Emotional Nesting : A Short-ish Story

This is what the living room looked like when we first moved in...wall to wall boxes with little wood floor canals to walk in between. Dickie the Cat LOVED it. It was like her own little landscape to walk around and up and over. She was Queen of Mt. Box there for a while...I guess she still is queen of Mt. Box.

 So, I had a pretty emotional weekend, last weekend. This is the most I've cried while being pregnant and I took lots of deep breaths as to try not to effect the baby too negatively...I haven't a clue if that helped or if he could sense my emotions. Or maybe sensing my emotions isn't a bad thing for the baby? (I also learned that babies cry in the womb. I hope I didn't make him cry.)

So, most of you know this: Our house is very crowded with bookshelf-lined-walls, piles of boxes, bicycles, boxed up and framed artwork. It's overwhelming for me to say the least. I have a yarn collection problem and Mike has a book, shoe, shirt, shorts, vinyl, bicycle, hummingbird feeder, cheese grater, bike parts problem. We had a plan to move into a different place in order to help with simplifying our home and preparing for the baby but we've decided to stay put and I told Mike, "If we stay we still must simplify." Mike wholeheartedly agreed. So, UNC graduation came and went and Mike said, "I'll start with the house stuff one week after graduation because the color processor will be on and I want to maximize that time to make artwork." I swear he said one week. (He is making pretty artwork tho!) I said that was fine but that I was anxious about it all. Second week goes by. Nothing. At the end of that second week he said, "Let's clean the office out this Sunday." OH HAPPY DAY! 

This is our place when we lived in Albuquerque. This is not as crazy as what our living room looks like in Chapel Hill...and this room was kinda crazy.

 So, this is what I know about Mike, you cannot push him and nag and prod him about something, otherwise it's counteractive and he either gets overwhelmed or frustrated. So I have learned to become the master seed planter. (Or so I like to call myself.) I give him gentle hints, I tell him how a situation makes me feel and how he can assist me and hope that on his own time frame he will be ready to act. It takes patience, but it works, maybe not always so smoothly, but it WORKS! 

So, my seed planting grew into a beautiful stalk in the form of:

Oh, it was pretty, that statement even had flowers growing off of it. Sunday arrived. I got up early as usual and ate first breakfast. I putzed around the office (which has my yarn and some of my books and the computer and printers and scanner.) I consolidated as much stuff as I could and made up many give away bags. I moved as much stuff out as I could (light stuff) to prep for the big box and furniture moving. Sleepy Mike got up and I made second breakfast. We ate. He drank his coffee and slowly woke up. Meanwhile I went in for my morning nap, you know that second breakfast wiped me out. Then I awoke from my slumber and said, "O.K. I'm ready." I went into the office and started and then Mike came in and said, "Tell me when you're ready to move the big stuff." and I said, "I'm ready now." So he moved some stuff out of the way. I said, "I'm going to sit here and sketch out a layout of the room." and he said, "I'm going to watch the Indy 500."

WHAT?!

He doesn't even like the Indy 500. Mike went into the living room and then I started bawling crying. HA! I felt abandoned. I felt like I was the only one doing anything. He came back in and saw my face covered in snot and tears and he said, "Oh no! It's me isn't it?" I said, "I just feel like we're never going to get anything done. We have so much stuff." Our timing just seemed to be off: I was up, he was sleeping. He was up, I was sleeping. I was ready, he wasn't. It was a crappy start to an (Oh) Happy Day(!) My tears brought communication. Our communication brought action. The funny thing is, this office is probably the least cluttered place in the house (well, maybe second to the bathroom.) We thought we were starting on a room that would be easy breezy.

Big fat HA! 

Here is Mike unwrapping glass baby jars that my Grandma would put her homemade guava jelly in. The last time I went to visit her (while I was still in grad school) I hauled them all to New Mexico thinking I could make art with them somehow. I never did and they somehow made the move to NC. So this is proof that I have some collecting tendencies too!

Mike told me to take a break and said, as he looked around the room that appeared to have been hit by a hurricane, "I don't want you to go into labor now."  So, I took a break. I sat on the love seat in the living room and started crying again. Sitting there surrounded by bookshelves and boxes that seemed to be caving in all around me caused me to freak out again. So I got up and started going through stuff again. It felt so good to put books and at least 1/3 of my yarn in give away bags. The room is still in disarray but it looks so much better than it did before. There's even room for a crib (if we decide to ever get an actual crib)!

