Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas! We're enjoying trees lit up, classic Disney cartoons with a holiday theme (courtesy of the "Holiday Celebration with Mickey & Pals" DVD), El Hub made breakfast, and there's a kiddo kicking away in my belly. I hope you're having a lovely morning as well.

A couple of days ago I threw out the idea that we could do a homemade breakfast on Christmas morning, since we aren't due to make the family rounds until the afternoon. El Hub made it happen, even after the first three stores we went to on Christmas Eve were closed. Thank you 7-11 for being open and for having pancake mix and syrup!

Lists that say a lot but basically boil down to me being awesome.

I would like to preface this post with this thought: I am freaking awesome. Continue on to find out why.

Projects I've completed around the house during these past few weeks when I have clearly begun nesting*:

• Cleaned off the dining room table and found a home for everything on it
• Set up the two curio cabinets with their shelves and new, non-broken dowels and put knickknacks in them to display
• Moved a bookcase from the living room to be with its matching curio cabinet the dining room, cleaned it out, and put dining room-appropriate knickknacks in it
  
• Dealt with absolutely everything on the floor of our bedroom that didn't belong there and found a home for it all
• Tackled the master bathroom and got rid of five bags worth of hair products, makeup, and random toiletries
• Cleaned out the guest bathroom to make a clean slate for Butternut's arrival and eventual takeover
• Literally emptied the pantry and got rid of an embarrassing amount of expired food
• Cleaned out the kitchen cabinets and sorted through all our small appliances, cleaning supplies, cutlery, etc.
• Whipped the junk drawer and junk cabinet in our kitchen into shape
• Reorganized the living room media center
• Tackled the mountain of papers on the living room desk and filed everything
• Sorted my nail polish collection and gave away a third of it
• Perpetually reorganized my office, which is where a lot of random stuff from elsewhere in the house made its way during this process
• Started plotting out the arrangement for the photo frame mosaic for the nursery
• Sorted the baby stuff we've received so far and stored them in a laundry basket in the nursery closet
• Sorted stuff in the garage for Goodwill donations and straightened up the shelves
• Decorated the Christmas tree
• Decorated the rest of the house with Christmas stuff
  
• Wrapped Christmas gifts
• Wrote and mailed holiday cards
• Donated a TON of stuff to Goodwill
• Sold a couple of bookcases via Craigslist
• Sold our old television via Craigslist
• Cleaned out El Hub's car (why I did his and not mine, I have no clue)

And that's on top of my usual day job, the most amazing sinus infection ever, exercising regularly, physical therapy for my neck injury from that car accident in June, my other health issues, and oh, BEING PREGNANT. Which is really hard work, ask any woman who has been pregnant.


Projects I still need to wrap up before I can put my feet up:

Master Bedroom

• Sort jewelry (sure to be difficult thanks to all the history I attach to each piece)

My Office

• Sort photos (same issue as jewelry)
• Buy curtains and curtain rod

El Hub's Office

• Buy curtains and curtain rod

Nursery

• Buy curtains and curtain rod
• Put up a decorative clothesline - Buy two hooks, clothespins, twine, and decorative paper (and glue?)
• Make a no-sew crib skirts - buy fabric, stick-on velco and Heat N’ Bond Ultra Hold hem tape
• Hang photo frames. And maybe put stuff in them
• Find a green or teal lumbar pillow for the IKEA Poang chair
• Find and hang a mirror over the crib
• Buy wrapping paper and use it to line drawers
• Buy drawer knobs to switch out the old hardware on the dressers

My Car

• Clean it out (don't want mine to feel neglected after I took care of El Hub's)

Projects I can't do a darn thing about until El Hub paints the nursery:

Nursery

• Everything in the nursery.

Projects on El Hub's Honey Do List, which he has forbade me from even mentioning to him:

Nursery

• Finish painting
• Hang curtain rod
• Install blinds
• Put together crib
• Install light switch

Attic

• Fix the evil rattling that happens whenever the heater is on, conspiring to make sleep even more difficult for me.

Living Room

• Pick up the coffee table from my mom's house to bring here

Garage

• Clean out tools/odds and ends shelves
• Move one of the shelves to make room for the freezer in the next item.
• Pick up the freezer at my mom's house to bring here so I can start making freezer-friendly foods in preparation for Butternut's arrival

El Hub's Office

• Install curtain rod and curtains
• Install blinds
• Deal with the many boxes piled up.

My Office

• Install curtain rod and curtains
• Install blinds

*nesting, aka a convenient phrase for realizing, "OH MY GOSH, there's going to be a little person in the house soon who is going to make this place look and function about as well as if a bomb had been dropped here."

The Thing Is by Ellen Bass

Thank you to Mighty Girl Maggie for introducing me to this poem.

The Thing Is

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

(From Mules of Love, via The Writer’s Almanac.)