Last Day for Cheap Books

Today's the last day of Book Closeouts back-to-school sale (use coupon code castle and password bookcloseouts for an additional $5 off your $35 order, now through August 31st, 2006). I spent $60 there last week, and I'm very happy so far with all of them. So happy, I thought I share a few of my best deals:

• Meals That Heal $7.99 (One of my favorite cookbooks ever, I ruined mine when I flooded my coffeepot last month)

• The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People $3.49 (I'd been looking for this cheap for a long time)

• The Joy Diet $2.49 (This is by Martha Beck, Oprah columnist extraordinaire. I once followed her advice to say to a mean person who had a point, "You have a point, but you could stand to work on your people skills." It worked like a charm! I'm looking forward to reading this.)

• Life Is Not a Game of Perfect $2.49

• Life Lessons for Mothers $1.49 (I am LOVING this little gem of a book! So much wisdom in so few words)

• The Pathway $1.99

• Relax $1.74 (Just a fun little book to browse through)

• Simple Acts of Moving Forward $2.99

• The Healthy Table $5.99 (An intriguing healthy cookbook)

• Mothering from the Heart $2.49

• Mrs. Clean Jeans' Housekeeping with Kids $2.99 (I bought this based on its Amazon reviews. It seems kind of long, I mean, how much can you say about cleaning, with kids? A lot, it looks like.)

• My Kid's An Honor Student, Your Kid's A Loser $1.99

• Pass the Faith, Please: Nourishing Your Child's Soul in the Everyday Moments of Life $2.99

• Stop, Look & Listen: Using Your Senses From Head to Toe $1.99

• Thanks & Giving: All Year Long $3.99 (A handsome hardcover with lots of interesting songs, stories and art. It's by Marlo Thomas, she of Free to Be You and Me,who has enlisted Eric Carle, Ray Romano, Mel Brooks, and Paul Newman among others.)

• Look Who's Laughing! $2.49

I'd improve the formatting and fill in more links, but we're off for a bike ride. I'll fill more in later if I can!

One Book (Warning: It's a Meme)

Prudence, the cool chick behind Women Knead the Dough, totally called me out on the fact that I write about books ALL THE TIME so I have NO EXCUSE not to do this meme.

Hmmph.

One book you have read more than once?
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamott. I plan on reading it a few more times, too.

One book you would want on a desert island?
The Castaways' Devotional Bible. I couldn't find it on Amazon, for some reason.

One book that made you laugh?
Thomas' Calculus, by I Don't Know or Care. Indefinite integrals? Derivation? How the heck do I know, you number psychos?! It makes not a lick of sense to me. Yeah, I laughed, the laugh of someone doomed to test, fail, repeat for the rest of her college career. When my report card came and I saw that 'D,' tears welled in my eyes, tears of joy! I would never have to do calculus again! Then, I laughed some more.

One book that made you cry?
The Book of Ruth, by Jane Hamilton. I cried buckets and I blame Oprah 100 percent for making me read it. The main character -- her voice, her point of view, her experiences -- will stay with me always. To me, it's a masterpiece.

One book you wish you had written?
White Oleander, by Janet Fitch. Yes, it's another Oprah's Book Club book. What's your point? This was Fitch's first novel. Announcing it on her show, Oprah claimed that she begged to voice the audio book, and she convinced me that this was the Best Novel of All Time Period. Can you imagine that happening to you as a first-time novelist? Fitch's debut deals with the foster care system, and I've always been interested in foster kids' plight. It held my rapt attention. I laughed, I cried. Also, I think I could write a book like this, like, in reality. No, really.

One book you wish had never been written?
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. Because, damn, us right-wingers had everybody fooled until The Posterboy for Mean-Spirited Self-Righteousness came along! And, no, I'm not linking to it.

One book you are currently reading?
Use Me, by Elissa Schappell. It's a short story collection. Wait, it's a novel! Either way, I like it. Schappell hooked me during an early scene in which a 15-year-old girl, recovering from her third abortion, has to pull boys' underpants out of a show dog's butt. She still has me tonight, reading about a mom addicted to nursing her three year old.

One book you've been meaning to read?
Two that I'm supposed to review: It Hit Me Like a Ton of Bricks, by Catherine Lloyd Burns, and To Hell With All That, by Caitlin Flanagan. I've started the latter, and so far, it's quite good, even though it's not normally my kind of book.

