And then, overnight, all that hard work morphed into what you see here. As best as I can tell, Moveable Type (my old blogging software) got off its tired, cranky ass and whooped up on WordPress, possibly beating the code out of it with a walking stick.

Oh boy.

Did I mention that Clara Jane put herself to bed at 7 PM last night, and has been awake since 6:00? I was up until nearly 2 AM, as I become even more nocturnal when it's this hot.

Bear with us. Since we're up so early, we're going to take advantage of it and run some early-morning errands. Then we're going to spend the day at Cooperella, where I'm going to request that they pack my body in ice while I pump coffee directly into my gullet.

That day was today. While I love snow days, I hate heat-wave lock-down days. Heat makes me nervous and uncomfortable. Snow days are filled with cozy things like long-simmering soup, making homemade cookies, and snuggling on the couch with hot beverages. Heat-wave lock-down days are filled with things like waiting for the air conditioner to freeze up, doing everything in my power to not turn on the stove, and having mild panic attacks any time someone else's sweaty, clammy skin touches mine.

Well, except for Clara Jane. I'm used to her crawling all over me. That didn't make it any better when, this afternoon, I blew a raspberry on her bare armpit and found myself with a mouthful of sweat.

There is not enough Klonopin in this house for me to survive more than one Heat-Wave Lock-Down with two bored dogs and a child with sweaty armpits, on which I put my mouth.

(I shouldn't complain. I'm a lucky, lucky person who has the luxury of air conditioning in order to remain at a temperature that makes being alive possible, all while contributing to global warming. I'm a part of the circle of life. A sweaty, sweaty part of the circle of life.)

Anyway, I'd hoped to unveil the new, improved blog layout tonight. Not happening. Too lazy/tired. I'm so lazy/tired that I'm using my old PC. I'm too tired/lazy even try to get my Macbook to connect to the fussy, crabby piece of shit wireless router. It's the third one our ISP has given us, and the third on that won't hold a connection. The Macbook connects just fine and dandy when we're out and about. At home? The router's a lot like me and just wants to take a little nap.

But I'm not whiny today. No! You know a good way to spend one of the hottest days of the year? Why, in my basement rumpus room with a bunch of friends and kids, eating spinach-bacon salad, real Greek feta, homemade cheese - that's right, I said homemade cheese - and homemade hummus with enough garlic to make the entire state of Illinois vampire-free until at least 2018.

• Didn't blog.
  
• Knitted some socks that take me right back to The Wheel Thing Roller Rink, circa 1982. I love these socks more than I love my dogs.
  
• Drank beer at a local pub with a friend. There was live music, old couples dancing to Frank Sinatra covers, and absolutely no credit cards accepted. It was awesome! Upon leaving, I watched a few silent minutes of "The Simpsons Movie" from the drive-in theater next door to the bar. Reveled in how much I love living in this town.
  
• Celebrated Little Eddie's second birthday. Clara Jane celebrated Little Eddie's birthday the same way she celebrated Abby's birthday last week: by eating exactly two cupcakes-worth of icing and then going off to play with her father instead of the other kids.
  
• Worked on those major blog changes I've been threatening for ages. They're almost finished, I promise. Although I lied a bit; I worked on the major blog changes for about five minutes before I got completely befuddled by the complexities of the five-minute install and yelled for B. to help me.
  
• Sweated. Profusely. Just by sitting on my ass in my air conditioned house. I fucking hate August.
  
• Made arrangements to have the Monday playdate at my house, instead of going to the coffeehouse that's gonna feel the wrath of our motherly ire by the lack of our presence. Oh yeah.
  
• Went to Hawaii with Clara Jane. And by "Hawaii" I mean, "the basement". Imagination? Check!
  
• Made silly lists instead of engaging my brain enough to make a real blog entry.
  

Whenever something bad happens, I feel like I should say something. Then I feel arrogant for thinking I've got anything particularly insightful to add in the commentary of tragedies. Everyone I know in Minneapolis (including The Cuz) is safe, and for that I'm extremely thankful.

I've never been afraid of bridges, but I have to admit to being shaky during today's two trips over the Poplar Street Bridge, the massive interstate bridge that connects downtown St. Louis to the rest of the world. It was either stay home and give myself that form of post-traumatic stress disorder you get from watching the same traumatic footage over and over on CNN, or hang out at the coffeehouse and yarn shop with a few of my friends. I opted for the latter, bridge anxiety be damned, and I'm glad.

