My brains works in a weird way. At any given time, I have at least twenty different trains of thought running through my head and pregnancy brain has made me more forgetful than ever. But I need these things done and I don't have the option of helpful friends and family falling at my feet to volunteer. Whatever shall I do? PLAN. Plan, plan, plan, big time.
If I need a mommy bag and baby bag ready in a month, then by that time, my work around the house should be greatly diminished and brought down to just an occasional dusting or wiping. That's my giant task on my to-do list. This is my to-do list by the way:
TO-DO LIST:
- Get housework down to a bare minimum for the last trimester.
- Get cracking on mommy bag and baby bag.
- Be prepared for baby.
- Have baby.
Each task on my to-do list has its own to-do list. Which I will get to eventually. I am aware that I am a procrastinator and a former perfectionist, but I'm learning how to go with the flow. The flow says I have a month to spruce up this place. How am I going to do that when I fall asleep regardless of what I'm doing at night and during the day? Or when I spend most of the week in bed, struggling to sit up on my own? I know not. But I will make this happen. My baby will not come home to cobwebs and dirty laundry. I will not put myself in a situation where I have to fight against a waddle and late pregnancy belly/other symptoms to do hardcore housework. So, I WILL make this happen.
Hubby has located my missing Ipod nano, so even though I can't blast music because of *censored* *censored* *censored* *censored*, as long as I tape my headphones to my ears, neck, and body, I can't sweat it off. I'll also have Rumi (my 14 month old pompek) for company and she almost always cheers me up and will be my bodyguard in the event of uninvited company/*censored*. Sure, she runs away whimpering and hides behind me the second she sees someone coming, but it's the thought that counts, right? I have my broom, mop, mop bucket, two homemade cleaning sprays, an old duster, and garbage bags. Yeah. *deep breath* I can totally do this.
The depressing part is that hubby doesn't want Rumi in the room at all once the baby is born. First, he was going to take over her play/living area to make himself an entertainment area, but after months and months of debate, he's finally agreed to give me the space for a nursery. I'd give up the nursery to keep Rumi inside safely with me, but if Taurus man says no Rumi, he means no Rumi. He's offered to put her on the steps by the garage downstairs, but after getting hell from his father when my last two pups were there, in addition to his father's habit of leaving the house (garage included) completely unlocked and usually wide open at all times, in addition to my last two pups being stolen given away without my consent or knowledge by his father, I'm still fighting Taurus man on that. If I want to keep Rumi, I have to suggest a place for her to stay (giving her away tore my heart out and was not successful - she's too "old" for people to want her now) and think of all the pros (to convince Taurus man) and cons (that Taurus man will bring up). That has me more bummed than anything but happy Taurus man means happy baby and happy me. So. :( *sniff sniff* The bitch.
The bedroom needs rearranging. As in HOLY SHIZNIT the bedroom needs rearranging. Furniture needs to be moved out, some might be broken down, and the chipping, dirty, blinding bright blue (Taurus man did it) walls need to be repainted. The windows need to be able to seal shut properly when closed and I need to figure out how to get shorter curtains that won't harbor the nursery or pose a threat to the baby with no sewing machine, and other factors I can't remember because Taurus man just interrupted my thinking flow. All kinds of crap need moving around in here and I'm hoping the lights can be changed to dimmers. Don't let me go on. A whole bunch of crap needs to be done here. A WHOLE bunch of crap. The bedroom gets a to-do list all by itself. Did I mention we're hoping to construct a wall to split the bedroom in two so the bedroom and nursery are separate as well as install air conditioning? *nervous laugh* HOLY SHIZNIT. I kid you not.
The back porch gets me pissed. I'm a horrible plant owner and half of my plants have died or are on their way to the afterlife as we speak. I need to take care of my plants and trim, replant, replace, etc. There are also clothesline strung across the entire length of the back porch that we hang our clothes on after washing. The clothespins have a habit of "disappearing" on their own. After three-quarters of them were stolen by Taurus man's sister, Cancer bitch, hubby and I bought a bulk pack of clothespins. Taurus man's dad, Cancer grump, kept making my clothespins disappear, so I brought out small packets at a time until half the pack was being used/disappeared. Not only does Cancer grump make the clothespins disappear, he makes my pretty new clothespins disappear in particular, uses the rest to hang his sheets or clothes or wash rags or plastic bags and then leaves the old, discoloring, breaking up ones for me. This goes as far as taking the new clothespins off of my clothes and replacing them with old ones. WTF man? Cancer grump also considers the back porch to be a dump. No matter how much I clean, any old unused pieces of machinery are dumped and piled on in the back porch. This includes extra large metal dishes that are all his, washing machines, fridges, and rusty old wiry things that were once who knows what. The heating iron is also never to be found as he takes it to his wood workshop downstairs and only brings it up to one of his rooms for his personal use and locks his doors at all times or carries it back downstairs. His prayer room is also located in the porch. The few times he actually cleans it, he sweeps out all the garbage and leaves it in the back porch for me to clean up. His hammock is also located there, where he spends half the night chatting away with a married woman he was "meant to be" with and eventually falls asleep before getting to his bedroom. In the midst of all these insignificant things, I'm supposed to keep the poorly half-painted, concrete floored back porch sparkling clean at all times. A round table in the back porch now has a pile of hubby's and my own laundry as his heart attack combined with my own health problems forced me to take a long break from anything resembling cleaning. But I must tend to it.
