Meatballs and carpentry. Meatballish carpentry?

I honestly don’t remember what happened on Monday. I think I fell asleep on the couch before lunch, woke up at about 2:30 and then ate and cleaned a bit. Yeah, that seems about right. I had to sweep because I needed to move the bookshelf from the bedroom to the lounge and wanted the floor where it was going to be spotless.

Tuesday I moved the bookshelf. It’s a tiny little thing we got from Ikea when Dad was here, but it’s rather heavy. I had to drag it, very slowly, to move it. It must be made of real wood. I think it is, that sounds like something I would pick. I got everything to fit on it nice and neat, but I need to rearrange a bit. Because it is right by the couch, I see it when I’m watching tv, and last night could not stop staring because it was bugging me. The top shelf (there are only 3 shelves) is dvds, and because I did it as 2 layers, they poke out ever so slightly. Which would be fine, except the middle shelf is books about dvd sized (in width, anyway) so they seem reaaaaalllly far back in comparison. I think I have to pull out the back row of DVDs, turn them so they face front instead of the spine facing front, and split them over the two levels. Or I need to get another piece of wood and shelf-holders so there could be 4 shelves. 4 shelves would totally work…

I had to move the bookshelf because I needed to make space for A’s crib. I was going to also shift the position of the change table and another piece of furniture in our room, but once I got the bookshelf out I realised that spot looks perfect for the crib. Plus, less work for me (well, Jake. There is no way I’d be able to move either of those things without hurting myself and scratching up the floor) which is always nice.

This morning I woke up at 6. Partially because I needed to pee, partially because Jake got out of bed, and partially because the heater was cracking. That is normally a sign that it is on, but we turn it off overnight (even last night, when it apparently got down to 4F (-15C)) so I was confused. I asked Jake to touch it, and he said it was warm, even though it was clearly off on the thermostat. Confusion! (By the time I got up at 7:30 it was cold and not cracking, so I don’t know what was going on there.) I stayed in bed for 90 minutes, trying to trick my body into thinking it got a decent amount of rest, especially because I have to get up early tomorrow (dentist yay) and also because I was scared of how cold it would be out of the bed. Under the doona and the delicious soft warm red blanket, and on top of the mattress and the delicious warm pink blanket, I had a cocoon of delicious warmth. heh. I would have stayed but I got too hungry, and couldn’t work out a way to eat oatmeal without at least sitting up, so I got up. Jake still made my food for me though. He stirred it on the stove while I washed the dishes to warm myself up a bit. Mmm, delicious oatmeal.

Once Jake went to work at 8:30, I opened up the box with the crib in it. The instructions were stuck to the spring-thing the mattress sits on, so I had to take everything out of the box in order to know what to do. Then I had to put everything back in the order it was, because it had been packed so the first things you need are on top. Kinda silly with the instructions at the bottom though…

I got as far as halfway through step 1.

There are 3 holes that are used to connect the leg to the side, 2 at the bottom and 1 at the top. The top hole… it lines up for only 1 of the legs. The rest, it is slightly askew so the screws (stupid allen key) can’t go in at all. If it was for something like a bookshelf or whatever, I’d work out a way to fix the holes or jam the screws in. But I’m not going to do that for my baby’s bed, don’t want any kind of risk involved in the construction of that.

So with the help of my darling mother-in-law, Lisa, we’ve called around and found a store with another crib in stock (otherwise it was wait 2 weeks for one to be ordered in. At this point in the game, that could be pushing it). I was hoping to have the crib set up to show her on Saturday (baby shower day!) but now she’ll be taking the crib with her, and returning on Wednesday with a fresh one that hopefully has all the holes and bits and pieces lined up perfectly. Matt (bonus-father-in-law) will be coming over then too, he wants to help me put it all together. I don’t need help, but ok. Hopefully we work together as well as my Dad and I did when we ‘built’ the bookshelf and tv unit. And if not, I’m totally capable of constructing things by myself.

I love flat-pack furniture, it’s like a 3D jigsaw puzzle that you get to use productively once complete.

This afternoon, I made 2 curry chicken pot pies (that so aren’t pie, more… casserole with puff pastry pieces on top), and I’m so excited to eat one for dinner tonight. Have to make space in the freezer for the other one. Freezer is already rather full of soup and pasta sauce and things, delicious things, so we can have home cooked meals even when I’m too pregnant to think straight or too busy with a fresh baby to bother cooking. Ooh, and there is a ham bone in there so we can have beans & cornbread one night. Not that that meal involves brainpower, but Lisa will probably be cooking that. FOOD!

Ooh, speaking of food, we found these awesome chicken meatballs at the store-next-door, so we had pasta with tomato sauce and meatballs the other night (best part – one of the gifts Jake got from the work xmas party was a giftcard to that store, so they were FREE meatballs!) and it was soooo goood. Had it with garlic bread. It was like going out to eat, only I could recline and remove clothes and things because my belly was too big and restricted by clothes. Can’t really do those things out in public.

On a slightly connected note, I noticed I have stretchmarks on my belly now. Only on the bottom part though, the part I can’t see. I only noticed them because I was trying to take a picture of my belly botton (which is still holding on, but only barely. Such an amusing little dip in belly-topography) for Photo 366. Which I’m not doing officially or anything. I figured it makes SO MUCH SENSE to take pictures every day for the whole year, it will be filled with so much that needs to be photographed. And hopefully I will end up with massive amounts of gorgeous nature photos as well so I can make a lovely calendar for 2013. This year’s calendar was a bit of a stretch, most of the photos are from Aus when we were there in Dec/Jan and compared to the 2011 calendar that I made (I did photo365 in 2010) the photos are kinda crappy. That’s what happens when you have less to choose from.

Must stop rambling and put the crib pieces back in the box. Have to make space so we can move in the bedroom again.