The Final Countdown

I have reached that stage of my pregnancy where, on a given day, I might get an irresistible urge to paint the entire house, plant an herb garden, or sew a complete set of crib bedding from scratch (note: I don't sew); yet I am officially too big to even put on my pants by myself.  Some call this urge the nesting instinct.  I call it panic.

See, at thirty-six weeks and counting, you suddenly realize you only have about three or four weeks left to be an actual human being (albeit one with a rather large, energetic parasite that starts doing water ballet about 11p.m. each night) before being plunged back into the world of feed, spit-up, poop, feed, spit-up, poop, feed, spit-up, poop -- a world where you exist in such an exhaustion-induced stupor that when you finally come to, you realize you haven't showered or brushed your teeth in six weeks.  (Incidentally, this is the part of motherhood you conveniently forgot when you started to consider getting pregnant again).

Yeah, it's beginning to dawn on me that, unless I act quickly, the crayon mural my two-year-old created on the sliding-glass door will still be there in a year and a half, along with the drips of orange juice on the wall behind the kitchen table, and the twenty-some-odd boxes in the basement labeled "Stuff" left from our last move.

So I've written up a nice long list of impossible tasks to complete before the end of June -- things like cleaning out all the cupboards in the kitchen, organizing the storage room, and finishing the novel I started six years ago.  And I'm all geared up to accomplish every last one of them -- something that would seem so much more achievable if only I could see my shoes.