You get not ONE, but TWO posts tonight. Enjoy. :)
First, a baby update:
The baby is great. She's now pretty consistently head-downward, perhaps thanks to a little effort on mine & Colin's part involving flashlights, singing, hanging out on my hands and knees, and reading out loud.
Second, our midwife:
Our midwife is awesome. She comes to our house every other week these days to do my checkups. She brings along with her everything that my doctor would have in his office during my checkups with him, only... it's in my house, and she actually seems to give a crap about what I'm doing. I had to keep a food log for her, she asks me a million questions, and even gives me options when it comes to treating any issues.
We discovered that I had a mild UTI a couple weeks back, and she wanted to put me on antibiotics to make sure that it went away. I'd just finished a round of antibiotics about a month earlier, and I knew that the slightly abnormal tests were due to kidney stone issues, and not really, like, bladder infections or anything serious like that. So, she gave me an alternative treatment involving really strong cranberry juice and garlic pills and a strict no-sugar diet for 2 weeks. And it TOTALLY worked. The infection was gone next time she tested.
Third, baby name update:
We don't know yet. We're probably not going to decide before she comes. I know how annoying that is, but... I don't think we can do it. (And, I'm sorry, but Luna and Taegan still are up at the top of our list.)
Finally, the baby shower!
It's this weekend! Saturday, Feb. 28th, to be exact. All I know so far is that it's loosely "picnic" themed, eco-friendly-ish, and is going to be at a really beautiful park on a lake about 15 minutes from our house. We're going to enjoy fresh produce, playing games, and (fingers crossed) beautiful weather.
And, don't be fooled, that's not all I've written tonight. Keep reading.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Okay, I'll admit it...
I'm obsessed. Not just a little, kind of a lot.
Let me preface an explanation by saying that I've always known that I like to live in a place that looks clean. The trouble is, I'm pretty lazy when it comes to the pick-up-after-yourself-right-away type of cleaning. I'm not into it. Letting things get a little messy has never really bothered me.
And that much really hasn't changed. I'm still willing to let a pile stack up over there or stuff in the bathroom get scattered across the counter as I use it over the course of the week.
My new obsession, on the other hand, is in regard to the mess you can't see.
I've taken to trying to figure out the best way to keep a house clean... Not necessarily neat-clean, though that's part of it... I mean CLEAN clean. Something I've admittedly never really experienced before. My whole life, we've had loads of animals, which means we have pet hair rolling around in big balls in the corners of every room. That's just how it's always been! And it bothered me... a little... but not really enough to do much about it besides going on a cleaning spree once a month (or every other month), to get a fresh start.
My goal over the last month or so, however, was to figure out how often specific things needed to be cleaned in order to always be pretty much clean... For example:
-Can I walk around in the kitchen without wanting to rub my feet off on the carpet?
-Can I feel good about Jhonen sitting on the living room carpet, touching the floor, and then sticking his hands in his mouth?
-Can I walk in the front door and not be grossed out by the balls of hair collecting in front of the piano?
-Can I sit on the couch without being covered in fur?
-Can I step into my shower without going, "eww. I need to clean this..."?
-Can I get into bed without wondering when the last time I changed the sheets was?
-Can I reach to the top shelf of that bookcase and NOT worry that huge clumps of dust will fall all over me?
And so on. Yeah, it's gross, right? When you think about it? Because before this project started, there's not a single example I just gave that the answer wouldn't have been a resounding "HELL NO!", pretty much always.
So, my game plan was this: put together a list of chores, and estimate how often things would need to get done in order for them to remain at least "acceptably" clean. I recruited Colin in this project, since I'm not really in any condition to do some of the things that HAVE to get done, and he has thankfully been an incredibly good sport.
I put together a comprehensive schedule of chores to complete and published them on ChoreBuster.net, which reminds us what needs to get done on what days.
The sad thing I'm realizing: keeping a house as clean as you'd like is A) REALLY darn hard work and B) frightfully difficult to maintain! When you really try to KEEP things clean, you start to discover just how quickly things turn south.
