Vampy me oh my.

I’ve turned into a total vampire, and almost completely stopped sleeping at night.

Mommypie! Surely you jest! Au contraire mon frere. It appears that six years of late nights working from home has caught up with me and totally farked my sleep schedule.

Now, I stay up all night, lie down around 4 a.m. to catch a few hours sleep before having to get up and get MP to kindergarten. After dropping her off, I swiftly return home and fall back into bed until sometime after lunch, at which point I have to literally force myself to get up. I SO have to get off this insane schedule and back to some semblance of normalcy.

What do I DO all night? I DO get a ton of work done. (Swap Mamas is now over 5,200 members and between 700,000 and 1 million page views a month! W00t!)

And I bake.

Yessiree, nothin’ says lovin’ like Mommypie from the oven.

Tonight, after warming a loaf of leftover garlic bread and sitting down to watch Twilight for the bazillionth time, the irony of the combo dawned on me.

Oh noooo, the Vamp’s gotta go.

Howling at the moon and other country activities.

It happened last year and it’s happening again. A week before Halloween and MP’s waffling. Just a few weeks ago she was PSYCHED to be Bat Girl. Her costume is seriously kick ass.

And suddenly, now she wants to be a werewolf.

I have no idea who or what is responsible for planting this thought. Who knows what crazy randomness lurks in the mind of a 4 1/2 year old? I suspect MP’s brain looks something like a Froot Loop strewn McDonald’s PlayLand. With toy catalogs and lots of Chapstick and Spongebob serving ice cream. Surprisingly, it appears to be a place where mythical hairy monsters aren’t so scary afterall. Mean foxes and dinosaurs on the other hand … THOSE are the things nightmares are made of.

(At least lately.)

So, the whole werewolf thing has spurred kind of a crazy routine.

(At least lately.)

We howl at the moon.

We don’t just stick our heads out the door and give a couple ‘owwws.’ We go out on the lawn, get down on all fours, throw our heads back and HOWL Baby.

I can’t take credit for THIS particular crazy idea. This one’s all MP’s. A few nights this week, I’ve put her to bed without howling, only to have her tiptoe out to the livingroom in her footie PJs.

“Mommy, we forgot to howl at the moon.”

So we bundle up in our coats and winter hats (yes, we have SNOW) and run out to the yard. And as off-the-wall as it sounds, I think it’s actually empowered her a bit, and made her a little less fearful of the night.

Living in the country has its advantages.

We just don’t do it on Fridays. That’s when the ‘neighbors’ get naked and climb into their teepee sweatlodge. This is also a new development. I’m SO not kidding.

At any rate, I’m still pushin’ Bat Girl. As much as I love the whole wolf vibe, I have NO idea how to make a werewolf costume.

TGIOvah.

I’m back in Blogland! Last Friday’s presentation behind me, I feel like I can finally focus on something other than Powerpoint. I feel like I MAY have actually caught up on some desperately needed sleep.

It went fairly well — aside from the fact that I went 1/2 hour OVER my allotted time. Which is a GOOD sign, right? Oh yeah, and there was only one teensy technical problem.

I had this very cool quick Twitter tutorial all cued up. I clicked on it. And THIS is what started playing.

Yeah, that was a little uncomfortable. SO not what I meant to show.

Anyhoo, thanks for all your words of encouragement, ma Doogs. Have I told you lately that I love you?

xoxox

A gift from Zombietown

It’s now 1:26 a.m. Three and a half hours before I have to get up, get ready, and board a plane to Hawaii.

I haven’t started packing.

I’m hoping if I stay up and deprive myself of sleep, I’ll snooze away the day, stress free over the ocean.

But before I get going, I wanted to give you this. Spankin’ new badges for all you BlogHerNots. I’m a little late, and they’re totally cobbled together, but hopefully my fancy schmancy code WORKS. Let me know if it doesn’t …

If you were a BlogHerNot ’08 Instructor and want to display a badge, just copy and paste the code directly below into your site.

<a href=”https://mommypie.wordpress.com&#8221; target=”_blank”><img class=”alignnone size-medium wp-image-1137″ src=”https://mommypie.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/bhn08_instructorbadge.jpg?w=274&#8243; alt=”” width=”173″ height=”189″ /></a>

If you were a BlogHerNot ’08 Participant and want to display a badge, just copy and paste the code directly below into your site.

<a href=”https://mommypie.wordpress.com&#8221; target=”_blank”><img class=”alignnone size-medium wp-image-1141″ src=”https://mommypie.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/bhn08_participantbadge1.jpg?w=274&#8243; alt=”” width=”173″ height=”189″ /></a>

You should be able to size them down if needed.

Happy Thursday Doogs!

