To say this blog has laid fallow would be an understatement. And I own that. This new job at Vulture is exhausting. In a good way, mind you, but I find myself having to work so quickly that when I leave at the end of the day I feel like someone’s been chasing me with an ax. In a good way. An ax that has an Amazon gift card taped to the blade.

So I come home, help put the kids to bed, and then think, “Tonight I blog!” and then I realize that I can’t quite muster the mental energy to untie my shoes, so writing is right out. So over the past few months I’ve had countless moments where I’ve ‘thought, “That could be a blog post!” and then I never do it. So tonight, when I have the tiniest amount of motivation, I will try to clear my plate of all the things I’ve considered blogging but didn’t, all in short order. I lay no claims to them being interesting or related or otherwise noteworthy. But it's just something I had to do.

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I told myself that no matter how long I went without posting, I would stop starting every post with an apology for the long lapse. It gets old, and the apologies start to mean nothing. But I'll break that shortlived rule this time, because I waited so long that I got an email from a reader chastising me. Guilted on my own blog. Anyway, my own excuses grow tiresome even to me, but just when both daughters started sleeping to very reasonable hours (around 7:30), Lila started kindergarten, and now we all have to be up at 6:45. What the hell? This is the first time in five years I’ve needed to set my alarm clock, and I am not happy with the reunion. And now, for the first time, I need to go wake the kids up. My parents used to take a grim satisfaction in waking me up when I was a teenager; I remember being in a deep sleep as my mother threw open my door and began shouting my marching orders for the day, yanking open my blinds, and then vanishing before I could extricate my hands from their sleeping berth on my balls. It was a very jarring way to wake up. Once I hit college, they decided that I was an adult, and therefore they wouldn’t wake me up anymore when I came home for a visit…although they would not change their lives one iota to enable that. I would be jarred awake to the sounds of my dad cranking up the local Saturday morning bluegrass radio show. No, he was not a cowboy. No, we did not live in the old west. Why bluegrass? He loved it, but I suspect it was a fiendish plot to annoy me as much as possible, because really, what better way than with a bunch of banjos?

Anyway, that was when I was a teenager, who could sleep until 11 or noon. I can understand how -- as an adult who naturally wakes up early after being conditioned that way from years of getting up for a real job -- it would be annoying to be around someone that lazy, and I can see how gratifying it would be to wake me up. But even after my kids spent five years waking me up, I now derive no satisfaction waking them up, since that is time I could be sleeping myself. Nobody wins. Now, all night long I’m doing the math of how much sleep I could get if I went to bed RIGHT NOW versus JUST 20 MORE MINUTES!

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When Lila was born, someone gave her a really soft yellow blanket that she warmed to. Then someone else randomly gave us a smaller version of the very same blanket. Since we always handed her the blanket before she went into her crib and we said, “Nighty night,” she started calling the big one “Nighty Night,” and the small one became “Baby Nighty Night.” She is incredibly attached to them, and often walks around the house clutching Big NN to her face, a la Peanuts’ Linus. When Lila was much smaller, I used to love pressing the blankets to my own face, because they smelled like her breath. They still do, although that smell has gotten a little less pleasant with the passing time, and is now part of the fabric’s DNA and won’t disappear after a washing.

Anyway, we have a rule: Big NN never leaves the house, while Baby NN is for traveling. We have had some close calls over the years, but never lost them. I once had a sweat-soaked moment when we left it at a restaurant and they maintained it wasn’t there until hours later when they discovered it in their pile of dirty napkins ready to be laundered, and Chris once dropped it at an open house, but we always got it back. I’ve oftentimes wondered just how hellacious it would be if we ever lost it. I’ve also marveled at the fact that we have managed to keep track of this thing for nearly five years, considering how often she randomly drops it places.

Well, this time we lost it.

He’s vanished. Probably lost in the park somewhere, we don’t even know. We don’t know exactly when we lost it, so don’t know where to begin to look for it. Christine only discovered that it was gone yesterday morning, when they were all leaving the house for the day. By the time I came home last night, Lila was fine, but apparently that morning she had been very weepy indeed. Lila was very concerned that Baby NN was lost and alone in the park somewhere. And when Christine told me that, I practically started crying, because I have the same worry. And I am an adult.

I’ve written before about how I have always had a bad problem anthromorphizing possessions. I have a hell of a time throwing anything away, because I always picture it lost and alone. Are you judging me? Well, how would you like it if you had been living comfortably in your home for years, with good friends that you consider family, and then one day someone without warning threw on the lights, grabbed you, and threw you out in the street? Pretty bad, right? Well then how do you think my old sneakers feel? Think about that, you callous bastards!

And now Baby Nighty Night is out there somewhere in the cold city. All he’s ever known is the safety of being pressed against a small child’s face, and now he’s probably being used as toilet paper by indigents. That’s quite a lifestyle change.

I’m a little concerned that Lila will come to me for consolation about this. At that point I should either make something up (blankets sometimes grow up and move to Blanketsylvania, where they all have big parties and are very happy!) or put it off (we may still find him) or give hard truths (sometimes things get lost, and it’s sad, but it’s just a thing, and you’ll be fine). But I fear that instead of all those choices, I will burst into tears and begin wailing, “I know! What are we going to do? He’s probably being eaten by a wolf right now! NIGHTY NIIIIIIIIIIGHT!”

I know, it’s crazy, but I’m consumed by this. I had been thinking recently about how we needed to start weaning her off her blankets (as well the accompanying thumbsucking). She starts kindergarten next week, so it’s definitely time, but we’ve read that peer pressure will likely take care of it. So while technically it’s good timing, I still find it heartbreaking. This isn’t the way I wanted it to go down. Though I would never have done it, it would bother me less if I had stolen Baby NN and told her it was lost, because at least then I would know the blanket was okay…which technically makes me no more mature than a 5-year-old.

I also have no leg to stand on: Growing up, I had a blanket named Lulu. Instead of sucking my thumb and clutching the blanket, I streamlined by sucking on the blanket. It was a torn mess by the end of its time with me; my grandfather called it Shredded Wheat. I still can remember the smell of it, which was instantly activated by my own saliva. I would slowly move around the perimeter of the blanket, seeking out dry spots. I owe my years of orthodonture to all that sucking; when I finally had to get braces, my teeth were pulled so far forward that they were practically horizontal. When I wanted to chew food, I had to just bash it over my parallel lines of teeth and then toss the bits into my mouth. But I remember how people tried to get me to give Lulu up, and how steadfastly I refused. I can’t even imagine how crazed I would have been had I lost it. Rest in peace, Baby NN. And I hope Lila gets over this faster than I would have. Or than I will.