We know Milo
I sat down this evening to do some serious channel flipping, and i landed as i often do at 5:30pm on Gilmore Girls. Luke was having a heartfelt conversation with his son, a young ruffian motorcycle-type who wins the heart of Rory Gilmore. A boy who can't make it through a high-school education but still manages to speak in paragraph-length sentences. What a wity dreamboat. What a rebel. And then, like a flash of lighning, it hit me...
"Holy Shit!" i exclaimed, "Peter Petrelli??!!!"
Indeed (as imdb kindly confirmed) Milo Ventimiglia who plays the now famous Peter Petrelli in NBC's Heroes is one in the same with Milo Ventimiglia who incarnated Jess Mariano from 2001 to 2006 in the ABC dramadie Gilmore Girls. Once again, this proves that i am the awesome at recognizing people on tv. Actually, that's an understatement. Once on the street i recognized Alyssa Milano from the back side portion of her head. I recognized Alissa Milano's EAR. THAT'S how good i am.
I feel this vindicates me from the two unique instances when i slipped at my craft, the instances that family and friends often point to for mockery solely because they are the only two misidentifications i've made, out of thousands of correct pairings that my synapses have produced. One was that time that i confused Renée Zellweger with that girl from Chasing Amy. The other was when i thought the girl cop on Heroes was the same actress as the girl who played the friend on Joan of Arcadia. She wasn't. But that friend from Joan of Arcadia, actress Becky Wahlstrom, she WAS on CSI, i'll have you know, and it was me who positively identified her when Dan asked, "Why does that actress look so familiar?"
And Milo "Peter Petrelli" Ventimiglia? He cut his teeth on Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Although i don't remember that from the show. That tidbit comes straight from IMDB. which stands for I M Da Bomb at this. Where this is this stupid game i just made up. And the "at this" is silent.
our little skills
I happened to look into the first volume of the Bone comic book yesterday. First thing I thought was, "the author must be a big Pogo fan." Next thing: "Hmm. Pogo crossed with Lord of the Rings." When I got home I looked the series up on the Wikipedia, and, as you can see at the entry linked above, the article's introduction reads:
Bone was drawn and written by Jeff Smith. Smith's black-and-white drawings are inspired by animated cartoons and comic strips, a notable influence being Walt Kelly's Pogo. However, the story contains both light-hearted comedy and dark, epic fantasy, drawing inspiration from J. R. R. Tolkien and others.
Imagine my feelings of triumph! I of course rushed to tell Leah of my perspecacity; she was mildly enthusiastic, but she really wanted to talk about something else. "Did you read my blog post?" she asked. "I did." I told her. "We all have our little skills, don't we."
sometimes i act like a good housewife and bake!
Leah: "You know how you love eating cookie dough until the first batch of cookies comes out of the oven, and then you only want to eat the cookies? It's like how you loved making out before you got into having sex."
Dan: "Well then you can give me the bowl to lick when you're done, because I loooove me some cookie dough... I MEAN! I like sex TOO though! I LIIIIKE SEX. Don't get me wrong!"
technical update
If you happened to be browsing the blog yesterday or today and saw a PHP error or a notice of bad SQL syntax, you know that I was working on the blog software here. More remains to be done, but there are two exciting new features worthy of particular notice. First, we have an RSS 2.0 feed now. We had RSS 1.0 all along, but I never bothered to advertise it; now, if you want to read the first few characters of every post via the RSS, just point your syndicator at squibix.net/blog/rss/. Second, I've created author-based archives, so if you click on Leah's name on any one of her posts you'll see the blog populated by only her writing. Bookmark that instead of the main page, and you'll be guaranteed a squibix family blog experience free of any more whining about Movable Type! The author archive works for me too, but who would want that?!
free as in beer
You know, free beer just doesn't get any love. A long time ago our house-mate Ashley had a dinner party and one of her friends brought along a couple 24-packs of Amstel Light. Since everyone else had come with a bottle of wine or two, only three of the 48 beers were consumed that evening; we managed to put away maybe five more over the next week or so. The rest have had a tough life of it, I'm afraid I have to report.
First, they were shoved into the corner of the dining room, where they sat for some time. Later, they served as a riser for the food and water dishes of Ashley's dog (a St. Bernard) for a while, until she remembered to bring the bowl holder back home. When we cleaned up we put them down in the basement, where I tripped over the boxes more than once. Finally, Ashley had another party in the beginning of February, so she brought them up and put them out on the back porch to chill and be available should anyone want beer that had already been through so much (I don't think she advertised their condition, though). They are still out there today, having endured snow and sleet, sub-zero temperatures and thaws, pouring rain, and direct sun every sunny day between sunrise and noon.
How do you think they taste now? I'll check tomorrow.
holy moly
The Boston Sunday Globe "broke the news" this morning in its "Ideas" section that while 2/3 of people surveyed in the US believed the bible carries all the answers to life's questions, only 1/2 of people could name AT LEAST ONE of the Gospels. That's AT LEAST one, people. After some quick math, that means that over 15% of the people who believe the bible is honest-to-God truth couldn't pull the name "Matthew" out of their butts. or Mark. or Luke. or John. I was born Jewish you guys, but i still didn't need to cross-check those names somewhere else in the internet.
So in Sunday School this morning, i did an informal test of my 8th graders. We were talking about the Enunciation, and i asked the boys if any of them knew who it was who baptized Jesus. You know, the guy in the water, preaching and telling people to repent of their sins? Who was that guy? I'll give you a hint, his name ends in "-The Baptist".
"Um," said one of the boys, "Moses?"
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO DAN!!!!!
Today is a very special day. It was thirty years ago today, you see, that my dear love Danny shuffled onto this mortal coil. And we're all very glad that he did, because now he gives nice things to the earth, like blog networks and cute smiles. Happy birthday Danny!!! Maybe later after his partaay Dan will write if he got anything good for his birthday.
wherein i reveal multiple layers of geekiness
Oona's comment on yesterday's blog post reminded me: CAN YOU F-ING BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED ON HEROS LAST NIGHT???!!!!!
I mean, so okay, i'm no frame-by-frame geek, but here's what we got so far.
We find out that "The Initiative" (the Buffy-referencing name i've chosen for the paper-factory-running secret army) is secretly run by Linderman. Either that, or Linderman is a good guy not connected to the initiative, on the same side as the Patrellis, who can't be bad because at least one of them speaks French, and the Haitian, who too speaks french but not that amazingly. I mean, he's good at it, but it's not that amazing that he speaks it.
(Also, typing that nationality totally reminds me of anouther throw-back quote: "... so if we could just haul ass to the kitchen, rearrange some things, we could totally party with the Haitians. And in conclusion, it does NOT say RSVP on the statue of Liberty!")
Also, Claire's dad is totally in trouble, thanks to this new X-man i-mean-hero, let's just call her Mystique, who is by-the-way a total bitch! And do you think everytime they want to solve some tiny problem in the show they're gonna introduce anouther character deux-ex-machina style. Oh crap, she's dead but we need her to still be alive for a bit, bring in a new hero!
Also bad news: Peter Patrelli got his lock of hair lobbed off, but i bet he can use Claire's skills to grow it back.
i dunno. i'll have to watch it again and report more. Scoobies on the trail!
the power! THE POWER!
This post comes to you via my birthday present, a big fancy new computer. And I mean big! It puts my previous machine to shame in several regards, including size of actual computer, size of monitor (they gave me a new monitor too!), brightness of monitor, power of processor, size of hard drive, amount of RAM, and whiteness of keyboard. That last one is a little worrisome, actually; I got my last, black, keyboard pretty dirty, so I shudder to think what this one will look like in a couple months! I've already dusted it once. For this wonderful entré into the world of 21st century computing I owe a great big thank you to Leah, her parents, and my parents. THANKS!! Best birthday present ever.
modern life, why must you mock me so?!
