Breezy

Yes, I'm still here. I realize I've been starting just about every post that same way, lately. Maybe I'll just post once a month, throw in some lovely but dated picture like the one above (taken around this time, last year) and that will suffice: "I'm still here, here's a view in or around my house, hope you're all well, and adios."

I should tell you that I came this close, this close, to shutting the blog down completely. I had the post and good-bye message written, and all I had to do was hit the "Publish" button, and I could've walked away. But then I decided to sleep on it, and in the morning my decision to call it quits felt like an over-reaction, a plea for attention (from who, I'm not sure, since I think I have all of about 2.8 regular readers) and just a bad idea overall.

So here I am. I won't try to catch you up on th past few weeks since I've been gone. Part of the feeling of being burdened by this blog is feeling like I need to account for and relate all those hours & days I've spent since the last post. Thinking about doing that makes me feel tired, and bored.

I took the picture above on a pristine, blue-sky day last fall -- a day a lot like today. This is the view looking east out the upstairs stairway windows. It was breezy out then, but then it's often breezy around these parts. It's the second week of October, and still 88 degrees out. I'm about over that, but such is life in Southern California -- and the Inland Empire region, at that. I'm all ready for cold days and crisp nights and trying out some flannel sheets and baking a cake to go with the Maple Pumpkin Butter I bought a few weeks back. Ready to wear long sleeves, and socks, and let that deep flip-flop tan on my brown summer feet finally fade away. Maybe next week?

Also -- I think it's time to buy Tucker a big-boy bed. The crib seems to be the last major hold-over from his true baby days, now that he seems to be fully potty-trained during the day. (Unless you count the pacifier issue, which we won't for now.) Lately it seems that two or three times during the very early morning hours, from about 2 a.m. on, Tucker will wake up crying because one or both of his two beloved pacifier's, or fi-fi's, has gone missing overboard from the crib. If it's after 3 or 4 am (which it often is), that means that I am twice woken up from a dead sleep to stagger down the hall, drop to my knees and root around under the crib for the missing fi-fi. This morning, when I went in there around 5:30, it felt cold in the room, so after finding the missing fi and giving that half-reassuring, half-threatening pat on the back with my slurred, "now go back to sleep!," I put a blanket over him and his nestled down and went right out.

Now, this afternoon, there was a call for the blanket again at naptime. Twice before he fell asleep, I was summoned into T.'s room to adjust the blanket because it wasn't covering his toes, and evidently one must have ones toes covered with a thick blankie to sleep well on a toasty afternoon. I see bad things coming from this, a bad precedent that I've set out upon in my misguided doting-mommy ways in the dark chill of 5:30 in the morning. I foresee endless trips down that hall at all hours, to fetch the fi-fi's, to retrieve the dropped "Cars" cars, and now to tuck the blankie in around those poor and naked toes. Oh god.
So yes. A big-boy bed...with tucked sheets and blankie, and maybe even a nice soft pillow, too. We need to get on this, and soon.