In much more superficial news, I finished another pair of socks today. This one took 16 days, which is the fastest I've ever knit a pair of socks. They're also my first foray in the world of knitalongs. A pair of socks each month from August through December? I can do that. Wanna see my first pair, in which I knit a whopping two inches during the month of August? For guilt's sake I'm going to finish another pair I started awhile ago and haven't finished.

Here's the ones I finished, in the always-lovely Dyeabolical Yarns.

Now that I've depressed you with bridge talk and bored you with knitting talk, you want to read cute stuff about my kid, right? Or about childhood trauma.

I'm fine. Really. Last night B. grilled some chicken breasts, corn on the cob, and wee little yellow potatoes, and it was all great. Well, until I got about three bites into my chicken and thought, "Mmmmm ... slick and chewy. Oh my God! Chicken shouldn't be slick and chewy!!!" and commenced spitting chewed food onto my plate and teaching my kid a new way to entertain herself at the dinner table. Sure enough, my chicken wasn't cooked through.

The other pieces of chicken were fine. Mine was the only raw one.

I have the disadvantage of knowledge in this category. In culinary school, they made damn sure that we knew every single thing there is to know about food-borne illnesses and how to prevent them. Generally, I can touch a piece of chicken or a steak and tell you to what degree it's been cooked, which makes me feel particularly stupid about devouring half of a raw piece of chicken.

I'm a bit on the paranoid/hypochondriac side as it is. Being on Salmonella Alert '07 doesn't help. Every time my stomach gurgled last night I was sure This Was It. And my stomach gurgled a lot. Turns out I was just hungry from not finishing my dinner.

It would be so much easier if they made early salmonella detection tests. If you see one line, you're negative. If you don't see any lines because you've befouled the stick, chances are you're positive.

Something's happened to me in this new house, particularly on Sundays. Maybe the precident of severe laziness was set the day after the Boob-Ha-Ha auction, when everyone in the house slept until noon, ate hot wings for breakfast, and sat on our asses staring at either the TV or the various computer monitors.

Oh, so this is why people sit on their asses and do nothing. Because it's fun!

Uh, yeah. Just like 95% of the videos on YouTube. Duh.

The video had been online for well over a year. It's a shaky, barely-audible (except for my stupid giggling) clip of two-year-old Clara Jane, eating a frozen yogurt pop and extolling the virtures of Wilco's "Candyfloss". It's a bad video that would only interest people who dig my kid and people who feel the need to hear the worst possible rendition of "Candyfloss" ever captured.

I chalked the comment up to some geek, probably a Wilco fan pissed off that my video interrupted a stream of a zillion concert bootlegs. I deleted the comment, blocked the user, placed a short little rant about it on Twitter and went about my business.

Later that day I got an email from my blog buddy Eden about how a similar issue with her YouTube account had blown up. I'm not even sure I responded to her email, since this all happened around the time of the Boob-Ha-Ha and I was majorly distracted.

Well, Eden's case has really blown up. So much so that I damn near watched Bill O'Reilly last night to see her talking about how she's suing Universal Music.

Sorry I couldn't watch, Eden. I didn't get the message until after the show. By then I was digesting a lot of curry and while I adore you and love what you're doing, I was afraid Bill would make me vomit Indian food, which is a sure-fire way to take the new right out of a new house. But I was supporting you in spirit. Truly. Because holy shit. I'm a music lover, and I'm so sick and tired of how the big music companies are grasping at pathetic straws to save their asses, instead of evolving with their consumers.

What musicians are signed to Universal? Andrew WK. Ashlee Simpson. T.A.T.U. Saliva. Smash Mouth. Suddenly, it makes sense why they would threaten legal action against a family. They obviously need the cash.

Yes, I'm choosing to ignore that some of my favorite artists - Johnn Cash, Ryan Adams, Amy Winehouse, Sonic Youth, Rufus Wainwright, U2, Drive-By Truckers, and Beck - are signed to Universal.

I'm not going to ignore the fact that really shitty records by the likes of Black Eyed Peas and Pussycat Dolls have brought fistfuls of cash to Universal over the past few years with songs about little more than female body parts. Nice. Way to support the arts and humanity, Universal!

