He said "I Love You"!!!

Yes, I am a big dork, but today my son said "I love you" for the first time. (Well, to me. T. says he's said it already, and I'm like, "Not to meeee!" wah, because I don't think I could have missed that even if I do have terrible hearing.) I'm not really sure if he knows what I love you means, but he said it and that's good enough for me. I managed to coax him to say it a few more times today. Yes, I am shameless.

He had his two-year checkup the other day. Flying colors, happily, as usual. Except he still can't make it out of the 5th-10th percentile in weight. Oh well. He pretty much never stops moving, and T is a slim guy, so I don't think he has any real hope of bulking up. We've also started a gym class for him, which is fun although I didn't like the first class as much as the free trial class I took (big surprise). Oh well, I think he'll still have a good time, and I can use the running around time as well. So far he loves to hang on the uneven parallel bars. My little Olympian! (The gymnastics apparati are really for older kids, but the little ones can play around and get familiar with them.) The only problem is he has applied this newfound skill to hanging off inappropriate things around the house: the pedestal sink, an open kitchen drawer....

Here in the 'burbs it is pouring rain and thundering. Not a great situation for getting your kid to nap, but I think he's down now. My poor garden is limping along. I think we might get one more zucchini this year, for a total of, like, 8. Damned cane borers and cucumber beetles. My plan for next year is to spray the hell out of the garden with organic pesticides and/or soap, vs. this year's regime of spraying halfheartedly with pesticide that the guy at the garden store told me was organic but I have my doubts because it smelled like turpentine. It stank, and was a hassle to apply, and T. complained every time and said, Are you sure this is organic? and I defended it but the truth is I was unsure. So let's hope things turn out better next year. Maybe I should also look into whether there are such people as garden-sitters, in case I go on vacation.

Off to go read some more of my latest book and eat a little chocolate. Yay for naptime.

Well

Been a while, no? Lots has happened, some good, some bad. The bad news, an important relative of my husband's died, so we've been away for a week visiting his family. The good news, we had a nice time hanging out with them, and ASH spent all day every day running around, playing in dirt, visiting his uncle's horses and chickens, riding a tractor (not alone), etc. Rural good times. He slept like a champ all week, not surprisingly.

Good news--well, ASH is just trucking along growing up, and it's fun to see. He seems to have made a language jump--perhaps this developmental leap is to what we can attribute the bad temper and poor sleeping of a couple weeks ago. Now he's through and is being extra cute lately. New words: happy (how gratifying!), fun, run, bike, kite, and the names of his uncle and aunt. Conveniently, T's brother and my brother have the same name, so if we can get him to learn my bro's wife's name we'll be all set. Bro and SIL arrive tomorrow to rest up before they move into an apt a few miles away, so ASH's timing of his new knowledge is perfect. We are psyched to have bro and SIL living nearby! Yeah! Although we will miss visiting them in NYC, it'll be great to have them around. They are major food-lovers, so I hope to glom onto them as they explore local restaurants.

The garden...mpmh. The cherry tomatoes, both colors, are doing great. By failing to adequately stake one of my large tomatoes, I have allowed the main stem to break and I think it may be a goner. I'm peeved because I planned to taste-test it and compare to the other large tomato to see which I might want to plant next year, and I haven't done it yet. Maybe I already know that I won't plant another Brandywine. It is an heirloom variety, but I learned online that a lot of tomatoes go by that name, and you can't really be sure which you are getting. This one looks beautiful when cut and doesn't have big seed pockets, which is nice, but the flavor and color--eh. Not that really WOW red or acidic flavor. Might just be a little too mild for me. Better luck next year.

The zucchini...so sad. After the trauma of cane borers, arrived the heartbreak of powdery mildew. F, man, I am so sick of this. The one year I get to take summer vacation (we tend to be spring/fall vacationers, for some reason, which means never getting to lie on a beach in the hot sun), and it happens to be the year I decide to start a garden, and, boy, if you have a garden I do not think you are allowed to take a weeklong vacation because misery is unleashed while you are gone. Sigh. Well, I am learning. I am half-tempted to abandon gardening altogether but then I will feel too guilty about the hundreds of dollars we spent on wood for the container boxes, etc., which we justified with the knowledge that it was just the startup costs and we would reap the benefits in saving equivalently hundreds of dollars at the farmer's market. Mpmh. Not so much. So far, though.