The bathroom pisses me off. No matter how often I scrub and fix and clean and throw out the trash, it keeps coming back. Cancer grump has two bedrooms for his own personal rooms, one of which is a master bedroom with a master bathroom. Why is he leaving muddy footprints in my otherwise clean shower? Or dumping wood-shavings on my rinsed out mop in the washtub? Or rinsing greasy things with greasy build up and black particles in the shower or sink to leave marks that need to be scrubbed out right when I thought I had a day's break from cleaning? Or leaving urine drops on the toilet seat and floor? Or leaving water rings on the washing machine lid? Or leaving the washing machine open to collect dust inside the outer rim? Or constantly pushing old disposable shavers or dusty pieces of cloth or empty toothpastes in the holes in the bricks running along the top of the bathroom? WHY? I do not know. But I must clean.
There are two parts to the kitchen. Which both piss me off. There is the back of the kitchen, which is mostly used by hubby or myself to plug in the griddle, store food supplies, mix batters, arrange cooked dishes, wash vegetables, or make ourselves busy until the stove or sink in the real kitchen is available. The real kitchen has the stove covered in all kinds of gunk unless I clean it every day and the sink that gets mildewed because of the leaky faucet Cancer grump refuses to fix the right way, the microwave that gets all kind of weird smells and splatters unless I clean it, the small fridge that's over ten years old and barely holding itself together that hubby and I use, and gunk building up on the counter tops unless I scrub them everyday, etc. I get pissed with the kitchen a lot. When the shit hits the fan and I can't rise at dawn to scrub and soak and clean, it turns into a dump. I haven't been cleaning at dawn for months, so just imagine the damage. But I must clean.
There is also the hall. The people that designed this house did so extremely half-assed. The hall is like a gigantic living room in between the kitchen and the doors to the bedrooms. Hubby and I have tried rearranging the dining table and some of his mom's furniture to make it has homely as we can, but poorly painted walls that were painted white more than 16 years ago and left to stain and collect dust in addition to the dust dropping, cobweb attracting ceiling kind of defeat the whole purpose. The ceiling is made of wood and runs through the whole house. The ceiling houses termites, ants, spiders, lizards, bats, and birds. There are probably more creatures hiding up there, but we don't know any more than these. The ceiling constantly drops dust and wood grains all over the house every few hours, every day and every night. Every stranger that Cancer grump brings to use our bathroom or wait for him for whatever reason or to clean his room tracks in God-knows-what on their shoes and leave these proud marks for me to scrub away. Cancer grump has a habit of trekking back and forth through God-knows-what when I am mopping and then quarrels with me for missing a spot or not mopping properly when he turns around to gleam at the new marks he leaves after every back and forth through the house. Weird things are also dumped here. Old tools covered in dust, wood shavings, and some kind of black substance are abandoned on the white dining room table cover, or on the clean new sheets I've covered the couch with, for example. When Cancer grump brings his maid or a workman to clean his room, he also instructs them to dump all of his dust and garbage out into the hall. Do I get pissed? Pissed is an understatement. But I must do it.
There is also the gallery. The gallery is a small protrusion to the front of the house. Dust from the road flies up and coats everything in the gallery daily. If there is construction (which there frequently is for the pipelines or roads), then construction dust and sand flies up and coats everything in the gallery. Anytime I open the burglar proofing and front door to the gallery, if I leave for five minutes and Cancer grump walks by, he shuts the door and locks the burglar proofing. As soon as it is cleaned, it attracts dust and will be just as dirty as it was before in mere hours. But I must tend to it.
I'm not even going to start on the stairs and outside the house. If I don't land myself in the hospital from all the cleaning I have laid out before me, I'm definitely not risking it for the outside. Sure the doc said not to do such things, but if I intend to put my feet up and relax for any part of my third trimester, now is the time to get to it. Whew. 5 months down, four months to go. I can totally do this. Not freaking out. Not freaking out at all.
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