Hittin’ the road with MP and Bobo

It’s early Friday morning, and MP, Bobo and I are hittin’ the road to Denver in eight hours, to meet the newest edition to the family — my brother’s second baby and second son, Greyson. MP INSISTS she’s a big SISTER, NOT a big COUSIN. Whatever works.

We’ll be away for a few days, which means I may or may not be taking a tiny break from Blogland — just depends. Lots of old friends to catch up with in D-Town in a short period of time.

Criminey, I haven’t even BEGUN to pack yet. I’m so tired right now I’m actually seriously contemplating just going to bed, getting up at 5 a.m. and packing then. A dangerous choice, given Bobo’s strict road trip rules: GET ON THE ROAD, STAY ON THE ROAD, AND DON’T BE LATE. It’ll be an interesting trip. Either we’ll arrive tomorrow night in Denver wanting to strangle each other or the long drive will prove a fantastic bonding experience.

I’ll be on Twitter all day, or as long as I have a signal. AND I’ll try and Tweet pics from the Crackberry, using TwitPic.

Mkay, gotta move mounds of wet clothes to the dryer and start another load before collapsing.

Watch for me on Twitter, Doogs!

Hellooo From The Land of Sleep Deprivation

Tonight, I am too tired to blog. I do have something written. It’s … okay, I think … But it’s not done. And I’m not really sure what it’s about. I’d run a spell check, but apparently WordPress decided that function wasn’t important enough to keep when they changed the dashboard earlier this week. Can that be right?

Sitting on the couch, fingers poised above the keyboard, I just realized I’ve been frozen in this position, staring at GOLF the past 10 minutes. With my mouth open. And no recollection of any of it. Except maybe a Cialis commercial. Or was it Sominex?

The damn bird snapped me out of it. The one that’s been chirping non-stop outside the window. In the dead of night, no less. The one that turned out to be my nose whistling.

It’s safe to say chronic lack of sleep has zombified me. Barely able to keep my eyes open, and I can’t quit. I’m STILL typing.

MUST … BLOG … BLOG … GOOD … SLEEP … BAD

I need help.

Scratch the spell check thing – I just found it. I SWEAR it wasn’t there 10 minutes ago.

Who’s The Boss?

9:15 a.m. Conversation in the Car

MP: My feet are tired.

Me: My eyes are tired. Hey, make sure you take a nap at school today, okay?

MP: Okay. You should take a nap at work.

Me: I wish I could. My boss doesn’t let me take naps at work.

MP: WHAT?!? Well, you have to tell him YOU’RE the boss!

Me: Well, I’m the boss at home, but he’s the boss at work.

MP: You’ll just have to take a nap when we get home.

Me: Sounds good to me.

MP: ‘Cause he doesn’t know where you live.

Me: Nope.

MP: Pretty sneaky Mom.

Me: I try.

That Damn Peter Fonda

Holy Hell, that damn Flower Power infomercial is back. Went on a teensy internet shopping binge tonight, so feeling a bit vulnerable — I don’t know how much longer I can continue to deny Peter …

Go To Bed Already

A Time/Life infomercial has me seriously considering picking up the phone and purchasing my very own Flower Power CD set. It contains 175 unforgettable hits from the 60s. Just five easy payments of $29.95 each. And when I order with my credit card within the next five minutes I get a bonus CD, The Summer of Love. Plus, the first 500 callers will get FREE shipping and handling.

Damn, that Peter Fonda is good.

When Did 2 a.m. Become the New 11 p.m.?

As I sit here, barely able to pry my eyelids open, I can’t help by ask myself, “when did four to five hours of sleep a night become the norm?”

My nightly routine is starting to catch up with me. After picking MP up from preschool, getting her fed, bathed and into bed, with a story or two in between, I begin work at my second job as a web content editor. By the time I wrap that up, it’s anywhere between 10 and midnight.

I could sooo easily collapse into bed at this moment, but these hours are too precious to waste on sleep.

Instead, I stay up. I surf, write, watch deliciously vapid TV shows (can you say Nip/Tuck?), read, veg, whatever — eventually hitting the sheets around 2 a.m. Six o’clock comes waaay too early, I wind up sleepwalking through the day, and although I know this isn’t healthy, (I know this!) I continue the maddening routine.

I continue because I treasure my down-time. (Ironically, as I write this, it’s 10 p.m. and MP is up asking for a snack.) I need it. It’s my drug. I know this addiction of sorts isn’t something exclusive to single moms – it comes with being a mother, period.

On a related note, I promised myself I would start working out again. Ugh. I missed my self-imposed start date of Feb. 1, so come Monday, I now expect to be squeezing gym visits into my day.

How, I have no idea…