Failure to Lurch

There are few times when I throw down the gloves and whole-heartedly admit defeat. However, pregnancy has taught me many lessons lately, and awareness of my limitations is just one. My limitations are both physical and mental, it seems. Lying under a sink 8 months pregnant was just plain stupid, I can admit that now, and the nightmare I had last night about said sink exploding and water spewing everywhere was just what I deserved. Also, I don’t seem to have any cold water, just hot, so despite the apparent functionality things aren’t what they seem. I'm going to try to run the dishwasher here shortly, which should be hilarious.

My only other stupid to-do item was to install two little harmless dimmer switches, one for the Master Bedroom and one for the Nursery, the two places where I would want to make sure Little Precious knew it was always quiet time. The Master went ok, except that there’s an odd hum coming from the fixture that I find a little disturbing since I sleep directly underneath. The Nursery, on the other hand…

First of all, understand that in order to ‘do this right’ and not send tasty piping-hot electricity through Junior, I had to flip the breaker switch in the control panel in the garage. So I did that. I then hauled my enormous derrière upstairs to take out the existing light switch and realized that the ceiling fan and light were on the same switch. Hm. I wrestled the wires out, breaking off a piece in the box in the process, and decided that maybe I could just hook up the new switch without the fan wire. So I tried this, and went back to the garage, where the breaker wouldn’t flip. So back upstairs I went, and tried to undo what I had done. However, since I had left a nice little piece of copper wire in the original box, I couldn’t hook it all back up. So I tried doing it without hooking up the fan. Back down to the garage. Back upstairs. Didn’t work. So I next decided to use the box I had taken from the Master bedroom. Hooked everything up. Back down to the garage. Back upstairs. It worked, then blew the breaker. I thought I might have switched the wires, so I made a swap. Back down to the garage. Back upstairs. Didn’t work. Switched the wires back and tried once more. Back down to the garage (you’re starting to get the idea, aren’t you? I also want you to realize just how steep my stairs are, and that I have 194 lbs of dead weight out front), back upstairs. Starting to really sweat despite the AC keeping my house a pregnancy-comfortable 67 degrees. Anyhow, it worked again, then blew the breaker again, so I tore the damn thing out and decided to leave it and call my favorite handyman. I went back down to the garage and flipped the breaker one more time so I’d at least have hall lights, but at some point it blew again, so now I’m worried that I’ve done real damage. Plus I’m mad at myself for being an idiot and not being able to do something so simple. AND I have to call someone to fix something really simple, so I feel like a helpless girl, which I despise. And I wished I was dead because I was so exhausted and I had a couple contractions in there somewhere and my back was killing me.

So the lesson for today, kids, is to NOT DO ANYTHING THAT ISN’T POSITIVELY NECESSARY when you’re eight months pregnant. Because I didn’t learn from my horrible afternoon. Nope, I decided I had to start post-baby cooking, and made a double batch of enchiladas for the freezer. It wasn’t until AFTER that, at 9 pm, that I really and truly wanted to die, so I had a little hormonal self-pitying cry and took a bath and put myself to bed.

Today’s project is to switch out my television sets, but I swear I will wait until the handyman gets here and see if I can throw some money at him so he’ll do it. And then that’s it, absolutely, I promise. I’m all unpacked so there shouldn’t be any more lifting or bending. Maybe one or two more curtains/blinds to hang…