Suburban Bliss:: Birth Control Via The Written Word

I have this habit

Sometimes I forget, no, sometimes I put off writing thank you notes and then a week goes by and I haven't sent a thank you and then pretty soon....two, three, now a month has gone by and I am a horrible person and I haven't sent a thank you note and I feel like a horrible person and in order to get over being a horrible person who doesn't send thank you notes I have to start my thank you note with a preface about what a horrible person I am and I know for a fact it ruins the rest of the note where I am actually quite thankful for whatever I am sending the note for.

I tried.

Someone emailed me about this and asked me to spread the word. I've tried and I've tried to come up with something profound to say about it. Something to express my feelings about a show which reduces the often painful decision to give up a child for adoption and the often painful process of finding a child to adopt to nothing more than another reality show with a baby as the 'prize'.

This is the email I received:

"Last week I made the mistake of watching the last bit of 20/20 and saw what they were advertising for this Friday's episode (4/30/04)- a 'reality show' about infertile couples vying for the right to adopt one girl's baby. I am outraged, and want to get the word out there so that people can contact ABC and tell them that the insensitivity with which they are approaching infertility and adoption is totally inappropriate. Exploitation of the painful decisions that couples must face perpetuates stereotypes and does nothing to educate the public about the very real desires and tragedies that happen to couples every day. How can anyone hope for greater sensitivity from co-workers, friends and family when the only public exposure of an adoption process is shown in the form of a contest?"

Here is another smart woman's take on this show, a woman who has been through the adoption process.

And another well worded letter based on personal experience to look at.

And finally, if you find this as offensive as I do, please take a moment to Email 20/20 and let them know.

Our Vacation Home In The South Of France

Madison was a surprise. Not like 'Surprise! There's a baby jumping out of a cake!' But a surprise in the sense that I was taking the pill, and 'Surprise!' several pregnancy tests kept showing me two lines even though there was "Just no way in hell I could be pregnant."

The day I found out I was pregnant with her was a day of deep denial. A day I spent in our home working on a paper for my Organizational Comm class, while drinking water...lots of water and taking short breaks to urinate on small sticks. When I'd run out of sticks to urinate on, I'd drive to several different drugstores in town to buy several more sticks I could pee on.

I was in a denial so deep I didn't really pay attention to the double lines after a while. I just kept drinking pint glass after pint glass of water, then I'd head to the bathroom, pee on the stick and then head back to the computer to finish typing up the paper. The paper which was probably littered with lots of incoherent 'Oh My Fucking Gods' throughout the text.

Several hundred dollars later and more water than I'd ever like to drink again, my urine was as clear as the water I'd been drinking and still that God Damn pregnancy test had the fucking nerve to show me two lines.

After that rocky beginning and an even rockier post partum period, when I had Madison it was like I was supposed to have had her at this exact time in my life. Even though it didn't seem like the exact time to me while I was peeing on all those sticks. It was all much earlier than we'd planned. We'd only been married for 8 months when we found out we were growing her.

Withholding Information

I came across a discussion at Dot Moms this morning. I found the title 'When Do You Lie To Your Kids' quite interesting and I fear in my effort to evaluate the lies I tell my daughter, I may have clogged the blog (thanks for that lovely rhyme Julia) with my own thoughts and I may have missed the point the author was trying to make.

I think her point was on a more personal level and I was thinking in a more global sense and instead of continuing to Clog the Blog (wow, it doesn't get any easier to type that) I thought I'd go to my corner to think some more.

Blog Name Up For Grabs

I've been looking at a few blogs about infertility amongst other things and I always find them entertaining even when they are so heartwrenchingly sad and even though I feel terribly guilty reading about those horrible emotions surrounding infertility and loss and I end up thinking how unfair it is that I have these two beautiful children and how I had to stop my fertility in an awfully painful way. It all seems so cruel that I should be so bad at parenting yet have such an easy time conceiving. It makes no sense at all and I wish I could have donated my uterus to science.

However, I have a great name for a blog! While struggling a couple of years ago with very heavy periods it was discovered that I have a Heart Shaped Uterus! My friend Patti immediately called it a band name.

"Appearing Tonight! Heart Shaped Uterus!"

But someone, somewhere is looking for a blog and they happen to be struggling with fertility and maybe they have a heart shaped uterus. That's it! That's the name of your blog!

Creative Flourish.

You know I love my husband right? I mean, okay, he forbids me to eat anything pickled and/or mayonaisse based. Yes, he does that annoying thing with his weight....dropping it...as I continue to hover well above the number I thought was the highest I could ever accept. Okay and yes (!) sometimes I really envy his social life with adults who are not familiar with Miralax and tantrums. But I love him, right?

Right, yes I love him with every last cell of my being. I don't like to brag about him very much because he tends to believe his press a bit too much. (Note: I used to call him 'Pants' a sarcastic take on the 'Who wears the pants in the family' thing. Because we all know, I do! But he started to actually believe he was wearing the pants...and no, we can not have that.)

So I like to pick on him to balance the mad and passionate love I have for him.

Logan is really very good at a lot of things. You give him a mouse and a G5 and he will make all your commercial design dreams come true! Give him some art, and he will direct it! If you want a house plan, he can do that too! With paper and a pencil even! "CAD is for pussies!" he says. (Not really, but wouldn't it be funny if he did say that?)

However, if you ask him to write a story he will bore you to death with the most inane and purely factual account of the events you can imagine. He will not be able to add 'flourishes' for comedic effect. He will simply relay in painfully excruciating detail the encounter, word by word.

As an example, after reading the 'Mayonnaise Rages' he said, "Hey! I never made you sign a prenup!" (Okay, he didn't say that...but see! He could have and it would have been really funny!) He may not have said that exact sentence but he has said very similar things on several occasions.

I guess what I'm saying essentially is that my husband is a horrible liar, which is a good thing so really I'm not picking on him at all.

Imagine my surprise when I got this email relaying an early morning encounter my husband had:

Scene set-up: Early Friday morning, office elevator. Me, another guy and a gal get on the elevator.

Him (Earnest yet relieved facial expression, saying "I know you're gonna agree with what I'm about to say, dude..."; wearing a Snoopy tie with sweater vest): "TGIF, man. It couldn't come any quicker..."

Me (weary of a lifetime of dorkiness, but relieved to not be both dorky AND incredibly nerdy; smiling politely), thinking: Uh... yeah. Whatever. Can't we just elevate in peace?

Her (incredulous that she has to hear that same line for the 232nd time this year, yet smiling in a thinly disguised patronizing manner ), thinking: God that other guy is hot!

Inane elevator conversation...

You'll note: Ego is heavily present ('God that other guy is hot!'). Also, please note he added some inner dialogue which shows imagination on his part. I'm very very impressed.

Of course, after I read this I asked, 'Wait a minute, how do you know that's what she was thinking?'

Just Like My Brother

One of our friends is making some huge life changes. Not only in the 'life' department with this addition. He also sent an email announcing a total flip in his career...he's moving from an IT type position to a mortgage banking type position. In the email he said: 'So, I'm going to be just like your brother now!' (*my brother was in mortgage banking before flippity flopping into firefighting in January)

Of course all I can think is how, if he's really going to be like my brother, he's going to call me 'Pig Nose' from now on. He's going to have to call my sister 'Bubble Butt' and he's going to make lewd gestures at me while we play euchre. He's going to be completely oblivious when his wife paints the ceiling of the sunroom, he's going to wear horrible t shirts and he's going to be my mom's favorite from now on...even though he's really not her child, just because he's being just like my brother! My God, he's going to have to become a Republican even! Can you even be a republican and live in Ann Arbor?

As you can imagine my world is spinning. Up is down. Black is white. Red wine goes with fish.

Streamlining Suburbia

I've been trying to get a hold of my house since the new year. Part of that process was making some sense of our finances, part of it was making dinner most nights of the week for my family and part of that was coming up with some routines to keep our laundry running smoothly and the house relatively clean at all times.

The whole thing has been going pretty well, depending on how you define 'well'.

Keeping the house clean and neat has been especially difficult. Not impossible mind you but the key to keeping the house clean and less chaotic is making sure we have a place for everything and everything in it's place. In order to do that in our 1200 square foot house we have to make sure there isn't so much stuff to find places for, since there are only so many places and they're already kind of filled.

This is no small task for me since I share this home with two cats, a three year old, a five year old and a thirty six year old man who loves to collect things and can't bring himself to throw out anything, anything at all.

Mayonnaise Rages

This recipe for Wasabi Bloody Marys makes me wish I had plummeted a little deeper into my relationship with alcohol so I could wake up tomorrow morning and race out to the store and buy all the necessary ingredients and whip up a few.

