Rats and Straws

All this insanity going on, and I forgot to post about the rat at work.

[Either that, or I DID post about the rat at work, and my pregnant brain can't remember it.]

So, a couple weeks ago, I get in and there's all these pieces of plastic on the floor. I slowly figure out it's the lid to my can of nuts... THE can of nuts that is SAFE for Gestational Diabetes. There's also a couple of nuts on the floor. I show my co-worker, and I email our maintenance dude that we have a RODENT.

At the end of work, I toss all the food on my shelves away. I can just see the rodent crawling all over my stuff. I don't lysol my desk, but I do lysol where my food had been on my shelves. I ensure that the only food I'm leaving in my shared office is in the filing cabinet.

Then, the following week, while I was out sick on Monday (chills/cold sweats/exhaustion) and Tuesday (3 hours of sleep/exhaustion), the rat came back, and broke into my OTHER jar of nuts. This jar had a HEAVY red plastic lid. It was the nuts I can't eat, because they are salted, and I can feel my blood pressure go up when I munch on them. I left them out on my desk for others to eat. Guess the rat took me up on my hospitality.

My office-mate was at a meeting when I got in. I read (in email) about the 2nd visit of the rat well after I'd put my crap down on top of my desk, in areas the rat might have walked across. Ick.

I lysoled the surface of my desk. I lysoled some items that were on my desk that I take home with me every evening, but otherwise managed to stop myself from going too crazy. The following morning, before I set stuff down, I lysoled the desk again and then set my purse and my lunch pail, etc., down. My poor office-mate opened a window to keep from gagging on the lysol stench. He mentioned that the cleaning lady cleaned off my desk after the rat had been there, and I tell him that I bet she didn't swab it down with an antiseptic. [This is because I watched her use her duster to move the prior can of nuts' lid flakes around the floor to one location so she could easily pick them up. And because she was willing to take some of the food that I'd thrown into the trash (because the rat might have walked around the packaging) and take it home. I mean, yeah, maybe I'm at the extreme end of germaphobia, but she's kindof at the extreme of not caring about germs, LOL! She's a nice person, but I don't think the word "sterilize" is in her vocabulary. :) ]

So, that was the rat situation. It broke into other people's cans of nuts, as well! I guess it really likes nuts!

There's a sticky trap under my desk, but as I no longer have food out, the rat hasn't come back. I suspect that, with everyone hiding food now, it's probably given up and escaped the building.

The rat situation has been going on while all kinds of other things were going on over the past 2 or 3 weeks. But with all the other things, I forgot to blog about the rat. Which is ironic, because having a wild, disease-ridden rodent crawl all over my stuff is like my worst nightmare.

We've had a rat and we've had mice in the house, pooing everywhere, especially in our lower kitchen cabinets, which double both as a place to put pots and pans, as well as a pantry. Trying to clean all of that up periodically drives me totally batty, especially when I realize it's time to also clean ALL OF THE PANS, ETC., that the rodent might have walked over or peed/pooed on. That is a MAJOR task. We've got alot of pots/pans/dishes down there.

If I weren't afraid our dogs would eat it, I would get a cat. A really MEAN cat.

Anyway, no further signs of the rat at work since my food at my desk has been kept in the filing cabinet at night.

Please, don't get me wrong: I don't dislike all rats. Pet rats are great. They are disease free, and can be taught to not go hide in the kitchen and poo everywhere, LOL! It's the wild ones that decide to make themselves pests... or the wild mice. Or cockroaches or termites. Basically, the uninvited guests are the ones that piss me off.

I'm very much an animal person, but when a creature decides to invade my home and defecate everywhere, I get rather murderous thoughts towards it.

So straws. Well, the exhaustion has I think become the last straw.

Wednesday night, 10/10/2007, I was to have my last birthing class. My husband was on travel, due to a mixup in when his conference really was, and so he wasn't going to make the birthing class.

I was at work, sitting there, looking through my birthing class notes to see what the last class was about. And I realized that I didn't really care anymore. I was so tired... all the time. My hips have decided to hurt way more often. Just sitting in the computer chair that day was painful. I figured that was a sign.

I was done. Friggin done.

And after the class, I'd have to come home and try to clean up a little, "find the floor", so our house cleaners would have actual SURFACES to clean Thursday, LOL! And although I care about them dearly, they aren't the greatest at getting food off of our dishes, so I was planning on also doing a ton of dishes, even though that tends to really mess with my back right now. :P

I decided right then and there that I wasn't going to any more evening baby classes when I had been at work all day. Screw that. Yeah, the classes were so I'd be a good mother, and so I'd be informed about labor, etc., etc. But if I didn't get some rest at night, I was going to drop the kid right then and there.

So I skipped out on the last birthing class. And I made a mental note to skip out on next Monday's "breast feeding class". I've read a little about the difficulties some women have breast feeding, and what to do about it. I think I'll just wing it. :P

So that brought it down to 2 more classes. The first is "Baby Basics", which is on a Saturday morning. [It's the makeup class for the one my husband and I were too tired to attend on the morning of the baby shower.] And the last class is a baby CPR class, on a Monday night, but I should be off work by then. Those I don't want to miss.

So yeah. I give up. I'm not superwoman. I'm a tired pregnant woman who has been doing her best to meet everyone's expectations, but who just can't right now.

Besides, all this stuff, all this stress has been distracting me in a way from what it's really all about. It's about this adorable baby boy growing inside of me. It's about talking to him while he's in there, and talking to him when he's finally come out.

I am already in love with our son. He and I have had some long and meaningful conversations. :) Or more often some very silly ones, LOL!

And that's what all of this whole insanity of pregnancy is about: our son.

I love that today, Thursday, he kept squirming around while my ObGyn tried for the longest time to find his heartbeat. At one point she said, "Oh, did you hear that? That's him moving! You're going to have to run after this kid when he's born!" :) She finally found the heartbeat, and thank the Lord, it was in a good range. So far, he seems like he's doing REALLY WELL, even though I've got Gestational Diabetes, even though I'm getting more and more tired and miserable of being pregnant, LOL, and even though I found out that 64 ounces of water a day is actually HALF of what I should be drinking while pregnant!

I think I'll just move my computer at work into the bathroom upstairs, LOL! Yikes. Either that or learn how to catheterize myself and stick a bag down a pant leg.

The irony of drinking THAT MUCH WATER, when your bladder is being squished to a small fraction of it's original size, is hysterical. Then there's the fact that my "What to Expect when you are Expecting" book says not to hold it in if you have to go: just go to the bathroom and go. Why? Because a full bladder CAN bring on premature labor!

Yikes. It's just really amusing to get upstairs into the bathroom and do my thing, and then be like, "What, bladder, you made me come up here for THAT amount? Yeesh." Yes, there are downstairs bathrooms at work... but the upstairs bathroom, well, flushes better, LOL! And is generally cleaner as it's less used. :)

And although it's probably not helping my hips, it's at least giving me SOME exercise.

So, I'm just done. I can't do it all. I give up.

I've got a little under 6 weeks to the due date. This is it, the last stretch.