What getting ready for baby means to me...

So I think I need to explain my situation a little bit.... and maybe vent a tad.

My house is trashed. We moved over a month and a half ago and there are boxes everywhere. I'm not exaggerating. They are everywhere. I trip over them all the time and they are stacked 2-4 high, and on every flat surface. And within the last week, more appeared full of hand-me-down baby stuff which I just pushed into the baby room to make go away for the time being. This house is not functional as is and we've just been making due.

We were not able to even start unpacking for weeks as we thought we had lead paint in the kitchen and bathrooms and well, everywhere so we had to fight with the landlord for a while until he agreed to get a lead risk assessment done. Turns out everything is at ok levels, but we had already lost that momentum of moving and had begun living with just the bare essentials found in the essential boxes and just walking around the others. Once you start living out of boxes, it's much easier to keep living out of boxes. It's kinda like vacation where you have your essentials with you and you just make due. Add to that the fact that I've been exhausted and worked 12-14 hour days since we moved in, and this is the first few days to do anything else in my life.

We eat out every night or get take out because the kitchen... not functional. Much to still unpack and to figure out what we need to get to make it more functional. Sure we can make toast and eat cereal and we've managed to make rice and oatmeal, and a salad or two, but actual cooking can't quite happen in there yet... again, too many boxes in the way, stuff on the counter which doesn't have a home, and in general the layout sucks to begin with.

Then there is the old/grime factor. We moved into a 50's foreclosure property which was purchased to be rented out. Our landlord did the minimum needed and that minimum is gross to most people's standards. We had THOUGHT he would have it cleaned before we moved in, but NO he didn't. Liz came over the day we moved in and scrubbed a lot and there was still so much more scrubbing to be done. I won't even go into the state of the yard because I have little problem letting that go before the baby comes, but the mold, and the stains, and the just general grossness.... that all needs to be taken care of.

Some things are beyond repair or elbow grease. Some things need more elbow grease than my wrists will allow. And some I'm going to scrub the hell out of no matter how much it hurts me because I cannot continue to live with mold and grossness. For example, tonight I purchased some fairly caustic cleaning products (which I probably shouldn't be using in my current state but oh well), some rubber gloves, and good ol' Mr Clean Magic Erasers. We generally use very "green" cleaning solutions like vinegar, H2O2, and Baking Soda, but this place is beyond those products. My toilets are now white. I am opting not to tell you their prior state, but I no longer gag when I take a bath where I am at an angle where I can see under the rim (not that the stains were only under the rim). Again... NOT EXAGGERATING!

To add to the fun, Eric and I are clutter leavers. Have a space, crap will fill it. We do not have a dishwasher, and we (Eric) do not have a habit or see the point of cleaning the dishes every night (or the counter, or the wipe out the microwave when something explodes, or hell closing a drawer after its been opened). We don't have good homes for the crap and some feel that an adequate home for crap is shoving it into a drawer, or box, or cabinet, so you just end up with crap drawers and cabinets and crap full of crap. Sure I can't change all of that now, but some of the crap needs to go and now is the only time I will have in the next year to deal with it. Sure this stuff is lower priority, but this week I needed to find some of MY crap which had been unpacked into the crap places full of crap because important papers got mixed in.

Sure, I am embarrassed that we will be having guests stay with us, so some of this motivation to get our own shit together prior to the baby's stuff has something to do with that. But mostly, once the baby is here, all of the boxes, the mold, the gross, the crap will not be taken care of. This house is not clean and not in a state to bring a baby into. And I won't even go into the fact that we are expecting guests and we still do not own a guest bed.... just one more thing on the list of things to figure out.

Baby's don't need a lot of stuff. Some diapers, some clothes, my boobs and a place to sleep. We have that. There is no point in going through the bags and bags of hand-me-down and new clothes now, because if I wash them, I have no place to put them yet so no point in washing. Another thing of the list.... baby's dresser or some sort of closet organizer (and hangers) or even plastic tubs.

Today I also needed to buy the things I need when I get home. Like sleep nursing bras, and ginormous maxi pads, boob cream and cotton pads to clean baby's sensitive bum and random goop because Eric will not be in any state to be trying to figure that stuff out on his own and I'm not going anywhere after a C-Section for a while. Also, needed to continue to deal with the property I just sold as the banks seem to like to continue to take auto-payments out for a mortgage which is no longer active and no.. they don't give the money back. And you know what tomorrow is? It's tax day... nuff said. Non-baby stuff needs to happen before this baby arrives. Period.

So in essence. Me taking care of all of the other stuff and not setting up the baby room (which the baby will not be even using for a few months and will essentially be a place to hold baby stuff and a guest room), really IS getting ready for baby.