Monthly Archives: February 2006

Well, we survived. We’re both sleep-deprived and the house is a total chaos-zone, but everything seems to be intact. We spent the vast majority of the weekend back at the apartment, transporting the stuff we didn’t get packed in time for the movers and cleaning – with the able assistance of long-suffering family members, thank goodness. We’re now completely out of the apartment, so it will be nice to focus just on one abode. Random thoughts on the move:

– Now that we’re in the house I can’t imagine how we fit all of our stuff in the apartment. We have so much stuff!We’ll easily fill all the new space available to us. The nice part will be having regular, easy access to possessions that had to reside in storage for most of the past 3+ years, just because there was no room for them. I’ve rediscovered lots of wedding presents that I forgot we even had.

– I started thinking about where I’ve lived and how long, and realized that I’d lived longer in the apartment we just moved out of than anywhere else since I was ten years old. Additionally, if Mr. Squab and I stay in our new house for more than 5 years, I’ll have beat my all time record for time living in one residence. I’d never really thought that through before, but now that I realize it, it strikes me as completely insane. Who moves that much? Admittedly, a lot of those moves were between the same two houses (I switched between my mom and my dad’s houses every year during jr. high and high school) – but that’s still packing up all my stuff and carting it to a different place. No wonder I crave a sense of stability.

– The first section of the new house to be completely unpacked and set up: the bar. Ah, yeah.

– Dude. We got moved by pirates. We hired the movers on the recommendation of some friends, and they were great, but instead of the buff young lads I was hoping for expecting, we got three ancient, grizzled men, one of whom had a glass/wandering eye, another of whom had a fetching set of gold teeth and an earring, and the last of whom must’ve been close to 70 and had the red nose and beery aroma of a lifetime commitment to self-ossification. They were nice as could be and very careful of our possessions, but Yarrr! They only needed parrots and a jug of rum to complete the picture.

– Best new house moment to date: hearing Mr. Squab thumping around upstairs and thinking “man, we have some loud upstairs neighbors at this new place” and then remembering! We don’t have upstairs neighbors! It’s just us! Woohoo!

Pictures will be posted as soon as we’ve assembled the rooms into some remote cousin of an orderly abode. In other words, don’t hold yer breath.

Moving day is tomorrow, starting bright and early when the movers arrive at 8-bloody-30 in the AM. Gah. I forecast a 99% chance of exhaustion and grumpiness.

More to the point, I dunno when our internet access will be up, so posting may be light-to-nonexistent for the next couple of days. But then we’ll have pictures! If we survive!

… office chairs are really fucking uncomfortable when you’re 31 weeks pregnant.

But getting up and walking around: even more so.

There’s not much worse than being someone who is used to helping others and not being able to even help yourself. I hate not being able to do more packing and getting the house ready in preparation for our move this Friday. Even though I know I shouldn’t feel guilty, that I’m doing my “job” just by growing this small person inside me, it still just … sucks. But since I can’t do very much, I feel oh, so very, very lucky to have such a nice family and such lovely friends to help out. Just in the past week:

– one of my sisters donated an entire week of her vacation time to getting the house cleaned, painted, and ready for us to move into;

– my stepmom and two sisters came over to our apartment, asked me to point out what could be packed in the kitchen, made me go to bed and take a nap, then packed up about 1/2 the kitchen, brought it over to the new house, lined the cupboard shelves, and put it all away so we could reuse the boxes;

– two dear friends donated 1/2 their President’s Day holiday to come over and help Mr. Squab pack up the rest of the house (I had to work). All that’s really left is the knick-knacks and our clothes and food.

This is love. And what’s even nicer is that they all say “thank you” when they’re done! As in, “thanks for letting us come over and help!” How do you respond to that? (Mr. Squab offers “you can pay us later.”) I honestly have no idea what we’d have done without them. No, actually that’s not true – we’d both have been beyond exhausted and one of us would have been pretty weepy. Thank goodness for family, actual and honorary.

Why, when you abbreviate refrigerator, is it spelled “fridge?” There’s no “d” in the original word, so why is there one in the abbreviation?

Nerdy Enquiring minds want to know.

The scene: Me and Mr. Squab watching Project Runway, to which we are addicted. (Why did they have to kick Nick off? Why?!?!) Heidi Klum comes prancing down the runway in maternity couture.

Mr Squab: Man. Pregnant women are sexy. (Turning and leering at me with a creepy stalker smile) Especially when you know them! (Makes lunge to grab me, I fend him off, much giggling ensues.)

God, I’m so fricking tired. I don’t know what it is (other than just a glorious new side effect of the pregs), but this last week the fatigue has hit me like a freight train. Oof. Part of it, I’m sure, is related to the suckiness of my day job, but it’s not like that’s sucking any more than usual – it’s just taking more energy to deal with the suckiness lately. By the time 5:00 rolls around I pretty much just want to lay right down on the floor and go to sleep. Actually, that’s how I feel at about 10 am, but I can stave it off until 5, and then I just want to die. It’s like all my reserves have been permanently depleted. And the thing is, I can’t just end my day at 5:00. I have an apartment to pack, a set to finish designing, kitties (and myself) to feed, email to catch up on – these are the things that usually fill my evenings, and when I’m in a normal state, I even find them revitalizing. It takes my mind off the job-suckiness and gets me in a decent frame of mind for the next day. But now, lord have mercy. It’s about all I can do to find some cheese sticks and cereal for dinner and then crash out on the sofa. Poor Mr. Squab, who’s been inundated this week with extra regular and freelance work, has his hands full. He brings me home dinner when he can and rubs my back and tells me to just go to bed and he’ll do the packing and cleaning. Which of course makes me feel awful! Because I should be able to help! So then I feel awful and tired, and then I get weepy, and then Mr. Squab has to take care of a weepy Squab in addition to all the other stuff. Gah. It’s a vicious cycle. So is this just how things are until the baby comes? Anyone got any tips? Because I’d really, really, really like to have some energy sometime soon.