reasonable creature

It's so cool how, let's say you have two hours to kill out and about in the city, and for once you remembered a pen, but you forgot your notebook, and you're actually in the mood to write, so you think about buying a new notebook, even though you have a gazillion of them at home and you would have to hide the new one from your husband because he would like freak if he saw you had bought another one, but you don't have enough bits of paper/receipts/blank phone-book pages to work with, so you ask your local nice bookstore lady for some scrap paper and she happily gives you a generous chunk of computer printout from the recycle bin, which turns out to be the best stuff to write on! Ever!

It's so cool.

Those of you keeping score at home, take note: Last night in Philadelphia, the Creature beat her own all-time Scrabble record, with a handsome 481.

The boys over at Brainiac--perhaps sensing a wee bit of dissatisfaction among some readers frustrated by the boys-club aura beginning to emanate from said blog--call our attention to a Mothering magazine contest that produced this new "international breastfeeding symbol":











I must say I rather love it, all caveats aside about the need to accept and support formula-feeders. And it reminds me that I kind of miss those vachement days, just a little.

Blame it on the rain, or on the fact that my iPod seemed to be randomly playing more songs with the word "rain" in them than should be statistically possible. In any event, I decided today to begin the Great Clothing Reassessment that has long been overdue in the RC household. This involved putting away summer clothes, including the maternity stuff I hadn't ever stored last summer, and getting out the winter wear. It also meant trying to rearrange what goes where, especially since there was no previous order--things were just stuffed in whatever closet or drawer or corner happened to be closest at the time.

So I created several piles of clothing, by category. In the process I figured out two things: One, I never need buy a piece of sleepwear again for the rest of my life. And two, it turned out that my pile of "loungewear" was the biggest of all. This is what happens when you work from home/work in the home, I suppose. The need for anything tailored, or dry-clean-only, or not cotton and comfy drops dramatically in favor of old banana republic t-shirts and frayed-at-the-ankle yoga pants. At first you just wear them indoors, while on deadline, or during cleaning binges, but then it occurs to you that you can run out to the Starbucks like this, particularly if you have a coat to throw on top, and then it's not like the people at the Safeway care how you dress...

Before you know it you're showing up at dinner parties in a Gap hoodie and sweatpants.

Let’s teach our children from a very young age about the story of the universe and its incredible richness and beauty. It is already so much more glorious and awesome—and even comforting—than anything offered by any scripture or God concept I know.

Yes! Let's!

Every time I see Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, I think about old people solving crimes. Why?



Oh yeah.

There's a rather, um, extraordinary letter about my last book review in the Post this weekend.

It's here.

Earlier this week, baby's doctor announced that we are to go cold turkey on the bottle. Well, we could still do one at night, she allowed, but at 15 months she said it was high time to give them up.

Baby disagrees.

However, husband and I decided to comply, even though it feels like unbridled sadism and it means several hours a day of complaint (which is sort of like unbridled masochism, I suppose). And we'd been spared a battle over the pacifier, since she'd weaned herself off them before we even noticed.

Still, the worst moments are brutal. Today at play class, some of the other moms were commiserating with me, and sharing their own stories. Then Mrs. Fussy Smugalot (not her real name) primly announced that she had called a halt to the bottle at 14 months. Someone else asked how many days of hard going they had before her daughter got used to it. "Oh, no, she's good. It was fine right away," she smirked.

Harumph. Well, fine. Some kids walk early (smirk) and begin sleeping through the night early (smirk, smirk), and others whine incessantly for their bottle even after 14 months, and that's just the way the world works. Normally I don't let the likes of Mrs. S get to me, but the lack of sleep from last night's cryfest plus the misery of the day before had worn me down.

That is, until we were all packing up to leave, and there was Baby Smugalot, tucked into her stroller, sucking on a big ol' multicolor pacifier.

Smirk, smirk.

Actually, I won't be live-blogging anything, but I do find myself mesmerized by Candy Crowley's fingernails on CNN. While I can assure you that black nailpolish is very chic right now, I just don't think it's working for her.

Visiting baby's American aunt at the University of Chicago this past weekend I was reminded of many important things. Among them:

1. napping is great, and cannot be overestimated as a recreational activity. Co-napping=even better, if you find the right partner.

2. used-book stores are much better in college towns (or neighborhoods) than in sterile capital cities.

3. you need club soda to make a proper mojito.

At one of the aforementioned bookstores I came across a book of short stories ($5, hardcover!) by Sylvia Townsend Warner, who I had sort of forgotten about even after reading her remarkable first novel from the 1920s, Lolly Willowes. My stepmother had loaned it to me with some other books and I chose to read it first because the cover was wonderfully strange--a bold yellow, with black silhouettes of witches all a-broom. While I have terrible recall for the plots of novels, I seem to remember that this one was lovely and normal until about halfway through when, with a shock, it got quietly trippy and even more wonderful. The short stories--all or most of which appeared first in the New Yorker--are yummy, too, and I fear I will speed through them too fast and be left to myself once again.

In other news, and against all reason, the plants I brought inside for the winter are flourishing, and the petunia (which I grew from seeds!) has bloomed again. Baby loves to be picked up and brought over to the tray of little pots ("gah! gah!") and then we must count each flower and explain about the herbs, sometimes two or three times over.

This might indeed be an instance of pure evil. And the Creature doesn't even believe in moral absolutes (well, it's perhaps a bit more complicated than that, but you get the point). So let's see, a government attacking vulnerable newborn children? Mmmm, that smells evil-riffic!

I never used to believe those stories about high school girls getting pregnant but not realizing it until they give birth in the bathroom during prom. Then when I got pregnant--and realized I was pregnant about 2 weeks after conception--I doubted them ever more. So this AP story caught my eye.

BELLEVUE, Wash. (AP) -- Amanda Brisendine attributed the 30 pounds she gained in the past year to an abandoned smoking habit and rich food. So when she went to the hospital with sharp stomach pain, she wasn't expecting to leave with a newborn son.

''I don't know how I didn't know. I just didn't know,'' Brisendine said Tuesday from her bed at Overlake Medical Center's Birthing Center, where she delivered Alexander Joseph Britt by Caesarean section.

I suppose we humans have an enormous capacity for self-delusion. But I still don't quite believe this is true.