Although I could not garnish it with pickled asparagus because Logan made me sign a prenuptial agreement which specifically limits the introduction of pickled products into our marriage. Dill pickles and sweet pickles are just barely acceptable, they must be quarantined in plastic food storage bags in the fridge away from the rest of our food. Other pickled vegetables require me to forfeit all claims to our joint marital property and assets and leave this home immediately with nothing but my pickled produce and the clothing on my back.

It seems harsh I realize, but you don't understand how deeply into Logan's soul the hatred of pickled products goes. Please, let's not even discuss his psychotic rages over anything resembling mayonnaise in any way.

I do have a love for pickled vegetables which is kind of unnatural but I limit my consumption to brunches at one of our favorite spots with a Bloody Mary Bar where I come back with my drink in one hand and 3 small plates piled high with all classes of pickled vegetables. Sometimes before I'm even done with my drink I go back up for even more. One day I'm going to ask for a Bloody Mary minus the tomato juice and I'll just add brine to my vodka.

Just imagine how bloated I would be by the end of that brunch. Go ahead, just imagine.

The Groom Played Bridezilla

We went to a wedding shower for two of our friends. It was a couples shower, which was probably the best news I'd ever gotten because I have to tell you I've endured several awkward showers due to the fact that my husband has a lot of female friends and female family I have very little in common with.

The friends getting married are quite young, and quite attractive and so are all their friends and I felt like I was sitting in the midst of a kind of alternative 'Friends' set and I felt a little out of place wearing 'Old Navy' from head to toe. Sigh....

Highlights were:

The groom-to-be hinting that the real purpose for this 'shower' was the big announcement he and Logan were making about their future as a couple. They thought a party with people I barely know would prevent an ugly scene.

Telling the groom-to-be to 'Get it together, it's your fucking bridal shower.' (He didn't like it being called his bridal shower.)

The groom-to-be calling himself 'Bridezilla' and declaring "This is all mildly disappointing!!" then breaking down into tears.

The groom-to-be taking a picture of my chest (remember this for later), which I found kind of flattering, except they don't photograph well...much like the rest of me.

A particularly rousing game of 'How well do you know the groom!'. Question for the groom to be: "What is the grooms dream job?" He says: "I'll say a fluffer." (Oddly this was not the answer the bride-to-be thought the groom would give.)

This was made even more amusing when the over 50 crowd began whispering to one another, "What's a fluffer?" Someone seemed to give an answer, but I can only assume he didn't give them an accurate definition.

Oddly the shower was almost entirely alcohol free (the over 50 "Jacket Club" met in the back hall and threw back a couple of drinks...sometimes I wish I was a man) and I have to tell you, from now on, my mission in life is to make sure there is never, ever another alcohol free shower, ever. Sure, I had fun without it. Sure the groom to be still said his dream job was a fluffer, in front of his own mother.

But I don't think it's right to throw a bunch of people ranging in age from 21 to 63 with nearly nothing in common into a pile and expect them to just "MINGLE, DAMN IT!"

Example of most common failed conversation: "So, you're into the Detroit Techno scene? [Thinking: I sound so fucking stupid right now] Oh, me? Well I'm a STAY AT HOME MOM"

Would you like to me to shoot this conversation now just to put it out of it's misery or do you want to keep going? Go ahead, throw something else out there...I can kill that too. I'm seriously that good. You know what's on my mind lately? Potty training....you use the potty right? Wait, where are you going?

See alcohol wouldn't have changed the conversation that much but I would have been blissfully unaware of the stupid things flinging forward from my mouth.

We had to leave around 3:30 before the shower really ended because of our babysitter (yes, we were the only ones with a babysitter), but we'd been there for almost 3 hours and the shower showed no signs of stopping. To give you an idea of how long the shower went on, as we crawled into bed last night at midnight Logan said "I wonder if that shower's wrapping up yet?"

I'm really not convinced it was over yet. Those crazy techno kids.

Two more related but unrelated things.

Moms Gone Wild

My moms group holds a monthly Moms Night Out, I like to call it 'Moms Gone Wild!'

It's kind of like the Girls Gone Wild series, only we don't make out with each other or flash our boobs or really do much else than eat dinner and most of the moms have a drink and are tipsy. I, on the other hand, have quite a few drinks and am barely tipsy. Thank You Irish Heritage!