The broccoli seems to be growing like crazy, but just the leaves. Where are the actual broccoli heads? My SIL in the mid-Atlantic, where we were this past week, has already seen hers come and go. I am hopeful that means mine are only a couple weeks away, but I dunno. Maybe I got a late-harvesting variety.

Happily, the eggplant is growing beautifully [my ordinarily wonderful and supportive husband refers to this as the "one success story" of the garden. Thanks a lot! There are plenty of other sucess stories, mister. Just look at the cherry tomatoes.], although I haven't a clue how to tell when it's ready to pick. It's so much firmer than a supermarket eggplant that I don't know if it's still underripe or if this is what they're like when they're super-fresh. How much knowledge of our agrarian heritage we have lost!

And the hyssop I had sort of given up on since it wasn't flowering or doing anything interesting, has decided to flower. Reprive! It is mixed in with lavender, and and I was thinking of ripping it out and replacing with more lavender so I can have a mini version of a luxuriant Provence-like border. But now I guess I won't. A nice thing is that the lavender flowers in the spring, but the hyssop flowers now, so there's something happening in two different seasons. This is the sort of event I aim for in the garden but rarely achieve.

OK, that's enough for one post, isn't it? I have been tagged! but I will put that in another post.

Bad blogger

Having never been good at keeping a paper journal, I don't know what made me think I'd be better at the online version. Ah, well. We were on vacation for a week in beautiful Kennebunk, ME, then we had family visiting, then the lying-around-on-the-couch-recovering-from-family-visiting period, etc. etc. Plus I was doing a freelance project that ate into my normal blogging time. I guess part of my problem is that whilst blogging I always have the feeling that I should be emptying the dishwasher, doing laundry, other good housewifey things. Or, to be honest, sometimes I am lying around reading and being lazy instead. Reading other people's words is so much less effort than creating one's own.

BTW, I apologize in advance for not hyperlinking anything in this post. Cf. lazy above.

ASH turned 2 on August 1. Hard to believe 2 years ago at this time I was suffering the agonies of sore nipples and sleep deprivation and the deep terror that comes with the realization that you are entirely responsible for this little creature's well-being, and you'd better not fuck up. ASH today is the sweetest, friendliest, most gorgeous child you could ever hope to meet. Lately we've had a preview of terrible-two-ness (sample: Me: "Do you want some edamame?" ASH: "No!" [ASH then takes edamame and eats it.]) but it's easier to handle (at least so far, check back with me later and perhaps I'll be selling him on Craigslist) when I know it's all part of his developmental phase, and when at other times he runs full tilt at my legs and then gives them a hug, saying, "Ohhhhhhh, pat pat pat" because that's what we say when we hug him and he hugs back and pats us the way we do him. It's all too insanely cute for words. I still marvel at my incredible good fortune in being given this amazing child.

I think I'm appreciating him more this week because we are poised to leave him with my dad and stepmother for the weekend while T and I go to New York to catch a Yankees game in the last season before they tear down Yankee Stadium. Sigh. (As good Red Sox fans, we of course plan to root for Kansas City. I am trying to decide whether to be a jerk and wear my Red Sox hat to the game. Heh.) I am simultaneously excited to have a couples weekend and heartbroken at the thought of leaving him behind. This will be the first time we have done so for more than one night since he was born. It'll only be 2 nights, but it feels like a big deal. (His only other overnight was a year ago when my best friend got married and ASH stayed with my dad, with T and me saying we might come back and pick him up that night. Umm, didn't happen.) I know he will be fine but I am still going to miss him like CRAZY.

But we will enjoy baby-free-in-New-York time. We plan to eat with my brother and his wife at Les Halles (home of Anthony Bourdain, although I doubt he's ever in the kitchen anymore, what with gallivanting about for the Travel Channel and being a Top Chef guest judge and all. Fame, so time-consuming. There are always a million things I want to do in NYC and we never do any of them. And now my bro is moving up here to Boston to go to grad school, so it's goodbye, exquisite coop in the West Village. Sigh. I feel like we will never visit New York again without them there, which is of course untrue, but it's just so nice to visit them and New York at the same time. And did I mention their apartment is exquisite? View of the Chrysler and Empire State buildings? Ohhhhh...
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In other news--the garden, she ails. My once-mighty zucchini plants were attacked by the dreaded cane borer, a hideous white segmented worm that eats the stems from the inside out. Then the whole plant dies. This has happened to 6 of my 12 plants. Supposedly you can slit the stem, dig out the borer, and then cover up the stem with dirt so it can heal and the plant recovers, but I dunno. Suffice it to say we have not been having the zucchini overload I had anticipated. I get one serving of zucchini about every couple of weeks. Alas.

Not helping matters is the ridiculous amount of rain we've had lately. When we came back from vacation I actually found a small FROG in the garden. No lie. I can't imagine where he came from. I thought at first it was one of those hideous Darth-Vader-like squash bugs, and I was squaring my shoulders at the thought of the murder I was going to have to commit, when I looked closer and saw what it really was. I wonder what's happened to him now that it's a little drier. When it's too wet I also have the problem that my insecticide and fertilizer are made to be dissolved in water and sprayed on, so I have to either water a garden that desperately doesn't need it so I can kill bugs or feed the plants, or...not.

The tomatoes are doing OK so far, although a number of the leaves have brown spots and I don't know if it's OK or some kind of death knell for my only happy plants. The orange cherry tomatoes are the best producers at this point. The red cherries are poky, as well as really too big for optimum pop-in-your-mouth eating. The Brandywine tomatoes are HUGE, and the one that's nearly ripe is already cracking, which I think is bad although I'm not sure. I hope it doesn't rot or fall off the vine while we're gone. Maybe I should bring it to my dad. That's an idea. And my eggplant! She is so pretty! Swelling like a woman in the 3rd trimester. And I haven't checked lately, but I think another eggplant is on the way. I hope there isn't some kind of eggplant borer no one's told me about. Sigh. This whole garden thing is really more trouble than I was led to believe, Mr. Square Foot Gardening. Better luck next year, I hope.

Roses doing great. I can see now that the sad little new ones that weren't doing well--all they needed was more water. Oops. They are so much happier now. At least somebody is!
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And finally--TV check-in. I was happy Joshua won So You Think You Can Dance, although I TOTALLY thought it would be Twitch. I mean, come on! Josh was great but not (for me) nearly as entertaining. Still, I was happy. We are completely behind on Project Runway and have yet to form opinions much, although I loved Suede's winning dress in the green challenge, even though Suede himself seems like a total tool. (I mean, "SUEDE"? WTF kind of name is that?) In Olympics thoughts, it is TOTALLY TOTALLY unfair that women's beach volleyball players have to wear these itsy little bikinis and the men wear the most hideously unflattering, body-hiding singlet-type things. Give me some bare chests! And shorter shorts! (When I was saying this yesterday, T pointed out, "Hey, this isn't Top Gun." Well, it SHOULD be.) Don't get my wrong, the bikinis are cute, and the women look great in them, and I guess the scantiness is fairly appropriate in this context. I would just like equal-opportunity scanty. Get on that for 2012, London, OK? At least for swimming and diving there is some good ogling potential.

That's all for now. Got to go pack for the weekend. For some reason I don't have much trouble packing for the whole family to go somewhere, but packing for ASH to go one place and me another is somehow defeating me. I'm terrified I will forget to pack something major. Like diapers. Luckily, I'm pretty sure my dad knows where to buy them. ;-)

Harvest!

Amazing what a few weeks of heat and sun will do. Here are the latest photos.


If only I knew why Blogger is posting this zucchini pic portrait-style instead of landscape (as I took it and as it appears in Picasa). But here they are! They were very yummy. At left you can see a flower still attached. The female flowers become zucchini (sort of--a swelling at the flower's base becomes the fruit), and the males just grow on stalks. Then bees or other bugs facilitate the magic of pollination. These flowers are absolutely delicious dipped in batter and fried and salted. Especially with Parmigiano-Reggiano, as I accidentally discovered last night. (I guess I knew this, but I had forgotten. I gave ASH some cheese for dinner and when he didn't eat it, I thought, "Yay, I get to eat it!" and made the happy discovery of how good the flowers and cheese are together.) Marcella Hazan says use a cup of water to 2/3 cup flour (sifting the flour slowly into the water and mixing well to avoid lumps), although I find I usually need a bit more flour than this (you want it to be like thick cream, or maybe melted ice cream or something), and I halve the recipe because this is way too much. Dip the flower in briefly and let the excess drain off, then fry in a skillet of hot oil. You'll know it's hot enough when it bubbles madly when you put in the flower. Be careful. Brown lightly on both sides, drain on paper towels, salt, and serve immediately. This makes good onion rings too.

