What really matters

I didn't lose my voice last night. Bruce was great, but I'm not the type to go nuts over any rock star, even the best of the best.

But tonight, I'm going hoarse and my hands are already sore from clapping. My boys were up by 12 at the half. Now they're up by 4 with 5:37 left. I am slightly drunk and very loud, with all sorts of very inappropriate language drifting down from the TV room to TheGirl's crib. Judybat and TheBoy are out being social, which is good, because nobody needs to see me behave this way. I say work is where I'm happiest, but that's not true. It's watching the Tar Heels, screaming at them to box out and hustle just a little more and play just a bit smarter.

A five point lead with 3:31 left. Make one more pass before you shoot, please?

At least Duke is gone already. Maybe it's the beer talking, but I think if we have another baby, we should use Tyler Hansbrough's sperm.

Judybat, is that OK?

Bruuuuuuuuce

For our 14th anniversary (the anniversary of our first kiss, that is - not to be confused with the up-and-coming 7th anniversary of the day we stood up in front of friends and family and got hitched) AR shelled out a ridiculous amount of money and got floor tickets for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Here are a few observations I made during the show:

1. Those guys - and girl - are old.
2. Those guys - and girl - can rock and roll.
3. The audience was old.
4. The audience was whiter than the state of Vermont.
5. It's fun to watch middle-aged white guys dance to 'Born to Run'
6. Steve Van Zandt is just as funny on stage as he was in 'The Sopranos.'
7. With all due respect to Clarence Clemons, nothing says 80s rock band like a wailing sax.
8. It's cool to hear thousands of people sing in unison.
9. It's even more cool to ride your bike a mile or two down the road to see Bruce Springsteen in concert.

THANK YOU PORTLAND AND GOODNIGHT!

His ancestors would be horrified

TheBoy was born in Raleigh, but we seem to have gotten him out of North Carolina before certain unpleasant Tar Heel traits took root. How do I know? This morning, as we were leaving his sister's daycare, he sniffed the air, frowned and let out this little pearl of little guy wisdom: "I smell a cigarette. That's disgusting."

Keep in mind that my parents both did a little time in the tobacco fields during their summer breaks, and that my first newspaper internship was in Winston-Salem, a place where the smell of tobacco still hangs in the air, sort of like chocolate in Hershey. A certain respect for Big Tobacco runs in his family, if not his gene pool. So I wanted to make sure I'd heard him right.

"Disgusting, really?"

"Disgusting."

"How do you know?"

"Well, Grandma smokes. And you say it's disgusting when she does it."

Yes, Mom, I do. TheBoy learns well.

Not quite the cruelest month

October used to be my favorite month. I'm a bit of a grey-scale girl to begin with, and there's just something about the smell of fall in Connecticut, the beginning of college basketball season, the end of baseball season. But now I'm a continent away, and older and wiser, and March is quickly gaining on my ranking of the best time of the year.

It's rainy and windy here right now, except when it's sunny, except when it's freezing cold and hailing. The variety pleases me. And there's something to be said for all the things going on right now: The occasional glimpse of sun and fun and Joba in spring training, the adrenaline rush of election season, this wacky life in which my small family celebrates both Purim and Easter on the same weekend. Noisemakers yesterday, colored eggs today, in other words.

And then there are moments like this one right here, sitting upstairs watching the Tar Heels -- knowing good and well CBS is going to cut away any minute because we're up by 24. TheGirl is sitting right next to me ripping apart the Sunday Times. TheBoy is eating jellybeans from an egg hunt. I'm acting like a true Portlander, drinking one of these and feeling the way I should feel after half a glass. Slightly tipsy and very pleased with the world, in other words.

Happy holiday, everybody.

I'm not an addict

I gave up caffeine on August 26, 2006, in preparation for the effort to get knocked up. I figured it was better to kick the habit before the stress of trying to conceive really kicked in, and to give myself as much time as possible. I went cold turkey, and I suffered through four days of -- I kid you not -- vision-blurring headaches.

Friends told me I was stupid to give it up completely, but I knew two things: First, I lack the willpower to slowly wean myself off anything. It's got to be all or nothing. Second, I knew cutting the caffeine entirely would be horrible -- so bad that I would never, ever want to go back.

I was right. Or at least, I was, up until now.

Regular coffee is calling to me. And real Diet Cokes. And maybe the occasional, adult Coke, in the pretty red can, with all that sugar.

