Nesting for the winter

Been so busy lately that I have hardly had time to get a full nights sleep so blogging has been totally out of the question. Right now, I have some time in front of the computer because B has bid on a winter coat for Ella and I am waiting to see if we've won. Poor kid is still tramping around in an old, stained sweater coat (she loves it and won't let me wrestle her into anything else) like some kind of toddler hobo while the temperture here in Paris has turned decidedly wintery. Problem is that I am too cheap to just go to the shop and buy a nice Bonpoint coat but all the coats in the budget seem too chintzy so I keep trying to get a deal on Ebay, only to be out bid in the last 30 seconds. But I'm feeling lucky tonight...



So did I mention that B had to have surgery on his knee? And that his stupid doctor told him that he would be walking again in a few days, only its nearly 2 weeks since the surgery and he can just barely get around the house. I had a suspicion that the recovery would be longer than B expected. What I didn't suspect was that running the house on my own would nearly kill me. My god, that guy does a lot of hard work around here. I have seriously been worked off my feet and the worst part is that I haven't even been doing anything special, its just so much more work to get all the daily chores done, especially all those related to baby care, all by myself. I suppose that it doesn't help that I have to get up with Ella in the night and first thing in the morning since B can't be expected to hobble around in the dark on his crutches. So I now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I could not manage as a single mother. Good thing I figured that out before this last weekend because in addition to having to do twice as much work, I had to deal with having B in the house with me non-stop, 24/7, while he laid on the sofa and "suffered". Divorce was rapidly seeming like an attractive option. I tried very hard to be a good little nurse but I have to admit to loosing my cool fairly quickly. After my recent elective surgery, I was back in full mommy mode after 3 days of recuperation. Mr B was still incapable of doing anything more than read a story (so long as Ella carried it over to him, bien sur) in the middle of the second week. There was a bit of tension in the air, perhaps not everyone in the house was getting as much "affection" as they might prefer, a few slammed doors to drive the point home and things have improved a great deal. B is still not walking but he is back on diaper duty.



And probably not incidentally, I have bought a new membership for the Bikram Yoga studio. I decided that since I have a full-time babysitter at home for another week, I might as well take advantage and do a yoga class every day. Its amazing to me that I could get back into it so easily. Normally, 2 hours in that heat just killed me, especially after re-starting classes. This time I've managed to make it through every single class with lots of energy, no overheating, and still manage to work on my form, not just slog my way through the poses in between sucks on my water bottle. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I am in shape (and 2 hours in front of a mirror in spandex clothing has definitely removed any illusions that I might have had in that direction) but I'm not as out of shape as I thought I was. Plus, its an excellent way to burn off all the negative energy that I was stock-piling while watching the master lay around, eating bon-bons and catching up on all his tabloid reading.



He has done one useful thing while laying around. Our kitchen renovation project has gotten kicked into high gear. Part of my exhaustion this past two weeks has been due to all the appointments I have had with different kitchen design places, trying to decide which brand we would work with. Ultimately, the decision was incredibly simple. I went with the guy who gave me a rendez-vous for the day that I phoned and who also managed to give me a rough estimate of the cost at the end of this meeting. I am admittedly an impatient person but I had the impression that even if I walked into one of these stores with a carrier bag of hundred euro bills, they would still wave me off and refuse to take my money before I had had 5 appointments and tattooed their name with LUV 4EVER on my derriere. Anyways, that is another post, which I promise will be illustrated by photos of the decisions currently keeping me awake at night.

Anyways, one very exciting event today was buying tickets to the Amy Winehouse concert next Monday. I had been totally bummed out when I missed out on tickets the first time around, having hesitated a day too long. I kind of have AW on my mind lately because I STILL haven't added any other music to my Ipod and it crossed my mind that the concert was coming up, maybe some more tickets had been released. Apparently the concert has been moved to the Zenith so there were tons of new tickets on sale from Monday morning and I snagged a few. Its not quite so exciting as seeing her play at the Olympia but I'm still looking forward to it. Crossing my fingers that she doesn't get arrested again between now and then. Or overdose or go into rehab, either I suppose.

Oh- and good news. I won the coat! My little matchstick girl will make it through the winter.