The Dow Is Up!

A funny thing happened to me today. I’m on the train, doing my Sudoku puzzles. I was tired, so I decided to take a little nap. I woke up about 10-15 minutes later paranoid that I’d missed my stop. (This has happened to me before, which is incredibly annoying.) I recognized some faces on the train and realized that I was okay.

But then I started thinking. I couldn’t remember walking to the train from work. Worse yet, I couldn’t even remember WORKING that day. I know I have memory problems, but this was legitimately scary. It was like a complete blackout. And that’s when I realized that my train was in fact heading INTO the city. The reason I didn’t remember working was that it was 8:00 a.m. I don’t know if there could possibly be a more demoralizing feeling than thinking you’re heading home from a long day of work to find out that you’re actually headed TOWARDS a long day of work.

I had a training session all day today at GeeksInc. It was one of those Hip Hip Hooray sessions where they tell you how great GeeksInc is. It was an incredibly good use of 8 hours.

Anyway. Two women were leading the session. One of the women (who looked a bit like Marg Helgenberger from CSI) introduced herself with a noticeable accent. I don’t want to tell you her actual name, but it was something like Irina Imreallypolishsky. And so naturally, I presumed she was of eastern European descent. But, like with the black woman with the white marriage photo, I was wrong.

Irina was talking about where people were from. That’s when she said, “Clearly I’m not from Chicago. You can obviously tell that I’m from Argentina.” Huh? Oh yeah. She’s a WOMAN. She’s probably married. It’s no doubt her husband’s name. Turns out I was wrong again. (Notice a theme?)

At the very end of the course, someone asked her to spell her name for the evaluation form. That’s when she told us that it’s actually her MAIDEN name. Apparently, her husband (who’s also from Argentina) has a name that’s ever harder to pronounce. I don’t remember what it was, but it had several consonants in it that don’t belong together. Like “czmklrz.” And I think I’m actually being generous. I guess it never occurred to me that eastern Europeans settled in Argentina. And I never would have guessed that they'd end up speaking Spanish. I guess it just goes to show what a boob I am. And that I really need to stop making assumptions about people.

I think it’s time to shoot our dog. Last night, I went to bed (relatively) early. Luke generally hasn’t been sleeping well, waking up a few times at night. I think the problem is that he’s cold because all I have to do is throw a blanket on him and rub his back and he’s asleep again. Lately, we’ve been double-pajamaing (it’s a word, trust me) him. (This is a temporary solution until we get new windows on Sunday. How awesome is that going to be? Unless you live in my house, not too awesome. But for us, it’s pretty sweet.) Anyway, this double-pajama approach has been working pretty well.

Unfortunately, The Wife has quickly replaced Luke as the one who won’t sleep through the night. Of course, this is mostly a result of her being pregnant. I can’t even imagine what it must be like trying to sleep with your belly bloated by about 20 extra pounds. Oh wait, yes I can. So there must be other side effects other than the clearly visible one. Either way, she’s had a rough time sleeping. Which means I’VE had a rough time sleeping.

In fact, I’m really starting to understand why Ricky and Lucy had separate beds on I Love Lucy. I think Lucy had the jimmy legs and Ricky just wanted to get away from her. (They covered this in a Seinfeld episode, right? I’m blatantly ripping that show off, aren’t I?) So, now that Luke stopped waking me up in the middle of the night, The Wife felt obligated to chip in.

Well, last night, I was pleasantly surprised to not be awoken by either Luke OR The Wife. Instead, Snow woke me up. At 4:15, she started whining. Apparently she needed to pee. And she let me know. Over and over again. And since The Wife is partially deaf and pregnant, she either didn’t hear Snow or just didn’t feel like getting out of bed. I can’t say I blame her. If I had a hearing problem, I’d do the same. And if I were pregnant, I’d pretend that the doctors put me on permanent bed rest. Then I’d watch reruns of 90210 all day. This is why I’m not allowed to get pregnant. That, and basic physiology.

So I relented and let Snow out to pee. That started a never-ending battle of I’ll Wake You Up. When I got back to bed, it took me awhile to fall asleep. As soon as I’d get comfortable and start drifting off, The Wife would get fidgety and flop over. That, of course, woke me up. After about 5 minutes of lying still, I’D get fidgety and wake her up. We repeated this cycle for another hour until she got up to surf the net and I got up to head to the gym.

One of the things I anticipated with having children was getting less sleep. I knew that Luke wouldn’t sleep through the night right away. I thought that by 18 months, that would end. We’ve finally solved his problem. Now C2 is causing even more problems before she’s even born. And to top it all off, Snow is making everyone’s sleeping life miserable. And that’s why I think we should shoot her.

(By the way, in case you didn’t notice, yes C2 is going to be a girl. At least we’re 98% sure she’ll be a girl. That means I’m 6 for 6 on picking baby sexes. I should start a business where I predict the sex of babies. Of course, 1 out of every 64 people would think the exact same thing. And my new name for C2 is Evangeline. I don’t know why I like the name, but I do. Perhaps because I like Lost and that’s Kate’s real name (Evangeline Lilly). Or perhaps I just really like the Matthew Sweet song. Either way, The Wife is not a fan, which is why I insist upon calling C2 Evangeline. Yes, our marriage is nothing but bliss.)