With the new computer comes a new chance to organize my life (or at the very least my digital life) in the forms prescribed by the makers of the machine. To wit, I made an effort to set up the Mac's built in address book and calender program. I used the address book a little on the old machine, but only because there was no other way to add folks to your list of IM contacts—your buddy list, as it's known—without having them in the book. There was no information included beyond screen names in that first iteration, I assure you. The calendar, of course, went completely unused by an unscheduled soul such as me.
Now I'm so busy and successful, though! Or so I thought until I tried to come up with some contacts and calender events. You know you're in trouble when everyone in your address book shares the same last name. Friends? Coworkers? Where are you?!?! Ditto the calendar. I've got my classes in there, but as for the rest I'm at a loss. Should I schedule my lunches, for the days I'm working at home? Walking the dog? (Can't chat now, I have an appointment in the bathroom at 10:15!) I'll have to ask Leah what she does. She has a little calendar machine that she carries around with her, and it seems that she manages to enter a fair amount of information into its electronic grasp. As for the contacts, though, I think I'm on my own. Know anybody who'd like a pen pal?
happy birthday Oona!
Oona is fortunate in that her birthday follows mine so closely. Surely March is the best time to have birthdays! It's even better in Seattle, perhaps, because there the beginning of March is more closely associated with spring, itself undoubtedly an auspicious time to be born. Here, not so much; although today was an encouraging early sign. I might even go so far as to call this afternoon's weather a harbinger. The morning was not—the computerized thermometer (the only one we've got, so modern are we here at the squibix household) read 4°F when we took the dog out for his walk at around 8:00—but by late afternoon when Rascal wanted to play in the yard, it was warm enough that when he lay down to chew a stick I set myself down next to him. Next thing you know it'll be time to break out the hammock! Unfortunately all our pretty flowers, like the ones pictured in Oona's post linked to above, tried to bloom in December. So I don't know what their going to do when spring comes around for real.
You will note the degree to which Rascal determines my schedule. His looming presence on top of this blog (in this season's style, anyways) is an accurate representation of his role in our lives.
the nature of the internet
Everyone uses the internet, but how many of us know how it works? I was just doing some light reading about DNS and IPv6, driven initially by curiosity as to how the website belonging to the company that manages (I use the term loosely) our web hosting here at the squibix web has managed to drop completely off the face of the earth. It's not that their site is down per se, it's that it doesn't exist at all. It's the aforementioned DNS, I believe, which is not reassuring in a web host, especially one from whose clutches you're currently trying to pry your domain name.
Anyways, it turns out some computers somewhere take what you enter into the address bar there and, through who knows what sorts of magic, turn it into a unique number that identifies the particular computer you're trying to access over the ether. All those millions of sites! I was looking through some of them earlier via Blogger's "next blog" navigation button, and it turns out that many of them are blogs in Spanish or sites advertising male models. On Blogger, really! I was fascinated. Right now, the numbering system in use only allows for 4.5 billion different sites (very loosely speaking); IPv6, the system of the future, will allow for many many more. As the Wikipedia puts it, with IPv6 "every person on Earth could have roughly eleven million trillion times all the addresses currently available for the whole world."
Just think of all those male models!
how much daylight did you save?!
The confusion was moved a few weeks early this year. Some senator or something decided to do his part for the health of the Earth by springing forward a couple weeks early, because changing people's clocks about the only environmental measure without a lobby out there opposing it. It's all fine and good I suppose, except when people start talking seriously about "increasing the hours of daylight". Now if the senate managed to do that, I'd be impressed (though I imagine the folks in China or Australia or wherever might not be so pleased) but, as it is, all they're doing is penalizing those of us who get up at a reasonable hour. We need to turn on lights in the morning too, senator! Ben Franklin would say that it's just another sign of this once-fine country's long decline.
On the other hand, it's nice that it's light out at dinner time!
a confession
I cannot eat, or even see, an olive or jar of olives without getting the Hebrew "Alphabet Song" stuck in my head.
Aleph bet vet, Aleph Bet vet. Gimel Daled Hey, Gimel Daled Hey.
we really talk like this
On a walk with Rascal.
