A few years ago, I first remember hearing it: the use of "earnest" as an insult.

ear·nest

¹    [ur-nist] Show IPA adjective

1. serious in intention, purpose, or effort; sincerely zealous: an earnest worker.

2. showing depth and sincerity of feeling: earnest words; an earnest entreaty.

3. seriously important; demanding or receiving serious attention.

I remember feeling shocked, then flashing to embarrassed, because I am quite often seriously zealous.

Then the emotion turned to anger, and I didn't like that feeling, so I put the entire issue aside.

Today I read the word "earnest" in its usual context, but I immediately remembered the whole earnest-as-an-insult thing and decided to focus on why it made me so mad, because it was a sort of irrational mad. Perhaps even an earnest anger.

Upon further contemplation, I realized a similar word for me is "hysterical." Immediate, irrational anger. There is nothing inherently wrong with that word.

hys·ter·i·cal

[hi-ster-i-kuhl] Show IPA adjective

1. of, pertaining to, or characterized by hysteria.

2. uncontrollably emotional.

3. irrational from fear, emotion, or an emotional shock.

4. causing hysteria.

5. suffering from or subject to hysteria

Except that both of them have at times been applied as insults in order to belittle someone who may have a legitimate cause or gripe. These two adjectives both imply passion, emotion -- the exact opposite of apathy.

ap·a·thy

[ap-uh-thee] Show IPA noun, plural ap·a·thies.

1. absence or suppression of passion, emotion, or excitement.

2. lack of interest in or concern for things that others find moving or exciting.

I equate apathy with one of two things: teenagers or clinical depression.

When did it become cool for adults to pretend not to care about things that are totally worth caring about -- whether they are political causes or volunteering opportunities or their kids? When did it become awesome to publicly belittle someone who has put effort and enthusiasm into anything?

I'm losing my edge.

I like to poke fun as much as the next person, good natured fun. But somewhere along the line, I shed my desire to appear above the fray. I completely understand that I am not cooler than any other person on this planet, because I've given up on cool. Whether they annoy you or not, earnest people get things done. Hysterical people are often reacting to a very real injustice -- they are moved to get angry because someone's been mistreated and everyone's acting like it's no big thing.

Nobody would ever make art if they weren't earnest. It's too hard.

(definitions from Dictionary.com)

Wow, thank you to everyone for your helpful ideas about getting to sleep. Isn't it funny how something so basic should be so difficult for so many of us to attain?

Ironically, since I wrote this post, she has slept through the night, though she still wakes up really early, in my opinion, for how late she goes to sleep. My husband only sleeps about five hours a night, though, so it's possible her natural needs are lower than those of other kids.

We have a routine, though it's been  pushed back a lot these past few weeks as we try to suck the marrow out of summer/early fall while the weather is still good and the light is still here after dinner. Third grade strangely has produced less homework than second grade, though more reading. She gets home from school at 4:30 on the bus and either does her homework or entertains herself in some other manner until I finish work around 6. Then we make dinner. We've been eating outside as much as possible. The last few days she's wanted to play outside with neighborhood friends, climbing trees and swinging. I'm fairly sure climbing trees and swinging are part of what combats global warming, so of course I let her do those things whenever she wants.

I'm not sure if the physical activity has tired her out more or if she's just getting back into the rhythm of life again and thus sleeping better. After she comes in, we have dessert and talk a little, then she showers and then there's about a half-hour of stalling and procrastination, then she climbs in bed and a parent reads to or with her for a half-hour or 45 minutes, then we lie next to her while she falls asleep. When it's me, I count backwards in my head to keep MYSELF awake, because I can fall asleep at the drop of a hat. She also has an air cleaner that makes noise, a lit fish tank with pleasant bubble sounds and a fish light that throws dappled blue light on the ceiling. The kid is practically living in a spa of sleep aids.

