…and yet…I cannot indulge.

Man. They weren’t lying when they told me that when nesting hits, it hits hard. I haven’t experienced that birth-is-imminent energy burst yet (thankfully), but I am dying to accomplish things. I want to scrub and organize and make everything obnoxiously clean and cute for Ethan.

Unfortunately, I don’t trust my clown feet to hold me upright long enough to do much. What’s more, we aren’t going to be here long enough for it to matter even if I did accomplish all the things I’m itching to do. We’re moving!

That’s right – we found a lovely new apartment, very close to where I grew up! The place is a perfect size and in a very nice community, with shops close enough to walk to (including the grocery store, which is really nice), a pool, 24-hour workout room, and with the library just a couple of streets away. I can’t wait!

We move March 15. We sent our Big Scary Legalese Letter to River City Real Estate – excuse me, I mean Historic Property Management. That’s right, they changed their name (I don’t recall them telling anyone that they were doing this, so I’m not sure what to make of the sudden shift). We stated very clearly that we would be moving on March 15 and paying a prorated rent for the months of February and March. In our letter, we outlines our reasons for moving: the lack of proper treatment for the roaches and mold, the fact that it took over a week for our heat to be fixed, and the serious lack of communication on their part, which often left us completely clueless as to if or when these problems would be attended to.

They called and left a message on Adam’s phone yesterday, letting us know that they received our letter. Oh, and since they noticed we’re still having a bug problem, they’d be sending an exterminator out sometime that day.

Sigh.

So not only was the point entirely missed, they also gave me a shining example of the communication problems I had been trying to point out all along. I suppose that means they did me a favor.

Just noticed that the thermostat is broken again. I’m not joking. I just got up to go and adjust the temperature and it is completely dead. This is what happened when we were without heat that whole time.

Sigh, part deux.

I think I just have to laugh at this point. At least we know we will have a new home in just a few weeks, one that isn’t actively trying to kill us, and one that has a staff I could actually track down if absolutely necessary. My only concern now is that Ethan will be born before our moving date (very likely – he’s due March 13). If that happens, I absolutely do not want to bring him back to this apartment, and I’ll be useless during the move since I’ll probably still be recovering. But we’ll just have to get creative, which we’ve gotten pretty good at by now, and hope for the best!

Okay, I didn’t see all of the Oscar-nominated films this year, and my own preferences rarely turn out to be the winners. Even so, here are my predictions…and what my choices would be if it were up to me. Because I know you all care so much about my opinion on the matter because I am such an authority.

BEST PICTURE
MY CHOICE: The Artist. It was my favorite of the year by a landslide and easily made my all-time Top 10. I adored every moment of that film.
LIKELY WINNER: I actually might be right about this one, but I think War Horse might be the most likely alternative to win.

BEST ACTOR
MY CHOICE: Jean Dujardin. Again, The Artist was my favorite, and his performance was not only charming, it had a heart-wrenching depth that I found inspiring.
LIKELY WINNER: If it’s not Dujardin, I have a good feeling about Gary Oldman. He was incredible in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and he deserves it.

BEST ACTRESS
MY CHOICE: I can’t decide between Rooney Mara and Viola Davis. Both stunning performances, but for totally different reasons. I’d be thrilled with either, but I might give the edge a bit to Mara just because it was such a complete transformation. As an actor, I just have so much respect and admiration for what she went through for that role – especially with Fincher’s notoriety for doing take after take after take.
LIKELY WINNER: Meryl Streep probably has this in the bag, but all of the nominees have a really good chance.

SUPPORTING ACTOR
MY CHOICE: Jonah Hill in Moneyball. It was such a departure from what I’m used to seeing him do that it actually took me a while to recognize him – and I have a freaky memory for faces, so that’s saying something.
LIKELY WINNER: I have a gut feeling about Christopher Plummer. Because he’s Christopher Plummer. That’s reason enough to hand out awards to the man.

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
MY CHOICE: Are you at all surprised that I choose Berenice Bejo? You shouldn’t be. She was so lovable and fearless in The Artist. I adored her in that role.
LIKELY WINNER: Octavia Spencer. She was great in The Help, and I’ve heard a lot of buzz about her being the likely winner.