This month we went bowling and I'm actually a terrible bowler. I look ridiculous doing it. I can't aim, except into the gutter. When Logan and I take the kids we use the bumpers with them and I actually utilize the bumpers so that it's less like bowling and more like pinball.

But you know, here's the thing about bowling. Even if you're really good at it are you ever really a 'winner'?

I may have lost every game (I scored a 54 and a 62)....but when you really think about it, I still won.

I woke up this morning with a bit of a hangover and I can't tell if it's a hangover from the drinks or a hangover from spending an extended amount of time in an actual bowling alley. I really don't see how it can be good for your health to spend nearly 4 hours in a bowling alley.

Gassy Pants

A Continuously Growing List Of Things Which Apparently Make My Husband Gassy*

Pasta.

Sharing a bed with me.

Being at the grocery store.

Driving long distances.

Split pea soup.

Being in bed in general.

Designing logos.

Dried Apricots. (Banned from our home.)

My God, I Absolutely Love This Potty!

Ineffective Things I Have Said (or thought about saying) While Trying To Convince My Son To Use The Potty.

"You know, I'm cool with not changing your diaper anymore. I mean I'm not 'married' to it. Really, it's fine if you want to use the potty instead. Seriously, I'm not going to freak out about it or anything."

(While I am on the toilet) "WOW! This is fun! I really love using this potty."

"Why can't you be more like your sister? She was using the potty at two and a half! On the side of the freeway! In the middle of Philadelphia!"*
*Did not say, but if I had it would explain a lot of the brewing sibling rivalry we're cultivating in this house.

Actual Awkward Conversations I Have Had. Chapter 1

Mrs Kennedy tackled homelessness with Jackson yesterday. She handled it quite well, but really...would it be that bad to let him eat out of the trash can?

Anyway, it brought to mind one of the most ridiculous cocktail party conversations I've ever had in my entire life.

A woman was telling us the story of how she explained homelessness to her 5 year old son.

"Well, we were driving through Detroit coming back from some show and as you can imagine there were a lot of homeless people. Of course he asked about these people out so late at night with shopping carts full of things and I told him...(drunk-ish laughter)....'Those people don't have homes and do you know why they don't have homes?' (more drunk-ish laughter) 'Those people DIDN'T GO TO COLLEGE'"

Her: more roaring drunken laughter....only from her.

Everyone Else: awkward silence and horribly obvious segue.

What everyone should have said, "Why that's ridiculous! Everyone knows those people are homeless because they weren't breastfed!"

Jellinek's Profound Truth

Somewhere in my preteens my father went to rehab.

He was an alcoholic. The kind of alcoholic who has a 'beer fridge' in the dining room, in the spot where nice families would have thought to put a china cabinet. The kind of alcoholic who drank pretty much non stop from Friday after work until Sunday at black out time.

He was a harmless drunk if you call emotionally tormenting your son and verbally abusing your spouse 'Harmless'. If you mean 'harmless' as in destroying your children's chance for a childhood free of adult problems and fear of the unexpected...then sure, he was 'harmless'.

This is the 76th time I've mentioned my hair, and I'm not done yet.

Though I know it's getting old for you, imagine what it's been like for me. 49+ bad hair days in a row over the last 7 weeks.

Finally it got long enough to get it reshaped a bit and hopefully make a little more sense out of it...but it didn't work out. Well, it does make more sense now, but only if having a post high school 'Beverly Hills 90210' Jennie Garth hairdo makes sense to you.

Quite Amusing...For a Sunday.

Things I Would Say To Dorothy Parker If I Was Her Boyfriend That Would Lead To A Huge Fight

"Did you just order another drink? How many is that?"

"I don't get it. Was that supposed to be funny?"

I love McSweeney's lists.

Fatter and Older

I've always looked young for my age. Even in kindergarten everyone thought I was an infant. When I turned 21, I was not surprised to be asked for my ID often. I've never understood getting upset about that, especially not when there are so many other things in this world worth being upset about.

However, I was annoyed a couple of times when, after showing my id, I was called a LIAR. To my face. In an unpleasant way. Once at an REM concert in the mid 90's, a security guard asked to see my id, convinced I was not old enough to be drinking the beer I had in hand. I proudly produced my license, she looked at it and said with a smirk, "This ain't you lady, this is your fatter, older sister."

Uhm, no. That's just fat, plain old me. I mean, okay it was a bad picture. I'm not exactly photogenic, especially not at the DMV, but Holy God what a WITCH.

