Yesterday I did eleventy-five loads of laundry AND folded it all AND put it away. And every time a load got done, I thought, "Yesss! More laundry to fold and put away!" I thought this without a trace of sarcasm in my mind.
Last night my champion sleeper (ahahahahah, that is so a thing of the past, though she's still a pretty good sleeper, I suppose, and if this is not just a phase that 9- and 10-month-olds go through, I will probably kill myself) woke up at 3:45 and stayed that way until 6:30. I coped by going downstairs and eating a metric ton of black cherry frozen yogurt (and yet I still weighed one pound less this morning). Seriously, I have tried everything I can think of (short of booze; I joke about doing this, but I wouldn't actually, and I hope I didn't have to tell you that) with this kid. I do not know what to do with her. Why would a formerly awesome sleeper suddenly do this? I NEED ANSWERS.
(Before anyone jumps down my throat, yes, I do know that thousands of other kids do not even sleep through the night until they're three. If you tell me your cat just died, I will not yell at you about how I've lost three grandparents and a father-in-law, and IF I COULD BE SO LUCKY I WOULD BE GRATEFUL. Don't worry; if you are one of my friends on here, I am not talking about you. I am talking about other people who do the drive-by notes, which are so often private. I am VERY grateful that she sleeps as well as she does, but when you get used to a thing, and then suddenly that thing turns into a nightmare, it is hard to get unused to it. And I handle sleep deprivation about as well as Bill Clinton handles celibacy.)
Ahem. So. I slept about three hours last night. That's because even after she finally settled, I kept dreaming that she was crying, so I'd wake up in a panic, all, "Oh, not again! What's wrong this time?"
I thought today would be awful. I thought I would spend it lying in bed, trying to recover from the insane amount of work I did yesterday and from a sleepless night. After I fed Grace, I did lie in bed for a while. I watched her bop around our room, mostly between the window fan (if she had a boyfriend, that would be it) and the air filter (and she'd be two-timing it with him).
For the first time in weeks, I enjoyed her instead of just gritting my teeth through yet another day. She made me giggle. I made her giggle. I felt a little of this yesterday, but today I really felt normal and happy again. Not that I've been depressed for the past month, but I have definitely not been myself. Tired and draggy, horrified at the thought of almost all food, yet constantly starving. I had some (pregnancy-safe) anti-nausea pills that really helped, but they also made me drowsy, and yesterday was the first day I didn't need them. Oh, it was great.
About a half hour of that, and I suddenly realized that even though I'd picked up our bedroom yesterday, it wasn't clean, and it was vitally important that our bedroom be spotless and sweet-smelling today. No, yesterday, and oh my gosh it's too late I need it clean now. I wiped down every surface with Murphy's Oil Soap (they need to make a room spray that smells like that; it is the best smell in the world), including the baseboards and window trim and ceiling fan. I vacuumed, and then I vacuumed some more. Then I started in on the windows, and this is where the DOOM! music starts.
These windows. I have not cleaned a window in this house since we first moved in, and now I remember why. When we first got here, I tackled the two front windows in the living room. They were horribly dirty, yet mostly web-free, which is why I chose them. It took me FOUR HOURS. Yes, that is a "four", and that is an "hours". It took me four hours partly because I am crazy and a perfectionist, but mostly it took me four hours because the window needs to be completely disassembled in order to be cleaned. And even THEN you cannot clean it completely. Not even with a toothbrush. It's like Martha Stewart's worst nightmare.
One of the major attractions of this house when we moved in was the new windows. "New windows!" we said, "Energy savings!" we said, "Ease of use!" we said. Silly young couple. These windows have slots up the sides that are JUST narrow enough that they cannot be cleaned with towel, finger, toothbrush, or scalpel. They can be mostly clean, but never completely clean. Do you know what kind of goop collects in those slots? Do you have any idea? It is the stuff of nightmares. And, while the windows swing out nicely so that it is easy to clean both sides, heaven help you if you accidentally take it all the way out. The first time I had to put a window pane back in, my belly was the size of Morocco, and I hadn't eaten all day. This time around I thought it would be easier. Nope. Not in the least! Also, the tabs that slide back and forth so you can swing the window in and out are textured plastic and screwed into the window frame. To clean it (and they were really filthy; this is not a case of me being crazy), I had to unscrew and disassembled each tab, let them soak while I cleaned the rest of the window, then scrub and dry them before putting them back together. This assembly includes one (1) tiny spring, like what you might find in a pen, one (1) small disk-thingy whose purpose I have yet to ascertain, one (1) textured bracket (hi, dirt! come live with us! forever!) that fits over the whole assembly, and one (1) tab onto which you have to fit the spring perfectly before you put the whole thing just right into the bracket, and oops, that spring likes to pop off, and oops, if you put it on just wrong, you have to disassemble the whole thing and start over because otherwise your window will fall out in the middle of the night or possibly on your child's head in the middle of the day.
I had NO IDEA that a window could make me so angry. Anyway, this time around it only took three hours to do the two windows. This does not include the twenty minutes I spent ducking and weaving when a sneaky bee zoomed into the house in search of...? No idea. I think this is the same bee that tried to traumatize me last summer while I was cleaning radiator covers in the front lawn. Perhaps they are attracted to Pine-Sol, my second favorite cleaning supply.
I am still losing weight. Doctor's appointment tomorrow. I will ask about this because I did not have anything like this problem last time. Even with all the not eating and throwing up more often and feeling like poo, I still gained about ten pounds during first trimester. I have LOST almost ten pounds during first trimester. The vain side of me is thrilled, but I know it's not something you want to have happen during pregnancy. Not ten pounds in a month. I thought that it might stop last week, when I suddenly started feeling a little better and eating more, but it didn't. It slowed, but I'm still dropping weight.
I've run out of things to say.
Here is a grainy photo from my MacBook camera:
It's grainy, but it so perfectly captures her personality: maniacal happiness and constant movement. Also, you can see the hideous former color scheme of our living room. The camera does not adequately capture the horror, but it's close. Imagine both those colors just a little bit pukier, and you'll have it. We can't bring ourselves to repaint the door. It is too awesomely horrific.
To clarify: I don't feel rotten anymore. I feel awesome, for the first time in weeks, despite my lousy sleep. I'm baffled by this compulsion to clean, clean, clean (even though I know it's just nesting), but I feel great.