It's not the healthiest recipe, but dang, it is good. I will say that I feel faintly disconcerted about eating the pollen-covered stamen (pistil?) inside the flower, because, you know...that's like flower sperm. But whatever.

Here are my cherry tomatoes!



You forget, when you go to the farmer's market or supermarket and pick up a pint or more of these at once, that each plant produces maybe one ripe tomato at a time. At least, around July 14 they do. So that kind of stinks. But I'm hoping as the season progresses I might be able to eat, oh, 5 at a time. (And I'm a good mom and all, but I do have to fight the urge to keep most of them to myself. I'm selfish that way. But I do fight it and give [most of] the produce to ASH.) These are yellow cherry tomatoes, that's why they're so...yellow. They won't get redder. This makes it hard to know when they're really ready, though.

Eggplant! I am so proud! A little purple baby sprouts from this flower. Note our friend the bee.


Here is a yellow squash, and a flower.

Here are the overview photos.



Sadly I discovered this week that my big tomatoes are suffering, I think, blossom-end rot. I learned from this site (which I just now discovered so that I could show you all what this rot looks like), it says that the manner in which I applied calcium (as instructed by the garden center) may not in fact fix the problem. Good to know! Thank you, intarwebs. And OSU. This may be why I got the rot in the first place, since I dutifully applied liquid calcium to the leaves before the fruit even developed. So I guess it's time to buy lime.

I actually had to prune the tomatoes a little, they were taking over. And the zucchini was stealing all the sunlight from some of my basil, so it was Pesto Time this weekend. (Stop! Pesto Time!) Oh, so tasty. I had forgotten.

Well, someone is sounding very unhappy, so I think it's time I give him a bath and send him to bed. Hope everyone is enjoying a happy summer with plenty of good things to eat. And if you know someone growing zucchini, hit them up for some flowers.

ASH's first joke

As promised in my first blog post. It is probably not as funny to others as it was to me, but:

The Scene: The changing table.
ASH knocks on the wall next to the table and says, "Kna kna!" (Knock-knock.)
I say, "Who's there? (We haven't really gotten into knock-knock jokes, just the knock itself, but I make the knee-jerk response.)
He says . . .(pause): "Baby!"

I don't know if he knew this is how a knock-knock joke is supposed to go (and if so, how did he know?), or if he just has natural comedic talent. That's my boy.

SYTYCFail

Last week I was all set for So You Think You Can Dance (aka SY). I was literally counting the days. Snickollet was coming over and I was excited to indoctrinate her into the One True Faith (although, to get ahead of myself, I'm not feeling so devoted to it this season). She is new to the show and I hope to get her good and hooked, like me. Then I spent most of Wednesday afternoon being, shall we say, indisposed with (I think) food poisoning. I left Snick a message saying maybe we should cancel. A few hours later, after the 4th and final vomiting episode, I felt miraculously restored to health. I left her another message saying I was still game if she was, though I couldn't have blamed her for not wanting to come over, in case it wasn't food poisoning. Then I saw her email message saying she had to cancel. OK, no big deal. I could still watch on my own, yeah! Cut to a few hours later, ASH is asleep, T on his way home from golf. He comes home and practically runs to change, and I'm thinking, Wow, I know he's into SO You Think You Can Dance, but I didn't think he'd RUN. I settle in with the remote and watch 2 minutes of SY before he comes down and commandeers the TV to watch his Tivo'd Germany Euro Cup game. Um, hi! I was here, ready to watch SY! I said, "You know, Snick was going to come over to watch SY tonight." And he said, "But you knew this game was today." Of course, I didn't know he HAD to watch it the very same day, but I should have, because he is German and soccer really matters. So it was lucky Snick couldn't make it after all, because I don't think any of my neighborhood bars would have been showing SY, more's the pity.

[Let's pause a moment to bow our heads for Germany's loss in the Euro Cup final.]

