"This guy is so dumb he has no idea how dumb he is."

This column gets it exactly right. You say you think W. is actually a smart guy, in spite of all appearances? You're lying.

Princess envy

From the moment the Peanut emerged into the world and surprised me by not being a boy, as I'd imagined for nine months, I vowed that she would be raised in a steadfastly feminist household. There was to be no foolishness with this Disney Princess crap. No Barbie unrealistic-body-image nonsense. By God, this kid would learn that there ain't going to be no knight riding in on a white horse. I was going to raise a strong woman who would love herself for who she is. Who wouldn't waste a minute putting her happiness in the hands of men, instead of deciding that, boyfriend or no boyfriend, she's going to be happy. On her own terms.

I still fervently hope to raise that strong woman. But in the meantime, to my horror, I fear there are going to be princesses afoot in my house.

This is because of what happened at our neighbor's daughter's 2nd birthday party this weekend. At the very end of the gift opening, the birthday girl received a dress-up set with a poofy, lacy, pink skirt and a tiara. She smiled with glee as she modeled her new outfit for her guests. I sat on the floor next to the Peanut and watched her reaction.

Her mouth hanging open slightly, her eyes widening in awe, the Peanut pointed toward the birthday girl. "TI-AAAA-RA," the Peanut said in a reverent tone, mimicking the word she heard the adults saying all around the room. Then she looked at me and pointed at her own head. "TI-AAAA-RA!"

I think I know what somebody wants for her own 2nd birthday later this year...

I suppose I will give in and get her the tiara and the poofy princess skirt, because I can see it's going to make her soooo happy. But that knight on the white horse -- he's history. He is never setting foot in my house.

Communication

Yesterday, during my work-at-home day, the Peanut's babysitter left once the Peanut went down for a nap so she could get some errands done. When my girl woke up, she was calling the babysitter's name.

"It's just mommy for the moment," I said, lifting her onto the changing table for a quick change. "Is it OK if it's just me for now?"

She stood up so I could pull her pants back up. "Mommy," the Peanut said, giving me a hug and resting her head on my shoulder. (She is so tall now that when she stands on the changing table, her head is a little bit higher than mine.) Then she removed her arms from around my neck, stood back and looked deep into my eyes. (Her eyes are like the darkest chocolate, melting out of the sweetest brownie sundae in the world.) "Mommy."

Outrage

This is totally outrageous:

Big Dig Possible Defect Count Quadrupled
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By GLEN JOHNSON Associated Press Writer

July 13,2006 BOSTON -- Inspectors on Thursday quadrupled to 240 the number of possible ceiling bolt problems in a Big Dig tunnel where a woman was crushed by falling concrete, a still-closed section at the center of Gov. Mitt Romney's push to oversee the safety of the troubled project.

The Massachusetts Turnpike Authority said inspectors found additional bolt assemblies that were separating from 3-ton concrete roof panels, raising the number of defects over previous inspections that found 60 defects. The earlier defects were enough for officials to order a sweeping review of every roadway, tunnel and bridge in Boston's entire highway system.

Michael Lewis, director of the Big Dig, said inspectors found 68 suspect bolt assemblies over the westbound lanes of a connector tunnel providing the main route to Logan Airport. Forty-five more were discovered in a lane carrying carpool traffic, as well as 69 in ramps connecting two interstate highways.

Because apparently every contractor involved in this project was just out to steal as much money as possible and avoid doing their jobs the right way, this woman's kids are motherless now, and her husband is a widower. Somebody needs to go to jail for this. Probably a lot of people should be in jail.

And here in Boston, how will we ever feel safe again driving through these tunnels? Completely freaking unbelievable.

50 questions for your Republican friends

I found this in a comment on AmericaBlog and it is hilarious. So props to poster "Vegas Baby," whoever you are:


1. What are the top seven best things that the Bush administration has done?

2. Is the Iraq War is going well?

3. After three years thus far, when do you think Iraq might be able to "stand up" so that America can "stand down"?

4. For his part in the event, how would you rate the job the President did protecting New Orleans from devastation?

5. How do you think the rebuilding of New Orleans is going?

6. When Dick Cheney and the oil company and energy executives met in private to plan America's energy policy, how much of their goal was to benefit consumers?

7. Do you believe in the President's call for an Era of Personal Responsibility?

8. Since Republicans control the White House, Senate and House of Representatives, how personally responsible are they for conditions in America today?

9. Why do you think they haven't been able to find anyone who can verify that George Bush ever showed up for National Guard duty in Alabama?

10. Would you want Donald Rumsfeld to plan your daughter's wedding?

11. Are you aware that no government in the history of civilization, other than the Bush administration, has lowered taxes during a war?

12. Are you married?

13. Do you personally feel threatened by gay marriage?

14. Since getting elected, do you think the President has been more a uniter or a divider?

15. How do you explain the President's approval rating going from a high of 90% to the current mid-30%?

16. Do you like the government collecting personal data on you without a warrant?

17. How much money do you have in your bank account, stocks and investments?

18. What's your partner's favorite sex position?

19. If you have nothing to hide, why aren't you answering?

20. Should we build a wall along the Mexican border?

21. Why isn't anyone building a wall along the Canadian border?

22. Does that terrorist gang arrested in Canada count as a threat?

23. If you shot someone in the face while drinking, how fast would the police show up to arrest you?

24. If Donald Rumsfeld had planned your daughter's wedding three years ago, would the guests still be there?

25. Even if no laws are broken, do you think it's okay to reveal the name of a covert agent?

26. During your lifetime, approximately how often have you changed your mind?

27. Why shouldn't people dismiss you as a flip-flopper?

28. Where do you think the Weapons of Mass Destruction might be?

29. Where do you think Osama bin Laden might be?

30. Is it fiscally responsible to cut taxes, increase spending and create a $9 trillion federal debt?

31. Are you glad liberals passed such programs as Social Security, Medicare, the Civil Rights Act, women's suffrage, federal deposit insurance, unemployment compensation, rural electrification, child labor laws, minimum wages and the 40-hour work week?

32. What are the top ten best things that conservatives have given to America?

33. If you were on life support, would you want a doctor you'd never met making a diagnosis about you via remote television?

34. Do you think man-made greenhouse gases have anything at all to do with depleting the ozone layer?

35. If Donald Rumsfeld had planned your daughter's wedding three years ago, and guests were still there, how many factions would they now be split into?

36. How good is it that the terrorist Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi was killed?

37. Are you aware that in 2002 the Pentagon knew where al-Zarqawi was and presented three separate plans to kill him, but the administration refused to act each time?

38. Is George W. Bush the kind of guy you'd want to sit down and have a beer with?

39. When he started talking about being a born again Christian, would you want to stay or leave?

40. Is Ray Romano the kind of guy you'd want to sit down and have a beer with?

41. Would you want him to be President?

42. Does the Administration have an environmental policy that benefits the environment?

43. Since George Bush campaigned for President strongly against nation building, in what ways are our actions in Iraq not nation building?

44. What's the maximum amount of time you'd want to spend alone with Dick Cheney?

45. After dismissing Saddam Hussein's old Iraqi army, was it a good idea to let them keep their rifles?

46. Would a policy that allows torture be something that makes you proud as an American?

47. Has the Mission been Accomplished?

48. Do you feel comforted that Dick Cheney is a heartbeat away from being President?

49. If Donald Rumsfeld had planned your daughter's wedding, and guests started fighting and were killed, would you expect to be allowed to view the caskets when they were returned home?

50. How glad do you think George Bush is that he's no longer active in the National Guard?

Holy crap

Nice to know we're so safe driving around the Big Dig. If you needed one more reason not to drive to Logan Airport, here it is.

Binky withdrawal

The Peanut had the shakes this morning--the withdrawal was bad. Mr. Fraulein had taken the binky out of her mouth before she woke up. Given that she's 21 months old now, we only let her have the pacifier while she sleeps, and even that we feel like we should start cutting back on soon...so once she was fully awake and realized that her beloved binky was gone, she was one unhappy Peanut.

She started whimpering, looking around for it. Within seconds this escalated into a full-blown tantrum, complete with tears streaming down her face, heaving sobs, and screaming. Oh, the screaming.

"BINKY! BINKY! BINKY!"

This continued all through diaper changing and dressing. Why were we such cruel parents, ripping her heart out like this? I tried to explain that she is such a big girl now that soon she won't need the binky at all anymore. I tried hugs and kisses. We attempted to distract her with sippy cups and cereal, but the sobbing continued.