CINEMATOGRAPHY
MY CHOICE: The Artist for its stunning use of black-and-white alone. The entire film was beautiful to look at. War Horse, though, also literally took my breath away. So I would choose The Artist for its subtle beauty and War Horse for its more obvious – but epic – use of film.
LIKELY WINNER: The Tree of Life, being a Terrance Malick film, is automatically a top contender. Say what you will about his weird, whispery, pseudo-philosophic dialogue and his nearly-incomprehensible plot devices, the man doesn’t make ugly movies.

DIRECTING
MY CHOICE: Michael Hazanavicius for The Artist. The film was such a tribute to silent film – as well as the incredible potential for film as an art form – that I just can’t bring myself to choose anyone else. I can’t imagine taking on that sort of task…not only did it require making a movie that paid homage and did justice to the lost art of silent film, but it required finding and directing a cast and crew in what is largely foreign territory.
LIKELY WINNER: I have a good feeling about Hazanavicius, but with names like Scorsese, Malick, Payne, and Allen on the list as well, I honestly couldn’t possibly predict.

Those are the only ones I feel any sort of qualification to wager a guess about…I don’t know the first thing about most of the other categories, so I would just be guessing blindly. Anyway, those are my guesses…what are yours?

My brother will occasionally say something really brilliant that makes me incredibly jealous for not being the one to come up with it first.

Case in point: tonight, I mentioned that I had a crazy drop in my blood sugar and was all dizzy/sweaty/shaky/hormonal from it (and ate about half of his box of Reese’s Puffs as a result). His response was that he didn’t mind if I ate the cereal (points for brother)…and then he went and summarized pregnancy in a much better way than I have been able to:

“Miracles can be a pain in the ass.”

True words, Jonathan, true words.

There’s just something about the prospect of your second internal exam in a week that makes it a little hard to sleep comfortably. I woke up at 5:00 AM to the dulcet tones of my neighbors having a hi-larious discussion about a purple Frisbee and haven’t been able to fall back asleep. Lying in bed, desperately trying to think of boring things to put myself back out, I remembered that it’s Thursday. I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, which will include another internal exam. Having been through my first one on Tuesday, I have no desire to repeat the experience anytime soon. Unfortunately, I don’t really call the shots here – though normally these exams can be declined, because of my “unique” (read: not ideal and actually kind of weird) body shape, they’re a bit more necessary than usual to determine Ethan’s position. This has led me to resolve – fiercely – that before we even think of procreating a second time, I am going to a chiropractor and massage therapist and taking up magical hip-fixing yoga to solve this problem.

On Tuesday, I had an ultrasound to see whether Ethan was still breech. Thankfully, he isn’t, which brings my chances of avoiding a C-section way up. This is exactly what I was hoping for. I know that C-sections are performed all the time these days and that it isn’t the end of the world to have to get one. I just really, really, really wanted to avoid it if possible. Like any sane person, I didn’t want to get abdominal surgery unless it was absolutely unavoidable. I left the ultrasound all aglow at the joyous news that my kid had finally figured out which way was…well, not up, but you know where I was going with that.

Then came the exam. Holy sweet baby Lord in the manger in the sky. I was not expecting pain like that. My OB was very concerned at my reaction. Combined with the point I brought up – that my hips are all funky and rotate forward, meaning my pelvic flexibility is utter crap – there’s a chance that I’ll still have trouble with a traditional delivery. Son of a gun. Here I was thinking, “Well, he’s not breech, problem solved” when really, that was just the first hurdle to overcome. My body is literally creating others.

