Is This Nesting?

When I first got pregnant, I was primarily intrigued by two things I would potentially experience: cravings and the nesting instinct. I never did get the cravings, so now I’m waiting for the nesting instinct to kick in—from what I’ve read, it could be a sign of imminent labor. I’m a nesty person in general, however, so I’m not sure I’ll notice any new instincts in this area. Apparently the urge to clean house is a big part of this—but I’m not sure it’s applicable for someone as cleaning-averse as I am. An urge to organize is probably more realistic.

Which is why I’m wondering if the nesting instinct—my version of it—has indeed kicked in: this afternoon I decided to prepare my tax materials for my tax guy. My taxes are always tricky, involving a random selection of 1099s and an even more random collection of receipts for tax write-offs. Some of the documentation can’t be gathered until after the end of the year, of course, but today I went through nine months of receipts, printed out payment histories for my subscriptions, cell phone, fax, and cable, and began a spreadsheet and an explanatory letter to my accountant. It doesn’t take days to do this, but it does require a certain amount of table space, focus, and organization, so I thought I’d better get the brunt of it done before the baby arrives. This may very well have been nesting.

Then again, there’s dust all over my desk, the baby’s mattress doesn’t even have sheets on it, and I was almost crushed today by an avalanche of office supplies when I tried to pull an envelope off my office-supply shelf. So perhaps the taxes were just an extreme form of my usual organization (I can cross it off my to-do list before it was even on the to-do list!). I’ll keep you posted.

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