60% Complete

That is a weird way to think about this pregnancy. But when I say 60% complete, I think to myself that 40% seems like an awful lot left to do. It is funny the way I can manipulate myself into thinking I have much less time to get things in order. For example, instead of a %, lets throw it into weeks. I have 16 weeks left to go! 16 Weeks to go, and I have still not done a THING to prepare for this arrival of this baby (outside of regular prenatal visits and reading about what I should expect in the next 18 months of my life).

We (the husband and I) have so much left to do before this baby gets here. We've got to pay someone to haul the formerly magnificent couch away (because believe it or not, Guinness has taken to destroying that couch on a daily basis... we are almost down to a wood frame at this point) and then move the Futon from the guest room (aka, nursery) to the living room. We've also got a bookshelf and a desk in the nursery that we need to find a new home for (as in, a new home somewhere else in our house). Add to that the closet full of boxes of books that never were unpacked when we moved into this house 2.5 years ago, and we have a whole lot of shuffling to do. And after we get everything OUT of the room, we then have a massive clean up on our hands. The cats have had their center of operations in that room (litter box and food dishes) so we need to get someone in to steam the carpets and we will need to thoroughly scrub the walls.

After the room is *clean* it will then need to be prepped for baby. Paint on the walls, and a closet organizer is all we really need (besides all that baby stuff that will end up in their eventually).

The baby to do list isn't the only one around. We STILL need to get something done with the floors (since Guinness chewed up a massive section of carpet, and as of today has started chewing the carpet AGAIN and ripped up a new seam into the living room). We will replace the carpet with laminate floors (aka, fake wood).

Oh - and the backyard has wall to wall tumbleweeds that need to be professionally removed at this point, because even if we could pull them out, we do not have the adequate trash container to have them all thrown away, and they will need to be hauled away as well.

And finally, there is the small matter of the smoke alarms and the holes in the walls/doors. About a year ago, the smoke alarms started going insane and would just go off in the middle of the night, without fail, at around 1:30 am. I assumed they needed new batteries, and went out and bought new batteries for them. Apparently that wasn't the problem, but the effing effers KEPT going off. In despair, we ripped all the batteries out of them so they couldn't go off at all. HA HA HA! No, turns out the little bastards are hard wired into the house, and they continued to go off without batteries. Once we figured out the correct switch on the breaker outside, we gleefully flipped it and have slept in peace since. Except for now I can't sleep in peace. What if there is a fire in our house? Who will warn us?

Yeah, so, last weekend we finally bought 6 new smoke alarms to replace the others, and hopefully that solves our problem. Now I just need to convince the husband to install them!!

The holes in the walls and doors (ok, 2 holes, 1 in a wall, and 1 in a door) are the result of clumsiness. Dear sister put her elbow through the door into our office, and sweet husband managed to put a hole in the drywall in the bathroom. *sigh*

Have I left anything off?

Oh, crap, I totally forgot about the garage. The garage that will one day need to house bicycles, skateboards, rollerskates and the Christmas tree during the other 10 months of the year. Right now the only thing in the garage would be my Jeep, and the rest of the boxes that were never unpacked after we moved in. Do you think after 2.5 years that we actually need the stuff in those boxes?

And after re-reading my post, I realize that we've got some major issues with our sweet puppy. What else is he going to destroy? Will we have a house left if we keep him? He loves us, but he is super aggressive to our other dog Sammie (out of jealousy I assume). Will he be aggressive towards the baby? We have tried expensive training (barkbusters.com) and we've tried crate training (Guinness LITERALLY chewed through the biggest heavy duty metal crate available). What else is there left to do? Am I putting off the inevitable by not trying to find him a new home now? Or is there hope?

Sorry - I realize this was a long post rambling about a whole bunch of crap that I have the capability of doing something about. Don't you just hate whiny slackers?