I've earned it, dammit

Zeke is starting the teething process on his upper gums, and it's a doozy. He's once again drooling like a madman -- soaking through his shirt in half an hour -- and goes through periods of such intense pain that he screams inconsolably. Mostly this happens at night. He'll start to cry, clutching at the side of his face (and no, it's not an ear infection -- we checked), thrashing around and banging his head into my chest. All I can do is hold him and try to soothe him and give him as much Tylenol and Advil as I can get my hands on.

Last night Zeke had three episodes in which he screamed in pain for 45 minutes. Which means that I'm exhausted and emotionally drained.

In the meantime, I can't get the TV in my bedroom to work.

It's something of a cliche that a young child will futz with a remote control or push a couple of buttons on a cell phone and all of a sudden it's inoperable and the parent can't figure out how to fix it. I've always scoffed at the notion of something like that happening to me, because I'm actually really good with technology and appliances -- I can fix or program just about anything electronic. My mother routinely calls me to talk her through setting up a new cable system or figuring out how to get the subtitles off the DVD picture.

Yesterday while I worked on the computer, Zeke was playing on the middle of my bed and got hold of the TV remote. He pushed a couple of buttons and the picture disappeared. I have worked on it for an hour and I can't get it back.

The past few times we've been to Costco, Jason and I have drooled over the flat-screen TVs. We've got a huge one in the living room, but we could use a smaller one in our bedroom, because the one we have is enormous and unwieldy and ugly. I want a pretty one I can hang on the wall.

So I've decided that the solution to the problem with my upstairs TV is to simply buy a new one. Good work, son...