'twas a dark and stormy night

I've started about three posts tonight, and none of them felt right. The tone wasn't right, or it wasn't important enough, or whatever. You know I like to be political, and when I'm angst-ridden, I think I write better.

But sometimes I'm just apolitical and content, which is alright too.

So I thought I'd share some stories from the past few days, just to write some more about my family and me. In case you wanted to know us better.

In the first place, an update: we started potty training Zoe in early September. She's done fabulously overall, but the past few days, she's started having accidents...daily...which is just so odd. I'm wondering if it's just a phase or something like that, but I guess a phase should be longer than three days. Tomorrow I'll try the bribery technique for the first time in weeks - if she goes all day sans accident, she can have a treat when she gets home. It's amazing what that kid will do for some candy corn!

Here's an update on some of my writing projects. I have three short story rough drafts that are so rough they hurt to read. The same can be said for an essay I'd like to submit for publication to an online parenting mag. But my plan is to print them all out and start red-penning...which, to me, is the fun part of writing. I'm going to take what David Sedaris taught me and pay attention to word selection and placement, and they're all going to wind up awesome. Clearly.

Also, today felt like a good mom-day for me. Zoe did not nap at school, and I've been up since she woke me up to pee at 3:30 this morning, which is typically a recipe for disaster. But she was actually (mostly) sweet all evening, and I found a second (or third) wind. We ate tacos for dinner, a favorite for all three of us. Zoe and I sang silly songs during her bath, and we laughed a lot. It was a good night.

And finally, an update on our poor TV...it's still broken. So sad. Charles and our friend Antonio tried to fix it Friday night, and it was sort of crazy seeing the TV all spread out across our living room. They think they narrowed down the issue to the power board (I learned about capacitors that night...but not flux capacitors because they don't exist), so Charles is going to order a new one and see what happens. We've mostly adapted to life without TV - our shows and Zoe's can all be watched online. But sports are kind of a killer. Right now, my Giants are playing their arch nemesis, the Dallas Cowboys, and I am NOT WATCHING IT! AT ALL!! It's sort of painful.

But the other night, Charles and I played Trivial Pursuit instead of watching a show, and it was really fun.

So there's the silver lining. Tonight, on this dark and stormy night, I'm all about silver linings.