Creature Bug

When Love is Born

Sometimes I click through on links that others post, and sometimes I don't.

Today I clicked on a link from Gretchen.

And I read the most beautiful and moving birth story ever, sniffling and sobbing until I had to sit on the floor and catch my breath.

I promise you won't regret reading Nella's birth story.

Week 237: 10 Lessons From Disney World

~ One: Find a new perspective ~

 

Sometimes you have to put on those 3-D glasses to really get the full effect of what's going on. We saw two different 3-D shows, and the Bug's Life one was so entertaining. Who would have thought bug spit could be so funny?

~ Two: Learn from others ~

Sure, it's not entirely practical to act like a flamingo all day, but it can be quite entertaining. Beyond flamingos, I can watch and learn from others.

~ Three: Make new friends ~

 

I had the amazing opportunity to meet up with blog friend Megan. She hung out with us on Thursday, and convinced me to go on the teacup ride. I definitely would not have gone if not for her, but she made a persuasive case and Sydney was happy to have someone else on the ride help her spin the cup in circles. Jason was also happy to have someone wait in line with him for Space Mountain (I like roller-coasters, but stayed with Syd). It was very cool to spend the day with you, Megan. Thanks for meeting up with us!

~ Four: Read interesting stories ~

 

Hands down, in 2008 I read more non-fiction than in all my life combined. I just was drawn to it, and fiction didn't appeal to me at all (for whatever reason). But Belle reminded me during her story-time, that there is a lot of fiction out there that I'm sure I'd enjoy. I just need to get back in the habit of it. (BTW: Belle's Story-time is a great opportunity to get your picture with Belle, and the line is much shorter than it is for the other character photo ops.)

~ Five: I'll never outgrow hugs and kisses ~ 

 

Alternate lesson: I still think it's cool to meet Minnie Mouse. Totally worth the 45 minute wait.

~ Six: Hum my worries away ~

 

Beyond helping shape foreign policy, Winnie the Pooh's gentle humor and consistent good nature never go out of style. I think I managed to see ole Pooh Bear in all four of the Disney Parades we watched, and was tickled to see him every time. Plus, playing in Pooh's Playground was a highlight for Syd: lots of running around, crawling through tunnels, "fireflies" in the sky, and hooray! no line to get in. Just wander in and play to your heart's content.

~ Seven: Don't forget to ask for help ~

 

Fairy godmothers may not be too common, but fairy friendships are always floating around, waiting for you.

~ Eight: It really would take magic to keep the house as clean as I want ~

 

We got our money's worth for these brooms: a float broke down in front of us, and the brooms kept us entertained as Disney Staff scrambled to restore the parade back to its magical self. If only I could have brought one home to keep on hand.

~ Nine: Sometimes all it takes is faith, trust, and pixie dust ~

Jolly work, these little wands do. Even though we didn't get to meet Cinderella personally, Sydney waved her wand just as Cinderella's parade float passed by, and in return, Cinderella waved at Sydney and blew her a kiss. Best moment I didn't catch on camera.

~ Ten: Celebrate everything ~

 

The best fireworks show I've ever seen? The one at Magic Kingdom. The narration, the music, the timing of the fireworks...wow. It was...just...wow. Definitely the best way to end our vacation, and one we won't soon forget. In fact, with just the right amount of fairy dust, we might be returning this summer.

And to that I say, zippidy doo dah.

Turning Five

Happy Birthday to you.
Happy Birthday to you.
Happy Birthday, dear Creature Bug.
Happy Birthday to you!

Today marks the fifth birthday of my little blog. Five years of recording daily moments. Five years of writing about pregnancies, births, and moments that have sailed through my life on calm and temptuous seas. I've written about books and teaching, weather and movies, parenting and holidays. I've misplaced more than one comma, left modifiers dangling, verbed nouns. I've taken pictures of my family, home, and even the view out the window.

On more than one occasion over the past five years, I have thought about giving up blogging...sometimes the narrative in my head gets so loud I somehow believe that not blogging will make it quieter. And sometimes I lose perspective about why I started writing here in the first place. It's taken me awhile to realize that the voice in my head persisted long before the Internet even began, and while I could stop writing here, I'd still have to write somewhere. I've also learned to stop looking at my numbers--numbers of readers, numbers of comments, numbers of hits--and stop worrying about every post being clever. I can't compete. I'm okay with that.

