Tasteful Animal Art

While I’ve been sitting around nesting like a pregnant lady, I’ve just discovered that one of my colleagues on this here Information Superhighway has been dressing up a taxidermied weasel in an apron and making her famous—and lucrative—on Zazzle.

I’m so inspired—and jealous—I can hardly speak. Gestating a human, though an act of creation, is not exactly creative.
And I think I might kind of miss being creative. I mean, I used to live in a converted old school filled with artists where I used a child’s play oven for a side table in my living room. Now I live in a house in a neighborhood filled with Amazon executives and the child’s play oven in my living room is used strictly as a child’s play oven. (Okay, sometimes it’s used as a refrigerator. Or a pantry. Or a resting ground for plush mice—similar to a regular pantry.)

Last time I was pregnant I went into full-throttle planning mode the moment I finally quit barfing around week eighteen. I wanted to work obsessively on the baby’s room but had to plan—and have—my wedding first. After Dr. Husband made an honest woman of me five-and-a-half months into my pregnancy, I was all about the painting and cleaning and onesie-shopping and Craigslisting. This pregnancy, I haven’t had the energy or motivation or even strong desire to do any of that stuff that brought me so much peace of mind and a tangible sense of accomplishment (as opposed to growing a baby inside my body which only felt like an accomplishment after the baby was good and done)—until the past two weeks when I’ve been NESTING LIKE A CRAZY WOMAN.

I cannot adequately express how relieved I was to wake up one morning knowing that I would spend the first half of the day stuffing garbage bags full of crap for Goodwill and the second half shopping on Etsy like it was a canned good store on the eve of a nuclear winter. I’ve become convinced that the successful transition from heavily-doted-on only child to doted-on-only-on-her-birthday oldest child hinges on my ability to find the perfect fabric bunting in her favorite colors—yeh-yo and pink AND puhpuh. Pimping out her new room has brought me much pleasure—and taken up every ounce of energy and mental space lately. And THAT, friends, is why I haven’t written! Because I’m too busy putting together Ikea shelves and driving to random suburbs to buy wooden doll cribs from old ladies for five dollars and convincing myself that my daughter WILL BE OKAY.

When I was pregnant with the now-two-year-old I funneled all my anxieties into one giant anxiety about giving birth. That’s been harder to do this time since her birth was so freakishly easy (sans the barfing (jesus the neverending BARFING), so instead I’ve been funneling all my anxieties into one giant anxiety about the two-year-old feeling displaced and unloved and traumatized and miserable and morphing from her sweet (albeit bossy and unnecessarily whiny) self into a sociopathic monster who eats other children for lunch and doesn’t even say fank you afterwards.

And so… Even as I write this I am SIMULTANEOUSLY looking online for tasteful, fun, not-too-babyish, affordable, framed artwork that somehow incorporates cats for my kitty-obsessed daughter. (Do you have any idea how little tasteful cat art is out there? Almost none! And I only say “almost” because my internet search skills are not 100%.)

Perhaps the answer is to get her a taxidermied cat that we can dress up in an apron and sell greeting cards in her image to recoup the cost. Kill a couple of birds, as it were.

Or maybe I’ll just turn off the computer for a while and head to Goodwill to drop of the ten bags of stuff I’m getting rid of to make room for the baby. Because lord knows those people take up A LOT of space—and not just in our minds and hearts.

photo courtesy rezdora70, morgueFile