37 weeks: trouble at home

So as luck would have it, as soon as we have the nursery together, the rest of the house falls apart.

As some of you may know, Jeff has just finished re-establishing a backyard of lush green grass after a blight of lawn-killing grubs. This entailed a chemical treatment, tilling and pulling up the dead grass, seeding, and a twice a day watering schedule. All was well in our backyard. Upon rising and making his coffee in the morning it would not be uncommon for Jeff to gaze out our kitchen window and remark on how beautiful our new lawn had finally become.

That was until one morning Jeff noticed a black hole had been dug into the lawn, six feet in diameter. A little investigation pointed to the culprit: a large animal, likely a raccoon. And likely one that had, at some point, feasted on grubs in our yard. Perhaps he was upset at our lack of supply, and took it out on our lawn, ripping it to shreds. The next night he came back to further vent his frustrations.

We picked up a trap at the police department to catch our little friend. It took two nights, but we caught the rascally digger with strawberries and peanut butter. He had to hang out in the cage for the rest of the day, until Jeff came home from work. I tried to make his stay as non-Gitmo as possible by feeding him a couple of times and keeping him comfortable by covering his cage with an old piece of carpet. His growling and attempts to bite me made me feel unappreciated. Oh well. That night, we completed the little criminal's relocation plan by dropping him off at an undisclosed location, far, far, from our house (at the encouragement of our police department, surprisingly). If he found his way back, I can only imagine the amount of damage he may have committed in retaliation.


With that behind us, on to the next problem... I had a plumber come out to clear a couple of slow drains in our bathrooms. Let me just say, first off, that Jeff was opposed to bringing in a human plumber, favoring instead the liquid variety. Well, that being the case, it is no surprise then that the real plumber would cause a real problem. While aggressively rodding the second drain, he busted a pipe, letting loose a waterfall in our utility room in the basement. Just my luck. This week the plumber will be tearing out some of our subfloor and part of a wall to access the broken section of pipe that just so happens to be embedded in concrete. What a convenient place for the pipe to burst.

Two hours after the waterfall, a loud buzzing noise in our front yard alerted me to the fact that our brand new driveway curtain was being destroyed. I ran outside to see what was happening. It took a few minutes for the worker to see me waving my arms at him, he was so distracted with the fun of tearing up our driveway. We put up with construction on our street for the past 7 months until last week when most of the rubble and orange lawn ornaments had disappeared. It seems that a mistake had been made in the type of pipes they used to drain water to the sewer. Now driveways and curbs up and down the street are once again torn up.

Not even an hour before the plumber showed up, I had a mini panic attack for no reason. When I saw that water flowing down the wall, I was ready to cry. By the time the driveway was being destroyed, I could only laugh in resignation. I guess I'm not too capable of dealing with surprise situations at this point in pregnancy. We've just built this damn nest, it upsets me to see it pulled apart! Good thing it was nothing too serious.

Oh, and our little baby is doing well, thank you.