2/25/11 Nesters Anonymous

My name is Quirky, and I have a problem. I've become an Extreme Nester.

Normally, pregnancy nesting is a good thing. You set up the nursery, you clean out a closet or two, maybe you even wipe down a counter. Not me. Apparently, I am an Extreme Nester. The Bear Grylls of nesting. I'm drawing up blueprints to add a a 15oo square foot extension to the house. I'm terracing the back yard. I'm renting a backhoe to put in a pond with three-tiered waterfall feature and meditation bridge.

Never mind that I can't see my feet...what we really need now is an Old World style tumbled stone driveway! Lead me to the quarry! I'll dig the stones out myself!

It started out innocently enough. A little laundry, a little vacuuming. Then I borrowed Mom's Shark streamer and steam sanitized every room in the house. (I'm not sure how Baby Girl will be able to get to the top of the kitchen cabinets, but if she does, she'll find them cleaned with the sanitizing power of steam! And then wiped down with a Lysol wipe! And then steamed again!)

But it turns out that the steamer was just the beginning. A gateway cleaner, if you will. After that, I started mixing the hard stuff: baby hormones and HGTV.

Don't get me wrong. I love HGTV. They're wonderful at giving you great ideas and showing you how to do stuff around your home and garden. The problem is, they give you ideas and show you how to do stuff around your home and garden. And combined with the potent baby hormones and too much free time on your hands, suddenly you find yourself going, "The baby needs a herringbone brick patterned outdoor pizza oven on the patio and SHE NEEDS IT NOW!"

Poor Tony. He can't keep up. In an effort to keep me from overdoing, he's trying to do all the projects for me. I've already had him digging holes and transplanting bushes and raking leaves and building a raised flowerbed and dragging off downed tree limbs. (And that was just the little stuff!) I thought he was going to cry when he came home to discover that they were building a two story gazebo on the latest episode of Outdoor Spaces.

Tony's only saving grace is that this can't go on much longer. First, I only have a few weeks left, and second, we're running out of room in the backyard. Then the baby will come and the fever will break. And I'll be too sleep deprived to even remember how to turn the TV on, much less try to duplicate my own dream yard.

In the mean time, they're putting in a zen garden on Curb Appeal! Oh! Baby Girl will love it! (And after dragging in 500 pounds of sand and decorative stones, poor Tony could probably use a little more zen too.) I'll put it on the nesting list.