reasonable creature

I've been referring (in my ongoing interior monologue, which is sometimes concerned with such things) to the lead of the USA Network show The Dead Zone as "that-guy-who-looks-like-Anthony-Michael-Hall-from-some-angles-but-isn't." And yet, it turns out he is. Which kind of makes me want to watch the show, you know, so I can try to figure out whether he truly is the only child star to grow up looking normal, ever, or whether it's just really really good face work.

On the flight home from the quiz tournament, I wound down from all the excitement by working the Sunday crossword. Then I noticed that the overhead screens on the plane were broadcasting puzzles and trivia questions from the board game Cranium. They were all simple enough, until I got to the one that asked something like, "true or false: any month that begins on a Sunday will always have a Friday the 13th." I thought about it for a moment, and figured it had to be true. if the 1st is a Sunday, the 13th must be a Friday, right? Well, the answer came up: "false."

I obsessed about this for the rest of plane ride. How can that be false? It just doesn't make sense. Did I read the question wrong? Forget to figure in something about leap years? Am I just not as smart as I think I am?

Anyhow, I came home and forgot about it until today, when I looked up Friday the 13th on Wikipedia: "All months whose first day falls on a Sunday will contain a Friday the 13th."

So, if we can believe the wiki-ers, then it seems like the digital media error plague has now spread to in-flight entertainment, too.

Back home now, and exhausted from 36 hours of geekery. Also, thinking of flying into Orlando International Airport on Memorial Day weekend? Think again. Also, why does every casual dining establishment chain have to have its own onion ring specialty (The Onion Loaf! The Irish Haystack!) and its own Xtreme! dessert menu (Death by Chocolate! The Chocolate Avalanche!)?

Also, I'm very, very tired. But we did way better in the tournament than I'd feared, and (despite a rather miserable car ride back to the hotel) it was fun hanging out with the sibs.

And baby seemed not to notice that I'd left--which I consider a sign of parental success.

I'm off to a high-level academic quiz tournament to compete along with members of my family against some of the titans of the academic quiz tournament circuit. If all goes well, you will be hearing more about this. In any event, the Creature will return later this weekend. See you then.

After complaining about the typo in the New York Times crossword puzzle, I was surprisingly delighted to see this one. It's exhibit 7 from Green v. Haskell County, the case the ACLU is bringing in Oklahoma protesting a Ten Commandments statue on a courthouse lawn. If you look closely--or click on the photo--you can see, carved into stone, that the seventh commandment bans "adultry."

The judge is expected to rule on this case soon. Meanwhile, here's what the county commissioners had to say about their decision to approve the monument:

“.... The good Lord died for me. I can stand for him. . . . I’m a Christian and I believe in this. I think it’s a benefit for this community.”

“In fact, I think there needs to be more of them [monuments with the Ten Commandments inscribed] so people can read them. We should put them in front of all of the courthouses and school houses and federal buildings. If we did, we probably wouldn’t have a lot of the bad stuff happening today.”

The decision to allow the monument “came down to siding with a majority of Christians who too often have let the minority tell them what to do."

“I believe the good Lord put [the monument with the Ten Commandments inscribed] up here.”

If that's so, all I can say is, I hope my lord is a better speller than yours is.

It's been bothering me for months now, but I've been able to avoid talking about it much. Until today. Because not only do I see typos everywhere--they are rampant on websites, increasingly common in newspapers, magazines, and books, even cropping up on street signs--but today I found one in the New York Times crossword puzzle. There's no way to link to it online, but if you have the print edition check out 22 Across:

Courtoom figures: Abbr.

I was willing to bend over backwards for Will Shortz (um, that so doesn't sound like what I meant, but whatever). Could this be some alternate spelling of Khartoum? No luck; from the answer, it's clear that an 'r' has been dropped.

So what does this all mean? Well, on the one hand, we all make mistakes; I'm sure there are at least a few errors in this very blog. But I do feel that standards are slipping, and I blame two connected phenomena. The immediate issue is that so many print organizations are trying to save money by cutting back on copyediting and proofreading. A bigger problem, however, is that (while I hate to blame the Internet--the cause of and solution to all of life's problems, one might say) online standards are still not as high as those for published works. But rather than digital media becoming more like print, it seems that print is veering closer to the sloppiness of digital. I used to believe that the NYT crossword puzzle was the last holdout of precision and care. Today, that hope has died.

