not that you asked...

A new partnership - for an awesome cause

I'm going to be 100 percent straight up about this: Having a blog, that people actually read and seem to enjoy (I occasionally really DO get an email from someone saying they have had their day brightened/conscience soothed/LIFE CHANGED by this website, I SWEAR IT) (ok, so maybe not the life changing part, ONE CAN DREAM) is pretty awesome. So is the fact that I've made an umpteen number of connections with other parents and people, many of whom I've gotten to hang out with in PERSON, and some of whom have become some of my closest and most treasured friends.

There's also that whole thing about how this blog – this little bitty corner of the Internet – has occasionally done way more than list all the things that are annoying about House Hunters/toilet paper commercials/children who barf repeatedly on long car rides... this blog has helped people. I'm sure most of you remember our friends Katie and Brian Mandell, who lost their sweet daughter, Emily, to brain cancer a couple of years ago. It was because of this blog and the amazing, wonderful help of people who read and comment and took action that we raised close to $60,000 to help them cover their medical costs, including, most heartbreakingly of all, many expenses related to Emily's funeral and burial. Sixty thousand dollars, you guys. That's staggering and mindblowing and humbling, too, because I really think that there are people out there who want to help people, but just don't know how or where to give.

Blogging, for me at least, is most definitely about a sense of community – and I love it best when that community can do something unexpected and inspired for people who might never have imagined it would be possible. And it is happening more often than ever, all over the Internet. I love that something as big as the Internet is still able to narrow down into thousands of little communities that can help each other out, you know?

Anyway, all that to say that I was approached by Huggies® a few weeks ago to see if I was interested in becoming a blogging ambassador for their Every Little Bottom campaign. And once I heard what the program entails and what this company is trying to do, I signed on immediately, and I am super excited to be a part of something else GOOD and HELPFUL and HOPEFUL on the Internet. Is there anything better than being able to use your (somewhat limited, but go with me on this) powers for something GOOD? To possibly help improve someone's (or many someones) life/lives? To maybe be able to change things for people, even if it's just one little bitty step at a time? YES YES YES. Of COURSE.

Here's the thing, Huggies did an extensive survey in 2010 (real research conducted by a research and strategy organization) that found that one in three American moms have struggled with diaper need. That means that one-third of moms in this country have either sacrificed other needs like clothes, food or medications to provide diapers for their children, or have been forced to do things like extend the amount of time their children stay in one diaper or even clean out and reuse soiled or wet disposables. Moms who are short on diapers can't take their kids out to run errands, or go to work, or to doctor appointments. And this is reality for millions of American moms. MILLIONS, you guys. Poverty and hardship is real in this country, and it breaks my heart that there are women out there who only want to mother their children the best way they can, and yet, they can't.

You know the guilt we feel for feeding our babies jarred baby food instead of freshly prepared organic? Or the stress we create wondering if we haven't signed our preschoolers up for the best schools/soccer camps/swim lessons? I'm not saying those things aren't important or are to be completely discounted, but just imagine the guilt you would feel as a mom if you were unable to put a fresh, dry diaper on your baby. Imagine it. It would feel awful; it would feel demoralizing and depressing and hopeless and embarrassing. It would feel like failure.

So last year, in an attempt to do something about what amounts to a staggeringly common problem, Huggies donated 22.5 million diapers to food banks and other charitable organizations that were distributed to needy moms around the country – but they want to do even more this year, and not only do I think that's amazing and commendable, but I am honored to be asked to assist. I'm not sure exactly where this journey will take me, but I am thrilled to be tasked with getting the word out about the Every Little Bottom program, and with the chance to help Huggies raise awareness as well as more diaper donations to be distributed to those who could use our help.

The Internet is a fantastic tool for doing good in this world, it just needs some people to channel some of that good, charitable energy directly into a needy cause. I am here to do just that.

Disclosure: I have partnered with the Huggies® brand to help promote the Huggies® Every Little Bottom program. I have been compensated for my time commitment to the program, which includes writing about it here.  However, my opinions are entirely my own.

