A few years ago, after much debating, my parents decided to keep the house they had lived in nearly my entire life, but renovate it throughout. They figured that in their mid-fifties it might be nice to have things like, oh, say… central air. And a fridge that wasn’t puke yellow and from 1989.

Projects like installing central air and wood floors throughout your house are a bit of a pain, but nothing is as much of a pain as knocking down a wall in your kitchen, gutting it, and putting in a new kitchen from the ground up. This I know from experience, although my parent’s budget and timeline was far different than ours. They hired an awesome contractor and over the span of several months lived in their finished basement while the kitchen was being renovated. For those many months, they referred to the room in the finished basement as “The Studio” and became well accustomed to cooking with a toaster and microwave and living out of a dorm-sized fridge.

This past weekend, we blocked off our own kitchen to finally get around to painting the wood floors. Because we didn’t want to push our luck, we decided to plan the painting with the most conservative of timelines including two full days between coats for optimal drying time. Which meant that I had 5 days worth of food to plan out in advance with a toaster oven and basement fridge as my only options.

I spent much of Friday at the grocery store and in the kitchen making up a whole host of sandwiches, cutting up cucumbers and summer squash and marinating chicken that could be grilled outside. We’re on day 4 of living without a kitchen, and I’ll be honest, the sandwiches are getting old. Same for washing our dirty dishes in the bathroom sink. And going outside and around to the back of the house to get milk from the basement fridge.

Here’s what our dining room currently looks like with a mattress blocking off the door to the kitchen and the dining room table covered with our picnic staples.

From Daily Daguerreotype

And here’s the kitchen floor drying.

From Daily Daguerreotype

After five days of living like this, I honestly cannot imagine how my parents lived for months on end in The Studio. But then again, our finished project is nothing like theirs.

From Daily Daguerreotype

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that every time I go to my mom’s house I beg to cook a meal, and the entire time I talk to my pretend audience as if I’m a Food Network chef.

Over the past… eh… week and a half, life has been spinning at an absurdly fast rate of speed. Suddenly all of these carseats started arriving at the front door, which made it absolutely necessary for me to remove them from their boxes, inspect all of their moving pieces, read all of the installation instructions (holy cow!) and proceed to vacuum, detail and wash both of our cars.

It was bittersweet cleaning out our Volvo wagon, because I knew I was ultimately cleaning it out to be replaced. The little guy has been everything we could have wanted for carting around drywall and a muddy dog over the past few years, but has now gotten to a place where it needs major repairs – repairs that are significantly more expensive than the car is worth. As of December it won’t pass inspection without those repairs, so we’re planning on replacing it, perhaps with an Outback, perhaps with something else.

We’ve put 85,000 miles on our already well-loved wagon in almost five years, which is crazy considering it was my car and I took public transportation to work for 2 of those years and was at home for another year. Matt’s jobs have always required an outrageous amount of driving, so we’ve had to face the fact that we will inevitably replace cars sooner than the average American family. It’s a bummer on the wallet, but has gotten us pretty adept at car shopping over the past few years.

This Saturday we had an appointment to test drive an Outback and a Forester; the former we decided was the car for us. We’re wagon people. We like having a five-seater with lots of storage capacity and good gas mileage. We like a car that drives well in the snow, not that that matters so much anymore. We like a car that you can put a muddy dog in and not think twice about.

But I didn’t like how the smug salesman was unwilling to negotiate down to the price I wanted. So today I called down to a competing dealership to see what the Polish salesguy could do for me. After I played a Chris Matthews-worthy version of hardball, he made me some good promises that the car we’d be special ordering would come in right at the price we are willing to pay.

I like the Polish people. They make great sausages. And sweet sugary baked goods.

I’ll hear back from my friend later this week, and I hope he has good news for me. Yeah, I want a new Outback, but more than anything I’m just gnawing at the bit with an insatiable desire to install this adorable new carseat!

Until then, I can bide my time re-reading the owner’s manual.

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.

For those of you who follow me on Facebook and Twitter, you’re already well aware that I may or may not have spent the very early portion of Sunday morning in an emergency room at a posh hospital in the Chicago suburbs. I may or may not have gone to the hospital after spending seven hours of Saturday evening vomiting promptly every thirty minutes for a total of fifteen pukes and two unfortunate changes of underwear. I also may or may not have found out that vomiting in your third trimester is made easier by being on all fours, and that in moments of desperation I will beg the nearest ER nurse for an IV to rehydrate me – things I never would have assumed before this weekend.

I caught a stomach bug that was goin around, and I’m pleased to say that it gave the Hof and I some good preparatory experience for what I’d imagine D-day will entail: multiple calls to the midwife (who was kind enough to coach us through my stomach bug in the midst of delivering babies), many, many clean towels, and my exclamation to everyone I was wheeled past in the hospital that “I’M TWENTY NINE WEEKS PREGNANT!” for fear they would inject me with some drug unsafe for my daughter in utero.