One of the sisters-in-law was visiting, and before she left today, she was giving a clinic in child-rearing. I think she was most appalled by baby's bedtime hour. You see, sister-in-law has read all the books, and feels strongly about the Bedtime Ritual and other Keys to Success. And I was willing to go along--the first night she had baby fed, bathed, and asleep by 9:30. There was one waking, but mostly she slept through the night. Husband and I sat on the sofa, somewhat shocked not to have a child with us, and tried to think of things to say to each other.

This was not to be a pattern, and every night since then I have been up and down again and again with baby, who is less settled than ever. But it was a nice idea.

More interesting were sister-in-law's choices to give baby (1) a pen, which she managed to open (we still haven't gotten all of the ink marks off her thigh); (2) a plastic bag (you know, as a toy); and (3) a postcard, which baby nibbled on and regurgitated, as is her wont.

Chalk this one up to cultural relativism? In any event, baby loves her auntie, and we were sad to see her go.

If I were a little more paranoid, today would be the day I started thinking that the New York Times was sending me subliminal messages. And as with any true paranoia, there would be a core of truth:

* The horse-ankle-fracture graphic on page 1--I've been hobbling around on a sprained left hind ankle (er, I mean, ankle) for the past week!

* The bizarre David Carr column which is for no good reason all about my friend Michael Schaffer! (And Mike, when you google yourself and find this blog deep in the search, shoot me an email.)

Okay, so I was going to find a third example, but then I remembered that I don't work for a newsmagazine any more, so I don't have to back up so-called trends with three so-called examples. I'm free.

I want to hate BabyFirstTV (via this piece). But given how excited baby gets when she hears the theme song to Buffy (and how we then do the Buffy music dance, and say "Grrr! Argh!" along with the monster at the end), I'm not sure I have any credibility on this issue.

Today brings news that Britney Spears almost dropped her baby while carrying him and a glass of water out of the Ritz Carlton on Central Park South. This comes, of course, in the wake of other incidents when (1) she held the baby on her lap while she was driving her car; (2) he fell from a broken high chair and fractured his skull; and (3) she drove with his carseat facing the wrong way.

However.

I think we should give her a break on this new one. (And not only because I once spent 4 months living in that hotel and I know how depressing it can be.) From the visual evidence, this case seems to have been overblown (see pix at Sky, via Gawker). But even more so, moms who will admit it will tell you that they've had their "almosts," too. It comes with the territory. Before I was pregnant, a friend of mine explained that motherhood is all about learning to carry many things at once: the baby, the folded-up stroller, and the groceries, for example. Or, the baby, the diaper bag, the bottle pack, and the umbrella.

This has held true, but perhaps even more so, I believe that motherhood is about improvisation, not perfection. Like: During allergy season, using the burp rags as handkerchiefs, and then wiping baby's face with the edge of your t-shirt. When the bibs are all in the laundry, draping a dishcloth over the baby instead. When the baby towels are all in the laundry, wrap her in an old swaddling blanket when she comes out of the bath. Nothing in the house for lunch, and you can't bear the thought of getting you and baby out of the house to find something? A generous spoonful of peanut butter, right from the jar, will get you through.

An important caveat, however: Do not be tempted to use the baby's play mirror to apply your makeup. This way madness lies.

Our friends at BOBW have a nice item occasioned by a Wall Street Journal piece looking at the lobbyists behind criticism of Fast Food Nation. P O'Neill explains:

TCS Daily is the current version of Tech Central Station, an outfit which has always sought the aura of upstart libertarian blogging ... but as the story makes clear, is in fact tightly connected to Washington lobbyists.

I recommend that you check out the TCS site if you crave a hit of bile with your morning coffee. (Be sure to read the "success stories" of people who claim to have gone on 30-day all-McDonald's diets and lost weight.) It is an exquisite piece of 21st century propaganda.

Even with the usual j8l caveats, I find this strangely disturbing.

