For the record, the most difficult part living with a baby - in a purely physical sense - is the 6:30 a.m. wake up. Because not only does Nora wake up then, but, after she eats, she is ready to get down to serious business. Like do projects, schedule meetings, balance the checkbook, you name it.

And I’ve been thinking about ways to make the situation better, and the most alluring option would be to have a servant enter the bedroom with cups of coffee for J and I. A servant who would then change Nora’s diaper and bring us back to us all clean and everything. Because coffee and a clean child would be more do-able at 6:30 a.m., you know what I’m saying? When most reasonable people are still cuddled in bed or, at the very worst, watching the morning news in their bathrobe and not pulling their ten-month-old from the wine rack for the 400 or 500th time that day.

This person’s pay would be…well, free, because this awesome servant person love making our lives better. I realize people have nannies and sometimes the nannies do stuff like this but I’m thinking more along the lines of Mr. Belvedere, but less British and proper because I want someone who is not going to judge us for being in our pajamas and all, because then, what’s the point?

That’s all I want. And, I mean, a book deal and maybe a bigger TV if we’re really going crazy here.

Ok. You’ve done the Moonwalk, you’ve listened to “Billie Jean” at top volume and you Twittered your heart out. What’s left when it comes to remembering Michael Jackson?

Don’t worry, I’ll tell you.

Rock for Kids, an organization that raises money to help provide music lessons for underprivileged children, has launched Web site www.ImissyouMJ.com, to pay tribute to the king of pop, as well as to help to raise money for the organization. The site s a collective photo memorial that includes 10,000 photo plots available for purchase. The plots come together to form a mosaic of MJ’s famous white glove.

A $25 donation allows you to submit your own photo into the mosaic and receive a copy of this poster once the squares have been filled. Proceeds go to Rock for Kids and the poster itself will be presented to the Jackson family as a tribute.

TIME.com has listed this as one of the top ten places to pay tribute to Michael Jackson.

Learn more about Rock for Kids here, and make sure to pass on this wonderful fundraising opportunity.

I don’t know what happened, but after a week of feeling sorry for myself, I got over it and started enjoying not having a job. What the hell? I thought. I’ll take the summer off. I’ll get stuff done around the house. I”ll play with my daughter. I’ll harass the major newspapers until they print my work. Stuff like that.

And so far - as long as I plan my days well so there aren’t long stretches of me sitting there thinking about how I wish I had a big bag of candy, as Nora plays with her toys - it’s been great. I’ve really delved into home improvement, going beyond the whole keeping the house clean (while I’m on the topic have we really not come up with a superior alternative to sweeping in the modern age?) and have embarked on some projects. I even made a list. A list that contains really simple items like “plant hostas,” but also more daunting undertakings such as “shutters.” As though I’m going to put shutters on the house.

Today I took on our basement which is a serious mess. It’s where we put, um, anything, when we’re not sure what else to do with it. Like dog outfits and approximately six or 7,000 faux Pashminas, it turns out. I know because I was down there for several hours today, organizing items into plastic bins that will inevitably need to be reorganized once I’m finished.

If I could somehow rid myself of my sense of sentimentality I would get rid of all of it. For real. I adore getting rid of things and happily threw tons in my donation box today. But I do always end up keeping the occasional meaningful t-shirt or letter. There is always stuff that somehow evades the trash or Goodwill store, even if it has no place in my life, which is how I ended up tagging one of my plastic bins “stuff that doesn’t fit and winter hats.” Another, “non-nursing bras and Ethiopian clothes.”

At least when I’m done, though, the unnecessary will be neatly packed away. And when I open some box in the future, view the contents - which might include a toy plastic gun and a purse with a goldfish on it - I’ll remember this summer and how hard I worked, even though I had no job.

If anyone has any brilliant organization tips and would like to share them in the comments, they would be much appreciated, and I promise I’ll think of you when I’m boxing up J’s old copies of “Bird Watcher’s Digest.”

“Nora Claire Eat Your BROCCOLI.”

“Her Name Is Nora, She Came From the Hospital.”

“Wash Your Hands, Wash Your Hands!”

“Brush Your Teeth, Brush Your Teeth!”

“Please Don’t Take A Nap Now, Because I Need You To Take A Nap In Half An Hour, But Not Now…”

“Mommy Wants Her COFFEE.”

Variations on our original “What’s In Your Diaper?”

