As I mentioned the last time I wrote, the past few weeks have been sort of busy. We did a lot of traveling in April, then came home to have two weeks of drywallers in our house followed by a week and a half of guests. And then there was the Tennessee Flood of 2010. Mixed in among all of that were trips to Home Depot to fix up other parts of our house, trips to the midwife, and more social engagements than I think I’ve had in the past five years.

Which meant Berlin spent a lot of time sleeping on her bed all alone.

After I dropped my mom off at the airport last Saturday morning, it was as if Berlin got a new lease on life and she’s been euphoric ever since. We were home most of the weekend, and while running around a bit this week, at least one of us has been home at almost any given time since then. Berlin’s getting evening fetch with her dad again, something she had gone weeks without. And she has morning snuggles with her mom, something that was traded in for rushed early mornings when I needed to be up to let the drywallers in.

In fact Berlin’s been so happy over the past few days that she appears to have sprained a leg while playing too hard outside. It looks really painful, yet her tail is wagging frenetically because to her, life seems to be back to normal! It’s just the four of us in the house again! So she spends her days randomly going in and out of her dog door – inside to snuggle for a while, outside to play. And she couldn’t be happier.

They say you’re supposed to prepare your pets for your baby’s arrival so that they don’t become territorial or aggressive. I’m not at all worried about that; Berlin doesn’t have an aggressive bone in her body. But I am going to be sad to see my happy girl return to long days sleeping on her bed from lack of attention.

We have about five and a half weeks (give or take a couple days) left of this life that we know so well before it all radically changes. Now that my nesting urge seems to be calming down a bit, I just want to spend each day soaking in the normalcy. Until we have a new normal defined for us.

The past few weeks have been harried and hectic and stressful and fun. So much has gone on that I am finding it hard to sort it all out into something writable. So I’m scrapping all of that to write about light fixtures. This post will inevitably change the world.

Throughout the process of renovating our house I have come to the conclusion that I have a love affair with two things, fabrics and lights. I’m convinced they can completely change the mood of a room, or a house even. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately, I really don’t know) both light fixtures and fabrics seem to be a get-what-you-pay-for kinda scenario. I’ve found that I fall head over heels for very expensive light fixtures and then need to spend days finding affordable versions of them, which inevitably wind up with logistical problems.

Our dining room pendant should have taken fifteen minutes to install, but because I fell in love with a fixture that was not meant to be hardwired to the ceiling, Matt had to work some serious magic to get it up there. Three hours and much rolling of eyes later, he installed a free (!) and lovely solution that I adore:

For the bathroom I searched high and low for just the right fixture, splurged a little on price, and then found it necessary for Matt to completely rebuild the wall behind it with spackle since the previous fixture took up far more space. But again I was tickled pink with how it turned out.

This morning Matt is busy wiring up lights that I picked out for the second floor. Before the drywall was installed, I asked him to completely rewire the lighting above our stairwell so that the hideously ugly track lighting could be switched over to a a flushmount and tasteful wall sconce. I found the sconce that I wanted, but once again, it would take some jerry-rigging to hardwire it into the wall and hide a hole in the fixture. In fact I need to spend a few hours this week finding a small brushed nickel knob to hide said hole. Because I can’t just make it easy, can I?

Once Matt finishes installing the fixtures upstairs, we’ll basically be done replacing lights throughout the house. And to keep my husband from walking out on me, I’ve decided to just stick with table lamps from now on.

Although then I might need him to add more outlets to the house.

I’ve broken many of the rules of pregnancy in that I’ve indulged in the occasional salami sandwich, regularly forgotten to take my prenatal vitamins and have sipped on four glasses of wine with a few glurbs of Matt’s beer to boot. All in all, I’ve tried to be pretty good, but the fact of the matter is that by nature I’m a rule breaker. There are few rules that I believe really matter in life, and the rest I feel can be bent a little bit.

Despite my penchant for living on the other side of the law, I have held firm against my biggest desire – Wellfleet oysters on the half shell. Luckily I live in TENNESSEE and am not faced with this temptation on a daily basis. But this past weekend while in DC we went out to a yummy seafood place in Old Town Alexandria with my lovely cousin and her husband. And what should Matt order? Oysters on the half shell. Because deep inside his puritanical spirit enjoys snickering while I am forced to OBEY.

