Noise

I'm taking a Twitter break. I'm attempting the same with Facebook, but that will probably prove trickier.

It's not that I'm against social media or the Internet or modernity, really. I couldn't make a living if I was. (And, uh, it'd be pretty silly for me to be blogging about it if I was.) But every now and again I find that my brain is filling up with too much noise: Too many RSS feeds. Too many Tweets. Too many status updates. Too much stuff.

Maybe I'm getting old. Maybe there's enough real noise in our real life -- the boy is on a teething bender -- that electronic noise is just a step too far. Or maybe I miss concentration. Contemplation.

Or maybe I'm getting old.

Baby Wars

We're out for a walk with Shmoog when we cross paths with a woman and her mother pushing a baby carriage. "Baby wars!" the older woman says brightly.

"My baby will fuck your baby up," I growl back at her.

OK. Not really. But that would've been fun to do.

Tonight: Teething

After five months, we occasionally start to fool ourselves that we've got this parenting thing down. The boy had started lobbying for post-midnight bedtimes, but we worked him hard this week, quieting down sometime between 10 and 11 p.m. for three nights in a row. We felt victorious. We felt smart.

Then there's tonight.

It's 1:45 a.m. Jocelyn is rocking the boy now in his room, singing "Hush Little Baby" for what she swears is -- no exaggeration -- the 100th time today. She is tired. She has earplugs in to dampen his occasional screams because -- this is key -- about 15 minutes ago he started shrieking. We think it was because of teething pain. The Orajel certainly seems to have calmed him down since. But it's tiring and it's certainly not easy. (And it's far more tiring and difficult for Jo, who after all has been with him here all day long.)

Plus, the cat has her own problems, breaking forth with her own yowl -- or sets of yowls -- every five to 10 minutes or so.