Irony of the day:

In proofing my latest chapter last night I discovered that every time I wrote �perfect� or �perfection� I misspelled it.

We�re back to feeling sorry for ourselves this week in the Harriet household. Let me just say that this cold or flu or whatever the hell it is that is going around, bites. It�s a tease. First you just think you�re really tired. Then it taunts you with a burst of energy so you�re not even certain that you were sick. Then you feel like hell, but only at night do you feel bad enough to stay in bed, which, since you�d in all likelihood be doing that anyway, completely wipes out the one benefit of being ill � complete slothfulness and hours of bad TV. Then for a day or so, you feel fine. The following evening, though, look out. That�s when the real fun starts. And yet this maniacal illness never gives you the dignity of feeling quite ill enough to stay in bed. Curse you, cold!

AJ definitely has gotten the worst of it. After waking up repeatedly last night, he was totally pathetic this morning and while attempting to remain cheerful, kept lying down in the middle of the floor when it all became too much for him. And so we spent this morning watching old videos of AJ, which he loves to see, before going to the pediatrician and getting him diagnosed with an ear infection. Poor guy.

It�s been really fun watching these videos, most of which I have never seen since we filmed them in the usual overly-adoring-first-time-parents mode. Or rather, it�s been fun watching AJ watch them. He has taken to calling them collectively �Go, AJ, Go� inspired in part by his current favorite book Go, Dog, Go and in part by the large amounts of footage of him running laps around our dining room table � still one of his favorite activities, at least when not in the grips of the evil cold (hereafter to be referred to as E.C.). Even though he refers to the onscreen images of him as a baby as �Baby AJ,� I don�t think he�s quite clued in to the fact that he�s watching himself at an earlier time. With these older videos, he yells at baby AJ to stop playing with his favorite toys, �No! That�s mines!� With the newer ones he seems merely mystified as to how some of the people on camera (i.e. mom and dad) can be in the room with him while others are not (grandma and grandpa, etc.).

Less fun, though, was forcing this poor miserable boy to take three kinds of medicine before his afternoon nap.

Today�s also our wedding anniversary. We�re supposed to want to celebrate but really all I want to do is sleep � I�ve been up since 3 a.m. My husband and I exchanged nearly identical cards that in typical Hallmark humor rued the loss of our previous life but said we�re glad we did it. Always reassuring to know your life can be reduced to a greeting card.

Actually, we have a history of exchanging identical anniversary presents. I suppose that�s a good sign. For our first anniversary, we each gave the other the French version of Trivial Pursuit [yes, we�re total geeks, so stop rolling your eyes]. On our honeymoon in Quebec we had stayed in this funky inn that had the original French Canadian version. My husband doesn�t speak French, but guessed at translations using his high school Spanish. I was at a similar disadvantage, knowing absolutely nothing about hockey (really, all Canadian stereotypes were borne out in this game). Much hilarity ensued. The French one is a lot harder, due to much less shared culture with the U.S. But it�s still kind of fun to have around.

The lack of sleep is getting the better of me. I�d better quit before the run-on sentences really take over.

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