Bed Side Table

When life gives you two kids and yet another snow day, well, if you're me, you gather The Little Mermaid, an exersaucer, and some goldfish crackers and then you hide yourself in the office with coffee. Lots of coffee. Then you dig through your e-mail and see that the Ten on Tuesday topic is 10 Things On Your Bedside Table and figure, I've got two hundred things on my bedside table so this is no problemo! I did give thought to cleaning off my bedside table before photographing it. Heck, I even thought about giving the dust a swipe, but then I decided authenticity would be more appreciated. Okay, that is totally not true. Though I appreciate authenticity when people share slivers of their lives, the reality is that I am vain enough to want to clean off my bedside table before sharing it with the internets. Unfortunately my kids care not about my vanity but instead about MORE PRETZELS WOMAN. So the pictures were taken slapdash and you get a glimpse of the real mess that greets me every morning, dust and all.

Without further adieu ...


1) My lamp. Something about a bedside lamp screams ADULT. Or this could just be because I didn't have a bedside lamp until, oh, about two years ago. I love this lamp and when my table isn't loaded down with stuff, it is like a little happy acrylic beacon that makes me smile. That being said, this lamp is a smidge obsolete now because my alarm clock (my husband's cast-off because he would send it flying whenever he hit snooze) has a built in night light. Nonetheless, I like the lamp and my husband has a matching one on his side, so it's staying. Note that the shade is once again straight. I noticed it was a bit wonky after I took the pictures and fixed that immediately. OCD? Me? No, why do you ask?

2) Two baby monitors. Two kids, two monitors, two reasons why I don't get eight straight hours of sleep.

3) Hand sanitizers. There are three different types of alcohol based hand sanitizers on my nightstand. It's not because I am some freaktastic germaphobe (I like to lick toilets as much as the next gal), but because of the kids. Inevitably someone is sick and since I am beckoned for binky retrieval or blanket fluffing (no, I am not kidding, it is ridiculous) at least once in the night, chances are I am encountering a snot factory or am one myself. The hand sanitizer is one of the ways I try to keep the snot factory to a factory of one, either by sanitizing myself before I attended to my charges or sanitizing myself afterwards.

4) Hand Lotions. All that alcohol hand sanitizer? It dries my shit out. So I have lots of lotions. These are usually lotions that are not my favorite smell good stuff, but more utilitarian. Currently I am a fan of a Gold Bond tube. It is made for feet, but I noticed that when I slap it on the feet at bedtime, my feet AND my hands look better in the morning. Win-win.

5) Stack o' books. These drive my husband INSANE. They are a leaning tower of trashy romance novels that I love and when I want to unwind before bed, these are my go to reads. Each has been read, at least, a dozen times, and each one I still thoroughly enjoy.

6) Borrowed books. There are two borrowed books. First, The Hunger Games, which I checked out from the library and HOLY GOODNESS! I've had it for two weeks and read it three times. It is fluff but oh-so-delightfully-good. Good enough that I am going to be getting my own copy once the library gets its back. The other is the new Susan Elizabeth Phillips book, Call Me Irresistible. It isn't as laugh-out-loud funny as some of her old ones but it was good enough that I started it at 10:00pmish and ended up going to bed at 2:00amish because I read it straight through.

7) Synthroid. You are suppose to take thyroid medicine in the morning and on a very empty stomach and that means nothing for an hour after you take it. So no coffee for an hour each morning after you take it. Ha! And, uh, not gonna happen. I leave the stuff on my bedside table and take it when someone wakes me up at some unholy hour, or, I take it the second I wake up. This lets me mainline coffee all the sooner. Also, Snythroid makes a good rattle when you have to bring a baby to bed and want to doze a little while longer. Unless you have a destroyer baby who can open child-proof medicine bottles. If that is the case then you might find yourself half-asleep, in a rain shower of itty bitty synthroid pills and wondering what the heck is going on. FYI, this is like a shot of pure adrenaline to the heart and really wakes you up quick.

8) Water bottle. Needed for the synthroid as you take it with "a full glass of water" but not "a full glass of coffee."

9) Stain stick. My laundry basket is just around the corner in the closet so this is the most convenient place to leave the stain stick and the best hope for me to remember to use it. Which I rarely do. Though I really should. Me = slob ∴ stain stick necessary.

10) Note pad & pen. Every night when I crawl into bed, I think of a dozen things I need to do the next day. And, every morning when I wake up, well, I can't remember them. So the pads and pens are suppose to be easily accessible so I can write stuff down. Typically the pen won't work or I am under the covers and so they never get used. But I leave them there. Hope springs eternal.