My saddest discoveries: It takes less than ONE week for all of the floors to need cleaning, that includes balls of hair collecting in the front door, and feeling like you need to wipe your feet on the carpet, which you then know you need to clean, since you've been wiping dirt on it. I was hoping to keep my floor cleaning down to every OTHER week. No such luck, it would seem.
So, that means vacuuming, sweeping, and mopping at LEAST once a week, and... if we're honest, MORE often than that.
It's possible that I'm simply dealing with an evolutionary safeguard that's written into my DNA: I'm about to have a baby, and therefore I'm supposed to be "nesting". My understanding of that odd term is that it usually comes in the form of excitement bordering on obsession regarding setting up a nursery -- creating a special, adorable space for a little one to jump into once they get home. Mine might be in a slightly different form, since I don't really have a nursery to obsess over, but... It seems to be raging nonetheless.
When Jess was expecting, our house had a lot of shifting around, too: we ended up moving our craft room furniture out to the garage, putting the craft table in the kitchen, putting the kitchen table in what used to be our lounge, and scattering the lounge furniture around the house -- most of it into the garage, and the couch into Jess & Ben's old bedroom, now Jhonen's room, whose furniture had shifted into the old craft room once we finished painting it and the bathroom between the two rooms.
And we were all ecstatic to throw our efforts into the rearrangement! Because it was SO exciting to get ready for the big change... That, and more evidence from this week, leads me to believe that this nesting instinct is actually contagious... Gramma and I were totally involved and excited about the changes being made in expectation of Jho coming along, and... Gramma suddenly, out of nowhere, joined my crusade yesterday.
She's been collecting hundreds of books, for EVER, hoarding everything from medical dictionaries to poetry criticism to gardening manuals alongside dozens upon dozens of novels... And for as long as I could remember, I've been begging her to let them go. Something clicked this week, and -- she did.
Let them go, I mean.
It started in the kitchen with the animal books: I told her she really didn't need her animal medical reference books because anything she could need to know, she could look up online really easily. She then discovered that our cat, Gravity, had peed all over her collection of birdwatching books... so they got pitched immediately.
Following the kitchen purge, she felt like she was on a roll, and that she could be convinced to purge some of her philosophy books from the living room, and I agreed to let many of mine go, too. Then came drama, short stories, essays, and finally novels (including a huge Penguin Classics collection). She didn't feel the need to keep her thrillers or a lot of her sci-fi. Then back to the kitchen to narrow down the cookbooks. And then, in her bedroom, she let go of her teaching materials, her dictionaries, thesauruses, medical reference books, and fluff nonfiction.
I'd never been so proud of her!
But I really think it was this darn nesting disease. She was starting to see a difference in the cleanliness of the house come about, and she was ready for a change herself. So the books were boxed up over the course of the last 2 days... Not all of them, but a lot of them. By the time we were done, we'd emptied off the entire shelving unit behind the couch, and a bookshelf and a half from her bedroom.
With the shelving unit behind the couch empty, we hoped we could shift that one into gramma's room to hold a lot of her knick-knacks (which I've still not been able to help her purge), however, Colin and I realized pretty quickly that the shelf couldn't be maneuvered successfully into place there. We considered our options: We wouldn't mind getting rid of the shelf, except that gramma built it with her dad when she was a kid, and it holds a heck of a lot of sentimental value. Can't really fault her there. So, we needed to find a place for it... It's so shallow, that it really doesn't take up much room.
We plotted out a plan to shift the shelf to where the piano was, the piano where gramma's desk was, gramma's desk into her room where her table is, and the table into a temporary home on another wall in her room. We'd taken out the empty shelf from her room earlier in the day and shifted it into the kitchen to hold the cookbooks and a computer (which we've been wanting in there for a while now).
