2005-02-17 - 11:04 p.m.

Yes, I realize I'm opening myself up to trolls and the like, but I'm not really sure where to turn on this one.

My sweet little Dumpling, who did suffer some night terrors when she first arrived, has been sleeping 12 hour nights since her 3rd week here. That is, until last week. All of a sudden, we started noticing the music box coming on when we go to bed, and then again once or twice during the night. The music box hangs from the side of her crib and it will start playing if the baby cries (which she does not), or if she hits the big button (which she does).

At first, we thought the sounds of use going to bed or the dogs russling about were waking her up. But now, I'm convinced it's not related. When I go check on her, I often find her sitting up in her crib, seemingly in a trance, without the music on, which leads me to believe that she *wakes up* even more often than we thought.

Whenever she does play the music, it's not like she's realy awake. She's just sitting there in her crib with her eyes wide open, but she is completly and totally out of it. We lie her back down and pat her belly or her back, we've even tried picking her up and rocking her. But I'm more worried aobut why this is happening.... Is this a normal toddler thing, do toddlers sleep walk? Or is this some sort of post-adoption phonemenon?

When I see our social worker next week in class, I will certainly try to ask her, but in the mean time, assvice would be welcomed.

Anything to add? 8

2005-02-16 - 1:00 p.m.

If you should happen to see my daughter, don't be alarmed. Those injuries were self-inflicted, no need to turn us in to child protective services!!! If you don't beleive me, my husband tells the tale of all 3 injuries here. The split lip, the large blue mark on her cheek, the skin tear on the thigh, all self-inflicted while attempting to turn into a Monkey!

So yesterday was the day I got to give marketeers my opinion about a new sitcom they are testing out. You might recall I agreed to this last week after finding out that my hours in front of the tv were not useless, somebody actually wanted to hear what I had to say!

The first problem was getting the tape to play. The tape, you see, came with a warning: you can only play it once, it doesn't rewind, and it erases at it plays. (this could be one explanation why they haven't joined the 21 century and used a DVD, they can't make them self-destruct!). I never hooked the VCR back up after we received our wall unit in December. I couldn't reach the back panel of the tv, so I tried to plug the VCRinto the plasma tv in the kitchen. no go. It only takes digital inputs, like the satellite, the computer, or a DVD player, not a VCR. Finally, I dragged the CBR to the attic, where the only way I found to quickly hook it up to the tv was so unplug the satelitel and use its cable wire. Finally, we were in business.

And boy, was is ever a let down. all that work for this: DADS, a sitcom that was probably shot in the early 90s. I'm basing this on the horrible clothes worn by the ex-wife character. Think floral print dress worn by Phoebe in the first season of friends.
The premise of the show seems to be 3 fathers, one divorced, 2 married, who's commonality is that their 3 children are in the same kindergarden class, teacher played by Rue Maclanahan, who for some reason sports a weird german accent....

This particular episode dealt with the divorced father attempting to one-up is ex-wife by trying to put together their 5 year old son's b-day party at the last minute (other dating alert: he's trying to book Barney. Nobody in 2005 would try to book Barney: the Wiggles, Spongebob, but not Barney).

The show is sooo bad, we had to force ourselves to watch it til the end, and it's only 22 minutes! The main character, the divorced dad, seemes somewhat familiar to me, I know he's been in other sitcoms, I'll have to do some research on it. But you don't have to worry, you wont' be seing DADS anytime soon, I cannot imagine any network would actually pick this up!!!

edited to add: Google helped me figure out that someone else was subjected to this garbage 6 months ago!!! and someone else also noticed the bad german accent! And had much more patience in detailing the actual premise of the show.... and this cached page reveals that one of the dads is in fact C Thomas Howell, who used to be my absolute high school crush, but whom I didn't even recognize! Now I totally have to try to rewind that tape and rewatch it if it didn't erase!!! And if you still don't believe me Finally, as I have been suspecting, this survey has nothing to do with the pathetic show, but rather the ads, which I didn't watch!!! (too busy making fun of the horrible show!)

Anything to add? 1

2005-02-14 - 11:04 p.m.

Tonight, I am attempting an evolution in my personal system for dealing with dirty clothes. Before I reveal this earth-shattering news, let me take you back to how this system came to be.....