Then we switched gears into ignoring the tantrum, as all the books advise. She decided to lie down on the floor in the hallway in front of her room. There she stayed while we finished getting dressed and packing her lunch. Finally, realizing she wasn't getting attention anymore, she picked herself up, stopped crying, and came into the kitchen to have breakfast. The binky was not mentioned again, even during the car ride to day care.

With any luck we won't see too many more binky-withdrawal-related tantrums like that one. Mama's heart can't take it!

June 30, 2002

On the night before my wedding, I didn't sleep at all. Not because I was particularly nervous. I'm actually not sure why I got no sleep. Somehow I made it through the whole wedding day craziness on adrenaline alone.

There are some things that remain seared on your memory; like everything that happened on the day the Peanut was born, my wedding day was one such event. The morning was a complete whirlwind. My parents' house was Hair and Makeup Central for myself, my mom, and my three bridesmaids. My mother, in her usual fashion, decided our hair stylist had done a crappy job, so with the limo minutes from arriving at the house to take us to the church, took a curling iron to her head to start over. I took a break from the photographer to run upstairs to tell her to get a move on, and when she took a good look at me in my dress and veil, she burst into tears.

My mom's hair crisis averted, we piled into the limo. The sun looked gorgeous on the trees, as well as, during the ceremony, pouring through the stained glass windows. My girls were perfection in their light purple silk Jackie O suits -- no stupid poofy bridesmaids dresses in this wedding! They walked into the church first, along with the groomsmen (Mr. Fraulein's brother and two friends). And then my dad and I came up the stairs and around the corner, to the beginning of the aisle.

And all our guests -- our family and friends -- STOOD UP, and the church lit up with flashing cameras. My dad and I took our walk to the altar, where Mr. Fraulein stood waiting, smiling at me.

An hour later, we were Mr. and Mrs. Fraulein, on our way to a massive party that included, among other things, several conga lines, many Ella Fitzgerald tunes, and the best dessert bar in the history of mankind. (People are still talking about it.) "This was the best party I've been to in 20 years," my Uncle Carmine said that night, giving me a hug. Like all the best celebrations, it was like a door opening, ushering in the beginning of something even bigger and better.

We've had four years of vacations and house buying, working and not working, cooking (mostly done by Mr. Fraulein!) and minor home renovations (also done by Mr. Fraulein). And laughing and crying and getting the hang of being parents to our Peanut.

Here's to 30 more years of celebrations to come!

Down the rabbit hole

So MSNBC thinks it's reasonable to debate whether the New York Times -- taking a rare break from its usual non-stop promotion of Bush's interests -- is guilty of treason for reporting on some secret government plan to covertly track people's financial activities in the hunt for "terrorists."

A "news" network is home to this debate, in America in 2006. Somewhere, Edward R. Murrow is weeping, and Joseph Stalin is grinning.

Harry Potter update

From the AP: J.K. Rowling says she's going to kill off two characters in the final Harry Potter book:

June 27,2006 LONDON -- Author J.K. Rowling said two characters will die in the last installment of her boy wizard series, and she hinted Harry Potter might not survive either...

..."I have never been tempted to kill him off before the final because I've always planned seven books, and I want to finish on seven books," Rowling said Monday on TV here.

..."The final chapter is hidden away, although it's now changed very slightly. One character got a reprieve. But I have to say two die that I didn't intend to die," she said. "A price has to be paid. We are dealing with pure evil here. They don't target extras do they? They go for the main characters. Well, I do."

I just know she's going to kill off Harry. The narrative arc of the story is moving in that direction. It's the only thing that makes sense, as I realized when I read the last book. Voldemort's going to die, I'm sure, but I suspect Harry's going with him.

To see Rowling hint at this possibility in an interview makes it more real. Now I'm going to be depressed for the rest of the day!

A conundrum

The Huggies diapers generally work as advertised from the time we do the Peanut's last diaper change of the evening, around 7:30 p.m., until she wakes up at 6:30 a.m. Yet during today's 45-minute drive to the day care near our respective offices, we suffered the dreaded Diaper Containment Failure. And not just a little leak -- her pants were completely soaked.

"She's all wet," Mr. Fraulein said, lifting her out of the car seat. "Did she spill juice in here? It can't be the diaper."

But yes, it was the diaper. Time to disassemble the car seat and throw the cover in the wash, yet again! It seems like we do this at least once a week, for one reason or another. My friend who's expecting twins at the moment has no idea what she's in for...

Awesome blog titles

One of the things I love about being part of the Crazy Hip Blog Mamas webring is reading the list of blog titles each week, as new people add their blogs to the webring. It seems to be growing exponentially these days. I just wish I had more time to dive in and see what all these mamas are blogging about!

Some of the blogging mamas have obviously put a lot of thought into what to call their blogs. Here, in no particular order, are CHBM blog titles which I get a huge kick out of. One of these days I'll get around to actually reading them...

Mommy Needs a Martini

Send Chocolate

Binkytown

Crazy Ass Family

Crouching Mommy Hidden Laundry

From Hoochie to Mama

I Kick Ass for the Lord

Insert Expletive Here

Mother Scratcher (love the Raising Arizona reference!)

Step Away From the Barbies

Who Are These Kids?

Daddy's going braless today

One of the more amusing things about the Peanut's emerging language skills is the kind of questions she asks as she learns new words. Often as we're scrambling to get ready to leave the house in the morning, she will watch me getting dressed. Out of habit, I label everything for her so she learns the words.

"This is a bra," I say.

"Bra," she repeats, nodding her head. Then she points to her own chest and asks, "Bra?" Her meaning is clear as day from her inflection. Where is my bra, she wants to know. So I tell her that it will be a while yet before we go shopping for training bras.

Then we do a last-minute diaper change before we head out the door. She pulls out the collar of her daddy's shirt, peers in at his chest and asks, "Bra?" Cracks us up every time.

The Peanut's Father's Day weekend

On Saturday afternoon we went to the zoo, inspired by visions of the baby gorilla who was to be on display. We knew that the Peanut, with her love of animals, would get a huge kick out of this. But we were somewhat lax in our usual no-liquids-right-before-car-rides policy. As a result, as soon as we pulled into the parking lot, our carsickness-prone Peanut vomited spectacularly all over the front of her shirt, creating a little puddle of fruit juice in her car seat. Ever prepared, we pulled out a spare T-shirt and shorts from her diaper bag. Mr. Fraulein crouched patiently in the stifling heat next to our screaming Peanut, who was standing beside the car, as he mopped up vomit, wiped off her face, and helped me dress her in clean clothes. Luckily, she fully recovered after this. Gorilla poop stink notwithstanding, she had a look of awe on her face as we watched the little baby gorilla romp around with the mommy and daddy gorillas.

Then on Sunday, we joined a crowd of our neighbors for a very loud brunch attended by kids ranging in age from 6 months to 6 years, followed by a trip outside to watch our town's annual Flag Day parade. The most anticipated feature of this parade is the candy toss. Nearly every float and public works vehicle held someone whose job it was to toss lollipops and Tootsie Rolls into the screaming crowd of kids. The Peanut didn't know from Tootsie Rolls, but she was all about the marching bands. She did her own marching in little circles on the sidewalk, accompanied by hip-shaking, dramatic arm movements, and clapping. Mr. Fraulein periodically lunged after her to keep her from running out into the street, and shielded her ears with his hands when the blank "shotgun blasts" went off.

Then, exhilarated and sticky with watermelon juice from brunch, the Peanut held her daddy's hand as we trooped in our own noisy parade back home for naptime.

'Three Guineas' quote of the day

Even when they meet privately and talk, as we have boasted, about ‘politics and people, war and peace, barbarism and civilization’, yet they evade and conceal. But it is so important to accustom ourselves to the duties of free speech, for without private there can be no public freedom, that we must try to uncover this fear and to face it. What then can be the nature of the fear that still makes concealment necessary between educated people and reduces our boasted freedom to a farce? ... Again there are three dots; again they represent a gulf—of silence this time, of silence inspired by fear. -- Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas

Mission accomplished

We slaughter their innocents at Haditha, then our soldiers sing a jaunty little tune about killing more of them. Then their militants slaughter our soldiers.

Heck of a job, Bushie.

Marines Corps investigates song about killing civilians

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A music video posted on the Internet that tells a tale about a U.S. Marine killing members of an Iraqi family is being condemned by an Islamic group and investigated by the Marine Corps.

The four-minute song, "Hadji Girl," appears to be sung by a Marine in front of a cheering audience. The lyrics talk about the Marine gunning down members of an Iraqi woman's family after they confront him with automatic weapons.

