I want to be excited about having a house. I really do. It’s difficult, though.
There’s a lot to do. Thankfully, Janelle’s parents are in town and are experienced house tinkerers. So, with their help we’ve placed new fans in three bedrooms, redone hanging lighting throughout the house, wired new lighting in the kitchen, planted trees and various other flora in the backyard, repaired and upgraded sprinkler systems in the backyard, begun to strip and revarnish our dining room table, begun to strip tile from our entryway in advance of new tile placement, added venting to our upstairs bathrooms and soon we’ll paint a couple of bedrooms. All “small-ish” projects, but a lot of them. And we have a home that started out in remarkably good shape.
Even with their presence, working hard all day long each day while Janelle and I are at work, and our assisting in evening and on weekends it’s going to be a 2-3 week process to get the place fixed up. I shudder to think how long it would be without them. A couple months, I wager. It would be tricky, too, as Janelle can’t be around when we’re doing any sort of painting with conventional paints.
On top of having all that to do, there’s my previous bitching about all the decisions we have to make. There’s a constant pressure to make choices quickly to keep the work moving — but because we’ve never considered these options before, there’s a lot of time browsing and considering and pondering and shopping.
And to really drive the nails into the coffin, we haven’t even moved in yet. We won’t be in entirely until the 21st. Perhaps then I can enjoy the house. It seems a tragedy to not enjoy the single most expensive thing I have ever purchased, but right now all the house functions as is a chore generation center, and it turns out for a guy who is always keeping himself busy, I’m pretty lazy (blog post on this soon).
Now that we’ve got our nails in the coffin, let’s throw some dirt over it. The real killer for the house is that it has almost entirely stolen both our attentions away from the baby. Janelle never really has the option to be fully distracted, as every day she gets punched harder and harder from the inside. Plus, she’s started to reach the point where her belly makes things awkward for her. I would say it’s amusing, but I’m sure it will be frustrating to acclimate to for her.
I’ve found that I’m not talking to the baby and that Janelle’s not sitting around with headphones on her belly so the baby can listen to some tunes. I haven’t been recording my Oz chapters to play back and we haven’t even begun to think about preparation outside of “Do we want to paint the nursery?” We’re either too busy or too grumpy or tired to really focus on the baby.
This, though, has a silver lining to it. Through all the little stresses and busywork we have piling up and all the distractions, I’ve found that what I’m looking forward to the most is time to think about the baby more. In an unexpected manner, I’ve had it affirmed for me that I’m not as nervous for the upcoming arrival as I thought.