D: Ow! My knee just started hurting for no reason. Maybe it's the arthritis starting up. Waaah! I'm so old!
L: No no, knees just hurt sometimes. It happens to me, and I'm alot younger than you.
D: Hey! Don't rub it in! Unless you're rubbing in the Bengay...
squibix blog, how i've missed thee
It turns out that when you run a blog network professionally, you suddenly have a decreased incentive to blog on your personal time. This is why UNTIL THIS VERY SECOND Dan won the war over control over the homepage. I'm just all tapped out of exciting things to say after a hard day of aggrigating IT stories. Yawn, and double yawn. However, the warmer weather should free up some extra time i had previously used to de-ice my windshield and cower in the corner in a huddled pile bemoaning the coldness of the outside world. That was, like, fifteen, twenty minutes a day. That translates into three, four jokes tops.
new server, yay!
squibix.net has moved! Not so you'd notice; I just switched web hosts, after months (if not years) of frustration with Fuitadnet, where I moved the site in 2004. We are now hosted by the fine folks at Routhost; let's see how long my good opinions of their services last. The switchover went remarkably well, so far as I can tell, but if you regularly peruse the deeper depths of the squibix web you will notice that much of the old content didn't make the move. I honestly don't think anyone will notice, but if there's something you miss, let me know!
Valerie Plame is a total hotty
So, i turned on CSPAN today like TOTALLY BY ACCIDENT, because I AM NOT THAT BIG OF A LOSER, and the Plame Gate hearing was on. Helloooooo! How come no one told me that Valerie Plame was, like, such a total babe? This story just keeps getting better and better! All the papers say that the VP's office divulged her name for "political" reasons, but i think Dick Cheney was just jealous that his old Lynney isn't as much of a fire-crotch as she used to be. Did i just say that? Look at the picture, people.
That hair flip used to be the secret weapon behind our nation's intelligence. If you can't tell meeee where the WMDs are, maybe you will tell THE HAIR!!!
spring broken
So it was supposed to be my Spring Break this week. That means I had to be hanging out at elementary schools four of the five days. Well, I guess that's all I can expect as a 30-year-old grad student: my Cancun days are over for good. So no 'Break', per se; how about the Spring? Well, we had one good day of open windows, but today a blizzard shut us in the house all day. They're saying there'll be a foot of snow on the ground by tomorrow morning. Failure.
does it snow in Ireland?
Saint Patrick's day is a school holiday in Boston (they snuck it in under the mantle of Evacuation Day), or at least it is when it falls on a weekday. Too bad for the children of our fair city, then, that the 17th of March was a Saturday this year. Even worse, they missed not one but two days off of school (if multiple days off could be observed simultaneously) because there was also an awful lot of snow today. Most of it came down last night, as I mentioned in my bitter post about my alleged Spring Break (MTV, why must you raise these false expectations?!) but this morning we saw a fair amount of freezing rain and whatnot. The dog loved the early-morning snow, so much so that he ran away—before his breakfast, even!—and had himself a little 20-minute romp. Later, though, the crust formed by the freezing rain gave him some considerable difficulty. We alternated between concern for his well-being and hilarity at his attempts to maintain any semblance of reasonable gait. Since there was no blood (unlike last time he had to deal with a crusty snow) the hilarity won out.
Also, it is impossible to conclude this St. Patrick's day post without noting that Leah won a bottle of tasty Irish Whiskey in a drawing at the gym. We're going to have to start drinking again!
it's a work of art
In addition to the computer I got for my birthday, Leah also gave me a picture of said computer. A painted picture! It's awesome. I finally got a picture of it on the internets, and here it is for your enjoyment:
(click on the picture to see it slightly bigger.)
the internet is more of a web than a truck
As part of my new job in the blogosphere, i manage bloggers and blog content on this website which just launched last week. I recruit bloggers, created blogs for them, and introduce them on the homepage. Also, i learn how to do things like create blogs and make a link. Did you see that link i just made??? I made that!!!!!
