Momnesia

Emerson is coughing her little lungs out. She's prone to respiratory infections (it's just a cold, people!), but they make her so sick that she can't sleep, she screeches suddenly, frequently, during the night and generally makes it impossible for me to get any rest...

... and yet, there's my husband, deforesting the whole of the Amazon in his sleep. Tell me: how is it that he can hear his blankety-blank cell phone on vibrate in the kitchen at 3 a.m., but he can't hear his own daughter hacking her lungs out and crying for her mommy and daddy when we share a wall with her? Doesn't that sound like selective hearing?

"Well, if I don't hear her, wake me up," he said to me just now, and all I could think was how conveniently close to my foot his balls were located. How is that supposed to help? I wake up, wait for him to wake up, spend 10 minutes trying to wake him up, during which he repeats "uhhuh. Mmmup." while making no movement to the affirmative, and then finally being forced to get up out of bed, now smoking - literally, smoking! like, smoke pouring out of my ears! - with fury as I try to comfort my now-hysterical 2-year-old. Yeah. Really good plan there, hoser.

I try to explain this to him with a minimum of arm-flapping and high-pitched vocalizations, but I'm pretty sure that all he hears is "CAAAAAAAW! CAAAAAAAW!" I see confusion, revulsion and a touch of fear in his eyes, like he had come too close to an aquarium housing a live cobra right as it attacked the glass.

"Well, I'll try to sleep lightly, but I don't know what to do about it," he said, kissed me lightly on the lips and went to bed.

I think what I'll do is put his cell phone in the other end of the crib, then hit "redial" whenever Emmie cries. Yes. This experiment will be lots of fun...

No. I will wait until tomorrow when I have my camera.
Trust me, Emmie will still be sick.

A.W.: "I was telling my friend about the hubbub around the office about the Avett Brothers. I said, 'You would have thought that Davy Jones was coming.' ... It was all I could think of."

From Sylvia Cooper's "City Ink" Column:

HAUGHTY CULTURE: After months of delay, the Georgia Golf Hall of Fame board voted last week to allow the city to operate the gardens for the next six months, but there won't be much to see.

"It was very depressing," said Augusta-Richmond County Extension coordinator Sid Mullis, who went to survey the gardens on behalf of the city. Weeds and dead azaleas were everywhere.

City officials say the Hall of Fame has taken the statues, killed most of the plants and expects the city to give it 25 percent of the revenue generated from events held there, and approve any new ones the city proposed.

Usually I try to refrain from talking about these people. I'm not all that rational when I watch them make decisions that screw up the place where my husband and I were married. But I don't see how links to already-published stories can do them much more damage.

So this site lets you earn Points for doing what you already do online; shopping, reading emails, playing games, searching the web, taking surveys, and more. I've been a member for five years, and I've redeemed my points for hotel stays, retail gift certificates and gas cards.

Check out these handpicked highlights:

Visit MyPoints.com, Inc.

A.W.: "Your hair looks cute, Stacey. I would have never thought you'd done it yourself."
Me: "Thanks!"
A.W.: "I would have thought Emerson did it."

A.W.: "My father is a guitar collector, and every family vacation we took revolved around guitars. So I have as much interest in guitars as I have in getting the clap, or something."
Me: "And yet your brother plays guitar..."
A.W.: "Well, he can't say the 12 months of the year in order." My mother always said, 'He's got a piece missing.'"

Thanks, Duane!

A.C.: "Did you hear about the toys made of GHB?"
Me: "Oh, yeah. That's insane!"
A.C.: "How does that happen?"
Me: "I don't know."
A.W.: "Are y'all talking about those beads?"
Me: "Yeah."
A.C.: "They're supposed to be these hot items for Christmas, too!"
Me: "They're a stupid toy. I saw a commercial for them when I was at my parents house and I thought, 'That's just dumb.'"
A.C.: "Yeah."
Me: "I'm only going to let Emerson play with sticks."
(laugh)
Me: "And rocks. Rocks and sticks. And then she can join Hamas."

Look! They're still for sale!:
Here
Here
Here
Here

What, exactly, does "RECALL" mean to these people?

So after a rough night of Emerson waking up every hour, I woke up yesterday morning looking quite a bit like this:
But Scott looked at me lying on the bed with Emerson, having one of our nonsensical conversations, and said, "Emmie, isn't your mommy beautiful?"
Emmie patted my face and nodded. "See's lite shunshine."

I thought for a while that I had gotten the wrong baby at the hospital. This child is too good to be true. But now I remember that I ate a Little Debbie Nutty Bar every day that I was pregnant, and washed it down with Diet Coke. Because nutrition is important to me. The chocolate, peanut butter, sugar wafers, caramel syrup and caffeine must have bonded together to mold the ultimate sweet: Emerson. She's kind of like a Powerpuff Girl that way. Without the beating people up part. And the flying. Although that would be cool. I could tie a rope to her leg and carry her around like a balloon.

The Mayo Clinic released this very informative article. I don't remember medical information being this funny...

ikordo is a free online meeting planner that negotiates with attendees to find the perfect date and time for your meeting.

Tell it when you want the meeting to happen, for example, 'next week between 9 and 12pm, please'. It goes back and forth with your attendees and finds a match, mails confirmation and also sends SMS reminders to everyone. ikordo does this by sending out meeting invites and by interpreting plain English e-mail responses to build a picture of everyone's availability.

Here are a couple of quick facts about ikordo:

* ikordo is a free service
* ikordo is fully time zone aware (it understands that 9am on the east coast of the US is 2:00pm in the UK) and communicates with invited attendees in their local time.
* ikordo can text reminders to you and all of your meeting attendees when the meeting is planned and just before the meeting.

I hope that soon ikordo will offer synchronization with plaxo and with outlook. That would make it even more useful. But for now, it's a great alternative to the S.O.P.

AUGUSTA, GA. -

This is so weird. I've been hit with a culture clash I wasn't aware existed. It seems this is three years old, and has even been a clue on Jeopardy.

Lolcats 4 Leroy:


moarfunny pictures

Does u unnerstan lolcat? I don'!

Jeopardy loves Leroy:


Do you get this clue? I'd have been able to guess the answer, because I've heard of the game. But it seems there's a whole World of Warcraft culture (or WoW culture). Let me introduce you to one of its heroes: Leroy Jenkins.

The Origin of Species:


Did you hear his battle cry? Yes. It is his name. And now they are all dead.
But wait: their memories live on.

Leroy Jenkins in the elevator:


Leroy Jenkins in a meeting:


Leroy Jenkins at the Black Gates:


Leroy Jenkins as Han Solo:


They even interviewed him as a celebrity on... uh... something. I bet this was the, like, in-hotel, closed-circuit TV station at the convention.

Interview with Leroy Jenkins: