All I'm Saying there's a joke in here somewhere

We were in a huge dilemma as to whether or not we should even go on the trip. Freya had had a fever in the night the day before we were set to leave (Thursday night, leaving Saturday). Her school teacher said, "Gee, I hope it isn't the flu. That comes with a lot of vomiting!" I said, "Great." We decided on Friday that we'd monitor Freya overnight and if it looked like just a cold, we'd hit the road.

Saturday dawned and Freya seemed mostly fine, though you could tell she was developing a cold. How could you tell? Oh, the gallon of snot perched on her upper lip at any given moment. So we loaded the car and headed out. We stopped at a grocery store to pick up a picnic lunch, since there is NOTHIN' between Boise and Winnemucca, Nevada. While checking out, I had a very tall senior citizen man looming over me in the line, and I was pretty convinced he was going to try to get my PIN and steal my wallet. I was poised to punch him in the neck. Matt said he was just waiting for that. Anyway, it turned out to be a non-event.

We got in the car and started the drive through some of the most godforsaken country in the West. Southeastern Oregon and northern Nevada just aren't pretty. I don't know what it would take to make them nice--maybe some vegetation? We drove and we drove. I'm not sure how far from home we were when, for the first but absolutely not the last time on the trip, Freya said, "I want to go home." She seriously must have said that fifty times over the course of the vacation, and there's nothing to frustrate and sadden a parent more than a child who is that declarative about not wanting to be doing a fun family activity.

We finally landed in Reno, where we stopped for the night. After a succulent meal at IHOP, we turned in for the night. This is when Freya's cold really manifested itself with a coughing fit that honest-to-God lasted for over an hour in the middle of the night.

When we woke in the morning, I recall saying, "Well, lets hope that's the worst night of the trip."

Oh, silly, innocent Mommy! To be continued...

We are home safe from a week-long trip to Santa Barbara. My God, it was a long, long drive. Drives are always made longer by having a toddler, don't you think? And how about a drive where the toddler has a terrible head-cold with lots of drainage and a raging case of pink-eye? And then when the toddler gives her mother (but not her father) said cold and pink-eye?

I think we drove the equivalent of to the moon and back, based on all that.

Lots to talk about and lots of great pictures to share, but I'm still settling back in and haven't down-loaded the photos yet, so expect updates as soon as I can get to them!

Just wanted to let you all know that I'll be taking the week off from blogging for spring break.

I hope you all have a really nice week ahead!
Casey

I came across an interesting article today. I can't obviously say that I have an unbiased opinion about the circumstances--too much personal history--but I'm curious what you all think.

When Science Meets the Soul

Last winter, when the family was preparing for a trip to Italy, Maria learned she was pregnant again. In the doctor's office, Maria remembers the shock of seeing "two circles" on the ultrasound monitor: She was having twins. Later came terrifying news - one of the fetuses could have a heart problem. By then five months pregnant, Maria and Jose rushed to the UMass Memorial Medical Center to see the pediatric cardiac specialist on call. That's when we met.

The couple faced an impossible choice: allow their baby to die a preventable death, or save their baby and forfeit a chance at eternal life in paradise. In a sense, their ordeal recalls one of the most troubling passages of the Old Testament. In the Book of Genesis, God without explanation commands Abraham to sacrifice and burn the body of his only son, Isaac, at an altar atop Mount Moriah. Abraham binds his son with ropes, lays him on the altar, and raises a knife to slay him. At the last moment, an angel descends to stop the violence. "Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son," the angel says, and promises that "all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed."

There's a great deal more to the article, but the outcome was that the family continued to disallow the surgery and it went to court. The judge gently, believe it or not, instructed the doctors to perform the surgery and the child was saved. The family feels like they didn't sin against their God or the doctrine, because it wasn't strictly their choice.

So some questions for you:
Is there anything you believe in so strongly that you would sacrifice your child's life for it?

The couple mentions in the article that they considered leaving the country before the birth so that the court couldn't order the surgery. By staying in the country, were they making a tacit decision to allow the surgery? (i.e. Was making no choice actually a choice? Did they want the court to do what it did?)

If a parent can choose to have an abortion, is choosing to let their child die at birth due to religious beliefs any less acceptable? (This is a very sticky one for me, since I'm for a woman's right to choose, though I probably wouldn't choose it for myself.)

Whose rights were violated in this situation? Anyone's?

