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…not since I last posted (although that is true). No, it’s been awhile since I’ve had a migraine. I think I’m in the throes of one right now and I am quite unhappy about it.

I haven’t had a full-blown migraine since 2005. I got pregnant in November 2005 and that seemed to fix the migraine problem pretty well. But they’re back. Bleh.

I’ve tried a couple of remedies, but no luck so far. No luck with Tylenol. No luck with caffeine (thought I bet a 20-oz Coca-Cola would fix me right up), no luck with locating and using my reading glasses. In fact, my glasses seem to make it worse. Whoops.

I haven’t been sleeping well lately, so that is probably one culprit. I’m all keyed up about this election and that’s why I can’t relax. Among other things, I mean. There are a few other things that are causing me stress, but they’re normal to me so I’m not sure what’s going on.

Ugh. Nausea on top of the headache. Excellent.

No, I am not pregnant.

It’s almost time for Jillian to have a nap, so maybe I’ll attempt a nap myself.

Bask in the glory of my craptastic knitting! I’m a spaz knitter who doesn’t like to follow directions all the time. Occasionally, I create something wearable! And my model is pretty cute, too.

If you have ever lived with a male human being, you know all about the Man Cold. The sneezing, the nose-blowing, the moaning, the “I’m dyyyyyinnnnggggg,” the whole thing. The Man Cold is no joke.

If differs in many ways from a normal cold. A person struck with a normal cold might still cough and sniffle, but she will also be able to fold laundry, cook dinner, run to the dry cleaners, and take the kid to the park. A normal cold won’t kill you, but a Man Cold apparently will.

Yesterday, I had a Man Cold. It actually started the night before - I’d been feeling a little sluggish during the day, but after dinner things went downhill fast. Since I’m a recovering hypochondriac, I immediately started thinking back to what I’d eaten because it might be food poisoning! That’s harsh while it lasts, but it generally ends after a few horrible hours. Unfortunately, I woke up yesterday morning around 3AM, with my head stuffed full of what felt like cotton. Couldn’t breathe, couldn’t blow my nose (nothing was happening!), and laying down was painful.

So I got up. I’m a good wife, and I know Freddie is recovering from his cold (it was normal, surprisingly enough - not a Man Cold), so I thought I would leave the bed and let him get whatever sleep he could before his alarm went off. Because I am awesome like that.

Somehow, I made it through the day. I even managed to put on some pants and hit the grocery store for necessities like soup and milk and Ben & Jerry’s. Never mind the fact that I can’t taste anything and even the thought of drinking water is making my stomach angry. Ice cream cures all! But despite this attempt at normalcy, I was not doing well and Freddie even made time in his day to come home a couple of hours early to do the baby-wrangling so I could be a couch lump.

I feel a bit better today, and I might even leave the house because there are some things I have to do, but I wish I could have slept another three hours or so. We’ll see what happens.

In the early days of November 2007, someone hanging around Rockefeller Center in NYC might have seen a woman in a tomato costume dancing around the place while people watched, took pictures, and in at least one case - video.

One might wonder just WHY a woman would do this, so I shall point them here: Tomato Nation.

That’s the website of one Ms. Sarah D. Bunting, co-founder of Television Without Pity and snarkstress extraordinaire. I’ve had a wee fangirly crush on her for YEARS, but that’s not why I’m talking about her today.

Sars and her tomato costume want to go to Washington D.C. To get her there, We The Readers need to throw a whole bunch of cash at the Donors Choose challenge she has set up. Last year, there was some puny initial goal, and as We The Readers crushed it handily, she kept raising the bar, insisting that if we managed to donate enough money, she’d dress as a tomato and do a dance outside Rockefeller Center. Not just any dance, mind you - the Angela Chase post-Jordan-kiss dance from My So-Called Life (which, incidentally, is the reason I dyed my hair that wacky shade of red in the summer of 2003. I’d been watching episodes online. Now you know).

We The Readers made that happen last year. So she set the bar REALLY high this year - $100,000. In one month. If We The Readers hit that $100K mark, Sars and her tomato costume will go to Washington D.C. and see the sights. This must happen! Extra bonus? She gives stuff away! Prizes! Who doesn’t like prizes?

