Annalie drew these teeny portraits of our family on something, and I knew immediately I would use them for return-address labels on our Christmas cards. She draws stuff like this all the time that surprises and delights me. It’s fairly awesome.

You know what else is fairly awesome? You guys are. Thank you for sticking with me and continuing to read through the past year of baby-induced blog neglect; supporting me and saying kind things when I am frustrated or troubled; cheering me up with your funny stories when I need to laugh; and just generally being some of the nicest people on the internets. I wish each and every one of you a happy, healthy new year full of good things. May 2012 be the year you learn to tango, go on your dream vacation, see your kids succeed wildly, eat more vegetables, own your beauty, read life-changing books, find a new favorite drink, or whatever it is you think about when you wish upon a star.

View large.

p.s. New-old banner, by Brenda as always.

I could easily make a list of my favorite hundred children’s books. But instead I’m going with the first one that leapt to mind.

The Saturdays, by Elizabeth Enright.

This book was so important to me as a kid that I can still remember coming across it on the shelf in my elementary-school library. I remember which bookcase it was on, and that I had to reach up to pull the book down. I remember reading the copy on the book jacket and having my interest piqued by the idea of a family of four kids—aspiring actress Mona, 13; mischeivous, piano-playing Rush, 12; dreamy artist and dancer Randy, 10; and solid, unflappable Oliver, 6—forming their own club. (I only have one brother, and although we love each other, we’re different enough that as kids we spent more time bickering and annoying each other than playing together. I could only barely imagine a family where your best friends were your siblings.) Then I opened the book and read the first page, and was immediately charmed by the description of these kids sitting in their attic, listening to the rain hissing and sizzling as it came down the chimney and complaining about how bored they were. I could relate to that! Also, I loved rain even back then, so that was guaranteed to pull me in.

Then I kept reading, as they discussed and rejected ways to relieve their boredom. They decided, at Randy’s suggestion, to pool their weekly allowances and take turns using the whole amount to have an adventure each Saturday afternoon. They came up with a clever name for their club: the Independent Saturday Afternoon Adventure Club, which they could airily refer to as “I.S.A.A.C.” around others. I goggled even back then in 1982 at the amount: adding up each of the older kids’ allowance of fifty cents each and Oliver’s ten cents, they would “have an adventure” every Saturday with the grand sum of $1.60. One dollar. And sixty cents. I don’t think any economics lesson could have taught me more memorably and clearly about inflation since 1941 (the year the book was published).

The adventures they had were fantastic to my seven-year-old Midwestern self, too. Randy went to the art museum and wound up having tea and petit fours (the first time I’d heard of those) at the cafe with a slightly mysterious old lady who’d known their father as a boy, and hearing all about the time she ran away with the circus when she was a girl in Paris. Rush took the bus to the Met to see an opera (a 12-year-old boy, voluntarily going to an opera!?) and ended up rescuing a bedraggled stray dog whom they adopted and named (natch) Isaac. Mona went to a beauty salon and recklessly decided to cut off her waist-length braids, accidentally winding up with a scandalous blood-red manicure which eventually had to be removed at home with perfume (you better believe I tried that a time or two). Oliver hoarded up the dimes the other kids gave him and calmly went to the circus all by himself one day, causing a panic at home when they realized it. After that they decided to go on their adventures as a group, for safety.

This book used to make me long to live in New York in 1941, when I would have been allowed to go operas and museums by myself at the age of 10 or 11. I still re-read The Saturdays and the other Melendy family books every year or so, and they still kind of make me feel that way. What strikes me most about them now, though, are two things in particular: (1) these children in 1941 aren’t really that different from kids now—they bickered and played with their siblings, complained about eating vegetables and doing their chores, swam in the summer and ate ice cream till their stomachs ached; and (2) they didn’t have a television. Sometimes I think my slight disdain for television might stem from reading these books about all the amazing things they did back when they didn’t have TV. I doubt I.S.A.A.C. would ever have been invented if there had been a little black-and-white television in their attic playroom that first rainy Saturday.

I’ve been waiting for seven and a half years for Annalie to be old enough for me to read The Saturdays out loud to her. I think 2012 might be the year. I can hardly wait.

I’m taking part in a blogging group called Reverb Broads that will be suggesting daily blogging prompts this December. I won’t do it every day, but I’ll be using them occasionally throughout the month as they tickle my fancy. If you want to join in, feel free! Go here or here to learn more.