Talk amongst yourselves.

Okay, here's something quirky I bet you didn't know about me. First, let me preface this by saying that I do not have pierced ears. I have never had the slightest desire to add another hole to my body, regardless of the hole's location.

That said, I think earrings are hygenically gross. I was just over at Dooce looking at some of the daily design photos and there was a shot of some little bowls that she was using to put her earrings in. I about hurled. It is nauseating to me to see someone's earrings. They have been stuck through a part of your body, for Pete's sake! *brrr*

I can recall having been asked to either hold or pick up an earring of a friend in the past, and I just can't do it.

It's a sign of mental illness, isn't it?

I think many of you know that Freya came to work with me until she was six months old. I had a walled cubicle behind my main desk area where I kept all of her stuff and where I would take her to nurse. She usually slept in her bouncy seat by my desk or in her sling as I wore her, but that little room was always "Freya's spot" and still contains some of her toys, diapers, and some baby apparatus she has outgrown, including the bouncy seat, a porta-crib and a rolling walker.

Freya has come in to work with me for a couple of hours at a time here and there since then, specifically when her Montessori wasn't open on one of my work days or when she was too sick to go to school and infect the other kids but I really needed to be in the office for a short time. The first thing she does when we get to the office is to go to the door of that room and wait for me to open it so she can reacquaint herself with her stuff. She likes to grab the books, visit the stuffed animals and show me the various toys she hasn't played with in a while.

But since she doesn't need the apparatus anymore, and because there is a huge consignment sale coming up next month, I am taking all that stuff down and getting it ready to sell. She hasn't been in the porta-crib for at least 6 months, and then mainly as a lark, but I am feeling a serious twinge when it comes to changing her room around at all. It's going to go back to being an office one of these days, and that means that Freya isn't a baby anymore. And I know that and like I have mentioned before, I love having this cool little kid hanging around. But...sheesh. She's not a baby anymore.

And that's kind of bittersweet.

Freya on her last day of "work" at my office--25 weeks old.

(Whatever that means.)

Matt and I are celebrating our 6th wedding anniversary today. In honor of the occasion, I made grilled sausage sandwiches with sauteed onions and "baby portobello" mushrooms (I think that means they are crimini), and he is out digging holes in the front yard for a joint landscaping project with our neighbors. Freya is watching YouTube on my lap and picking her nose. We're mighty festive!

Actually, we did go out for a nice dinner last night. We went to The Cottonwood Grille, which for some reason has the reputation of being one of Boise's nicer restaurants. I say "for some reason" because I have had two consecutive disappointing, expensive meals there. We went there for our anniversary last year too, and Matt had a really great dinner. Mine was kind of...meh. I figured maybe it was a fluke and since it is kind of hard to find an open place to eat in Boise on a Sunday, we figured we'd try it again. But my buffalo roast was tough, the grapes on our appetizer plate were nasty, as were the strawberries (too old), and nothing just really gave my taste buds a thrill. And it is a pity, because it was a very large bill. *grumble* So now they get panned on my blog--no hard feelings, CG, but I'd really like my $110 back.

All that said, I'll leave you with a great joke I got from my brother-in-law this morning, in honor of St. Patrick's Day. It is not suitable for kids, unless you want to try to spend a lot of time explaining it. And even then, it wouldn't be suitable.

An Irishman goes to confession in St. Patrick's Catholic Church. 'Father, it has been one month since my last confession. I had sex with Nookie Green twice last month.'

The priest tells the sinner, 'You are forgiven. Go out and say three Hail Mary's.'

Soon after, another Irishman enters the confessional. 'Father, it has been two months since my last confession. I've had sex with Nookie Green twice a week for the last two months.'

This time the priest questions, 'Who is Nookie Green?'

'A new woman in the neighborhood,' the sinner replies.

'Very well,' sighs the priest. 'Go and say ten Hail Mary's.'

At Mass the next morning, as the priest prepares to deliver his sermon, a tall, voluptuous, drop dead gorgeous redhead woman enters the sanctuary. The eyes of every man in the church fall upon her as she slowly sashays up the aisle and sits down right in front of the priest. Her dress is green and very short, with matching shiny emerald green shoes. The priest and altar boy gasp, as the woman in the matching green shoes and dress sits with her legs slightly spread apart.

The priest turns to the altar boy and whispers, 'Is that Nookie Green?'

