i'm awake and many things are in my head, part 1

awww, man. the things i think about at 2:30 in the morning...



eowyn went to her friend sylvia's house on sunday for sylvia's birthday party. it's a sleepover party! sylvia's actual birthday is on christmas so her parents wisely have the party earlier. i missed the party due to work but i was to check to see if i had a text message from erika, sylvia's mom, saying that eowyn wanted to come home. i plugged in my phone before leaving for work to make sure there would be enough power. at 11:30 that night, when i got off the phones to clean, i realized my cell phone was still plugged up....at home.



i was off at midnight so i went home and checked the messages. yep, two texts, although both from amy. the first was "pickup eowyn", the second, "never mind, she went to sleep". after checking the messages i walked in the kitchen. amy was working at her computer. i repeated aloud the messages she had sent. then i told her the phone had been here all along. she said, "duh, i could have brained that because i saw it sitting on the dresser earlier!" so at least i was the only dummy in this situation.



meira was asleep in the bedroom so i regaled my lovely wife with readings from david bodanis' "the secret house". if you've never read the secret house, it's probably best. not that it isn't a great book, it is. the subject matter is what makes it most frightening. "the secret house" takes the reader through an entire day in the life of a house and it's occupants by using the scariest of all literary tactics...reality.



every thing from waking up in the morning to the sound waves of the alarm bouncing off the curtains (making the curtains move and heat up) to brushing one's teeth (using chalk, water, paint, seaweed, anti-freeze, paraffin oil, detergent, peppermint, formaldehyde and fluoride: the ingredients in toothpaste...yes, anti-freeze is in there to keep everything from drying out and formaldehyde kills any bacteria that try to invade the paste) to mites that live everywhere, on everything, including in our eyelashes and in particular, the follicles of the lashes. fascinating reading.



around 2 am we went to bed. then we had a fight about finances. i simply asked if she thought she might get paid early, like at thanksgiving, instead of the usual end of the month. "why?", she asks. "it would just be good if you did", i say. "it worries me to get paid early...it's then another month and a half before getting paid again". "it works out the same", i say, meaning the money goes in the same account and sits there waiting to be used at the appropriate time. she senses my underlying meaning, though. "what are you saying?". uh-oh. "i get paid tomorrow but we would have very little money to last two weeks", was my last sentence before getting a barrage of howmuchmoneydowehaveareyoutellingmethere'snomoneyforchristmaswelltheregoeschristmas...i didn't stand a chance of making myself heard now. so i got up, pulled out the records, logged onto the bank website and figured it all out.



at three o'clock i got back in bed. "well, how are we", amy asks, meaning the account. i tell her the figure we have to work with. "sounds like a lot to me", she replies. whew.



when i got up monday morning, amy was off to work so it was just meira and me. meira woke up early, got out of bed, toddled off and came back with a booklight and a book. "read", she commands in her little singsong voice. i've said it before, she's a little bookworm...just like her sister...and her mommy....and her daddy. not that there's anything wrong with that. in fact, it's great!



so we read as much as she can stand, we get up, eat, mess around, she watches elmo's world and then it's off to get the big girl.