You hear these horror stories of people who were given a drug they were allergic to because their emergency medical band fell off, or a dosage gone wrong because the nurse was overworked, underpaid, and just needed a vacation forheavensake! Well I was determined not to be one of those people and questioned everything that went into my IV – what would the side effects be and um, hi, but my face is tingling, just as an FYI. At one point, when I reminded the nurse that “I’M TWENTY NINE WEEKS PREGNANT! And is this safe for the baby?” she responded with a snarky, “the doctor wouldn’t have prescribed it if it wasn’t safe for the baby.”

So that’s when I just shut up, told her she had gorgeous hair, and turned on the tele to watch Ben Harper on Austin City Limits. About five minutes after that miracle-working hydrating IV, I was ranting to Matt about how STUPID Reliant K was, how Ben was just letting it all go to pot, and myohmy how I LOVE THIS IV!

The whole ordeal was really rather comical (aside from the moments when I really feared my daughter was in danger), and we had a stupendous weekend with family although it was cut short. My biggest regret? Not being able to eat my sister’s slow-roasted Chicago beefs. I cut all of that meat the day beforehand and didn’t even get to taste it!

Now that we’re home, my system is slowly returning to normal. And frankly, as I head off to the grocery store today to fill our empty fridge, I look forward to doing so with a non-existant appetite – something I haven’t experienced in seven months. You really can’t imagine how nice it will be to walk past the bakery and not fight with myself over whether or not I need to buy five chocolate cakes… one for each workday BECAUSE I WORK SO HARD!

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!

I had one thing and one thing only that I needed to accomplish today. At 8am I needed to go to the midwife’s office for my regular checkup and get my swine flu vaccine on the way out. It was the failiest fail ever.

Last visit to the midwife’s office was wonderful and exciting. We found out we were having a girl and got to watch Penny squirming on the ultrasound machine for a solid half hour. Matt was with me, and held my hand as I laid down and received my regular seasonal flu vaccine. At that visit I had planned on getting both vaccines, but after barely making it through the seasonal flu shot, I opted to get my H1N1 on my next visit which was scheduled well in advance so Matt could come with me.

Well, he wound up not being able to come today. February being a short month and Tennessee being snow-day happy, he had to squeeze in a couple extra hours today with a client, so I went alone. I’ve known for about a week and a half that I would be going alone and psyched myself up for it. As in, not sleeping a wink last night and walking into the office this morning shaking.

When I arrived Brandy took my blood pressure, and her eyes opened so wide I thought maybe SHE was going to pass out and suddenly I’d have to really pull myself together and give her mouth to mouth or something. She asked me to take the standard pee test to find out if I had preeclampsia. I told her I thought maybe my blood pressure was high because I was so nervous, but she wanted to opt on the safe side.

So I waited in the room for what felt like decades before the midwife and her midwife-in-training came in to see me. Before I could even say hello I blurted out, “Do I have preeclampsia?” Midwife Melissa smiled and assured me that I was fine, no preeclampsia, and that they’d try taking my blood pressure later in the appointment.

And that’s when I burst into tears and told her that I was so nervous about coming in and getting a shot by myself, that my husband couldn’t make it (and he’s the one who really wants me to get the swine flu vaccine anyways!), and that my car was in the shop so I’m driving this brand new loaner car from the dealer, and what if I passed out and crashed the loaner car on the way home?!

“You really don’t need to get the shot today. Why don’t you wait until your husband can come with you?”

“Really?”

“Yes. I’d like you to get the vaccine, but you’ll be fine if you put it off another four weeks. We have to do a blood draw at your next visit anyways, so we can get it all done at once. And you get another ultrasound at that visit, which will be fun! You’ll get to see your little girl again!”

This is where I kissed her on the mouth. We finished up all the routine stuff, and she re-took my blood pressure which wound up being perfectly fine, in fact a little on the low side of normal.

I really wanted to be brave enough to get that shot all by myself today. I’ve had my blood drawn before by myself, but the thing that freaks me out about the flu vaccine is that you can feel it in your arm long after you’ve had it done, unlike a blood draw. And for some reason, my physiological response to feeling that sting hours later is to get queasy all over again. But I wanted to overcome it. I wanted to make Matt proud of me, especially because he knows that despite what everyone says, I still don’t believe it’s necessary to have the silly vaccine, but I am willing to do it because it matters so much to him. I wanted to kick this fear in the crotch once and for all.

I have gone to so many midwife visits over the past few months, have been poked and prodded with needle after needle and haven’t passed out once. I have gotten so much better. But then days like today come along, and I feel like I’m back to square one with no improvements made.

I mean, what would you do if you were told you needed to go sky diving once a month to usher in world peace. You’d be scared spitless at the door of that plane, and the only thing stopping you from vomiting would be the sexy G.I. Joe character whose back you’d be strapped to for the free-fall. So you get a little less scared each month cause G.I. Joe makes you feel a wee mite safer. But then one day you have to jump alone. And you start crying and say to yourself, “WHY DO I NEED TO JUMP OUT OF A PLANE TO STOP ETHNIC CLEANSING?!” So the plane takes you safely back to the airport, and you drive home hating yourself because c’mon, what’s so scary about jumping out of a plane?! ALONE?! People do that all the time, right? A BABY COULD DO IT!

That’s basically what it feels like. And now, because of my big needle fail the whole world is going to die of swine flu.