Twins are not gypsies, grilled ribs and get the hell over yourself

I rarely, ever look at daytime TV. I consider it the equivalent of sitting in a pool of radioactive slime. It slowly, silently saps you of your life.
Unless it's poker or stuff my not-quite-yet 2-year-old likes like Clifford, Little Einsteins or JoJo.
So I was trying to look away when I was running on the treadmill at the gym Friday, enjoying my hour off from Mr. Mom day (thanks sweetie) with a run, when I saw twins.
Twins. TWINS. Hey! Cool! I'm very interested in all things twins. No, not for that reason. How dare you. Get your mind out of the gutter.
It's more because of THE BIG NEWS. They are due (get your baby pool entries in soon) starting at the end of April (June e officially), and I'm trying to learn as much as I can about them before the girls arrive.
So instead of looking away, I decided to sacrifice a brain cell or two and watch the daytime TV show on twins. Maybe they would be discussing funny habits, eerie similarities or, better yet, how to raise them without going to crazy that you want to carve out your eyeballs with a piece of broken glass.
No. Instead, they claimed they were Psychic Twins.
Er. OK. I gave it a chance. Maybe there was something there about how twins seem to communicate with each other without speaking or how they seem to have a bond that no one can explain.
The show still had me.
Until they started talking about Brad Pitt.
Oh, God.
These were Twins Who Were Psychic and used those Psychic Powers to see in the future and tell us which celebrities will get married.
Ow. Ow. Owwwwww.
Sorry. I just lost another brain cell even thinking about it.
Damn you, daytime TV. Now not only did you kill a few of my precious cells (Ow) but you pissed me off. Twins aren't freaks. They are not psychic. At least I don't think so. And if they were, they would NOT use those powers to tell us what's going to happen with Brad Pitt's personal life.
At least not my girls.

(By the way, if there are any of my new twin mom fans reading this, my wife, who is already showing at 30 weeks despite being 24 weeks pregnant (hi mom hi mom), her ribs really hurt. Any ideas?)

• • •

This was awards weekend in Colorado. It's one of my favorite weekends of the year. I like awards, probably far too much. I have to admit it. I'm competitive.
We're all supposed to be modest and say awards don't mean anything, but deep down we all want to be recognized and know that's bullshit. I'm OK with the fact that I like awards even if they are just one judge's opinion and they are so screwy sometiimes (a great example, a reporter for the Rocky Mountain News won the pulitzer prize for feature writing but only took second in one of the two state contests, which is like winning a Grammy but not making the finals for American Idol).
I'm human, and if you watched the Oscars last night, I'm not the only one who appreciates trophies.
That's a couple of worthless paragraphs to tell you that I won three first place awards from the Colorado Associated Press Friday night and two firsts, one second and a third from the Colorado Press Association. I was proud. I've won at least one first place a year from both organizations in the last six years, but there still are only like 8-9 writing categories per contest and usually at least eight newspapers enter them. This year was a good one.
More importantly I got to hear Tom Hallman Jr. speak. Hallman Jr. won a pulitzer and was a finalist for two others and is one of the five best newspaper writers in the country. I came away from that inspired for the first time in two years, and I spoke to my editor about writing a weekly column, much like a metro columnist does for the big-city newspapers. He seemed supportive. If so I'll post them here once a week.
That's a big reason why I like awards, too. Others believe it shows you are good, and opportunities arise for them.
And with that, good luck Wil in the blogger contest!
(If you already lost I apologize. I don't pay attention to such things. Especially because I wasn't nominated).