A few words of explanation

Friends, have you noticed a distinct diminution in the quality of this blog lately? Have you idly scanned a surfeit of bullets, memes, and kid conversations, all the while wondering, "Yes, but where is the sustained thought, the incisive commentary, the delicate exploration of a theme and its variations?" Have you clicked quickly through in the hopes of finding, at least, a comment or two worthy of the efforts of your mouse-muscles, and then, briefly satisfied, heaved a sigh and returned to your open game of freecell? Have you been musing vaguely, in the quiet corners of your brain in which you keep those thoughts that you wish to deny, thinking "Lo! Has it yet come to pass that Phantom has finally jumped the shark?"

The answer to all those questions I will leave to be determined by the judgement of posterity. Someday, when the history of the pixie party is written by some as yet unknown chronicler, this may well be the moment that analysis proves to have been the beginning of the end. I am not here to make that determination. I am only here to offer a few words of explanation.

Friends, Baby Blue is phasing out her nap.

The nap. Let us take a moment to appreciate the nap. The nap is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. It represents a shining beacon of hope in the the swirling, tumultuous ocean of the day. There, the weary parent-mariner can fix her eye, drawing both strength and succor, as well as purpose and direction. Every day a parent steers her craft across the open ocean, through tumults and squalls, trending ever toward the peaceful calm of the sheltered cove: the nap.

Now, my friends, the good ship Scribbler-Blue is foundering upon a perfect storm: LG's preschool is about to end. Baby Blue has attained Relentless Conversational Status. And.... Baby Blue is phasing out her nap.

I'm not saying the nap is gone for good. No, it hangs on -- Baby Blue still naps more days than she doesn't. But the nap as a way of life? Over. Those days when I knew that an hour -- even an hour and a half -- of quiet time would be ours, no matter how the day had progressed? Gone.

Now, friends, we have entered a world of confusion and crankiness, which is similar to confusion and delay, except with a greater reliance on slammed doors and shrieking. We have entered a world in all bets are off. We have entered a world which resembles, in form and feeling, the very example of a vortex of chaos.

Friends, hear me as I sing my tragic tale of moorings lost! I am adrift upon the shoals of the ever-wakeful toddler, casting in vain for stars by which to steer. Will today be a day in which Baby Blue sleeps for 20 minutes? 40 minutes? Not at all? I look to the sky. There is no way to predict.

In such ways are all vestiges of control ripped from the structures of our lives.

Today, I keen in sorrow for the loss of the nap.

Tomorrow, I turn again to bravely face the day. The nap, it may be lost. But -- praise the Lord! -- television is forever.