Jessie may be getting a master's, but I'm watching West Wing, so I'll keep up.

I just had to share.

My husband is now, at this moment, writing a paper for class on Monday. The assignment is to write a debate paper. The topic is entirely up to the student, but they have to pick a side and defend their position.

My husband is writing about whether or not he would vote for a presidential candidate with a disease he had kept secret from the public.

We also just finished West Wing, Season Two. This morning.

For those of you unable to connect the dots, my husband is writing his paper on the season finale of West Wing. Essentially.

I love my husband.

I don't know what an aquila is, if it's not the key to the cub scout closet.

I went to my first pack meeting last night. Okay, I may have attended a pack meeting once or twice when my brothers were younger, but I don't remember them. Maybe I blocked them out. I think that probably even if I'm in cub scouts for the rest of my life, I'll never quite understand a pack meeting. Maybe it was the ratio of estrogen to testosterone in our house that left me unprepared for the antics of a bunch of boys and grown men who were once boys, and the den mothers keeping them in check.

Most hilarious to me was the meeting cheer. Girls don't do cheers at social events. At least not the girls I grew up with. Those are reserved for basketball games, when you do all kinds of things you normally wouldn't do, like make Beehives cry. (I may have sucked at basketball as a young woman, but I kid you not: my best achievement was fouling out of a Young Women's game after getting a little too aggressive stealing balls from 12 year olds.) So, anyway, the cheers threw me off. And I had to really contain myself from laughing at the scouts as they did their skits, because I was giggling on the inside. It was incomprehensible. I still have no idea what one of the skits was about. I don't know if it made me excited or terrified to have boys someday. Because they're going to grow up to be cub scouts. And wear official cub scout socks. I didn't know there are offical cub scout socks. Also, they are going to earn a lot of badges I'll have to sew onto shirts. And we all know how good my sewing skills are. Maybe I'll get Madeline to do it as a Young Women's project. Right after I teach her how to make Beehives cry.

Sleeping isn't something we do here.

Madeline is driving me nuts. This shouldn't surprise most of you. This time it's because of her sleeping habits. Or rather, her lack of sleeping habits. I suppose I should just be grateful she always sleeps through the night-and I am. But she goes through phases when she sleeps 8 or nine hours a night, and then 10 or 11. Or she wants to wake up at 5:30 AM, and then she'll sleep until almost seven for three or four days in a row, and then randomly want to wake up at 4:30 AM. Like today. Her naps are no better. Some days she'll sleep a total of half an hour all day, and then other days she'll take 2 hour naps. I read somewhere that kids are supposed to have schedules because it provides stability or something. If Madeline ever complains to me at some future date of having no stability in her life, I'm giving her extra chores. And a lecture on what comes around goes around, and how I hope her children are erratic.

Her strange sleeping habits probably wouldn't aggravate me so, except that I am not a morning person in any sense of the word. Before becoming a mother, I never woke up regularly before eight or nine. Except when I had early morning custodial jobs that didn't require coherency. Scrubbing toilets and mopping floors I can pretty much do on autopilot. Come to think of it, I can pretty much feed, change, and entertain Madeline on autopilot too. Isn't it great how my body can adapt and evolve to allow me to delay fully waking up? Darwin would be proud.

This is how we entertain ourselves at the Warner household.

We've been watching way too much of The West Wing at our house. My sister lent me the first three seasons, to give me something to do while Madeline is busy chatting up her blocks and chewing on my nail files. Jessie was initially skeptical of my enthusiasm for the series, but I knew he secretly was mighty curious to watch an episode himself. So, after some coercion and much protest from Jessie, he watched a few episodes. I am now proud to report that I have turned my husband into a West Wing addict. He's officially watched one and a half seasons in the past two weeks. He likes to point out that I've watched every single one of those with him, as well as another season on my own. I have no defense. I spend all day watching West Wing and neglecting my house, child, husband, and talents. But now I can run a political campaign if I felt the urge, so I consider it a necessary sacrifice.

