Lara is so tired...

...(it's one a.m.) that the letter arrangement on the keyboard seems like a worthwhile topic of discussion. Come on, who thinks this makes sense? Try showing it to a five year old and asking him to type his name...and be prepared to stay awhile! Could it be more counterituitive? Really? Could I have picked a more germane topic to throw out to the masses?

Oh Lord, now I'm going to get dozens of replies--my husband's first among them, no doubt, about the history of, the necessity for,the beauty of, whatever, whatever, whatever. Ha, I say! If my punch drunk fingers can't find the correct characters (you have no idea the sheer amount of damage control I'm having to do), then I say, the system is flawed! Ha! So there you have it, it's new, it's radical, it's edgy, it's out there (makes me think of "When Harry Met Sally), now you gotta deal with it!

Yeah. That is so me. Rebel, malcontent, social activist. All things everyone who knows me thinks of first. Right.

Ahh. I think I can sleep now, content that I have...um...elevated awareness about...um...keyboard arrangement. I suspect I'll regret this in the morning.

I am in love with sleep these days. OMG...that sleep could be this good!! There are no words, except, thank you, CPAP inventor...while I question your design aesthetic and curse the day that mirrored doors were installed at the foot of my bed...still, I salute you, and am eager to partake in your bounty once more. Lead on, Great Warrior in the raging battle against sleep apnea. Lead on. I will follow, even unto the end of dreaming. Also known as waking up.

It's 8:09 a.m., and I'm waiting for a man to show up. Once he gets here, I will usher him into my bedroom, and beg him to show me how his techno-toys work...it will involve straps, and hoses, and heavy breathing. Yes, that's right...I'm having an affair with...a CPAP machine.

See, it turns out, there's a reason I've been exhausted for the last, oh, six years or so. There's a reason I have trouble remembering what happened last week, for why I can't fall asleep without my good friend Ambien, for myriad aches, pains, and other small complaints. I have that uber-sexy, don't-you-wish-you-had-it-too condition, sleep apnea.

I know this because I got to have a sleep adventure at a lab, where they attached about 20 electrodes and wires to my face, body and scalp with this thick, sticky goop (so glad I'd washed my hair special for the occasion), gathered it all into a heavy ponytail behind me so I was afraid to move too much, and then wished me pleasant dreams. Um, yeah. That went really well. Despite my conviction that sleep was pretty much impossible under these conditions, I did sleep, sporadically (it was a looooong couple of hours), and apparently had enough apnea "events" to allow my doctor to diagnose it, and prescribe this lovely contraption that I am literally waiting with bated breath for.

So, come on, technician guy, do your worst, give me your bulkiest, unloveliest, unsexiest machine. I'm ready for you. And I think I'll probably end up thanking you for it, as the mere idea of sleep...real sleep...night after night of restful, restorative sleep... makes me all verklempt.

So, I just thought I'd compile a small list of the ways in which I have found my five year old son sleeping, in the last few months...this boy must have wonderful adventures once I kiss him good night and close the door:

A) With a giant stuffed snake wrapped around his head--unclear if it was protecting or eating him.

B) With his hands tucked angelically under his cheek, but a full-size toy rifle balanced carefully across his body--perhaps to fend off the snake?

C) With his head nestled inside a large Lego bucket--my personal favorite, and one for which I really can't come up with an explanation.

And one night I think I quashed a burgeoning adventure (bad Mommy, bad Mommy) by making him take off an ever-so-snazzy, silver-grey Kenneth Cole dressy vest, 2 sizes too small (which looked entirely fabulous over his bug jammies) before he climbed into bed ...who knows what he could have done with that one.

A few months later... Shoved his mattress out from the wall about a foot, and squeezed into the space he'd created...when I came in and took a picture of him, he roused enough to sit up and gabble incensed nonsense at me (which was both funny and unnerving) and flung himself back down.The next night he improved upon this idea , shoving the mattress completely off the bed, and was sleeping on the boxsprings when I found him. Do you know how uncomfortable a boxspring is?? The next day he told me his mattress was there for anyone who might have wanted to visit in the night. I thought it was awfully considerate, even as I commanded him never to do it again.


Meanwhile, his baby sister (aged 3) is clearly feeling a little inspired by big brother's boldness, and has staged a few nighttime discoveries of her own, although it tends to run toward cleaning her room when we think she's asleep (which prompts me to wonder whose child she is, as she's clearly not mine), sleeping dead center in the middle of the floor sans any blankets or pillows, and inexplicably draping small blankets over random objects.

Can I just say I don't remember having nearly this much fun when the lights went out when I was a little girl. Well, except that one time I rigged a booby trap in my room to catch a criminal....but that's for another time.