So I was at my doctor's office yesterday for a quick diagnostic.

Naturally, it wasn't quick; they kept me sitting in the waiting room for about 45 minutes, altogether. Which gave me plenty of time to look at the picture they'd painted on the wall.

I wish I'd had my camera.

The main stretch of wall showed a quilt hanging from a clothesline. The clothesline was tied to the branch of a tree on one side, and on the other... A bird perched over the door held the line in its beak.

Um... Okay, fine, artistic license and whimsey. Whatever.

The quilt itself looked like it had been painted from a real quilt, perhaps, or at least from real samples of fabric. It was a typical pattern of large squares sewn together, some of which had pictures instead of mere fabric.

The William and Mary logo. A strawberry. A toothbrush. Some historical-looking tower that I didn't recognize.

Some of the pictures really had me blinking.

A badly-drawn band-aid. How hard is it to draw a rectangle with a smaller rectangle in the middle? It wasn't a rectangle at all; it looked more like a bow-tie than a band-aid. The painter was working in a doctor's office, for petesake; surely they could have asked for a band-aid to look at as reference!

A sporty square with a lacrosse stick and a soccer ball. Lacrosse and soccer? Those were the best two sports you could come up with? WTF?

But the thing that had me staring at the picture for most of my forty-five minutes in the waiting room wasn't one of the pictures, but one of the "fabric" squares. Well, four or five of them, actually, as - with any quilt - the fabric was repeated in several spots.

I suspect the original fabric from which the painter was working had been small, dark blue flowers on a light blue background.

But what it looked like on the wall, there in the doctor's office, was sperm under a microscope. Oval heads and flailing tails... It was almost frightening.

Like I said, I wish to heck I'd had my camera.

Penny went to bed a bit later than usual last night. Matt and I were hoping it would mean she'd sleep a bit later than usual.

No dice. She woke up at 4:15, cried for about 90 seconds, and went back to sleep. And then she woke up again at 4:30, and cried for a good half an hour. (It seems to me that she cries less if we don't go in to check on her, but we do have to check, after a while, to make sure there isn't actually something wrong.) Then, at least, she slept until 5:45, but I'm still kind of dragging today.

But it's still better than when we lived in dread of not knowing when she'd go to bed, or whether she'd be up in the middle of the night for an hour or more. Definitely better than that. Got to keep that in mind.

I've got to look at the positive side of things.

Just as soon as I have some coffee.

--Liz