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*not actually me!

First, take a moment and look at these date tags, will you? NINE days since the last post.  This is totally unacceptable and management will address the problem forthwith.  Well, hopefully.

Yes, as this picture illustrates, I am back on the hamster wheel of grad school again.   The break went by in approximately 5 nanoseconds, I think.  (Vegas’ll do that to a person, I hear).  Even though the semester technically started a week ago, I find myself floundering and completely at a loss for motivation, comprehension, organization, and any other applicable tion‘s you can think of.   On Sunday night, I did the first assignment for one of my classes and it should have been easy in theory but in practice it took me about 4 hours, and included an elegant mental breakdown, 2 temper tantrums (on the inside [mostly]), and a very, VERY strong impulse to throw my mouse through the window just to hear some kind of satisfying breakage. Yeah, welcome back to academia!

Sooooo, yeah, I’ve been a in a marvelous frame of mind and lots of fun to be around lately.  Just ask FF!  On second thought, don’t ask him.  Work, too, has been pretty nutty, although, not as bad as some semester launches.  I attribute the manageable-nut-factor to my awesome coworkers.  (and possibly I should also recognize here the fine contributions of my good friend,  Beer.)

So anyway, this is another one of those “whatever pops into my head with no organization or coherent theme” posts.

K has not been the best sleeper lately.  After 4+ years of dealing with unholy sleep disruptions, I’d like to say at this point that becoming a parent is FULL of false advertising.  When they are all tiny, cute, and fit in one arm, you tell yourself that all the sleep deprivation is worth it, and after all, they’ll sleep through the night eventually, right?  FALSEFALSEFALSE!!! Woe is me.

I have to proclaim something very important: vanilla oreos dipped in Nutella might be the most delicious thing on Earth.  So delicious in fact that I will not be able to buy them ever again, because merely looking at the package is approximately 200 calories.  This is most definitely what I want for dinner.  Sigh.

Just when I am about to pull my freaking hair out over my daughter’s sudden shift to demanding parent-interactive play CONSTANTLY, a $6 investment in a pretend-pizza-set kept her busy for 2 days straight!  What the heck?  I mean, she always used to be really good about creative, imaginative pretend and/or toy play, and I always felt we had a really positive mix of solo and interactive play.  Lately though, it has been Mom/Dad/K2 or nothing but complaints.  I don’t get it.  Is this a normal developmental shift?  Geez kid, go entertain yourself already and let us take down the Christmas decorations!

Now that the dining room area is painted, mostly deboxed, and we have an actual table and chairs, we have started eating at the table like (mostly) civilized folks.  Thus, I am teaching K to set the table.  So far, she thinks it is a lot of fun; especially when it comes to lighting or blowing out the candles.  I wonder, am I starting a pyro here?

My self Christmas present this year was my ridiculously cute Coach bag.  FF, on the other hand, has been lusting after a Keurig single-cup coffee brewer for quite awhile, so that was his self-gift this year.  I expected to get indifferent service out of it, just as I have viewed any other coffee apparatus in the past.  Well, that was the past.  I’m now a slavish fanboi for this thing.  Go figure.  But hey, it brews perfect single cups of coffee, tea, or cocoa in mere seconds, directly into my travel mugs and there are no distracting measurements, clean up, filters, blah blah blah.  It’s ridiculously awesome. 

/Soapbox:

Dear Ghost Whisperer / JLH:

I feel that some of the storylines this season have been waning in quality.  For example, who had the great idea of digitally rendering the “Shiny people” on the cheap, thus ending up with something that looked like the love child of Casper the ghost and the Stay-Puft man?  Also bear witness to the oddness of sending JLH inside an online virtual world avatar. Please understand that I hold you to no specific intellectual standards, but there is only so much ridiculousness that I can tolerate in the name of my JLH crush.  I hate to bring this up and all, but I just saw the preview footage for next Friday and all I can say is….couldn’t you spend a little more on those glowing orange contact lenses?  And hasn’t the cheesy demonic possession thing been DONE enough already? I’m really ok with numbing, formulaic regularity in your episodes, so please consider this my request to skip the contact lenses, avatars, and marshmellow people forthwith.    /Soapbox off

OK, one more last thought: DAMN, some days I wish I could have gone from pregnancy to a 5 year old in the blink of an eye with nary a scratch, saggy boob, or misplaced hair.