Since Nora has learned to pull up on the furniture, life is a total guessing game, as in, which thing could the baby potentially hit her head on next. I look away for a second and she’s hyper-crawled over to the basket of newspapers we keep in our living room, up on her feet, a death grip on a some section of the New York Times at the top of the pile as she wobbles and smiles at me.

I did some basic babyproofing after realizing she can and will hoist herself up on the heavy metal fireplace set, but it doesn’t matter, because all hitting your head requires is a floor. And you can’t get rid of the floor.

So, you know, no more quietly drinking our coffee while watching Nora lie on her back on her activity mat. On the plus side, though, Nora is always up for showing us her dance moves, and a lot of the time she’s more entertaining than the morning news.

My father emailed me earlier today with a story he’d heard about a woman who was arrested for breastfeeding her baby while drunk and now faces up to five years in prison, and instead of what may seem the obvious reply (”Poor baby!”) I was all, “Wait WHAT? FIVE YEARS?”

Apparently police discovered North Dakota mother Stacey Anvarinia breastfeeding her six-week-old while intoxicated and arrested her. Ok. It is no good to take care of your little baby while you’re drunk, even if you’ve had no sleep and are stressed out, and even if you really want to party instead of change the 100th diaper of the day. It’s just not a good idea and I think most reasonable people know that.

I think most reasonable people also know it’s not a good idea to breastfeed your child after you’ve had a ton to drink. I’m no scientist, but I understand the basics. The alcohol enters your breast milk, much like it enters your bloodstream, and then burns off as time passes.

So, you know, Stacey made a bad decision.

But still.

Should she be threatened with five years in jail? And really, should she have been arrested at all? Is breastfeeding while intoxicated the same as hitting your child?

I don’t know, and the problem is, nobody does. There aren’t many studies out on the subject, I guess because scientists aren’t into boozing up new nursing moms and watching what happens to their infants. Ethics and all.

Therefore, I don’t know what damage this woman may have inflicted on her child, or may have continued to inflict if authorities hadn’t stepped in. Yet I do worry about what this situation does to the image of mothers, especially breastfeeding mothers. Because it is so, so easy to lash out at this woman.

You know what, though? I’m a breastfeeding mom, and I drink too.

Ok, so I’ve never been rip-roaring drunk while cradling Nora to my breast. If anything, I was overly cautious to the point of annoying for many months about having a drink, constantly pulling J aside and asking if I was somehow ruining this life we’d created - being ridiculous, in short, because I followed all the rules. Despite the fact that I truly believe (having consulted several sources) that a glass of wine won’t hurt your milk or your baby, I never nursed Nora after having a drink, unless it was a few hours after and I felt certain it has passed through my system. I’m nursing less now, so it’s not as much of an issue. Plus, she sleeps from 7:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. most nights, so I don’t really have to worry about it. If one night I decide to have a drink or two, I’m pretty sure I’m clean after her luxurious 11-hour respite.

This isn’t the point, however. The point is that the whole drinking while breastfeeding thing is treated with a lack of humanity, in my opinion. A lack of reality, too. In “What to Expect the First Year,” the authors advise that having a “small drink” once or twice a week is probably alright, but never two drinks in one day. Never.

Other experts advise not drinking at all while breastfeeding.

I know, I know, it’s not that hard, right? Just don’t drink! You’ve got this beautiful little life to take care of! OH COME ON. It’s not that I want to go out and get bombed all the time, God knows I don’t. I need to be in bed by like 10 o’ clock because that is my bedtime as a parent. I mean, I partied. I had my day. Roll the film reel from Chapel Hill when I was 25! (Wait, there isn’t a film reel, right?)

But yeah, I want to return to some human form of myself before I became whale-like and had this child. Every once in a while, I want to have a glass of wine with my husband. I want to share a beer with friends at a backyard barbecue.

It’s fun to feel part of the breastfeeding club - I went to the support group, we ate cookies, talked nursing bras and had a nice time.

I also want to be part of the other club. The Rest of the World Club. The club where I don’t feel intense guilt for every decision I make as a mother, not only because people are getting arrested for breastfeeding while drunk, but because so many people are going to hate her. And maybe hate me.

People like this Babycenter commenter, who commented on their topic page about alcohol and breastfeeding, and sounds like she needs a drink herself:

“If drinking alcohol is such a f-ing necessity for you to function, then you need to put your baby on formula so they are not being continually poisoned.”

Fun! There are so many comments like this one out there. I’ve seen them.