The bug-eyed altar boy can't believe his ears but replies, 'No, I think it's just the reflection off her shoes!

We took Freya to the "Easter Eggstravaganza" at the Boise Zoo today. It was Freya's first egg hunt ever, and with the exception of once when I was little and a friend and I hid and re-hid her Easter eggs after her family's celebration, my first egg hunt as well. (Thanks, Jehovah's Witness upbringing!)

I present to you, Our Morning in Photos:

Here is Freya right at the beginning. She's at the top of the 0-2 age group, so while she was one of the older children there, she was still pretty small. She had no idea what to do, though we had spent several minutes coaching her prior to the start of the egg hunt.

Daddy had to give her a little instruction.

And then he had to demonstrate.

But then something clicked.

She started to get the hang of it.

And then she was off to the races!

As with everything else, Freya does, she then wanted to start doing it "by h'sef."

And she emerged victorious from the fray!

She and Daddy are ready to make it an annual event. (Though I think Freya might choose to make it a daily event, now that she realizes there is candy involved.) Mommy votes for annual.

We had Freya's second parent/teacher conference at her Montessori school today. According to the reports, she's doing great! They rate the kids on a scale (which is so not intuitive, but that's me) where a 1 means that they're age-appropriate for a certain skill, 2 is ahead of their age group, and 3 means they recognize the skill but don't show much interest in doing it.

Freya didn't have any 3s this time around (she did last fall), and she had a ton of 2+ marks. In fact, she had several 2++++ marks, notably for ability to identify objects in the outdoor environment. That makes me happy--we try hard to get her outside and interested in the outdoors as much as we can because that's something that has always been important to both Matt and I individually.

The teacher also rated her very high on empathy toward her friends. She said that when one of the kids is upset and crying, Freya will often go over and kneel down next to them and rub their backs until the child is feeling better. Is that sweet, or what?

What a great kid.

Okay, I know this isn't terribly interesting, but maybe it would be information some of you would be glad to see. I certainly was happy for the clarification. The IRS has posted some good information about the economic stimulus package to their website. Included is information about who gets the checks and when, and for how much they will be made out. Some points I was glad to hear about include:

A. No, the stimulus payment will not reduce your refund or increase the amount you owe when you file your 2008 return.

And then there's some information about direct deposit:

Q. Can I have my stimulus payment direct deposited?

A. Stimulus payments will be direct deposited for taxpayers who select that option when filing their 2007 tax returns. Taxpayers who already filed and requested direct deposit won't need to do anything else to receive the stimulus payment. Taxpayers who did not request direct deposit for their 2007 refund will receive a paper check by mail. The IRS reminds taxpayers who haven't filed their 2007 returns yet that direct deposit is the fastest way to get both regular refunds and stimulus payments.

This is the first time I've seen anything official about whether or not it was an advance on next year's refund, and I am very glad to hear it is not. While I think this is a silly, silly thing to do for the Nation's well-being*, I do figure we'll probably go out and spend most of ours on our backyard overhaul. Not to mention that our neighbors have talked us in to a front yard landscaping thing between our houses and the large plants alone are pushing $200.

In the vein of national well-being, I found this Time magazine article very interesting. It talks about the trouble we're getting into with borrowing money for the stimulus package. Particularly interesting to me was this point:

It is a sign of how completely Republican thinking now dominates discussions of economic policy that so few of the stimulus ideas floating around Washington involve increasing federal spending. It used to be that stimulus debates were about a tax cut vs. a spending increase. An increase in federal spending can goose the economy just like cutting taxes. The government builds a bridge or a highway, people get jobs, take their families to Olive Garden, which hires more waiters, and so on. In fact, direct government spending is a more efficient stimulus than an equivalent tax cut because all of it gets spent. When actual people get hold of the money, a few might have an unpatriotic tendency to save some of it.

I found especially interesting the point that increasing government spending would be a more beneficial way to stimulate the economy. But...I guess it is done now, at least for this round. I hate to think that this plan isn't going to work (it isn't), and that the country will go deeper into debt at a later time to try the government spending plan.

Considering a move to Idaho? Think carefully...

Two Books About Sexuality will be Removed from the Nampa Library

Two much-debated books about sexuality will be removed from the shelves of the Nampa Public Library but will be kept in the library director's office and provided on request, the library board ruled Monday in a 3-to-2 vote.

