This weekend, My Guy and I helped his sister and her husband prep their nursery. They've been married a few weeks and are still in the midst of combining households. Their daughter is due in March.
They are going to live in the groom's house, which was his parents' house. It is filled with his deceased parents' stuff. There are pathways, 2 open rooms, and then more pathways. Now, there's also a sort-of clean nursery.
The weekend was emotionally exhausting - maybe that's why I haven't blogged for several days. I have post traumatic stress disorder.
You know that show Hoarders, the one I decided never to watch again after visiting my father-in-law's house? Yeah. This house could totally be on that show. In the driveway, there are 2 broken hot tubs, a dump truck, and 4 maybe-they-run-maybe-they-don't cars.
It's a fine line between My Guy supporting his baby sister and being sucked into someone else's psychosis.
I stuck with my task at hand: cutting in the pale lilac paint in the nursery. Yeah, I freehanded it. Yeah, I'm totally an excellent painter after painting our entire house. Lookit me go!
Except.
In the midst of working my trim magic and trying to ignore the heated "why can't we donate these unopened boxes of Depends?" conversations around me, I realized 2 things: 1) The carpet - which I was lying on - had clearly been marked by a cat; and 2) I was painting someone else's nursery. You know, safely breathing in those paint fumes, like the infertile, completely not-pregnant woman I am.
And then? Then, all I could think about was the Huey Lewis and The News song, "Doin' It All For My Baby." Damn you, Huey Lewis! I love you, but damn you and your baby-centric propaganda!
So, I painted pale lilac walls for my niece. I tried really hard - somewhat unsuccessfully - not to harshly judge her parents and their situation. I hummed Huey Lewis songs and said a little prayer - for her, for me, for us.
Then? I went back to my mother-in-law's house and took a 57-minute hot shower. Because that hoarding stank does not wash off easily.
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7 comments:
So painful for you on so many different levels.
Ugh. That sounds like a fifth of gin kind of day, honey.
I can't even begin to imagine the conflict you must feel, with this already unpleasant family situation so close on the heels of your own infertility diagnosis.
Hoarding is its own sad and gruesome disease, isn't it? If it helps even a little to write about it--remember, we're out here reading your words and nodding, and wishing we could give you a squeeze.
Hang in there, Auntie! She needs you, even if she doesn't know it yet.
Sending hugs your way. If you were closer, I would have already dragged your ass out for a HUGE alcoholic beverage.
Oh God. You nailed me with Huey Lewis. All that teenage angst came flooding back...
GAH. Yes. We have hoarders in this family too. I say to them "you will die one day, nobody will know until you stink terribly, and then I WILL HAVE TO CLEAN YOUR MESS". This has gotten laughs. It is s'posed to get ACTION. be well yerself, sorry for the troubles....
It's not a fair world. It stinks, in a cat-pee-on-carpet sort of way. I've been struck by that a lot lately. It's full of crappy things like cancer and mental illness, and babies being born into bad situations when there are people in good situation who so badly want to have babies... and can't.
I wish you didn't have to go through such pain.
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