The happy side-effect of making an otherwise sane-seeming woman do these things is because Donors Choose benefits schoolchildren all over the country. Teachers can write in asking for money for specific projects - they tell you what they need and why. Most, if not all, of the teachers who write in to Donors Choose are from schools that are in high-poverty areas, and these kids are in need of basic things like PENCILS. Can you imagine going to school and not even having something to write with? My mom used to get pencils with my name on them for me every year, which was nice since Stanley Calhoun stole them one time in fourth grade and denied doing it. The proof was right there! Pencil! With my name on it! Thanks, mom!

But there are thousands of kids whose parents can’t afford the crappy embossed pencils out of the Lillian Vernon catalog and their teachers can’t afford to be supplying them, either. That’s where We The Readers come in. We The Readers go to Tomato Nation. We click on the link for the Fall Contest, which takes us to the Donors Choose page. We choose a project we would like to throw money at. We then apologize for ending a sentence with ‘at’ even though it is a perfectly acceptable thing to do, despite what you may have heard (that prohibition comes from some jackasses attempting to impose the grammatical rules of Latin onto English which is Germanic and perfectly happy to have sentences end in prepositions. Still, some habits die hard). We donate. The total rises. Sars gets closer to Washington D.C. Kids get books! And pencils! And stuff!

Last year, I bought a clarinet for a school in Neptune, NJ, and they sent me a thank-you package with hand-written notes and photos that made me all weepy. And you know how much of a blackhearted bitch I am!! I know some kid is going to make horrendous noises with that clarinet I bought, and that makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. I spent many years making horrendous noises with a saxophone (and then an oboe), so I know what that’s like.

I know the economy sucks and that your 401(k) is more like a 201(k) right now, but if you have $10 to spare, think about clicking over to Tomato Nation to find out how you can help some kids who need it. Kids who will need it more than ever if things keep going the way they’re going now. If you are reading these words, it’s because someone taught you how to do that. Now is your chance to help another kid get the same opportunity.

Go.

Donate.

Jillian is just over two years old. A lot of the baby books and magazines that cross my eyespace say that this is the age where they start to want to do a lot of things for themselves, such as get dressed, put on shoes, etc.

I’m pretty sure my child will get to Harvard before she dresses herself because her preferred outfit is naked. She loves loves LOVES to be naked, so she hasn’t yet tried to dress herself at all. Undressing, we’ve got that down cold. But dressing? No.

Nor do we have any shoe skills. She seems to be indifferent to the shoes. When they’re on, that’s fine. When they’re off, that’s fine too - she doesn’t care enough either way to try to take them off or put them on.

So… is she lagging behind her age-groupers with regards to development? Sometimes I worry about this.

However, despite these brief flashes of wondering if Jillian measures up to the other kids, I know that in many far more important ways, she’s already far ahead of most of them.

How do I know this?

Jillian can beatbox.

Our laptop was officially ‘elderly’ the day after we bought it. Four years later, someone, whose name rhymes with Shmeddie Mack spilled orange soda on the keyboard, effectively incapacitating it. A USB keyboard was acquired and that worked surprisingly well (despite the fact that the theme to Sanford and Son played in my head every time I looked at it).

Until it didn’t. The laptop keyboard decided to be retarded and go ““~~~~“`~~~“~~~~ like a mad thing. So I did what any red-blooded American would do in an economic crisis both personal and national: I went to Best Buy and bought a new laptop.

It’s so shiny! And new! And shiny! And will give me a chance to start over with my Sims! My first priority, obviously, is getting all of my iTunes crap moved over successfully (we are not hopeful, not at all) and then all my words (my previous blog is still in Word document format - all two million words of blather), and then I can re-install all my Sims. Now, I know I could transfer my game files from the old ‘puter to the new one but I’m not going to. I would like a clean slate, and maybe, just maybe, I can create heterosexual Sims.

All my Sims are gay. I have no idea why this is, but it has always been the case.

So, new computer. Hooray! That means more and better website updates! See, I haven’t been neglecting you, my 5 loyal readers. Not at all! It’s just… the keyboard, right? And… well, the weather has been better so Jillian and I have been hanging around outside for more than 15 minutes at a time. And… well… I just don’t have much to say since everything is more or less hunky. And dory. One might say that it’s all just hunky-dory.

…of PHISH!

Hampton Coliseum, March 6-8, 2009. Will we be there? The odds are not in favor, but… we shall try.

OMG.

Phish.