A report out today from the CDC recommends that women of any childbearing age--puberty to menopause--approach their medical care as though they could become pregnant at any time. Like many public health proclamations, it goes too far for most of the population--most 13-year-old girls aren't going to get pregnant (though 84 out of 1000 will, according to the teen sex package also in today's Post). And one could argue that it assumes women aren't in control of their reproductivity enough to plan their pregnancies. (Come to think of it, if the Republicans have their way, this is exactly what will happen.) Still, it is a very good idea to encourage potential parents to have an in-depth pre-conception doctor's visit--and to make sure that insurance companies pay for it.

But these visits are currently far from standard procedure. In fact most women I know who call their doctor's office to say they think they're pregnant are told to schedule an appointment for weeks later, even though

[r]esearch shows that "during the first few weeks (before 52 days' gestation) of pregnancy" -- during which a woman may not yet realize she's pregnant -- "exposure to alcohol, tobacco and other drugs; lack of essential vitamins (e.g., folic acid); and workplace hazards can adversely affect fetal development and result in pregnancy complications and poor outcomes for both the mother and the infant," the report states.

Women are already plenty concerned about this--we find out that we're finally pregnant after months of trying, and then remember that the previous week we shared a bottle of wine at dinner. Or we learn that the seemingly harmless over-the-counter decongestant we took after we knew we were pregnant has been known to cause birth defects in the first trimester. There's clearly a knowledge gap here. Maybe now doctors will try to fill it.

That wasn't really so geeky. But this (via gawker) is.

The FedEx dude just brought my George Saunders Army materials. I am so nerdily happy about this--especially the iron-on transfer of the cover art from the book, which I may apply to something this very night. (But should it be a t-shirt of mine, husband's, or baby's? So much to think about!)

Poet Stanley Kunitz has died, at 100. I saw him read once, about ten years ago at the Library of Congress. He read Touch Me, in this wonderful old man voice. It was an amazing thing to behold.

read this

Yesterday I complained about the terrible Mother's Day "Op-Art" piece in the New York Times; today that piece seems to have completely vanished from their website. Vanished! So today I am officially complaining about David Brooks and John Tierney. So there.

Never never never again will I drink coffee at night. It's after 3 a.m., the birds are doing that nighttime singing thing (am I the only one who thinks it's weird that they sing at night?), and I'm up googling old enemies and half hoping baby fusses and wakes so I can soothe her (and have something else to do). And tomorrow afternoon when I finally get out of bed, husband is going to give me that exasperated glare he saves especially for every time I drink coffee at night and can't sleep. Plus it will be (well, really, it already is) Mother's Day, and I have Big Plans to go to the garden store as my gift to myself, so I really can't be sleeping the day away. I should be sleeping now and instead I am searching through medical sites to see if my sore ankle is an early sign of gout. (There is, actually, some gout in my family--well, in my stepfather I guess it doesn't mean much, but my uncle has it too...) Usually when I can't sleep I just get up, tweeze my eyebrows in front of the bathroom mirror, examine my clogged pores, and then I am able to go back to bed and fall asleep. But not with coffee! Which seemed like such a nice idea when it was suggested--and really I had such a small amount, with loads of milk....

Yep, it's my first official year with this lame-ass holiday. And what do I wake up to this morning? Why, this aggressively unfunny op-ed in the Times, of course. Hooray for me.

ADDENDUM: That item seems to have disappeared....

Contemporary Poetry Review looks at the poetry of rock stars (link via Bookslut), and quotes this gem from Paul McCartney, a "tribute to his late wife Linda" entitled "Rock On":

I want to smell
your underarm odor
I want to drink
your ice cream soda […]

Want to stroke
your furry kitten
Don’t be shy
you won’t be bitten.

Extremely unsurprising tidbits from a rainy day of reading:

* The New York Times Book Review names the best American novels of the past 25 years, plus runners-up, oddly scooping their own May 21 issue. And guess what? Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, Cormac McCarthy, John Updike, and Don DeLillo are all, like, really good writers.

* Newsweeklies think alike.