I'm not tagging anyone, but if you do this, please let me know. I'd love to read your answers.

Also, I am way behind on book/DVD/music CD reviews. Stay tuned for lots of reviews and giveways in the coming week or two.

P.S. Speaking of Anne Lamott, have you read this? You have to fill out a survey to read it, but it takes two seconds. I'm going to print it out and save it with my boys' scrapbooks. Also, Operating Instructions? You've read that, right?

Life is too short to be small*

Karen has declared it Love Thursday.


I love this picture from Ava's 1st birthday party, even though my niece snapped it on her cell phone, and it's grainy.

I love Ava's arm chub, which has vanished in the two months since.

I love that it captures Ben's demeaner around her: protective, affectionate and, always, seeking to entertain.

Come to think of it, Ava's birth started Ben's reign as our Family Clown.

Here, though, Ava's the clown.

* Quote by Benjamin Disraeli

Sentimentality Gone Wrong

Last night at 3 a.m., I awoke to the usual plaintive howls coming from Ava's crib. Normally I stand up, mumble a stream of expletives and growl, "This is the last time, girlie!" Then I stumble into her room, lift her into my arms and pause while she points to my bedroom door and grunts: "Take me to your breasts, woman."

If she woke up once a night, I could do the night nursing indefinitely. But she keeps waking at 3 a.m. then again at 5 or 6, demanding to be nursed both times. It's killing me.

So last night, instead, I smacked Brian on the shoulder. "I'm not feeding her twice a night any more. You need to get her back to sleep." Because I'm so thoughtful and polite like that.

From 3 a.m. to 4:15 a.m., as I lay in bed alternately feeling guilty and analyzing the pain in my back (I'm pretty sure I'm dying), Brian got Ava settled and returned to bed 20 times, only to have her scream again 4 minutes later. I wanted to give in, Brian wanted to punch a hole in the wall. But I kept thinking, If I give in now, the last 15/30/45/60 minutes will have been in vain.

At about 4 am, Brian stomped downstairs, got her some apple juice, and changed her diaper. She then settled into her crib and slept until 7:30.

This morning, I feel hopeful that I can start sleeping six or seven hours in a row again. Images of us keep flashing before my eyes, sitting on the edge of my bed, leaning into each other in the still of the night, me staring at a novel I can't bring into focus, under the blue light of my bedside lamp. I'm feeling sad, sad that this could be the end of our quiet midnight nursing.

How can I be sad that I'm going to start sleeping like a normal person? What does this mean?

1. I have sleep-deprivation-induced delirium

2. Soon, overcome with gross sentimentality, I will weep over a poopie diaper ("This could be the last one!" )

3. I need a job to keep my mind better occupied

4. I'm longing for another baby

I think it's No. 3 and No. 4 combined. They seem mutually exclusive, don't they? Can I get a new part-time job and get pregnant again?

Right now, to me, that would be the equivilent of "having it all."

Maybe it really is No. 1.

Inept Babysitter No. 3 (Unhealthy, Actually)

This is part three in a series of five posts about my experience hiring babysitters between May 2002 and September 2003. This post picks up in September 2002.

Writing this series reminds me how surreal the whole experience was. I mean, all I needed was a person to come to my house and hang with my babies for two four-hour shifts a week. Yet, here I was, two hires and two inept babysitters into my quest. I felt so humbled. While working at my various jobs, I had conducted at least 70 interviews and hired many people. They weren’t all psychos. (Ok, there were a few, but that’s another post.)

But I am not one to give up. Just this Sunday, I arrived at my niece’s bridal shower 2 hours and 45 minutes late, the latest I’d ever been for anything in my life. Did I give up? Did I drive home when I found myself without a cell phone and with a wallet full of Canadian quarters, spinning my wheels on the back roads of York County, Maine, failed by Yahoo Maps, my global positioning system AND the phone number on the invitation? I did not! I kept plugging, and I got to eat some cupcakes and watch my sweetheart of a niece open most of her gifts.

All of which is to say, after two dismal failures, I didn’t give up on my babysitter search. Need I explain that eight hours a week of “get stuff done without a toddler biting at my thighs” sounded like nirvana? Need I remind you that I was four months into my recovery from severe whiplash? No, I would not be denied a competent babysitter.