I have very healthy self-esteem which allows me to blithely forget the stupid things I do. At least, I assume that’s what happens, because I know for a fact that I do stupid stuff all the time (ask my husband, I’m sure he could tell you a story or ten), but nothing is jumping to mind from this past year.

However, I do vividly remember the moment I realized that looking stupid and being embarrassed was not only not gonna kill me, but that it in fact was even kinda fun. I was 10 years old, it was the last day of fourth grade, and my class was playing games and goofing off after we helped move the chairs and desks from our classroom to storage (I went to a small parochial school so the students were also occasionally slave labor). My friend Jenny, who was super outgoing and hilarious and had inexplicably picked me to be her best friend in our class, offered to lead everyone in the motions of some song we were singing, and without asking she grabbed my hand and dragged me to the front of the class with her.

Now, back then I was shy. I hated being the center of attention. I hated being looked at. I didn’t like being singled out for criticism or praise. I just wanted to be left alone to read my book and fade into the wallpaper. The fact that Jenny had dragged me up to the front of the class with her to wave my arms and jump around like a giant dork in front of everyone should have made me freeze and then run for the hills like a scared rabbit. But over the course of that year I had slowly changed.

Being friends with Jenny was a big part of that change. She was so confident and unafraid to be weird and silly, and she was awesome. If someone like her thought it was okay to risk being laughed at, maybe it wasn’t so bad after all. The other major component of that change was that I’d moved from a big public school where there were three classes of 30 kids in each grade to a small school where my entire grade only had 12 kids in it. So not only were there fewer people for me to embarrass myself in front of, but they were people who had not known me my whole life. They didn’t have preconceived notions of who I was and what I would or wouldn’t do. It’s always a little easier to break out of a rut when everyone around you doesn’t keep pushing you back into it.

When Jenny pulled me to the front of the class so I could sing and do the motions to a silly camp song with her, my heart was pounding and my mouth was dry and I felt like I might throw up. But I threw caution to the wind and did it. I sang the heck out of that song (strangely, although I can remember the moment perfectly in other ways, I have no memory of what the song was) and I acted out the stupid motions while everyone was looking at me and laughing good-naturedly as they sang along.

When we were done, I felt idiotic and shaky and completely exhilarated. I couldn’t believe that I’d done it. I’d looked moderately stupid in front of a bunch of my peers and I was still standing and breathing and if anyone was making fun of me I didn’t even care, because at that moment I started understanding that when you’re willing to risk looking stupid sometimes, life is a lot more fun.

I’m taking part in a blogging group called Reverb Broads that will be suggesting daily blogging prompts this December. It’s unlikely that I’ll do it every day, but I’ll be using them occasionally throughout the month as they tickle my fancy. If you want to join in, feel free! Go here or here to learn more.

I got nothin’ right now.

I kind of hate myself for even thinking about writing this post, complete with an artsy nature photo, about how blah and tired I’ve been lately, and how there are a million things I could and should be doing instead of sitting on the couch after the kids are in bed. (The artsy nature photo itself is pretty cool, though; Annalie took it, which makes it that much cooler.) Yet here I am writing it. Bleargh.

Troy’s been working ridiculously long hours for months now and we’re all fraying at the edges because of it. Elliora still isn’t sleeping through the night and the lack of sleep is taking its toll on me and my patience levels. Annalie insists on acting like a seven-year-old (the nerve!). I’m always a few steps behind the mess that’s taking over the house. We could be moving as soon as February but don’t have orders yet so we can’t plan anything past January. I have a mile-long list of crochet projects I need to tackle but hardly any time or desire to crochet. I want to blog—I have so many posts in my head—but I never seem to get any of them actually written. One or both of the cats keep pooping on the floor next to the litter box. There is a new yet old ongoing family drama that is breaking my heart and making me lose sleep when I don’t have any to spare. Blah, blah, blah.

All this stuff is combining lately into a perfect storm that leaves me exhausted and frustrated in its wake. It’s overwhelming, and I tend to go a little numb when I think about it too much. I don’t even want to be writing this post about it except it’s driving me crazy that I can’t write the posts I want to write so I’m writing this one to explain why.

