Well, it took a bit…

Well, it took a bit longer to get her home than we would have liked -- when we went to pick Ellie up from the ER, they told us that they wanted her monitored just a bit longer, so sent us over to our regular vet, where they took her away again. She had a big cone on her head to keep her from biting out her IV line, but otherwise looked fine; cheerful and bouncy. It sucked leaving her again. But we did, and came home, and did much work of various kinds (Kriti and school and household) and in the evening, Kevin went and got her and brought her home. She seems essentially fine, though was a bit quiet, off and on. Does it make you tired to lie in a box for three days? I think it might, especially if you're stressed at not being with your family and having people poke you with IV needles and put a big cone on your head so you can't properly investigate any interesting smells...

We're feeling a bit paranoid about her health now -- up in the garden, I imagine we're going to be watching her pretty closely to be sure she doesn't go near any of the potentially poisonous plants. We're not planting some of them, but we already have iris bulbs coming up from last year, and I really don't want to give up my morning glory if I don't have to. She doesn't normally show any interest in eating most plants, so I think if we watch her for a bit, she should be okay with them. We'll see. Kevin keeps finding and printing out lists of poisonous plants for me. There are lots and lots and lots, including quite a few of my favorites. (Side note: the forsythia started actually blooming yesterday. :-)

My folks were freaked out after my own ER visit this year -- my mom in particular was worried that I'd exhaust myself trying to do too much and would end up miscarrying. They sent us a few hundred dollars and said to use the money for a cleaning service. Mostly, we've just been cleaning ourselves, because I really do feel fine, most of the time, aside from the fibroid pains which the doctor doesn't think are doing anything actually bad. But today, we did schedule someone to come and clean. Why today? Well, for one, our windows are kind of filthy, from all the construction that's been going on outside (our neighborhood is gentrifying at a prodigious rate, with every other house on the block being knocked down for condos), and when I try to clean them, the smell of the Windex makes me nauseous and dizzy. Apparently some cleaning supplies have pretty bad chemicals for pregnant women, so Kevin keeps telling me not to try to use them.

More importantly, though, my parents are coming to visit on Thursday. So rather than panic about how messy the house is, and whether we can clean it to my mom's exacting standards (I swear, there were times growing up when I think she kept our house cleaner than some hospitals I've been in), we're going to pay someone to do it, using the money she provided. That feels appropriate somehow.

I do have to resist the urge to clean up *for* the cleaning person. I mean, the counter is messy -- shouldn't I wipe it down? Someone's coming over! I swear, my brain is just nuts sometimes. I'm going to restrain myself to getting the dishes into the dishwasher before she arrives, and then I'm going back to my grading. Really.

(And is the desire to clean merely a way to procrastinate grading? Do you even need to ask?)