Blowing & Drifting

Forecast: Significant blowing and drifting, with the possibility of heavy accumulation in rural areas.

Obsessive-Compulsive Sleep Inducing

This great "parenthack" for getting kids to bed early on New Year's Eve reminded me of how I spent the time from 10:38 to 11:00 p.m. on New Year's Eve. Gigi found it very hard to fall asleep in our loud motel room, so I had to sit with her in our room's one desk chair and rock like a self-soothing autist for the better part of half an hour. I couldn't see anything except the red numerals on the digital clock atop the bedside table, but that made it easy to see just how much time was passing. To distract myself as I started to tire, I would until the minute changed and then try to count at exactly the pace that would bring me to 60 when the minute changed again. I was inordinately pleased to find that, over twenty-two minutes, I ticked off the seconds exactly about five times, and within another five seconds about ten more times. I knew I had to stop and lay Gigi down when I found myself skipping from 45 to 70, then wondering just how that minute came to have 70 seconds in it.