And Then I Actually DID Talk About Paint Drying

Not that you'd ever suspect I would, but I certainly did NOT get scared off by the Kerry Vincent brouhaha below. I was working hard on an "appropriate" follow-up post (um, because how DO you follow that up?) and then got sidelined and now it's long gone and no one cares about my Cake Defense anymore. I'll post it anyway, though.

Stripes are slimming, right?
In the meantime, I haven't been eaten or anything. It just...well, it occurred to me fairly recently that this pregnancy thing is, actually, going to result in HAVING A BABY.

So um. You knew this. And yeah, I had my suspicions. But pregnancy itself is such an overwhelming, encompassing thing that sometimes it feels like it's just nine months of increasing uncomfortability and no cocktails and you forget about why. "I JUST WANT THIS TO BE OVER!" those of us who prefer things like martinis and also not having the odd foot digging into our bladders all night tend to think. And THEN we remember, somewhere around eight-and-a-half months, that the end result of not being pregnant? Isn't about getting to have a martini.

I mean, you DO get to have a martini. Yay! But also! You get a child! A baby!

And then you're like, WHAT DO YOU MEAN, A BABY? WHERE IS IT GOING TO GO?

Perspective. That's what I'm saying.

The reality, my reality, is that I worry. A lot. So I spend my pregnancy thinking about pregnancy, not the awesome what-comes-after part (because I don't want to count my chicken before it hatches). Which means that one day I woke up and was all eight months pregnant and wondering, "No but really. Where IS the baby going to go?" And also, "Oh, and it will probably need diapers and stuff."

Thus, the last few weeks have been a whirlwind of organizing things we haven't touched since before Eve arrived, making 30 million lists, buying supplies, and trying to prep our home to be "ready." Which, I've discovered through my wackjob "nesting" instincts that never much presented themselves with Eve, will be "never."

Yesterday I spent hours contorting my full and not-to-be-contorted body across all our floors and staircase steam-cleaning our baseboards. I'm not kidding. Generally speaking, I'd move before voluntarily doing this, let alone doing this while pregnant. And yet.

I also got it into my head that we must finish painting the diningroom/entranceway.

(Probably you don't care at all about this, but some of you asked if I was okay and given what I'm about to explain, I'm not sure I can rightfully answer "yes.")

The thing is, a year ago we decided to pull up the carpet from the dining room because it was lame and also reeked of cat pee. And honestly, there's nothing you can do to rid carpet of cat pee smell other than rid yourself of the carpet entirely. It took us weeks to decide what flooring to replace the carpet with, because the floors that run through the rest of the downstairs have been discontinued because of course they have. And then there was the requisite "it's back-ordered" drama, mixed with flaky contractors and voila! Five months and all our savings later, we had a new floor!

Shortly thereafter, we decided to take the curtains down and paint the whole space, since we don't really like "flesh colored" walls. (And once you've already spent a fortune, why not just finish the job?) We thought it would be nice to have it done for Thanksgiving.

Instead, on Thanksgiving, we had giant, naked windows and five squares of paint samples smeared on three walls. FESTIVE!

And then somehow it was April.

Now I'm in this pressure-prompted, last-ditch effort to finish all unfinished everything, and have been to the paint store enough times that the grown men who work there giggle when I enter. (I am not making that up.)

And instead of a painted dining room, I have a wall that now has FIFTEEN different colors on it. YES, FIFTEEN. As though it's a modern art piece unto itself. 


Please note that this is just one wall of samples.
These same colors appear in larger and smaller swatches all over the room.

I will not walk you through the mental progression that these have taken. I will not explain to you how very, very different 5 and 6 are from 11 and 12. Just know that they are. And that we have decided on #12, which is Collonade Gray by Sherwin Williams (featured left; isn't it pretty?).


Aside from drying-paint adventures (will the painters come and get the room done before the baby arrives? HAHAHAHAHA), and other housekeeping projects, we went through the process of moving Eve into a big-girl bed in a big-girl room. Which could have been a horribly traumatizing event for all of us, and yet Eve -- again -- made the transition so well and so smoothly I'm convinced the child I'm currently carrying must be some kind of hellspawn.

