It's a quiet, snowy Monday morning and I'm relaxing for the first time in months because, well, because the enormous pre-baby to-do list is coming to a close.  Thank God. Thank God. (The second 'Thank God' is from Fabulous Husband, and is delivered with even more enthusiasim than mine).

Something about becoming pregnant inspired me to make a list of house-related projects that (I decided) absolutely had to be completed before our daughter's arrival. I've read about this behavior in pregnancy books, and it appears to be a classic case of what they call 'nesting'. 

I don't know what made me think this was a good idea to make such a list.  I'm the kind of person that has a difficult time living with any form of incomplete list. Just ask Fab Husband, who has to live with my laser-like focus on working at whatever task is at hand until either the task is completed or he is picking me up from a big, pregnant, weepy puddle on the floor. 

The list included:

I haven't had a drink in about six million years and I would give my right arm for an ice cold bourbon and ginger right about now.  It is the world's worst cosmic joke that a girl cannot have a drink when she is preparing to become a new mother, as this is arguably the time when a girl has most reason to put on a light buzz from time to time.  Think about it: the scale reports numbers she has NEVER seen in her entire lifetime, she can't sleep for more than a few hours straight without either visiting the bathroom (hi again! hi tiles! hi sink!) or waking up to project manage a Turn Over Maneuver, and, of course, there's the fact that she's not so much walking but waddling from meeting to meeting.  It's difficult to look serious about product revenue when you're wearing pink-fringed maternity clothes. And let me tell you that if you think it is easy to find neutral maternity clothes at a decent price, well, then...you can just ... just go right on thinking that.  Yeah. Go ahead. 

Given the number of times a pregnant woman visits the bathroom over the course of the day, I wish mine were either a more interesting bathroom or that the visit itself was a more interesting one. I've already managed to inventory every single irregularity in the paint job I gave the bathroom last year.  I've already decided to redecorate the room by adding some pictures to the wall, and, having already imagined what these pictures might be in my mind's eye, I've already decided where to hang them.  Beyond that, I've run out of things to do or think about while zipping in and out of the bathroom.  I'm thinking I might set up an enormous jigsaw puzzle on the floor so that at least I can gain some feeling of accomplishment for all the time spent in there of late.  

I would like to stop right here to say that I've never given so much thought or ink to the subject of my bathroom.  I am hoping, as perhaps you are hoping, that this trend does not continue.  On some level I'm aware that it's uncouth to discuss one's bathroom. My mother, who has not fully recovered from the glider rocker story, has probably been thrown right back into a deep, embarrassed wince.  Cheer up, ma! At least you can drink.  

I should start a separate section of entries entitled "Things I never knew but everyone else appears to have known from the time they were children.".  It would be a large category.

If I had such a separate section of blog entries, I would add this little tidbit to it today: the process of dry cleaning is not, in fact, "dry".  Your clothes get wet. Your wools, your silks... they get wet.  Your clothes are dipped in a vat of (very wet) chemical, then dried. 

WTF?

I know, I know.  I have already tested this out at work and discovered that pretty much every single one of you already knew that.  

But how do you know that?  When did you learn that?  Don't even try to tell me you learned that in school, because I went to school and I did not learn that. 

Did you learn that because, say, you were driving along with your parents one day, saw a sign for a dry cleaners, and asked, "Mom?  Dad? You know that sign that says 'Dry Cleaning'? Does that big sign just lie?". 

Or did you learn that at university from one of your fellow students in  one of those deep, philosophical discussions? 

Did you learn it from the Discovery channel?  Or are you all the type of people who regularly read Dry Cleaning Today magazine? 

WTF?!