brat

Abe and I just moved to Evanston for three months. Don't ask why unless you want a lengthy explanation involving hospital proximity, Abe's best friend's semester schedule, my mom's mission, and the Obama home-buyer stimulus. It's all very complicated, but the end result is Abe and I have decided to boomerang between Hyde Park and Evanston for the next year; this is the first of four moves. Fun.

Actually, I really don't have much room to complain since Abe did the majority of the work moving. At one point, he also deemed it necessary to deep clean the bathroom using a host of carcinogenic cleaners. I begged and pleaded (from a distance) with him to use some natural cleaners instead, but he insisted that the cancer-causing stuff did a superior job. Between coughs, he would exclaim over how white the tile was or how see-through the shower glass had instantly become. I guess in the mind of a perfectionist, such results must absolutely trump the possibility of contracting cancer.   So now Abe is pumped full of carcinogens (he was still coughing an hour after finishing the project), but at least our friends in Hyde Park will enjoy a sparkling shiny bathroom.

As for me, I OD'd on the edible aspect of our Christmas celebrations in Utah, and that translated into an impressive new level of back pain that has made itself my constant companion ever since. At one point, I was walking home and ended up sitting in a puddle on the steps of a seminary two blocks away, sobbing hysterically into my dying phone about how much my back hurt, how I couldn't possibly survive being pregnant for two more months, how I certainly couldn't  manage to walk the entire two blocks more, and blah, blah, blah. Really, I don't know how Abe was so patient with me--especially since I brought this on myself! But he came as fast as he could, bought me some beautiful flowers and gave me a long back massage (after he finished moving all of our stuff). It is, in short, disgusting how spoiled I am.

Which brings me to today.  Yesterday we had a great lesson in church on receiving the Holy Ghost, and I decided I need to be less bratty and more actively seek the companionship of the Holy Ghost in my life. Abe and I tried to go to bed early enough in order to wake up in time to arrive at our church institute at 6 this morning--all in the hopes that an early morning churchy discussion will translate into more Holy Ghost/less brattiness for me. Falling asleep at a reasonable hour proved impossible, so when the alarm went off today we had gotten approximately 4.5 hours of sleep. I still wanted to go, though, and Abe, in his typical uber-supportive fashion, dragged himself out of bed and came with. We had a great institute discussion about eternal life,and I'm really glad I went, but when I came home I passed out for a loooooong time (basically until now).

Once again, I feel spoiled and bratty--not to mention intimidated by the mess of moving. My original goal was to unpack, organize, and clean everything, but everywhere I look there is so, so, SO much to be done! I've retreated to the most chaos-free part of our home and armed myself with my computer and three giant books (all fascinating and completely recommended thus far: Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, and Your Child's Growing Mind). Between blogging and reading, I expect to lose myself in a variety of alternate realities for the next couple hours, at which point I expect to experience full-blown panic at the prospect of having passed the day without accomplishing anything. Maybe at that point, I'll grab some carcinogenic cleaners and have a go at the bathroom...at least it'll be a quick and cancerous way to finally getting something done.