I need to stop it with the parentheses

I have been on a quest for a really good pickle for weeks now. The really salty ones they give you in restaurants. Also, yes, I realize those two sentences could sound really dirty if your mind were in the gutter, but I know you are all ladies and gentlemen. Ahem. So, pickles! A quest! The only three kinds at our local grocery stores were Vlasic (ho hum), Milwaukee's (ok in small quantity) and Roundy's (never tried). None were what I was looking for, and this Crazy Pregnant Lady is obsessed with pickles, like so many movie cliches. And then! A Twitter friend recommended Claussen pickles, and I was perplexed. I cannot find Claussen anywhere! And then! Today! Finally! Exclamation point! I was walking past the bacon and sausage (gutter minds, keep your comments to yourselves), and there, on the shelf, were the Claussen pickles. A whole shelf full of them.

And I ate a whole jar tonight. They were THAT good. And now I'm drinking the juice. I will regret this later, but people, these are the best pickles ever in the world, amen.

(Thank you, Twitter friend)

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I am acquainted with a couple of internet ladies who just had babies. And these babies, they have SO MUCH HAIR. I am no longer the hairy baby queen, which would make me sad and jealous, except these babies are so cute as to be edible. Also, fat.

I'm not bringing this up just to talk about hair. I'm bringing this up because these soft, fuzzy babies are making me insane. March is eons away, light years, even (and I'm in a rickshaw, not a space ship)! I want my baby now, darn it. Well, except I don't. He would be all unhealthy and such if that were to happen.

(I only say "he" because I think he's a he, and so I call him that. But we don't find out until the 12th. If he cooperates.)

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I CHOPPED my hair. I do not think it has ever been this short before. People, I love it. LOVE. I have attempted to take pictures, but they all look terrible. I do not do pictures. My avatar is pretty much the best picture of me ever, which is why I have had it up for years and years even though my hair is back to blond, and it has not been that long in forever. And I still don't think it looks anything like me. Not that I think I'm Heidi Klum or anything, but I swear my nose is not that large, and I do not ordinarily look stupidly smug.

Anyway. I chopped it. Hacked it right off. And got some highlights. The next day, I woke up, took a shower, and attempted to blow-dry it to what it looked like the day before. HAH! Silly Naomi. Even though my stylist doesn't do much in the way of styling (she likes to cut it and style in ways that I can deal with it, and she knows I have fourteen thumbs when it comes to doing hair), I can still never get it the same. I walk out with this fabulous haircut, and the next day it's like a bad hangover mingled with lots of regret over stupid things you've done the day before (I actually have not experienced this--I don't think--, but I have seen enough movies).

My hair, when it air dries (and when I blow-dry it, but to a lesser degree), does this Farrah Faucett swoop off one side of my head. And, unfortunately, I do not possess Farrah Faucett's DNA, and I cannot pull of such a look. I just look like an idiot. Like Zac Efron (circa High School Musical, and can I just say I'm really glad that haircut is going out of style?) caught in a violent sideways wind.

So instead of crying, like I wanted to do, I bought a cheap flat iron. And now I wish I'd bought one six years ago. People, it fixes everything. Everything! I can now let my hair air dry, and then when I'm ready to go out, three quick swipes on the swoopy parts of my head, and hello, normal hair! It's a beautiful thing. And it only cost $15.

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Guess what I just spilled all over the couch. Yeah, that's right. Pickle juice! It will go nicely with the milk I spilled there three days ago. The cover is washable, but a little of each got into the cushion itself, and I'm sure that's going to be fragrant in a couple of days.

I do not know why I keep doing this (a couple months ago it was a giant glass of water). I set the glass up against the back of the couch and say to myself, "Okay, self, glass of liquid on the couch. Remember not to tip it over." And then five minutes later I kneel over the back of my couch to get a cord for my laptop, or I lie down, or I gesture expansively, and whoops! a couch baptism!

Moron.

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I had another dentist appointment last Monday. And I enjoyed it. These people are made of magic. And my teeth feel beautiful and shiny. Wales Dental Arts, people.

(Not in the UK. Wales, Wisconsin)

Oh, and I now own 47 toothbrushes and samples of floss and toothpaste. (If I brush my teeth seldom enough and have to keep going to the dentist, we will end up saving money, yes?) And the hygienist gave me a kid's toothbrush just because I mentioned that The Child is obsessed with the things.

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You may have noticed that I have not mentioned The Child's sleep habits yet. That is because I do not want to jinx anything. Not that I'm superstitious.

(But I kind of am)

Broken record

I have been informed that the some of you (or, actually, just one of you) is not content with my diary as of late. You know, with the falling off the face of the earth and all.

Three words: new nap schedule. Also, child not sleeping. And, tired all the time. (Yes, that last one was four words. Shut it.)

Seriously, any entry written on here over the last month would go something like this, "WHINE WHINE WHINE TIRED WHINE WHINE WHINE NOT SLEEPING WHINE WHINE WHINE." So I've refrained.

I mean, there are aspects to my life other than child-rearing, of course, but when I'm this tired all the time, I can't remember anything beyond what happened in the last five minutes. It's really pathetic.

And I'm sitting here staring at my computer, sure that I'll come up with something clever to write about, and I just can't. Agh. The good news is that The Child seems to be slowly inching her way back toward normalcy. I am thinking, though, that this new nap schedule was a bad idea. No morning nap, and then a three-hour afternoon nap. Except those three hours are two hours, no matter how tired she is, and it is making me foam at the mouth. The first two days were great. Crappy morning followed by three hours of silence, followed by good afternoon and evening. Not so much now. Feh. But at least now she's sleeping until 6:30 or better, which is definitely an improvement from what she was doing, which was waking up and screeching like a Nazgûl anywhere from 2:30 to 5:30 in the morning, and then taking an hour to get back to sleep. That was tons of fun.

So I'll be back shortly. Today has been much better. I am optimistic about the future. Yesterday I was not. Yesterday I was pretty sure that having two of these things hanging off me at all hours was going to kill me. Now I think I may make it, possibly with the assistance of drugs, but I may make it. Yay!