Dan asked me to post something for our blog and i was like: post to a blog? I post to blogs all day!!! JSON is an altermative to XML! Paris and Nicole are booring!!! Take that linkage, biotch!
technological shortcomings in the universtity population
I had cause to spend a few hours in the computer lab at my university yesterday, and a few things surprised me—most notable among them the presence of six beautiful (or at least once-beautiful) Mac Pros, complete with Apple Cinema displays, gracing one side of the room. Mac Pros? Isn't that a little much for machines that are only going to be used for email and writing double-spaced undergraduate essays in Microsoft Word? Even worse (though, sadly, less surprising) was the fact that no one was using them, preferring instead to patronize the several rows of Dells. Which can't cost more than $600 each!! Shouldn't that price differential matter to people?! Clearly they haven't heard the news, that Apple is the new darling of the business world. The halo from the iPod is going to overlap with the halo from the recently-released Apple TV, to create some kind of robot super-halo. Luckily for them, the folks in the lab got a taste of the Mac love against their wills, since the printer connected to the Dells was non-functional, and to print anything they had to email it to themselves and figure out how to get onto the internet on a non-Windows machine. And believe me, they had their troubles. Not the wonderful user experience Apple might have hoped for.
The fact is, the level of computer knowledge in the room was not high. That applies not only to the students, but to the lab personnel as well. The part-timers have some excuse—work-study doesn't require a great deal of experience or training, I believe—but their supervisor wasn't much better. One of the Macs was having a problem opening Word files, and he was trying to remember what the keyboard combination was to rebuild the desktop. Aside from the fact that he was sitting in a room filled with 50 computers connected to the internet (who needs memory when you've got google?), rebuilding the desktop is OS9 voodoo, at least seven years old now. The new superstitious response is repairing permissions, don't you know!
That machine's problems were minor, however, compared to another one of the Macs, that was kernal panicing as soon as it was started up. They were trying to reinstall the OS, or at least do something with the install disk, but sadly the install program couldn't even find the machine's hard drive. Now what could they have been doing to that poor computer to reduce it to such a state?! I can excuse the hideously dirty keyboards (white keys do not belong in a public lab, I'm afraid) but not the 'motherboard troubles' that the lab tech diagnosed. Between the poor care and the public disdain, I had half a mind to try and liberate one or two of the big guys from the lab, to give them a chance to live up to their full Pro potential in more congenial surroundings. But I've got my own big computer to take care of now, so they will have to await another liberator.
survival of the species
According to the Boston Globe this morning, there is overcrowding in the Waltham school system, and the school has to cut 1.3 million from their budget. They tried to cut freshman sports, but parents complained. They tried to cut full-day kindergarten but the parents all yelled. The new initiative is to redistrict the elementary schools so that one particular school won't need to turn their entire gym into classrooms,like they already did for art and music, and some parents in the Globe are already complaining that, "It will split up neighborhoods. That's really hard on the kids."
I don't know how this phenomena remains undocumented, but it seems to me that otherwise intelligent women, once they have kids, become like completely unable to grasp simple problems of addition... even without numbers, the entire CONCEPT of simple addition. Like, your town has absolutely no money, so little that your obese kids can't have gym, and you "just say no" to any increased property taxes, but no resources, plus no allowable spending cuts, plus increased population every year, somehow equals "YOU CANNOT POSSIBLE CUT ONE SECOND OF FULL DAY KINDERGARTEN!! WHAT ARE YOU, A NAZI!!"
only the best for my child. he's my little angel. he deserves so much.
People saying that motherhood brings out the best in women is like saying that motherhood brings out the best in wolverines, because of the ferocity with which they dismember any other creature in a four-mile radius of their cub. It's called unconditional love. I think it's protected under the constitution, or, like, something.
serendipity
Leah: So i was getting my grandma a pre-paid phone at the T-Mobile store, and the woman asked for my birthday so she could write the warranty, and i said 4/29, and she said "That's my birthday too!"
Dan: Wow.
Leah: And theeeeen, there was a guy in line behind me, and he said, 'That's my birthday too!
Dan: Impressive.