Hello, My Name Is 'Dirty Laundry'

It turns out 2004 is not the year of becoming debt free. Apparently it is the year of telling your wife this is the year of No More Debt but what you really want is for your wife to not spend any money and squeeze groceries and household goods out of a fucking stone so that you, the breadwinner can go out with your buddies after work at least once a week and spend, as a 'reasonable' compromise, $25 each time. (Though before this recent 'compromise' you were spending more like $50 a week.)

This works out to $100 a month. Considering I am expected to spend $100 a month on things like...oh, everything we need in this house...I guess I'm a little annoyed at the thought of my husband drinking $100 at a bar every month.

I guess I'm sitting here picturing my husband drinking lotion and contact solution and toilet paper and dishwashing soap and laundry detergent and toothpaste. Because, in effect he's drinking away the portion of my budget alloted for these things.

He says things like, "I don't think $25 a week on my bar outings is unreasonable."

You know, he's right. If we had that money, then really $25 a week on bar outings wouldn't be unreasonable. But since we literally do not have $25 extra a week to spend on anything then I don't understand why exactly I'm supposed to smile and nod adoringly as my husband drinks my monthly toiletries budget.

Also, I'm thinking about Easter coming up on Sunday and how usually I'd buy my daughter and my son an adorable new outfit to wear to the various celebrations we participate in. However, this year....since it's the year of My Wife Spending Less Money So I Can Drink More With My Friends, I decided not to buy anything for the kids or myself to wear. I haven't spent any of my 'fun money' allowance this week just so I could get a god damn haircut this weekend.

But you know, God Forbid, my spouse not have his 'Bar Night'.

I'm so happy to learn this. Because really if I'd known it was the year of My Wife Spending Less So I Can Drink More With My Friends, I never would have agreed to the terms of this agreement.

It looks like the kids and I are going shopping tonight while my spouse is out hobnobbing at the bar with his co workers. I'll be buying all the things I haven't been buying while under the budget restrictions of 2004.

Really extravagant things like new shoes for my son, a new trash can to replace the broken (since December) one in our kitchen, maybe even a new toaster oven to replace the 25 year old yard sale find we've had for the last 7 years. Maybe I'll get one that works in less than one hour.

All this time my spouse has been telling me, "Let's wait on that."

With the budget restrictions and the ultimate goal of getting our financial house in order, I have complied...with angst of course but with a greater purpose in mind.

But, sheesh, if we have $25 a week to spend on drinking at a bar with co workers....we obviously must have money somewhere for a trash can for the love of God.

And if we can find money for the trash can, then what are we doing living with a bathroom that's literally crumbling beneath our feet? I mean if we have $100 a month to go to drinking, surely we can take $100 a month to begin remodeling the bathroom! The possibilities are endless and this is an excellent turn of events.

I only wish I'd known about this secret money tree my spouse has been growing in the basement all this time, really all this anxiety and insomnia I've been enduring about our impending financial doom could have been avoided.

Half Empty Half Full

Did I mention I got my laptop back?

Of course I didn't, that's because I'm a pessimist and I only talk about things I can complain and whine about. But, for a change of pace, I did get my laptop back exactly a week ago. When the 'Genius' brought it out to me at the 'Genius Bar' he said, 'Is this your baby' and I realized he understood what I had been through and I wanted to kiss him hard, and not in a Customer/'Genius' kind of way.

Quiet Times

If you want to know the real secret to getting into my pants it's this:

Be my utterly handsome husband.

Call me on your way home from the office.

Say: "If you have the kids shoes on, I'll pull up and whisk them away for a few hours."

Do exactly that.

I'm not sure I could love someone more than I love him at this exact moment.

It's so quiet here, I'm only now realizing my ears are ringing, maybe they've been ringing for hours, only it was too loud before to know.

Madison had her last day of school today until April 19th. That's 11, (eleven) days at home. All day, every day. Of course I have some outings planned and the weather is much nicer these days. However, we're simply bound to be sick of each other after 3 days and we'll have 8 more to go.

Don't even remind me of summer.

I'm the kind of person who requires a lot of alone time. I require a lot of quiet to feel like a somewhat sane person. This means it was terribly irresponsible of me to breed.

