My first day of maternity leave was April 4, 12 days ago, not that I'm counting. The first couple of days were relaxing and fun and happily productive. Since then I've gone through multiple roller coaster ups & downs of peacefulness, anxiety, restfulness, restlessness, enjoyment of the spring sunshine and moving at a slow pace, extreme boredom, enjoyment of quality family time, impatience, enjoyment of me time, loneliness...
I've written and finished multiple iterations of to do lists, created projects for myself just to have something to do, dredged up stale tasks that have been avoided for years and taken care of them, and generally driven myself nuts. I'm a person who nests even when I'm not pregnant, anytime there's a spare moment to organize or prepare something, so being pregnant and off of work is a really bad combination for me.
Here's a list of what I've done for the past 12 days and I'm sure it's not even completely exhaustive:
- Went to Michael’s to buy scrapbooking stuff
- Created 10 scrapbook layouts
- Returned an item at Michael’s, browsed around for a long time to replace it
- Organized all the ripped out of magazine recipes into recipe notebook
- Tried 4 new recipes
- Baked banana bread, ate 25%, froze 75%
- Stocked up the freezer
- Prepared soil in two raised garden beds, stopping every few minutes to catch breath
- Planted seeds, installed labels, tomato cages & bean poles in garden beds
- Watered the garden beds each day
- Rinsed, sorted, and culled all the backyard sand toys, riding toys, trucks & balls, re-organized into bins
- Re-arranged backyard furniture, playhouse, slide, & basketball hoop
- Had a service demo and remove old shed, along with some other yard junk
- Broke down and recycled accumulated cardboard boxes
- Cleaned & dried the ice chest
- Hung up wind chimes now that the too windy season is over
- Installed elbow on outdoor spigot
- Threw out broken 25’ coiled hose
- Unwound & rinsed spider webs off of 100’ hose, stopping often to catch breath
- Installed hose winder to new elbow with new connector hose & seal
- Wound 100’ hose into hose winder, stopping every few turns to catch breath
- Realized 100’ hose leaked where connected to winder and is too heavy, annoying to actually practically use on a daily basis
- *Replaced 100’ hose with new 50’ hose on hose winder
- Realized really never liked hose winder at all
- *Purchased basket to wind hose into instead
- Washed all the remaining unwashed baby clothes
- *Installed curtain rod and curtain in nursery
- Sat in nursery in contemplation
- Washed & changed all the bed linens
- Stocked up on post-partum supplies
- Moved alarm clock to Backtire’s side of the bed since I’m not waking up for work anymore
- Moved alarm clock back to my side to time contractions one night
- Got excited & nervous after 2 hours of 10 min apart contractions
- Called doula & brother-in-law to put them on alert
- Kept timing contractions that went on every 10 min for 8 hours, but then just stopped
- Texted doula that nothing ended up happening
- Got really bummed out
- Organized Turtle’s bookshelves, stopping just short of using the Dewey Decimal system
- Went through Turtle’s dresser and closet, pulling out outgrown clothes, putting out the next size up
- Did near daily small loads of laundry to just “stay on top of it”
- Went through 4 filing cabinet drawers, thinning, re-organizing, re-labeling, and shredding
- Created a rock & mineral kit with accompanying explanatory book for Turtle’s preschool classroom, delivered it & used it with the kids
- Checked and kept up with work email daily
- Filled out work paperwork
- Renewed my teaching credential
- Checked and kept up with personal email daily
- Wiped the hard drive of, found the accessories to, posted on craigslist, & met with buyer to sell old laptop
- Went through computer accessory box, culled, set aside e-waste
- Went on near daily walks to Starbucks to drink, eat, read, and kill time
- Took Turtle to the park for 5 hours
- Took Turtle out to breakfast twice
- Met friend from work for lunch date
- Went on a lunch date with my mom
- Toured the house for sale on my street
- Dyed my hair
- Drove to distant mall to exchange one of Turtle’s birthday gifts
- Used gift certificate to order two pairs of shoes online
- Received shoes, tried them on, called for return authorization for one pair
- Packaged up one pair of shoes, went to UPS store to ship back to shoe store
- Shipped birthday present to my brother
- Set up, synced, and started learning how to use my new iPad2
- Organized a bunch of files on work computer
- Organized a bunch of files on home computer
- Wrote & mailed a big pile of thank you notes
- Supervised & battled with Turtle over writing & mailing one thank you note per day for his birthday gifts
- Went through both bookshelves, re-organized books, pulled out ones to return or lend to people or give away
- Found over 5 year old disposable camera and dropped off to be developed
- Superglued broken toy
- Read Pink Brain, Blue Brain
- Read Eat, Pray, Love
- Read Pope Joan
- Read Free Range Kids
- Read every current magazine in the house
- Organized old National Geographics into piles for each of the last 4 years, started going back and reading the ones I never read
- Read a bunch of blogs
- Read chapters and chapters and chapters of The Borrowers, Ralph & The Motorcycle, The Trumpet of the Swan, etc. to Turtle
- Watched about 20 TED talks
- Watched Away We Go
- Watched The Social Network
- Took in a matinee of The King’s Speech
- Called my mom
- Called my sister
- Called my friends
- Texted my friends
(*To be fair, Backtire actually did these 3 tasks. But I led the charge.)
What's left? Perhaps I'll have to go gather some twigs, grass, and mud and start building an actual nest.
If you see something like this in my front yard, you'll know I've gone overdue...
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