Marie Gauthier

On certain nights, like this one, it seems that I haven’t had a solid 5 hours of sleep since Vincent was born—but no, since before, because you know it’s impossible to sleep well during pregnancy, right from the get-go, when you’re waking up 3 times a night to use the bathroom, and those final months when you’re a beached whale moaning for the sea—my brain is so foggy I’m walking around the apartment squinting, and I’d swear that it’s been years since I slept.

But I remember: Thanksgiving evening, after a long, eventful day with much food and no nap, V. went to sleep, and stayed sleep, for 9 and a half hours. Straight. It’s one of those unexpected gifts (A Thanksgiving miracle!), so rare that we can’t be sure if it actually happened anymore, or if it’s merely apocryphal.

And these lovely evenings after he has so willingly and happily gone to sleep like a lovely lovely boy, I have these miraculous pockets of time, so I squint away at my books, here at the computer screen, instead of sprinting into bed like a sane girl, because these are miraculous pockets of time and I want to make use of them, not waste them sleeping.

Do you remember being a teenager, when you could sleep until 1pm if your mom let you? O the decadence.

In a political aside, John McCain is cleaning Romney’s clock in NH–[spontaneous Snoopy dance]–I think McCain’s a decent guy, and someone I have real admiration for–if only he’d stop being Bush’s sock puppet. And any time anybody beats Romney is a good day in my book. As for the Dems, no complaints here–and I have no idea who I’m going to vote for.