I woke up this morning with the phrase, �Can�t sleep. . . Clown�ll eat me,� running through my head (A subliminal message from tcklyrpharsn, perhaps?). This is not the first time this week that I have been beset by random popular culture references intruding on my dream. Yesterday I dreamed I was making out with Eugene Levy in the stacks of the Evanston Public Library. Clearly I need to be rethinking the bedtime routine. Or getting professional help.

K. is leaving us. She�s decided to join her mom on a buying trip to NYC next week (her mom owns a local boutique) and will be heading back to school upon her return. We thought we had another two weeks of childcare, so this is kind of a wrench in the works, but I think we might be able to find a local kid to pick up a few hours. As she stood in our kitchen telling me this (and given K.�s general penchant for talk, it took at least 20 minutes, as I got all the details of the NY trip, her new apartment, and even the spring break she will be taking in Cancun in March 2005), I found myself staring at the diamond studded P1ayb0y bunny she was wearing on a chain around her neck. I�d like to get her a small thank you gift, but I have absolutely no idea what to do for this person who is still so foreign and who seems to have everything and more than she can possibly need. She is such an odd mixture of traits. On the one hand, she shows an incredible amount of skin, wears unabashedly fake nails, T-shirts screaming sexual double entendres and of course the P1ayb0y bunny. On the other, she complains about the movies on her university�s cable system being too graphic. The example she gave was, of all things, Love Actually. �What if somebody�s child saw it?� she queried, looking mildly horrified, then offered, �But they�re so free in Europe,� by way of explanation.

K.�s last day will be Friday, when she babysits for the evening so we can actually go out for my birthday for the first time in several years. Hopefully I�ll think of something appropriate by then. But I�ll probably end up with a tedious gift certificate to a bookstore, which she could put towards either textbooks or the Nora Roberts novels that she seems to love.

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