You might be a poet if...

If your mind quickly, smoothly, moving almost without your awareness, makes far-fetched and appropriate metaphorical associations. Poets do this a lot, which is what makes some people's poems so exact, so beautiful.

Mona has, in only four months, become a thoroughly integrated part of our family. She already has her own habits, routines, and preferences. One of her preferences, which was a bright idea of hers (not mine) about four weeks ago, is to wake up early--say 3:30 or 4:00, sometimes 4:30--and do some intensive sleep-nursing. It's sort of a game. With any luck I will fall back asleep and forget she's there, and then she gets to stay and that's considered a score. When this happens, all three of us co-sleepers (I think they call them) switch into sleep-nursing mode, which means we all roll over in unison about every half hour. I guess this is because it's a queen-sized bed and so not quite large enough to allow one mother-and-baby unit to roll over without disturbing the father unit. Hence, both units roll at once, and a roll is usually initiated by the hungry baby sub-unit...although sometimes by me, realizing that if I don't keep moving I'm about to lose the game, sort of like how if you go to sleep in the snow you freeze to death?

Anyway, it was during one of these group rolls in the early hours of this morning that Peter's poetry kicked in: "You know," he remarked sleepily, "I feel like we're a bunch of rotisserie hot-dogs."

Bingo.