Friday, Never Hesitate

I don't know if I finally have my head out of my ass or if I'm been bitten with the crazy, but I have been severely attacking the basement this week.

It's do or die: the baby is due at the end of August, but my weekly Progesterone (also known as: STOP MAH LABAH) shots end mid- to late-July. Which means we need to be ready and by ready, I mean motherfuckingready for our little baba ganoush by August 1st.

Aaron agrees.

First step with living with a hoarder (as I've learned over the 12 years we've lived together), is to get said hoarder to agree to timelines. Signed documentation also helps.

Having to be ready by August 1st means we have just over two months to prepare.

Gulp.

Ohmyhell.

So, I've been slowly working on the basement, but then I got the sinus infection from hell, which required the antibiotics from hell which came along with the side effects from hell that nearly hospitalized me. Amen.

I'm just now getting over those side effects and the basement is now my biyatch. As in, this is my theme song for cleaning the basement:



Oh yes, it is.

After Wednesday's recycling fiasco (dude, be glad you didn't hear that conversation, my hell), Aaron and I had a frank discussion about The Basement.

As in, we don't need Paper and Cardboard.

This was, of course, after a found a ten foot tower of empty cardboard boxes. I thought Aaron's cardboard box collection was centralized to the garage. Apparently not.

Included in the collection was a box for a VCR that died seven years ago. And a box for an automated scooping kitty litter box. Which we got rid of over five years ago.

::shaking head::

So we had initially agreed to having a garage sale. Let's face it, there's more than just paper and cardboard in the basement. There's a shit-ton of stuff we don't use and have no intention of using again.

Second rule with living with a hoarder: be brutally honest in the likelihood that something is worth holding on to.

I do my very best to respect Aaron's feelings, and I get it: I also don't want to get rid of stuff just to turn around and spend money on the very same stuff again.

This is why I'm trying to clean the basement in the first place: to figure out what we have for the baby. Like, duh.

So far, stuff I've found we won't use: broken electric beaters, 12 boxes of crayons (like we don't already have five boxes currently in use as-is), acrylic blankets from when I was a kid.

And I'm a reasonable person. The Legos and Light Brite (both circa mid-90s) was brought upstairs and put to use:


The real kicker came when Aaron agreed that he likely will not be able to host a garage sale by July 1st (see? timelines) and that I should donate things as I accrue too much to have reasonable work space.

So today I took 13 bags of stuff to the donation center. I have five more ready for another run on Tuesday.

See? I'm not just gonna go willy-nilly and throw everything away.

Pinkie swear.

Somebody's Gonna Come Undone

Aaron skipped off to work early this morning, so it became my responsibility to take out the trash and recycling before the sun came up.

Do you know what I found in the garage?

Fourteen bags of recycling Aaron has refused to recycle.

Fourteen bags.

Aaron's hoarding is officially out of control. He's holding onto 14 bags of class worksheets Griffin and Darwin have brought home over the past year. And better yet - he's sorted the recycling so that all the worksheets are together so he could keep them.

He has, thankfully, gotten to the point that he will admit it's become a problem but he REFUSES that it's actually an issue and claims he doesn't need any professional help - or any help at all.

He just needs "more free time."

Dude. If you have free time to sort and hide 14 bags of paper, you have free time to actually look at it, recycle it and work on something else.

There's a Calm Before the Storm

If there's one thing you can count on me to do is to get a simple head cold and have it escalate into threats of hospitalization and crazy-ass side-effects from drugs.

As in, the drugs are making me sicker than the stupid sinus infection. And although I can now keep fluids down and to warrant off dehydration, I've lost over four pounds in as many days and guess what particular OB isn't all that appreciative of weight loss during pregnancy?

So, yeah. I'm coping the best I can but it's not spectacularly well. Between the pregnancy weight gain (which granted is all in my belly and some edema and damn I'm uncomfortable in my body and I know it's only gonna get worse) and all the naps (never in my life did I think I would complain about actually being able to nap) and the weekly progesterone shots and the calcification on the baby's heart that won't go away and the laundry that is never-ending (and why can't I find a plastic hanger that isn't blue or white in stores?) I am just spent.

But I'm coping. Or, trying to cope. I just wish my antibiotic came with a nice magical dose of Make Mommy Happy. Know where I can get some of that?