I should really be asleep by now. In a few short hours, I’ve got an early morning meeting with the special education teacher at Sophie’s school — I need to try to convince her that even though my kid’s got an IQ of 86, she deserves time in the “resource room” without letting her think Sophie needs to be in a special program at another school.

I’m grouchy. I hate the word “special”. I keep thinking of that Saturday Night Live character who used it all the time — “He’s so SPECIAL” — you know, the one who lisped a lot. I’ll have to look up the particulars.

But that task is for another night, because tonight I will not be googling. Nor going to bed right away. I’m headed to the couch with “Breaking Dawn,” the embarrassingly addictive fourth Young Adult novel by Stephenie Meyer. (Lauded as the next J.K. Rowling, but for teenage girls and pathetic, panting older women. I’m horrified to admit that these are vampire books. With werewolves in them.)

I stayed up late last night reading the book (it’s ginormous — probably 600 pages) and was up before the proverbial dawn, reading it again, thanks to Annabelle’s Digi-Pet, which started demanding “food” at about 4 this morning.

I do not know how the rest of my family slept through the very large beep that came out of that very tiny piece of plastic crap, particularly since it was nestled about, oh, five inches from Annabelle’s head. I finally crawled out of my own bed, wrestled with AB’s alarm clock til I realized that wasn’t the culprit, grabbed the Digi-Pet and deposited it on the dining room table, on the other side of the house. I narrowly avoided stepping right on a gecko carcass. (Why does the cat insist on leaving the torso?)

I crawled back into bed, but since I had stupidly sworn off Benadryl (for one night, anyway) I was wide awake.

So I headed to the couch with Bella, Edward and Jacob. I won’t spoil the story (so far) for anyone who might dare lift the brick of a book, but I will echo just about everyone else I’ve heard from: in a word, disappointing.

But no less crack-esque than the four-quel’s predecessors. It made me miss Megan, my writer who recently left the paper. In my head, Megan will always be Bella. Now, 99% of that’s because Megan profiled Stephenie Meyer (she lives in metro Phoenix) last year for New Times (you can read the excellent piece at http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2007-07-12/news/charmed) but just a teeny bit is because Megan’s got pale skin, long brown hair and big brown eyes — just like Bella. She even left Phoenix for the Pacific Northwest, an irony not lost on Megan. (This is a woman on whom irony is never lost.)

And both women have a lot of poise.

Megan and I have a big disagreement: She’s all about Jacob, while I’m firmly in Edward’s camp.

If you don’t know what I mean, break down and buy “Twilight,” the first (and by far the best) in the series and just see if you can get any sleep. Just make sure you hide your kid’s Digi-Pet deep in a kitchen drawer.