The girls slept straight through last night. It’s a sad thing when that’s more of an event than NOT sleeping through the night, but daddy came home yesterday; I am guessing the sweet dreams about the return of cookies and rice pudding kept them placidly unconscious. Since they didn’t stage the usual performace of 2 or 3 wakings, I felt perfectly sane and stable for the first time in about two weeks. Wow, IT’S GREAT. I can’t believe you normal people feel like this all the time.

As I have posted before, it’s been an epic struggle to find the source of all this nighttime waking and screaming fits, let alone a solution. But now that I can actually think clearly…I guess it’s separation anxiety. My getting pissed about it is…probably not helpful. Back to book #1, #2 and #3.

I dropped the parent participation class. I wasn’t even awake most of the time, let alone participating.

The husband brought back a cute gift from Boston…I love it. The trick is going to be keeping four tiny little hands off it.

Speaking of them: I haven’t done a development update in quite a while, have I? (Bad mama! Been too busy bitching about sleep deprivation!). The girls will be three in about two months. So far they know half the alphabet, and can almost count to four (ok, so math wasn’t mommy’s strong point, either). If you call, they will finally greet you with an enthusiastic “hello!” on the phone, instead of the stone-cold silence you would receive until recently. They can, if so moved, sit through an entire Sesame Street video. Several potty training successes have occurred, and we’ve been able to remove 90% of our babyproofing devices around the house. They can dress and undress themselves. Saige has made it known she wants her own computer–something I am giving some thought to, despite that article I read years ago in the Atlantic Monthly that said giving kids computers before they reach junior high is so bad you might as well let them play with glass shards. But if I remember correctly, I think it was mostly arguing against them in school and all the incredibly bad and ineffective software that schools buy to “teach” kids with. This is how I am rationalizing it, anyway. Oh, and we can add one more lame discovery to the list of “DUH: Things We Should Have Figured Out Earlier”…shorter naps. Not only seperate nap rooms, but limiting naptime to an hour seems to be a good thing for a decent bedtime. 90 mintues is apparently too long. Not that naps are all that cool with them anymore.

And late to the party as usual, I just signed up with Netflix. Anything that saves me yet another goddamned trip in the car is a great thing as far as I’m concerned, but really I love how you can see what everyone you know is watching and what they thought of their picks. So if you’ve got an account, I’d love to connect so I see what slolane visitors are into. (I use my gmail address).

I’ve pretty much got every form of media coming to me through the mail now, which is not something I really anticipated ever happening, but hey, why not? You can’t ask the fools working at Barnes and Noble about the merits of the latest David McCullough book, but you can see dozens of good reviews on Amazon, and I am so done with buying craptacular CDs for $15 a pop in music stores (unless they are insanely good). In fact I am really done with buying music period. I get a lot of my tunes through Live365, Last.FM, podcasts, or Soulseek. (Sidenote: Bruce and I will never forget the time we went to one of those giant chain bookstores looking for a book by Carl Jung. “Chuuung? Juuung? I’ve never heard of him,” said the girl at the counter. Bruce informed her that it’s pronounced YOUNG. “Oh! Young! Yeah! I think he’s…yeah I think we might have that.”).

Still experimenting with coffee-freeness. Except for that one cup the other day–in a moment of utter weakness– I’ve decided to stick with tea and see what happens. The ol’ bladder seemed to send a little message late that evening, something like, “Oh, back on your junk again so soon? Don’t fuck with me.” I still yearn for a nice cup of java all the time, but I am thinking, you know, that maybe the trade-offs aren’t worth it. As it is, the last few years I have had to limit myself to half-caf and no having ANY coffee of ANY kind after 2pm, if I am to have any hope of sleeping at all. It took me years to figure out that much. The last time I had a cup of full-strength Peet’s coffee (which, as all you coffee geeks know, is about as pure and strong as it gets) I felt like I had taken a giant speedball. For 36 hours I was the female version of Too Much Coffee Man. I’ve been drinking the stuff pretty much constantly for a decade, and I’m the one that had “death before decaf” on my license plate frame. So now I’m Ms. English Breakfast or whatever. I must be getting old.

So what was I thinking with buying Trader Joe’s lovely new Wintery Blend last week? Uh…that’s for Christmas. I’m allowed to be bad on Christmas.

I’ve also started using Google’s site analyzer, as of tonight. Looks promising and the price is right (free).

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Nevermind her music, I can’t believe Madonna is putting out stuff like this
Eat, Sleep, Work, Consume, Die
Crafty-types: spare your square?
From the “forwarded way too much” file: get ready to vomit
Planet Mom shirts (hey, why’dja kill the coffee shirt?)
Make more money than me