The State of Affairs
Ants! There are suddenly so many ants in my house. Why? There is either a hidden picnic or at perhaps a stashed jar of jelly around here somewhere. They are big and black and not very smart. They seem to like my desk, and every time I'm sitting here at least one scuttles across my line of vision, and for some reason all of my typical humanist generous-to-all-small-creatures, gather-them-up-to-set-them-free instincts fly out the window and I want to crush their little bodies with a tissue and feel that horrible-yet-satisfying click.
Business-wise, we have snow. Lots and lots of snow, and no one gives a damn. Clearly, we are not the only ones who have given up on this Winter, the city-folk couldn't care less that we have oodles of it. They are staying put and waiting for Spring. So, all the digging and shoveling and paying for expensive plow-jobs is sort of squandered on our three customers this weekend, but whatever. We're over wishing this season to be more cooperative, our eyes are just calmly trained on the magnolia buds outside, watching them plump and waiting for the glorious day that they emerge.
Poopies-wise, we have a little comedian on our hands. He's discovered the joy of making us laugh, and will do anything, from asking for cookies for breakfast, to dramatic pratfalls, to straight-on tickling to make it happen. He is totally hilarious, if not a bit weird, which we see as a good thing entirely. When he's not vying for laughs, he's telling endless tales of what happened earlier in the day or week, which mostly consists of a scattering of words he knows filled in "um"s plus his typical gibberish, with adorable sighs, hand-clasps and pauses while he looks diagonally at the ceiling and thinks of the next silly bit. He is also sleeping the whole night in his crib lately, which is sweet and kind thing for him to finally do. I had really sort of had it with having to retrieve a 30-pound leech at 3 am every morning.
Baby-wise, I'm nearly 26 weeks along now, feeling good, feeling fine, if not a tad incapable of imagining what a little baby is going to do to our lives. I recall feeling this way before Poopies' arrival, but this is a totally different game. The Pooper is going to be sad. And mad. And I hate doing that to my favorite little person. What really gets me is that I imagine that every bit that I dote on the baby and love her will be upsetting and resented by him. It was so easy to love him, it was free and natural and there was no competition or bad feelings associated. And I wish it could be the same this time around. I know he will come around eventually, but initially he will hate it I'm sure, and he is such a loving, cuddly little boy I really hate to sully his feelings for me.
Plus, there is the sleeping situation, which I've finally accepted we will just have to feel out once the time comes. I assume we will start with the baby in the bed, joined immediately by Poopies I'm sure, and will suffer through a few weeks or possibly months of that madness before we throw our couch out the window, moving our bed into the living room, thereby surrendering all hope of ever receiving visitors to our home, and giving up our room to "the kids." We are still planning on starting a renovation that will add a second floor about a year from now, but the logistics of this between financing, town hall and questionable foundations is fairly defeating, I have to say. Plus, doing all that work and still having seven-foot-ceilings on the first floor seems like an exercise in futility.
So, I've worked my way into a bit of a depressing endnote here, huh. Well, we'll just end with a cute photo of our wooly winter boy, and call it a day:
