I need an emoticon with the eyes pointing in different directions... maybe holding a margarita in one hand...

Just a busy day. Jacob was just now sitting on my lap, and he started making some suspicious grunting and straining type noises - and he leaned back and backhand grabbed hold of the front of my shirt, just like you might do of you were next to someone and you witnessed an oncoming tornado. You know, that sort of panicked but awed experience? Musta been a noteworthy experience for him...

I've had several of those shirt-grabbing moments today. I'm tired.

First, I'm snuggled happily into my soft, cozy bed, warm under my down comforter, happy in the knowledge that both kids slept great last night and I'm sneaking up on 8 hours of sleep last night, interrupted only for one quick feed (which doesn't count as awake-time, to me, since I've become a master sleepwalker). I hear my husband start thumping and stumbling around the house, and I experience my daily microsecond of guilt - my mom always got up and made breakfast for my dad, even when he got up 3 hours before she needed to, and I'm just not willing to do that, sorry. (But then I remember, HEY, my parents are currently in the middle of an acrimonious divorce, maybe I SHOULDN'T try to imitate my mom as a wife...) Anyway, I'm just fading back out when I sense a presence looming over my bed. It's my husband, stark naked and sorta jittery. (And he's a big guy, so this is a little intimidating.) "We have no water," he announced.

"Mhresrewuiommhhpppphh," I replied. And I MEANT it. "No, we have no water at all. I don't think a pipe burst but I don't know what the problem is."

So I dredged myself into consciousness. Sure enough, we were waterless. Pipes froze. Now, I live in a split level. The water heater and pipes are housed in a boiler room. And inside boiler room. Off the garage, under my bedroom. HOW could the pipes freeze in there?

Well, easy. A Husband-Who-Shall-Remain-Nameless could dump his hockey equipment in there, be too damn lazy to close the door, and then pull his Jeep into MY spot in the garage (If he wants to park in the garage, then he can invest in a remote car starter and shovel the walk so that I don't end up tripping and falling and burying both of his children in the 3-foot snowdrifts next to our house when I'm trying to get somewhere. Nyah, nyah, nyah.), THEN be too damn lazy to close the garage door. I mean, seriously, all it takes is four extra steps and a brief flick of the wrist, this is too much effort?!? Cripes.

So, he shuffles - unshowered - off to work, I spend about 4 minutes pretending I'm going to go back to sleep, and then I get up and start obsessing. Don't want to pay overtime plumber rates, can't figure out where the pipes or frozen or what to do, just gotta sit around and twitch until 8:30. The plumbers came right out at 8:30, lovely men, yay... can't wait to get their bill. They laughed at me. I insisted that I had nothing to do with the idiocy of allowing my indoor pipes to freeze. They laughed at my husband. They fixed my pipes.
Meanwhile, as they are pounding and grunting and generally exuding testosterone in my garage, I'm upstairs on the phone with my dissertation committee, for our first-ever draft review meeting. I'm trying to concentrate carefully on what they say, while ignoring the Neanderthalithic noises emerging from the bowels of my house, ignoring my unshoweredness, wishing I could figure out a way to properly express my gratitude to my friend Stacy (who watched my kids here during all this, and kept them QUIET somehow), and generally feelin a bit overwrought. And somehow we got through the meeting, and my dissertation proposal was accepted! This is a BIG DEAL for me, because I started working on the proposal while pregnant (on bedrest) and finished it in December after a few major events this fall (one of which is still filling his diaper, the boy has stamina). So what that means is, now I have permission to go ahead and do the work I suggested in the proposal, and once it's done they'll let me stop going to school. Heady stuff, I've been in school for 11 years so far, I'm tired.

Yee haw!

Then I got a call from my realtor here - we'll be moving this summer so that my husband can go back for his doctorate. Apparently my student-status looks like fun to him, despite my frantic efforts to finish in one piece, so he wants a turn. He'll be doing math, though, not psychology - a true glutton for punishment. Anyway, we had a market analysis done on the house... and he is suggesting that we put the house up for sale and ask for about $60,000 more than we bought it for, four years ago.

Yee haw AND yippee!!

THEN I got a packet in the mail from the realtor where we're moving, with a bunch of potential houses included - all nice places and well within our price range, yay.

Then I spent 3 hours at the "car doctor" with both kids. I had expected a half-hour appointment, so I didn't bring anything to entertain my distractible and potentially whiny preschooler, and I didn't bring any cereal or cookies for Jacob. But both kids were wonderful, Emily played happily with the nasty, grimy, yicky toys they had there (I've since doused her in boiling antibacterial wash, we're all good) and Jacob nursed once, subtly, and played and napped the rest of the time. What could have been a nightmare was actually an oddly pleasant afternoon.

So, yeah. I'm all done. But in a very good way, overall. Sure, it sucks when you know the plumbers are telling stories about me back at work, and I'm too busy right now to properly celebrate passing the dissertation proposal... but we could have had a pipe burst (happened 3 years ago, it SUCKED), I could have failed that meeting, blah blah blah. So, life is good, and I'm just all warm and fuzzy inside. And I haven't spoken with my in-laws in weeks.