If I don't have my quiet time, I become an adult version of an overstimulated 3 month old infant. I rub my eyes, pull my ears and my arms flail around scaring the shit out of me. I also find myself answering every noise with a "What!?". The phone, the neighbors dog, the sound of my children being charming. I mean that, I'm not being sarcastic. They are charming and sometimes I don't appreciate it because I haven't had my quiet time.

As a child and especially as an awkward teenager, I had a lot of alone time. I was alone most of the time. In fact I was alone so much that when people who were forced to be around me (read: family) were around I would talk sofastandsomuchthatnoonecouldreallyunderstandawordIwassayingbecauseIwassoexcitedtobetalking.

My brother would stare like a deer in headlights as enormous amounts of totally uninteresting details of my uneventful day spewed forth from my mouth. My mother would numb herself to the sound of my voice and say 'mmhmmm' until I was too tired to say another word. Massive verbage every where. Pummeling everyone in it's path. Then I'd go to bed and I'd talk in my sleep just to hear my voice a little more because come tomorrow morning at 7am it was quiet time again.

I always thought my need for quiet was not exactly a choice but more a symptom of the miserable years I spent at Earnest W Seaholm High School.

I only realized after having two children and having very little quiet time that I actually enjoy quiet time and I like being alone and I actually require it. I mean, not all the time like when I was in high school and forgot what my voice sounded like between the hours of 7am and 3pm, but in a more well rounded and psychologically sound kind of way.

More in the kind of way that would find me hiding in the darkest corner of my closet with earplugs and a blindfold on. Once I actually did hide in the closet to get away from all the noise in the early days of Max's small and acid reflux-y life. It wasn't until Logan came home, opened the closet to put away his work clothes and found his wife sitting on the floor of the closet that I realized how kind of insane it was.

***Update: It turns out this entire 'Picking up the kids to give you a night off.' was less of a selfless act of a kind and loving spouse and was more an act of a man who wanted something he knew was unreasonable, so he decided to do something nice to soften the blow of his Jackassery™. Charming.

Aa, Bb, Cc

This schoolwork completed by Madison tells us a few things about our daughter:

Somewhere between Aa and Zz, Madison loses motivation for drawing nice and neat letters.

This assignment appears to involve some sort of drinking game as evidenced by the growing letters falling off the lines in each row.

The lower case z is a letter sent from the depths of hell to torment Madison and her pencil.

A Tour Of The Perplexing

Tonight I started thinking about how I used to wear knickers back in the early 80's, when I was in first and second grade. I remembered them being 'the thing' to wear.

I remembered wearing them but then as I thought about it all some more I realized I must have been dreaming because I couldn't imagine knickers ever being 'the thing' to wear even if you're a golfer, but especially if you're a second grader or even worse, if you're in high school.

But no, it wasn't just a very bad dream, it really happened.

Also recently perplexing, and entirely unrelated, is the fact that prostitution, having sex in exchange for money, is illegal. However, if you have sex in exchange for money but you let people record it and distribute those tapes so that anyone who chooses to can watch the act...then that's legal?

So, in effect, prostitution is fine as long as everyone can watch it? I don't get it.

I should not be allowed in public.

Pants and I had such a lovely date last night. We went to the DIA for a free visit with Whistler's Mother and some other work in the Whistler Exhibit.

It was a work related event and there was free salty snack mix and free drinks and good conversation with people Pants works with. I saw a father I wanted to meet so badly when I spotted him wearing his baby in a Baby Bjorn while having a beer. I would have felt funny drinking while wearing the Bjorn, so I had great respect for him, because really is there a time you need a drink more than when you're a guy and you're wearing a six month old on your chest like a tumor?

The exhibit was great, except that next to the painting of Whistler's mother was a board with a few quotes from her. Language has changed so much in a century and here's proof:

Whistler's mother describes the process of painting her portrait to a friend, "....at one or two difficult points I heard him ejaculate, 'No, I can't get it right!'......"

I realize how immature it is to laugh, but I could not help it. She said ejaculate for the love of God. Mostly I didn't laugh I wrote it down as though I was quite moved by what I was reading so I could share it later.

Oh, the paintings were intriguing also.

While walking through the museum a bit we read about some upcoming design changes coming to our art museum. It seems Michael Graves is working on the project.

Logan said, "You mean that guy from Target?" Which I'm sure has actually been said outloud in the museum, and not in jest.