I also finally got a library card this week, in the interest of becoming educated and brilliant instead of having everything I know come from the West Wing and facebook. I had to wait until I got some mail addressed to me instead of Jessie, so they would believe I live in Pleasant Grove and am not trying to mooch off their library without paying taxes. Because it is a horrible thing to let people just read books for free, just because they want to be more educated. I got a few books for Madeline, which she's enjoying thoroughly, although she keeps trying to get me to see that she'd enjoy it more if I let her rip out all the pages. I also got a few for me, including some light fun reading (because I haven't read Harry Potter enough times), and a few more serious things. Right now I'm working on Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I read Anthem in high school, and didn't die, so I thought maybe I could get through this one too. Afterwards I was thinking Madeline and I could write essays on the philosophical ideas presented in our books and share them with each other. I'm interested to see what deep philosophies she got out of Dr. Suess' Sleep Book. She sure didn't get sleepy from it. Drat.

A few announcements for my adoring public.

Being in some kind of fit of change (don't worry, it has nothing to do with our newly crowned savior president, so you can breathe easy), I've been screwing around with my blog. Please forgive me if you check it today and it's blue, and tomorrow it's pink, and the next day it has pictures of penguins everywhere. Sometime in the near future I'll settle on a template and color scheme. I promise, it started innocently, with my intent being merely to restore it to its pre-Christmas state, but we all know I can't leave well enough alone. It's a good thing we're only renting, or my house would have a new color scheme every two weeks.

Also, to update you all on the evil mice: my kind friend was good enough to drive me to the store to get traps, which I put in every place imaginable that Madeline can't get them. Which is actually very few places, but we managed. And despite using peanut butter to try to lure them to their imminent doom, we have yet to see hide nor hair of a rodent since my initial sighting on Saturday. Which makes me uneasy, because it is my understanding that vigilante mice do not often run around your house once and then vacate the area without throwing a party for their friends. My theories are either a) the mice know the peanut butter is past its expiration date, b) they heard about the giant peanut butter recall, or c) they read my blog, sensed my dire hatred, and decided it just wasn't worth it for the few graham cracker crumbs Madeline leaves out for them. Let's hope it is the latter.

Also, as a public service announcement: Jessie officially had his orientation for school, and begins his first class next Monday, ushering in my era of grad school widowdom. (It bothers me that blogspot doesn't let me make up new words without highlighting them in angry red to assure me that I am stupid. I know widowdom is not a word. I am using creative license, you stupid spellchecker. Also I hate that it always tells me contractions are spelled wrong. You can rest assured, I'm taking it up with President Obama stat. Because he will solve all my problems or risk my wrath.) Anyway, getting back to the point. I am now trying to think of various ways to amuse myself whilst Jessie is studying and attending class, preferably ways that do not involve extra housework or learning to sew. Suggestions are welcome.

Of Mice and Men and Musophobia

My house has been invaded. By evil little mice. I actually dreamed two nights ago that there were mice in our house and that one ran over my foot. I'm pretty sure it was actually just Jessie's foot, and I forgave him, because of my past efforts to smother him in his sleep. But then, I woke up this morning, and while feeding Madeline a bottle, saw a mouse sneaking around the corner into my kitchen. And promptly freaked out. I HATE mice. More than spiders, and that's saying something. I spent the rest of the morning upstairs, waiting for Jessie to wake up so I could inform him how much I HATE mice. Unfortunately, after about an hour, Madeline might have quite accidentally woken him up before he wanted to be coherent, and he was less than pleased to know he was losing sleep over a mouse. He essentially told me to suck it up. I essentially told him that we're all going to die from hantavirus. If we don't die of musophobia. (I had to look that up. I don't mind telling you that I had to look it up.)

