Feet in my kidneys - a tale of my night

Today is my anniversary. :) Unfortunately, it's coming at the expense of a miserable stretch with Anne. I will say that yesterday evening was great - she was totally back to normal. We played, we read books, we enjoyed her company. Then she went to bed.

She was up for the first time (you know that's a bad omen when in relation to sleep, a parent uses the phrase "when she woke for the *first* time...") just as I shut my eyes around 10:30 pm. Anne has always had that knack. It doesn't matter that she is not in our room. She apparently has a radar that goes off when mom's eyelids close.

Mike goes in. Finds that Anne has wet through her sleeper. He changes her and strips her crib sheet. Gets her back down. All is well.

For 20 minutes. Then she's awake again. *sighs*

I go in, and I'm in there for what feels like an eternity. I attempted one put down, but as I was arranging her blankie on her, I could see that she was unfolding the cry face, so I just picked her up for another soothe. I was awake anyway, why prolong the agony?

By the time I got her down for good it was about 12:30 am. I get back in bed. I can't sleep.

Perhaps God is smiting me.

I fall asleep about 1 am. Anne is up again at 2:30 am. Then she's up again at 4:30 am. Then she's up for the day at 5 am.

I tried bringing her into bed with us, because I was so desperate, and due to said desperation, I forgot that this NEVER WORKS. The child has never wanted to sleep in our bed. She turns. She kicks. She sits up and exclaims "da da!" when she discovers that we are not alone in the bed. As you might imagine, it went poorly.

All told, I got about 3-4 hours of sleep last night. This does not make for a happy Tiffany. But you know how it goes. Nights that epically bad usually do not repeat themselves the very next night. Usually.

In other depressing news, my new iPod Nano is being insubordinate. Mike got him for me for Christmas because my old iPod (Max) was at full capacity. Plus, I've had him for years and he would frequently freeze up on me while playing. That would terrify me with regard to dance performances in which you simply bring your own iPod and have to play it on whatever dock happens to be at the venue. If the iPod is frozen, no music = no dancey.

My brand new iPod Nano is green, and I've named him John Paul. He's quite adorable. I wasn't sure what to think of his touch screen at first, but I'm getting used to it. He has many features that are far superior to Max, and has double the capacity. I do love him. Except that this newest model of iPods (and apparently iPhones as well, though I don't have one of those) has a new output feature. Instead of the large "plug-in area" if you will, that we all use to connect our iPods to our computers, our iPod docks, etc. the new generation now sports this much smaller output that I think is called a "lightning plug." Or something like that. The old plug is called "30 pin" if I'm not mistaken. What this means is that John Paul will not work with ANY of my equipment without an adapter. Which costs **$40** from Apple.

$40!!

The reviews for the adapters on Amazon are positively scathing, with livid people complaining about Apple robbing them blind. I thought I was rising above the nastiness by searching online and finding a much cheaper generic model somewhere else. I ordered it. It came in yesterday.

Right, it doesn't work.

*insert appalling swear word of your choice here*

I mean, it fits into my iPod, and then it fits into the old plug system, but my accessories (my dock and FM transmitter in my car) do not subsequently play my music and podcasts. And I NEED this thing to play with ANY dock for my dancing. I can't even return this cheap adapter because it would cost me more in postage to do so than to just throw it in the garbage.

Let my experience be a lesson to you, dear reader. Generic adapters for the new Apple devices = NO NO.

With much humility, I just went to Amazon and ordered the $40 real Apple adapter. I'm feeling punchy about it, but from what I'm reading this will in fact work to output my audio. I had a little credit from Amazon coming, so it cost me about $20, but I'm still rather pinchy faced about the whole thing.

At this point, as long as it works, I'll hold my tongue. I should have it next week.

*nostrils flare*

The nerdy Catholic Librarian prepares to travel...

For most normal people, preparing to go on vacation means that they pack sunscreen, their bathing suit, and put their carry-on toiletries into those ridiculous little 3 oz. containers and subseqnent ziploc bag that the airline industry subjects us to. What does the Catholic Librarian do, you ask?

(1) Go to the public library and obtain a small army of romance and religious fiction, and Catholic non-fiction to read.
(2) Charge up my beloved iPod Nano, Max, (Mike claims I love Max more than him) and synch him up with some new French music Shauna'h gave me.
(3) Use super speedy librarian powers to find a free rosary podcast through iTunes, and subscribe happily. I am now loaded up with the Sorrowful Mysteries.
(4) Refresh my Vatican Radio podcast list so that I'll have a few to listen to at the airport; this, of course, is assuming that Hank is unconscious or something. Otherwise, how on earth would I be able to listen to anything?
(5) Make sure that my binoculars and east coast bird reference volume are in the "to be packed" pile. I've spotted many a snowy egret from the car on the way back from the airport.

So, I think I'm ready. I'd rather sleep in the same clothes for three straight days then not have a book with me or anything to listen to. I shudder at the thought.

Things that make me laugh...

Well, I had a pretty nice weekend. We worked with Hank a lot on the potty, and did have a few successes. Granted, they were successes that took place while we held Hank down onto the potty as he sprayed pee pee everywhere, cried, whined, and went though a series of pelvic gyrations in a desperate attempt to escape. But in the end, we made some progress. By midafternoon yesterday, our living room smelled like a horse's stall. It was below freezing, and we were tempted to crack a window to get a little air circulating. Good heavens. All the Febreze in the world wasn't strong enough to cut that odor.

At any rate, the other day as I was driving home, I heard a Christmas song on the radio that makes me laugh every single year. It's a pretty corny song, but I re-enjoy it annually. I don't even know it's official title, something stupid like "The 12 Pains of Christmas," I think. What it does is mimic "The 12 Days of Christmas" with little holiday disasters instead, and each time the count comes past their number again, things are elaborated a bit. A few really make me laugh, hard.

My favorite is I think number 2, the guy who is putting up his Christmas lights. He has a real porky sounding voice, and for a while just says that his pain is "stringing up the lights." As the song progresses, he starts to get more and more pissed off. It reminds me of Christmases past with my dad putting up the lights, which he always hated :) Eventually, our guys says "What, don't we have any extension cords?!" And "Great, now they're blinking!!" Finally, "Someone get me a flash light, I think I blew a fuse!!"

Other mentionables include the effeminate sounding guy who hates writing Christmas cards. At the last go round, he exclaims "Oh, I don't even *know* half these people!!" I also like the woman who bemoans having to see her in-laws at holiday time. Finally, she flat out says "She's a witch, I *hate* her!!" But the one that I relate to most is the pain of Christmas shopping. On each pass through, a surly toddler demands some complicated and noisy sounding toy. Finally, we hear the toddler exclaim "I have to go potty!!" and then, just sobbing.

Survivor: Potty Island

Well, we're persisting and Hank is still complaining. But I'm hoping (please God) that the consistency will have a stinky end result sometime soon. That's really all the new news with me. Sad, huh?

Oh, well, I suppose it's noteworthy that I've fallen happily back into listening to a nauseating amount of Christmas music like I do every year. Mike is already rolling his eyes. I've created a new holiday playlist for my beloved iPod Nano, Max, and am populating it with much enthusiasm. I've taken a real liking to Enya's new holiday album, And Winter Came. I chose not to download the whole album (cost cutting, sigh) but a few of the tracks are excellent and I bought them, specifically the title track and O Come O Come Emmanual. iTunes has a new Essentials list that I'm really digging (I totally fall trap to their devious marketing plan, don't I?) called Melancholy Winter. It's not depressing, honestly, it's really good stuff. You should check it out :)