I remind myself that it's about the journey. It's about practicing my writing, capturing moments, creating community, connecting with friends, expressing my voice however I find it at any particular moment. It's about catching that elusive phrase and tieing it down with a few strokes on the keyboard. Even when blogging goes out of style, writing about life never will. And so I write on.

So, today, I'll blow out a candle and do a little birthday dance to celebrate five years of living online.

Most of all, my deepest thanks for coming to my party. You've made my day...more than once, no doubt. 

Please eat some cake, drink some punch, and, if you'd like, drop off your presence by the guestbook. :)

The Blue Soldier

[Originally posted July 4, 2005. As I re-read through this post, I was struck by two things. First, of the similarities between Sydney--photographed below at 13 months old--and Julianne (yes, indeed, they are sisters). Second, that I'm sure I never would have imagined the last few paragraphs would still be applicable four years after I had written it.]

***   

In doing the genealogy for Jason's family, my mom found a real treasure: original letters Jason's Great-great-great grandfather wrote to his wife during the Civil War. While there are undoubtedly more letters existing, my mom was able to locate over a hundred.

In the field near Strasburg, VA, On May 10, 1864, Josiah writes:

Dear Parny,

I wrote to you but two days ago but I thought I would write again seeing I had a chance and will write often as long as the letters can go through. We left Winchester yesterday morning and camped here last night in a very nice place. We stay here today to build a bridge across Cedar Creek which the rebs burned. It is said there is to be a very heavy force here soon and then we are going to make everything leave this valley. I think we will go right to Stannton. It is said we will have 200 pieces of artillery and 60 or 70 thousand men. I think it is on to Richmond this time. I do hope that all will work together which I think they are doing now, if the thing is done right Richmond is ours before two months longer.

Now Parney you must keep up courage for if Richmond is taken the war is nearly over and it will certainly be taken before the fourth of July. For my part I would like to celebrate that memorial day in the capitol of the confederacy and if I live and keep my health I think I will.

When you write let me know whether you got the box I sent you.  Give me the news generally. I don't know how I will stand traveling. I came nearer giving out yesterday than I ever did before and we came but thirteen miles. It was very warm and dusty. This is a splendid country. There is plenty of pasture for the horses and also for the drove of cattle which we drive along to eat. I pity the 'critters' that is unlucky enough to be right fate in this country. We just pick them up as we go.

I can't think of any more at this time. Kiss the children for me. Give my respects to all.

Josiah

Sadly, Josiah didn't get to celebrate the Fourth of July in Richmond, and in fact the war didn't end until the following year. Five days after Josiah wrote this letter he was taken prisoner and sent to Andersonville Prison. He became deathly ill, and when paroled he made it as far as Washington DC before dying in a hospital there. The above letter was the last letter his wife received from him. Josiah left behind two young sons. The nurse who was with Josiah at the end wrote: "His last words were tell my wife that all is well with me and that I should like to be buried beside my little boy that died three years ago. ... Thank God he was out of rebel hands and died in our own lines and is buried under the stars and stripes."

Should Jason and I ever have a son, we have decided to name him Josiah -- after his four times great-grandfather who fought so bravely for a just cause.

And here, 140 years later, we are a nation once again at war. A war that I struggle to support, but I nevertheless support all our dear soldiers, the men and women who are fighting far from home. Men and women who push their individual beliefs aside in order to serve their country. Men and women I pray for daily that they might be delivered home safely to their families. And for those who perish in this war, I hope that they can be brought home in order that they too might be buried under the stars and stripes.

Despite all the short-comings of our nation, it is still the finest country in the world. May I never take it for granted. May we always be grateful for the freedom we have been given. May my daughter live to see her country in a time of peace.

Happy birthday, America -- the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

Scraped

Want a story about treachery, thievery, and blackmail? A story fraught with danger and deceit?

Yeah, well. That story ain't here. But I can tell you the story of how I discovered other people making money off my bloggy stuff. It's not super exciting, but it'll have to do for the weekend's entertainment.

So, last week when I was checking up on my Technorati profile I happened to glance through the page that lists sites that have linked to little ole' Creature Bug. I recognized all the sites as belonging to people I know except four. I checked out those four pages and discovered that while they did, in fact, have me linked as the source to the post they were duplicating on their site, the post was surrounded by Google Ads and the whole thing smacked of "making money off my work." I normally love other bloggers linking back to me, but this was not along those lines at all.

I know in my last post I said something about plagiarism, but what these sites did wasn't exactly plagiarism (which is when you take someone's work and call it your own). What happened to Jenny at Absolutely Bananas was plagiarism. (Read her whole awful ordeal here.) This was more along the lines of copyright infringement. It's a form of scraping, and in my case the issue might happen like this:

• I have a post called "Pictures from Camden" (two of the sites chose this post)
• The "link site" takes this post and puts it on their blog (with a courtesy link back to me)
• Someone goes to Google and searches for "pictures from camden" and up pop a dozen places to choose from, including mine and the link site's.
• Someone goes to the link site, sees my post and then maybe ends up here afterall.

No, big deal really. Except in the part where someone goes to the link site instead of coming here. That additional step means that someone else might be making money off my posts. They also might have objectionable content on their site that I wouldn't like to be associated with. If it sounds confusing, this post at Blogging Basics 101 explains it much better than I could.

I have now started a folder in my Favorites Center called Thievery, where I am collecting helpful links in my effort to protect my content, as well as the links to the sites that scraped my content.

• Whois Source helped me look up the owners of the domains that were illegally linking me. I obtained email addresses for three of the four sites through Whois.
• I searched for copies of my webpage using Copyscape (came up clean)
• I found a helpful article on what to do when someone copies material from my blog.

Unfortunately, Typepad doesn't offer a "permanent signature line" feature where I wouldn't have to type in the copyright info at the bottom of every post, so that I will do manually. Including the copyright info at the bottom of each post is really only effective against individuals who might take your entire RSS feed and refeed it into their mirror site. Hopefully Typepad will start providing this feature because I know I'll forget to include that copyright info on my posts.

So. That's the ordeal. I wasn't going to do anything about it until I read the post at Absolutely Bananas, and then I decided to at least try some of the tactics she suggests. The end result is that I emailed three of the four, and two of the sites have taken down the post (yay!). One site continues to have my Pictures of Camden post up, even though I emailed AND commented on the post. The fourth site I don't really have any way of contacting. A bogus email address is on their Whois records, and the site itself has no email or comment capabilities. To top it all off, the ISP for the site is in Russia. Call me a product of the eighties, but I have little faith that me emailing an ISP in Russia will motivate them to get a site to remove my link. I'm not pursuing it. But you're welcome to try if you like--here's the page. (I don't see any ads, so I don't think they'll generate any revenue from you clicking through. I can't quite figure out what the point of the site is.)

I kind of feel like I ought to be more irritated than I am, but I'm not. For one thing, I knew when I signed up for this kind of writing that there was always going to be the possibility of someone taking my work. For me, it goes with the territory. Certainly, I'm not going to take thievery lying down...I'll add my watermark on photos and my copyright link at the bottom of posts. I'll email and badger and do sleuth work every once in awhile (like Googling certain phrases from my posts to see if they pop up anywhere they shouldn't).

However, it's quite possible that someone out there has taken a photo of mine, resubmitted it as their own, and is making money and/or a great story out of it. I know bloggers that have had this happen to them, and some of them even stopped blogging because of it. Very understandable since there's a strong "creepy" factor to people taking bits and pieces of your life.

For me, though, I'm just going to keep plugging along. For one thing, if I'm always worried about my content then it would take all the fun out of hanging out here. Even though it irritates me that these sites took something from me, they aren't really taking anything from my life. I'm still the one living it. For another thing, my list of fears is a mile long anyway and I just can't add any blog related items to that list. It'd drive me crazy and make me lose sleep. Meh. I prefer sanity, and we all know how much I love my sleep.

Speaking of which...I forgot. I've been up since 4 this morning. Maybe I should go to sleep.

Final suggestions for foiling potential thieves:

• watermark your photos
• add a copyright signature to the end of every post (or you could just do that "partial post" thing where only part of your post shows up in a reader, but I hate that. I know some of you swear by it, but my secret confession is that sometimes I don't end up reading the post if you don't have the whole thing displayed).
• sign your blog up on Technorati so you can see who is linking to you
• Remember: you can't live in fear because that means they win (see, I'm also a product of the 21st century)

Also remember, don't steal. It's not nice. The end. And have a great weekend, plagiarism free!

*****

(c) 2008 by Creature Bug. All rights reserved.

ROAR!

One of the best things about one-year olds just learning words? You can teach them to say things that make you laugh. Jules has mamama, dadda, dayeeezeee!, and sihsih (Sydney) down. And now she has added a rascally little roar to her vocabulary. We say, "Jules! Roar!" and she gets a huge smile, opens her mouth wide, and a little baby tiger comes romping from her vocal chords. It's so endearing. Along with her knack for sleeping through the night and eating whatever I feed her. She's a keeper.

And speaking of roaring, the lovely and wondrous Sam (whose Tuesdays are the best because she posts photos of Thomas, whose cheeks are so kissable!) has passed along the ROAR! for Powerful Words award to me, which means I need to list three writing tips.

It's a funny thing about writing tips. Because, you know, I actually have a degree in Writing Tips (except those academic snobs call it something like Language Arts Education). And yet...obviously, I still have lots to learn about writing. Fortunately, I like being in that position. Learning about writing is one of my most favorite things to do. That, and listen to Jules roar.

A word of clarification about these tips: I'm thinking more in terms of writing for an audience and developing your process of writing rather than just tips on where to begin to write. Other ROAR! recipients have given great suggestions in this latter field, so I thought I'd try a different take on it. I don't mean to imply that there needs to be some process to writing in order to engage a reader (I have always loved that Marilyn writes with few edits (and has such a remarkable voice through her writing), and engages the reader without any thought to process). Just that, for me, my best writing is definitely something I labor over.

1. Be stylish: One thing I like to remember is that writing appeals to the visual and auditory senses. For the visual side, try to have a variety of sentence and paragraph lengths. I make use of one sentence paragraphs, and even one word sentences. Especially when I'm writing on the Internet, I make a concerted effort not to have long paragraphs because it's hard on the eyes. For the auditory side, I use parallel structure and repetition, almost to a fault. This helps with the rhythm of a piece, how it sounds and what emotions I want to evoke.
2. Be fearless: Fear can cripple you as a writer. I could always write about sunshine and daisies, or I can be honest. For some people, being honest is sunshine and daisies; for me, honesty is writing about the sunshine and the clouds, the laughter and the depression, the love and the trials. The focus of my writing is what comes from my life, be it backyard projects, a delicious meal, a parenting moment, or the fact that I take Zoloft. I know I make some family members uncomfortable with my transparency regarding depression, but I write about it anyway.
3. Be inspired. Don't be afraid to use writing techniques from other writers. Even though I'm a big fan of reading novels, the writers who influence my style the most are those who write for magazines and blogs--probably because I aspire to be a columnist rather than being a novelist. Being an avid reader can only help improve your writing, unless you're reading Russian novels, in which case that won't help you at all. Even if you don't read (which is so sad!), your life is full of stories that are worth writing about. Even breakfast can be inspiring!

Here's the short list of columnists I love the most:

• Peter Fish who writes for Sunset magazine is amazing with his travel pieces. I love the way he uses punctuation, and I am more aware of how I use dashes and colons thanks to him.
• Maggie Mason is a great one for capturing conversation snippets. Her posts are rarely long, but usually smile worthy.
• Bill Simmons (aka The Sports Guy) writes for ESPN magazine, and I love his wit and humor. Believe it or not, even if Jason wanted to cancel his subscription to ESPN I wouldn't do it. I'm addicted to sports columnists.
• The girls over at Go Fug Yourself are snarky as all get out, and there's a good argument to be made against fashion writers. But I have learned many tricks of the humor writing trade from these ladies. Plus, they have a great conversational tone to their writing that I find interesting and entertaining.
• Above all, however, the one who has influenced my writing about parenting the most is Catherine Newman. While she is more melancholy than I am, I am in love with the way she captures the lives of her children. I'm inspired every time I read her.

As for other writers I'd love to hear roar?