I'm also not going to ignore the fact that Eden's video that's drawing so much fire contains music by an artist who has battled against record companies for the rights of artists and consumers for most of his 30-year career and has been at the forefront of digitally delivering music at a fair price to fans. My questionable video? Song by Wilco, a band that, when they got screwed by their record company, opted to offer their album for free on their website, eventually leading the record company to re-sign them to another imprint. Of course big record companies have to sue people! How else will they ever afford to buy the same album twice?

The whole situation makes my head hurt.

I know that laws are laws, but what happens with the laws are no longer applicable? I guess this is how change comes about. I'd love it if change came about by all parents uploading videos to YouTube of their kids joyfully dancing to copyrighted music that's barely audible in the background. If you've got the guts to do it, send me the link.

Speaking of dance ...

They haven't.

That said, they're better. When I'm anxious or, on the rare occasion, panicked, my first instinct isn't to run away from home, but rather to stay there. I've always been thankful that my particular version of agoraphobia got me out of the house instead of imprisoning me in it.

I had my first big attack since the move today. Not that it surprised me. It's the time of the month that leads to the attacks. My schedule was thrown off, thanks to everyone sleeping far too late this morning, which always puts me on edge. I woke up with a start at 10:27, terrified because Clara Jane hadn't woken me up She was fine. Just snoozing in after not taking a much-needed nap yesterday. Then Chloe, the Basset hound, had some issues walking up the steps, which sent me over the edge into sweaty, heart-racing fear.

She's fine. She just needs her butt popped again. Anal gland problems. They were full when my pal Jen the Groomer drained them on Tuesday. When they get overfull like that, the fill up again within a few days. It takes a few butt-poppings to get her back on track. Regardless, it's enough to throw me into a spin, especially when the time of the month is wrong, my schedule's off, and I've been over-busy.

We had some errands to run today, anyway, and I was thankful. I know I would have been okay at home, but I was relieved to have an excuse to not be there. We ran our errands and now we're at Cooperella for lunch. I thought we had arrived late enough to miss the bulk of the noisy crowd, but I was wrong. Apparently, today there's a meeting of St. Louis Shriekers Anonymous. I'm just glad that my kid is snuggled up beside me, quietly eating her turkey and swiss sandwich. Oh, and look who just walked in. The dad who, last time I blogged at Cooperella, blew a gasket because his son cast a sidelong, interested glance at a pink tutu. NO! Not for boys! NO! He's been here five minutes and he's already managed to lose the boy, who's probably in the boutique, trying on party dresses. I hope.

It's a good thing one of those errands I ran earlier today was to get my panic and anxiety drugs. Give me enough today to make me able to do little more than shuffle around, staring at my feet in oblivious bliss until the next few days pass.

This isn't a knitting blog, you know. It's a blog by someone who happens to knit. When I'm completely void of interesting stories, you get to look at what I'm knitting. It's socks. All the time with the socks. Did you know I have set a personal goal for myself to knit every pattern in Sensational Knitted Socks. I've already completed a pair for my mom and a pair for a friend from the book. Since the end of Boob-Ha-Ha, I've wanted to do nothing but knit, so I should be finished with the book sometime in 2014 instead of my originally-projected 2016.

See? I don't tell you people everything.

I finished yet another sock last night, in lovely yarn dyed by Rachel. Wanna see?

I've learned that it's a waste to spend $12 for a yoga class for my kid. Why? Because I wind up doing all the yoga, all while cajoling Clara Jane to c'mon, please be a downward-facing dog instead of standing there, interrupting the yoga teacher with the details of this morning's episode of "Curious George". The after-effects? All the sore muscles of yoga with none of the Zen benefits. Screw that. From now on, I pay $12/class to yoga teachers who don't invite pants-poopers into the classroom.

I've learned that what Clara Jane lacks in yoga ability, she makes up for in descriptive talents. For example: "Murphy throwed-ed up. She went [insert dog-vomit noises here]. It was orange and looked like a cupcake." I've also learned that there is something that can suppress my insatiable cupcake appetite.

Speaking of dog problems, did you know that Scott Wolf from "Party of Five" has a Maltese with fleas? I learned that yesterday. He sought advice from my pal Jen the Groomer. I don't know if the Maltese pukes orange cupcakes, though.

I've learned that, just because my dad complain on the length of our grass, that doesn't mean he's willing to go to the garage, get the mower, and cut it himself.