Imagine the loveliest of lovely beaches.
Feel the sand between your toes.
Hear the surf and the wind in the palms.
Sip the cold drink in your hand.

Do you feel it? Are you there?

Yeah, me too.

Back next week...

"You can burp on command?"

"You didn't know that?"

"That's what I love about you, honey. Five years of marriage and I am still learning new things about you."

"Happy anniversary!"

Just wanted you to know...

I heard O calling me from her room this morning around 2:30a. She wasn't crying, so I waited to see if she would go back to sleep. After a few minutes and a few more rounds of "Mommy," I got up and made my way to her. I knelt down next to her bed quietly because I had a feeling that she might actually still be asleep. She talks in her sleep sometimes and indeed, when I put my hand on her and she turned toward me, her eyes were still closed. She opened them then though and said to me as she patted the bed by her head, "This is my bed and it is for laying down, and this," as she patted her bum, "is my diaper and it's for pooping." Trying very hard not to laugh too loudly, I took the opportunity to say, "Yes, and so is the potty." "Um-hmm, that's right, so is the potty" she said, closed her eyes and went back to sleep.

I keep sitting down to write and all that comes out is:

IT'S HOT. I'M HOT. BURNING. FLESH HURTS. LUNGS ARE TIRED. TOO HOT.

Perhaps part of the problem is that IT'S HOT. Wait, that's not where I was going with that. I'm not sleeping. Perhaps I will never sleep again. I'm starting to have some serious "Nightmare on Elm Street" type tension about bedtime.

It's not that I can't go to sleep. It's that I can't stay asleep. O's blood sugar fluctuates pretty wildly at night. We might head to bed with a decent blood sugar, then screw it up with a snack and spend the next five hours trying to decide whether or not we should correct. Or she might head to bed with a decent number only to bottom out at 2:00a. I never feel secure in just letting her go through even the better part of the night without checking.

Having Marc get up and do some of the checking is quite frankly not worth my time. He sleeps much more soundly than I do and doesn't wake to an alarm very well. If he is going to get up, nine times out of ten it is going to take me to wake him, and even if I don't have to wake him, I am still going to be awake. What's the point in both of us being up?

Last night O was 90 at 1:00am and would not eat or drink anything, not even a glucose tab, which is usually considered a big treat. I set the alarm for 45 minutes so that I could get up and check her again and give her a snack. The alarm didn't go off and I fell deeply asleep, not waking until 4:00. Of course, by then she had fallen to 51.

Apparently, I can get by on a smaller amount of sleep than I have ever needed or enjoyed in the past. But when I consider this going on and on and on (much like this HEAT we are having. HOT), I get a little antsy. I am afraid of what it is going to do to me over the long haul. Early-onset dementia at the worst and general fogginess and stupidity at best?

Marc's sister just gave us a book called Fancy Nancy and it seems apt as Olivia seems to have discovered her style:

       

and a convenient means of getting all of her accessories from Point A to B:

 

Oh camera, you rascally scamp. There you were, in your little black Sephora bag, snugged up against that black suitcase under the bed in the darkest corner. The only corner in the house that I hadn't touched four times.

It was divine providence and desperation that led me to crouch down and rifle through the drawers in the bureau yet again and from that crouch, catch a glimpse of your red drawstring. Could it be?

Amongst the dustbunnies, discarded test strips and one random sock I dove and was rewarded for my pessimism and whiny cries of "It's gone. I'll never find it" with you, my camera, no worse for the wear and just where everyone said you would be.

Now tell me, camera, where is your cord? I need to upload pictures.

Take this as you will, but I feel that I am probably putting out some weird energy this week. Everything seems about 14 degrees off and I feel a bit...static-y.

Marc's grandfather died two night before I had the miscarriage and we traveled to GA on Thursday for his memorial. He had been quite ill; the loss is hard for Marc and his family. Marc sort of put on his game face and soldiered through the week, while I have vacillated between wanting to talk a lot about the miscarriage (perhaps inappropriately to near-strangers) and not wanting to think about anything at all.

O has been freaking out and I have had little patience for her, I am ashamed to say. I know that she knows something is wrong; at the least, she thinks that "Mommy doesn't feel well." She has told me 100 times this week, "It's OK, Mommy," but she has also hit and kicked me as many times and unfortunately I have reacted more strongly to that behavior. We all three have come down with some kind of cold/mystery flu and that hasn't helped matters much.

At some point this weekend, I lost my brand-new camera, the one Marc gave me for my birthday less than a month ago and it has nearly unhinged me. I have re-traced my steps, gone back to all my weekend destinations, turned the house upside down...it's nowhere. And I have been ANGRY about it. I know that it isn't all about the camera, but it is a convenient place to dump some of it.