Lt. Col. Scott Fazekas, a spokesman for the Marines, said Tuesday that the Marines were aware of the video. Fazekas said officials don't know the identity of the singer or whether he is in the military.

The song was "inappropriate and contrary to the high standards expected of all Marines," Fazekas said. He said Marine officers are looking in to the matter.

Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said that in light of recent allegations of atrocities committed by Marines in Haditha and other towns in Iraq, the video should be investigated by the Pentagon and Congress.

"The inappropriate actions of a few individuals should not be allowed to tarnish the reputation of all American military personnel," said Awad.

The video was posted anonymously on the www.youtube.com Web site, but was removed. It is still available on CAIR's web site, www.cair-net.org. A hadji is a pilgrim who journeys to Mecca. CAIR said the word has been used as a disparaging term by U.S. troops in Iraq.

"The video is not reflective of the tremendous sacrifices and dedication demonstrated, on a daily basis, by tens of thousands of Marines who have assisted the Iraqi people in gaining their freedom," Fazekas said. "We agree with the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations that the inappropriate actions of a few individuals should not tarnish the reputation of all American military personnel."

The singer is shown playing a guitar and singing about meeting an Iraqi woman and then being confronted by her brother and father, who have guns. The lyrics describe the Marine pulling the woman's little sister in front of him and watching blood spray from her head.

He then sings about blowing the father and brother "to eternity."

Defense officials are investigating allegations that U.S. Marines massacred as many as two dozen unarmed civilians in Haditha last November. Another probe is under way into charges that U.S. troops pulled an unarmed Iraqi man from his home in Hamandiya in late April and shot him to death without provocation.

Bodies of Missing U.S. Soldiers Recovered
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By KIM GAMEL Associated Press Writer
June 20, 2006 BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The bodies of two U.S. soldiers reported captured last week have been recovered, and an Iraqi defense ministry official said Tuesday the men were "killed in a barbaric way." The U.S. military said the remains were believed to be those of Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, of Houston, and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, 25, of Madras, Ore.

Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said U.S. forces -- part of a search involving some 8,000 American and Iraqi troops -- found the bodies late Monday near Youssifiyah, where they disappeared Friday. The bodies were recovered early Tuesday.

Caldwell said the cause of death was "undeterminable at this point," and that the bodies would be taken back to the United States for DNA tests to confirm the identities.

Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility for killing the soldiers, and said the successor to slain terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had "slaughtered" them, according to a Web statement that could not be authenticated. The language in the statement suggested the men had been beheaded.

Friday lit. blogging: special Bloomsday edition

Today is June 16, the day on which James Joyce's Ulysses takes place. I wonder if anybody reads Ulysses anymore? It's a daunting read, and very time consuming to get through the whole thing, but certain parts are pure gold. It's classic modernist fun--quite different in scope and feeling and tone from Woolf's works, but still steeped in the modernist credo: describing life as it really is.

Oh, to be in Dublin downing a pint of Guiness right now...

Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning peace from the stairhead seaward where he gazed. Inshore and farther out the mirror of water whitened, spurned by lightshod hurrying feet. White breast of the dim sea. The twining stresses, two by two. A hand plucking the harpstrings, merging their twining chords. Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide.

A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, wholly, shadowing the bay in deeper green. It lay beneath him, a bowl of bitter waters. Fergus’ song: I sang it alone in the house, holding down the long dark chords. Her door was open: she wanted to hear my music. Silent with awe and pity I went to her bedside. She was crying in her wretched bed. For those words, Stephen: love’s bitter mystery.

Starving babies; "flashy self-made millionaires"

Here's the lead story on Salon.com (subscription only) today:

Starving season

World hunger is by far the worst crisis humanity faces, and it's getting worse --especially in Africa. Until the West overcomes its apathy and works toward long-term solutions, millions of people -- many of them children -- will continue to die unnecessarily.

By Samuel Loewenberg

June 13, 2006 In a dust-blown clinic on the southern edge of the Sahara desert, scores of women crowd into a bunkerlike structure, clutching children with emaciated limbs and listless eyes. They have come to have their babies weighed. It is a tradition known to every parent. Here, the tradition has become a nightmare.

The medical staff take an infant named Bintow from the arms of his mother and place him in a black harness attached to a hand-held scale. He shrieks at the sudden discomfort, thrashing his arms and legs. His stomach bulges, all of his ribs are visible. The child is 10 months old. He weighs 9 pounds.

Bintow is lucky, as far as it goes. He is so badly underweight that he will receive an emergency ration: two weeks' worth of enriched cornmeal and oil. Only a third of the estimated 200 children at the center that day will receive care. There is simply not enough to go around.

And here's a couple of recent stories from the Boston Globe (I can't provide links because of the signup firewall) which cannot stop kissing the asses of the obscenely wealthy:

XXL

It happens all the time. A couple buys an estate-size home with multiple rooms and lavish amenities. Two-story fireplaces. Palatial entryways with formal staircases. Soaring coffered ceilings. Arched floor-to-ceiling windows.. First they're thrilled, says Sheri Edsall, a Needham interior designer. Then "they're panic-stricken. They can't deal with that much house." But many Boston-area residents are learning to deal with it.

The New Rich

Bye-bye Brahmins. Flashy self-made millionaires are taking over Boston.

Imagine if we had some journalists at the Globe, instead of a bunch of Republican National Committee functionaries who only think rich people matter?

So nice that it wasn't lice

The Drama of the Day for yesterday occurred when my babysitter brought the Peanut over to me and said, "Look at this. I think these are lice eggs in her hair."

Needless to say, this was far from welcome news. I have no idea what lice eggs look like, so to me it just looked like lint. But I thought, well, maybe she picked something up at the day care center, so I called them to ask about it. This set off a panic: "We haven't seen that in 10 years! You have to bring her to the doctor! Don't bring her back in until you confirm she doesn't have it!"

So that was the end of my normally peaceful work-at-home day. I started stripping off bedding, vacuuming, and preparing to sterilize the teddy bears by running them through the dryer. But luckily, the pediatrician confirmed it was a false alarm -- just some kind of food particles in the Peanut's hair.

As much of a pain as this was, we learned what to look for. If you see tiny white particles in the hair near the back of the neck and behind the ears, and they don't come off when you try to comb them out, that's probably lice.

We're thankful that the worst thing to emerge from this episode is that now the Peanut has learned the word "lice," and is running around yelling it at the top of her lungs. ("LICE! LICE! LICE!") Annoying, but not as annoying as having to disinfect the entire house.

Dreaming of size 10 pants

So even though the Peanut is 20 months old now, I still haven't lost the post-pregnancy weight. This is partly because I love to eat, and being pregnant was an excuse to wolf down things like macaroni and cheese, which I have now developed an excessive fondness for. It's also partly because I'm lazy. I've never been the exercising type.

Now I have 20 pounds to lose and I'm developing back problems because the extra weight is making it difficult for me to haul around a 27-pound toddler. When I got pregnant, I was 10 pounds above my fairly tolerable weight at my wedding. I've never been thin, but I was reasonably close when I got married. Now, post-baby, with an additional 10 pounds on top of the 10 pounds I gained after the wedding, my pre-pregnancy clothes are, for the most part, sitting in the closet mocking me. I have a few pairs of size 10 pants that I can squeeze into, but they're big 10s. Mostly now I need 12s, and this depresses me. It just seems too big for a short person like myself.

I have nothing to wear to work (thank God my office is pretty casual!) yet buying a new, size 12 work wardrobe seems too defeatist. So I'm trying to watch my diet and get some kind of exercise and/or stretching in every day. I have a couple of yoga DVDs by this guy, who is quite the character. He is all about the inner peace and the tranquility and the centering, and of course the flattering camera angles that show off his abs and his ponytail. I do find the routines helpful with my back and leg pain, but it's hard to get through one without laughing, particularly when he says "groins," as in, "You'll feel this stretch in your groins." I always thought I only had one groin, but who knows.

Look, over there! Gay people! AIIIGGGHHH!!

I just have one question: do you think that any of the Republican half-wits pushing this Defense of Marriage Amendment or We Hate all the Gay People Amendment or Ewww--Gays! Amendment or whatever they're calling it these days, have ever actually MET any gay people? If the lesbian couple across the way in my condo complex get married (and for all I know they already have) the Republicans tell me this endangers my heterosexual marriage.

How is that exactly? I want specifics. Will I or my husband suddenly turn gay? Can we catch The Gay from the municipal water system? Should we avoid public toilets? If we do come down with The Gay, is there an over-the-counter medicine we can take for that?