* "As what may be the last major tax-cut bill from the Bush administration nears final approval in Congress, studies show that most of the benefits will flow to high-income Americans," writes David Cay Johnston. "80 percent of the tax savings would flow to the top 10 percent of taxpayers and ... almost a fifth of the benefits will go to the top one-tenth of 1 percent."

* Rich Hollywood types love getting free stuff.

(and yes, I did read an entire issue of Us, which felt like scarfing down a bag of mini-Snickers while you're waiting for the Trick-or-Treaters to show up. But that aside, this phenomenon of absurdly rich people going ga-ga over a free $70 t-shirt astounds me. Would someone please explain?)

Three parents.

That's right, I think that small children should be allotted three adults, instead of the customary two. My sister has been visiting and helping out, and it is amazing how much energy that leaves for the rest of us. With three parents, there's always a spare around to jump in if one of us needs a nap, or a shower or whatever. And baby loves having another style of play in the mix.

FYI: This has nothing to do with my big big love for Big Love. I do not want a "sister-wife," though perhaps I want a live-in sister?

I know I've been oddly silent about the New York Times article regarding nasty mothers in the animal kingdom. It's only because I've been so transfixed by the totally bizarre photoillustrations that accompanied the piece. I can't take my eyes off the sexy, negligent mama rabbit. I'm thinking of adding it to baby's keepsake file, you know, along with the hospital anklets and umbilical stub.

Two observations from tonight's Europe Day celebration at the European Ambassador's place:

1. The food was so much better than at the White House Christmas party. It's like not even funny.

2. There is actually a street sign in the ambassador's 'hood (Kalorama) that reads "Califorina." I kid you not. Now, Kalorama has to be one of the most influential neighborhoods in, well, the world, right? And even they can't get proofreaders?

It's the magazine cutbacks, people. They're hurting everyone.

P.S. Someone tell Rose to stop procrastinating and write that paper, 'kay?

I had thought that the hardest thing I'd ever done was squeeze a basketball out of my Pringles can after 30 hours of labor. But it turns out that living through a full day without the Internet is right up there. Baby and I napped through most of it, became seriously annoyed with each other, got deep into Buffy season 7, didn't go out because it was rainy and cold, then made up with a session of "watch the cars! watch the planes!" on the front steps.

Husband came home and had to actually use a real live yellow pages to find the phone number for our take-out. It was very retro. Then the Internet connection came back and I almost cried with relief.

This post by Michael at Bookslut about fake band names makes me want to claim my band names asap. So, for the record, these are mine (and my sister's, since she has to be in any band I'm in, it's like a rule or something):

Monkeypox (a girl-punk trio)

Persons of Interest (bad "modern rock" whiny boy band)

The Pin Factory (not sure yet whether this is an offshoot of Joy Division or just some kind of nerd rock outfit)

I think there have been some others over the years, but I don't remember right now.

be the last word on Caitlin Flanagan? Can it??? (link via atrios)

some pleasant Sunday afternoon reading in the New York Times Magazine:

"The mind-set that invites a couple to use contraception is an antichild mind-set. ... So when a baby is conceived accidentally, the couple already have this negative attitude toward the child. Therefore seeking an abortion is a natural outcome."

"Sexual union in marriage ought to be a complete giving of each spouse to the other, and when fertility (or potential fertility) is deliberately excluded from that giving I am convinced that something valuable is lost. A husband will sometimes begin to see his wife as an object of sexual pleasure who should always be available for gratification."

making [plan B] available over the counter could lead to "extreme promiscuous behaviors such as the medication taking on an 'urban legend' status that would lead adolescents to form sex-based cults centered around the use of Plan B."

What if the best cure for my debilitating hay fever was pouring warm salt water in one nostril and letting it drip out the other?

What would I do then?