I didn't know the Sweetheart Neckline was even BACK

I am still, for some unknown reason, watching Grey's Anatomy. I no longer find it compelling or interesting or remotely likeable (though I personally think Meredith's hair keeps getting better and for that, I believe I am firmly in the minority), and yet, there are so few shows I really keep up with that I feel like I should stick it out. I mean, how much longer is it going to be on the air anyway? What do we have, like two seasons left, tops? One, if we're super lucky. Everyone's already been shot or hospitalized for something or another, there have been plane crashes and ferry capsizes and wasn't there a bomb or an earthquake or a car crash or a lesbian wedding or something else that was very very dramatic and overwrought? IT ALL RUNS TOGETHER. (Oh, fine, I do remember the lesbian wedding was a separate entity, OBVIOUSLY. I remember it because I thought there was way too much Sweetheart Neckline for my own personal tastes.)

Anyway, watching the season finale the other week was making me think about all the things that annoy me about it, and I thought about those things that annoyed me EVEN AFTER the show was over – I actually made a list, lying in bed. On my iPod. With the lights off, because I was supposed to be sleeping and instead I was Still Irritated. Like the fact that no one on television ever foams up while brushing their teeth. Doesn't this annoy everyone else? I am a virtual foam FACTORY when I am brushing my teeth! I cannot carry on a CONVERSATION while brushing my teeth, like they can conveniently do on television. I would be spitting all over everything, including the mirror, which is extra annoying because then I'd have to clean the mirror and it's not like anyone would know what I was saying anyway because of all the FOAM and the fact that the foam limits my annunciation skills. Also, they seem to spit a lot when they brush their teeth. I am kind of a “spit only at the end” tooth brusher, but maybe this is not the only way to do things? Do you perhaps spit throughout the brushing? Am I doing it wrong by saving it all up for one big spit at the end??? GREY'S ANATOMY YOU ARE MAKING ME QUESTION MY DENTAL HYGIENE PROCEDURES.

Also on my list of things they never get right on TV: Newborn babies. And I know, this is because there are laws about babies working on television, I get that. But those animatronic-ish babies we're using in the place of real babies are... downright frightening. I would rather not SEE the baby, I think, than be frightened by the sight of the little fake robotic baby with the jerky head and the (piped-in) cry of a four-month-old. I actually get those involuntary shudders when they show the fake newborns – even though the fake intestines or someone vomiting blood and all of that other medical stuff is totally not a problem for me. I just find it so ridiculous that we have the technology we do and yet, we cannot make a realistic-looking baby robot. HOW HARD CAN IT BE?

Then I was thinking about how for a long time, I agreed with the general idea that a show was more realistic when not everyone on it was Hollywood's version of Super Hot, with the long flowing hair and the arms that don't flap in the breeze but then they put that Dr. Hunt dude on and oh, you guys, he is just not for me (though he may be for you!), what with the fact that he smiles and you can't see anything but the tips of his little fang teeth and it creeps me out and I started thinking, why are they making me look at this guy every week? Can we not get someone HOT ON THIS SHOW? And BAM! It turns out I am exactly the kind of viewer Hollywood already knows about! We DO want attractive people on our shows! We say we don't, but we really really do, or we'll end up complaining about something as ridiculous as someone's fangish teeth. (He has nice eyes, I guess. But I can't really see them, because I'm focused on the TEETH.) Weirdly, I don't feel that way about women. Give me all kinds of shapes and sizes of women, I'm down with that. But only hot men, please. I don't know what this says about me as a person, except that I am terrible deep down inside.

I can't stop talking about barf. I'm sorry.