Mind you, Colin and I (but mostly Colin) were heading up these efforts on our own today. Trying to clean as much as we could along the way (since the house was COMPLETELY filthy from the books and all the dust flying around). Thank goodness the weather was nice so we could have the windows open to send some of this dust out and let some fresh air in! Any other time of year, and we would've really made ourselves quite sick.
In any case, we managed to get everything done, including vacuuming gramma's carpets and all of the upholstery in the living room, sweeping the dining room, dusting every surface we came in contact with, and putting all of the purged books into the van to take off to Goodwill tomorrow, before we collapsed onto the couches for 2 West Wing episodes and my writing this tonight.
Colin's having some WoW time right now. :) I've taken up 2 of his Sundays now with projects around the house, and something tells me that as much as I'd love to let him have his weekends to do nothing, I'm going to continue needing his help to nurture my obsession.
Which doesn't just end with cleaning. Because I've never known much about how to clean, I'm trying to teach myself the best ways to clean, and the best things to use to clean. Apparently, all of those expensive cleaning solutions are not only bad for your bank account, they're also really bad for your health! So, by all means, I want to make sure that we can be kind to both while I'm bothering working so hard.
So, yeah... vinegar & baking soda... My new best friends. Who knew they'd work so well? 7th Generation or Green Clean products are my second choice. Some things, I know you can't really cut through the grime without the hardcore stuff, so we got some Pledge wipes for dusting and some Scrubbing Bubbles to try to get rid of the really angrily stubborn soap scum in the bathroom.
Also disturbing to learn: Wall-to-wall carpeting is gross... no matter how cozy.
Not only does it release toxic VOC's (volatile organic compounds) into the air over the course of its life, it's virtually impossible to clean it (as in, actually get rid of bacteria and mites) without toxic chemicals, which are then released into the air and onto your skin and are potentially even more harmful. Carpets hold every odor, every bit of moisture, every icky nasty thing you (or your pets) walk in, and the fibers hold onto those nasties for dear life. Without hot water to sanitize it, it can't get clean, and without the toxic chemical cleaners, hot water on its own creates the perfect breeding ground for other, even grosser things. This article is one of dozens that all say virtually the same thing...
::sigh::
Of course we have to make compromises... without some moderation we would really go crazy. We aren't getting rid of our animals, we love them. We aren't getting rid of our carpets, because we love Ben & Jess and they love our carpets. We aren't going to mop and vacuum every day, even if we ought to, because, well, that's not a life worth living!
I am, however, going to do what I can, within reason, to make our home a healthier, safer, cleaner, more organized place to live... So that we can all sneeze less, check our food for fur less, wipe our feet on the carpet less, be less embarrassed to have people over at the drop of a hat, feel more at ease, let Jhonen and his new girlfriend play safely on the floor or on the couches, and hopefully allow them the ability -- in their most sensitive state -- to develop strong asthma-free lungs (thanks to less dust and dirt) and allergy-free skin (thanks to less chemicals and grime).
Can I get an A-MEN? :)
Let me preface an explanation by saying that I've always known that I like to live in a place that looks clean. The trouble is, I'm pretty lazy when it comes to the pick-up-after-yourself-right-away type of cleaning. I'm not into it. Letting things get a little messy has never really bothered me.
And that much really hasn't changed. I'm still willing to let a pile stack up over there or stuff in the bathroom get scattered across the counter as I use it over the course of the week.
My new obsession, on the other hand, is in regard to the mess you can't see.
I've taken to trying to figure out the best way to keep a house clean... Not necessarily neat-clean, though that's part of it... I mean CLEAN clean. Something I've admittedly never really experienced before. My whole life, we've had loads of animals, which means we have pet hair rolling around in big balls in the corners of every room. That's just how it's always been! And it bothered me... a little... but not really enough to do much about it besides going on a cleaning spree once a month (or every other month), to get a fresh start.
My goal over the last month or so, however, was to figure out how often specific things needed to be cleaned in order to always be pretty much clean... For example:
-Can I walk around in the kitchen without wanting to rub my feet off on the carpet?