I have never wanted to dive into something face first more than I wanted to dive into his plate. Thank the good Lord in heaven that the conversation was so interesting I was distracted from his plate long enough for them to be slurped up swiftly behind my back.

While I have vigilantly given up raw seafood while pregnant, you better believe I won’t let breastfeeding stop me. And as soon as that baby girl pops out of me you know I’m going to be demanding that Matt provide me with a dozen Welfleet oysters on the half shell. In Tennessee. In June. Which doesn’t have an R.

I consider that ample payback for the twinkle I saw in his eye the ONE night he ate oysters while I was pregnant. What goes around comes around, boy!

I really didn’t sleep last night. I may have been laying in bed for five hours, but I remember most of it, which leads me to believe that no sleep was had.

It was a late night – Matt accidentally downloaded a bad file that sent trojan viruses through the computer, which I stayed up late trying to repair. I think all is well now, but I will not be surprised if a window pops up with an African-American basketball player rapping about my credit score – I’ve already seen him once today.

When I did finally lie down for the night, Pendragon wouldn’t stop squirming around. Overall she’s a pretty mellow chica, but last night she was wide awake. There really must be something to the “sleep when the baby is sleeping” since she really, honestly kept me awake. Downside is I’m fairly certain “the baby” hasn’t slept in 24 hours.

I was up early to go to a friends house for a women’s prayer group and got absolutely lost on my way over there. So much for going into it “totally knowing how to get there.” I was calling her every five minutes for directions which seriously inhibited my driving as I’m not good at multi-tasking while driving a manual yet. I kissed the sky that I was in Tennessee as Mass drivers would have slaughtered me with my erratic behavior.

Overall it feels like a day that is challenging me to stay posicore. Just as I was about to kick the cat out of frustration, Matt texted me saying  ”Extra fun surprise coming!!” When I inquired further he responded, “Special treat.”

Instantly, out of nowhere, my mind ran to “I hope he’s won $250,000.” I’m not sure why that figure came to mind, or how exactly Matt would have won that sum of money, but that’s what I thought.

I’d also settle for a bouquet of flowers.

OR A WHOLE BOTTLE OF PINO GRIGIO ALL TO MYSELF.

Whaddya think it is? Bets and/or affirmations of the wine/$250,000 theories are welcome in the comments.

One lesson I learned early on in marriage, and the thing I tell people whenever they (shockingly) ask me for marital advice is not to nag one’s husband. Matt is a typical stubborn Irish Mick, and will actually dig his heels in deeper if he gets the feeling he’s being nagged. Although he doesn’t pick up on passive-aggressive manipulative nagging too quickly, he doesn’t respond to it either. So all in all I’ve learned it’s better to just let him do his thing and be responsible for whatever positive or negative consequences might occur.

Perhaps this leaves me open to his sometimes ill behavior reflecting poorly on me, but I can deal with that. My grandmother is horrified that I don’t iron his dress shirts for him, so I’m used to letting people down.

On the other hand, I have found that when I simply ask Matt or remind him about tasks that are a given (like could he please take out the trash?), he hops right up and does them happily. It’s all about determining which things are worth arguing over and which things are not, and then making sure the things I really care about mutually transition into “givens.”

One thing I really cared about when I married Matt was the diligent writing of thankyou notes. Now, I was raised a proper New Englander and was taught to write thankyou notes at a young age. I’ve been writing them ever since, in fact my sisters and I continue to exchange thankyou notes and hostess gifts whenever we get together. (Although I must admit they are MUCH better at remembering and much prompter in the sending of said thankyou notes than I am.) Frankly, even after all these years of writing thankyou notes, I still really enjoy how relaxing it is to sit down with a box of cards and write out a note to a kind and generous person, despite my atrocious handwriting – the brunt of many a family joke.

Last week Matt sat down to write out the thankyou notes to his coworkers for the very generous shower gifts they gave him. He whipped them right up without a problem and was done in no time. Then this afternoon I reminded him that he still had birthday thankyou notes to write, so he hopped right up and went to my card basket to retrieve some blank cards and a pen.

“I think we’re out of cards.”