I wanted to run right out and buy mousetraps to exterminate the little guy and any friends he might have invited over, but we hit a snag. To be more specific, we found out our car is dead. Which was a whole aggravating experience in and of itself, but its importance to this story is that it prevented me from buying instruments of death for the furry little invaders in my kitchen. (Don't tell anyone I said that. They might report me to PETA and my blog will get shut down by protesters. Which will upset my three readers. Totally ruin their day.) So here I sit, waiting for transportation and researching mousetraps on Wikipedia. Turns out there are a lot of cool mousetraps nowadays. My favorite is the one that notifies you by e-mail when it catches a mouse so that you can go reset the trap quickly. I'm betting that's a little out of budget, but if it turns out they sell those at the corner store, we're totally going that direction.

My daughter is healthy, tall, and utterly abnormal.

Well, Madeline passed her doctor's appointment with flying colors. There was one brief moment where they thought her head was too big, but I assured them that no child of mine had a big head, and they were content. (Actually, they just remeasured it and it was fine, but my version sounds cooler.) Alas, I was misinformed about the shots as well. She only needed one vaccination, but it was a shot, not an oral. So she yelled at me for a while. Although she didn't mind them poking her toe and squeezing out blood for a hemoglobin test. Go figure, fickle child. For the interested: she is officially 17 pounds 4 ounces, and 28 1/4 inches tall, putting her in the 20th and 75th percentiles, respectively. In other words, I have a tall skinny kid, which explains why her dresses always look too short.

In other news, Madeline refuses to knock down block towers, leaving me baffled at her lack of normal-ness. I mean, what nine month old doesn't like toppling blocks of towers and destruction in general? But I am here to testify that right at this moment there is a two foot tower of blocks sitting in my living room that has been intact for the last three hours, because Madeline refuses to touch it. She'll sit in my lap and look at it for ten minutes, and once in a while start to reach for it, and then decide it's too unstable and delicate. She is also unnaturally careful in crawling way around it so that she doesn't accidentally knock it over. In desperation, I aimed her push car at it and tried to get her to ram it. She went around it. I'm going to knock the dratted thing over myself soon if she won't.

Today's Blog, Starring: Miss Madeline

Well, I guess it's about time for another Madeline update. Because, clearly, she does not get enough press time in this blog. You'd never know I even have a daughter. Anyway, she just turned nine months old yesterday, and it's about freaking time. I've been telling people she was nine months for the last two weeks. Because eight and a half months is a lot longer, although more accurate. She has her nine month appointment tomorrow, which I am actually looking forward to. Meaning I was told there are no shots-just one oral vaccination. So we can enjoy finding out how chunky Madeline has become without the trauma of holding her hand and knowing I am aiding and abetting those mean old nurses.

Alas, the nine month appointment arrived before Madeline learned how to walk, thoroughly debunking my prophecy that she'd be walking by Christmas. You can't blame me on the early goal date, though, since she's been threatening to walk for three months. She takes her "first" steps every couple of weeks, and then chickens out and won't try again for at least seven days. Apparently her curiosity was enough to get her mobile early in life, but her bravery is a bit lacking. Although she finally got brave enough to try going down the stairs backwards, and is getting pretty good at it. Which means I spend less time rescuing her, and more time doing whatever it is I do when I'm not rescuing Madeline. Like trying to get her to walk, because I am a mean mother.

Another cool skill we are working on is feeding ourselves. And when I say we, I mean Madeline, because contrary to popular opinion, Jessie and I are pretty good at using silverware and the like. So far, Madeline has learned how to get small treats and potatoes into her mouth with her hand, and how to grab a spoon when I'm feeding her. Left to her own devices, however, she generally tries to eat the handle and then throws the spoon on the floor in disgust when it doesn't behave the way she would like. We also tried drinking from a cup, but since Madeline is usually much more interested in dunking her hands than satisfying her thirst, that endeavor is coming along more slowly.

That concludes our Madeline update. Until tomorrow, when she'll undoubtedly be amazing and blog worthy at her doctor's appointment, and I'll regale you with her height/weight/genius IQ and future plans for med school and Nobel Prize winning.

Here I am. Eating Twinkie and planning my dog's downfall.