I got a sleep aid machine breathing monitor in the mail yesterday for review, but we haven't had a chance to test it out on getting her back to sleep yet. I'll let you know how that goes. It's a great concept. I used it for exactly three seconds last night because I require no help falling alseep.

We did have both the little angel and Ski Bear take an oath on Monday night that they solemnly swore to try to stay in bed and lie quietly instead of coming to get us for at least ten minutes to see if they could fall back asleep on their own. They held their right hands up and repeated after me. Ski Bear is known to break his oaths, but the little angel is usually pretty good.

So, thus far, during the work week she is sleeping okay.

And, since this post was sorta boring, here's a post about The Light Bulb Conundrum of the Easy Bake Oven that I wrote on BlogHer yesterday.

My daughter struggled with sleeping until she finally slept through the night for the first time at about four years old, shortly after we moved into Chateau Travolta. That whole period of zero-sleeping through the night is a giant haze and something I like to avoid thinking about, except to note she was cute and sweet even though she never slept.

Then she turned into this awesome sleeper who could sleep through military helicopters flying over the house and fireworks set off next door and kids opening up their muffler-less cars on our little residential street.

And it was good.

Then, this week: eight-year-old insomnia. WHAT?

Last night I went to bed too late, slept from midnight to three and woke to hear her crying. She explained what she was crying about (nothing big), then I crawled in bed with her, but she was Wide.Awake. Then Petunia wandered in and was all meowy-meowy, then the little angel was REALLY REALLY WIDE AWAKE, and then she tossed and turned until I said, "I'm going to check on you and go back to bed," which means, "I've had it, kid."

I went back to my bed and five minutes later, she was there, too. Then she did fall asleep and started shoving me farther and farther toward Beloved, who may have been suffering from allergies (I wear earplugs, and no, they don't work). Finally, my back felt like it was being stabbed from the bizarre position I was in, so I extricated myself vertically and went into HER bed, leaving her to stick her bony little knees into my husband's back instead. It was about six by then. I finally fell asleep in her bed, and she must've slept in my bed, though I doubt Beloved did.

This morning on the way to school (I had to drive her because I couldn't get my EYEBALLS TO OPEN in time to get everything going to catch the bus), I said, "So what was going on this morning?" And she was all "I don't know. I just couldn't sleep."

RECORD SCRATCH

This can't happen again.

So we talked about relaxing all the different muscle groups. And we talked about counting backwards from 100. And we talked about what works for me, focusing on relaxing the muscle between my ears. And we talked about deep breathing.

And she was all PSHAW.

The bad part is that she woke up at three on Saturday night and couldn't go back to sleep, too.

OH MY GOD WHAT DO I DO?

Does anyone know how to cure insomnia in a kid?

Ireland, by Peter Cox.

This post was recognized by Five Star Friday. I'm honored.

Today's post was going to be a series of blurry photographs of Miss Elephant and her new outfits. Miss Elephant came from the circus, and her outfits came from the sewing scrap pile. Don't worry, they're still coming, but there's something else I realized I have to write first.

---

Two events came crashing together this morning, launched by another last night. I tell you this because sometimes I myself wonder how I got the idea to do something. One was the launch of the BlogHer Book Club discussion of Brene Brown's new book, Daring Greatly. The other was a text conversation I had with a friend who's been going through a very extended trough in her life. During the course of our conversation, she wrote, "Sounds like you're doing well from your blog, though. Yay!" And for the most part, I am, and I was glad she was happy for me in the midst of her hard place, which is truly who she is, a very generous and lovely person. I would like to be more generous and lovely, myself, so I appreciate it when I see it in others.

But I felt like such a liar.

---

We discussed Kansas author Laura Moriarty's book The Chaperone in BlogHer Book Club a while back, and since I realized she teaches at KU and lives in Lawrence just right down the road from me, I decided to check out her backlist. Wow. I totally went fangirl and read them all. Laura Moriarty writes books that are painful to read because they are so fucking real. Last night around midnight I finished The Rest of Her Life, which is a book about the relationship between a mother and her daughter after the daughter accidentally kills a schoolmate by hitting her with her car.

