Sunday morning, and I jerk awake thinking Lawsy it’s hot for six a.m.! Look at the clock, and it’s 9:30. Sun is shining through the windows, the house is empty and a note is waiting on the kitchen counter: We’re at IHOP! We might go to the Science Center after! We’ll be home by noon! The coffee is made, the Sunday paper untouched, and the Big Guy has just won my heart again.

The Big Guy has been having the same dream for seven years, in which he and I are strolling happily through an alley in Venice, bathed in golden light. The Little Guy is part of our family but isn’t born yet, and we are happily exploring new territory, together. Well, even MomBrain can interpret that dream, and it’s a recurring reminder of how lucky I am that the Big Guy enjoys our adventures into the uncharted terrain of parenthood.

But. (And it’s a Big But.) I’m thinking this dream has changed lately, with the Big Guy speeding through the canals of Venice in his motorboat. And this motor, she is loud. One might even say it sounds like a man snoring. In bed. Next to his insomniac wife. Who is beginning to hallucinate from fatigue and may even be approaching psychosis, keeping a mental tally of all the sharp objects in the house and moving to the couch before she can act on it. Not that I would …

This just in from Sister K, who announced that she is the most Shakespeare-illiterate person in the entire world and then proceeded to recite a lengthy monologue from Julius Caesar, which she memorized thirty years ago. My, Grandma, what sticky brains you have! Clearly we are not from the same gene pool. My brain, she is coated with Teflon, slick as a whistle.