I say that with love, of course.

So that is what I have been up to. I'm fine, I'm just cramming nine months worth of "let's get ready for baby!" stuff into like, three weeks. While working 50+ hour weeks at my work-job-start-up and not neglecting the toddler who, when I point to my belly and say baby, looks at me like I'm a doofus who has no idea what a baby is.



(Taken with the Hipstamatic App.
Any idea why it says APR 81 or how to change that?)

Comments

  1. Whew ! I'd been missing you.

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  2. I can definitely relate to the "flaky contractors" issue - - we have had MORE THAN OUR SHARE of them recently. Frustrating, annoying, and just totally maddening!

    That is a pretty shade of gray, by the way. I bet the walls are going to look spectacular when they are finished! :)

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  3. "...have been discontinued because of course they have."

    Why DO they DO that? Because they ALL do.

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  4. Your little girl is so beautiful, and so grown, it seems like yesterday you were expecting her!

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  5. So glad you're back! And i can't wait to find out how to get rid of the April 81 as well!

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  6. IF you are steam cleaning the baseboards, the baby is probably about to crown! I know when my cleaning instincts really kicked in with #1 I was about to go into labor.
    I have to keep telling myself- I'm having a baby! because it still doesn't seem real entirely. I'm 12 weeks- it helped to hear the heart beat last week. But oh, I have so much preparation to do!

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  7. I enjoyed reading about talking about paint drying WAY more than I have ever enjoyed watching paint dry... just so you know! :-) Hope all the prep goes well as the minutes tock away to the arrival (by the way... if your first baby is "good" the second will most likely be some kind of hellspawn... (I learned that from first-hand experience)...just sayin' :-) ah but we love the little devils anyway don't we??!! :-)

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  8. i am dating a painter who does mostly decorative finishes and i can't stop cracking up that you "know the difference!" between those tiny paint samples on your wall. people are very particular about paint. sheesh. (i'm a white walls kind of girl. lots of art for color, but all white on the walls.)

    if you need to keep nesting and run out of stuff to clean, i have a little house in pittsburgh that needs the love of a pregnant woman. just sayin.

    i think that app tries to mimic old photos and they used to have the month and year typed small on them. i thought that was back in the early 70's, though. no reason for it to say 81. since i don't have an iphone i can't tell you how to change it, though. sorry.

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  9. God I love you, lol. Your baby girl is beautiful! Oh, AND I love the people who comment too.

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  10. I get how 5 and 6 are different from 11 and 12. I do. I also drive my husband crazy when we paint, so…

    Oh! Go to Settings - Hipstamatic and then turn off "Retro-Date Prints". I just figured that out not too long ago, thankfully.

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  11. When I painted an old bedroom I had samples of every shade of celery/celedon/pale green that Home Depot, Lowe's, Sherwin Williams and Walmart carried hanging up.
    It looked like A Beautiful Mind in there.

    So I feel your pain--but I was happy with the end results and that's all that matters.

    Can't wait to "meet" the little guy through your blog--Eve is going to have a ball bossing him around (says a big sister)!
    As for devil child--nah, I was mostly easy (minus ages 3 and 14) and my brothers were good kids too.

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  12. Love this post! I am a first-time mom of a seven-week old. I discovered that the baby goes ... in my arms attached to my boob. Otherwise he cries. I bought all kinds of things to put him in so he would have somewhere to go once he got here, but those have so far been a big a waste of money. :)

    Also, I love your blog so much, I gave you the Versatile Blogger Award on my blog.

    http://live-by-rule2.blogspot.com/2011/04/versatile-blogger-award.html

    Thanks!
    Melissa (@melrut01)

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  13. Oh m' gosh, I'm dying over here. I'm a designer researching Collonade gray and stumbled upon this post. I also had a miserable pregnancy and got all kinds of stares when I complained to perfect strangers in the grocery store. Their subtle judgement did not phase me through the misery and 85 pound weight gain.

    Obviously by now you have popped out that baby and it is a toddler! Will be back to say hello again:)

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