Oh, this will be funny to some people: Last night at chorus, I heard a woman talking about getting her Yuletide assignment. I'm still not sure if she meant some seasonal musical thing or the fic thing.

Oh dear msbelle, not an auspicious start. I hope you and mac can have a quiet afternoon and evening. With my kids, when I know I'm going to be tired I try to plan ahead for an activity that has lots of flow and minimal effort on my part, like letting them play Wii.

I try to plan ahead for an activity that has lots of flow and minimal effort on my part

that would be every night in our house.

I did get an extra espresso shot in my coffee this morning, so there's that.

How can getting the kids on the bus make me tired enough to want to collapse? And I still have the day's worth of work ahead of me. Clearly I need to get on the coffee train with msbelle and ChiKat.

Jessie's Girl just came on Spotify, and it makes me smile and think of our Cowgirl Jesse.

It's my day off, but the dogs don't believe that, so I still had to get up at 6:15. At least I was able to have breakfast before I took them out for a long walk.

I need to get them to let me sleep in at least a little bit, or next week (post-time change) is going to be ugly.

Jessie's Girl just came on Spotify, and it makes me smile and think of our Cowgirl Jesse.

It took me a long time to be able to enjoy that song.

How can getting the kids on the bus make me tired enough to want to collapse?

All I've done since 5am has been about commuting kids to school. Driving Emmett to Albany for a workout at 6am, then back in time to take the whiniest girl in the world to school.

It is a ten minute walk to school. Her litany of complaint included:

• We forgot to put up her favorite Halloween pumpkin drawing for Halloween and now we missed it and it was ruined. (Tears)

• Her forehead was cold. It was freezing. Her thoughts were actually regressing to absolute zero and it wouldn't be possible to think at school today.

• Her eyes were burning from the car exhaust. (There may have been one car two blocks away from us at this point.)

• She hated car exhaust. (coughing and spitting) She couldn't breathe! (No cars visible at this juncture. Tears)

• She was so tired. So very tired. It's not fair that she has to get up so early for school. It's wrong and bad and she feels bad and she's determined to make everybody in her immediate vicinity (me) feel her bad tiredness.

• She didn't get to watch the end of Superwhy!

• She didn't need to wear her whole soccer uniform for practice today and I shouldn't have packed the whole thing. Implied: You're stupid, Daddy.

• Oh no, we forgot to bring in her UNICEF box filled with money for poor starving kids and it's due today! (tears)

That took up six minutes of the walk to school so at that point I forbade her to speak anymore.

Generally speaking, the whiny tendency has abated considerably so that is no longer a regular feature of Matilda's day. But today it re-asserted itself.

Don't forget that Daylight Saving Time ends this weekend. Fall back and all that.

It's my day off, but the dogs don't believe that, so I still had to get up at 6:15.

So I guess your dogs will be waking you up at 5:15 now....

Implied: You're stupid, Daddy

There are some days I would pay cash money for an *implied* "You're stupid, Mommy"

So I sympathize.