Why are people so scared of other people's loving relationships? It makes my head hurt just to think about this.

Your Republican party

"I have never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much." -- Ann Coulter on the 9/11 widows

Want to know what the difference is between Ann Coulter and John McCain and Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rudy Giuliani and George W. Bush?

There isn't any. This is the Republican party. All for one, one for all, and all nuts, all the time.

Random thoughts

It's hot and muggy and rainy here in eastern Massachusetts today, which always tends to make me cranky. I can't stand it when it's humid.

I can't believe it's been a week since I've posted anything. The time always goes too fast, and it seems there's never enough time for the things we want to do (reading, seeing friends, going out to dinner, even doing little home improvement projects) because the basic mechanics of life take so much time and energy. Once the Peanut is fed and bathed and has had her fill of storytime, we finally get her to sleep and just want to collapse in bed ourselves.

Another thing I can't believe is that in four months she will turn 2. Where did that time go? Lately I've been collecting things to give to an officemate who is expecting twins, and it makes me think back to the Peanut's newborn days. Digging out the Boppy pillow from the basement to add to the pile, I recalled my short-lived attempt at nursing and the odd limbo that followed, as I pumped milk for 10 weeks after it became clear that the Peanut was having none of this "latching on" thing. I would sit in the rocking chair in our bedroom holding a suction cup to each breast, thinking about how silly I must have looked.

Luckily the Peanut has been quite healthy so far, even though she only got a tiny amount of breast milk, so there you go.

With her birthday coming up, I'm already starting to think about party planning. Anyone have any thoughts on good birthday party themes for toddlers? The child guests will range from roughly the Peanut's age to about 6. Any ideas are welcome.

Overdue Friday lit. blogging: Franz Wright

The Only Animal

The only animal that commits suicide
went for a walk in the park,
basked on a hard bench
in the first star,
traveled to the edge of space
in an armchair
while company quietly
talked and abruptly
returned,
the room empty.

The only animal that cries
that takes off its clothes
and reports to the mirror, the one
and only animal
that brushes its own teeth—

Somewhere

the only animal that smokes a cigarette,
that lies down and flies backward in time,
that rises and walks to a book
and looks up a word
heard the telephone ringing
in the darkness downstairs and decided
to answer no more.

And I understand,
too well: how many times
have I made the decision to dwell
from now on
in the hour of my death
(the space I took up here
scarlessly closing like water)
and said I’m never coming back
and yet

this morning
I stood once again
in this world, the garden
ark and vacant
tomb of what
I can’t imagine,
between twin eternities,
some sort of wings,
more or less equidistantly
exiled from both,
hovering in the dreaming called
being awake, where
You gave me
in secret one thing
to perceive, the
tall blue starry

strangeness of being
here at all.

You gave us each in secret something to perceive.

Furless now, upright, My banished
and experimental
child

You said, though your own heart condemn you
I do not condemn you.

Kitty gone. Mama sad.

Recently we had to put our cat, Marcus, to sleep. He was not exactly a kitten at age 14, and after fighting gastrointestinal cancer for two and a half years, he was pretty much on his 9th life. But even though he was old and sick and we were expecting it, the loss of a pet brings its own unique kind of misery.

If you're not an animal person, this will probably sound strange to you. But now that he's gone, the emptiness in our house is palpable. I adopted Marcus from an animal shelter eight years ago. I knew him longer than I've known my husband.

He used to sprint from room to room in my old apartment at lightning speed (the cat, not the husband). When Marcus stalked the mysterious little flying bugs that showed up in that apartment periodically, he would sometimes leap into the air and catch one between his front paws. He'd sit on the back of the couch and look out the window and watch the birds. And when I was trapped in the claustrophobic grip of depression, he'd come silently up beside me and gaze at me with his deep green eyes, and purr. His purr sounded like an outboard motor.
When I slept on my stomach, he would curl up on my back. When he wanted to wake me up to give him breakfast, he'd gently lick my eyelids or my cheeks, or pat my arm with his paw.

Marcus put up with two house moves and the addition of a new human daddy and human little sister, all without the slightest complaint. And then he got cancer and we had to start giving him pills every day, which he hated. But his quality of life was undiminished for the most part, until shortly before he died.

He had been a fairly big cat, with long, glossy black fur that remained beautiful up until the end, but in his last couple of months he lost a lot of weight and became very bony. Then about two days before he died, he stopped eating. Twenty-four hours before he died, he was still jumping up on the couch. But the morning we decided to have him put to sleep, Marcus couldn't jump up anymore -- he couldn't even walk.

I carried him to his favorite windowsill in our living room so he could watch the blue jays in the trees that morning. I held Marcus in my arms when the vet administered the needle. He went out of our lives without a sound.

The Peanut looked from room to room for Marcus for a while, but now has stopped searching. But occasionally she will still say "Kitty?" in a questioning way, and I'll respond, "Kitty gone." And she will nod her head sagely and say "Kitty gone. Mama sad."

Journalism's finest hour

I swear to God, my head is about to explode. Just go read this, uh, "profile" of Bill Frist in the freaking Washington Post -- NOT The Onion -- but make sure you have a bucket handy, because it's going to make you want to heave.

Meanwhile, as the excellent Harry Shearer points out on Huffington Post, the whore-iffic New York Times has run a front-page story claiming the levees are pretty much fixed in New Orleans -- and buried the inconvenient news that they're actually, well, not so much fixed ("The overall New Orleans flood protection system...must be considered suspect") in the last paragraph.

I had a crotchety old journalism professor (is there any other kind?) named Seth King at Boston University who would have blown a gasket had this spectacular display of ass-kissing, ignoring of inconvenient facts, and general ineptitude been in evidence in the news business back then. (Back in the distant past of 1988, when I took his Journalism 101 class.)

I have no idea if old Seth is even still among the living, but if he's not, he is surely spinning in his grave.

Biggest public issue of the day: the Clintons' marriage

Today the New York Times returned to its late 1990s all-Clenis-all-the-time glory days with a front page dissection of Bill and Hillary Clinton's marriage.

Because it's not like there's anything else going on in Washington or in the rest of the country that you might want to devote your reporting resources to, if you were supposed to be one of the premier newspapers in the United States.

It's not like there's an unnecessary war going on or anything.

Or an entire American city lost to a hurricane and flood nine months ago, with practically none of the rubble cleaned up yet, and the next hurricane season about to begin.

Or a massive coordinated government effort to spy on the activities of ordinary citizens.

Or an unprecedented looming environmental catastrophe.

No, the most pressingly important issue in America today is how much time Bill and Hill are spending together these days. This is what they apparently think, over there at the New York Times. I would give any amount of money to hear what goes on in the editors' daily news meeting. What exactly is the thought process that leads to the conclusion that speculation over the personal lives of political figures is more important than what political figures ACTUALLY DO in their official capacities -- good, bad and indifferent? Why are the personalities deemed to be so much more important than the policies?

And WHY, for the love of all that is holy, does the press still think that Bill Clinton's mistakes have more impact on the country than George W. Bush's mistakes? Are they really that clueless? They actually think that we care more about Clinton having an affair than we do about the shredding of the Constitution and the killing and maiming of God knows how many people, in our name and funded by our tax dollars, FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER?

Dear Peanut...

Dear Peanut:

In celebration of my second Mother's Day, I thought it would be a good time to write you a little letter and tell you how very very blessed I am to be your mama.

Of course I fell in love with you as soon as I saw you, but it's been even more amazing to get to know you and to realize that you are developing a strong personality of your own. I know you get frustrated sometimes because you are so perceptive and smart, and you want to try to do things that, at 19 months, are still beyond your reach. That's when you get mad and start howling and sometimes smack me or your daddy. But I love that as soon as we remind you about our "no hitting" rule, you get that look of concern on your face, because you know we don't like that, and you fling your arms around us to make sure we aren't really mad at you. Which we couldn't possibly be.

I love the way you seem to understand a scary amount of what is going on around you, and the way you make your requests undeniably clear. You want cheese and crackers for breakfast, every day, and you're going to keep telling us so even though we keep giving you Eggos and bananas. I guess you're thinking that, dense though we are, eventually we'll figure it out and serve up your cheese plate at 6 a.m.

I love the way you look slightly concerned and say "Mine!" when other kids climb onto the playground equipment you happen to be using at the time. But you never go and push anybody off of it.

I promise to teach you to be as strong and independent and fearless as you can possibly be, and to love yourself no matter what you look like or what you weigh. (But if present trends continue, and "beautiful" and "gorgeous" remain people's first reactions when they meet you, I'll try to teach you to deal with that reality, without becoming too full of yourself because of it.)

I hope very much that you grow up to love science and math like your daddy, so that your first job out of college pays way more than the slave wages I earned for my first journalism gig. And I pray that all through your school years you'll be able to look the bullies in the eye with pity and laugh.

I'm so grateful that you came into my life.

Love,

Mama

"...let Facts be submitted to a candid world..."

Are we ready for a new Declaration of Independence yet? How far gone will things be in this country before people start to wake up?

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 2006

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of these States; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King George is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

Here's the facts, then:

• World Trade Center: Gone
• New Orleans: Drowned; abandoned
• Middle class: Disappearing
• Rich: Getting richer, thanks to tax cuts
• Poor: Screwed
• Environment: Raped
• Civil liberties: Obliterated
• Corporations: Fat and happy
• America's armed forces: Sent to die for no reason

Spring in New England

My head is so congested from the freakish amount of pollen in the air that my eyeballs feel like they're about to shoot out of my skull, and yet when I left the house this morning, it was so cold that I wished I had gloves on.

Welcome to spring in New England, shortly to be followed by summer in New England, which for the past several years has featured rain forest levels of humidity.

Story of the weekend

This past weekend, Mr. Fraulein and the Peanut and I took a road trip to lovely Brattleboro, VT, to visit some friends of ours and their 5- and 2-year-old daughters. Much dessert and many brunch items were consumed, innumerable baby dolls were played with, and, in spite of a few minor toddler tantrums, fun was had by all. I have to share this great story about an excellent comeback by the 5-year-old, little A., to an overbearing relative.

The way my friend S., A.'s mommy, tells it, during a recent family gathering, they were introduced to S.'s uncle's new wife, who apparently at one time was a noteworthy ballet dancer. (At least, according to New Wife herself.) Upon being introduced to A., and hearing that A. is very fond of her ballet classes, New Wife proceeded to drill the 5-year-old on her knowledge of the ballet positions, etc. She also rather condescendingly insisted that in the future, A. would look back on this meeting with no small amount of awe, since she would then know what a famous onetime-dancer she had met.

"I used to be a ballerina," New Wife smugly pronounced.

To which A. responded: "I'm STILL a ballerina."

Colbert: Genius

Edward R. Murrow, meet Stephen Colbert. It's pretty pathetic that the best muckrakers today are comedians.

Friday lit. blogging: Tennyson's "Ulysses"

Awesome, awesome poem. It's all about determination--I love the part about "'Tis not too late to seek a newer world..."

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vest the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers;
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breath were life. Life piled on life
Were all to little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.


This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle-
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.


There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me-
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads- you and I are old;
Old age had yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices.
Come, my friends,'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.


Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in the old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal-temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

[1842]

Heard around our house recently

Here’s what happens when you live with a toddler: you find yourself actually saying things like this:

-- Please take the cheese out of your ear.
-- Will you stop standing on the Cheerios box?
-- Can you take the remote control out of your mouth?
-- Why are you trying to wedge your baby doll into the wine rack?
-- No, really, take the cheese out of your ear.

I'm it

This is exciting: I've been tagged by Magpie over at Shocked & Appalled. (OK, this was weeks and weeks ago, and I am just now getting around to it, which is pathetic.) So here goes:

Four jobs I've had

1. Obituary writer at a small local newspaper. This involves spending a lot of time talking on the phone to funeral directors, who, as you might expect, are partial to macabre jokes.

2. Corporate marketing whipping-girl at The Management Consulting Firm From Hell. My boss WAS Michael Scott from The Office, if you can imagine him as a 58-year-old woman. Same hellacious insecurities. Same cluelessness about the violent inappropriateness of everything that came out of her mouth. This is an actual conversation I had with this woman not long after I was hired:

Boss From Hell: So, how old are you?

Me: Um, I'm 33...why?

BFH: Well, you know, the mid-thirties are the best time of a woman's life! You are approaching your sexual peak now! I hope your husband appreciates that!

3. Managing editor of a teeny weeny weekly newspaper. This was the weirdest job I've ever had (and for those of you who don't know me, that is saying something). When the toilet paper ran low in the ladies room, we would approach the company facilities manager, who would supply us with a single additional roll. Once, at a staff meeting for the editors of the papers in the chain, it was reported that another managing editor left for lunch several days earlier and hadn't been seen since. The job paid so little, she didn't even bother to call anyone to say she was quitting.

4. Reporter at a tech trade magazine during the Internet boom. I look forward to regaling my grandkids with stories about this one.


Four movies I can watch over and over

1. Office Space
2. Monsters Inc.
3. His Girl Friday
4. Raising Arizona


Four places I've lived

1. Boston
2. Oxford, U.K.
3. Northern New Jersey
4. Telford, Shropshire, U.K.


Four TV shows I love to watch

I'm hard pressed to come up with four -- I just think TV sucks lately! But The Daily Show and The Office spring to mind.


Four places I've been on vacation

1. Bermuda
2. Tuscany
3. Ireland
4. Cape Cod


Four blogs I visit regularly

1. Daily Kos
2. This Modern World
3. Shocked & Appalled
4. EverythingSFNE


Four of my favorite foods

1. Bagels, muffins--the whole carb group
2. Prosciutto and melon
3. Fresh mango
4. Shu mai (Chinese dumplings)


Four places I'd rather be

1. The King's Arms pub, Oxford
2. Driving through the Tuscan countryside
3. Watching the sun set on the beach in Wellfleet
4. Walking in London


Four albums I can't live without

At this point we have pretty much given up our CDs in favor of XM Radio.


Four vehicles I've owned

1. A crappy Renault
2. A crappy Pontiac
3. A crappy Mitsubishi
4. A slowly-crapifying Honda

More Tom Cruise wackiness

Good news: Tom and Katie have downplayed reports of their plans to eat their baby's placenta.

Can you imagine what kind of loon this poor kid will turn out to be?

Friday lit. blogging: Virginia Woolf

Because you also can't get enough Woolf (or at least I can't.) Here is an excerpt from a scene I love in Mrs. Dalloway -- the scene where Peter Walsh returns to England and visits Clarissa Dalloway on the afternoon before her party. What I love most about this scene is the wordless emotional interplay between the two characters:

Peter Walsh had got up and crossed to the window and stood with his back to her, flicking a bandanna handkerchief from side to side. Masterly and dry and desolate he looked, his thin shoulder-blades lifing his coat slightly; blowing his nose violently. Take me with you, Clarissa thought impulsively, as if he were starting directly upon some great voyage; and then, next moment, it was as if the five acts of a play that had been very exciting and moving were now over and she had lived a lifetime in them and had run away, had lived with Peter, and it was now over.

Now it was time to move, and, as a woman gathers her things together, her cloak, her gloves, her opera glasses, and gets up to go out of the theatre into the street, she rose from the sofa and went to Peter.

And it was awfully strange, he thought, how she still had the power, as she came tinkling, rustling, still had the power as she came across the room, to make the moon, which he detested, rise at Bourton on the terrace in the summer sky.

Good omen

OK, so I'm still fairly bummed out about the possibility that the Chimp-in-Chief is going to start a nuclear war, so I'm grasping around for anything that seems like a good omen for the future. This afternoon was gorgeous here in Massachusetts, just as it should be with Easter coming up this weekend. The trees outside our windows are just beginning to bud, and the daffodils are blooming. (Whenever we are outside, we point out the flowers to the Peanut, and tell her that they are "beautiful flowers, just like you," since her middle name means "beautiful flower" in Chinese.) I took a walk at lunchtime to pick up some cookies from Athan's, and I was amused to hear my wedding song, Ella Fitzgerald's version of "Love You Madly," playing as I made my selections.

For my money, there is no such thing as too much Ella Fitzgerald. Especially when you're browsing in a pastry shop on a lovely spring afternoon.

Living mindfully; working for change

These days, I am trying very hard not to take anything for granted. I guess that's one mother of a cliche, but it's how I feel right now. The last few months -- really the last few years, since the stolen presidential election of 2000 blasted me out of my complacency -- I've been having an incredibly strong feeling that our whole way of life is about to change, and not for the better.

Between the nuclear sabre-rattling, the global warming, the peak oil, and the economy, I look to the next few years, and I can't imagine things continuing as they've been. It's very hard to picture a peaceful, stable future for this country. So I try to live mindfully, cherishing every moment with my family and friends, every book, every movie, every sunset, every meal.

