The Computer Vet Weblog

September. How can it be September already? Wasn’t it just January? Wasn’t Viola just surprising me with the pregnancy test last week? “September,” she said. “I did the math in my little book, and the baby is due in September.” Well, that’s fine. September is a long way away. We’ve got the whole year ahead of us. We’ve got the rest of winter, and that always lasts a while. Then comes spring, and even though it doesn’t last very long around here, that still takes up a few weeks. Then we have summer. Summers here are always long, and they always seem to drag on forever, so all the time we’re sweltering through the summer we won’t have to worry about the baby coming. September is, like, the first day of fall. And who wants to think about the first day of fall when you’re sitting here nice and comfortable in the middle of January?

Well, it’s not January anymore. All those other months seemed to zip right on by, and the summer, while certainly sweltering, didn’t seem to drag on quite as long as I remember in years past. It all was one big long blur, one long time lapse montage showing Viola’s belly growing bigger and bigger. And now here we are in September. The countdown on the board in the kitchen says there are two weeks and two days left. Sixteen days left of normal life, although our life so far this year certainly hasn’t been anything close to normal. Bi-weekly doctors visits, prenatal vitamins, maternity shopping, these are not part of a normal life. But it still seems normal enough. We both get up. We both go to work. There is no third person to worry about. There won’t be a third person to worry about until sixteen days from now.

In the meantime, there is still work to do at the house. This evening I opened up the door to the soon-to-be-nursery, which was formerly the guest room slash dumping ground for all the junk we couldn’t find a place for. I opened up the door and it looked like this:

I almost broke down in tears. Undaunted, I put on the gloves and readied the toxic waste barrel, and set to work. A couple of hours later, I had it looking like this:

Progress, at least. Now we I just have to rip up the carpet, prime it with Kilz®, paint the walls, and move all the baby furniture in. On top of that I’ll have to turn some water into wine, balance the California budget, and bring peace to Iraq. Might as well whip up something for dinner too, while I’m at it.

Sixteen days.