And there are about a million passages in this book that made me gasp and examine myself and freak out. And this was one of them:

"'Oh," Pam said. It was all she said, that one word, but her voice held so much ache and sympathy that it seemed to Leigh her sister might have actually been there at the market and seen Diane Kletchka's misery and insanity for herself. Leigh relayed the entire confrontation, and her sister's face grew more distressed. It was hard to tell who she was feeling sorry for -- Bethany's mother, or Kara, or Gary, or Leigh herself. And that made sense. Leigh knew this even as she was talking, even as she felt a resurgence of fear just describing the scene. There were, after all, no underdogs in the scene, no winners or losers to root for. It was a miserable situation for everyone involved. An objective bystander could only wish they would all get through it." - p. 248

I read that last night, and it lodged somewhere in my mind, a piece of the puzzle sliding into place. And that's why I texted my friend this morning, because there are no underdogs in her story, either. Just a trough and a hard time, and I wanted to let her know I was thinking of her.

---

This new book of Brene's is all about vulnerability and not being afraid to get in the arena and show people who you really are, even though that can make you look incompetent (you think) or ineffective or sort of vindictive or unfair.

For almost a year now, Beloved's been traveling for work. A lot. Like a several times a week. And I knew with him taking this job it would put new challenges in my road. Most days I handle them well enough. Last night, though, last night, I could feel myself getting sick, and I was standing at the counter getting that dizzy/tingly/oh fuck feeling, and the little angel was asking about dinner and the movie I promised to watch with her, and the trash needed to be taken out, and the cat was protesting for her dinner, and I wasn't quite done with work for the day, and it Felt.Like.Too.Much. As it often does.

I'm not a full-time single mother, but I play one part-time in my life right now. That means my schedule is dictated by my daughter's and husband's, as there is often no one else to watch her or take her where she needs to go. Sometimes that means I can't make plans with friends or answer the phone at certain times of the day. And then I worry I'm hurting the other people in my life by paying them no attention.

---

Years ago, I would've just blamed this all on my husband, because that's the easy thing to do. I spent much of my early marriage holding him responsible for all manner of things that weren't his fault. And sometimes I find myself tempted to do it now. After all, he's gone while I'm doing the work at home, right? It's not like we're Downton Abbey with staff here. But I know how much he wishes he were here. I know how hard it is for him to be away from us at night, especially when we seem too busy to talk to him, but that's really because everything takes me a million years when I have to do them one at a time, and by the time he calls, we're fried and trying to get to bed. He knows this. I know this.

There are no underdogs here.

---

So yeah, there has been Miss Elephant this week. And a glorious bike ride on Sunday with my husband and daughter, and she made it nine whole miles and then we went to Cold Stone. But there was also last night, at the counter, with tears running down my face and me emailing my parents to say I WANT MY MOMMY. And then she emailed back with something about making iced tea for my cousin's bridal shower and I was all THAT IS NOT THE RIGHT RESPONSE TO I WANT MY MOMMY. Which she fixed this morning, but in that moment, I just fell apart.

We're all just totally treading water.

But don't we all look nice on our blogs?

So yesterday, I was having a day. I snatched the little angel right off the school bus and drove twenty miles to get her to a make-up ballet class, for which she was not dressed or hairdressed. We hit every red light in the Kansas City metro area, and while I was shoving her into her tights, I gave them a huge run. Then her hair wouldn't stay. She'd been crying most of the way to class because she didn't realize she'd have to go and was worried because she didn't know anyone there or the teacher. And we were twelve minutes late. And the teacher turned out to be the director of the entire school. And I'm not sure she was even marked as being there. And while I was going down to the waiting area to silently berate myself for such a parenting fail, the strap of my shoe broke, rendering it impossible to walk.