I know a lot of this is because of Troy’s crazy job right now, and more of it is because I have a baby, and that both of those things are temporary. I know that someday I will feel more like myself again, that this too shall pass. But oh, I’ll be annoyed about it until it does.

What’s annoying you right now? Let’s have a b!tch-fest. Those always make me feel better! Misery loves company.

Sleeping face-down on Mom’s crossed legs is SO two days ago. Face-UP is where it’s at.

This afternoon Elliora fell asleep in the car on the way home for a few minutes, which normally doesn’t affect her napping. But today when I brought her inside and nursed her, she didn’t fall asleep like she normally does. She was wide-awake and happy. I mentally shrugged, figuring she’d go to bed a bit early tonight, and we got up to play.

When her slightly-earlier-than-normal bedtime came around, she happily nursed and easily went to sleep, not even making a peep when I put her down in her bed. I went off to meet a friend at Starbucks for some companionable side-by-side laptopping, confident that she’d stay asleep…only to text my mom an hour and a half later and find out that she had awakened ten minutes after I left and had been awake ever since.

So I wasn’t surprised when she had a hard time going to sleep after that. I wasn’t even surprised at how hard she was fighting sleep; Elliora is very strong-willed and has been able to keep herself awake since she was born. What did surprise me was that when she flopped into a position face-up on my crossed legs, she relaxed and immediately went to sleep.

Nothing regarding this kid should surprise me anymore when it comes to sleep, though.

I’ve been gradually cutting down her night-nursing for a couple of months now, working my way up to eight hours without nursing. I did the same thing with Annalie, who was much more interested in nursing than Elliora ever has been, at about the same age. After a couple nights of her waking up and being denied a chance to nurse, Annalie just kinda went, “Oh, I won’t get fed if I wake up? All right then, I’ll just sleep,” and she stopped waking up at night almost entirely. The times she did wake up, it was easy to settle her back down by just patting her on the back and whispering to her.

Elliora, on the other hand, shows no sign of being even close to sleeping for eight hours without waking up, or of being willing to settle back down with just a touch and a reassurance. She does go back to sleep without nursing, so I don’t feel like she’s missing that. It’s more like she just isn’t a big sleeper. Annalie is like me: once we’re asleep, we’re out for the count and it’s hard to wake us up. I think Elliora just might be more like my brother: he has a hard time going to sleep and a hard time staying asleep, waking up more than once most nights. He’s been like that since the day he was born.

Elliora will sleep from bedtime (usually between 7-7:30) till around midnight without waking up about half the time. (The other half of the time, she might wake up once between bedtime and midnight, or she might wake up every hour on the hour. We never know which it will be.) She wakes up almost every night around midnight and usually takes about 10-15 minutes to settle back down with one of us picking her up and cuddling her. Just to keep things interesting, on some nights nothing on God’s green earth will calm her down for an hour or more.

Regardless of when or how often she wakes up, if we don’t pick her up, she will stand up in her crib and screeeeeeeeam and wake Annalie up. If we try to leave her in the bed and just pat her on the back, we have to physically hold her down to keep her from getting up, which makes her scream more, which wakes Annalie up. Annalie, very understandably, gets grouchy when a screaming baby wakes her up from a sound sleep.

The rest of the night is pretty unpredictable. Elliora usually only wakes up once between midnight and 4am, and can be settled back down with 10-15 minutes of cuddling. Or she might wake up every hour and need 10-15 minutes of holding each time, or she might just wake up and be awake for an hour or two.

Elliora has slept entirely through the night, from 8pm to 7am, exactly once in her life, on a night when we hadn’t done anything differently from any other night. So we know she can do it, but we have no idea how to make her do it again.

I would happily let her sleep with us and cuddle all night, but if she’s in bed with me and I won’t nurse her, she gets monumentally annoyed and will scream her annoyance for a long time. She’s also quite strong for her size, and trying to hold onto her when she’s struggling is difficult and exhausting. The times I have stuck it out and let her cry in my arms without giving in and nursing her, she’s screamed for two hours or more. Usually if I nurse her, she’s fine and will go to sleep eventually, but if I nurse her in bed I’ll probably fall asleep, and since she’s learned how to crawl we don’t feel safe leaving her in bed with us all night while we’re sleeping. She’s an explorer and she takes every chance she gets to wander off.

