d have that you’d hear that from me, the one known for going barefoot in January! Ha!

One Month Left, and a busy month at that. The Au Pair, while still concocting wonderful things in the kitchen (since my last post she’s spoiled us with a chocolate malted cake and a peanut butter cake, both of which have made the cut—read on), is getting better and better with the kids. Muppet still tries to walk all over her, but she’s getting better at keeping him in line. And Pooplette worships her…most of the time. Actually Pooplette has gotten very strange lately. One can often find the Papa’s girl trying to cuddle with her mama of all people.

And yes, she’s been sick. All of us have, actually, but she’s taken the record for trips to the doctor this week. Since the kids have been going to the crèche, they’ve been slowly trading germs with all the other monkeys running around with them. It’s normal, and I’m not really overly concerned about it. But this means we’ve all been sick to some degree for the past six weeks, and lately it’s been a lot more than we can bear. Both kids are on antibiotics, as am I. The doctor seems to think that there’s a bit more than a lot of different viruses running around inside of us. Muppet, after the first dose of antibiotic, promptly fell asleep and continued to sleep for the next fifteen hours. The child who woke up was a lot happier than the one who fell asleep, and if you can forgive the eternally runny nose, he seems almost back to normal. Pooplette on the other hand woke up yesterday with a mid-grade fever. We treated it like we normally would—she’s teething after all, and the odd fever goes with the territory. But this morning she woke up and the thermometer hit 39.5°C—103.1°F—so we went back to the doctor. Her whateveritisthat’sinfected is trying to push itself into an ear infection, something I have no experience with as a mother, and from what I understand, I want to keep it that way. So she’s had a change of antibiotics and a few additional drugs added to her list of fun things to pump your kids up on and we’re hoping for improvement. Of course the new antibiotic carries a risk of dyin-in-the-rear, so we’re looking forward to fun times indeed. And me? Well, I’m still stopped up but at least the yucky smelly infection part seems to be cleared up. I’m just all snotty still, and hating that, because who can think clearly with this many hormones and this much snot running around in her body? Not I.

And of course, the head isn’t the only part of my body stuffed up. I’ve had to take magnesium for those wonderful leg/foot cramps that go along with pregnancy—something that recently popped up on me because, let’s face it, I had nothing else to complain about. So we all know what magnesium does to one’s system, right? Basically I’ve been pooping out adobe bricks, HUGE adobe bricks, which means that the ass-terror-roids are back. Yes, my colon feels like it’s hanging around my knees. I know I have never had the pleasure of even the beginning of a twinge of labor pains, but honestly, can they be much worse than this? Can they? Because all you natural child-birthing muthas out there, HOLY SHIT THIS HURTS! Any why is it that everything is attached to one’s anus? I can’t cough that my bunghole doesn’t feel it. Hell, even typing makes it tickle a little. Who designed the human body? I want to complain. This just is not fair.

So yeah, huge month coming up. We’re having a big Birthday Partay an the 12th with a buncha people coming and a lot of ‘em staying and all of ‘em eating, so there’s that to look forward to—all that work, woohoo. (And no I am not complaining because I wouldn’t have it any other way—I thrive on shit like this.) So in the meantime the Au Pair is spoiling us with cakes, trying to narrow the recipes down to just three or four to make for all the glorious people. And I have to say, as gorgeous and as yummy as it was, the one pictured before just didn’t make the cut. Au Pair is getting better and better at pushing my gestational diabetes closer to a permanent state. Beyotch.

And we still have no name for the spawn. No, not true. We both have names, just not the same one. Marc wants one thing, and I another and I’ll be damned if I give in. See, his chosen name is French—very French—like French to the point that there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that my family will ever get it right. And I’m just not down with that, nope, not at all. The couple I have picked out can go either way. One is actually very French, too, but well enough known Stateside that there’ll be no problem with it. The other is very classic, and not really country-specific. And I’m not really stuck on either of them. If some other name fell into our laps I’d be willing to gobble it up, but for now we’re at a stalemate. And it’s bothering me because I hardly feel any bond at all with this monkey and she’ll be here in One Month. I’m odd about that—she has no name so it’s hard to give her any real identity. I know, I’m a horrible mother. Horrible horrible horrible, and yes, I’m planning for therapy for my kids already.

So, big party, name search, what else? Oh, yeah. The continuing nightmare. Yesterday we started the judicial expertise on the house. Our lawyer, the expert appointed by the courts, the expert who did the report for the insurance company, and Marc and I all gathered at the house, where the sub-contractor, of course, didn’t bother going. But we did what needed to be done, or at least we started. The court appointed expert actually wants to come back another day to finish things up because, yes, there’s that much wrong with the house. Just the balcony posed an hour long problem—what to do to fix it, and how to do it so that the sub doesn’t freak out and file bankruptcy. At least that part got real simple today. See, we got a letter form the liquidation firm that handled the bankruptcy for the builder, and guess what?! The sub has now filed too! So instead of trying to be nice with the report, the gloves are off and the expert will probably recommend either tearing down the balcony and starting over or something else equally drastic and costly. We know already that we won’t see much money right away, and that’s a nightmare in and of itself because we will eventually have to figure out a way to finance all the work that has to be done on the house. But because the builder and the sub both lied about their insurance in our contracts, as well as a few other choice fraudulent tidbits, we’re filing a civil and penal suit as soon as the lawyer has the forms ready. What this basically means is that wherever they go, whatever they do, if they get a euro in their pocket, we get to take it away, FOREVER, until the money they owe us is paid. It’s a long term investment to be sure, and one that we’ll have to be very patient about if it is ever to bear fruit (and knowing that the sub may just pack it in and head back to Turkey has not escaped us), but I’m hungry for blood right about now.

In the meantime, send checks and cash to us at the above address. Because honestly, we have no idea how we’re going to pull off the fix it part. The roof has to be redone, the balcony has to be redone, the inside walls and ceilings all have to be ripped out and redone. And we’re looking at around 60K€, a sum we can’t even contemplate at this point because our budget is stretched to its absolute limit.

Maybe we should auction off the un-named baby?

I’m still working on my emotional purge post where I spill forth all my emotions about being a mom for the third and final time and how that’s affecting my life and why it’s odd and stuff like that. It’s actually a bit stupid at this point, and because I have this odd notion that some of you think of me as more than the shallow piece of crap human being that I am, I’d like for it to be something worth reading. So I’m working on that, and working on eating all these yummy cakes my Au Pair is baking us, and working on getting our home (reconciled with that word for now I am, believe it or not) organized (going fairly well at this point) and ready (bwahaha) for the third monkey. And I’m trying to keep busy, and calm, and believe it or not, aside from the expatriated part of my intestines that make me want to cry nonstop, I feel pretty damn good—rested, calm(er than usual), and almost happy.

The sky must be falling…