Knowing Me Knowing You (with the usual whiny accompaniment)

Perspective is a funny thing. I have overly reactive, chronically inflamed airways, and when I get sick I get a rib-breaking breath-stealing consumptive cough that can last for months. I always think that my husband must feel really bad for me when he hears me coughing like that. Then when he gets a cough -- his normal wussy-man cough although he acts like it's the final stages of the bubonic plague, naturally -- I find it really annoying and ask him to sleep in the basement. Then I think maybe he doesn't actually feel that bad for me when I cough.

I'm tired. It's been a good, kind of busy week. My husband had out-of-town people in at work so he's been wining and dining them while I meet the teacher and feed and bathe and supervise homework and piano practice more or less solo. Plus I've been sleeping like crap. Lying there with the same goddamned song running through my head a hundred and forty-two times, totally awake and yet yawning until my jaw creaks every few minutes. If there was a way to strangle yourself I'd be all over it.

Pam and I went for a lovely walk in a fun area of town where we never go this morning. For a little over two hours. It was wonderful, and I came home thinking it was just what I needed and I would probably sleep well tonight. The problem was, I wanted tonight to start RIGHT NOW. Then my husband came home after lunch and said he had a migraine and threw up at work and was going to bed. I managed to mutter something vaguely sympathetic, went to pick up the kids from school and fed them dinner and supervised piano practice solo AGAIN. Then he got up and ate four times what he usually eats and disappeared back upstairs with his laptop, which I may now go upstairs and beat him over the head with. Did I mention I have my period? I'm not sure how well this new blogging initiative is going. I looked at yesterday's post and it ended on a strange note about Angus's picture having a Charlie Brown head with no nose. For that I forgot to put Eve to bed until nine-thirty and went upstairs and found her nodding sleepily over a Junie B. Jones book in my armchair. I hope Zarah can live with herself.

Oh right, Knowing Me Knowing You...whatever month this is. Yay Fairy Blogmother.

1. Started your Christmas shopping yet?

Oh hell no. Well, a couple of tiny insignificant things that I have shoved in my closet and won't be able to find in December. I'm not buying the kids anything 'for Christmas' this year, except things that they would get anyway, because I always end up with way too much stuff, most of which they could have easily done without. At least that's the plan. I'll let you know how it works out for me.

2. Fall is here, what is your favourite cold weather comfort food?

Anything I cook in my crock pot that means I'm not cooking at four-thirty p.m. The most comforting thing is not having to cook dinner at dinner time. Pork chops in peach sauce, hungarian goulash, beef stew. Plus, you know, booze -- comforting in any weather.

3. Are you watching any new TV shows?

Don't think so. I usually love new fall TV, if only because none of it has had the chance to suck yet, but there's so much on it just makes me tired and I go read a book instead.

4. Have you read Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett?

Nope. I'm a horrible snob -- if everybody loves a book I avoid it like the plague because three million people can't possibly be right. Perhaps you remember how well that worked for me with Twilight.

5. Is the top of your desk cluttered or clear?

Why do I have a desk? And anyone who's seen my house knows better than to ask if the top of my anything is cluttered or clear. The top of everything has a stack of books and a flurry of pink post-it notes on it. And possibly a shrivelled mushroom and a dead caterpillar from Eve's nature box, which has a distressing habit of thinking out of the box.

My kids have been in pajamas since 5:30 and some kid on America's Funniest Home Videos just put boobs on a snowman. I'm going to bed.