What it all comes down to is that Elliora is incredibly strong-willed. She isn’t a sound sleeper and she isn’t very flexible about her sleeping habits. She’s very good at letting us know how she’s feeling, and when she’s mad she screams about it.

It’s already gotten so much better than it used to be with her, sleep-wise. But there still isn’t much consistency, and that’s both baffling and frustrating at times. We know it won’t be this way forever, and we’ll deal with it like grown-ups and do our best to gently teach her, when she seems ready, how to sleep through the night without the all-night milk bar or on-demand snuggling. But we’ll still be really happy when she’s sleeping through the night consistently.

What about you? Does your kid have a sleeping habit that mystifies you, or drives you crazy? Or do you have one of those mythical kids who sleeps beautifully?

I’m SO close to 10,000 comments on this blog! Will this post be the one that gets the 10,000th comment!? I think it could be…and that 10,000th commenter will win a piece of custom-painted pottery, or something crocheted, or maybe something else entirely. It’s just my way of saying “thank you” for all for the great comments over the past four years. So gimme your two cents, and YOU could be lucky #10,000!

Today has been one of those days. It wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t really good either.

I’m getting over a cold (aren’t I always?), the main symptom of which is an annoying cough.

Since I’m sick, I slept with Elliora during both her naps, which was doubtless good for me but as usual it made the whole day feel off-kilter.

I met a friend to paint pottery this evening, which was fun; but the 7 Days photo I’d planned to take at the studio didn’t happen because although I’d remembered to lug along my fancy camera, I’d forgotten to put the memory card back in it before I left.

(I did take this cameraphone picture of the mug I painted.)

When I got home, I half-heartedly attempted a few self-portraits only to be thwarted by a dead camera battery. So I plugged the battery in and decided I should eat something.

I asked Troy if there were any grapes left, and he said yes, and maybe he’d try one of the Ginger Gold apples we’d bought today.

That’s when it hit me. I knew what I needed to do to save the day. I needed to eat some apples and hummus. And I did, and they were delicious.

The ironic postscript is that when I uploaded the photos I’d taken of my day-saving apples and hummus (Ginger Gold apples go perfectly with hummus), something had corrupted the files. I was able to view the complete images in the preview window, but when I opened them in Photoshop half or more of each photo was missing. And then I couldn’t save the corrupted images. I ended up doing a screencap of the most-complete image, only to find I couldn’t even edit the screencap in Photoshop. So I uploaded to Flickr and used Picnik to edit it. Now I’m adding this to the 7 Days pool just minutes before midnight.

Dedication to 7 Days: I haz it.

Did you know that Brenda has published a book? She has! The first one (she has at least two more planned) is based on the alphabet flash cards that she made a few years ago for Bug, and they’re just as adorable in book form. You can even buy a Kindle edition to keep your kids entertained in the car or while you’re cooking dinner!

I bought a copy of the book for us, of course, and one for my 20-month-old niece just because. My mom reports that Aurora LOVES the book and has wanted to read it approximately 11 billion times since they got it. My brother has been working on teaching her the alphabet and she already knows most of her letters! This book is right up her alley, since she can practically read it herself.

Hearing how much Aurora loves this book made me think, “I should buy this for all the littles I need to give Christmas gifts to this year, and all the babies I know who are being born in the next few months!” Brilliant idea, right? So brilliant that I figured I should share it with you all. You’re welcome!

On another note, I’m so tired of being sick. Everyone in the house has been taking turns with a summer cold, the kind that leaves you listless and stuffed up and coughing. I’ve been fighting The Annoying Cold That Will Not Die (h/t Sonja) for what seems like forever. A few days ago, just as I was starting to feel better, I got a plugged milk duct! Those suckers can turn into mastitis, which I’ve never had but am scared of because I hear it’s quite painful. So I was stressing about that till it (thank God) cleared itself up. And then Monday, just as I was ready to tackle packing for California, I woke up with a fever and chills. What the heck, immune system!?

That is actually quite typical of me. Last year when I was pregnant, I was basically sick for two months with one virus or another. I think my immune system must be easily overwhelmed; once it’s working on one infection, all the other germs say, “Hey, she’s distracted! Quick, slip in while she’s not looking!”