Sunday went and Monday came. I had Monday off for Memorial Day. I got up early again and started going through more stuff (getting closer and more organized!) Mike made blueberry pancakes, yum! I dropped Mike off at school where he did some art and studio organization and I took the car into Durham to get some storage bins and a decaf mocha frappucino, which hit the spot right in the center of my new pregnant sweet tooth. Later that evening we went to our friend Joe's house for his birthday where he made delicious tacos and the heaviest, moistest chocolate cake.  Then we came home and I did some odds and ends around the kitchen. Before going in to lay down for bed I went to plant a seed and said to Mike, "Let's both accomplish at least one thing around the house every day. It can be as small as going through that paper bag of stuff to selling all of those boxes of books." He agreed. So I went to lay down and played some handheld Yahtzee and tears just started pouring out of my eyeballs. "Dear me, what now," is what I thought to myself. I became overwhelmed again. There is a huge bookshelf towering over me in bed. So I moved to the foot of the bed and put the oscillating fan on me. I said to myself over and over again,

"It's not the end of the world if we don't have a de-cluttered house by the time the baby comes. It's not the end of the world if we don't have a de-cluttered house by the time the baby comes." 

And then I saw the stacks of t-shirts, the piles of shoes and the tears came. I started fantasizing about catching a plane to Hawaii and telling Mike, "I'm not coming back until all of your crap is gone." And tears flowed. And then I fantasized about throwing everything out the front door in a rage. And tears flowed. Then Mike walks in while brushing his teeth and asks his preggo wife lying at the foot of the bed with the fan on her if she's o.k. and I said in a cracking voice, "I'm trying to distract myself from my emotions." Which I almost did before I started these crazy fantasies. He said, "I'll be right back."and he went to rinse his mouth. When he came back we had a really good talk. I told him that I didn't think it was necessary to have piles of clothes and shoes that didn't fit in the closet. I told him that we need to do something with all the books; we don't need all of those books. I told him that I feel like I can't relax in my own home without getting overwhelmed. I told him that I don't want to be a nagging wife and that I know that pushing him to hard would be counteractive. I told him about my fantasies of going to Hawaii. I told him that I would be willing to get rid of more of my stuff. I told him that I think that having less stuff will allow us to function better, relax in our home and be less stressful people. I told him while choking back tears (even while realizing how ridiculous I sounded),

"My dream is to have a couch." 

I told him that it was a simple dream. He said, "What do you mean simple?" And I said, "A simple and silly dream to have a couch." And he said, "A new one?" and I said, "Yes, or a nice used one." It was hilarious. Really. That's my dream. To have a couch...or more specifically to have a living room that has enough room for a couch. We have a little love seat - which I like to call a "hate seat." It's tiny. You can barely recline and relax. That's my dream. He took it all in so well. He appreciated my forthrightness and took it all in. In this instance more than a seed planting was in order - we both needed to lay out the garden plans with our already sprouted seedlings. Anyways, I think I'm what you call "nesting" but it's hard to "nest" when you don't have a lot of control over the objects in the nest.

The next morning he gave me a call at work and told me that his co-worker, Abby, was going to get a truck and put all of his stuff in it and drive it away. She said that he could chase the truck and pull things off if he wanted but that she would just keep putting the stuff on and driving. Thank you Abby. He also said that he was looking up hoarding and saving money on the interwebs and how those two things just might have a cause and effect relationship with one another. This is one of my favorite things about Mike. He will take action if you ask him to. It's just a matter of asking him to - and of course it has to be realistic, he's no pushover. He said to me the other night, "I don't want to be the cause of your misery." I told him he wasn't (yet, ha!) and that I still love him even if he has all of this crap that seems to be caving in on me. He knows how I feel and what I'm thinking about the house and after our talk I now know what he is thinking and am clear on what his timeline is. Being clear and communicative is so helpful. We are learning and growing and changing amidst a huge change a-comin' on a nearing horizon. Wish us luck.

P.S. I am feeling so much less frazzled. Talking to your spouse is obviously a good thing. :)