No need to consult your astrology chart or call a 1-900 number - next time you're curious, just consult with Jacob, he's apparently psychic. Though, admittedly, his talent is pretty localized - he can only be useful to you if you want to know exactly what time I juuuuuuust barely start to drift off to sleep. Then - BWAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH...

It's a lot of fun. Seriously, I can't figure out how he does it. At first I thought it had to do with the TV - I would leave the TV on until I was done watching it (SEE - LOOK - THERE IT IS!!!! I KNEW that there was some lost, lonely, pathetic little bastion of logic still clinging to the edges of my life somewhere! Phew, what a relief, now I can just accept that nothing else will make sense!). Anyway, I'd turn the TV off, brush my teeth, crawl into bed, and Jacob would wake up. I thought maybe the sound of the TV was like background noise to him and he was waking up when I turned it off, so I started turning the sound off earlier (I'm hard of hearing, so I use captioning anyway). Still, he would sleep until I was just drifting off. I've tried reading in bed for a while... sending in a stunt double... sleeping on the couch... no luck. He's just gifted.

Speaking of gifted, we had a plumber here yesterday. You may recall that a Husband Who Shall Remain Nameless left the garage and boiler room doors open in February, causing our pipes to freeze on the day of my dissertation draft review meeting. Well, we learned the other day that the pipes leading to the outside faucets burst in several places. Wanna know how we came across that precious little tidbit of information?? Emily was digging in the garden - which I have entirely handed over to her this year, since we'll be moving before the harvest time this year and I'm hell on plants anyway - and she wanted water. So I sent the HWSRN down to turn on the valve, which we had (LUCKILY) turned off in the fall. (I say luckily, because our first year here we didn't know to do that, and had a pipe burst inside the house even though the garage and boiler room doors were closed that time.) He couldn't find it. Let's not go there, okay? Just, insert your own sarcastic comment about men and finding things here. So I went down, holding Jacob, to point out the BRIGHT RED valve that's next to the faucet line and not near anything else. He leaned down to turn it on, and all 3 of us were instantly soaked. There were at least 6 or 8 little slits along the pipe, all strategically aimed directly at my head.

So we got the valve turned back off and called the plumber, who came yesterday morning. He was a good guy, did a great job - very chatty, but in an unexpectedly deep and philosophical way. Not that I think plumbers can't be deep and philosophical, but the other ones I've worked with are generally more "nice weather, nice baby, bad plumbing" kinds of conversationalists. This guy, at one point, finished soldering a spot dangerously close to my (flammable) ceiling, and on his way to the valve he looked at me, deeply and philosophically, and said, "And now we'll find out if my life philosophy holds true... I've always felt that it's better to be lucky than to be good." I gaped at him like a fish in front of the television, and he explained, "I know I'm not good enough to have fixed that spot with pure talent, but I might be lucky enough." And he was.

So, I'm facing an impossible battle for the weekend. I said before, my mother-in-law is coming for the weekend. She's a nightmare anyway, I don't count that as a battle. But the specific thing is, she had asked to stay through until Monday - she said she'd watch the kids while I'm in classes. Sure, saves us money on a sitter, lets her get grandkid time, lets me not be around her, life is good. Well, she called yesterday to say that she's still coming, but she has torn her rotator cuff, so she's in intense pain. This puts me in a fantastic situation, because if I call our sitter and ask her to come, then I will get grief for stepping on mother-in-law's toes or something, but if I let her watch the kids then I will get grief for how heavy Jacob is (25 pounds) and how much it hurts to lift him, blah blah blah.

Big sigh.