First five, my sweet Bev.

eta: and lovely, libkitty.

Matt called- so I missed the opening

It's the Insomniac Bitch Chorus!

Thank you Liese. Not to leave us threadless, or spinning out 36 till daybreak.

Brought to you by the sleepless ones. Now, my work is done, and I think I'm going to try to change that. Unless I end up reading in bed. Ah, weekends with no plans until tomorrow afternoon.

I am sleepy and twitchy. Not a good combo.

That sucks, ChiKat.

See how well I'm doing that going to bed thing?

ChiKat, have you tried magnesium or melatonin? I used to swear by melatonin, except apparently it interacts with corticosteroids, so now magnesium is my new best friend. Although, I clearly haven't taken it today. Actually, it's not all that late here. Just midnight.

ChiKat, have you tried magnesium or melatonin?

I take 800-1200 mg of magnesium per day (doc's orders--one day is 800, the next is 1200, etc.). The twitchy is because I've been lax about taking the prescribed calcium for the past couple of weeks. I've been taking some, just not enough and it caught up to me today.

I need to look into melatonin. Certainly can't hurt, right?

Actually, you should probably be more careful with melatonin than some other supplements, since it's a hormone, but you should be ok if you get it a reputable brand and don't take too much. Andrew Weil and others used to say (and maybe still do) that you can take more the older you get, since your body makes less and less. My uncle started taking it daily in his 70s. I started taking it in my late 20s, but would only take it occasionally, and never more than 3 or 4 days in a row.

eta: I don't think that they know of any harm from taking it regularly when you're younger, is just that since it's a hormone, some think there may be unknown side effects.

Right now, the oldest daughters are too busy being surrogate moms for their younger siblings.

In the natural world, this occurs in species like currawongs and European marmots, where the demands of bringing up young may be too hard on a single couple. (Currawongs will even try to lure juveniles away from other currawong bands.) The marmot mothers have a simple technique for keeping their daughters from having pups - they beat on them regularly to force them to abort.

Eusocial structures, like bees, wasps and naked mole rats, have a similar motivation, of course. There the other females are kept in check chemically.

Why don't more of these Christian movements look to Creation for their lifestyle choices?

Can't really say anything about their obsession with J's considering my own with O's.

Until you're naming your sixteenth child 'Obiwan', I think you'll have a little space for the moral high ground.

The mom is tiny too, damn it.

Of course she is. She's been devoured from the inside!