There just aren’t many moderates in this debate - and I get it - I get it that medical experts can’t really tell nursing moms to drink a little if they want, because some women might take that to extremes. So I think we, the mothers, need to be the moderates. I’m glad the North Dakota case has brought this issue to the table. Not that it’s a matter of national urgency, but it’s nice to see the issue being discussed (I really like this blog post by Katie Allison Granju.)

Those are my meandering thoughts. For some reason this story got my defenses up and I felt the need to jump in. It’s hard to be a mother with all the differing lines of thought out there, and sometimes we need to be a little easier on ourselves.

I remember right after I had Nora, I was sitting in this breastfeeding information class at the hospital led by a lactation consultant. I was sore and beaten from the C-section, and the other mothers looked pretty tired, too.

Wouldn’t you guess, we all wanted to know what the rules on drinking and breastfeeding were. “It’s kind of like drinking and driving,” the lactation consultant told us. “If you feel intoxicated, don’t nurse the baby.”

Just a matter of common sense, she said.

I could read a million expert opinions and never find any advice better than that.

And with that, we mothers relaxed and moved on to much more important matters.

I have only read about two sentences of “Ulysses” despite my claims.

“Oprah” makes me feel good.

I want to do something great, but I don’t know where to start.

I’m going to do it until she’s one, but I’m sort of excited to stop breastfeeding in a couple months.

I just got a pedicure even though I swore I wouldn’t do anything like get a pedicure, since I don’t have a job, but you wanna know what IT FELT REALLY GOOD.

I was mildly intrigued by the Infinite Summer idea at first, but now I think everyone doing it is insane (ok, this isn’t a confession, it’s a statement, fine, I know.)

Despite the fact that I have a blog and am currently addicted to Twitter, the Internet is usually very boring to me.

I recently preset a rap station on my car stereo.

Lately I’ve found the “Modern Love” column in the New York Times - which I used to love - rather self-absorbed and I rarely want to read it anymore (one notable exception was June 26th essay by Simon Van Booy, which was fantastic and you should read it right now.)

I wish I was a better gardener.

I like all the rain.

I suppose my philosophy regarding television is similar to that of many parents - not that it is all too relevant considering my child is nine-months-old - in that I don’t want Nora to watch a lot of it. I’d rather she be outside, be creating art, be reading, be playing with other kids, with us, writing her first novel, whatever.

But I don’t have a huge problem with TV in small doses. Really, I think it’s just fine. It’s a hallmark of the modern age, and I’m not gonna go around pretending it doesn’t exist. Plus, sometimes it is awesome. It is AWESOME. Like when I used to work at home on Tuesdays with Nora, and I’d have a deadline, and Nora would be making her way over to the dog bed to lie down with Cecilia, because that seemed like a good, clean, normal idea, and I’d put on our Baby Beethoven video (thanks, Sheila!) and it solved everything. Nora would sit still and I’d get my work done in time.

Also, I think there is something sweet and comforting about watching TV together from time to time. J and I love the prospect of staying in and watching a movie. I’d never really sat and watched TV with Nora before, but just a few weeks ago we were at my grandmother’s, up early, before anyone else. I was watching the news while the baby played with her toys, and upon flipping through the channels I noticed that “Sesame Street” was on, a show I haven’t watched since I was a little kid myself. I picked Nora up, sat her in my lap, and we sunk into the couch and watched Elmo and Big Bird and learned about the letter T.

I liked it because babies are busy people, constantly on the move, so it was rare for her to remain so still and quiet for more than five minutes, warm in my arms, on that rainy, early morning.

There’s a quality issue, too, I think, when it comes to television. Quality for the parents, really, as in I like some kids’ shows more than others. For instance, my reaction to Barney is an instant desire for a quick death, while Nora really liked it. So that’s not one we’ll watch together.

The “Sesame Street” episode was another story, though. Charming and funny, but also reminiscent of my own childhood. So this morning, I was once again watching the news as Nora played, when she banged her head on this toy she’s currently obsessed with. It’s a little plastic table with a variety of musical instruments on top (thanks to Sheila, again!) and Nora thinks it is the greatest invention that ever was. Better than her parents and better than Cheerios. She’s learned to pull up on it and as she’s not that steady yet, she slipped on the rug and bumped her chin on the table.

Her little face crumpled and she started to cry so I scooped her up and, while it is not normally my first inclination to console with electronics, I wondered, as she whined in my arms, if “Sesame Street” was on somewhere in the great litany of cable TV stations.

It was. And - success! It was like nothing had ever happened. Or more aptly it was like an old, forgotten friend had made his way back into her life, like, “Hold up, HOLD UP ONE SECOND, Elmo’s back? WHAT?!?”