-Can I feel good about Jhonen sitting on the living room carpet, touching the floor, and then sticking his hands in his mouth?
-Can I walk in the front door and not be grossed out by the balls of hair collecting in front of the piano?
-Can I sit on the couch without being covered in fur?
-Can I step into my shower without going, "eww. I need to clean this..."?
-Can I get into bed without wondering when the last time I changed the sheets was?
-Can I reach to the top shelf of that bookcase and NOT worry that huge clumps of dust will fall all over me?
And so on. Yeah, it's gross, right? When you think about it? Because before this project started, there's not a single example I just gave that the answer wouldn't have been a resounding "HELL NO!", pretty much always.
So, my game plan was this: put together a list of chores, and estimate how often things would need to get done in order for them to remain at least "acceptably" clean. I recruited Colin in this project, since I'm not really in any condition to do some of the things that HAVE to get done, and he has thankfully been an incredibly good sport.
I put together a comprehensive schedule of chores to complete and published them on ChoreBuster.net, which reminds us what needs to get done on what days.
The sad thing I'm realizing: keeping a house as clean as you'd like is A) REALLY darn hard work and B) frightfully difficult to maintain! When you really try to KEEP things clean, you start to discover just how quickly things turn south.
My saddest discoveries: It takes less than ONE week for all of the floors to need cleaning, that includes balls of hair collecting in the front door, and feeling like you need to wipe your feet on the carpet, which you then know you need to clean, since you've been wiping dirt on it. I was hoping to keep my floor cleaning down to every OTHER week. No such luck, it would seem.
So, that means vacuuming, sweeping, and mopping at LEAST once a week, and... if we're honest, MORE often than that.
It's possible that I'm simply dealing with an evolutionary safeguard that's written into my DNA: I'm about to have a baby, and therefore I'm supposed to be "nesting". My understanding of that odd term is that it usually comes in the form of excitement bordering on obsession regarding setting up a nursery -- creating a special, adorable space for a little one to jump into once they get home. Mine might be in a slightly different form, since I don't really have a nursery to obsess over, but... It seems to be raging nonetheless.
When Jess was expecting, our house had a lot of shifting around, too: we ended up moving our craft room furniture out to the garage, putting the craft table in the kitchen, putting the kitchen table in what used to be our lounge, and scattering the lounge furniture around the house -- most of it into the garage, and the couch into Jess & Ben's old bedroom, now Jhonen's room, whose furniture had shifted into the old craft room once we finished painting it and the bathroom between the two rooms.
And we were all ecstatic to throw our efforts into the rearrangement! Because it was SO exciting to get ready for the big change... That, and more evidence from this week, leads me to believe that this nesting instinct is actually contagious... Gramma and I were totally involved and excited about the changes being made in expectation of Jho coming along, and... Gramma suddenly, out of nowhere, joined my crusade yesterday.
She's been collecting hundreds of books, for EVER, hoarding everything from medical dictionaries to poetry criticism to gardening manuals alongside dozens upon dozens of novels... And for as long as I could remember, I've been begging her to let them go. Something clicked this week, and -- she did.
Let them go, I mean.
It started in the kitchen with the animal books: I told her she really didn't need her animal medical reference books because anything she could need to know, she could look up online really easily. She then discovered that our cat, Gravity, had peed all over her collection of birdwatching books... so they got pitched immediately.
Following the kitchen purge, she felt like she was on a roll, and that she could be convinced to purge some of her philosophy books from the living room, and I agreed to let many of mine go, too. Then came drama, short stories, essays, and finally novels (including a huge Penguin Classics collection). She didn't feel the need to keep her thrillers or a lot of her sci-fi. Then back to the kitchen to narrow down the cookbooks. And then, in her bedroom, she let go of her teaching materials, her dictionaries, thesauruses, medical reference books, and fluff nonfiction.
I'd never been so proud of her!
But I really think it was this darn nesting disease. She was starting to see a difference in the cleanliness of the house come about, and she was ready for a change herself. So the books were boxed up over the course of the last 2 days... Not all of them, but a lot of them. By the time we were done, we'd emptied off the entire shelving unit behind the couch, and a bookshelf and a half from her bedroom.