• Gretchen from Lifenut
• Jen from Jen's Page
• Heather from Fumbling for Words
• Inkling of Small Inklings
• Amanda the London Southern Belle

*****

That concludes the writing-in-progress experiment. I don't usually have multiple drafts for a piece, but for this one I tried to capture the moments when I was thinking about what I would be adding by getting on the computer. It was definitely an exercising in being fearless, because you know I'd much rather you believed all the right words came out, organized and coherent the first time :)

ROAR! (in progress...draft 3)

The trouble with publishing drafts is that it makes me all the more aware of how it strips away some of the magic of writing. It's far easier to appear like writing is easy for me when all anybody sees is the final draft. True, I've done enough writing that there are elements of ease to it (particularly short posts), but the real reason behind this drafting experiment is to illustrate how I still have to work at it. For whatever that's worth.

Once again, changes from the previous draft are bold-faced.

ROAR! (in progress...draft 2)

Real quick, jotting down a couple more ideas while the girls are busy fighting with each other (what is it about Jules loving to pull Sydney's hair?). I've bolded the changes made from the last draft. I should note that this is more an exercise of showing you the process that I do more on a mental level than what I consistently do every time I write a post.

ROAR! (in progress...draft 1)

Here's the thing: I'm writing a post (below) about writing tips, and I thought I'd try something different. Usually (okay, always) I don't hit publish until a post is finished, or at least as finished as it's going to get. While I may go back and tweak a few sentences here and there--something I have been known to do after waking up in the middle of the night and realizing that I should have written this instead of that--most of the time I leave my blog writing alone.

I thought I'd try something different this time around and let you see how I work at getting a post finished. Nine times out of ten, I run of out time as I'm writing and need to go to bed, so the post is saved as a draft that I will return to later. Sometimes I start something and then need to take a break to let the words settle a bit. On a few occasions, I have the time to get it all done in one shot.

There's nothing extraordinary about what I'm writing here; I just thought the work-in-progress concept fit with where my brain is wandering. No worries if you're not interested. I'll let you know when you can read the actual, honest-to-goodness, spell-checked-and-everything post.

Zip zapped

I finished my class. Yee haw. Yesterday I gave my class presentation (I didn't do myself any favors by telling the professor that I teach a college speech class). This morning I finished all the journal readings. And at 12:53 today I emailed off my annotated bibliography and my final paper (seven minutes before they were due).

Because I'm giving myself a virtual award for getting through this, I'd like to thank my husband for being the full-time parent these last three weeks. Also my appreciation extends to my parents and Jason's parents who had Sydney for four whole days (the longest I've been without her). Thanks to my darling daughter for not being bitter that I abandoned her for schoolwork.

Also, thanks to Snickers candy bars for giving me that extra protein that I needed every day in class. Finally, a bit of thanks to NPR for keeping me updated on the Middle East crisis while I drove to and from school (although no thanks to the Middle East for having a crisis in the first place).

My immediate response after finishing my paper was to run around to all your blogs and start commenting (I have hundreds of entries to read...whew!). But only after two posted comments I realized that my brain needs a break from thinking and my fingers need a break from typing. Yeah, so let's call this a vacation from my vacation even though we all know that graduate classes aren't really a vacation and being away from the writing that I love more than anything also isn't a vacation.

But a vacation from the vacation makes it sound like it's all happiness, and since I'm finished with my class, then I get to say what's happy and what's not.

Oh, and if you're taking a vacation from your vacation too, at least come back here on July 31st because then I'll have ultrasound pictures to show off and we'll know if we got a little boy creature or a little girl creature. (I'll call this last paragraph my shameless ploy at getting you to stay interested in future installments, kind of like the end of the newest Pirates of the Caribbean movie (seriously! did they think we needed a reason to watch Depp, Knightley, and Bloom in another movie? is resolution just too passe these days?))

Okay, well, I think I'm going to eat some applesauce and take a nap. I'll be back next week, after our weekend of triple-digit weather. Yippee.

The writing life

"One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now." (Annie Dillard)

At play practice today I was talking with the director about writing. She is an English professor, and one of those literary sorts. While I am an English teacher too (someday, I might have to give up that title because what if I never go back to teaching?), and while I appreciate and enjoy literature, I'm quite a lot better at teaching writing. She was shaking her head in wonder at my bewildering passion for research writing. Oh, I do love to write a good research paper. Especially if it has anything to do with Irish literature or literary criticism (preferably in the Marxist vein).