So, I'm, supposed to be watching my brothers right now. But they ditched me to referee basketball games and play with friends. Because apparently I am not cool enough to hang out with for an extended period of time. Either that or they're mad at me for eating all of their treats while they were at school. It seemed logical to me. They are growing boys who should be eating healthy snacks instead of caramel bars and Twinkies. I, on the other hand, am not supposed to be growing, so I can eat whatever I want. Logical.

Also, I've decided my parents' dog is as dumb as everyone's been saying for the past few years. I graciously defended him when my family complained about how annoying and dirty and needy he is. But then he kept me up last night with his pattering around, and pooped on the floor instead of waking me up to let him out. Of course, if he had woken me up, I would have been angry too. Oh, and he woke up my baby at 5:30 in the morning. So he is officially on my hit list, and if Bryce is gone long enough, I might drop him off at the governor's mansion. Because then I don't have to feel bad about abandoning him at a shelter where he'll probably croak. The governor, on the other hand, would get lambasted by the media of he euthanized a poor helpless dog instead of making him a poster child for animal's rights and letting him sleep in the capital building. And I don't think he wants the bad publicity.

A bit of ranting. You have been warned.

The Sugar Bowl caused me a lot of grief. I admit it. Instead of being a good, caring person who recognizes without bias when someone has performed well, I rooted against the Utes and was very bitter when they pulled it off. We won't get into the whole ordeal. I was thoroughly chastised by pretty much everyone in Utah for not having state pride and supporting Utah. That's fine. I'm okay with being the lone person in Utah who's not happy for the Utes. Maybe I'll get my house egged or my car spray painted red, which would lend credibility to my bitterness. One can only hope.

But all bias aside, I'm pretty disgusted with the news reports that there may be legal action against the BCS since Utah can't play for the championship. (Which I'm surprised they managed to slip in in between all the news stories about the Utes. I swear, the headline tomorrow will be UTES WON THE SUGAR BOWL. IN CASE YOU HAVEN'T HEARD. Or maybe UTAH CITIZENS BURN BCS HEADQUARTERS AS OBAMA DECLARES UTAH THE #1 FOOTBALL TEAM IN THE UNIVERSE.) Anyway, back to the legal action thing. Apparently Utah's attorney general wants to prosecute the BCS under anti-trust laws. Does anyone else think this is ridiculous? If I remember anything from high school history (which, granted, may be debatable), that law was put in effect to break up giant monopolies. Not to carry out personal vendettas against the big bad bully who won't admit that my team is number one in the whole freaking universe. The BCS is stupid. It is a stupid system that is broken and should be changed. But being stupid isn't illegal. Otherwise all the people on Judge Judy would be locked up in prison instead of getting lambasted by someone much smarter than them on national television.

Ah. I feel much better getting that out of my system. Enough to say congratulations, Utes. But not quite enough to donate any money to the marching band to go to Washington. If anyone wants to give me money to go to Washington, feel free.

Jessie doesn't know what he's doing. But he'll get by.

So this morning Jessie and I got a call to come meet with a member of the bishopric. Yeah. We all know what that means. Callings! We were debating what callings we'd get, but I was totally blind-sighted. Drumroll please...we're in Cub scouts. Not together, either. I'm a Weeblow assistant (how the heck do you spell that? And who comes up with these names?). And Jessie is a Cub something or other, not master, who does something unidentifiable but may or may not have to do with registration of scouts and blue and gold banquets. So off we go, to magnify and conquer, or something along those lines. Right after I look up the definition of Weeblow.

In other great news involving Jessie having no idea what he's doing: Jessie fixed our tv! We now get approximately five channels in full, blazing color. It mostly came about because a) Jessie likes to try to fix anything that breaks, because he is an endless optimist, and because b) Jessie had never seen the inside of a television before and he was intensely curious. So he unscrewed the back of the television, looked at the thing a while, wiggled a few cords and broke a few connections, and then screwed it all back together. And boom. Color. Don't ask me how he managed it. His insane good luck, I suppose...the same good luck that keeps enabling him to beat me at Phase 10. But in this case, I'm lucky vicariously, so kudos, Jessie. You are the television master. I thank you in advance for the hours of Price is Right and Judge Judy I have before me.