Full-on nutty

The crazy preggy nesting hormones have kicked into high gear. I'm no longer content to merely obsess over dishes and vacuuming. The things that I am now fixating on are of the "if I don't clean it THIS MINUTE it won't happen in the next two years" variety. Which means that announcing "Hey J, I think I'm going to mop the kitchen this morning" really means moving all but the major appliances out of the kitchen, sweeping under the shelving, and mopping all of the linoleum in our house. Including behind the toilet (remember when I said that was nutty, and I wasn't THAT BAD, YET? It's happened. It's that bad.).

And when the sponge part on the mop starts falling apart ten minutes into the project, do I stop? Hell no. I am not to be deterred. I merely switch to scrubbing the floor on my hands and knees a la Cinderella. Okay, a 30-week-pregnant-and-totally-not-going-to-the-ball Cinderella, but still. It was crazy enough that J and Doodle stood in the doorway of the kitchen taking pictures of me.

At least I'm a happy nesting pregnant lady, right? RIGHT?!

Next on the list: pickling the box of cucumbers I insisted we buy at the Gardener's Market this weekend, followed by some apricot picking and canning/dehydrating later this week. Plus some reorganizing of tupperwares and canning jars, catching up on blogging, working on thesis chapters and maybe starting Xmas-related crafting (damn you, crafty blogs that have already started the holiday craftsiness tutorials!). Only ten weeks until the due date!!!

Nesting already?

Those familiar with pregnancy or pregnancy-related fables know that pregnant ladies, when nearing the point of popping, start "nesting". This is a highly technical term for cleaning like crazy, which may involve things like rearranging furniture, scrubbing walls, and generally becoming way more of a neat-freak than anyone thought possible. It's thought that this is the mother's way of preparing her home (or nest) for the impending arrival of her offspring. Some women go all-out with the nesting, while others never really feel the urge to scrub behind the toilet with a toothbrush. It's highly variable.

When I was pregnant with Doodle, I didn't really have any nesting urges. Sure, I got all excited about washing and preparing widdle bitty baby clothes and diapers and stuff, but I didn't really get into the "OMG, MUST SCRUB CEILING!!!" stage.

This time, Ohhh man.

I'm barely into the third trimester. Barely. I have PLENTY of time. So what have I spent the past few days doing? Do you really want to know? Alright, here goes. I have:

• cleaned the bathroom sink
  
• purged a bunch of my clothes
• washed the walls in the bathroom (yep, here come the nutty hormones)
  
• cleaned out the microwave and toaster oven (we usually dump the crumb tray of the toaster oven once in a blue moon. Scrubbing?! Very rare.)
  
• wiped down cabinets in the kitchen (pretty uncommon for me)
  
• reorganized storage baskets in the kitchen
  
• vacuumed out a window sill in the kitchen that had accumulated leaves and dead bugs (seriously, who does this?)
  
• and scrubbed the wall and floor near our kitchen trash can. On hands and knees. Really.

I know some people are regular wall- and baseboard-washers. That's not how I was raised. In our house my mom scrubbed the nasty creases on our kitchen cabinets maybe once every couple years. Baseboards? Pssh. Life is too short for scrubbing baseboards. Yet lately my eyes are drawn to the weird little cracks and creases in our house where dust and funk accumulates, and immediately my brain starts in with "Must Remove Ickiness NOW!" Never mind that it's in a corner that nobody ever pays attention to or, like the window sill, nobody even looks in. If I notice there is a funk accumulation, it must be remedied ASAP. Which explains why J walked into the kitchen this morning to see me scrubbing the fronts of the cabinets instead of getting food together to head to school. Because OMG DIRTY CABINETS!!! MUST SCRUB!

*sigh* I swear, this is so not normal for me. The hormones have saturated my brain. I'm not sure yet if this is a good thing or not. I guess by starting now I'll get a lot of the weird, out-of-the-way cleaning done before I'm too big and unweildy to do it. But what if this lasts until October?!