All three of the board members who favored taking the books off the shelves -- Kim Keller, Sandi Levi and Bruce Skaug -- have been appointed since Jackson's first attempt in early 2006. Board chair Rosie Delgadillo Reilly and member Barry Myers voted to keep the books on the shelf, a stance supported by library staff.

This has been going on for a while...several years, in fact. But it had been not only shot down, but publicly derided each time. The first time around, the library agreed to keep the books on the top shelves, out of the reach of children (who really should be better supervised by their parents, but that's just asking too much of parents these days, I guess). But that wasn't enough for this facist wacko. And he's won. For now.

Maybe the ACLU will take this up. But I'm so damned tired of Idaho being portrayed as such a backwater laughing-stock. Sadly, Idaho keeps earning it.

Since I'm in an "old boyfriends" frame of mind here on the blog, I figured I'd post about a more notable notorious ex of mine, Charlie the Felon.

Things started out pretty okay with CtF. He lived in the same apartment complex as I did, and I had noticed him from across the parking lot a couple of times. He drove an enormous Ford one-ton dually, wore a cowboy hat, and had a passing resemblance to a chubbier Tim McGraw. (Those all counted as good things for me back in my early twenties.) He seemed to be gainfully employed in some kind of construction trade.

So we started dating and things went fine for a month or two. Then one night he told me he needed to go back to California for an indefinite amount of time because his dad had suffered a serious heart attack. Well, nothing should stop a son from going to be with his dad when needed, so I cried and cried as I shooed him off into the sunset.

And then he quit calling. I heard from him maybe once in three weeks, which struck me as odd because he had by-God said the L-word to me before he left and I had a feeling I might be heading to California myself one day. So I called his folks' house one night and got one of his brothers on the phone. The brother said, "Oh, he's visiting Kaylee right now." I said, "Oh." And then the wheels started turning. Since I had never heard of anyone over the age of three who bore the name Kaylee, I went back to a conversation in my head where Charlie had said he had no children. But something wasn't right.

I called a mutual friend and simply said, "Who's Kaylee?" Don hesitated for a minute and then said, "I told him he should have told you but he said it was too late." Turned out that Kaylee was Charlie's two year-old daughter, and she had been born with a heart defect. She was the one who was having heart trouble, and he'd gone to California to be near her. Like I could possibly have held that against him? So I tried to talk it out with him. He said he didn't know why he'd lied, except that at the time I had asked him about kids, he wasn't sure of Kaylee's paternity, but that the blood tests had since come back and confirmed it.

So...things kind of just faded away. But then (here's the felon part) my next room-mate, who was a cop, said she'd always had a funny feeling about him. I gave her some of his particulars, and she ran his criminal history. Turned out he'd been arrested seven times in five years for things like DUI, domestic assault, and sodomy! I was more than a little shocked. I was also quite worried about whether or not he'd come back from California and then want to be in my life again. At this point, I had really decided he was someone I did not want around, and so I sort of disappeared. I moved, changed my number to one listed under my roomie's name, and gave pretty explicit directions to my employer about screening my calls at the front desk.

To the best of my knowledge, he never came back. In fact, the aforementioned mutual friend called me one day to say that Charlie's storage unit was being foreclosed on and I should go get any stuff of mine out of there. So I assume he never came back. A Google search a while back turned up a phone number (with a wife's name listed, which might be the mother of the baby if I remember the name right) in a small town in Northern California. That was all the information I ever needed.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Jeepers H. Christmas, has it already been a month since your second birthday??? You continue to tell us about your birthday. You like to tell us, "It's my birthday!" and we try to explain that it won't be your birthday again for a while yet. You don't seem to care--really, we don't either. No harm in feeling like every day is special, huh?

You're getting pretty good at using a spoon lately, which is nice. Chocolate milk is one of your all-time favorite things to enjoy, and you really prefer to drink it out of your cup with a spoon. It's good practice--unfortunately, a lot of your clothes fall victim to the brownish smudging, but I guess that's the price we have to pay for manual dexterity. I'm trying to be good about using the Spray and Wash religiously, but your dad sneaks a few outfits through the wash sometimes.

