Where I've been lately...

The last few weeks have been a total madhouse chez Loribeth & dh. Let me describe some of what's been going on, topic by topic:

Babies: The weekend before last, we were at FIL's house -- and so was stepBIL-in-law (stepMIL's youngest son) and his wife, with their new baby boy. I brought a gift (Baby Gap) & even held him for awhile as he slept and his bursting-at-the-seams-with-pride grandmother & aunt fawned over him. Oddly enough, it did not faze me in the least.

Monday was my pregnant coworker's baby shower at the office. Somehow I got roped into helping organize it & take pictures, not to mention (another) trip to Baby Gap for a gift, & a trip to the liquor store to pick up a bottle of pink champagne (we knew it was girl) on behalf of one of the bosses. Again, it did not faze me (much). Going home on the commuter train that night, though, I couldn't help but notice two very pregnant women -- one across the aisle & one just down the aisle. THAT irritated me and made me want to rant about the injustice of the universe, for some reason.

Pg coworker's due date was Oct. 3rd. Her last day was originally supposed to be last Friday, then it got moved back to Wednesday… but Wednesday morning, we got an e-mail that her water had broken, & by noon, we had another e-mail (from her husband's BlackBerry), telling us where all the stuff she had been working on was, & by the way, she was 9 cm dilated & ready to push (!!). The baby (girl) was born about an hour later!

I had a laugh trying to explain the significance of having your water break to two of my (single, male) co-workers in their early 30s. The one guy was quite concerned because this was a few weeks earlier than due date -- was the baby going to have to be in an incubator? I said I really didn't think so, not at this point in the pregnancy. I tend to forget that not everyone is as well-informed about all this stuff as I am. And then I had to reflect ruefully on how it is that I know all this stuff when I don't have any (living) children to point to as evidence that I've earned my stripes…

And speaking of work...

Work: Year end activities are gearing up. I need to find my mojo, and fast. Enough said...!

Dh works in a trading job for a brokerage on Bay Street -- the Wall Street of Canada. As the old saying goes, when the U.S. sneezes, Canada catches a cold (or something like that…), so needless to say, the recent carnage on Wall Street has had repercussions here, & been pretty stressful & exhausting for him.

Of course not only is he dealing with a mess at work, he's also dealing with one at home:

Home: As I mentioned in a recent post, we are in the middle of a bathroom renovation. Our bathroom has early-80s beige fixtures, which I can live with, but the doors on the vanity keep falling off, the toilet sometimes runs (& runs… & runs…), & the tub has been rusting & mildewing. A few years back, it was leaking onto the floor of the linen closet behind it. Some new taps & caulking fixed that, but last winter, we noticed it a wet spot on the living room ceiling close to the wall, right below the tub. We recaulked the tub, but it immediately started leaking again. Dh finally agreed with me that more drastic action was called for. And so… bathroom reno!!

His stepbrother (the new dad) is doing the work for us. He has a small business doing this sort of work. He was here three days last week, during which he replaced the tub, tiled & grouted the walls, and stripped the old wallpaper. We haven't heard from him in a few days (even contractors who are "family" can act like typical contractors, it seems...!), but I think he was waiting for us to make our minds up on a vanity, which we ordered tonight & should arrive on Friday. (Speaking of stress...!) My mother is coming for (Canadian) Thanksgiving in mid-October, and is very scent sensitive to things like glue & paint smells -- so I want to have this done & the house well aired before she arrives.

It's times like these, when everything is covered in drywall dust, that I'm thankful we don't have small children running around the house! -- although I must admit, he has been amazingly tidy, cleaning things up as he goes. Thank goodness!

I'm hoping to post some before/during/after photos for a future Show & Tell... for now, if you'd like a peek at some of our choices, here are some links with pictures of the tub, wall tiles and accent border tiles. I'm planning on dark blue towels, shower curtain, bath mat, etc., to pick up the blue in the border tile. : ) The vanity we picked is a dark reddish-brown wood with a beige marbled look top which I'm hoping will look OK with the tiles on the wall as well as on the floor.

Travel: We spent last weekend visiting friends (fellow bereaved parents, who now have a toddler son) in a small city about a 1.5-2 hour drive away. Left Saturday morning, returned Sunday afternoon. They moved there six months ago & have been hounding us to come for a visit. She & I started comparing calendars back in June, & this was the first date we could come up with that was mutually agreeable (!).

We're very glad we went -- we had a really nice time. (And returned with a severe case of house envy, lol -- they have a two-year-old 2,700 foot four bedroom house with a kitchen/family room/eating area across the back of the house that is to die for.) I'd forgotten how refreshing even a little weekend getaway to visit friends can be. It seems silly, because of course we have no kids and few obligations to worry about -- there is no reason why we can't just take off for the weekend or a mini-vacation as the spirit moves us -- but it seems like we never do, at least, we haven't in the past several years. I'm hoping there will be more such trips in the near future.