How to NOT watch the Soprano Finale

On Sunday night, your kid who normally goes to sleep without a hitch will suddenly freak out. You will feed him normally on your right breast and when it's time to switch, he will not take the left breast for the world. He will clamp his lips shut, arch away from the breast as if it were the worst thing he ever smelled and promptly begin screaming/crying. You will woefully look at the clock. Ten to nine. You will squeeze said breast to see if any milk comes out. It does. You smell it. It's fine. You worry it was that glass of wine you had with dinner. Did it effect one breast and not the other? Screaming/crying continues, so you stand up and begin walking him around. Standing on the balcony outside your bedroom calms him down, but he's waking up even more, looking intently at the dusky backyard.

At some point, you woefully realize that even though all day you have been excited to watch the Sopranos, as it happens and not delayed, it's going to be a TiVo experience. That's okay. Maybe you'll just be a little behind.

But oh-no! Your child will fuss and cry for so long that you are sure he's got intussusception because there were a few poops with blood in them over the last week and he has only had one big and one small poop on that day, less than usual. You will begin to freak yourself out about it. Your partner will try and calm you down. It barely works, but eventually you get the Cricket to sleep by standing in the totally dark closet singing old church hymns like "On this Day, Oh Beautiful Mother" and "Salve Regina" while all the while you are feverishly praying to Our Lady to help make you a calm mother who doesn't freak out at everything and please, please, please help your overtired baby go to sleep. It works. Baby falls asleep and goes down in cosleeper, finally. It's 10:30 pm.

You join your partner downstairs, where you find that she put out some profiteroles, what she thought was going to be a Sopranos treat. You ignore the profiteroles (for a minute) and gulp the rest of the (one) glass of wine you tried to eat with dinner. You then promptly eat the profiteroles, but not as a Soprano snack. Instead you watch two episodes of the British soap you have been helplessly addicted to for the past thirteen (yes, I said thirteen) years. You are so upset by one of the current story lines that you don't feel you can go sleep, even at 11:30, a time you haven't willingly stayed awake to for a goodly while.

As you and your partner go to upstairs, you comment that neither of you will be able to watch anything or listen to anything until you have watched the Sopranos. And then you fall asleep, actually, relatively easy.

In the morning as you breastfeed your baby, you watch Good Morning America and promptly fast forward the portion where they talk about The Sopranos. You aren't proud that the nipple fell out of the baby's mouth as you lunged for the remote, but you do feel pleased that you've avoided any spoilers.

When the baby goes for his morning nap, you prep your lab for the next day. And then after that, before you start studying for test two, you decide you'll check Google news, forgetting that there is a big "Entertainment" news section. And then you will see a headline about the show. And you will not be able to get what you read out of your head. And you might think, "Why bother even watching now?" But you will still watch, but probably not until tomorrow after you are done with your Organic Biochem test. And you will have to put yourself into a little bubble until then so you don't find out anything more than you already did.

*Sigh*

Don't tell me anything about the show. Don't even hint. I'm going to study now, but the only thing that will stick in my pathetic brain is not going to be anything about fatty acids, sphingosphines, or carbohydrate hydrolysis, it's going to be all (vaffancullo!) Tony and Paulie.