This isn't a political blog. I'm not a political commentator. There are plenty of others, more qualified than I, to fill that role. And I'm guessing if you read between the lines, you can figure out my bent, anyway.

So I won't offer much commentary here, except to say you need to read this: Woodward Book Says Bush Secretly Ordered Iraq War. Bob Woodward says so, folks. I'm thinking I can trust him.

Will be very interesting to see how Dubya and his ilk react. And if it turns the stomach of the American public the way it did mine.

I'll be TiVoing 60 Minutes this week.

Men will never understand speculums. Or stirrups. Or the strangeness of making small talk about kids or the weather while someone's hands are roving around inside you.

Before I got pregnant, my annual exam was just a yearly necessity. It wasn't fun, but it was quick and I didn't think about it for another 12 months. Making the switch to the first letters (OB) instead of the second (GYN), though, transformed the trips from a chore into a treat. There's nothing quite like sitting in a room of pregnant women trading quips and qualms. And the actual doctor visit was heavenly -- free reign to talk about every little twitch of my body, to focus on the child growing inside me, hear her heartbeat and chart her growth.

The visits after Emma was born were a letdown. The six-week postpartum one wasn't so bad, because they were still treating my so-recently-pregnant body. My first real GYN appointment, though, was very sad. I was no longer a miracle, just a mom. No one wanted to hear any details of my life, but just to get a fast swab and get me out.

As if that weren't bad enough, the results came back abnormal. As has every Pap since Emma was born. So, I come back in four months and they get another sample. It comes back abnormal. I go through the fun of a colposcopy or cone biopsy and the days after, being stuffed with something that looks and feels like coffee grounds and chicken skin. Yay. And then the waiting, waiting, waiting to hear that yup, there's something abnormal, but they can't figure out what. It doesn't look serious. Come back in six months.

So, it's that time of year again. After the joy of this morning's exam, I'll get a call in a week or so to tell me, again, the results are abnormal. And we'll start the routine again.

Emma didn't "sleep through the night" until she was nearly 1. And even then, she nursed at 4 a.m. I went about 25 months -- from getting pregnant to having a 15-month-old -- without getting eight hours of sleep in a row.

I'm a big sleeper. Napping is one of my favorite activities. I haven't slept past 8 a.m. in years, but I used to love wasting a morning in bed. I used to be religious about being in bed by 10, but those last couple of hours in the evening are all Adam and I have to ourselves. Over the last few months, we've been steadily pushing our bedtime back -- 10:30, 11, 11:30. Which means I barely get seven hours per night.

And that's reduced even more when Emma's not sleeping well.

For the last few weeks, she's been waking a lot. She requests a drink of water, more music, a potty trip or a cuddle. When she was nursing, my sleeping ears were attuned to any noise. Our deal was that Adam would bring her to the bed and take her back, since I did the "hard work" (which mostly involved sleeping till I realized she'd finished on one side and switching her to the other). But Adam rarely woke when she cried, so I'd have to nudge him or go get her myself.

But since Emma was weaned, my sensors are a lot less sensitive. Sometimes, I only wake as Adam's getting back into bed after dealing with her. But three or four nightly interruptions -- even for only five minutes at a time -- wear on us pretty quickly. She's sleepy and sweet when we come in, and it's hard to begrudge her those things she needs. But it's hard not to be pissy at 3 a.m., too.

And then add Daylight Savings Time. Argh. The first few nights, she was awake back there for an hour or more. Now, she's dozing a little, calling us after 30 minutes to restart her CD or turn on her fan. So those couple of hours we're used to having alone are filled with "Was that Emma?" questions over Sopranos dialogue.

It's not nearly as bad as when she was wee, of course. But I'm dragging, longing to not hear a peep between 8:15 p.m. and 7:15 a.m. Wish me luck.

Growing up, my family solved problems the old-fashioned way: with violence. Arguments started with raised voices, dialed up to screams and yells and often ended with broken glass or bones. I held my own in the midst of it, because I had to. And because I was a teenager who'd been raised on drama. Yelling was often the only way to make myself heard.

I hate confrontations now. Hate them. And I'll go to unreasonable lengths to avoid them. Adam and I don't fight. Period. We have couple friends who bicker over every little thing, and it's so strange for me to watch them. That's just not how we handle things. I'm not claiming we never disagree, just that we deal with it differently. We don't raise voices or slam doors. And it's not that Adam hates the scene the way I do -- he's been known to yell at the TV or kick the wall over a home-improvement project gone wrong. But he learned early on how uncomfortable fighting makes me, and so we just don't do it.

And I rarely have to, with anyone. Now and then something will come up at work that I dread --- telling a freelancer he or she has really missed the mark, making a stand over a policy, stepping on someone's toes about ownership of a project. But I've been here nearly five years, and most of the toe-squashing was done at the beginning, as we established guidelines. It's rare now. And I'm glad to not have a job where yelling is the rule rather than the exception. It's not an environment I enjoy.

So, I've been dreading today's task: telling Emma's day-care provider we've made other arrangements for her care. We've been having issues for a while, and with Em starting preschool this summer, the entire schedule was going to change anyway. So we decided to be proactive and find another setup.

I think we've found something ideal -- starting next month, a student is going to come in the house for the few hours a week Emma isn't in preschool or with Adam or I. She's game for the kind of direction and involvement I want: planning activities and books around a theme, lots of trips to parks, museums and the library, crafts and learning games, etc. Plus, she and Emma already like each other.

But telling the woman who's kept Emma for the last 18 months had me on pins and needles. I expected an ugly scene and was dreading it.

For no reason, it turns out. I'm sure she thinks we've become more effort than we're worth, particularly given how few hours she would've had Emma once school starts. We're demanding parents, I know. And I'm surprised, but quite happy, she let me off the hook so easily when I told her of our plans.

Crisis averted. Thank god. I can bury my head until the next time I need to dread someone's wrath.

A few requests:

Don't let someone who doesn't know me talk about washing machines, turtles or God. In fact, don't let someone who doesn't know me talk at all.

Don't act like you were my best friend. Unless of course you were.

Don't point fingers and blame someone for my death. (Unless I was killed by a drunk driver or ax murderer, in which case, point away.)

Don't list what elementary schools I attended and when. And don't mention that trip to Falls Creek when I "accepted Jesus."

Don't open the coffin. (One of my favorite things, oddly, about being a Jew is the plain-pine-box, no-open-coffin funerals. But still, this is an important reminder.)

Don't shush small children.

Don't waste your money on elaborate floral arrangements. Eat a big meal instead.

Don't talk about me being "called home." Don't say I was on loan from God.

Don't let the funeral parlor put an ad on the back of my program.