The other morning I made a pot of coffee that was half-regular, half-decaf. Twenty minutes later I felt the oddest sensation: Awake. The colors of the world were more vivid, maybe because my eyes were actually wide open. My brain couldn't keep up with all the stuff I wanted to accomplish. I felt like myself, only myself two or three or 10 years ago. Eager, energetic, maybe even happy.

I'm not going back completely. At work, it's still caffeine free Dike Coke -- I know all about the brain tumor I'm giving myself, thank you, but I figure the one I'm getting from cell phones will be bigger. After 10 a.m. or so, I'm solely a decaf kind of girl. But I've started adding at least a spoonful or two of the good stuff the pot in the morning, a little jump start to the day.

It feels good, even though I know better. I'm in complete control of my habit. Really. I swear. Pass the half and half.

Where'd we go?

That, my friends, is an excellent question. This blog has slowed down considerably here in the lord's year of 2008. It's not that we don't love you. It's not that we don't have stuff to tell you. But life interferes, you know?

For example, the not sleeping. Round about early January, The Girl began sleeping through the night. You'd think that would mean her mommies are well rested, right? Wrong. My body has responded to the end of breastfeeding and the wonders of a kid who sleeps 10 hours a stretch with the nastiest case of insomnia I can recall. Every night I collapse by 10:30. Then I wake up at 2 or 3 or 4, wide awake. I should just get the heck up and do some work or read or watch the movies Judybat won't watch with me. Or my Xena DVDs. Instead, I toss and turn ... and notice, as I do, that darling spouse is doing the same thing. She's sleeping, sure, but not deeply enough to really feel rested in the morning. I want her to do one of those sleep studies where they hook electrodes up to her body and track her dream patterns. She wants me to call the doctor and get some Ambien. Either way, we're exhausted.

I'm also working too much. The nice guy who took over city politics for me suffered some severe health problems earlier this month, so I've lost my cushy feature writing gig and am back wandering the halls of government. Speaking of things that keep me up at night ...

And it's the end of college basketball season. And I'm really depressed about what just happened in Ohio and Texas. And The Boy just turned 5, with all the pomp and ceremony such a grand event requires. (Not to mention a clown, who was nowhere near as terrifying as I'd feared. He seemed like what he was, a guy from down the street, rather than one of those Ronald McDonald, my-mouth-looks-like-I-just-ate-a-baby, clowns in the professional makeup.) And we've got a steady stream of visitors enjoying the hospitality and the upstairs skylight shower of the Little Green House. And the big blue car needs new tires. And our basement light needs replacing. And and and.

There's really no excuse, I know. We should be writing more, both of us. For the moment, however, accept my apologies and know that if you could see what I see right this second -- a little girl toddling her way across the hall, a boy making thank you cards for his buddies, early March sunlight shining through the front window -- you wouldn't feel like sitting down at the computer either.

Milestones

Warning: this may be one of those nauseating parenting blog posts that marvel about the wonder that is my child. Although, there is a reference to someone's stinky butt, so maybe not. Or maybe that's worse. I know it's been a while, but maybe you just want to skip this post and wait for the next one.

That said, there are a few moments that stick out in my mind as gateways to a new and better way of life, moments where parenting got - if not easier - a little less hands-on. Moments where I got to sit down on the job. Like the time when The Boy learned to pump his legs and I no longer had to push him on the swing, or when he figured out that he could drag a chair over to the fridge and get a yogurt out all by himself. We're still trying to get to a place where he can consistently - and cleanly! - wipe his own butt, but he has reached the point where he can reach the water fountain all by himself.

And now we are on the verge of the biggest, most satisfying milestone of all. A couple weeks ago, I sat down with The Boy and Hop On Pop. He had been calling out some simple words he saw - like "to" and "from" and "stop" and "go" - for a while and I wanted to see if he was reading them or just recognizing them. When we opened the book, sure enough, he started sounding out the words. I had to help him out with things like "fight" and "night", and sometimes he would get a little lazy and guess a word based on its first letter, but there was an amazing light bulb moment when he realized that if he could read "play" he could also "day." It was just as amazing for me to watch him work through the book, page by page, as if I could see things click into place as the little gears turned in his head.

We're still a ways away from that delicious moment when I say to the child nipping at my heels, "go read a book," but it's so close I can almost taste it.