Gronk.

I made tea. It's not coffee. I wish I had coffee too.

It's all I got right now.

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t peeks in through the crack in the door

t looks safe to come in

I just received an advance copy of "Paint it Black: A Guide to Gothic Homemaking" by Voltaire. Were I a Goth, I would be referring to this book constantly. It's full of humorous, yet practical advice. A sample:

... In my opinion, the best base color for a soon-to-be-Goth room is red. But stay away from primary red. You want your room to look romantic and hot -- as in sultry -- not like a fire engine. Steer towards secondary shades of red, like crimson or burgundy. Also, red paint names that bear an Oriental title tend to work nicely.

Resist the tempation to paint the walls black! I can tell you from experience that if you are starting with a smallish room, painting the walls black will make the room look even smaller. Furthermore, it will eventually depress youto a point far beyond the usual "I'm so Goth I'm dead... aren't I wonderfully mysterious?" to a stage where you will actually need to seek serious and immediate professional attention.

Jilli will either be very jealous of me, or she will say that she reviewed the galleys months ago....

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Jess, you could rig a basket for the baby suspended from the ceiling on pulleys. Or, if you have a bathtub, just store the baby there with padding. Or maybe get one of those birdboxes that you can attach to your window.

OK, not terribly helpful.

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Apparently, my library no longer charges fines, which I find odd, considering the staff has taken a voluntary, one week, unpaid furlough during the summer (this week, in fact) over the last couple of years, to help the town with its budget crunch.

The kids and I went to the library right before all the sickness hit our house, and took out seven books. The books were due back on July 18. Scott returned them right before we went on vacation, which was about a month late, and asked what the fine was, and they said there was no fine.

I will have to find out where to donate money to them.

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There's room in the kitchen, actually. It's the only room in the apartment that's not furnished to capacity. We could have swingy chairs instead of barstools!

(See, now E's going to come home and I'm going to be all "So, we're having a baby TOMORROW, is that okay?" And he's going to be all "Um?" And I'm going to be all "No, I planned the whole thing out! We're turning the fire escape into the baby's room! It'll be fine!")

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Apparently, my library no longer charges fines, which I find odd

The cost of keeping track of fines is often more than the fines bring in, and (where my library is, in an urban neighborhood) it's just not a good idea to have money around without much security.

Jessica, I have no doubt that you and your hubby would make very pretty babies, and that you could work out the space issues. My parents had two kids in a 1 bdrm apartment in Boston and NYC until my oldest sister was 6.

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The cost of keeping track of fines is often more than the fines bring in, and (where my library is, in an urban neighborhood) it's just not a good idea to have money around without much security.

We're a piddly little town, so I am not sure the security is an issue. It's not likely to be a lot of money, and our crime rate is low. A lot of private funding (from the citizens, but through fund-raising, not taxes) went into a complete rehab of the library a couple of years back, and I expect maybe it was in response to that. Our library has it's own Friends of the ________ organization of Patrons.

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Apparently, my library no longer charges fines

This is how I pay for my books there though... Also how I occasionally keep them from closing my account when I am on more of a book buying spree.

(See, now E's going to come home and I'm going to be all "So, we're having a baby TOMORROW, is that okay?" And he's going to be all "Um?" And I'm going to be all "No, I planned the whole thing out! We're turning the fire escape into the baby's room! It'll be fine!")

Any chance you can get a Web cam installed before this conversation? Because funn.eee.

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We should probably hold ourselves back from shipping too much to Perkins (point!) so that -t does not have to get it all back to NO, or wherever they end up. I'm thinking the BayAreaistas can take her out to lunch one day and then Target or Bed Bath & Beyond, arm her with the little guns you use to register and make her pick out new stuff.

A good point.

Let's do a two-stage thing.

Stage one:

Care package. Little things. Edible things. Hand made things.

Stage two:

Shower. We can include a card in the care package telling her we'll throw one once she's settled and suggesting some websites to register on. We can say either some of us will take her or they can do it at their leisure if an outing is too overwhelming.

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Jess, we have a just-barely 10x10 bedroom. We can't, with the way the doors and the heat registers are set up, fit a regular crib in here, even with our dressers moved out. I measured. I wept.

Then Susan lent me her Amby baby hammock. OMG, bless Susan so much. Tiny, tiny footprint. Happy, happy baby and parents. If we had a bigger, firmer bed (we have a full), I probably would have gone with something like the Cuddle Nest co-sleeper.

We're transitioning the office to a baby room, slowly. It's down to one computer and three computer-related bookshelves.

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