Our whole family – 2 adults, 2 cats, 2 dogs – are living in our basement this week. One room down here is finished, it’s Den’s “man room” with the big-screen TV, XBox, his computer, couch. We are sleeping on the futon mattress – just the mattress, on the floor. We are both very sore and cranky. It’s only a full size mattress, and compared to our king size it feels like we are crammed onto a postage stamp – and that’s when it’s just us, without any of the furry creatures climbing on too. (The dogs have been smart and have stayed off, mainly I think because they see how uncomfortable we are all crammed in!) My hips hurt, this mattress is far too solid for me. Even Den is complaining that it’s not comfortable. He may choose to sleep on the couch tonight to see if that’s any better. Maybe that will help me, too.

One of the cats is about two seconds from being throttled at any given time of the night. He’s our resident idiot – he’s lovable as all hell, but dumber than a box of rocks. He likes to cuddle. He likes to lay right up at your head and roll all over you. He likes this – and he does not get the freaking hint that we are not so appreciative at 3am. All fucking night long, every 10 minutes, the cat steps on your head. We can feel him coming, walking closer on the couch, then his giant fat-cat-paws land on your hair/face/whatever and we start flailing around, eventually tossing him heartily off the bed. And you know what? He comes right back. We’re going to murder him. (This is the reason he is NOT allowed in the bedroom.) And here he comes again. Why can’t he just sleep at my feet like a normal cat?

And then I have the unique situation (at least in this house) of being kicked from the inside all night, too. Every time I roll over – which is often, given how uncomfortable this mattress is – Kate starts up again, rolling to whatever side I’m laying on and kicking away at the side of my belly that is pressed up against the mattress. Not that this is something that I mind – it’s very reassuring – but at the same time after a half hour of being pummeled I start wishing I could just fall asleep.

All in all the dogs are the easiest ones to deal with, and who expected that? Not us! They’re not trying to dart upstairs like the cats are, they’re happy just to have us down here spending all our time with them. They sleep in their crates (which we moved downstairs) out of free will, though Zeeke also has a fondness for falling asleep on the carpet right beside the mattress – he really prefers to be within reach of us at all times.

Oh, and my anxiety attacks have gone away after that first initial freak-out. It’s still hard to be living without access to most of our stuff, but we’re keeping busy with house projects and soon we’ll be moving our stuff back in. We want to get baseboard put in before we do that, though! Which is an exciting thought – we haven’t had baseboards in here since we tore out the paneling in 2006.

Den and I are positively giddy when we stand in our living room. Little by little we see this house take form and it just feels so good. This is never going to be the perfect house, it’s certainly not a large house, it’s not a new house. It’s a fixer-upper. But every year we turn it more into our house. Every bit of paint, moulding, flooring… it’s all us. With the exception of bigger projects, like the fence installation and hardwood floor refinishing we’ve done almost all of it ourselves. And neither of us are contractors. We’re just homeowners, trying to figure it out. It’s a lot of hard work, but it’s all worth it when at the end of the day when we can stand back and say, “Wow, I didn’t know we could do that! That looks awesome!” Of course that can get dangerous when we finish one project and start thinking, hmmm, we could do the bathroom just as easily…

Of course with a 2-month deadline we’re feeling mighty motivated to get everything that we can done now. I’ve been putting money away all winter, just waiting for the warmer weather to arrive so we could dive into everything. The other side benefit of all of our hard work has been keeping me busy and distracted. The weeks are going by fairly quickly, and I don’t have the time or energy to sit and worry about every little thing about the pregnancy – which I could easily do, left to my own devices. I definitely check in with Kate a lot during the day, and do my kick counts and “how was she moving” notes every evening, but I just don’t have time to start imagining scenarios and freaking myself out.