Gearing Up!

I'm not sure how to feel right about now. Thankfully, I am no longer nauseated (nor obsessed with the fear of being miraculously, scientifically-impossibly pregnant) and the retching has ceased so I have the good sense to feel grateful for that. But otherwise...

Two days until Thanksgiving. Part of me thinks perhaps I should be a raving lunatic, stressing about what I have to do. But there's another part that has control of my consciousness right now that is completely calm, laid back and serene. So what if the dryer is covered in clutter during Thanksgiving dinner? We're not eating in the laundry room! Who cares if Man-Cub's sheets don't get changed this week? He and I are about the only ones who go in there and he certainly doesn't care! Who cares if we don't have rolls on Thursday because I clean forgot them? Well, my mother might but I work very hard at ignoring her at Holiday meals, so WHO CARES? Incidentally, Mom means well and she really is a super mom and grandma and I am a very lucky woman to have her so that's my disclaimer so I don't feel too guilty for complaining about her just now.

Daria has been a big help this week. She has dropped off and picked up children displaying varying degrees of gratitude (read: Redheaded Snippet? Not very.) with nary a complaint. She has cleared surfaces and moved piles of stuff so I can vacuum. She has subtly steered me in the direction of sanity and calm and helped me focus. She has even baked cookies, I KID YOU NOT, DHARMA! I have discovered that Daria is very, very good at "staging" and her talents are coming in handy this week.

Yesterday we were able to get the living room almost G.I.'ed, as Mom used to say. I'm talking moving furniture, dusting baseboards, using vacuum attachments. I hate hate hate vacuuming and only break out the attachments when I mean business, people. I also got about 37 loads of laundry done, folded and put away, too. Maybe it was more like 6 loads but it felt like 37. And I still have more. The ironing is sitting piled up in the rocking chair, waiting for something semi-interesting to be broadcast on tv (because, I'm sorry, I am not ironing to Dolly Parton as an angel or a bunch of yellow lab puppies pulling sleighs NOR counting down to the 25-day countdown to Christmas--how dumb is that?) and I still have the linens and another load-and-a-half of darks to do, but when I got out of the shower this morning and took a large gulp of air through my fresh, clean towel, the crisp smell of bleachy clean just lifted my spirits and made all my efforts worthwhile!

This morning, The Viking had his minor surgical procedure. I told him I'm going to start telling everybody he went in for liposuction. Saying, "minor surgical procedure," to everyone just sounds so purposely vague, like I'm trying to hide the fact that he's having hemorrhoid surgery or his eyelids done. Liposuction just sounds funnier to me. But back to the important thing, he's doing fine. He was, unfortunately, aware during the entire procedure (so much for "conscious sedation") which kind of sucked, but he's resting comfortably and we're praying this thing did the trick.

Today, I have to make lists and start food prep and make cranberry sauce and get all the dishes out and set the table and get the kids to clean the bathrooms and finish dusting and sweeping and hopefully get my pie crusts made! And I must be having some kind of sympathetic reaction to The Viking's mood-altering meds because I am not dreading it and am actually kind of looking forward to it.

Maybe I've snapped, finally, and have had a complete mental collapse. If that's what this is, I should have done it a long, long time ago.

Off to make cranberry sauce!