89 days??!!

whoa. i just checked in with the blog today for the first time in a week and a half, and see that the baby gaga tells me there are 89 days to go. what??! i knew that yesterday marked the point of 3 months till the due date, and i guess if i had thought of it, i would've realized that's roughly 90 days. but seeing the number in the double instead of triple digits really snaps me into focus. we are going to have a BABY (another one) in 3 months, give or take a few days. hopefully not earlier. i will gladly take a larger, slightly overdue baby in exchange for all the worry and heartache that comes along with another premie. so, wow. good thing we are starting to create a list of things to get done before mr. benjamin arrives, and have begun to do them. first on the list is my dissertation: i need to get cracking as much as possible before i hit another hiatus. so we've hired two drake students to begin babysitting on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons for 3 1/2 hours so that i can work. this, coupled with mike's wednesday night shift (where i can work in the morning), and the possibility of my mother-in-law coming once a week to play with jack, will give me 3-4 days a week, 3-4 hours each of those days, of working time. no, that's not a full-time job, but i think it will be a nice in between of me still staying home with jack and yet getting some working time in. i guess i'll do what i can in that amount of time and then go from there.

next on the list is the basement. it's ugly, it's dark, it's cold. we need to get new wiring and lighting, paint the walls and ceiling, new carpeting, and move the office furniture down there. once that's done, the room that is now our office will become jack's future "big boy" room. i already have the quilt set and wall colors picked out :) once we have THAT done, it's onto the backyard: re-seed the grass hawkeye tears up each summer, clean out and re-fill the sandbox, and try to get a bit of landscaping done. that last part may not happen before benjamin arrives. but it's on the list. someday we want to build on a 4-season porch, and re-build the deck. so maybe we'll skip the landscaping until we decide how the rest of that will go. anyway, we have a lot to do once spring comes. i imagine we'll have a month, maybe two, of warmer-weather-house-upkeep time to work with before ben makes his grand entrance. yikes!

speaking of house up-keep, i'm sure you fellow home owners out there will understand what i mean when i say that owning a home is a money PIT. it's money well-spent when you consider the investment, and the fact that you are building your home the way you want it to be, but holy wow does it drain the finances. we had wanted to replace our two sliding glass doors with french-style doors before the next baby comes, since the energy company audit guy told us that old sliding doors are a drain on energy. we had a few window/door companies give us quotes, and in the midst of those quotes, we come to find out that our master bedroom window frame is badly damaged due to leaking water. enough that it has leaked behind several pieces of siding, and is now leaking into one of the sliding doors down below. beautiful. we can't afford to replace both doors AND a major window, so we forget about the doors and move onto the window replacement. those of you who have never had to replace windows may be surprised to find out, as we were, that one window replacement (ONE) cost us $2,200. oh my god. and we aren't talking a picture window here, or anything fancy. a 60x60 bedroom window. i know it was necessary, but we hardly notice the new window! i admit i would much rather have enjoyed spending that amount of money on a trip to the caribbean or something. at least there you know where the money is going, and enjoy watching it go. this was just an unplanned, house thing. thank you seashore-ballard for helping fund our window replacement. sigh. okay, no more ranting. just needed to vent a little.

okay, i should be a good worker and get to my interviews. today is day#1 of babysitting, and jack is downstairs flirting with a college girl. so i should get to it. we are paying for her time, after all. so i should make the most of it. ta ta for now.