Trudging Uphill

Don returned home Thursday evening. Since then, he has fixed the toilet and the air conditioner, mowed the front yard, and used the string trimmer on all the edges. (The string trimmer is beyond my capabilities at the moment... apparently they don't come with front-wheel drive like the lawnmower.) It's good to have him back.

I'm finally making a little bit of progress in terms of getting everything together for the baby's arrival. My goal of having everything "done" by the end of April turned out to be a huge joke, except not the funny kind. Still, I've bought the car seat, started the diaper stash, washed a bunch of the clothes and blankets, and started looking for a dresser/changing table on Craig's List. Don and I started looking for our new couch yesterday, too. This may not seem baby-related, but it is, in its own way. We have two bedrooms, and contrary to popular expectations, we aren't turning the second into a nursery, but into a guest bedroom/ study. In the beginning, at least, the baby and his/her accessories will stay in our bedroom. To accomplish this, we're going to move our futon, which has faithfully served as our one-and-only sofa for many years, into the spare room to be the guest bed as needed (it actually makes a comfortable bed, honest!), and buying a Real, Grownup Sofa for the living room. Exciting stuff, seriously. That way, when people come to stay with us, we have a place to put them that isn't the living room. Since my mom is planning to come as soon as the baby arrives (or sooner, depending how long Baby takes to get here), and my sister and her boyfriend are coming in late June, it's pretty critical to our overall baby-readiness. The biggest setback is that I currently have NO energy. None. It seems to be all I can do to go to work each day.

Speaking of work, I no longer have access to The Internet from there: a new company-wide policy is preventing us from checking our personal email accounts, and is monitoring and tracking who is still doing so. It doesn't take a huge leap to think that this also may apply to Google, Amazon, EBay, and other non-work related sites. Since I did almost all of my blog-updating on my lunch breaks, posting might be even scarcer than usual for the next three weeks. (Three weeks, because that's when my vacation starts-- the vacation with no end date! Sad, I know, but I'm almost as excited about NOT WORKING for awhile as I am about the baby coming. Three more weeks!)