But the question now is, what do I do? I can't do nothing. I can't look into the Peanut's eyes, years from now, and tell her I didn't at least try to make things better. I know that writing letters to our "representatives" in Congress is probably hopelessly naive, as I've said before. So if we want to make our country live up to its former greatness -- if we want to create an America that values education and personal freedoms, that helps the weakest among us instead of demonizing them, that accepts its responsibilities as a steward of the planet, that cooperates with the rest of the world instead of starting pointless wars -- what do we do?

I want to ensure some kind of future here for my daughter, if I possibly can, and I want to start today. How do we create this new reality?

Friday lit. blogging: Andrew Marvell

To His Coy Mistress

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shoudst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time's wingéd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honor turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Tom Cruise: Bonkers

OK, it's not like we didn't know he was nuts, but even for him, this is completely wacky:

Tom Cruise may have found a way to keep Katie Holmes from violating the precepts of Scientology and shrieking in pain when she gives birth to their child.

It's a specially crafted adult pacifier, reports Star magazine.

18 months ago today

...I waddled into the OB's office for my 39-week checkup. My blood pressure had been fine for the whole pregnancy, but not that day.

"Look at that, your blood pressure has really shot up," the doctor said.

"Oh, really, what does that mean?"

"That means you have toxemia. And the cure for that is to get that baby out. I'm calling over to Labor and Delivery now to let them know -- we're going to induce you tonight."

"Oh my God."

A few hours later, Mr. Fraulein and I were back at the hospital, clutching my overnight bag and pillows from home. There can't be a more surreal feeling in this life than the crazy, overwhelming anticipation of taking off your clothes, getting into one of those delightful hospital nightgowns, and settling your giant self into that adjustable hospital bed, knowing that very soon, your baby is coming out. I had never been in the hospital before in my life. I will never forget how odd it felt to be in that room, dragging my IV pole with me every time I had to go to the bathroom. Sitting watching TV with the baby monitor stretched over my swollen belly. Taking phone calls from my freaked-out parents.

They started the induction later that evening by giving me a drug called Cervidil to soften up my cervix. After this, feeling just minor cramps, I went to sleep.

Then the next morning -- 18 months ago tomorrow -- Pitocin. This was the thing I'd been dreading, after so many friends' stories of Pitocin-induced labors that lasted 18, 24, 30 hours and more. A few hours later, I was surrounded by what seemed like a cast of thousands in the delivery room, cheering me on, chanting, yelling, PUSH! PUSH! And the waves of pain, ebbing and flowing like water, going away completely in between the contractions, which came as such a surprise to me. And Mr. Fraulein clutching my hand.

Somebody up in the sky, or somewhere, was smiling on me that day. In spite of the Pitocin, after just nine hours of labor (including two hours of pushing) the Peanut emerged, yelling, into the world. Mr. Fraulein heard her yelling before she even came out. And after nine months of thinking she was a boy, we discovered that we had a little girl Peanut on our hands.

The first things I saw were her feet. "It's a girl!" people yelled from all directions. I was stunned. I had truly felt like some cosmic voice was telling me I was having a boy. So much for mother's intuition.

And then they gave me an ice bag to sit on, and someone produced a hospital dinner that tasted, to me at that moment, like it came from the finest restaurant in the world. And the Peanut aced her APGAR test and settled onto my breast for her first meal.

Happy 18-months-in-the-world, little Peanut!

More on Scalia

The Boston Herald has been digging into the story of what really happened when Antonin Scalia supposedly gave a reporter the finger in a recent event at a Boston church. If this account is true, what he actually did is even worse:

Smith was working as a freelance photographer for the Boston archdiocese’s weekly newspaper at a special Mass for lawyers Sunday when a Herald reporter asked the justice how he responds to critics who might question his impartiality as a judge given his public worship.

“The judge paused for a second, then looked directly into my lens and said, ‘To my critics, I say, ‘Vaffanculo,’ ” punctuating the comment by flicking his right hand out from under his chin, Smith said.

The Italian phrase means “(expletive) you.”

As someone with literally dozens of hotheaded, easily offended Sicilian relatives, I can tell you for a fact that to say "vaffanculo," accompanied by that flicking-the-hand-out-from-under-the-chin action, does not mean "(expletive) you." It actually means "go take it up the ass."

Classy!

"Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!"

Virginia Woolf, January 25, 1882-March 28, 1941.

But what will we tell the children?

I'm going to let this one speak for itself. Well, except to say that as a Sicilian, I am appalled...

Justice Scalia flips the finger in church

BOSTON, March 27 (UPI) -- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia startled reporters in Boston just minutes after attending a mass, by flipping a middle finger to his critics. A Boston Herald reporter asked the 70-year-old conservative Roman Catholic if he faces much questioning over impartiality when it comes to issues separating church and state. "You know what I say to those people?" Scalia replied, making the obscene gesture and explaining "That's Sicilian."

The 20-year veteran of the high court was caught making the gesture by a photographer with The Pilot, the Archdiocese of Boston's newspaper. "Don't publish that," Scalia told the photographer, the Herald said. He was attending a special mass for lawyers and politicians at Cathedral of the Holy Cross, and afterward was the keynote speaker at the Catholic Lawyers' Guild luncheon.

Friday lit. blogging: J.K. Rowling

From my favorite book of the series so far, Order of the Phoenix:

"You two," she went on, gazing down at Fred and George, "are about to learn what happens to wrongdoers in my school."

You know what?" said Fred. "I don't think we are."

He turned to his twin.

"George," said Fred, "I think we've outgrown a full-time education."

"Yeah, I've been feeling that way myself," said George lightly.

"Time to test our talents in the real world, d'you reckon?" asked Fred.

"Definitely," said George.

And before Umbridge could say a word, they raised their wants and said together, "Accio Brooms!"

Harry heard a loud crash somewhere in the distance. Looking to his left he ducked just in time --Fred and George's broomsticks, one still trailing the heavy chain and iron peg with which Umbridge had fastened them to the wall, were hurtling along the corridor toward their owners. They turned left, streaked down the stairs, and stopped sharply in front of the twins, the chain clattering loudly on the flagged stone floor.

"We won't be seeing you," Fred told Professor Umbridge, swinging his leg over his broomstick.

"Yeah, don't bother to keep in touch," said George, mounting his own.

Fred looked around at the assembled students, and at the silent, watchful crowd.

"If anybody fancies buying a Portable Swamp, as demonstrated upstairs, come to number ninety-three Diagon Alley - Weasley's Wizard Wheezes," he said in a loud voice. "Our new premises!"

"Special discounts to Hogwarts students who swear they're going to use our products to get rid of this old bat," said George, pointing at Professor Umbridge.

"STOP THEM!" shrieked Umbridge, but it was too late. As the Inquisitorial Squad closed in, Fred and George kicked off from the floor, shooting fifteen feet into the air, the iron peg swinging dangerously below. Fred looked across the hall at the poltergeist bobbing on his level above the crowd.

"Give her hell from us, Peeves."

And Peeves, whom Harry had never seen take an order from a student before, swept his belled hat from his head and sprang to a salute as Fred and George wheeled about to tumultuous applause from the students below and sped out of the open front doors into the glorious sunset.

Diagnosis: Not diabetes, just run-of-the mill thirst

The Peanut had a little medical excitement this week. Fortunately it turned out to be nothing, but it was a bit scary at first. She has seen more than her share of doctors lately, as a result of follow-up appointments we've had to ensure that everything is OK after her bout with pneumonia from a few months back. A recent follow-up chest X-ray showed she still had a bit of fluid in the lungs, so we were told to give her albuterol through a machine called a nebulizer (it comes out as a mist that she inhales through a face mask. And toddlers love nothing better than being held down for 10 minutes so they can get medicine! Luckily, we have discovered the amazing powers of Elmo DVDs. That keeps her calm for a little while.)

At the same time as we started this regimen, she began drinking quite a bit more fluids than usual. It was something we sort of took note of, but didn't freak out over.

Then came the input from the teachers at the day care. "Do you realize she's drinking twice as much each day as every other kid in the room?" they said. So I called the lung doctor and asked if this was a side effect of the albuterol.

"No, but she could have diabetes," the lung doctor said. Cue freak out.

Yesterday it was back to the primary care pediatrician for a blood test. Thank God, the test showed she does not have diabetes. So what is it then, we asked?

"She's thirsty," the pediatrician said.

