Insomnia is like sleeping with a lesbian who has a crush on you. My lesbian crawled into bed with me about 4AM. She left about a half hour before Genny came into to stick her cold squirmy body in bed with us. I shouldn't complain about Genny waking us up though, as I am anxious about the time she decides she doesn't need to come in to wake us up and wants to make herself breakfast. While the "lesbian" was in bed with me though, I figured out a ballpark estimate of our deductions and I think I can come up with around $4500 in deductions, plus our student loan interest and childcare deductions, which means it might not be so bad after all, although I am going to have to ask for copies of most of our utility bills for the past year, which may cost moolah. Taxes in the wee hours can be a good thing, however.

I have to write a future plans essay for a scholarship application. Writing a future plans essay seems to me to be much like being a beauty pageant contestant. I keep saying to myself,"Yes, Mr. Barker, my plans for the future include creating peace on earth and fellating 30 year old virgins." Then, I snicker to myself and get stuck rewriting an introductory paragraph to that essay a million times over. Of course, fellating 30 year old virgins would probably create peace on earth, which means I would be a redundant beauty pageant contestant. This starts me snickering all over again and totally distracts me from writing the essay, which is probably the point.

I came up with a skeleton plan for doing my homework yesterday, which is to my credit. I still have to watch a video that is still used as the icon of teaching parents about learning disabilities, and it totally sends me over the edge. The guy who does it infers that teachers are bad people who do bad things to LD kids in class, which I think is a completely inaccurate and scary message to send to parents, who might not know any better. I also think that many of the parents who might be seeing this video are going to pretty fragile because they just discovered that their beautiful child has something wrong and then they're going to see this video which makes it seem like teachers are exploiting their children when they aren't around. Big Ew. I do realize that some teachers do these things, but I think it's a lot less common than this video would have you believe.

Additionally, this week I started the Iditawalk. This past week, I missed a few days, so I am going to be walking longer this week to make up the time. I walked yesterday for 45 minutes and discovered that here in RedneckRubyville that everyone owns a dog.

These dogs typically bark rabidly at me while wagging their tails and following me the length of the fenceline of their property. I got nervous yesterday because I saw a big black dog without a fence ahead, but it appeared he was called in before I passed his driveway, thankfully. We aren't going to consider a dog until we get a deed to a house. I often think I would like a small dog, that was smart, but I haven't met any. Most small dogs are what I consider blender dogs -- annoying little pests that should be dropped in the blender and fed to my cat. I realize this may damage my credentials as a potential redneck, but I do like some big dogs, despite the drool factor typical to many breeds. I grew up with border collies, which are about the smartest, nicest dogs ever created, but border collies need a lot of room to run. But they don't gnash their teeth on tennis balls until the ball is heavy with dog spit, like retrievers do, rather they get the ball, lay it in front of you and bark at you to toss it again. They aren't into the ball, they are into the running to GET the ball. The ball is just a means to an end.

I also want to state for the record that I think that Elmo is ten times more annoying than Barney. The fact that my daughter is addicted to Elmo only amplifies my hatred of said furry red monster of Sesame Street fame because I have to listen to his hyena laughter when she tickles his tummy, and hear his horrible high pitched un-monsterish voice singing and baby talking on DVD. When my husband picked out the three DVD Christmas set, I thought we'd only have to deal with Elmo at Christmas. How wrong I have been. While I am not Catholic, I will confess that I have also taken several opportunities to wish my husband unpleasant mishaps at the hand of Elmo, most of which include his ears bleeding to Elmo Christmas jingles.

Back to my future plans...