Leah: We were the ONLY THREE people in the T-Mobile store. The rest of the store was empty. And we all had THE SAME BIRTHDAY!
Dan: It's a miracle.
Leah: Do you know what the odds of that are? Assuming normal distribution of birth dates, the odds of three randomn people having the same birthday are 1/365 cubed.
Dan: No they aren't.
Leah: Yes they are. 1/365 to the third power.
Dan: Oh, i guess you're right.
Leah: 1/365 times 1/365 times 1/365.
Dan: Yeah! i get it!
Leah: That's over one in 48 million.
Dan: Okay, fine. That's a lot.
Leah: What did you think cubed meant, times four?
Dan: Shut up.
sproing!!
We had all that late snow dumped on us last week or whatever, but yesterday and today it melted about as fast as you could ever hope for. The ground is even dry in a few spots in the lawn! Small spots, true, but still. The place is also crawling with robins, which I suppose must mean something. Rascal still wants to eat them, and that no doubt contributes to his abysmally bad behavior over the last couple days. Beyond that predatory drive, I think the spring weather itself contributes. I'd say it was hormonal, but since Rascal is a post-op non-sexual that can't be a factor; clearly, the warmer air can have as powerful an effect through psychology as it can through biology. Either that or we're just really bad dog-trainers.
squibix design looks new!
I like pretending I have a real design company, and so far it's worked to the point where people are really paying me to design things for them. What fun, eh? To further the illusion, I've purchased a real domain for squibix design: take a look at the new site at its new location, squibixdesign.com! It was always a little embarrassing to have my big fancy company operating out of a subdirectory, but that taint is now removed. At least, it's removed as far as anyone out on the www can tell; from my point of view here things are pretty much the same, because the site is actually just a subdomain of the squibix web (as you can see if you take a look at design.squibix.net). But no one has to know that, and now I can put a link to the site in my professional-looking email signature without any fear of derision. Derision about the url, that is; there still might be terrible embarrassing display problems with the site, because I didn't get to test it on as many browsers as I would have liked. Stupid Windows doesn't let you have IE6 and IE7 on the same machine, and those are some pretty different browsers. So if you happen to take a look at the site and happen to see anything odd, let me know.
(Of course, I'm also vaguely aware that this very blog is pretty messed up in IE6. Who's still using that horrible old thing, though?! If you can't manage to switch to Firefox, at least get IE7. It's finally got support for transparent .pngs!)
While we're talking about terribly boring technical matters, I should mention that I changed the RSS feed so that you can now see the entirety of each post in your reader. A few other sites (notably boing boing) do it that way, and I think it's nice and efficient. So now you never have to actually visit the blog, if you don't want to... unless of course you want to take another look at that beautiful masthead picture of Rascal. Which reminds me, isn't it about time for a new design? It isn't so much winter any more...
a minor complaint
So, I wouldn't say that this was anything worth mention, except that I think of mentioning it every single time it happens—which is to say, every single day. Frequency provides cause where none would otherwise exist.
What on earth am I talking about? Why, simply that every single Oxo® product has an identical handle, so that when I reach into the utensil drawer for the peeler, half the time I come up with a potato masher. And the other half of the time it's the garlic press. It's not that I'm in love with Oxo's gear—in fact, given the chance I tend to steer clear of those bulky black handles—but they've insinuated themselves into every corner of the kitchen-gadget market space, and often alternatives are lacking. I'm thinking about implementing a solution involving colored tape...
visitors from the internet!
Yesterday we had guests visiting us from, respectively, Pennsylvania, Northern Ireland, and Germany. I took them on a brief tour of our local sites, and then we sat around at the squibix family home here and petted the dogs. Now personally, I see absolutely nothing wrong with meeting, in person, folks with whom I've heretofore only had virtual interactions. The two times I had occasion to describe to curious parties how we met people from such varied locales, however, my interlocutors expressed surpise and even dismay to hear that we had made our initial acquaintance via a web board. Come on, people, you aren't any more likely to meet a serial killer online than you are to cross paths with one on the course of your daily round! Like, everyone is on the internet now. That can be ICANN's* new slogan: "The internet: it's not just for social deviants any more!"
