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I'm kind of in a blogging slump lately. Even when I don't have much time, I usually will throw a tidbit up on my blog. But I just feel so uninspired right now. Every time I think of something I'd like to blog about-- something cute Bagel did, something I thought about-- I just can't get up the will to blog about it. If I blog about politics, I risk alienating half my family. If I blog about breastfeeding, my friend will complain that my blog is too "lurid" for his taste. If I blog about my kids, my sister will come along and proclaim me the poster child for birth control in the comments. If I blog about how I feel about what's happening in my life, or how different Tooele is from Logan, I come across as a whiny beyotch. Normally I don't give a flying Fig Newton about what all these people think of me, but lately I just haven't had the will to deal with it.

I've started a new job as an online tutor. It pays pretty well and it's nice to set my own hours. But I can only do it while Bagel's napping. We put him down to sleep a lot, but he doesn't sleep, so he's just tired all the time, and when he's tired, he's extraordinarily difficult. Since the jailbreak, when he dismantled his own crib, he's been having trouble adapting to the toddler bed. There have been a lot of sleepless nights. He's started actually sleeping through most of the night again, although I do have to go in and help him find his water bottle about 4:00 every morning. But the worst part is that he's gone back to nursing again, after he'd been weaned for about a week. My nipples are already tender from the pregnancy, and so now they're just sore from all the heavy-duty toddler nursing. Plus it takes energy out of you to nourish a child, and I'm doing double duty.

Also, we found one thing (and one thing only) that will help him to sleep: a lit candle in his room. I got a jar candle, which is more likely to put itself out if it falls, and of course we put it up really, really high, in a place where he can't crawl up to get it. He just sits there and watches it at night, and after a while he lays there and watches it, and a while after that he just lays there and sleeps. All would be wonderful, except now I'm catching flak from my mom and sister, who are just flabbergasted that I would do something so horrible as put an open flame in a child's room. Hey, it beats passing out from sheer exhaustion in the kitchen while trying to prepare breakfast and not being able to hear anyone talk over Bagel's screams at dinner, which was what it was like before the candle finally put Bagel to sleep.

Sonshine has entered an extraordinarily whiny period of his life. He whines about everything now, and he poops in his pants. Then he whines about how much he hates having poop in his pants. He whines about how unfair it is that Princess has a birthday and he doesn't, and he won't listen to us when we explain that everybody gets one birthday a year and, come March, he'll be the one with a birthday and she'll be the one without. When he comes home from school, he only stops whining long enough to tell me about his latest little crazy idea. His mouth never stops moving the whole afternoon.

Princess is horribly bored in school. She's got a good attitude toward it, but we are struggling to find her ways in which she can keep on learning new things despite her school. We got her a Saxon math book which she works on during Cursive Time (she learned cursive last year, so her teacher exempted her from cursive practice). But that still doesn't satiate her curiosity, so we spend every evening learning about science, language arts, and more math.

Just when I thought my schedule at the Extension had settled down, MORE changes are in the works. My students are not doing well with this five-hour-block-every-two-weeks schedule (which was originally concocted to go around their crazy shift schedule), and quite frankly I don't blame them. When the administration came to me and explained what this class schedule would be like, half of me was like "well, it'll be a real challenge, but we'll all rise to the occasion and make it work" and half of me was like "NO. FLIPPIN. WAY." The "no flippin' way" part, as it turns out, was the correct part. So now we are faced with the challenge of finding a time and date in which we can all meet. The class was scheduled for the 5-hour block on Fridays because the students on this shift have every other Friday off, but now we have to find an additional day in the week they don't have days off, and make sure it doesn't conflict with any of their class schedules. I could use a hit of whatever it was the people were smoking when they made that crazy schedule in the first place.

Business is not going well, either. The show in Ogden, which I'd been praying would be my big show of the fall, was a spectacular loss. I didn't even make back my booth fee, let alone all the gas I spent driving up there to re-set my display. My merchandise just didn't fit in with the style of the show, which was all schlocky and "country". All my hopes are now pinned on the show this weekend in Logan. That was a really good show for me last year, and I'm hoping that I'll do well, because the show is put on by the Gardeners' Market and so it will attract a lot of the same clientele that were my "regulars" in Logan. But I'm very dispirited by the spectacular lack of success I've had up here. Obviously I need to spend some time researching local conditions and preferences, and change my products or marketing to be more in line with them. But all that takes time. I have one idea that seems to be a productive one, and that's wholesaling my soap holders directly to soapmakers. I've brought in a little money so far with that, but not enough to pay for Christmas.

On top of all this, of course, are all the challenges that normally come with life and with moving. New doctor, new dentist, new everything. New organization (it's nice, though, to finally have enough room to organize my stuff, even if I don't have enough money to buy the furniture it takes to do so.) Our house has two flights of stairs, and some days I just can't manage them. I've been successful at getting my kids to do some things, like bring laundry downstairs. If I want them to do that, all I have to do is call for my "dung beetles" and they will roll balls of laundry down to the laundry room. (They saw dung beetles in a documentary and were, for some reason, quite enamored of the way they rolled balls of dung.) Some days I can do a normal amount of stuff, but some days I'm just so exhausted that I get worn out just being alive.

And today is one of those days. So you'll excuse me if I don't blog any more right now.