You wore a dress to school every day this last week. You are totally a girly-girl. I do suspect you'll be that four year-old who wears a dress, fairy wings, a tutu, a football helmet and cowboy boots all at once, though. And that will be really cute. In keeping with your feminine mystique, you're really big at "cutting hair." You sit Daddy or I down on the floor and you pat at our hair and run your fingers through it. A very cute recent addition to that drill is the addition of one of the scarves Aunt Tea sent you last week--so you wrap the scarf around our necks like it is a stylist's drape. Could this be your vocation?

It's so much fun to have a little kid. It was sweet and beautiful and endearing to have a little baby, but you are a riot, child. I love watching you grow, sweetie.

Love always,
Mama

Since Leilani asked about whether I purposely dated cowboys or it just turned out that way, I figured it might be a good topic for my next post. Oh yes, it was most definitely on purpose. I'm not sure what exactly spurred it on (pun intended), but I do recall around the age of 14 saying to my strict Jehovah's Witness mother, "There's something awfully attractive about cowboys, isn't there?" She was horrified. I didn't know why at the time, but it turned out she was awfully attracted to the cowboy who worked on our ranch. It never amounted to a whole lot, but it was enough to throw her for a loop.

Anyway, as soon as I left the JW's (in fact, slightly before), I started my pursuit of the tightly-Wranglered. Lord knows there was plenty to choose from--straight males in rural Idaho were rarely caught in anything but Wranglers. I am not making this up, but there is a person who was in my school who, if I see him from behind, I know immediately who it is because his Wrangler butt is that distinctive. I am something of a connoisseur on this matter.

Cowboy #1 was Ron. He was pretty legit. He was a backhoe operator most of the time, but he wore the silk neckerchiefs, the flat-brimmed Big Loop hat, and was pretty much never seen in a short-sleeved shirt. He later left me at a bar because he was going home with his girl cousin. His first cousin. It's simply no wonder I drank myself into such a stupor that the very smell of tequila makes me nauseated, 12 years later.

Thankfully, there was Cowboy #2, Walker, to take my mind of Ron. I don't really have anything bad to say about Walker. Unfortunately, we found that we made lots better friends than we did boyfriend and girlfriend. The negative of that is that his next girlfriend, who became Mrs. Walker, did not like him having me for a friend and made it very clear. She was never in the least bit of danger from me--I know this for an absolute fact--but there wasn't any convincing her of it. Still, I'll always consider Walker a friend, even if I don't ever talk to him again.

So let's see, that takes us to Cowboy #3, who was Ted. He was known far and wide as "The Mule." And if you need to think about it very hard, it was an anatomical reference. Wink wink, nudge nudge. Ted was a big ol' jerk, but at least I knew that going in. What I didn't know was that he had a fiancee' that he never bothered to mention. Oops. I never did meet her, which is definitely a good thing.

Cowboy #4 was Al, and he was mainly all hat and no cattle. He was more of an urban cowboy, but never did anyone, ANYONE look better in Wranglers. Still does, much to my chagrin. I'm sure his wife appreciates it.

I think that pretty much winds up the cowboy saga. Oops, I take that back. There was Brent--Walker's cousin. Walker didn't seem to feel bad about it. However...Brent simply could not function as a sober person and that was a serious problem for me. Last I heard, he has a couple of kids from a girlfriend and he still lives in his home-town. I can't imagine that he ever quit drinking and one of these days I'll probably hear he died in a drunk-driving accident or that his liver finally exploded.

So that's the cast of major characters--there were quite a few more flirtations in there, but those are the players. As I mentioned in my last post, I never was able to make it stick with any of them. Three of the list lived with their mothers. Only one of them held a full-time job (though to Walker's credit, he owned an interest in the ranch and just worked there. And he was the only one who had a dog. You may wonder why I made having a dog part of my criteria--at that point, I seriously was ready to accept the fact that someone was able to keep a canine alive as a qualifying point for a long-term relationship. Several fish would have qualified as well, but people just don't really keep fish in Idaho, so it never actually came up.

Slim pickens. Or, like they say about Alaska, the odds are good but the goods are odd. That's pretty much my dating history in a nutshell. Thank God I found Matt, is all I can say!

I can't tell you exactly how much time I spent reading a sort of true romance story on the internet today. Even if I could tell you, I wouldn't. Because that might disclose a portion of time that maybe I should have been finding meaningful work to do, instead. Via Donna's blogroll, I stumbled across Confessions of a Pioneer Woman.

