Curmudgeon has another pedestrian insight

There is an inverse correlation between blogging activity and activity in real life.

When we get busy in our real lives, our online substitutes may be neglected.

You'd think this would almost certainly be healthy. Almost. A lot depends, of course, on what takes up our time in the real world.

In my case, I'm not entirely certain how healthy it is.

Sleep deprivation isn't healthy. Younger Daughter's baby is the picture of robust, chubby health. She is gaining weight and she's strong as an ox. When I say she is a true Viking baby her father Olaf just beams.

But I don't see much of Olaf these days. Because that chubby, healthy baby is colicky as all get out. Long Suffering Spouse says she's never heard a baby cry so much. It's taken me 55 years, five children and one grandchild to find out that 'colicky' is just another word for 'gassy.'

Well, colicky is a far more polite word, isn't it?

Anyway, Olaf isn't getting a lot of sleep at night and he has to be up at 4:30am for work as it is. And Younger Daughter -- as I mentioned previously -- is really taking the brunt of it. But Long Suffering Spouse and I have not been unaffected.

We'd been trying to get to bed earlier before our domestic arrangements were so thoroughly rearranged. The idea was that we were better in the morning, and got more done, so why not get up sooner? That meant we shouldn't fall asleep in front of the TV and stumble upstairs at 1:00 or 2:00am as we'd begun to do.

And have begun to do again inasmuch as there's no point going upstairs into the land of the screaming baby, is there? And Younger Daughter is glad for her mother's company as I snore loudly away in my chair, asleep again in front of the TV despite my best intentions.

Really gnawing at us, right now, is Older Daughter's latest struggle with IVF. Again I mentioned this before -- but it's a daily roller coaster with her. Every cramp, every twinge, may mean failure. Or not. She's cornered the market in home pregnancy tests -- she's jumping the gun, of course, but that's how she is. Impatient. She wants to know now whether things will work. We'd like to know, too. But it's not in our hands -- or hers -- and, despite their pretensions, it is certainly not in the hands of her doctors.

Older Daughter has taken a leave of absence from work because she's been told to 'take it easy' while we wait for the fertilized eggs to attach. If it really was necessary to be practically stock still for a week in order to get fertilized eggs to attach, the human species would have died out eons ago. Somehow, though, women keep working and cleaning and picking up after us men and still manage to get pregnant and bring forth babies. Yet, Older Daughter's doctors yelled at her yesterday because she drove her car. It might be ill-advised to try and lift her car, but drive it? All her doctors care about is having their excuses lined up: If things don't work out, it will all be Older Daughter's fault. (In a pig's eye.)

Today seems like an uptick on the roller coaster and we're all happy. This may change the next time the phone rings. But I know this: If it works or if it doesn't, I will still have no use for these doctors who think they know everything and have no more control than... me.