How can this be, I thought? My proper New Englander mother is constantly sending me cards that she finds on clearance (including those somewhat strange purple baby shower cards you might have received in the mail from me) to keep my card supply stocked, and perhaps to keep reminding me of the importance of being polite. In all my days of thankyou note writing, I’ve never been without a spare card.

“Ok, I’ll pick some up next time I’m out.”

I was struck not only by the generosity of our friends being too fast for my thankyou note supply to keep up, but also by how crestfallen Matt appeared at not being able to complete his task. It will hover over his head like a dark cloud until I have supplied him with some new cards.

Perhaps now when people ask my marital advice, instead of telling them not to nag their husband, I’ll tell them to marry a person who will quickly prioritize and care about the things that matter to you. The boy cares about thankyou notes because it matters to me. And that’s the quickest route to a nag-free relationship, methinks.

That and letting him buy a motorcyle. Oh Matt, n0t nagging, but just a reminder to up your life insurance policy.

Do you know how warm it was here yesterday? LOW SEVENTIES. The type of day where you go outside and sit in the sun and will come in with a little pink on your white-as-a-fish’s-butt arms. Moving to the South might have been the best thing I’ve ever done in my life. Marrying Matt coming in second, of course.

The downside to the heat is that our house is full of original rope and pulley windows that we are attempting to restore, but only half of which actually open. The other half are stuck shut. Which means we could turn on the AC in the house, but c’mon! I’m not only a cheap Yankee, but I’m a cheap Yankee who thinks it would be ridiculous to turn on the AC when the thermostat is registering 73. Unfortunately I’m also a pregnant woman in her third trimester who frequently has hot flashes and is constantly accompanied by a pitcher full of ice water wherever she goes. So a compromise had to be made.

I was awfully warm at bedtime and decided the fleece pj pants were a bit much, but there ain’t a heck of a lot of other things I can fit into these days. So I stripped down to that which I could feel morally upright with wearing to bed while carrying my daughter in my belly, and turned on the overhead fan for a nice breeze to sleep under.

And that’s when Berlin’s world came to a screeching halt.

Because didn’t you know that overhead fans ARE THE DEVIL!?! That they are the scariest machine man has ever made? And that they were created to kill and torture dogs with anxiety? Specifically HER?

She was petrified of her normally safe den, our bedroom. She wouldn’t walk in, and even when she was forced into the bedroom, she sat slumped over on her dog bed looking at the corner. She wouldn’t jump on the bed, she couldn’t fathom looking at the ceiling, and there was no way in heck she was going to eat her dinner in that setting. After all, that overhead fan was there to kill her.

This is where I take a little rabbit trail and tell you how hard I laugh when people ask us if we’re ready to be parents. They chuckle and say things like, “Oh just you wait! Wait til YOU have to try potty training! Wait til YOU’RE fighting picky eaters at the dinner table! Wait til YOU just want to give in and let them win!”

They’re probably not aware that by day my husband potty trains 200 pound 17 year old boys with multiple developmental disabilities and tendencies towards self-injurious behavior. That seeing a child throw a large table across a room DOES NOT PHASE HIM. And that when he comes home at the end of the day, he patiently works masterful therapy on a schizophrenic dog who is afraid of ROTATING CEILING FANS, finally coaxing her onto the bed to wrestle and wag her tail.

Then we lay in bed after all of this and laugh about how funny it all is – our dog who requires daily sessions with the shrink. We roll our eyes and discuss how as miserable as she is with the ceiling fan on, and as hard as it is to watch her be so scared, we’ll keep it on all night because we’re going to win this battle. That it’s just not appropriate for her to be afraid of ceiling fans. Remember how she used to be afraid of the TV? And the back porch? And riding in the car?

Maybe I sound a little bitter, and I apologize for that. It must be because cleaning vomit off the carpet in the middle of the night, calming a frightened creature at the vet’s office, and leaving the party early to get back to someone’s bladder control schedule has not adequately prepared me for parenthood. Excuse me while I get up to leave, in the middle of my hour of internet peace, to run to the store and get cat food. Because we’re all out, and while I have a million things I need to do to pack up and go to Chicago for the weekend, his needs come before mine.

Oh boy, are we in for a surprise!