I’ll never forget the day I met Kerri. She was a preschool teacher for several years until being sidelined a year previously with severe complications from Crohn’s disease, which involved a ruptured intestine. Now, she was on the mend and in the process of adopting a six-month-old boy from Guatemala. (The medication for her disease made pregnancy impossible.)

She showed me his picture. With his bright eyes, bulging cheeks and wide smile, he was the most beautiful baby I'd ever seen. She expressed her pain at the slowness of the adoption process, and I sympathized, thinking how much it would hurt to miss the first year of my baby’s life.

She felt like a soul mate. She was just one of those people I guess.

She played the cutest games with Ben and John, singing songs, drawing, reading. She exclaimed over how smart Ben was because he knew his letters at 2, while I beamed with pride.

And this was all during the interview.

I hired her before checking her references, but when I did, everyone told me how special she was and how lucky we were to have her. Brian and I congratulated ourselves on sticking it out and finding the ideal candidate: a real “kid person,” a PRESCHOOL teacher, an all-around awesome gal.

Kerri worked two shifts, then her husband called over the weekend to say she’d had a relapse. Despite leaving her a few messages, I didn’t hear from her for a few weeks. When I did, she said she was still struggling to get back on her feet and would call me the next week.

I never heard from her again.

Her health issues were too severe for her to return to work, and if my hunch is correct, she was just too sad and embarrassed by the whole thing to even talk to me. I had lent her a book and never got it back, but it didn’t matter. This time I felt more like I’d lost a friend than a babysitter.

I think of Kerri every so often. I pray she’s OK, and that she achieved her dream of adopting that little boy in the photograph.

Stay tuned for part four of five: The Best Babysitter in the World.

Inept Babysitter No. 2

After reading my post about Inept Babysitter No. 1, you might be thinking judge-y thoughts about me. For example, "What the hell was she thinking? Leaving her kids with an insane person?"

Well, let me assure you, I do love my kids and was not in some postpartum hormonal psychosis and trying to kill them. Hiring someone can be very difficult, as many of you may have discovered in other arenas in life. People who seem normal can turn out to be complete whackos or incompetents. I'm sure you have examples from your own life, right? The assistant you hired, the friend you moved in with, the guy you married.

Also, I didn't need a babysitter for free time. I needed one so I could stop relying on my mom so much. It got to the point that every time she visited, she just watched the babies while I went to doctor appointments or worked on the newsletter. I wanted her to be able to enjoy my kids and stop being my slave laborer.

After I hired the Martha the Insane Babysitter, I moved on to Kristen the Unreliable Babysitter.

Kristen had just graduated from high school and was entering the local community college to study early childhood education. According to her resume and references, which I checked of course, she had been babysitting since age 12, up to four kids at a time. She babysat her neighbor's children from infancy. I liked her so much in the interview. I remember at one point exclaiming, "You have more experience with kids than I do!!" She responded, appropriately, by looking at me like I was a complete weirdo.

Kristen's schedule was 8:30 am to 12:30 pm, Tuesday and Thursday. The first week, everything seemed ok, except she lacked energy. I expected this 18-year-old professional babysitter to get down on the floor and play with my kids, playing games, chasing them, etc. Instead, she sat on my couch a lot and complained about her allergies.

The next week I left the house for a PT appointment, and returned to the boys watching a video and her laying, yes, on the couch. I had told her no TV. Her excuse, as usual, was her allergies.

The next thing I knew, she was calling in sick and showing up late. One day I had an appointment with my shrink at 9 a.m., and Kristen didn't show up. I called her and left a pissed off message. She called back a little while later, obviously right after she woke up, with an inventive and unique story about her allergies and missing medicine.

"Do you want me to come in now?"

"Don't bother."

The next time she came to work, I called her into the kitchen.

"Do you want this job?"

"Um...."

"Because you're not acting like someone who wants this job. I need someone I can rely on."

"I'm not a morning person ..."

"OK."

"I'm not used to getting up so early."

"So, you quit?"

"Um...."

I told her we could both think about it. I wanted to fire her, but my older brother had counseled me the night before to give her a chance, that maybe she needed to be "molded."

She went back to the kids, finished her shift and left. I never saw or heard from her again. In total I think she worked for me for about three weeks. I should have just fired her, but whatever.