I was enjoying it. The photography was nice, somewhat artsy but not pretentious, and then I found the story. The love story. The true love story. (Oozes jealousy.) You've got to go here and read From Black Heels to Tractor Wheels. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and start with chapter one, and then get ready to kill an undisclosable portion of your time getting sucked in to it all. I read up through her latest entry and now I'm twiddling my thumbs impatiently, waiting for the next. And the next. And the one after that.

It took me back to my cowboy-dating days, though I absolutely have to note that none of the cowboys I ever dated had their poop together like Marlboro Man does. I got to the point where I would tell my girl friends, "All I want is for him to have three things: a job, a dog, and a residence that his mother does not also occupy." I never did find all three in any of the cowboy/ranchers that I dated. Two out of three was the best I ever did and that just wasn't enough.

Anyway, giddyup over there and enjoy!

Because I haven't got much of depth to talk about, you get the shallow. Sort of.

My friend Carla is pregnant! I know this is not a shallow thing, but it isn't something where I would go into much detail about it. I'm just very excited for her.

I do not understand why I cannot just strike the words, "Do you want some help" from my lexicon. There are no words in the English language more likely to send a toddler into a rage.

I really would like to have hamburgers and fries for dinner tonight, but we're having ravioli instead. Which reminds me--how about this CostCo chicken meal recall? The article in our local paper indicated that it was a Level I recall, which used words like "high probability of serious illness or death" in it. That's enough to give you pause. We've got everything else CostCo ever sold in our fridge/freezer/pantry, but we don't have that. Phew.

Her highness says it is time to go downstairs, so this concludes my shallow blogging for the night. Don't eat any bagged chicken tonight, 'kay?

I'm sure I didn't mention that Freya fell head-first out of one of our dining room chairs yesterday. There she was, minding her own business, when she reached out too far and the weight of her hefty cranium overbalanced her and she went crashing to the ground. She literally landed right on top of her head. Wile E. Coyote couldn't have performed a better swan dive.

I was shocked and horrified. In the nanosecond of her fall, I visualized all kinds of awful things. I know Matt did too--he and I were both literally no more than 2 feet from her in either direction, but we couldn't have caught her.

So she woke up this morning, after having a fever for part of the night, and I was giving her a morning cuddle. I ran my hand along the side of her head and felt dried up fluid crust. She started complaining about pain in her ear shortly thereafter. Remembering her cold, I realized she must have an ear infection and made a mental note to get an appointment with the pediatrician.

Matt thought of something else. "Are you sure it isn't c-spine fluid?" he asked me. "Honey, if it was c-spine fluid, she'd have shown signs of spinal trauma well before this," I said. "The fall wasn't that bad." As a point of fact, she'd cried for about 20 seconds, then wiggled out of my arms and wandered off to play.

The pediatrician looked in her ears, said, "Yup, double ear infection. It's a good thing you brought her in." Matt was standing nearby looking fraught, so I took pity on him and asked the question Matt couldn't bring himself to. "Freya fell smack on top of her head yesterday. Is there any chance it is c-spine fluid?"

I now have a pretty good idea of what my, "No, you silly nincompoop" glance looks like--I saw it on the doctor's face for just a split second before he said, "No, it isn't c-spine fluid." In turn, I gave Matt my less-known but equally daunting, "I told you so" look.

Freya has been fighting a cold for the last several days (Surprise! another Freya is sick post), and I think it might be croup. She had a terrible, barking cough Friday night. It got better during the day, but then hit again last night. While she was in pretty good shape today, it hit her hard late this afternoon and she ended up sacking out for an extra nap at 5:30.

I immediately had a bad feeling about tonight. I woke her up at 6:30 in the hopes that she'd get up and be active for a while, but she just cried and huddled against me. I couldn't even get her out of bed. She didn't go back down to sleep, and at about 7:30, I managed to at least get her out of bed long enough for a change into her pajamas, a clean diaper, and a dose of Tylenol for the fever that was creeping up.

Then it was back to bed, where she thrashed around for 30 minutes before saying, "Let's get up." So we did, and she's eaten two pizza bites, three graham crackers, a cup of juice and is working on a banana. It is now an hour past her regular bed time and she's got a case of the ya-yas like you wouldn't believe.

I'm figuring she'll flame out...oh...about 1:00 this morning. Joy!

Unless you're someone who is willing to listen to and discuss details about menstruation, you might want to skip the extended entry.

Continue reading "Bleeeargh!"