While we were driving home, I saw one of those BMWs that looks like a Corolla. I've never understood why one would want a BMW that looks like a normal car -- maybe someone can explain that to me, because there may be some epic German engineering even in a tiny four-door -- but it was clear this car owner had bought the BMW because he or she always wanted to say "I drive a BMW." And the reason I know this: the vanity license plate said "BMR."

And my brain thought: BRLY

And I laughed and laughed until the little angel asked me what I was laughing about and I had to admit I was just being mean in my head, and I should really stop. It's not BMR's fault I had a bad day.

Last night, I was reading my book at my daughter's gymnastics class, listening with half an ear to two other mothers talking about their children's extracurricular activities. This year is the first year we've had the girl in more than one activity at a time (swimming lessons being the exception -- swimming lessons trumped everything for us), and it's tough. We've already had to make a hard decision to keep her from trying out for something in ballet she really wanted to do because of a family conflict, and I look forward into the middle school and high school years and wonder how many conflicts will arise if she does any organized anything -- sports, band, speech, theatre, choir -- any of it.

So anyway, this women had two kids, and she was telling the mother with three kids about how she'd just been at karate for an hour and then had to tag team getting the karate kid and taking him home so he could get to bed and coming back to gymnastics for the gymnastics kid. And the other mother said how all three of her kids take piano lessons and she ends up going to this house three times in three hours or something like that, and I found myself doing mental calculations of how much all these lessons must cost and how much driving that must take, and I must've looked up in shock, because suddenly they were both staring at me.

"Um. I have one kid," I finally said, laughing awkwardly.

This was followed with both, "Oh, you're so lucky," and "My sister-in-law only has one child and my husband told me we absolutely had to give ours a sibling so I ended up with three."

There was a time, earlier in my parenting experience, when the latter statement might have reduced me to tears. The woman clearly -- from her expression, anyway -- meant me no harm. Yet she'd just insinuated to my face that I had somehow scarred my daughter for life by not giving her a sibling.

It's tough, not offending people, and I've loosened up a lot. I don't believe at all most people mean to offend each other, and sometimes I think we collectively as a society need to cut each other a hell of a lot more slack and assume good intentions. There was a time, earlier in my parenting experience, when I would've gone home and cried for two hours and worried my daughter would grow old hating me and wishing she had brothers or sisters. Compound this event with the fact earlier in the day Beloved and I made a classroom visit and one of the kids asked if our girl was an only child and I almost asked if anyone else in the class was but stopped myself because what if nobody else was? Would that make her feel even more different than being the only one in the class with red hair?

I have spent a ton of energy worrying about her only-child status. I write about this now because I am so comfortable in that status. She may be upset with me someday, but if it weren't this, it would be that. I have heard plenty of times from friends who are only children they don't really like the caretaking role as their parents get older, but I've also heard plenty from friends who have siblings who don't do shit, so it's really a toss-up, at the end of life. You just never know. No sense in killing yourself worrying about it.

Obviously, if you read this blog, you know I still worry about every other thing under the sun, but I do believe I've put the only-child shame to bed.

One thing I've noticed, though, is that I revel so much in my small family that I have to check myself when I talk to other mothers of onlies. Some families aren't small because the parents wanted it -- sometimes there's a fertility issue or a divorce issue or some other thing that held back the size of the family, and I'd hate to ever hurt another mother's feelings by crowing about only children if her heart is breaking for five. It's such a loaded thing -- but it's such a frequently discussed thing. Almost every time we meet new people as a family of three, the fact my girl is an only immediately comes up, and their feelings on our choices are often written on their faces, and it's frequently, well, shock.

But last weekend, I was in Lawrence with my best friend and her only child, which she had with her only-child husband, and we ran into her graduate advisor and his wife and only child. And it was pretty fucking awesome to not explain anything to anyone.