Stay tuned for two more inept babysitters! I know I said three, but I remembered a fourth. Woohoo!

All We Need Is Love

Just under the "Love Thursday" wire, I couldn't resist Karen's call for love-related photos, which Irene inspired and I found at Mary's.



This was taken Tuesday, at Friendly's in Exeter, NH, after a long morning in the car, travelling to Nana's then beyond to pick up her new car. You both had the grilled cheese with French fries, and the requisite sundaes. Then you sat on the window sill and posed for a picture.

There's the fighting, but above all, there's the love.

Thank God for the love.

Inept Babysitter No. 1

Once upon a time, when I first went on maternity leave in 2000, I had a side job. It was a well-paid side job, one of those cozy corporate gigs that today I daydream about. Once every six weeks, I took content from my former employer and turned it into a newsletter that got mailed to several overcharged subscribers.

In the spring of 2004, the newsletter went to paper-content-delivery heaven, and I wept. But during those four years, I was a stay at home mom with some extra cash in my pocket.

What did I do with that cash, you might ask? Why, I hired a babysitter, of course!

I should say "babysitters," because I went through three before finding The One. These inept women made me question my ability to judge character and conduct due diligence prior to making important life decisions. They made me cry, too.

It was spring of 2002. Ben had just turned 2, John was 5 months old. Brian had been after me for months to hire help because he was sick of my whining and complaining about how I couldn’t get ANYTHING done and these babies were so needy, all day long with their needs! I couldn’t even poop let alone make dinner. Who did he think I was, anyway, a magician?

I had found FlyLady just before John’s birth, so for a while I rallied, becoming a routine-hotspot-27-fling-boogying mom-o-bot. But in April 2002, we got into a car accident that left Brian with a broken vertebrae and me with severe whiplash. When your kids are 22 months and 3 months old, and you can’t lift anything heavier than 8 pounds per doctor’s orders, you don’t have much choice but to hire help. Our poor parents could only take so much.

After getting no responses on the Christian college bulletin boards, I placed an ad in the newspaper. (This was when you could place a classified ad in print for $30. Today, it’s more like $100.)

I interviewed a bunch of people, many of whom thought I would pay them $15+ per hour to care for my babies. Man, I had a good laugh about those people! They seemed to think caring for children was some kind of career, a profession. What a hoot! I learned to screen those nanny-types out in 30 seconds flat, and settled on $10 per hour as my rate.

When I first spoke to "Martha," my ad had run for over a week and I was getting nervous. She worked at my local library (+), was in her 50s with grandchildren (++), had plenty of relevent references (+++) and was willing to work for $11 (-).

Her references checked out. She had frizzy brown hair and big bulbous eyes. I don’t remember the interview, just that I felt relieved yet desperate. She would work two four-hour mornings a week. Her first day of work was my first day of physical therapy for the whiplash.

Every day, there were red flags. If I went out and came home, say, 10 minutes before the end of her shift, she would pack up and leave. Ten minutes early. She wasn’t sure how to get John down for his morning nap while caring for Ben. As she bungled about my house, I thought, "That’s why you earn the big bucks, lady. Figure it out."

One day, as I sat at my computer in the family room, I heard silence in the kitchen and decided to take a peek. There sat 2-year-old Ben, in his high chair, eating apple slices.

Alone.

I checked the clock. She was upstairs putting John to bed and had left my barely 2-year-old son to choke to death in his high chair. Five minutes ticked by. Eight. She came downstairs and went into the bathroom for a few minutes. When she sat next to Ben I popped my head in and told her I don’t leave him alone when he’s eating.

Today I would have fired her on the spot, or at least before her next shift. But I was desperate and didn’t yet trust my instincts.

She started hinting that she wanted to care for my babies at her house. Ha ha ha! That’s a good one! Then one morning, a week or two after she started, my phone rang at 5 am.

Five a.m. was a good 3 hours before her shift and a good 2 ½ hours before I accept anything other than death-related phone calls.

“Hi, Kris? My eye is swollen.”

*Crickets* "Yeah?"

“Yeah. I don’t know what’s going on. It’s really swollen. I won’t be in today.”

“Oooooh kaaaay.”

“I wanted to let you know.”

“Right.”

I fell back into a fitfull sleep, dreaming of bulbous, infected eyes chasing my kids.