Anyway. I’m feeling better today. I’m taking Emergen-C and drinking tons of fluids, and am trying really, really hard not to go overboard trying to make up for lost time, wearing myself out, and ending up right back where I started. Except for, um, making banana-coconut muffins and doing laundry and loading the dishwasher and sorting clothes to pack. That’s not overboard, right? Sigh. I’m doomed to be sick till September, probably.

But hey, California! Have I mentioned that we’re going to California for two weeks? Just me and the girls, making a cross-country trip to visit friends and family. We already have a ton of fun stuff planned, and my mom is going to be there at the same time as us, visiting her sister in the next town over from Brenda. Poor Troy has to stay home and work. Poor Troy, with the house and the TV and the bed alllll to himself for two weeks. I’m sure he’ll miss us terribly.

Although the travel prep is probably going to kill me, I’m quite looking forward to our actually being there, hanging out with old friends and introducing Elliora to them and my mom’s side of the family. Annalie is beyond excited to stay at Bug’s house.

I’m pretty excited that I’m going to be able to get Brenda to sign my book for me in just a few days. To celebrate that, and Brenda’s first published book, I’m going to give a copy away! Just leave a comment telling me if you’re a list-making, pack-weeks-ahead organized kind of person, or a wait-till-the-last-minute-and-oh-heck-I’ll-pack-my-laundry-they-have-washing-machines-there kind of person. If you actually buy a copy of Secret Agent Josephine’s ABC’s, forward me the Amazon order confirmation (feel free to delete your address first) and I’ll give you four extra entries in the drawing!

I’ll close comments after we arrive in California on Friday afternoon. Good luck!

This post has been brought to you by (1) me finally feeling something like normal for the first time in weeks, and (2) Elliora’s unexpectedly, blessedly long afternoon nap. That long nap was probably due to the fact that Elliora ate almost an entire grilled cheese sandwich (provolone and cheddar, ‘cuz we’re fancy like that) for lunch today, cut up into bite-size pieces and dipped in tomato and roasted red pepper soup. She loved it.

Comments are now closed. I’ll post the winner soon!

I am thinking about the six baby blankets I want to make in the next three months. Two of them are already in progress. Am I insane to think I can manage that? We shall see.

I am thankful for everything, really. I feel like I whine and complain a lot these days, but I know how blessed I am. I have the luxury of being annoyed when the signal I’m using to access the internet as we drive down I-95 blips out for a second. My problems could be so much bigger, and they’re not. #diamondshoes

I am wearing a nightgown. But that’s boring, so instead I’ll tell you about two things I wore today which you may also find boring unless you are a breastfeeding mother. Feel free to skip ahead if you’re bored already.

I’ve been searching for the perfect nursing shirt for, oh, seven years, really. I think I may have finally found it: the nursing criss-cross tee from Momzelle. My main problem with most nursing shirts is that I have broad shoulders and a wide ribcage, but I’m not, shall we say, overly endowed in the chestal area—not even when I’m nursing. So shirts that fit my shoulders and torso completely droop down my front and show my bra to the world. Shirts that are more modest fit me like cling wrap, which is neither flattering nor comfortable. So I’m fairly excited to have finally found a shirt that (a) fits my proportions, (b) is comfortable and cute, and (b) is easy to nurse in. Huzzah!

The other thing I was wearing today that might interest you if you’re a nursing mother or plan on spending a lot of time holding a baby is this turquoise nursing necklace from the Etsy shop My Lil Market. I had a couple of nursing necklaces when Annalie was a baby, but they were more of the bright-tacky-plastic variety. This one is so pretty, I will probably be wearing it long after Elliora has stopped nursing. But I’ll definitely keep wearing it now because Elliora loved it. She spent several hours today playing with the beads and shoving different parts of it in her mouth. Not surprising, really; I’m sure this string of beads and stones is far more enticing than the specifically-designed-to-interest-a-baby necklaces I used to have, because babies always reject their fun toys in favor of the forbidden grown-up things, don’t they?

I am remembering that tomorrow, in addition to being my nephew Brett’s birthday, is also my other sister-in-law’s wedding anniversary and the anniversary of the day my mom, my brother and I were all baptized.

I am going to brush my teeth. Be right back.

I am currently reading I’m a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away, by Bill Bryson. This is another one I’m re-reading. Bill Bryson is one of my favorite authors—partly because he’s hilarious in a nerdy, befuddled, self-deprecating way that just rings my bell; and partly because he once sent me a letter in reply to one I’d written him—and reading his books is kind of like eating meatloaf and mashed potatoes or homemade macaroni and cheese. It’s comfort food for my brain and soul.

