1.  Take daily vitamins. I started out taking gummy vitamins but realized quickly that I just don’t like candy that much. So now I swallow them. Guess what? Turns out I don’t like swallowing vitamins the size of time capsules all that much, either – but I’m doing it anyway.

2. Go to bed when sleepy. (Please see ‘Ambien is Bullshit‘.) I realize that it’s ridiculous that I act like a 5 year old and fight sleep. I know this. But the world just becomes more interesting to me after midnight. Probably because all the lame early-sleepers are not up to dilute the fun.

3. Not a single cigarette. I’m not really a smoker. I couldn’t tell you the exactly last time I smoked a cigarette (it has been months). But I also could not tell you the last time I went a full 12 months without a single cigarette.

4. Be more like Lisbeth Salander. That is: Don’t put up with bullshit.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Me: “How old were we when we found out that Santa isn’t real?”

My Mother: “Hmmmm, I think 4 and 5.”

Me: ”Ohhh, we were just snooping, I guess? When we found the suit in the closet?”

My Mother: “What? That’s not how you found out…”

Me: ”What? I thought that’s how…? We were snooping in the spare bedroom closet and saw the Santa suit?”

My Mother: “No…It was Christmas Eve and Santa came to the house and his pants fell down.”

Me: *Blink* “What?”

My Mother: ”His pants fell down and then you knew it wasn’t Santa.”

Me: ”I can’t …I can’t help but feel that you’re leaving out some crucial details. It’s really weird that we would know it wasn’t Santa once his pants came down. Right? Like, that seems like some sort of red flag.”

We had these older next door neighbors whom my sister and I called Grandma Kay and Grandpa Lou. My sister vaguely remembered that Grandpa Lou had dressed up  like Santa that year.

So then I started to think about it and I could remember a picture from one of our photo albums of my Grandpa Lou dressed up like Santa but sans beard. Instead, he had a white handkerchief across his face like a freaking train robber. Or like he was trying to survive a dust storm.

I said, “Wait… is that the year Grandpa Lou wore a handkerchief as a beard?!”

My mother nodded.

I said, “Let me get this straight. You guys didn’t have a beard and so you just thought you’d wing it with a white handkerchief?!”

My mother nodded.

Apparently, Grandpa Lou came in, proceeded to hand out gifts and then his big old Santa pants fell down and revealed Grandpa Lou’s dress pants underneath which made everyone laugh so hard that they gave up the entire charade.

So I found out that Santa isn’t real when some bogus train-robbing bandit sandstorm-surviving Santa Claus lost his pants on Christmas Eve.

I feel like this isn’t normal.

Little Filthy sleeping on his paws (ab0ve)

PEACH YOGURT – DELICIOUS.

?

Black cherry yogurt? ALSO DELICIOUS.

I like to snap picture of the lake when I snag a cab home.

?

Dinner party at my sister’s – figs, gorgonzola, honey.

Little Filthy had an upset stomach here. He ate grapes off a table. Thought he might be toxic but the little boy pulled through and was back to himself in about a week. Scary!

There was a lot of travel at the end of the year. Little Filthy disapproves.

Legs got Little Filthy a pumpkin shirt.

Dinner one night.

Unfortunately, Little Filthy has learned that he just needs to climb over the back of the couch to look out the windows. *sigh*

Eggs lined up. These are from the restaurant Next. I was at the Food and Wine magazine event at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Playing LEGOS with my nephew.

Dinner at the loft.

First snow fall.

Passed out.

?

?

I had a cold for a few days this month. I picked up some of these cough drops – Halls Refresh.

Then I looked at the package. What the hell, exactly, is “Advanced Moisture Action” and why do I want it? It just sounds…. off putting.

The best part, however, is the little letters right above the picture of the cough drop.

It says “ENLARGED.”

You know, in case you thought the cough drop was an actual inch across.

I have too much time on my hands when I have a cold.

2. For three nights in a row, I had dreams about real estate. In one, I purchased a home and then found out that it used to be a whore house.

I’m not really sure what to make of that.

3.  I got this for my niece and nephew for Christmas. I will put it together and show it to them tomorrow. I expect some hell to break loose.

4.  Apologies for my silence – I feel a writing streak coming on.

5. I’m mailing Little Filthy to the highest bidder. He’s packed and ready to go.

I sometimes have trouble sleeping. I just… don’t have the urge to sleep until the wee morning hours and then, I sleep fitfully. Not all the time, mind you. The last three nights, I’ve had a solid 8 hours of sleep without any problem. But sometimes, it just doesn’t seem to be clicking. When that most recently happened, I decided to take Ambien.

I had some great warnings on Twitter.

“I once Ambien-sleep-walked.”

“I Ambien-sleep-ate!”

My personal favorite: “I Ambien-joined Match.com.”

But what surprised me the most were the dire warnings “not to fight it.” I was told to turn off the lights and rest in bed.

“Don’t fight it! Go to bed!”

“If you fight it, bad things happen.”

I don’t get this. I mean, what’s the point of a goddamn sleeping pill if it doesn’t knock me on my ass? If I was willing to just go to bed and rest there, I wouldn’t need this pill. Capiche? I want to be made sleepy. I want to want to go to bed. I want to be as sleepy as I remember being in church when I was a teenager. You know. Church Sleepy. God, seriously, was there ever a more sleepy sleepy than Church Sleepy?? Christ, if I could go to church right now, I’d sleep like the dead.

But seriously, some things aren’t worth selling your soul for.

I digress.

I complained to Instigator that I feel that a drug is sort of bullshit if I can just beat it with my mind. I mean, if all it takes to defeat Ambien is simply not wanting to go to sleep, how great a drug can it be? She politely informed me that not resting after taking Ambien is like taking aspirin for a headache and then banging your head against the wall and still expecting the aspirin to work. You have to help the drug work.

I told her that I want to be knocked on my ass and put down for a nap like I’ve had it coming. I want to be passed out asleep against my will. I want this shit to be magic.

She said, “Oh. What you want is Propofol.”

YES.

Is that jackass Conrad Murray in jail or is he still for hire?