With the shelving unit behind the couch empty, we hoped we could shift that one into gramma's room to hold a lot of her knick-knacks (which I've still not been able to help her purge), however, Colin and I realized pretty quickly that the shelf couldn't be maneuvered successfully into place there. We considered our options: We wouldn't mind getting rid of the shelf, except that gramma built it with her dad when she was a kid, and it holds a heck of a lot of sentimental value. Can't really fault her there. So, we needed to find a place for it... It's so shallow, that it really doesn't take up much room.
We plotted out a plan to shift the shelf to where the piano was, the piano where gramma's desk was, gramma's desk into her room where her table is, and the table into a temporary home on another wall in her room. We'd taken out the empty shelf from her room earlier in the day and shifted it into the kitchen to hold the cookbooks and a computer (which we've been wanting in there for a while now).
Mind you, Colin and I (but mostly Colin) were heading up these efforts on our own today. Trying to clean as much as we could along the way (since the house was COMPLETELY filthy from the books and all the dust flying around). Thank goodness the weather was nice so we could have the windows open to send some of this dust out and let some fresh air in! Any other time of year, and we would've really made ourselves quite sick.
In any case, we managed to get everything done, including vacuuming gramma's carpets and all of the upholstery in the living room, sweeping the dining room, dusting every surface we came in contact with, and putting all of the purged books into the van to take off to Goodwill tomorrow, before we collapsed onto the couches for 2 West Wing episodes and my writing this tonight.
Colin's having some WoW time right now. :) I've taken up 2 of his Sundays now with projects around the house, and something tells me that as much as I'd love to let him have his weekends to do nothing, I'm going to continue needing his help to nurture my obsession.
Which doesn't just end with cleaning. Because I've never known much about how to clean, I'm trying to teach myself the best ways to clean, and the best things to use to clean. Apparently, all of those expensive cleaning solutions are not only bad for your bank account, they're also really bad for your health! So, by all means, I want to make sure that we can be kind to both while I'm bothering working so hard.
So, yeah... vinegar & baking soda... My new best friends. Who knew they'd work so well? 7th Generation or Green Clean products are my second choice. Some things, I know you can't really cut through the grime without the hardcore stuff, so we got some Pledge wipes for dusting and some Scrubbing Bubbles to try to get rid of the really angrily stubborn soap scum in the bathroom.
Also disturbing to learn: Wall-to-wall carpeting is gross... no matter how cozy.
Not only does it release toxic VOC's (volatile organic compounds) into the air over the course of its life, it's virtually impossible to clean it (as in, actually get rid of bacteria and mites) without toxic chemicals, which are then released into the air and onto your skin and are potentially even more harmful. Carpets hold every odor, every bit of moisture, every icky nasty thing you (or your pets) walk in, and the fibers hold onto those nasties for dear life. Without hot water to sanitize it, it can't get clean, and without the toxic chemical cleaners, hot water on its own creates the perfect breeding ground for other, even grosser things. This article is one of dozens that all say virtually the same thing...
::sigh::
Of course we have to make compromises... without some moderation we would really go crazy. We aren't getting rid of our animals, we love them. We aren't getting rid of our carpets, because we love Ben & Jess and they love our carpets. We aren't going to mop and vacuum every day, even if we ought to, because, well, that's not a life worth living!
I am, however, going to do what I can, within reason, to make our home a healthier, safer, cleaner, more organized place to live... So that we can all sneeze less, check our food for fur less, wipe our feet on the carpet less, be less embarrassed to have people over at the drop of a hat, feel more at ease, let Jhonen and his new girlfriend play safely on the floor or on the couches, and hopefully allow them the ability -- in their most sensitive state -- to develop strong asthma-free lungs (thanks to less dust and dirt) and allergy-free skin (thanks to less chemicals and grime).
Can I get an A-MEN? :)
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