I am hoping that our drive home tomorrow goes as well as the 4.5-hour drive down did. Elliora slept for a total of three hours and change, played with a toy or looked out the window for another hour, and only cried for a few minutes right after lunch and about 15 minutes at the tail end of the trip. Fingers crossed.

On my mind: Samantha and her parents.

Noticing that Annalie is almost as tall as I am. I picked her up today for the first time in a while and was kind of shocked how big she seemed. I’m sure part of that is because these days I’m usually carrying Elliora, but still.

Around the house we have way too much stuff. Troy and I were just talking yesterday about how we’re overdue for a good clearing-out and getting-rid-of. Usually we do that as we unpack after a move, but maybe we’ll do it before we move this time.

In the kitchen, I am spending a lot more time lately. (Yoda, I sound like.) Elliora loves to eat. Like, she LOVES to eat. I am happy to make most of her food but it means I’m spending quite a bit more time in the kitchen lately, feeding her as well as cooking for her. I don’t really mind a bit, though. It’s so fun to feed a baby who likes everything we’ve offered her.
Applesauce (with and without cinnamon), mashed bananas, oatmeal, mixed-grain cereal, carrots, sweet potato, butternut squash, peas, green beans, spinach, pears, peaches, mango, avocado, refried beans, broccoli, rice, beef, turkey, ham, blueberries, pumpkin, watermelon, chicken, black olive, bacon, cheddar cheese, goat cheese, plain yogurt, mashed potatoes with garlic, Cheerios, asparagus…I’m sure I’m forgetting some. Seriously, she likes everything.)

One of my favorite things is finding awesome new TV shows to watch, and then geeking out over them with friends.

From my photo archive: Speaking of Elliora eating, here is a picture of her (on the right) eating carrots at 5 months old. Annalie (on the left) was about a year old when this picture was taken in June 2005, and was eating Spaghetti-Os.

Funny story about my eyes: as a kid I said my eyes were blue. Just plain blue like the rest of my family. But my eyes were faded denim compared to my mom’s cornflower, my dad’s royal blue, my brother’s bright-summer-sky eyes. My mom said my eyes looked greenish when I was wearing green, but I never noticed it. My eyes were just boring blue, and my vision was fine, so I never gave them a second thought.

One day when I was a teenager a friend squinted at me and said, “Did you know that you have a ring of green around your pupils? That’s kinda cool.”

I found a mirror and checked. By golly, my friend was right. I did have a ring of green around my pupils.

Suddenly my boring blue eyes weren’t boring or blue! They were hazel, they were turquoise, they were chameleon eyes that changed color depending on what color I was wearing. I didn’t hate my eyes when I thought they were boring old common blue, but now I love my changeable blue-green-gray eyes.

What do you love about yourself?

Inspired by Bonnie’s post on This is a Woman.

It’s been at least a month now since I’ve managed to blog about anything in a timely manner, and I hate it. It hate how many photos I’ve taken and posts I’ve written in my head that will probably never be published here, because eventually it gets to the point where we just have to move on. I hate it because they’re stories I wanted to tell, and because I’ll probably forget most of them if I don’t write them down.

I kind of hate that I’m writing this post about it, too. It’s so eye-rollingly meta and just plain boring when people blog about how they never have time to blog anymore. Yet here I am, doing that very thing. Arrggh.

I know I have good reasons for being a bad blogger right now. I know I have other things to do. I’m taking care of my family, first of all. I cook meals, I do laundry, I read stories and drive to gymnastics class and feed the cats. I have a baby who eats three meals a day now, which takes up a surprisingly large chunk of time each day. I’ve been busy traveling and entertaining out-of-town guests, which was super fun but frankly exhausting; I’m sure the guests would agree.

I have two baby blankets in progress and am planning to crochet two more before the summer’s over. I’ve painted a half-dozen custom-order mugs recently and have more to paint when I get the chance. I’m frittering away the usual amount of time reading blogs and watching TV, plus additional hours catching up on Fringe. And that’s only the very tippiest-top of the iceberg. Like everyone else I know—except maybe Diane Court—I’m monumentally busy.

But still. I miss blogging.