Actual Bush press conference quotes

This Bush press conference transcript is not from The Onion, although it reads like it is. Here are a few choice excerpts, which, as Dave Barry would say, I am not making up:

- “Foreign policy used to be dictated by the fact we had two oceans protecting us. If we saw a threat, we could deal with it if you needed to you think, or not, but we'd be safe.”

- “9/11 affected the way I think. I know these are like totalitarian fascists. They have an ideology. They have a desire to spread that ideology. And they're willing to use tactics to achieve their strategy.”

- “The problem is our employers don't know whether they're hiring people, because there's a whole forgery industry around people being smuggled into the United States. There's a smuggling industry and a forgery industry. And it's hard to ask our employers, the onion guy out there, whether or not the documents he's being shown which look real are real.”

St. Patrick's Day lit. blogging: James Joyce edition

The very last bit of Ulysses:

O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

Another Massachusetts blogging mama

Since I joined the CrazyHipBlogMamas webring, I've been trying to check out some of the other blogs. There is some first class writing going on here! Check out this hilarious entry from "Breed Em and Weep," which is written by another Mass. blogging mama. Good stuff.

aaaaiiiiiiiigggggghhhhhhhh

From the Tom Tomorrow blog, This Modern World:

Yesterday on CNN, Ed Henry gave the following update on the Feingold censure resolution:

"What just happened a few minutes ago is that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, the reason why there was an objection, is Frist declared he wants to bring this up for an immediate vote tonight, so it will not be a free pass. He wants to get Democrats on record here, make them decide whether they want to take what could be seen as an extreme stand and vote for a censure of President Bush. Frist is gambling that in fact this will go down something like 85-to-15 or 90-10 because a lot of Democrats are
probably saying they will not support this."

Assuming only ten Democrats end up supporting the censure resolution, where does that leave us? Well, take a look at these internals from the latest CBS poll (via Atrios):

If only 10 of 44 Democrats are willing to stand against the President, that gives Bush a greater approval rating among Democratic Senators (77%) than among his own base (74%). Cowards.

Misogynist, weak, and oh so sad

Read it and weep. What a sad, weak, penis-envying bunch of men run the Boston Globe, which never loses an opportunity to publish some idiot fawning over the latest "academic" to insist that women can't run businesses, can't run countries, and should stay in the kitchen and shut the ... up.

Woolf knew this guy. Harvey Mansfield, regrettably, existed in her time too, and she nailed him in A Room of One's Own:

"The most transient visitor to this planet, I thought, who picked up this paper could not fail to be aware, even from this scattered testimony, that England is under the rule of a patriarchy. Nobody in their senses could fail to detect the dominance of the professor. His was the power and the money and the influence. He was the proprietor of the paper and its editor and sub–editor. He was the Foreign Secretary and the judge. He was the cricketer; he owned the racehorses and the yachts. He was the director of the company that pays two hundred per cent to its shareholders. He left millions to charities and colleges that were ruled by himself. He suspended
the film actress in mid–air. He will decide if the hair on the meat axe is human; he it is who will acquit or convict the murderer, and hang him, or let him go free. With the exception of the fog he seemed to control everything. Yet he was angry."

What is this Mansfield character so angry about? And what does the Globe think it's doing running a column that presents him in such a positive light, with barely a whimper of dissent against his Neanderthal views? The tone of this column makes me sick. Mansfield is presented as being such a rebel, so brave in his insistence upon promoting his own special brand of bull at Harvard.

Toddler Dance Party

When Mr. Fraulein and I dropped the Peanut off at day care this morning, we found that the place was already in full Toddler Dance Party mode. For some reason they had the radio on, which they don't always do in the early a.m., and Donna Summer's "Last Dance" was playing. There was much boogie-ing going on among the 16- to 24-month-old set. (It's hard to appreciate the full hilariousness of this unless you were there to see it.) The Peanut jumped right in. Fun was had by all.

Empathy at 17 months

Something happened last night which I found pretty remarkable. Mr. Fraulein, the Peanut and I were hanging out in the living room. He was eating a snack, and suddenly started choking and coughing. It looked worse than it was--he really was fine--but he did need to go into the kitchen to get a glass of water. In the 30 seconds or so that he sat there before he got up, the Peanut turned to see what was going on, and a dark cloud passed over her face. She didn't start to cry, but she looked very concerned.

Mr. Fraulein walked to the kitchen, and the Peanut followed. "Daddy?" she said. "Daddy?" Her tone of voice was much different than usual. Normally, when she says Mama or Daddy, she's either just saying hi or trying to get our attention so she can ask for food or a toy, This time, she was asking if Daddy was OK. I think that says a lot about how tuned in our kids are to us, even at this age.

One of these things is not like the others

Here's another way that being a parent changes a person irrevocably. My main preoccupation lately is trying to come up with some way of dealing with the fact that things like this and this and this happen in the world where I have to, somehow, raise my kid. Before you become a parent, you know on an intellectual level that the world is an evil and dangerous and miserable place; having a baby makes it personal. You start to think about all the other babies too, and wonder what is going to happen to them. And the next thing is wondering how on earth you can do anything about it, when the traditional remedies of protesting and writing letters to Congress and other such things don't do a damn bit of good anymore. No more representative government (only those who can write big checks need apply); no more free press; and bingo--no more democracy.

Maybe this only proves that in my pre-motherhood days, I only took a token interest in the world around me, and it took having a baby to wake me up; I don't know. I hope the efforts I used to make to work on behalf of progressive causes did a tiny bit of good. But now I'm interested in quite a bit more than a tiny bit of good. I want to feel like I'm raising my kid in a country that's worthy of her. I just don't know what to do to make that a reality, and each new revelation of crime and catastrophe only makes me feel more helpless.

My experience of parenthood so far tells me there has to be more to life than this: never, ever learning from our history, sitting back and allowing poverty and war and injustice to spiral on endlessly. Life can't just be one big nihilistic excuse for a few people to get rich off of a lot of other people's suffering and bloodshed. It ought to be about being open to possibility, embracing our connections to other people, and being grateful for those connections.

And, of course, smearing bananas in your hair, throwing chewed-up wads of hot dog on the floor, and running around the kitchen with a dish towel on your head, giggling.

What to wear, what not to wear

Felicity Huffman: fabulous. Charlize Theron: disastrous.

Friday lit. blogging: e.e. cummings

Two poems from the great e.e:


since feeling is first
who pays any attention to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says
we are for each other: then
laugh leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis




it may not always be so; and i say
that if your lips, which i have loved, should touch
another's, and your dear strong fingers clutch
his heart, as mine in time not far away;
if on another's face your sweet hair lay
in such silence as i know, or such
great writhing words as, uttering overmuch,
stand helplessly before the spirit at bay;

if this should be, i say if this should be--
you of my heart, send me a little word;
that i may go unto him, and take his hands,
saying, Accept all happiness from me.
Then shall i turn my face and hear one bird
sing terribly afar in the lost lands

Flitting in and out of memory

On Saturday it will be two years since my friend Bevin left us, and I've been thinking about her a lot this week. She keeps passing before my mind's eye, talking, laughing, moving in that purposeful way she had. I see her welcoming holiday guests in her family's old house, joking around with my dad, pressing a drink into my hands.

In my favorite quote from Orlando, my favorite Woolf novel, she wrote memory is the seamstress. The gist of it is that we have no idea which images memory will link together for us, or why they come in the order they do. So that while standing folding laundry, or waiting for my coffee to heat up in the microwave, I might be so overwhelmed by Bevin's image flitting before me that I'll start to cry, wondering what might have been. What's left is to be thankful for what was.

More proof that "race" is a societal construct

Twin girls, one very pale, blonde, and blue-eyed, and one dark-skinned with dark eyes, born to parents who are both half black and half white.

Mixing up those genes produces some surprising and lovely results. How much more proof do we need that what we think of as "race" is just an idea invented ages ago by primitive proto-Republicans to keep people divided?

Back on the sauce

Anyone care to place bets on whether the Chimp-in-Chief is drinking again?

The official police incident report states: "[The unit] was requested to
cover the road junction on the Auchterarder to Braco Road as the President
of the USA, George Bush, was cycling through." The report goes on: "[At]
about 1800 hours the President approached the junction at speed on the
bicycle. The road was damp at the time. As the President passed the junction
at speed he raised his left arm from the handlebars to wave to the police
officers present while shouting 'thanks, you guys, for coming'.

"As he did this he lost control of the cycle, falling to the ground,
causing both himself and his bicycle to strike [the officer] on the lower legs.
[The officer] fell to the ground, striking his head. The President continued
along the ground for approximately five metres, causing himself a number of
abrasions. The officers... then assisted both injured parties."

