June 20, 2000 -- 4:06 PM EST

I woke up this morning and while trying to get Paul out the door I didn't even look for Minnie, but later when I went to the bathroom again I had to crack up. Ever since we've lived together we've had bathrooms games involving moving objects or drawing on the mirrors. We've fixated on Minnie as the object of choice to play with lately, and abandoned the stick-on dinosaurs. He moves it, I find it and move it, and then it's his turn again. I want to know how I'm supposed to move it when I'm too short to reach it?! He stuck it up on the ceiling AC vent!

Life in general is going pretty good. This weekend, I'm taking mom to dinner for her 49th birthday. Karen, my sister, sent us a whole box full of books she couldn't resell at the end of last semester. Lots of fiction short story collections. I hadn't read "Girl" by Kincaid in so long! She also sent along a college child development textbook and Paul started laughing.

The entire family on both sides is starting to tease us about the MaybeBaby. When Paul called his Dad for Father's Day he told him that he'd like another grandson. I guess after the last two babies being girls, it would just be interesting to have a baby boy around. Now Karen is mailing us child development stuff. Yeesh. At least nobody is sending us baby furniture or baby clothes!

I was skimming it last night and read about developing self-esteem in children. One of the diagrams was something like this:

Self-esteem, in general, was broken down into main categories and those main categories listed some examples. You could replace the academic stuff with career stuff and it pretty much holds for grown-ups. Whenever anyone asks me how to improve their self-esteem I have a hard time trying to give a reply, only having this vague sense that they ought to try to celebrate efforts in other areas of their lives and not get hung up on the small aspect of physical appearance. That your entire self-esteem isn't based on looks alone. The little diagram put it much more succinctly than I could though.

Paul liked the baby experiments -- visual acuity, depth perception, logic, reasoning, mimicry, etc. There were a whole bunch of pictures of a parent making faces at their newborn and the newborn making back the same face showing that very young babies can mimic. He practically had a fit over those because he thought newborns making faces was the funniest thing he'd ever seen. I have to admit, they are pretty funny looking.

Meanwhile, I'm happily doped up on Midol and feeling verrry sleepy as a result. I'm in much better moods and no longer quite so evil. My face cleared up. But dang, the older I get the rougher periods get. Mom keeps asking me about my face. I keep wondering too. I never broke out like this as an adolescent. Never had such bad cramps. Why now?!

I've been having intense cravings for sweet things -- candy, cakes, cookies. I've staved most of it off with fruits, but then with the package my sister sent, she'd thrown in some Flower's Kiss Candy and I ate them all already in one sitting. I couldn't help it. I've been feeling pretty wacky about sweets.

I have to try to get to the Asian Market and get some more. Better yet, that White Rabbit stuff I used to like so much as a kid. Kind of chewy... I don't think it's vegan though. Or those little dipping cookie stick things. Or Hello Kitty Candy. Ahhhh! The sesame seed brittle stuff! Yes! That! That's what I want! Not too sweet, and hard and crunchy!

~Astrophe