After we were through at the museum we decided to eat dinner at Union Street just down Woodward. The lighting in Union Street is a lovely red tone and it made me forget about my inexplicable hair and the fact that we don't get to go to Union Street with our friends once a week anymore on a Tuesday night just because someone called and 'What the hell?'....we had lovely conversation and drove home down Woodward looking for some signs of hope...and we did see some glimmers of hope that our city won't always look like an abandoned war zone.

Unfortunately, we didn't see enough glimmering to inspire us to move into the city, so we did as is terribly typical. We crossed over 8 mile back to the comfort of our suburban life.

Sleep Centered

I've decided to write a book about parenting. I have a few working titles.

'It's All About Sleep: Letting Sleep Guide You Through Parenting.'

"Making All Your Parenting Choices Based In Sleep"

"Raising Your Child In A Sleep Centered Household"

My three year old is still sleeping in a crib. Do you know why? Because I know that the minute he is not sleeping in a crib, he will be disrupting the very nice sleep plan we have going. So I've decided he'll have to stay in his crib until he's a teenager and I have to yell at him to 'Get out of bed and do something' at noon every weekend.

I know this decision seems a little selfish of me, since he might really like sleeping in a bed, but I'm just not ready to lose any sleep for the transition.

He still has a binky, he uses it at night and I can't see taking it away from him because doing so will result in quite a few sleepless nights and like I said, I like to make all the big decisions about my children based mainly on the amount of sleep I'll get.

I started thinking about my book when a friend and I were discussing her new baby and how he sleeps so much better on his tummy than on his back.

I admitted a dirty little secret of mine, my babies slept on their tummies.

It's not something I talk about a lot, not because I'm particularly ashamed of the choice, but because I worry someone will hear that I let my babies sleep on their tummies and they will then think it's a great idea to let their babies sleep on their tummies and let's say the unspeakable happens and then I'm left feeling like an asshole for saying it was a great idea.

So, I just don't talk about it but it's kind of a drag they haven't figured out what causes Sudden Infant Death because I really don't believe it's the tummy sleeping thing. Because if babies were supposed to sleep on their backs why the hell do they startle themselves awake all the time? And why would biology torture us by giving us such peaceful babies on their tummies who die because of it and such restless babies on their backs who don't sleep very well?

But you know, until I start my research foundation and discover what the real cause of SIDS is, then I can't actually endorse the shameful practice of putting your baby to sleep on it's tummy.

But I did it and I'll have to put it in my book because, for me, it's all about the sleep. But I'll have to put it in there with a whole bunch of disclaimers and the footnote/disclaimers will take up half the book.

In my book I'll talk about how I fed my babies Poisonous And Evil Formula, even though I know how great breast milk is for them. Even though I know how natural it is. Even though it is actually easier to breast feed your baby once you get the hang of it and you don't have to pack bottles to travel and you don't have to wash bottles and you don't have to mix the EVIL formula each and every night. I'll make sure to tell people how great breastfeeding is in my book.

I realize I'm evil because I gave up after the 87th strike of the hammer on my nipple. I know I'm a terribly selfish person because I felt like the forceps and the 40 some odd stitches was enough pain really. I know that I'm weak minded because I really liked the comfort of knowing that my baby had eaten exactly 4 ounces and so I wasn't guessing if she was hungry or tired. Since she ate 4 oz twenty minutes earlier, I knew she was most likely tired. I also know I'm going to hell because I liked that formula took about 3-4 hours to digest and breast milk appeared to take about 30 minutes.

I mean I realize now I have retarded and sickly children who will never get into the ivy league, but God Damn it I'm well rested, and like the title of my book warns...I have a sleep centered household. If you're going to be a Sleep Centered Parent, you're going to have to make some really tough choices.

When my book hits the stands, they'll probably keep it in brown wrapping behind the counter with the porn because really it's shameful to care so much about sleeping when you're supposed to be just plain happy about raising the miracle you just birthed.

But I believe people will buy the book anyway, even though they'll have to mumble at the clerk that they'd like that, uhm, sleep centered book and they'll shove it into their bag so no one can see it and they'll take it home and furtively glance through it when no one is looking.

And when I write my book, we'll all start a secret society and we'll have zzz's tattooed on our asses and we'll have a secret handshake and we'll share our passion for sleep and our dirty little secrets, because there are lots of people like me. People who love sleep, people who think it's at the foundation of a good or bad day of parenting.

Because we all know everyone is a better parent after 8 hours of sleep than they are after 2.