Apparently I Am Still Really Close to the Precipice

So, last night at around 3:30 a.m., I awoke to the sound of a vociferous bird singing, uber-cheerfully. It was really, really loud, and it felt like it was right beside my head. I roused my disoriented self, looked on my bedside table and saw that with every chirp and whistle of this peppy little bird's croon, the red lights on the baby monitor danced along with it.

The transmitting end of Olivia's monitor is stationed next to her crib. So either this overly-exuberant, time-confused, fucked-if-only-I-owned-a-gun Bird is right outside her window, or my little Tippi Hedren is in big trouble in there.

All that practice I had with her waking up every two hours for a petite dejeuner means nothing now that I have had a couple of weeks of eight-straighters, and I am stumbling through the house like Lee Remmick in "Days of Wine and Roses". I make it to her room, peek in and see that the bird is in fact, outside, thank God, but Olivia's eyes are open because that bird is the loudest m'fing bird I have ever heard in my life.

I tiptoe (why, who could hear my little footsteps above the din of all that racket?) back to my room, where I lay back down, attempting to ignore Olivia's (now rising) cries and The Bird. But then I worry she's scared. She never cried at night, only yelled for me to come serve her, and now she sounds like she is actually producing tears. Because she thinks that The Monster outside her window is coming in, and I swear myself that I can now hear that It is wielding a glass cutter. So I go and put the pacifier in her mouth, which soothes her a little, but now I am WIDE AWAKE.

Of course, in an OCD-kind-of-way, I start thinking maybe I should Google what kind of bird this is ('cause that's just the kind of curious girl I am), and I should turn off the alarm and go outside and chase him away by chunking rocks at his big head. But pretty soon It finishes singing, or drives off or something, and Olivia falls asleep and I am awake for the day, at 4:00 a.m.

And then I wonder, did MBF Tracy send this Bird over to sing me Happy Birthday? Scary, because warmly, within one interrupted sleep, I feel like I am welcoming someone with whom I had become quite familiar: that insane, non-sensical, sleep-deprived girl whose butt landed right in Boca Community Hospital.