End of semester busyness

The past couple of weeks have been super busy with work, as Friday was the last day of classes for the semester. There has been a lot to wrap up, and this will continue for the next couple of weeks as we finish with final exams, grading, the completion of honours theses, the defense of my master's student's thesis proposal, and various other bits and pieces that must be completed by the end of the month.

However, on Thursday I taught class for the last time for more than a year – I will start maternity leave in September and be on leave for a full twelve months (have I mentioned how much more sane the Canadian system is compared with the American one when it comes to parental leave?), so I will not teach again until September 2016. Jeff will be on leave during fall semester, so he will not be teaching again until January. So even though there is still a lot of end of semester stuff to deal with, knowing that I will not have to be lecturing in front of a class for quite some time is pretty exciting.

I can't quite remember what all I have mentioned and what is new – I feel like everything for the past month is kind of all blurred together. We have continued doing things around the house in order to prepare for baby and manage pregnancy. We bought a new mattress because sleep problems start pretty early in pregnancy, and as comfortable as our old mattress was, the body impression that I had put into the mattress over the past eight years was deep enough that I was unable to switch sleep positions anymore. We got a very good deal on a very good mattress, and now I am sleeping more soundly.We have also continued rearranging in the basement, buying some new shelves and a cupboard for our board games, tidying things up in the guest room, and finding spaces for things that have been displaced.

While working on all this, it became clear to me that there was still a smell of cat pee lingering in the basement. As you may recall, we had an unfortunate incident with some friends that we had to break up with last fall. For a while the smell seemed so pervasive that we were starting to think that we might have to replace the carpet in the basement, which might lead to a need to fix the floor (which consists of very lumpy concrete that is degrading and has huge buildup of efflorescence under the carpet). This is something that we have always known we would need to do eventually, but not something we wanted to do soon. Fortunately/unfortunately, some careful sniffing and sleuthing made it clear that the smell was emanating not from the carpet but from the side of our couch. Moving furniture around put the couch in a position where the smell was more noticeable. The very good news is that it seems that Nature's Miracle actually does work to neutralize the smell of cat spray (at least for this cat, and the one that has peed on our front door). So we will not be replacing the carpet, and our basement smells normal again.

Also incredible news is that the weather has finally turned a corner, and it is most definitely spring. The snow is now completely melted, even in the very shady places, and we were even able to spend a bit of time outside in the yard this weekend cleaning dead leaves out of the garden beds and uncovering the first little green nubs of the plants that are starting to grow there. Yesterday's high was 22°C/71°F. For the first time, the lows are above freezing. Jeff went for a jog in shorts this morning. It is lovely, and so nice to know that except for a possible short-lived freak snowstorm, we will probably have very nice weather from now through October.

The last bit of news to share is that everything seems to be going just fine pregnancy-wise. We had an appointment with our obstetrician last week, and she reassured me that my weight is just fine, I don't need to be worried about whether I am still sleeping on my back (even though the whole Internet will tell you that by now I should have transitioned to sleeping on my side), and we heard the baby's heartbeat again. I am mostly feeling good, although last night and today I believe there has been some kind of hormone surge. I am having physical symptoms that go along with panic attacks (in particular ones that are related to feeling strange in the stomach, a sense of derealization, and a feeling of general dread), but in the absence of any anxiety or psychological symptoms. I am so glad that I know what this is, because without that kind of understanding I can easily see why someone would become very anxious and go to the emergency room thinking that they are dying. It has been quite uncomfortable, but fortunately only on and off, and I believe it should settle down pretty soon. At least I hope so!