Feeling tired

So it's been a long time since I posted. In part, this is because I was determined not to post again until I could find something other than Ben to post about. It's been a while since I had a good feminist rant or mocked popular culture or argued with stupid anonymous comment-leavers. But alas, my life these days is ever so small. Ever so small. Ben is pretty much all I have to talk about. Last month, I got some pictures printed from my digital camera for the first time ever. I've had the camera for over two years. I told everyone I knew about this ad nauseum for weeks. I forced everyone to look at the pictures over and over and over and had a general feeling of pride and accomplishment that rivaled finishing my master's thesis. Because I had done something. I had a product to show for it.

Ben's first Christmas was lovely. Even though my sisters are in Costa Rica, my parents and Mark and I had a lovely day. Ben was charming all day long and then had a full colic meltdown right as Christmas dinner hit the table. Which was actually a good thing because my mom confessed to me later that she thought we had been exaggerating the volume of Ben's screaming, the length of his screaming sessions, and the way nothing worked to calm him (Dr. Karp's five s's sadly do not work with this "new colic" that started a couple of weeks ago. Apparently what came before was just pre-colic, a warm-up if you will, to the real thing). We tired all the usual things - swaddling, rocking, swing, naked time, bath, new clothes, more clothes, less clothes, fresh diaper. Nothing. But eventually he just had enough and turned into a cooing darling just in time to say good night to my parents. Little monkey.

Ben has also started waking up every hour at night wanting to be held for a couple of minutes. He doesn't need much, maybe 5 minutes of attention, and then he's back to sleep. I am not so lucky however and have gone from sleeping seven hours a night (with one small break in the middle for the 2:30 feed) to 4 hours a night and it's killing me! Ahhhh. Starting to relive the horror of those early weeks.

But on a brighter note, Ben rolled over for the first time. My awesome little guy. Anyway, that's my post. All about Ben because nothing else ever happens. Ever.

Losing the joy

So I have to confess that I watch a lot of soap operas. This started in grade 6 or 7 when I watched Y and R for a few years. I then moved on to Days of Our Lives and I watched Days pretty faithfully for a good 10 or 15 years. My mom started watching Days when my older sister was born and it was our family soap. We used to set the VCR to tape it and then all watch it together after school. And let me tell you, the late 80's to mid-90's, those were the glory years of Days. Hope getting blown up over a vat of acid, John is Roman is John is Father John is Forrest Allamaine, Vivian burying Carly alive in the condo coffin, and of course, the ultimate, Marlena's possession by the devil. We would watch together and howl.

When I went to university, watching Days became a great way to meet people. Everyone who watched would gather in the common room at 1:00 every day. You had an instant conversation because you could talk about how awful the show was and laugh at all the actor's and reminisce about past plot lines. I know it sounds lame but it was a great way to meet people. My university roommate also got me watching General Hospital so I expanded my soap repertoire a little. Eventually even the guys got into it and would watch Days even when us girls weren't there.

I still tune into soaps. I can't pretend I don't because my husband will rat me out. Just from living with me, he knows the name of everyone on Days, half the people on General Hospital and does a wicked John Black impression. But I have to say, watching soaps by yourself just isn't that interesting. Half of the fun is making fun of them and you just can't really get the full effect alone. As well, when you don't watch every day, you just don't care very much about what's happening and if you don't care, soaps become very very dull very quickly. Lastly, I swear the soaps just aren't as good any more. I don't know if it's me or if it's just that soaps don't really work on a pop-cultural level anymore but they are just so boring and so lame.

Which is sad because catching up on soaps was one of the things I was looking forward to with the whole maternity leave thing. Oh well, at least there's still Family Feud to fulfill my shitty tv hankerings!