Apparently it took forever for me to fall asleep (I had to tell the tech that was typical for me) and once asleep, I kept waking up even when the tech increased the pressure going through the CPAP.

I asked, rather fearfully, if they were going to leave it to my primary care doc to “read this off the report” once it was completed in 3 weeks, and the very nice tech said she’d email her boss to see if the boss could suggest something else for me or set up an appointment with one of their sleep doctors, since my own doc seems to have no idea this was even possible.

All I want is just one freaking full night of sleep. At this point, I’d settle for 3 continuous, non-medicated hours.

Tonight’s room has a lovely bedside stand I can use for my bottle of water, my book, and my glasses, unlike the chair I had to use last time. But no new issue of People Magazine, sadly. I don’t know if you can tell over the Interwebs, but I’m crying a little bit about this. Damn it, I need to know why the Bachelorette broke the rules!*

I’m across from the nurses’ station, which means I can hear the other sleep study patient’s snoring through the loudspeaker the nurse is monitoring. My diagnosis — the dude is on his first study, needs to lose weight, and has sleep apnea. I wonder if the nurse will be annoyed if I explain my diagnosis to her on my way to the bathroom?

*No, I don’t know what rules the Bachelorette broke. But I saw the cover of the latest issue of People, and now the only thing I can think about is why she broke them!

Li’l G had suddenly, quietly, appeared at the other end of the kitchen. His gaze went immediately to the orange in my hand, and then his eyes moved back up to meet my eyes. He grinned, engagingly, at me. He started walking toward me, head tilted, maintaining eye contact the whole time.

(Did I mention that Gus learned to walk last week? And already he’s finding it so incredibly useful…just wait until you have to be on your feet for 10+ hours a day, kid, and you’ll be wishing you’d stuck with crawling.)

I finished peeling my orange and ran out of the kitchen through the other door. Gus backed out of the kitchen through his door and intercepted me at the dining table. He stood still, a few feet away from me, and smiled again. He looked meaningfully at my orange.

Thankfully, my boss’s mother-in-law, who was babysitting that day, caught sight of what was going on, and got some Chex mix for Gus. Otherwise I would have eventually succumbed to the Paco-like gaze of Gus, and fed him some pieces of orange out of sheer guilt. And just like Paco, Gus would have ended up with strange, wiggly orange segments in his poop, inevitably resulting in a conversation between his parents that would go something like this:

“What the fuck is this kid eating!”

“I don’t know! He has teeth now; why isn’t he using them?”

“Jesus! Whatever it is, don’t give it to him again!”

“At least it’s not corn!”

I know this because:

1. My landlady told me.
    
2. There have apparently been herds of elephants stampeding up and down the stairs for an hour last night, and two hours so far this morning.
    

Though lately I’ve had a lot more exposure to children (not that kind), I’m still always amazed to realize how heavy young children really are. Small, slender children, who look like they weigh as much as a toothpick, actually contain incredibly dense bodies capable of producing an unbelievable amount of noise as they walk.

I remember once hefting a friend’s child. He was four years old at the time. And yes, he was an unusually tall and strong four. But I’m 36. Should I really have toppled over when I started lifting him?

Maybe there’s some kind of secret that these kids aren’t telling the adults. They’re carrying invisible boulders in their pockets. I’m sure that’s it.

I don’t actually know how the comments work. Maybe you have to register to comment. Maybe you don’t.

And now, uh…I don’t actually have anything to say.

Hmm. How embarrassing if I’m the only one who comments.

Edited to add: If you have any opinion on whether you want comments turned permanently on or off or simply don’t care, feel free to add it. I do have a future post coming up about blogging and why I blog and why I don’t have comments open, so any additional thoughts would be great.

FIFTY DOLLARS?!?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Good lord, how long did this woman keep her book(s)? And how is this woman OK with having a fine that huge? Granted, the circulation assistant then added, entirely unprompted, “We can drop that down to $27,” but still.

TWENTY-SEVEN DOLLARS?!?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I once had to pay an overdue fine. It was ten cents.

I didn’t stop talking about it for months.

Make that years; I guess this counts as having just talked about it.

“All the gas stations are self-serve now, so I don’t know what to do if I run out of gas! And I can’t practice because Daddy likes to take my car to all those weird places.”

To my father, upon exiting Lowe’s when my father asks what a word on the door means:

“Salida means exit, in Spanish! I see it everywhere, even on airplanes. Like on BlueJet.”

To my father and me, after my father tells me they have yellow lilies growing by the meter outside:

“What do you mean, the meter?”

After my father further tries to explain by saying the meter is by the chimney:

“What chimney?”

When my father goes back to trying to describe what the meter is:

“Where’s the meter?”

Me to my mother, after hearing all of this:

“Mom, you’ve never actually looked at the outside of your house, have you?”

This is the only explanation I can find for why, in the last few months, my face has suddenly become an oil pit. I now have more acne than I did as a teenager.

I would have preferred getting my twentysomething body back instead, ’cause that body required no effort at all to maintain, was smokin’ hot, and best of all, was evidently fueled by unlimited amounts of junk food.

Now the question is how to get them all on board with this…and which of them can I convince to get a dog so I can be a temporary dog auntie.