The inappriate phone call prompted the "cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs" sound to go off in my head every time Marthat crossed my mind. I’d hired an insane person. And yet I was allowed to procreate.

The next afternoon she called to tell me she had, at the ripe age of 55, discovered a new allergy, to cats. How surprising! What are the odds? All this time on the planet with felines at every turn and just now, this week, she discovers she's allergic to them. So severely allergic that she couldn't possible enter my house again. How frigging convenient!

I tried to bully her into one more shift (did I mention I was desperate?) but to no avail. She was gone, my babies survived her care, and I was back to square one.

My first call was to renew my prescription for painkillers, then to the newspaper to re-run my ad, then to my mother to whine about my plight. After gasping together that we had left Martha alone with my babies to go out to lunch, obviously endangering their very lives, my mom said, "Good riddance to her! She did you a favor."

We had dodged the Martha bullet.

Stay tuned for inept babysitters No. 2 and 3! And tell me, have you ever hired an inept babysitter?

A Few Things About Ava

If I say, "What's in your mouth?" she'll show me.





See? I have her trained. Except when she really does have something in her mouth, then she just smiles and scurries away.



She loves spaghetti.



She gives the best hugs, arms tight around my neck, her cheek pressed against mine.



But she also bites. I take my chances, as you can see.

She looks exquisite in just a diaper ...



... and finds ball pits so relaxing.





Her eyes are two different colors.



She's growing up so fast.

My Baby

I took this picture of Ava last week at Lynch Park, in Beverly. The open ocean spreads out around the park, it's beyond the trees behind her.



She's so beautiful, no? But she appears to be missing a top lip. Thank God for collagen.

"Have you weaned her yet?!"

Last Friday my neighbor invited us for dinner. This is the neighbor of the Martha Stewart-esque entertaining and decorating and elaborate kids' parties. She's got the social graces I wish I had. Usually.

Instead of the hotdogs I'd planned, Brian and I noshed on pork tenderloin and Harpoon ale. Instead of negotiating "milk or water?" and "hot dog or bread and butter?" for 20 minutes, I got to socialize with her husband and another couple while the kids ran races up and down the yard.

It was awesome. I need to get out more.

After playing hostess for an hour, she sat down with the five of us to chat. She immediately turned to me, and the first thing out of her mouth was, "Have you weaned Ava yet?"

I thanked her for bringing this up because, really, I'd been dying to discuss my boobs and Ava sucking on them with her husband and sister- and brother-in-law. Would they like me to demonstrate? Because it's her bedtime and I'm about to leak anyway.

I explained that I had no intentions of weaning until Ava goes to preschool. But then again, perhaps I can arrange with the teacher to come in at snack time to suckle my baby, who, by the way, will always be my baby.

When will I wean Ava? Am I becoming OBSESSED with the nipple stimulation, unable to let it go? What is it, a turn on? She's not a baby anymore, for God's sake. This is more about your needs at this point than hers, you know.

My neighbor didn't say those things, but that's the vibe I get when people start asking about the nursing after baby's first birthday. And this wasn't the first time she had asked me about weaning. She seems overly concerned with the issue. A few months ago, when I was bleary-eyed from night feeding, she told me that she stopped feeding her two babies at night when they were four months old. "Wow, you're hard core," I said. "Yes, I am," she agreed.

I am not hard core. I prefer to let my babies grow out of these things at their own pace, for the most part. Now that Ava's 13 months, I will start to put pressure on her not to nurse at night. I will send Brian in as a first line of defense. I do want to sleep through the night again, with every fiber of my being. But I feel no rush to stop nursing. She's still my baby, damnit!

What is it with these Puritanical New Englanders who bristle at a mom nursing her toddler? Everyone around here acts all liberal and multicultural and tolerant , yet I risk becoming the town oddity if I nurse Ava in public now that she's walking. (It's the walking that gives us away; she's in the 10th percentile for weight and height so she looks like a nine month old.)

It doesn't faze me, really. I'm a nonconformist at heart. I don't really care what people say about me, unless they say I have an ugly face, and then I might cry.

I've always said that age 2 is my limit for nursing, but what the hell. Maybe I should keep going until age 4 or 5. Maybe I should have another baby, then go to the mall and tandem nurse at the food court. Maybe I should learn how to hand express into a sippy cup, just for the occassion.