The Peanut's day

Thursdays are my work-at-home days, so the Peanut stays home from day care and hangs out with me and, thank God, her babysitter, without whom I could not get a single thing done. It's fun because I have a little more time to play with her, feed her, etc. than I normally get during the week. So this was our afternoon yesterday: each time I managed to settle down to the computer, I would hear the pitter-patter (which is actually more like a thunk-thunk) of tiny Peanut feet coming down the hallway. Every 20 minutes or so she would get up from whatever she was doing in her room with the sitter and walk to the dining room, where I work, to check and see if I was still there.

And I know she's coming because I hear "Mama, Mama, Mama" all the way down the hallway. Which is great fun, especially since for so long, all she said was "Daddy."

Pre-35 wardrobe: Tiny T-shirts and bare-midriff jeans. Post-35 wardrobe: Housecoats.

Yesterday I read in the Globe that Talbot's is taking over J. Jill. Apparently the two clothing chains are among the major specialty stores "for women 35 and over." Which I think I agree with, particularly in the case of Talbot's, whose offerings often veer towards the stodgy. In fact, I'd say Talbot's key demographic is professional women around age 50. J. Jill, however, sometimes features fairly hip-looking items (at least as I define it, which may not be saying much). I could easily see women in their early 20s wearing much of the J. Jill stuff.

Which is why it's so interesting that the Globe insists on characterizing the joint venture as aimed at older women. ("The combined companies will make a big footprint in the apparel market for older women, overtaking Ann Taylor, which had about $2 billion in sales last year...")

Now, Ann Taylor and J. Jill are hardly the places you go if you are a grandmother looking to buy a new housecoat. But apparently, those of us who shop at stores like these are stuck in the "older" category -- which is now defined as "over 35." Well, that's nice to know.

Do the people who write these stories, and the business analysts they quote, think that women morph directly from bubblegum-popping sylphs in ass-exposing jeans to dumpy matrons in dowdy suits? Why, in American society, are women shoved into such absolute categories? At 37 I'm not "young" anymore, so I must be "old."

Happy Chinese New Year

The Year of the Dog, that is.

Or as the Peanut would say, the Year of the Woo-Woo. She can't say dog, but likes to try to say "woof woof." It just comes out as "woo-woo." Which is how I think of dogs now. When I see somebody walking their dog, I think, oh look, a woo-woo. This is how parenthood damages your brain.

No comment

From Salon's Broadsheet:

Funny women a turnoff for most men

We all know men are intimidated by smart women. Now there's proof that they're threatened by funny women, too. A study published this week in the scientific journal Evolution and Human Behavior claims that while men might appreciate witty women, they don't want long-term relationships with them. Why? Because "men see being funny as a male thing," Rod Martin, author of study, told the Independent.

The study, based on interviews with hundreds of men and women in their 20s, found that one-half of the men did not want a partner with a sense of humor.

"The idea that men are more interested in having an audience rather than sharing banter doesn't really surprise me," British comedian Meera Syal told the Independent. "Women see men with a sense of humor as dangerous and sexy, while men see it as threatening. Basically, what it comes down to is that humor is a mark of intelligence."

Not surprisingly, the study found that men were willing to put aside their prejudice against clever women for hookups and short-term flings. So funny ladies, if you're looking for more than a one-night stand, just keep your mouth shut and laugh at whatever he says.

-- Lori Leibovich

Friday lit. blogging: yet more Woolf

Since I'm posting all these e-text links this week, here is the link to the online text of Orlando.

Best. Novel. Ever. I mean it.


‘Life and a lover.’ Then laying her pen aside she went into her bedroom, stood in front of her mirror, and arranged her pearls about her neck. Then since pearls do not show to advantage against a morning gown of sprigged cotton, she changed to a dove grey taffeta; thence to one of peach bloom; thence to a wine–coloured brocade. Perhaps a dash of powder was needed, and if her hair were disposed—so—about her brow, it might become her.

Then she slipped her feet into pointed slippers, and drew an emerald ring upon her finger. ‘Now,’ she said when all was ready and lit the silver sconces on either side of the mirror. What woman would not have kindled to see what Orlando saw then burning in the snow—for all about the looking–glass were snowy lawns, and she was like a fire, a burning bush, and the candle flames about her head were silver leaves; or again, the glass was green water, and she a mermaid, slung with pearls, a siren in a cave, singing so that oarsmen leant from their boats and fell down, down to embrace her; so dark, so bright, so hard, so soft, was she, so astonishingly seductive that it was a thousand pities that there was no one there to put it in plain English, and say outright, ‘Damn it, Madam, you are loveliness incarnate,’ which was the truth.

Even Orlando (who had no conceit of her person) knew it, for she smiled the involuntary smile which women smile when their own beauty, which seems not their own, forms like a drop falling or a fountain rising and confronts them all of a sudden in the glass—this smile she smiled and then she listened for a moment and heard only the leaves blowing and the sparrows twittering, and then she sighed, ‘Life, a lover,’ and then she turned on her heel with extraordinary rapidity; whipped her pearls from her neck, stripped the satins from her back, stood erect in the neat black silk knickerbockers of an ordinary nobleman, and rang the bell. When the servant came, she told him to order a coach and six to be in readiness instantly. She was summoned by urgent affairs to London. Within an hour of the Archduke’s departure, off she drove.

Virginia Woolf would be proud

Women say no to war! Petition here. Signing would be a nice way to celebrate the anniversary of VW's birth this week.

Reading Three Guineas would be another.

Jan. 25, 1882

124 years ago today, Virginia Woolf was born. What a lark! What a plunge!

My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery - always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What's this passion for?

"The Office"

If NBC ever puts out "The Office" on DVD, I'm buying every episode I can get my hands on. Because I have worked for Michael several times. Often he was female, but I remember him well. I have also worked with Dwight, who has also sometimes been female, but always creepy. Hands down the best show on TV right now (aside from the Daily Show of course).

How we '80s kids know we're getting old

While Mr. Fraulein and I were in Los Angeles over the holidays, we were able to take in a few movies, thanks to the abundant free babysitting that was available. During "The Producers," my blood started to run cold as I realized what it was that was bothering me about Matthew Broderick. He didn't look right. The skin on his face looked all crepey and loose.

This, of course, was because my image of Matthew Broderick is frozen in time from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," which came out in 1986. When I was a junior in high school.

Which was 20 years ago, for Christ's sake.

When the Peanut finally sees the John Hughes movies (on some digital format which probably doesn't even exist yet) they will be quaint, musty oldies, if they aren't already.

Once upon a potty

Today we got the shocking news from our pediatrician that in just three more months, we have to start potty training the Peanut. For some reason I didn't think this would come up so quickly, but apparently 18 months is the age to start. I guess we will have to get "Once Upon a Potty." On one level this is disturbing, but on another level, this means, some day not too long from now, no more diapers!

We're Delta Airlines. How can we make your trip more irritating?

Well, we are back from Los Angeles, where the Peanut had her whirlwind tour of Mr. Fraulein's family. She particularly enjoyed spending time with her Popo (grandma in Chinese), who never stopped feeding her, and her Ye-ye (grandpa). She also had fun with her aunts and uncles and her five cousins, ranging in age from 9 to 19. It's amazing to me how mature they all look since the last time I saw them. Smart, gorgeous kids all.

Delta, as I've mentioned in previous posts, seems to delight in spreading misery, but what are you going to do? This is just how air travel is these days. You stand on line, awaiting the chance to take your shoes and coat off so they can be separately X-rayed, even though I don't think this serves any real security purpose. You think you'll be fed, just because you're traveling all the way across the country? I don't think so. You'll carry a sack of enough food and water to carry you through any contingency (What if we miss the connecting flight and get stuck in the airport for days, and can't face the prospect of eating McDonalds?) -- and you'll like it. Did you say you wanted to board the plane first, just because you're traveling with a 15-month-old? Nice try. Perhaps you can shove the elderly passengers out of the way with your stroller, because it doesn't look like they get assistance anymore either.

Oh, and would you like your luggage to make it onto your connecting flight? Delta can't quite handle that challenge. It's not like they've been in this air travel business for very long or anything. But luckily, they do have a 24-hour delivery service, so our misplaced bags made it back to our house the next morning.

So no real harm done. But it amazes me that the airlines seem not to do one damn thing to make your trip go more smoothly. It's like they deliberately try to make it as difficult as possible to travel, and then they wonder why they're all in Chapter 11.