When I lived at home, I never had to deal with my laundry. In my closet, I had a cardboard barrel that I once contained spices in a market. My grandfather, a cheese wholesaler, used to bring these barrels home and cover them in mac-tac, turning them into laundry baskets. By the time I got one, it no longer smelled of anything, but I remember my aunt having one that made all her clothes smell like cinammon!

Anyways, my laundry barrel had magical properties: anything you put in it would be returned to it's rightful place in the closet a few days later, cleaned, pressed and ready to be worn again. My mother, who beleived in having us do chores, never let us anywhere near her washing machine, so I had no concept of how to deal with my clothes when I left home at 17 to spend a year in Austria as an exchange student.

Luckily for me, the family in Austria employed a cleaning woman a few times a week, and this wonderful woman also made my laundry disappear. I didn't have a magical barrel there, but anything that was left on the floor would spend no more than 48 hours there before magically returning to the drawers (there were no closets in Austria, only bulky pieces of furniture with drawers and very little room to hang things)

My first apartment, in my second year of university, was a dingy 3 bedroom I shared with 2 people plus various friends who crashed on weekends. This lovely abode was located above the biggest, most famous strip joint in town, a classy place where sports figures and business men would go for lunch.... Anyways, in those days, anything left over from my various part time jobs after I paid the rent was funneled to the drinking fund. Food was not a priority, so you can imagine laundry wasn't even on the radar. I lived in that apartment for one year, and I don't think I went to the laundromat more than 5 times.... We used to take all our underwear and t-shirts (I don't wear socks, so that help to cut down on laundry) and dump them all in the tub, all 3 of us together, and then pull an I-Love-Lucy and stomp around in there until we felt the stuff was clean. Bulky items like sweaters and jeans got a monthly cleaning at the laundromat, or if you dated someone with a machine in their building.

So when I moved into a subleted condo after university and had a washing machine and dryer all to myself for the first time in my life, I had to come up with a system. The first few months, I remember being freaked out by the piles of clothes on the floor. Why didn't they jump back in the closet or the drawers? Eventually, I figured out that if dumped my dirty clothes right in the washing machine every night, they wouldn't clutter the floor. And whenever the machine got full, I would run it and transfer the clothes to the dryer. I tried putting the dried clothes away for a while, but eventually, I figured out the best system for me was just to get dressed right out of the dryer. For years, I had no clothes in my closet: the dirty ones were in the wash, the clean ones were in the dryer!

When I moved in with my husband, the floor piles returned. With 2 people, my system wasn't going to work. Luckily for me, this was short lived, for our first house boasted a vintage laundry chute! How perfect! I did have to learn to bring the clothes back to the closet upstairs, but eventually, the cleaning lady got tired of the piles on top of the dryer and took that over for me too.... (I know, I should be embarassed)

When we moved to this house last year, we lost our laundry chute, and there is no way to build one, trust me, I looked into it. So we got a laundry basket. It's just as magical as my first one, since now the cleaning lady has figured out if she doesn't want to have to deal with piles, she should just take care of the laundry. But I have a problem.... I can't seem to get the clothes into the laundry basket! When I undress at night, everything falls next to my bed, where it will remain until Tuesday morning when she comes.

But lately, she's been shrinking my sweaters or washing things that really dont' need to be washed. So this is where the next step in my laundry system came to be.... I would rush around on Tuesday morning, trying to hang up the clothes I didn't want her to wash and putting away the sweaters I wanted to hand wash myself (I am not completely useless!!!) But with the Dumpling, this morning routine is just too hard. So tonight, BEFORE I went to bed, I sorted, folded and hung up my clothes.....

holy crap. I'm turning into a responsible grown up.... I give it 2 weeks....

Anything to add? 3

2005-02-14 - 11:38 a.m.

When I went to New York, the tv choices in the room were limited, but we had VH1 (which we don't have in Canada), and I caught several episodes of the weirdest show in reality tv: Strange Love.

How do I even describe what I saw? Brigitte Neilson, who didn't look good when she was young but certainly hasn't aged well, and some guy named Flavor Flav. I have no idea who/what he is, except all this theet are capped in gold and he wears the kitchen wall clock around his neck.

It's a horrible show, but it's like a train wreck, you can't take your eyes off!!! And they are on The View today, for Valentine's Day.... Strange indeed!

Anything to add? 4

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