in with the new

happy new year, reader. the baron can hardly believe it's 2010. it seems to her that only very recently was she worried about y2k viruses and the like, but alas: time, she passes.

the baron, as a university employee, enjoyed a pretty hefty chunk of time away from work, from a few days before christmas to a few days after new year's day. in the months running up to this break she had in her brain half-formed plans about what she'd do with the spare time. for instance, she thought she might make two more roman shades for the sun room, and finish a floral quilt begun sometime early last summer. she imagined, too, that she'd spend some time making baby-centric lists and rearranging the office into a nursery.

ahem. the best laid half-formed plans, eh?

in the days immediately before christmas, the baron baked and cooked and grocery shopped and raided the advent calendar. they were good days. christmas itself was a good day too - the baron and the husband slept in and had a lazy morning of pancakes and coffee (decaf for the baron).

the day after christmas was horrible. and the one after that. and the next one too.

on december 26, the baron lolled about in bed, ready to dive deeply into one of her christmas gifts (reader, the best thing the baron has read in a long, long time). the husband murmured something about packing up a few boxes of books or something like it. the baron, half listening, took this to mean, "the baron, i will be making slow progress in the office, taking my sweet time packing up our books - THE VESTIGES OF OUR FORMER, PRE-PREGNANCY LIVES - into boxes. this is a tragic and difficult process. sigh."

ahem.

the husband actually meant, "the baron, you stay here and read. i will ruthlessly pack away ALL of our books and dismantle the bookshelves to boot. don't worry; we won't need books where we're going."

ahem. that might be an overstatement, reader, but that is certainly how the baron felt when she stumbled out of bed three hours later to find the office in a shambles, books gone, bookcases dusty and waiting for transport to elsewhere. to use technical language, the baron, seeing the office laid waste in front of her, lost her shit. all over the place. see, she expected to find a few empty shelves, not a newly emptied room - it was jarring! the husband, excited about the baby and deep into the packing-things-away groove, saw nothing wrong with what he'd done. sigh. such is cohabitation, such is married life.

from there, the situation devolved into clipped barbs, to shouting, to pouting, and back again: where will the desk go? and the computer? why can't we get estimates for built in bookcases? just estimates! what seating would go into the baby's room? what color would it be? when sanding and painting, doesn't a drop cloth make sense so things don't, you know, filter into the basement? does everything have to be staged in the living room? why is there no room in the basement? why? why? why? reader, it was a lousy series of days. the mess, the rearranged furniture, the living in semi-squalor, the faint smell of paint lingering for days and days... really, really lousy.

see, it wasn't just the books being gone. it was also that the room needed to be painted. it was also that the husband's sister gifted to them a LITERAL metric ton of baby stuff; clothes and swaddling cloths and in-car bottle warmers and books and mobiles and five pairs of the tiniest shoes you've ever seen. it was also that the baron was - and remains - overwhelmed by these things.

but. the baron learned something, something she had known but momentarily forgot.

the baron is slow to take to change. she likes her change meted out in small doses.

the husband likes movement. movement, to him, is akin to progress.

so, while the baron was lamenting the slow death of their lives together - after all, the baron is a complicated woman who is capable of experiencing excitement about the baby coming while simultaneously experiencing sadness about the end of her family of two - the husband was delighting in the arrival of someone new.

she'll get there too, eventually, even though her steps? they are very, very small.