*Yes I know, not so much. But who else would need a slogan for the internet?! ICANN's all I could come up with.
what happens at the ed school?
Sometimes getting a graduate degree can be strangely juvenile. Today we got to color and cut things out, we got to talk about what animals we'd like to see at the aquarium, and we handed in our holiday charts (describing notable features of a particular American or international holiday, and decorated in that holiday's colors). Sometimes it's not so much, like when I had to write a research review and decode language like, "A multivariate analysis of variance was completed to compare performance between the NL and SLI groups by age on the NWRT, digit span task, and the PPVT-III." (You'll be happy to hear that "Results (Pillai's trace) revealed a significant multivariate group effect, F(3, 96) = 19.48, p < .0001, μ² = .429"). It seems to me that, at either extreme, these activities are only tangentially related to making us good teachers, but I suppose we're having fun with all of it.
Revealing my latant punk side
Teacher: Are there any other data mining software packages we haven't mentioned yet?
Leah: There's Razor's Edge. It's a software tool for non-profit fund raisors.
Teacher: Raisor's Edge?
Leah: Yeah, for fund-raising. See, it's like it's a pun. It's spelled with a Z. You know, like a razor you would use to cut yourself......... I MEAN TO SHAVE WITH!!!!!
Description sans judgement
Mom: You died your hair more red.
Leah: Yeah, it's a bit more red than last time.
Mom: It's kind of a Raggady-Andy red.
unaccustomed space
Rascal has been choosing to sleep on Leah's side of the bed lately, adversely affecting the quality of her sleep. And I know what that's like. So when we were out shopping yesterday, we dropped by the pet store and ended up leaving with a new bed. "You can return it," the check-out clerk promised us enthusiastically. "Even if he pees on it." That may have been a real risk a year or two ago, but no longer: whatever our problems with Rascal, he has excellent bladder control and isn't inclined to try and mark things indoors. We did, however, fear that he'd turn up his nose at the bed, or, even worse, run from it in fear (it does have a dangerous giant-bag look to it).
Happily, he took to it wonderfully; in fact he hopped right on it at bedtime and slept there contentedly the entire night. It was as if he were thinking, "Finally, a bed of my own! Now I don't have to put up with being constantly shoved all over the place!" I kind of missed having him up with us for a few seconds; I could hear him biting his tail, and I couldn't kick him like I usually do to make him stop. (OK, prod him with my foot. We're not abusers here.) For a few seconds, until I fell asleep. Leah says she can't ever remember sleeping that well, ever.
He looks like he likes it, eh?
He's growing up too fast!!!
As Dan mentioned, we have successfully transitioned Rascal to his "Big Boy Bed," and i am having all the typical feelings a mother would experience in such a situation. While i did "enjoy" the additional room in the bed, i haven't actually slept any better. In fact, for the past two nights i have been waking up every three minutes to turn over or shift position. I couldn't do that in the past, but now this luxury has me sleeping only 40% of the time. At 2am this morning, when i woke up to find that i was on my back and might prefer lying on my side, i said to myself, "Okay body, i know you're excited about this, but you're being excited about sleeping in the same way a two-year-old is excited about too much stimulation, by throwing a big frickin tantrum!"
I don't understand why i've actually slept worse with Rascal out of the bed. It could be because i'm suddenly sad and lonely, or it could be because curled up in a 2-ft diameter ball is actually my optimal sleeping position, the only one that when forced into will allow me to sleep straight through the night. I do kind of miss Rascal. The movement of his steady breathing against my feet, or knees, or bum, or back of my neck as he completely throws me out of my space, has been constant or soothing. Yes it's uncomfortable, but at least i know with tactile immediacy that everyone i love is still right here and breathing. As a mother, i'm surprised by how much i worry about the surity of that fact.
So i dunno. I have mixed feelings about the big-boy-bed. I guess my little pup just is growing up. And i might have to learn how to cuddle with my husband again.