Because the ultrasound tech forgot to check for Ethan’s growth, I have to go back in tomorrow to have another one. As long as he is measuring somewhere between normal and a little small, it should be smooth sailing. But if he is considered “too big” or even just “big”, it may complicate things. I’m getting a bit nervous. Again, I know C-sections aren’t the worst thing in the world. The end result absolutely must be the birth of a healthy baby in the safest possible way for both of us. I’m not going to be hardheaded about it either way. I’m not going to give up and just assume that a C-section is my only option, nor am I going to put myself and my baby at risk if it ends up being the safer option. I just have very mixed emotions right now about everything. I’m sure part of that is just being 37 weeks pregnant, but for someone who originally wanted a 100% intervention- and medication-free delivery, the prospect of an epidural and/or C-section is slightly frustrating.

But we’ll see. Nothing is set in stone, and my OB is very optimistic that there will be a solution that won’t necessarily be a C-section. She’s great – very supportive of my preferences and definitely someone who wants to help me have as natural a birth as is possible in my situation.

Now I just need to find someone who can lend me some cooperative hips and we’ll be in business.

Generally, I only check the weather to find out two things: if the clouds are going to be spitting things in my general direction, and if it is going to be under 45 degrees. I don’t even care how far under 45 degrees, as long as the temperature remains in the double digits. I just want to know if I need to bother with my coat or if the fact that my car heats up relatively quickly will be enough. Today, though, I care. I care about the fact that it is 34 degrees. I care about the fact that it is exactly two degrees above freezing. Why do I care so much? Because today makes it the sixth day in a row that I have not had heat in my apartment.

Let’s back up for a moment.

Our thermostat offed itself on Friday night. My brother noticed that it appeared to be completely dead. Since it was so late, we were all about to go to bed, and it wasn’t that cold, we let it slide and decided we’d contact Maintenance later. So over the weekend, we hopped onto our real estate website, filled out the online maintenance request form, and sent it on its merry way. We knew that it would be Monday at the earliest that we’d hear back, but we figured that a situation like loss of heat would be at least something of a priority.

Well…apparently not. And then it got cold. I went online last night to try and fill out the form a second time and the entire website was down. And when I say “down”, I mean “it looked like the thing never existed and I had to use a cached version to find the emergency maintenance number”. For some dumb reason, I didn’t put the emergency number in my phone when I got the new one. My mistake. Anyway, a bit before 7:30 last night, I called the emergency number. I got voicemail. We never  heard back from them, even though we made it clear that we had no heat and “Loss of Heat” is the first “emergency” situation listed in our resident handbook.

This is where the pregnant lady has a rambling, hormone-fueled breakdown. Proceed with caution…

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No, really, I am. Even when I’m busy and accomplishing things, I’m doing it in a lazy way. I don’t know why that is. When I look at my life from the outside in, I’m kind of impressed. Take today, for example: I rolled my eight-month-beached-whale-belly out of bed, babysat Hudson, taught my brother to use Mint.com, washed two baskets of laundry, cleaned the trash out of my car, got groceries, and made an extensive to-do list for the last few weeks of my pregnancy.

If anyone else told me their day was like that, I’d give them a high-five.

The dirty secret here is that none of those things took much effort, except for the rolling out of bed thing. Hudson’s an exceptionally easy kid to take care of – he mostly entertains himself and in fact often insists that I leave him alone. I generally just let him do his own thing. If he wants me to play with him, then I do, but most of the time I am just in the same room as him, watching him having his fun and making sure he doesn’t get a head wound or anything. I’m able to get a lot done when I babysit, as a result. Today, I texted my brother and taught him to use Mint over the phone and used Jeff and Sarah’s washing machine to take care of the laundry while Hudson spun around in circles and sang songs about Thomas the Tank Engine. I then took Hudson outside for a while and he helped me with my car (his doing – I was going to clean it out myself while he played with chalk. He thought trash was more interesting). As for the groceries, we use Relay Foods now, so all I had to do was drive up and load them into my trunk. The to-do list was something I had been jotting down periodically throughout the day, so it’s not like I really sat down and hammered out a list.

My day was pretty much completed by 4:00 PM.

I guess I’m just conflicted about this. Part of me feels like I should be proud of the fact that I’m able to get a lot done without much work. The other part of me is really concerned that once this baby comes, I’ll be thrown by how difficult it will be. My question to you is this: do I have anything to be worried about, or are my lazy ways totally acceptable?