A little girl was killed this week. Her name is Callie. She was two.

Her 23-year-old mother, who is pregnant with her third child, is charged in Callie's murder. So is her mother's boyfriend. When police were called to Callie's home Thursday, her tiny body was cold and lifeless.

The precious little girl had burns on the bottom of her feet, the back of her thigh, on her rosy cheek and the corner of her mouth. Her forehead was bruised, her ears were blue with bruises and there were "visible injuries to the child's vaginal area."

She was two, God help me. Two. What could she possibly have done wrong? While I recognize that the woman who gave birth to Callie and the drug dealing man who lived with her have not been convicted yet, someone did this to this child. Some monster. A terrible, horrible monster.

The state medical examiner released a report today saying Callie most likely died of asphyxiation. Not only did they burn her, beat her and sexually assault her, but they took the very air from her lungs. There are conflicting reports from the mom and boyfriend about a blanket Callie was wrapped in. The boyfriend said he just wrapped her up to put her to sleep. The mother said she wrapped Callie in a blanket as punishment.

Every time Faith smiles, I see this little girl in her eyes. Every time she dances in our living room, I wonder if Callie had enough spirit to dance. I wonder if her two years of life were as hellish as her death. I hope not. But if it was, thank you, Jesus for taking her.

My heart is in anguish. I can't bear the thought of the burns on that little girls body. I don't know how they burned her, but I wish they could feel her pain. Her fear. Her confusion. Why would her mommy hurt her like that? What did she do to deserve this? That poor, blessed baby.

My God, how does this happen to the most precious, innocent ones? Our children? Why, God? I don't understand how anyone could look into the eyes of a child and not see a reflection of trust, love and hope. Please, God, bless the family of this child who is left in horror. Please, God, take care of Callie's older brother, who at the tender age of six may have witnessed his baby sister be abused and murdered. Please God, if he was hurt too, give him a home of peace and love.

Please, God, heal the neighbors and community who are mourning for this baby. And please, God. Please. Show those who have done this to this child what it  feels like to be under the wrath of someone stronger and more powerful than them. Show them your own justice. Show them the pain that comes with having their lives ripped from them. Please, God. Make them suffer as Callie suffered.

Please, wrap your arms around her and show her Your love and Your peace, freedom from fear and an eternity of safety. Things I'm sure she has never known.

I'm a self-diagnosed psychopath.

This is not a new revelation. It's something I've been aware of for quite some time. Today just would have been a particularly good day for therapy.

After six days of intense labor to pull together a three-day series for the newspaper dissecting a recent murder, the case's investigation and ultimately the suspects' court case and conviction, I was more than ready for a break from work. When I asked off for today after completing the last leg of my ongoing saga, my editor thought nothing of telling me OK.

Yet, when I woke up this morning, Jason brought me Starbucks after taking Faith to daycare and my day was jumpstarted right along with my body. We began doing work in different areas of the house -- Jason finished unpacking suitcases from our trip to Murray last weekend while I began rearranging Faith's closet.

But I didn't stop there. Once I had successfully rearranged the closet, I also rearranged her toys and evaluated the current situation of the toy storage. Upon being declared unsatisfactory, Jason and I made a trip to Wal-Mart, where we not only solved the storage situation, we also shopped for two weeks worth of food based on a menu we completed at lunch.

When we came home, all the new food couldn't just be stuffed in the fridge with the old, disorganized, picked over food. So I rearranged the refrigerator. There is one pantry in our apartment which is rather large and located in the dining area. The four shelves typically are stuffed to capacity with canned goods, boxed dinners and cookie mixes. But after rearranging the refrigerator, I was dissatisfied with the state of the pantry as well.

So I rearranged it, too. But in order to do so, I decided to rearrange all the cabinets in the kitchen to better utilize our space, and make room for some of the items I moved out of the pantry. While rearranging Faith's closet, I had removed a wire storage shelving unit and placed it into the dining area for more storage there and more room in the closet. I arranged the items there until I decided there were more problems to be solved.

The one year anniversary of our move to Richmond will be sneaking around the corner next week. In that year, we have never established a permanent place for our towels. As I mentioned, there is only one pantry, and no linen closet. I had constructed a shelving unit behind the door in the bathroom when we moved in, but between the first-aid items, cleaning supplies, nail polish, curling irons and facial masks, there was little room for towels.

So I set out to give the towels a home, and decided I would sacrifice food space for linen space in my pantry. In moving the few towels that were in the bathroom to their new home, I discovered I own more cleaning supplies than the local maid service. They, too, were spread out beneath kitchen and bathroom sinks, on the bathroom storage shelves and above the refrigerator.

Of course, they need to be together, in a centralized location out of Faith's two-year-old reach, and what better place for them than the highest storage-cubbie in the house? On top of the refrigerator!

Needless to say, the refrigerator's top was packed already with unused china, vases and some other items that never found homes. So that had to be rearranged, too, to make space for my cleaning supplies.

This is not to mention the bathtub-scrubbing, vaccum cleaner-unclogging, laundry-washing and various other chores that fileld my day.

I could go on about my cleaning escapade, but it would suffice to say that little in my house is where it was when I got up this morning. It is now bordering on 3 a.m., and my mind still is racing with all the things I could be doing. After laying down for about an hour, I had to get back up just to get some things accomplished so I'd stop laying in bed and thinking about them.

So instead of taking my free day to take Faith to the pool, or veg out in front of a girly movie on my couch like a normal person, I spent the entire day working. Tomorrow morning when I return to work, I'm sure I'll be regretting this day, because I won't have another day off until Sunday, at which time, I'm sure there will be more things to be done.

A perfectly sane person would not have allowed themselves to get into such a predicament. But I never have been perfectly sane. Maybe psychopathic isn't the correct terminology. Maybe it's obsessive compulsiveness that drives my need to find a place for everything and have everything in its place. I'm not sure.

All I know now is, I'm tired. And I need a day off.