So, if you're out there, and you're considering stopping at one, I'll say it loud and again and over and over, because I needed people to say it to be over and over before I could override societal messages telling me I had to have more kids -- you don't. You can stop if you want. And if people ask if your child is an only, just say, "Yes, she is!" and give them a huge smile. Because I've done this many times, and it's like you see the other person consider the follow-up question and realize how rude it is ... and stop. And then we change the subject, or I ask if they have kids, too, or something else, but it takes the spotlight off me and my daughter (who is inevitably standing right there listening to the whole exchange with her eight-year-old ears).

Repeat after me: "Yes, she is!" NO EXPLANATION.

Last month, the Arens family won an iPad in a sweepstakes put on by ClassWish. (They are awesome, go buy some books and the school of your choice gets part of the proceeds.) Since then, we have been using the FaceTime feature on it to talk to family back in Iowa.

We've noticed something. If the camera adds ten pounds, the pixelated oranges of FaceTime adds ten years, as well as sunspots, shine and huge pores (for white people, at least).

It's so bad that my mother commented once on how unflattering the view is of oneself, especially considering you're almost always looking DOWN on the iPad in your lap, thus adding double chins to the effect.

Seriously. Here is me right now, normal, head-on, not-great-lowlight-cell-phone pic.

We see a few fine lines and wrinkles, but otherwise, hey, I'm 38! I don't appear to be on the edge of death.

Now let's check out FaceTime on the iPad. (Note: It is crazy super hard to take a picture of yourself on FaceTime because you're in the picture holding the phone over your face and blocking yourself. I had to hold the phone like upside down and backwards, then rotate the whole thing to show you. You're welcome.)

Sunken eyes, shiny NECK? And OMG ARE THOSE JOWLS?

It gets worse from the lap angle.

Now I also have several odd slopes on my face and a comb-over.

Please tell me I am not the only person experiencing this phenomenon?

I'm told I should start a Tumblr blog for these pictures. I'm too lazy to do that, so I'm creating a new category: Scenes I Walked in On. I'll try to go back and find all the others and tag them so they're in one place. I can't bear the thought of tracking more than one blog.

A few days ago, I walked into the living room after the little angel had gone to school and found this.

It reminded me of some horrible movie I saw in the eighties in which all the people were wrapped up by giant bees or spiders or something. With more than a little trepidation, I lifted the blanket.

And then I saw this.

So I did what any logical person would do. I tweeted the Nelson Atkins museum. We were just there. Looking at mummies.

Maybe should not have taken her thru Egyptian art at the @nelsonatkins last weekend? instagr.am/p/PPakDuvm_H/

— Rita Arens (@ritaarens)

Which is funny, because I always feel so dumb at art museums. While talking to the front desk folks, I forgot the word "sarcophagus." Then I got into an extended discussion  with a docent about a pieta in which I screwed up art terminology. I thought a pieta was any piece of art depicting Mary and baby Jesus. It's so not. It's Mary and dead Jesus, which is really much sadder than Mary and baby Jesus.

But he'd never heard of it either way, so I guess there's that.

Then the little angel asked me if it was okay to think art showing Jesus was really ugly, and I told her I thought the real Jesus would not be upset if she didn't like art created before people discovered foreshortening. She was extremely relieved. I actually remember having the exact same question about her age. They should really go through these things in church.

Lo and behold, the museum tweeted me back!

sarcophagus bears? “@ritaarens: Maybe should not have taken her thru Egyptian art at @nelson_atkinslast weekend? instagr.am/p/PPakDuvm_H/”

— NelsonAtkinsMuseum (@nelson_atkins) September 6, 2012

@nelson

Send her over to help w/ our installations :} “@ritaarens: @nelson_atkins I think so. Otherwise, the Chinese bed with the drapes. #art”

— NelsonAtkinsMuseum (@nelson_atkins) September 6, 2012

So then, just as I'm securing funding to send my little art genius off on her future career, I learned the truth. When she got home from school, I asked the little angel what up with the bears.

"Oh," she said. "They're sleeping. The light hurts their eyes."

Damn.