Then it took me another day or two to even get to watch SY and the results show, let alone blog. (Garden is doing great but it's true, it's time consuming.) I can't tell if it's the passage of time blurring my memory or what, but I continue to wait to be blown away by SY as I was almost every week last season. This week the only one that brought me back to those feelings was Matt and Chelsie's. I actually had chills watching it. One way you can tell when the dance is good is when it elevates a song you thought was just OK. I admit I turn up the radio and sing along when OneRepublic's "Apologize" comes on, because it was part of a great Danny dance last year. I'll now always associate that song and the one from Matt and Chelsie's routine with these amazing dances, and that makes them special to me.

I really like Matt, for his quirkiness and elegance and Valentino good looks. I finally figured out who he really reminds me of, though--he's like a younger, hotter, Japaneser Pee-Wee Herman. Sorry, Matt--you really are cute and not Pee-Wee-like, but I can't help it. I feel like Chelsie's just OK, but after this performance I like her a lot.

Twitchington: I love them. So cute, so funny, such good dancers. I felt like this wasn't the most PC routine in the world (is prison a dancing matter? I guess it can be, right, Elvis?), but I liked it a lot, particularly how the dance and music went together. That should go without saying, but I don't feel choreographers always work it this well. I loved the bit at the end where they go down the "elevator."

Courtney/Gev: (First--it is so annoying that there are two girls named Chelsea and two named Courtney, which would be bad enough, but then two of those 4 spell the names wrong. Don't get me started on Kherington either. Cor.) This routine was just OK for me. I think I was thrown off by the illusion that she was naked every time she turned that side to the audience. With a show this (generally) great, why can't they have a talk with the wardrobe people? Jesus, it's appalling. I thought it was a beautiful dress except for the nakedness aspect, and even that could have been appropriate on an older woman. Anyway, I'm just not loving this couple, and I didn't feel the chemistry between them. I felt like they were trying too hard.

Comfort/Chris: I like Comfort, but something about Chris doesn't do it for me. I loved this piece at the start, and then it just fell apart for me. ("I was interested, I was VERY interested--then, suddenly, I lost interest.") I totally agreed with the judges that they needed to bring more, be bigger. Generally Comfort does a much better job with this than Chris. I'm not surprised this was his last week. I am excited to see Comfort with a new partner. Why can't they get rid of Tyce Diorio and get more Shane Sparks? Broadway, jazz, whatever--if it's a Tyce routine, you better run, because you are getting voted out this week. (OK, every once in a while he has a good one, but rarely. And the Tyce=Going Home thing tends to hold true, just watch.)

Jessica/Will: Oh, Will, you make me forgive you for the absence of Debbie Allen. (Will is her protege, so she can't be a judge until he's gone, lest there be intimations of undue influence.) I love, LOVE Debbie Allen (doesn't everybody who watched Fame? "Right here is where you start paying. With SWEAT." I love her so much I even watched the Fame reality show she cohosted with Joey Fatone a few years ago that tanked because I was the only one watching.) so this is a big deal. He did not disappoint me, but I'm not into his partner. She's cute and all, but even back in Vegas week I was surprised she made it. My husband and I were sort of rooting for her to be voted out, along with Comfort's partner, and then Comfort and Will could be together, which I think would really work. Although it occurred to me I might only think that because they're both black. It's uncomfortable when you realize you are holding an idea that might be based on nothing more valid than prejudice. Ahem.

Where was I? Ah, Kourtni and Matt. Hey, what's Sinead O'Connor doing choreographing for this show? Choreography was quirky and cool, but I don't know how I felt about the routine overall. It reminded me of the wind-up-doll dance from last season. I'm just not into this couple. He, Thayne, and Chris are my least favorite guys, and Kourtni just doesn't do it for me. Is her resemblance to Courtney Love just an unfortunate coincidence?

Chelsea/Thayne: (Again, WTF with the names on this show? My God. Did all of today's 40-year-old parents get hold of some bad acid back in the day or what? Chromosomal damage is the only explanation.) Oh, the quickstep. Talk about a kiss of death, it is worse than getting Tyce Diorio. Why, WHY keep using a dance that everyone hates and hardly anyone can do? Just to torture people? ONE time, ONCE, it was good, and that was in the season I can't shut up about, last year. Just stop. There are plenty of lovely ballroom dances they could use instead. (More Argentine tango, please!) I noted, as did the judges, the painful rictus of a smile plastered on Thayne's face. I'm ready to see him go. He has just never impressed me. She's cute, but also not my favorite. Bye-bye, Chelsea.