10 Tangents in One Post

Have you ever taken a break from your blog and found it hard to come back? I had that problem. Plus, I got many nice comments on my vacation post, so I just kept reading them over and over. I swear, if I had a blog that got 50 comments a post, I would never interact with anyone outside my computer. God is looking out for me, my friends.

Last week, the post-killing reality was that my plans for off-loading the boys for afternoon summer camp went to hell, Ava ran a 103-degree fever, and our 275-gallon oil tank sprang several leaks.

Another problem was that I had/have 800 posts flying through my head, but when I try to formulate a post they can’t stop interfering with one another, so I just end up with a bunch of tangents. Here are 10 things running through my mind:

1. Ava. My sweet, sweet Ava. With the fever and the teething and the biting.

2. John and his “incident” at camp. (Think “throwing rocks,” “hitting other kids,” and “not allowed on the school bus” ... As if.)

3. My sick lust for decluttering. I’d rather just have a clutter-free home, but that’ll never happen. So I figure, why not enjoy it? I still wonder, though, how to fix the problem of said clutter growing back in two days like the weeds in my flower beds (to use the term “flower beds” loosely).

4. The book Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff With Your Family, by Richard Carlson. I will write a review and, no, I didn’t receive a free copy. I just love it that much. Carlson’s up there with Andrew Weil and FlyLady in my book, because his advice is so common-sense and wise. He makes me believe that, even though I’ll never be a perfect parent or wife, as long as I don’t stop trying, I will be good enough.

5. I switched my morning routine around and moved “pray” to the top of the list. It’s making a difference.

6. We had a week of day trips for vacation: Salem Willows, featuring a boat ride; Story Land featuring leaving at 5 am and returning at 10 pm (next year, we get a hotel); the Boston Aquarium (one word: hate); Wingaersheek Beach, Lynch Park. Everything went well, even though I had *wince* PMS. I'll post some pictures soon. (Uh, not of the PMS..., although there may be an illustrative picture.)

7. If I have to write much more about PMS, or write much more while under its influence, I will delete my blog and smother my desktop until it catches fire. However, I do have more to tell you about my fluctuating hormone levels, so stay tuned. As a preview, I will just tell you that I'm not taking this insanity lying down. And I'm NOT giving up chocolate. Or beer.

8. I put much thought and creativity into our vacation plans to maximize its fun potential and keep anxiety levels low. As part of this plan, as extra padding against VIOF (Vacation Is Over, Fuck) disorder*, I booked the boys for one week at our town’s summer program for the week after vacation. I would drop them off at 1pm, bring Ava home and put her in for a nap, then, oh, I don’t know.... Write, clean, read. Stare at the wall and rock back and forth.

But then, the Thursday of my vacation, three days before the start of camp, the director called and said the afternoon program was cancelled, but the boys could go in the morning. So, instead of a relaxing morning followed by blissful solitude, I had to get up early, rally them into sneakers, sunscreen and bug spray, get them to camp, care for Ava and clean the house and stuff, then go back to camp to pick them up and proceed with life as usual. I am proud to say that despite my PMS I only bitched about this, loudly, for about 15 minutes. Then I decided to stop trying to get away from my kids and just roll with the punches. At least the boys wouldn’t miss out. Yes, it was PMS, but enlightened PMS.

9. I am 20 pounds over my “happy weight,” what I weighed when we conceived Ava. I have gained a solid 10 to 15 pounds since having her last summer. I am proud to say that I did not berate myself about how hideous my body looks, even though I’ve only been this big one other time in my life (fourth year of college). But before each day trip during vacation, I grunted and huffed in my bedroom, trying on every summer garment that I own and realizing NOTHING FIT, not even the big gauzy cotton blouse (the horror!). I just said to myself, “Well, you should have gone shopping before now.” This wisdom, during PMS! Who the hell have I become?? I did realize fully for the first time in my life why they call it a “spare tire.” (You can see the ring of the tire my clearer when looking down at it.) I also did not look at my body and see “hideous.” I just saw "chunky but cute."

10. See what I mean about tangents? Good Lord, help me focus.

I think this has been a positive blog post for me. Was it good for you? Are you still awake? Can we just consider this a breaking-the-ice post and move on? Thank you.

*The only other acronym I could come up with was SAVE ME: Stress/Anxiety from Vacation Ending, Menstrual Edition.