Pre Baby

I've decided to start a blog to keep track of my thoughts before and after my son is born. I was inspired by my friend Bob Densmore and his blog, which covers his less joyful experiences with cancer, but I'm happy to say he's doing well.

According to the tally on my whiteboard at work, we are 18 days away from Dana's "Guess Date". Our birthing class leader likes to use this term rather than "Due Date" since it sounds less demanding and set-in-stone. I tend to agree, but of course nobody else understands what this means. The same is true for "Birthing Waves" vs. "Contractions", "Birthing" vs. "Labor", etc. It's obvious that the traditional vocabulary of child birth is not very sensitive, but I'm not a huge fan of redefining perfectly functional language.

We are both reluctant to commit to much of anything. We will almost certainly go to Longmont United Hospital for the birth, we will probably call him Alex, we will probably have him sleep in our bedroom for now... But we haven't made final decisions. I think this is pretty normal for us, and parenthood won't change things that much.

Meanwhile my big remodelling project at home is careening towards completion. A little under 2 years ago I decided that the uptairs east bedroom of our house was too cold and needed to be insulated. Being a 100-year old home, this was perhaps not surprising. What was surprising was how long it has taken me to get things finished! I am definately under budget, but waaaaay over on schedule.

As of last weekend, I had all the drywall installed, mudded, and taped. The new windows were installed. The patches to the plaster walls in the living room downstairs were done, except for texture & paint. Remaining to be done was:

• Wall Texture
• Paint
• Heat
• Carpet
• Trim
• Stain

Last night I invited my friend Sterling over to take a look. Sterling is a drywall master. He has done drywall professionally for 25 years. I should have known better. Sterling is a super nice guy, but he held no punches in analyzing the finish work we'd done. He pointed out a number of problems, including bubbling tape, uneven joints, and the need for more feathering of the seams.

I always have to fight the urge for perfection, to quell my obsessive nature. But in this case I'm afraid Sterling is right, on at least a few counts.

Lucky for me this is a 3-day weekend (Thank you George Washington). I will spend a day or so going over the joints with more mud. But I'm only going to spend a day or two on it!

Oh wait, I just remembered this is supposed to be about my son, who is on his way. Right. Well, most of my energy so far has gone into finishing this remodelling project, so I think that counts for now. I'll try to share more about the little guy as I go.

I'm definately excited, and maybe when he gets older he and I can work on this kind of stuff together.