Sliding… Warning: I ramble

I’ve been sliding. Not on the playground, but with everything. I don’t know if it’s because I had to finish 2 back to back custom diaper orders, and dealing with supplier issues all the while. I don’t know if it’s because the third trimester is soon upon me and the bliss of being to move around with ease is starting to fade.

I don’t know if it’s because I’ve had this cough for 2 weeks. When I get a coughing spell, I’m not getting enough oxygen and my vision gets dark and I feel faint-ish. So I sit. Then I get a headache. So I’ve been sitting down a lot, trying to catch my breath…which is a theme in this pregnancy. It was bad before, but after a coughing spell it’s really bad and I think it’s best that I just stay put in a chair until the light-headedness goes away. It’s way better than last week, though, and I think I’m nearly over it.

Now Silje is coughing, and I stayed awake listening to Elias breathe for a long time last night because it just didn’t sound right. (After you’ve spent weeks of his life standing by his side studying how he breathes, you learn a lot of the technical parts of what’s the right way and wrong way to breathe, and I can usually listen and feel his chest and know immediately if he’s going to have to be back in the hospital for lung issues or not.)

He sounds fine this morning, until he gets excited, and then his breathing gets strained and asthma sounding again. Still, I haven’t heard his unsafe breathing sound yet, so for now I’ll watch him. He’s not even coughing. Call me overprotective. He was born with underdeveloped lungs. When he was a few months old, he was hospitalized with RSV, and when he was over a year old, he was hospitalized with a cold that settled in his lungs because of his previous problems. This winter I’d really like to avoid having him in the hospital, and his doctor is optimistic that he’s old enough now that we might easily get away with just having nebulizers at home should he get a cold.

Part of it is I’m coming off of a long period of time of staying on top of things, and I’m sitting around too much. My hips hurt a lot, and I just can’t. So I knit while I’m sitting, so I can still feel productive. I have borrowed a friend’s camera, but still need the cord to download pictures to the computer, so you’ll have to wait to see the little baby squishiliousness that is coming off my needles these days. I like to think that I’m knitting on the outside of me, and God’s knitting on the inside of me. We’re both knitters.

Because of my cough, I’ve been drinking hot liquids all the time. I’ve taken up coffee again. My body can barely manage a cup a day without feeling buzzed. I know I’m not doing myself any favors by letting myself give into my addiction again, because I know my body does not like me on this stuff, which is why I gave it up years ago. Mornings have been so so tough to get out of bed lately, though, and the thought of a hot cup of coffee spurs me on. I’m trying not to feel guilty for this indulgence, and enjoy it until my body starts complaining again, and I’ll start the painful process of weaning off of it again. O, how I wish I could just drink this all day long!

I feel that so much clutter in my life is leading to this sliding, and overwhelming feelings. I have plans to simplify. I’ve turned down any more diaper stash orders until after this baby comes to allow me to make some things for my family that I’ve been meaning to do, and start on Christmas presents, which I try to do homemade as often as I can. (I’m really excited about the Christmas projects this year. I wish I could post about that…but alas, family reads this blog and I can’t give away secrets.)

So as I’m getting ready to do all of the projects, it came to my attention how cluttered my sewing room is with unfinished projects. I have longies for the store that only need ends woven in for them to be ready for the store. Other things only need buttons sewn on. Last spring when I went on the sewing retreat, I started several projects that I couldn’t finish because I forgot a few supplies at home. They are still sitting there, unfinished.

So my goal for the next few weeks/months is to rid my sewing room of all unfinished projects. My end goal date for this is New Years. Wouldn’t it be so nice to start the new year with no “hangover” from the previous year? I’m really excited about that. I need to get my house in order, first, though.

I also have plans to go through at least one more closet and reorganize before the baby comes. I’ve been making myself wait until the third trimester to go through and wash/sort my baby girl clothes. It’s always fun to go through baby clothes and swoon, and that’s coming up soon. I’m looking forward to that.