I kept Asher home from school on Tuesday after Monday's Great Road Trip Endurance Barf-a-Thon, but by 11am he was bouncing off the walls. He ate an enormous lunch, snacked all afternoon, and went to bed without any kind of bodily fluid incident that night. Great! I thought. A true 24-hour stomach virus. So on Wednesday morning I sent him to preschool where he was fine – PERFECTLY FINE AND HAPPY – until we got home and I opened the front door and he stepped inside and barfed ALL OVER THE CARPET. I had two thoughts at that moment. The first was fleeting, selfless concern that he was still ill and we had unwittingly exposed everyone at preschool; the second was simply me realizing that if had he thrown up a scant three seconds earlier, I could have hosed it off the concrete front steps instead of spending 10 minutes scrubbing it out of the carpet. It turns out he comes by it honestly; according to my mom, I was in HIGH SCHOOL before I learned how to get myself to a proper receptacle. She said I would just freeze, wherever I was, and just let it fly. My bed, the couch, the middle of the kitchen, WHEREVER. Anyway, he took a nap that afternoon and has been fine ever since. I don't know why he suffered the rogue barf, but it turned out to be a total non-issue.

Also, miracle of all miracles, no one else caught it. One benefit to Asher having this in a moving vehicle is that Lucy was sequestered in her own seat on the other side of the car, and was unable to get anywhere near anything he... uh, produced. So... yay? I don't know what I would have done if they were BOTH sick. They were both miserable anyway, because after Barf Number One, Asher had declared that he was tired and wanted to rest, but needed a stuffed animal (he'd barfed on his). I made Lucy give him her frog, and a few minutes later, he barfed on IT and OMG, you would have thought we DECAPITATED the thing. I had to put it in the Garbage Bag of Soiled Things and she went absolutely NUTS. Lucy develops new attachments to things every week – you can never tell what she's going to be bonkers for, but this week it is Froggie and as if it wasn't hard enough for her to see that Froggie had been defiled with stomach contents, then we put him in a PLASTIC BAG in the TRUNK and she just could not deal with it. It would have been funny, I guess, if everything else hadn't been so totally and completely UNfunny, you know?

So WOW, sorry about that – I did not intend to write two enormous additional paragraphs about BARF, but there you have it.

We are particularly happy to be done with it though because we are going on a little trip over the weekend and the kids are SO EXCITED about staying in a HOTEL. We are headed up to Pennsylvania where we're going to ride the steam train and then spend the night and hit up a kiddie amusement park the next day. We rode the steam train about this time last year, as a reward to Asher for finally getting himself good and potty trained, and it amazes me how much of the trip he can remember in detail. I was asking him about whether he wanted to eat lunch in the little cafe at the train station like we had done last year, and he said yes, Mom, do you remember we had a milkshake there? I thought that was pretty amazing that he could remember that, as we are not the kind of people who limit our milkshake consumption, but then he asked me where we would stand to board the train this year, would it be at platform seven like it was the last time? I'm all, I didn't even remember that there WERE numbered areas on the platform, but I checked and SURE ENOUGH, we boarded at area seven last time. It amazes me how much detail he can remember – it's probably because we haven't forced him to fill up his brain with Civics or Map Skills or PreCalculus – all the stuff I was made to put into my brain and then never used, rendering my ability to remember Platform Seven completely null and void. (I remembered the milkshake. I don't forget a milkshake, I'm afraid. Neither does my backside.)

So we're looking forward to that, because when we get back I'm going to have to spend the next three weeks packing up our kitchen for complete demolition. We are finally, FINALLY, renovating the kitchen. The whole thing is going, you guys – the nasty 1970s cabinetry, the formica countertops with the unsanitary gouges in them, the floor that never gets all the way clean – it's all going into a DUMPSTER. We're getting hardwood floors throughout the entire downstairs, and new maple cabinetry, and granite countertops, and recessed lighting, and a new refrigerator, and a microwave that actually works, instead of the one we have that doesn't let you press anything except “Add 30 Seconds” and OH I CANNOT WAIT. I promise you before and after pictures, and details of the renovation – I know I love seeing that kind of thing on other blogs. I can't promise that it will be an exciting-looking kitchen, because the purpose of renovating it is so we can sell it in a couple of years, but I can promise you that it will be an improvement. Also, I can promise you that I am going to be super duper poor. But I am hoping that having a nice house will make me way less likely to seek refuge in Target every weekday morning. Maybe I'll actually enjoy being HERE.

DO NOT READ THIS if you have a Vomit Phobia

The little country church that my mom and her sisters grew up in (and where I was raised until I was six and we moved out of state) had its 100th anniversary over the weekend, so my mom and I took the kids and drove in for the celebration. It was a good weekend – we stayed with my grandparents, whom Asher and Lucy absolutely adore, and for the most part, it was a success. There was the minor issue of the kids sharing a room and twin/trundle bed, and the fact that they had a hard time unwinding in a room together and therefore didn't fall asleep until close to ten every night (and, naturally, got up at 7:30 on the dot), but we all had a good time. I am proud to report that I am finally a relaxed enough parent to not really care whether or not they went to sleep on time, but to find a bit of joy in the fact that they were in the same room together, giggling and enjoying each others' company.

I'll have you know, however, that they were practically intolerable the next day, so all my Awesome Relaxed Parenting went right out the window when I had to drag them out of the church celebration on Sunday afternoon as I could no longer stand the whining and lethargy. I believe Asher went boneless and slid out of his chair at the mention of having to eat something that he didn't witness come straight out of an Annie's White Cheddar box.

We stayed three nights and started the drive home at 9:30 on Monday morning. At 11:30 we pulled into the parking lot of Wendy's for lunch, approximately two hours from my grandparents house and approximately four hours from home and so OF COURSE that's when Asher puked.

I am not sure there is anything worse than car barf. Any kind of barf is horrible, AGREED, but barf at home is easily cleaned up, and there are usually other rooms to flee to should the general barf smell linger, as well as things like washing machines and sinks. THIS IS NOT SO IN A CAR. In a car, you are trapped, and you are at the mercy of whatever you can pick up at the gas station to make the rest of your journey (ALL FOUR HOURS OF IT) tolerable. We stripped Asher down in the parking lot, mopped the car out with baby wipes, and stuffed his clothes, pillowcase, and stuffed animals into a plastic bag. I thought we were dealing with a bout of motion sickness – he seemed perfectly fine once the contents of his stomach were plastered all over the upholstery, and wasn't even sweaty or running a fever. We left the windows down while we ate lunch (HA HA HA surprise! No one wanted to eat lunch) and then we continued on our way.

An hour later, he threw up again. We pulled over, cleaned out the car as best we could, dressed him in new clothes, and continued on our way.

WE DID THIS FIVE TIMES. He barfed every hour or so until we got home, NINE HOURS LATER. At one point we seriously considered just getting a hotel room, but the kids were so sleep-deprived that I couldn't face the notion of another restless night of sleep in an unfamiliar room. So we kept going. And every time he would throw up, he would get that post-nausea glow about him and would announce that he felt better and WE FELL FOR IT EVERY TIME.

By the time we got to Barf Number Four, we'd already purchased a roll of paper towels, Windex and a big box of kitchen-size trash bags at a BP station in the middle of NOWHERE and I'd mummified the poor kid in them and YET, when he started throwing up he was doing that annoying thing that kids DO when they throw up which is just to... THROW UP. No aiming, no attempt to get the barf to go anywhere but all over them. So despite my mummification and my instant participation in the process once I heard him get sick (I practically climbed into the backseat with him every time) it still got absolutely everywhere, and it was clear we were going to have to pull over AGAIN and change his clothes and mop out his car seat and I had this Very Frustrated Moment where even though I knew it wasn't his fault and that he was just a poor, sad kid with a stomach bug, I was just so DONE with the whole thing and so irritated that it wasn't even a lot of barf and we were STILL going to have to pull over to deal with it and delay our arrival home by another HOUR and I said a very bad word and threw my sunglasses at the windshield. (They broke. Spectacularly. I deserved that.)

I am not even kidding you, by the time we made it home? He was just sitting back there in a t-shirt and his underwear, having burned through every article of clothing I'd packed for four days away and we went ahead and just sat the car seat out for the trash pickup. I'm sure, with some effort, we could have saved it, but as a person who had just sat in a car with barf fumes for seven straight hours, I could not face the job. My mother will probably never eat again, that's how haunted she is by the sight of partially digested Color Goldfish crackers that plastered her luxury SUV.

But Asher, oh, he is such a patient, sweet kid. He never cried or panicked, he just hung his little fifteenth percentile head and barfed quietly. He never got embarrassed or ashamed, he just did what he had to do, and followed directions perfectly when we got him out of the car and never fought me or argued or got upset. Last night we finally got him into bed and I forgot to put down towels or anything and he barfed one last time in his bed and I ended up having to change the sheets and everything, but he called my mom this morning and told her in a very matter-of-fact voice, “Ya Ya, I barfed a little bit in my bed last night, but mom changed the sheets and then I went to sleep.” I am so relieved that he doesn't appear to be traumatized by the entire event.

I'm traumatized enough for BOTH of us.

Sleeping on the couch is LUXURIOUS

Lucy got a minor cold last week and turned back into a newborn for five or six days. Ok, so maybe not a newborn... maybe more like a nine-month old. She would cry and cry for us when we put her to bed (I think one night Dave and I climbed the stairs to soothe her a combined 10 times before she settled down around 9:30) and she was waking up two or three times in the middle of the night requiring attention, too. Two of those nights we just gave up and Dave moved downstairs to the couch while I brought her to bed with me.

But without a doubt, the most frustrating thing was getting her to settle down enough to fall asleep at the beginning of the night. Because we couldn't figure out FOR THE LIFE OF US whether or not she was just pulling our chains. She'd wail for Mooooommmy, Daaaaadddy, and then we'd arrive up there and she'd perk up immediately and launch into some sort of General Interrogation about why her stuffed piggy wasn't wearing a diaper or why Daddy's beard didn't go all the way up to his forehead. Dave went up there once with the full intention of giving her a stern lecture about LAYING DOWN AND STAYING THERE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, and as he leaned forward to get in her face about it, she put her hands on his cheeks and asked sweetly, “Daddy, what color eyes you have? What color eyes do Mommy have?” and all the Sternness in his entire body (which really isn't a ton, as he's pretty skinny) went flying out the window. I don't know if we'll ever get it back; I think that little precious moment drained him of anger and frustration for life.

Nothing puts fear into my heart like the possibility that we could be dealing with a phase that isn't related to illness. Are you with me on this? I feel like if I know my kid has a cold, or the flu, or is recovering from a round of immunizations or WHATEVER, that I can make it through a week or more of crappy sleep because I know that all we need is for her to feel better, and everything will go back to normal. But these developmental things totally freak me out. I was picturing us having to fight this awful bedtime battle for weeks on end, and having to WIN and just being exhausted and angry every night between the hours of 7:30 and 10pm. But it appears to have passed, and the last three nights have been calm and incident-free, and it would be foolish of me to say anything more for fear of ruining the whole thing so I'll stop now except to say a very quiet and tasteful, “yay.”

Lucy is such a fun kid to be around these days. She is so imaginative and chatty, and sometimes I cannot believe the things that come out of her mouth. She is also still cramming those disgusting burp cloths in her mouth on a regular basis, and is one of the dirtiest kids I have ever met. I dress her in the morning in super cute clothes and fix her hair (we do not leave the house without a bow, you guys - I never thought I would be a Bow Person) and I kid you not, somehow by the time we arrive at Asher's preschool dropoff she has boogers smeared halfway across her face and her hair is sticking up in every direction. She's taken her shoes off and that soggy blankie is hanging out of her mouth and yet, she's hands down the cutest thing in the entire world. How is that possible? This is a kid who is constantly picking her nose (“I am trying to get the boogers all the way out!”) and instead of being disgusted and appalled, I'm trying to encourage her to do it again FOR THE VIDEO CAMERA.

WHO AM I, I ask you. I have become someone who wants actual video evidence of her child picking her nose, and not for blackmailing purposes. Simply because I find it ENDEARING. (Also because she can almost get in there up to her second knuckle, which is downright IMPRESSIVE.)

We're headed out of town on Friday and for the first time ever, I am going to attempt to not only put my kids to bed in the same room, but let Lucy sleep in a real bed. The kind without bars around it. It will be interesting at best, though if I learned anything last week, it's that at least that kid will go back to sleep if she's in a bed with me. Asher was the kind of kid who just rolled around and kicked us in the head and mumbled nonsense and eventually asked to be put back into his own bed; Lucy makes herself comfortable and conks out with that atrocious blankie and snores her little heart out on the pillow next to me. I'm okay with that, but you could wish us luck anyway.

I am using anti-wrinkle cream, I'll have you know

Today was the Mother's Day program at Asher's preschool. It was fine – Lucy played happily with the other kids (though she spent the majority of her time popping a small plastic leopard in and out of the play kitchen's microwave – TINY BIT WEIRD) and I ate a donut at a table full of moms I never see at drop off and pick up because they work full-time at Big Important Government Jobs in the City and have nannies. But that's okay, because they were wearing suits and suits are not conducive to eating powdered donuts, and hey! That means MORE POWDERED DONUTS FOR ME.

That plan backfired, just so you know. At first I was all superior over the fact that I didn't have to worry about my clothes getting powdered sugar all over them; moments after stuffing my face I realized everyone else was eating low-calorie fruit salad with a fork and leaving all their powdered donuts to their offspring. Actually, then someone asked me if I was X child's new nanny, and I had to say no, and she's all embarrassed, “Well you just look so young!” but you know she just said that because I was wearing jeans and not a power suit and had POWDERED SUGAR ALL OVER MY FACE. If she'd just looked a little closer, she would have seen all that powdered sugar settling into the fine lines and wrinkles around my mouth.

Anyway, other than that, it was fine. Perhaps memorable, even, as it was the very first time I have seen Asher participate in a group activity with a smile on his face. It's also the first time I have seen Asher's face while participating in a group activity. Behold, the top of his head.

December:

 

Today:

 

I know, the difference is remarkable. I'll save all my poetic ramblings concerning preschool for “graduation day” in three weeks. I had to use quotation marks because Asher is going back to the exact same classroom with the exact same teachers next year and will be a four-year-old again, so I guess he's graduating from... actually, I have no idea.

The best part of today was getting my homemade Mother's Day card. Dave got his card at an early Father's Day thing a month or so ago and we very much enjoyed the part of the card that Asher filled out with his teacher's help:

Here is the picture he drew of Dave:

I know, right? Your guess is as good as mine on those Menorah hands. We are not Jewish.

Today I got mine:

And a photo of me, with my hair apparently done up like either Sarah Palin or... well, according to sources (those sources being the aforementioned Father's Day card), like Dave.

For the record, I have never ridden a bike in my children's presence, and I have maybe eaten three salads in front of them. But imagine the relief that the card doesn't indicate the truth, which is that my favorite thing to do is The Internet. Also very relieved that no one outed me on my love for Cool Whip. I'm pretty sure Cool Whip is even lower on the food chain than powdered donuts.

The dude did make a lot of money off the newspapers, if I remember correctly

Do you like how in my last post I was all, TRA LA LA, summer is going to be such a breezy BREEEEEZE if I stay ORGANIZED and on TOP of things and HA HA HA HA HA, because Asher has had preschool twice already this week and this afternoon I have already given up and turned on a movie and yet I STILL have to continue to request, REPEATEDLY, that everyone please keep their hands to themselves.

I said it in italics, and then I said it again in all caps, and NO ONE IS LISTENING.

There are a lot of nice things about having kids who are relatively close in age. They really do play together well – and my kids' personalities seem to complement each other. Lucy's imagination is about where Asher's is (it's her strength and his weakness) and her easygoing temperament usually tones down his perfectionism. And I'd say... oh, 75 percent of the time they're fine together. They read books to each other and play instruments and yesterday Lucy took Asher's brand-new Lego helicopter apart and he just said, “That's ok, Lucy, we can fix it.” (I was not so ok with it, since I spent an HOUR putting it together for him.) (Relatedly: ages five to 12 can kiss my hind end.) (Also, can I just say that I cannot believe we've officially arrived at The Lego Age.)

The other 25 percent of the time BLOWS HARD. Last night was Date Night and prior to Dave's mom showing up, we actually had to confine each child to his/her own room for the first time ever. I could not take another second of Asher getting in Lucy's face or taking something away from her and her smacking him in retaliation and then both of them tripping over themselves to tattle on the other one. It drove me absolutely BALLISTIC. The nice thing is that they never do this when we're out and about. Never. They hold hands and chatter excitedly to each other and ask polite questions (for the most part) and share snacks whenever we're Doing Something.

But hole them up in the house for an afternoon and all hell breaks loose. Listen, we are out of our house a lot. We are always out and about in the mornings and we are very often out for a nature walk or a playground run in the afternoon but there are some times when I need to put away laundry or make a meal or WORK and we HAVE to be home and I dread it. I know that I can't expect them to be perfect and I know they're just little kids and I do appreciate that they look like little adorable angels whenever we're out together but what is it about this house that turns them into crazy people? Crazy people who need to be at each other's throats all afternoon?

Maybe I will look into some... cages? I mean, DON'T JUDGE, you guys. I'll get really really roomy ones, and I'll pad them with pillows and I bet you they will think it is a HOOT to drink out of those little guinea pig water bottles I'll hang on the side.

I suppose I could be a little high strung this week because we've gotten less sleep than is ideal to function like normal adults, normal adults being the kind of people who can handle bickering children. I keep thinking, how did I do this for 17 straight months when Lucy was a baby? (And then I remembered: I DIDN'T. I floundered and suffered and I cried A LOT.) We've had the Sleep Plagues this week: first was middle-of-the-night nosebleeds, then babies who can't sleep when they have colds, then Snoring Husbands, then the Hunger Games Trilogy, and finally, Really Important 11pm Breaking News Broadcasts and I am BEAT.

I have started thinking that maybe I need to give up television during the weeknights, at least during the summer. Honestly, except for Modern Family and 30 Rock, I don't watch much TV. But the reality is that I DO watch a lot of TV, because I turn it on, and look for something appetizing, of which there is NOTHING, and so Dave and I end up getting distracted from working/talking to each other/sleeping by shows like How It's Made, which is HUGELY dorky, even if it IS interesting. So I guess I watch a lot of TV that I don't even WANT to watch, instead of doing something more rewarding, like stuff I could get paid for, or projects around the house that I've wanted to do forever but can't seem to find the time to squeeze in. The thing is, I COULD squeeze stuff in – but I find myself mindlessly watching shows like Storage Wars. (Have you guys seen Storage Wars? It is freaking ridiculous. It isn't even INTERESTING. It is 30 minutes of watching people look through other people's discarded crap! And 30 percent of the show is repeating what everyone saw happen BEFORE the commercial as soon as they come BACK from commercial. WHO INVENTED THAT IN THE EDITING ROOM? It is SERIOUSLY ANNOYING.) So I don't know. I keep thinking, “I don't have time for everything I want to do!” but I think the truth is that I DO have time, I just don't dedicate myself to a task while I have the time. I write a few sentences and then I look up and someone on television is digging through a pile of old newspapers and I STOP AND WATCH IT and lose my train of thought/motivation. (Someone sorting through a pile of old newspapers! They are TELEVISING THIS! I swear to you! They think you are interested in OLD NEWSPAPERS.) (It turns out that sometimes I AM interested in someone digging through old newspapers.)

My point is that I want to try to make my evening time more deliberate. You know? Reading books is deliberate. Working on my writing (that wording sounds douchey, I know) is deliberate. Making a care package for a friend I love dearly is deliberate. Watching people dig through a pile of newspapers and then a cut to commercial and then back from commercial to watch people dig through the same pile of newspapers, THE SAME CLIP OF PEOPLE DIGGING THROUGH NEWSPAPERS, EVEN, while a voice over tells us exactly what they told us before they cut to the commercial? Not very deliberate at all.

My life – let me show you how there is room for improvement.