My mother arrived on Saturday, which means that I can go into labour without worrying about what to do with Kieran. Up until then I was just sort of crossing my fingers that we didn't have to make a middle of the night drop off of him anywhere.
Of course, along with the arrival of my mother, comes the zero sugar coating of just about anything. Within 10 minutes of coming in the door, she commented that I "looked wide". Sigh. Which proves, that even nine months pregnant, the woman does not let up. The other classic mother-trait is to nit-pick at the cleanliness of my house. I have said time and time again that it does matter HOW clean the house is, she will find something to complain about, which drives me absolutely stupid. Not just because it's obviously insulting, but because there will be no Blue Ribbon ever awarded to the woman on the state of her own house - and she doesn't have a toddler, nor is she pregnant. Not that her house is dirty by any stretch - it's just ....average. Like most people, when they have company, the do a major cleaning blitz, but otherwise there are books and magazines everywhere and not everything is in its place, or even HAS a place. Because of this, I've NEVER been able to figure out why she feels its OK to be so critical of her children's houses.
Anyhow as I have mentioned above, she also hardly cares how pregnant I am, so in anticipation of her visit, I decided to employ a cleaning service the day before she arrived. Obviously, I wouldn't TELL her this, I'll just let her think it was all us. I thought this was quite a brilliant plan...not only would it release me (and Eric) from actually doing the vigorous clean she apparently demands, but the house would be genuinely, top to bottom spotless. I could bring this baby home to a truly clean home and, at least for a few days, not worry about it. So, on Friday, the cleaners spend over 3 hours washing, dusting, tidying, sorting, scrubbing etc this house. It was truly lovely to come home to. They even "made the crib" for crying out loud and its never even crossed my mind to tuck Kieran's quilts under the mattress every morning.
Fast forward to the next day, Mom's barely in the from the airport and she says..."I'm going to wash your floors on Monday." She says this as though the floors haven't been washed in months, let alone 24 hours earlier. Then I knew for sure...it's some sort of illness. There was NO WAY you could have thought the floors were dirty unless you were officially a crazy person. So, now we know. It's sad, but also, in a way, freeing. (And now that I've spilled an entire glass of orange juice on the floor today the floors do need washing again...so at least all her work tomorrow will not be in vain. )
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We celebrated Earth Hour on Saturday. At 8 pm, we turned off all the lights and non-essential appliances, lit a bunch of candles and just talked for the hour. I thought it was quite painless. Kieran was taken with the candles and wanted them lit again today (but it was daytime, so it seemed pointless) but otherwise he wasn't fazed at all by the darkness. Of course, at 9 pm on the dot, Eric jumped up and starting flipping light switches, so it wasn't SOO much a success for him. But we did our minuscule part at least. Symbolic Gestures R Us, apparently.
Finally, as I mentioned, my maternity leave has officially begun...which means that we just HAD to make a large purchase of something to coincide with my alarming drop in salary. Last round, just after Kieran was born, we bought a Flat Screen TV with surround sound. We used the "Don't Pay for a Year" plan, but still, when I got back to work a year later, we had a huge bill to pay, which sucked and I vowed not to do it again.
Except that for the last few weeks, my dryer has stopped drying clothes. Everything had to be run through twice - and the final straw was yesterday when after the second time through everything was still damp. All the appliances that came with this house were total crap, so we've known this was coming. We had to replace the stove last year because the thing was a complete fire hazard, but otherwise we were just waiting for things to die. Which apparently happened to our dryer. But I'm not going to spend $200 getting a 15-year old dryer fixed, so it, and it's water sucking pal (the washer) can continue to drain our resources via water and electricity bills. So we bought a lovely new pair today. Stackable, energy-efficient, the whole nine yards. I didn't feel that bad about it because at least it's not something frivolous like surround sound. Besides, we've been looking on and off at prices for about two years and we KNOW we got it at a crazy sale price that we've never seen, and it came with a free year's supply of laundry detergent and fabric softener. This makes me feel better. Now my dishwasher, which is making an alarming buzzing noise, and my fridge, which seems to always be running, just need to hold on for another year....and the weird liquid seeping from my under the deep freezer? Let's not even go there...
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