Last night, over fabulous Vietnamese food, a friend shared a story about a friend-of-a friend in common, who insists that babies must go to sleep at 6:30 in the evening. I laughed along with everyone else, but inwardly shivered as I realized that we might be at the opposite--and also crazy--end of the sleep spectrum. Because right now it is midnight, and baby is still awake, happily cooing. And we're not too concerned.
I've been told that this is what is known as a "rock star" baby. She keeps our hours, basically--usually she is asleep around 11:15 and up again around 9 am. This is the schedule she herself settled on, when she began sleeping through the night. (Not wanting to risk various friendships, I won't tell you exactly when she started sleeping through--let's just say that it was very early on, and we will always be grateful.) It suits us, because it means husband gets several hours with her after he comes home from work, and we don't have to wake up extra early. My mother tells me I was the same way: I wouldn't go sleep until after Johnny Carson came on. (Now, instead of Carson, it is the Will & Grace reruns that signal it's time for bed. Does this mark evolution or devolution? You decide.)
I guess we may pay the price for all of this leisure when it's time for baby to go to school. Or at least that's what the books tell us. For now I am just happy to have a few extra minutes of her snotty-snorty giggles in my day, because I can never get enough.

A reader has directed me to the "Mom Salary Wizard" over at salary.com. It purports to put a value on a mother's work, adjusted for location. So take note: I should be making $140,120 for my mommying, which is slightly under the average for Washington, D.C. (I believe I am being penalized for not doing more of the cooking, but husband says he likes to cook....)

Over at Crooked Timber, Harry Brighouse asks why the British book Why Love Matters by psychotherapist Sue Gerhardt hasn't gotten more attention here. And it does sound provocative, from his read of it:

Gerhardt is very clear that what is best for very young children is that they are looked after by their parents; securing their emotional health requires that their carer be attuned to their emotional states not just at a particular time but over time, and be sufficiently attached to them to involve themselves in the emotional work that the baby needs... .

He then quotes this passage, which I think is worth repeating:

They need continuous care from adults who can attune to their states, regulate them, and feed back to them who they are. The capacity to do this develops through an ongoing relationship. Babies who are looked after by strangers cannot expect to enjoy lasting emotional attachments to them, building up a mutual emotional vocabulary and understanding; by their nature, these relationships are transitory. Babies looked after by people who are not ‘in love’ with them are often socialised into emotional life, with corresponding biochemical pathways in the brain, without the responsiveness and sensitivity that produce emotional confidence and competence. We know that there is a high rate of avoidant attachment in these looked after populations- ie a form of attachment behaviour which attempts self-sufficiency and not needing or relying on others. These tendencies perhaps lay the groundwork to produce the workaholics of the future labour force.

This somewhat flies in the face of what I've read of the research--and in what I have come to believe through experience. (If you follow the link you will see what others have been saying in response to Brighouse's post.) It seems to me that a good caregiver who is not a parent but who has a stable, longterm relationship with the baby can provide exactly the things that child needs--can be "in love" with the baby, in other words. And further, I think that there are a good many parents who wouldn't be very good at being a baby's daily carer, and are in fact doing the best thing for their babies by finding someone else who is very good at it.

Which brings me to something I've noticed more than once: Why are parents so upset by those instances when their children accidentally call the nanny or babysitter "mommy"? They should be delighted that the child has such a strong, loving attachment to this person! Instead, of course, the grown-up's ego gets bruised. In other words, we never grow up.

This afternoon, after our first "itsy-bitsy yoga" class, baby and I went to the playground. She loves the swings. There is no goal to this kind of play: She doesn't yet understand the idea of "go higher!" And she doesn't seem to care how long she swings; when I say it's time to stop, she accepts that it's time to stop. The pleasure is in the doing, purely in the moment. She leans into the backswing, eyes closing, then shoots forward into the rush of wind, her sly smile erupting into a squeal. Each oscillation is a new experience as far as she is concerned. There is nowhere to go, but that doesn't matter.

On the good days, this is what motherhood is like for me.

By now you've probably heard the latest twist in the Kaavya Viswanathan plagiarism scandal, how she took passages from another book, too. But this time, props to the Harvard girl: the "My Little Pony" sweatshirt is a brilliant improvement on the original.

Today's Wall Street Journal (sub. req'd) breaks the news that women don't love Tom Cruise like they used to, which may mean trouble for MI:III. Although, according to her website, as of two weeks ago Rosie O'Donnell was still hooked:

i will always love him
real love is eternal

Aha. Okay. Backing away real slow now...