I’ve been really bad about school and television this week. I’ll confess. Mornings have been so tough for me that I’ve been letting them watch t.v. before school while I sip my coffee in peace, and yesterday we didn’t start school until 10am because I just didn’t feel like it. We were still done by noon, but still. Silje wasn’t as focused, and since they started the day watching t.v. they bugged me to watch more t.v. all. day. long. I’d much rather them play in the morning while I get things together so that their eyes are open to all the fun, creative things that they can play inside and outside. When they start watching t.v. all they want to do is watch t.v. Then it turns into an annoying whiny day…and the kids are worse.

Harvest is coming soon. I’m so not ready for meals and taking over Knut’s responsibilities for awhile. I haven’t filled up my new freezer yet, but I think tomorrow I’m planning on making a huge batch of many chicken pot pies, so that will be a start. Soy beans could easily be ready for harvest at the end of this week. Soy bean harvest isn’t so bad, though. When the dew falls at night, the beans get wet and when they are harvested wet they get mushed in the combine, and mushed beans don’t have much value. So they stop at night, and often can’t start in the morning until the dew is gone. It’s the following corn harvest when things get crazy and we barely see Knut unless it rains. Even then…not too much stops corn harvest. A lot can slow it down, but very few things stop it.

Knut said that the corn is drier now than it was when it was harvested last year. It still could have a month left in the field too! We are very happy with that, and hopefully that means that harvest won’t drag out through December this year. I have good memories of it being done by Halloween just a few years ago. Wouldn’t that be nice! Unusual, but nice!

Anyway, back to my sliding. I haven’t been doing my dishes before I go to bed at night. That’s part of the problem. You wake up, you see your messy kitchen, and you just want to run away and hide. My other problem is that because of Silje’s Tuesday activities, I’m going to be running errands in town on Tuesdays instead of my traditional Thursday errand running day.

There are a few reasons I have an errand running day. You see, if you go to a store with a list of items that you need for the meals you have planned that week, you save so much more money than going to the store 3 times a week. That’s 3 opportunities to pick up things that just look good, but aren’t on your list. Or you have so little to buy that you don’t feel like you’re spending more if you just pick up that package of Oreos. Not to mention how much gas it saves us by only running errands once a week. I’d say, easily $50 a month. Maybe more.

Sorry for the rabbit trail. Anyway, moving my errand running day screws up my weekly to-do list. I know I’ve posted before how I have certain jobs that are done weekly and are assigned a day. I am not naturally a clean/tidy person, and work really really hard to keep life a bit organized. It does not come easily. Anyway, when I used to shop on Thursdays, that meant that I cleaned out the fridge and did all my meal planning on Wednesdays. That also meant that I did all of my mass/freezer cooking on Fridays when all of the meats for large batch meals were thawed in my fridge and didn’t have to wait in my freezer until I could get to them.

Moving my errand day to Tuesdays while Silje is at choir means that fridge cleaning day and mass cooking day also need to be moved. When I did that, the load of chores needing to be done on Mondays was overwhelming, and there’s very little to do on Fridays. My brain is a big hormonal bowl of spaghetti these days, so this problem was a bit overwhelming for me. Go ahead and laugh.

I spent much of the morning yesterday while Silje was doing her independent school work, on the phone with my sister who is the queen of organization. When I was a child she would organize my closet so all my clothes faced the same direction and were in rainbow color order. (Think Silje, but an adult.) She helped me problem solve my crisis of messing with my “system” and helped me evenly distribute my weekly chores a bit better. Man I miss her! I can’t believe her little twin girls are 5 months old now and I still have not held them. They’ll be nearly a year by the time we can get down there. Sometimes living far from family is so so hard. Little Jack-Jack has started preschool now too. He has to be so grown up!

So today instead of cleaning my kitchen before school, I’m blogging. I’m continuing on my new trend of avoiding responsibility which really needs to end today. Avoiding responsibility in my job only lasts as long as there are leftovers in the fridge, and we ate the last of them last night. Pretty soon, my family demands to be fed. Annoying, I know. In order the make the food I need to clean my kitchen, and once I clean the kitchen, I notice the floor needs to be swept, and it turns into one of those “If you give a mouse a cookie…” type things where pretty soon I’m all the way back at work.

Sadly, I just finished my cup of coffee. That means my rambling must be done.