Chelsie/Matt: Best routine of the night. Chills, etc, cf. above. I almost cried, actually. I love you, Matt! That's suit's hot on you!

Katee (please, Lord, make them spell properly!!!)/Joshua: He is another one of my favorites. Baby got BACK! Yowza! (I need to get my husband some pants like those. He too would fill them out nicely.) Great chemistry, great dancing, great bum! I think I was prejudiced by the film preceding where Katee said she was uncomfortable with sexy dancing, because I thought she didn't look so comfortable, and if I hadn't seen that film I probably wouldn't have noticed. Doesn't matter too much because I was busy watching Joshua. What a cutie! His dad, too.

I love seeing the parents and thinking about what ASH will do with himself someday. I am so excited for the possibilities. (Here my Irish superstition requires me to say God willing or knock on wood or something.) I was talking with Snick about this, actually, during an audition show. I am always surprised and disappointed at people's parents trying to stand in their way of following their dream. I used the analogy of, if ASH wanted to be a pro football player--I could hardly imagine something I would LESS like him to do. But if he were really talented, and loved it? How could I say no? I'd just have to do a lot of praying for him not to get injured. Or on drugs. Or--well, let's not imagine all the horrible possibilities. We'll just see how fate takes us. At the rate he's going, truck driver or firefighter is looking likely. That boy loves him some trucks.

Paging Dr. Freud

So I guess I shouldn't blog so much about my garden, because last night I dreamed that where most of the plants had been, there were only empty squares of dirt. Goodbye, zucchini. Addio, tomatoes. It was very sad. I was crushed. Happily everything is still there in real life. (It wasn't really a Freudian dream at all, just anxiety.) I do need to spray some insecticide (organic, natch) to get rid of these little beetles that like to eat the leaves and who knows what else. I keep discovering them in flagrante delicto nestled in the zucchini flowers. I'm sure it's very cozy in there, what with the warm golden light filtering through the blossoms, a perfect spot for romance, but get the hell out, bugs!

In other news--there is no good way to segue here--I've recently noticed that my son has leg hair. I swear it wasn't there a month or so ago. But maybe I am just noticing now that he wears shorts more often. It's these little things that sometimes make me realize how he's growing up. A few months ago I felt for the last remnant of his fontanel and it was gone. In less than 2 months he'll be 2 years old. I'm sure in a moment I'll turn around and he'll be shaving, driving, and graduating from high school, God willing. I realized at some point that part of what's so weird about having a child is that I still feel like pretty much the same person. I still listen to WFNX (after a few months just after ASH was born in which I steadily listened to the local classical station, because I do love classical music, and supposedly it's good for babies' brains and all, until one day I just couldn't stand it anymore. Give me back my Beasties and my Nine Inch Nails!). I still swear more than I should (particularly in the car, alas, and only too late do I realize what I've just said to the idiot in front of me while my little pitcher sits inches away). I still like sharing drinks and gossip with friends. I still like wearing makeup and high heels (even if my feet don't). I don't know what made me think this would all magically fall away and I would switch to sweatpants and smooth jazz. I'm the first of my main circle of friends to have a baby, and I'm enjoying showing them that it is possible to retain one's sense of self while wiping spit-up off your concert t-shirt. Not to sound smug, or like I don't have plenty of days where I don't bother to try to look pretty, or like there weren't days at the beginning where I felt having a baby had been a bad idea (don't tell ASH). Being a parent is the most ridiculously difficult thing in the world. So hard that I genuinely believe if people knew how hard it was, they wouldn't do it. BUT. It is also the greatest, most rewarding, most bringing-love-into-your-life thing you can do. In my opinion. I have Moxie and her commenters to thank for showing me all the different ways there are to parent, and to show me that I'm not alone. And some days, to remind me to be grateful for the challenges I do have, because when you are tired from your 22-month-old waking up crying at 3 AM one day out of the month, you go to Ask Moxie and see someone commenting who is still nursing her cosleeping 2 1/2-year-old 3 times a night...well, then you feel MUCH better.

This is the randomest post ever, no? I'll stop now. :-)