Nesting

Be mindful of the goals you set.

So one of my summer goals was to declutter a room a week. I was plodding along, not exactly setting the world on fire with my progress, but making a dent here and there.

And then Ainsley had an accident of the potty training variety and out came the bleach.

And then Dave invited friends to spend the Fourth of July at our house, and I scrubbed and scoured and accomplished an amazing amount in no time flat. He did, too!

And then one of our visitors dumped half a bottle of fish food into the recently cleaned tank that will be sparkling once again in an hour or two.

And then I opened the pantry and spotted moths . . . the kind that begin as something called weevils
 . . . the kind that require you to carefully check every package of dry goods in the vicinity and to scrub and to bleach and possibly to paint.

And then I called the exterminator to come do what he does best and this requires that every piece of furniture be pulled away from the walls and since you can't very well spray a dusty surface, I'm grabbing the vacuum and the Murphy's Oil Soap.

And then a problem of unspecified origin forced me to clean under the washing machine this morning. There I discovered a long lost earring, one of Ainsley's socks, two Legos, no batteries, one penny, Russian currency of an unknown denomination, a tiny burp cloth that must date back to Timothy's infancy, and a Chuck E. Cheese token.

And on it goes.

Many pregnant women experience nesting syndrome. Just before delivery, you wake with a burst of energy and an intense desire to zip over to Home Depot and then dash by the fabric store. Visions of order and beauty and Potty Barn catalogues dance in your head, and you make herculean progress in a brief span of time. If all goes well, this induces labor.

Case in point: I planted mums when I was forty weeks pregnant with Tim. My water broke shortly thereafter.

I should note that where nesting is concerned, there is vast difference between having a baby at 33 (my first) and at 45 (my last). Oh, I had the same intense desire to get it all done, but that surge of energy? Non-existent.

Nesting with Ainsley? I went to Walmart and bought sleepers and diapers. I probably came home and took a nap. I had a long To Do list, but I could barely muster the energy to lumber to the couch and hoist the remote.

And it was August and it was blazing hot and I felt every one of my forty-five years.

Not a total slacker, I invested a lot of time thinking about my To Do list. High on the list was reorganizing the pantry. Not sure why this was such a priority, but it was.

Then I flew to Michigan for a visit. I returned home to find that we had left a potato -- and I think it was just one single potato -- in the pantry. It had been there for two weeks. Now, you can leave many a household item to mold and moulder for two weeks or more, but you can't do this to a potato. Trust me on this point.

The bugs, the stench -- blahhhhhh! The saving grace was that I was long past the morning, noon, and night sickness that would have sent me sprinting for the bathroom.

Awful -- just awful.

I emptied the pantry. I sorted, scrubbed, bleached, and, yes, even painted. I nested. Under duress, but I nested.

Necessity may be the mother of invention; I think it's also the mother of productivity.

It's now been an hour or two, and the fish tank is indeed sparkling . . . but the filter is no longer operating. Necessity is calling, and it's ordering me up to the road to Petsmart.