Weekend Accomplishments

My husband and puppy are racing one another up the driveway as I type.  The torrential rain of earlier today has slowed to a trickle, and I think they enjoyed their few minutes outside the house, at last.  Yes.  Wear that puppy OUT.

 

It’s been a quiet weekend, and a relaxing one, although not without accomplishments.  I polished our three pieces of silver (which had been looking more like brass lately), cleaned the bathrooms, brushed the itchy animals (summer coats are coming in), vacuumed the upholstered furniture and all the rugs, did yoga, picked up some books at the library, and read one of the Agatha Christies that I’d selected from cover to exciting cover.  We took a long two mile walk yesterday, and went out to find two very cool weatherbeaten frames today, in which will go the pirate treasure maps that we ordered from etsy.com.  I took approximately seven hundred photographs of Jack’s room, of which I will share an appropriate handful, so you can see his nearly finished nest.  We tried to make the most we could of the small space, and many pieces of furniture are performing double duty, but I think we’ve made a workable compromise between a comfortable guest room and a workable baby’s room.  You’ll note that we will be spelling his name Jak from now on.  Unfortunately, the "C" in his name decided it could no longer go on, and flung itself dramatically from its perch on Jak’s closet door.  It survived the fall, but alas its delicate foam body was no match for our ferocious monster-dog, and it was very quickly dispatched, and is now a little pile of blue foam pieces scattered on the floor (and I daresay throughout Virgil’s digestive tract.)

 

My greatest accomplishment this weekend was to give myself a pedicure.  No mean feat (har har) at this stage of the game.  It’s sloppy, I got nail polish all over myself, and the left foot looks like a five year old painted it, but they look miles better than they did.  My feet will probably be one of the first things Ja(c)k sees when he comes out – I don’t want him to recoil in horror and try to crawl back in.  I thought of this yesterday as I scratched an itch on my right leg with the callous on my left heel.  Very handy to have hoary hobnail feet when one is unable to bend and scratch an itch on one’s lower leg – handy, but not at all attractive.  I myself will be staring at my toes for many hours on an upcoming day, and I didn’t want to be distracted by thinking about how wretched they look, so I limbered up for about ten minutes and then went to work.  I’m keeping my fingernails in perfect condition as well, in anticipation of all the upcoming pictures that will be taken of my hands holding a baby.  I will have bags under my eyes, indescribable hair, probably look sick and sweaty and bruised, but by hook or by crook I will have everyone exclaiming about the condition of my clean and well shaped nails.  (Who am I kidding?  From Ja(c)k’s birth-day on, there will no longer be any eyes on me, that’s for sure!)

 

Tonight we’ll watch a movie, or do something similarly untaxing.  It’s not so bad, this waiting game – we’re trying to enjoy our last few days of freedom.  I’ve now decided that Jack will be born one week early – on April 23, Shakespeare’s birthday.  That’s what he’s waiting for, of course, I was silly not to realize before.  Only a few days now.

 

So, in honor of my son’s upcoming shared birthday with the bard, I will close this blog then with a reprint of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 2, one I had to memorize years ago and never forgot.  I can’t vouch for the punctuation or spelling, I’ll just type it as I remember it.

 

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow

And dig deep trenches in they beauty’s field

Thy youth’s proud livery, so gazed on now 

Will be a tatter’d weed, of small worth held.

 

Then being asked where all they beauty lies

Where all the treasure of thy lusty days

To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes

Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.

 

How much more praise deserves they beauty’s use

If thou could’st answer – This fair child of mine

Shall sum my count and make my old excuse –

Proving his beauty, by succession, thine!

 

This were to be new made when thou art old

And to see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold.