The Beginning of the End of the Not Sleeping, Maybe

I have decided to teach the Wee One how to fall asleep at night without nursing, so that theoretically I might one day be able to leave her with another person and know that she will not spend the entire sleepy time screaming. I know that many of you think I should have already done this. I know that many of you probably think it’s weird that I’m still nursing her at all, since she can walk, climb on top of the kitchen table in less than ten seconds, and drive a stick shift.

So, filled with fear and trepidation, I nursed her the other night in the rocking chair, telling her all the while that “When we’re all done with milk we’re going to go upstairs and just fall asleep, like the Biggie!” And that’s what we did. She squirmed, yelled for ten minutes, and then, miraculously, settled into a quiet state during which she stared into my eyes while I sang “Wheels on the Bus” approximately forty times. The next night, there was no yelling at all. I am in shock.

I have spent such a long time functioning on so little sleep that I don’t know what I’ll do with myself when I get a solid eight hours a night. What do you people do, you with the sleeping and the restfulness? Will the bags under my eyes disappear? Will I stop telling everyone everything twice?

Will I stop telling everyone everything twice?

Overheard on the Monitor: “Calvin, why don’t you make your own triceratops sandwich?”

There Really, Really Are No Brain Cells Left

I just called my friend Debi and left a message on her machine asking her to save milk cartons for me for a Christmas project. Then I called my friend Brita to ask her the same thing. And then I called my friend Debi, to ask her to save milk cartons for me for a Christmas project.

Sadly, that is not a misprint.

I will continue to alienate my Republican readership (all two of you) by offering the following, sent to me by my dear friend Sharon.

Bush Haiku (not really)

This is a short poem made up entirely of actual quotations from George W. Bush. These have been arranged, only for aesthetic purposes, by Washington Post writer, Richard Thompson.

MAKE THE PIE HIGHER

I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen and uncertainty
And potential mental losses.

Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the Internet
Become more few?

How many hands have I shaked?
They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.

I know that the human being
And the fish can coexist.
Families is where our nation finds hope,
Where our wings take dream.

! Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher!
Make the pie higher!

In the spirit of trying not to think about the abomination or elation tomorrow’s election may bring, I decided to perform one of the Quistilton Family’s most hedonistic rituals: The Returning of the Bottles and the Cans and the Change. This ritual involves dredging up the huge trash bags filled with deposit containers (Coke cans, beer bottles), dragging them to Wegmans, and counting them up to receive a measly 5 cents per container. We always wait eons to do this, until we have three or four garbage bags of funky cans and bottles, and then I force the Husband to bring the beer bottles back because I don’t want to look like a desperate alcoholic toting wee ones to the store for her deposits.

And then I have so many cans that they clog the machine and I have to move to another machine which they also fill up, while the Wee One is climbing out of the grocery cart and I can’t grab her because my hands are sticky with Old Coke Shmutz.

But then I return the change, and it’s always worth far, far more than I think it will be. Today it was $40, and that was only a paltry few handfuls of nickels, dimes and pennies. Yeeha! On to the sushi bar!

Because of course the hedonistic aspect of this festival is that it all feels like free money, so we get whatever we want in the WHOLE DARN STORE. This is what we got today, crazy nuts that we are: Two trays of sushi, Jergens intense moisturizing cream, chondroitin and glucosamine tablets for the Husband’s knee, Viactiv milk chocolate calcium chews for my poor mineral-leached bones, pink lemonade for the Biggie, and *gasp* a six-pack of beer. Good lord, someone arrest us for our folly!

Except we almost couldn’t buy the beer. “Marva,” our lovely hostess, wouldn’t allow me to buy it because the Husband didn’t have his ID with him. Somehow she believed that we, with our fatigue-aged faces and young children in tow, were attempting to illegitimately buy booze and get the naive young Husband liquored up. Dude, PARTY!

So the Husband, seething, left the store while I went back to the beer section and tried to get another six-pack of our favored local brew (“Cascazilla,” named after the lizard and Cascadilla Gorge). There wasn’t another one. Annoyed by the inconvenience, and certain the Wee One was gritching for her dinner outside, I marched haughtily to the manager’s desk and demanded, “Um, where do the cashiers put things when customers can’t buy them? See, uh, I was going to buy this beer and then she said we couldn’t because my husband didn’t have his ID and then there wasn’t another six-pack and then, um, so...” all along feeling the New Englander’s Guilt--I WAS ACTUALLY GOING TO BUY BEER. AND I ADMITTED IT.

And it turns out Marva was wrong--they’re allowed to sell beer to married people. Because presumably we need it. So, Pfffflllbbbt to you, Marva! And cheers to the rest of you. May we all survive tomorrow.