But here I am, writing creative fiction for NaNoWriMo. And even though it is by far not going to be the highlight of my writing career, I am thankful. I'm even feeling creative enough to think about participating in Laura's Frankenstory project (maybe you want to too...just add your part of the story in the comment section). Thankful for imagination, for words, for writing and for the possibilities that writing creates. Nevertheless, as I type up my story I can't help but be reminded of a Scott Adam's Dilbert cartoon that my writing professor had posted on her door.

Dilbert writes a poem and presents it to Dogbert:

DOGBERT: I once read that given infinite time, a thousand monkeys with typewriters would eventually write the complete works of Shakespeare.
DILBERT: But what about my poem?
DOGBERT: Three monkeys, ten minutes.

I think it might be optimism on my part to even hope for three monkeys.

Inspiration

Not too often does literary theory inspire me. Don't get me wrong, I love it. I do. It's the stuff that keep me awake at night tossing and turning. But it doesn't exact move passions in the soul.

'The attention which post-colonial theory pays to factors which disrupt, undermind and speak back to monolithic cultural structures surely makes this possible, not only in terms of gender and class, but in the competing ways in which notions of ethnicity and authenticity are constructed.'

Certainly I like Colin Graham's 1995 Irish Studies Review article as much as the next theory nerd, but it doesn't, you know, set my heart a flutter.

On the other hand...

Every once in awhile I catch something that sticks with me. That something that makes me nod my head, moves me to write stars and exclamation points in the margin, inspires me to use the pink highlighter instead of the regular yellow one.

'I don't compare myself to the dead. I hardly compare myself to the living. I would hope my writing is my own.'
--Anne Enright

I like that. A lot.

Week 31: Feeling Resolute

I'm not one for resolutions. Maybe because I take them too seriously and then feel guilty about it if I don't follow through. And Lord knows I don't need anymore guilt than I already endure every day (laundry, dusting, dishes, more laundry, letting Sydney cry herself to sleep). I was trying to remember if I even made a resolution last year. I think I decided, "I'm having a baby for cryin' out loud, what more is expected of me?!" It's very probable I even said this aloud, causing Daisy to hide under the covers of the bed.

But this year, I've decided that setting goals can be a positive thing in my life. Just a few. No sense in creating an atmosphere of failure. I'll even throw in a few resolutions I already kind of do, that way I know I'll have some measure of success. It's like a little pat on the back everyday. Good work, you, for following through on those resolutions.

• #1: Do Pilates or some form of exercise at least 3 days a week. This is when I wish the new year was in June, because I exercise every day of the week during the summer. But I'm not all that keen on exercising indoors. It just feels sort of...weird. Nevertheless, I feel so much better (okay, I'll say it: I feel centered) after I exercise.
• #2: Regain my pre-Sydney waist line. I've lost all the weight I can lose (until Syd quits nursing), but that tummy of mine is still too squishy. It's a true distraction to me; call it immaturity, call it superficial. That's the way it goes. Conveniently, I don't remember what my waist line was BEFORE I got pregnant (because who measures their waist line when they already feel in shape?). But I'm not telling what my goal is...you'd all think I was delusional.
• #3: Read an actual novel every month. Not a baby help book. Not a cookbook. Not In Style magazine. I get a head start on this resolution because I have to read 4 novels in the next nine weeks for my Modern Irish Lit class (STARTS WEDNESDAY!!! Woo hoo!).
• #4: Write something. I'm deliberately keeping this one vague because it encompasses a lot. Blogging counts (yes, it does). But I'd like to write letters to my friends, and then also *ahem* I'd like to write a *cough* children's book.
• #5: Make a better effort at keeping the house in order. I actually do okay at this, but I could do a lot better. I'm not brave enough to resolve to "keep my room and bathroom as clean as the rest of my house" (you're my hero, Rach). But knowing that the most romantic thing I could do for my darling husband is to clean the house inspires me to work harder at it.
• #6: Find outlets for my creativity. It might be that knitting will fulfill this resolution. And now that I've learned how to knit AND purl, well, the sky's the limit. I'm also helping direct A Midsummer Night's Dream at the college (starting in two weeks). Fortunately, all the other resolutions contribute to this last resolution (yes, even exercising. When I feel good, I feel creative).

So that's it. I'm also making a Mondo Beyondo list because resolutions and dreams are entirely different things.

As for Syd's resolution...suffice it to say, she needs to resolve to start sleeping through the night. Unless she wants to stay an only child. Which would actually make it easier for me to keep all my resolutions.