I took Mac out to Rick's Really Rich Ice Cream yesterday for some mom/elder son quality time. I was wearing an old large Tintin in Tibet t-shirt, since I'm currently in that awful "must only wear clothes that I don't really mind getting stains on" stage. Mac asked who the people on my shirt were:

"That's Tintin, he's a boy reporter who goes on adventures, and that's his friend Captain Haddock. They have backpacks on because they're going hiking. One of Tintin's friends got lost, and they're going to look for him."
"Lost in the woods?"
"Lost in the mountains.'

I then tried to give a little story/lecture about what Mac should do if he was ever lost (stay in one place, seek high ground if possible, find a cop) and Mac listened intently throughout. Eventually, I stopped. "Do you understand that, Mac?"
Mac: "Uh-huh. If my friends are ever lost, I should go and find them."

***

Me: "Tomorrow, we need to take Robbie to the doctor, so he can get a checkup and some shots."
Mac (upset): No! Robbie doesn't want some shots! He's too busy crying a lot."

In other news, it's pretty clear that Mac thinks his school. Western Montessori, was named after a type of dinosaur.

R. is feeding and sleeping with gusto; indeed, we got a bit worried because it's nigh-impossible to wake him up for midnight feedings. Still, by last Saturday he had already regained his birth weight, a week ahead of schedule, so...

1. Michael Jackson is dead. I'm going to try to focus on the joy he took in his music in the early years, and not the weird ick of the later ones.

2. Anyone who's seen the Muppet Movie as an adult: Um, in Piggy's song/dream sequence (Never Again), is there implied sex, or is that just us?

3. Appaently, the Iranian gov is trying to keep protestors off the streets by showing a LOTR marathon. I'd be horrified if I were Tolkien/ Jackson..or hopeful that they'd get some ideas.

Anyone have any exp with air coolers? Any recs?

We bartered with jendaviswilson and redhound the other day for citrus fruit; we gave them a large bag of citrons (aka etrogs, aka lemons with yummy rinds and albedos but little juice) in return for a box of their oranges. Ever since, I've been trying to use up the oranges, despite lacking a juicer and not being that fond personally (though CP and Mac are) of straight oranges.

Since getting an immersion blender for Christmas, I've been trying to make smoothies periodically, but always disappointed at how poorly they compared to Jamba Juice (which I've been having a lot of since they're basically the closest food option to my office on campus).

Tonight, however, I concocted a smoothie Better than Jamba Juice, and must write it down while I still remember it.

( Ori's Orange-Berry-Lime Smoothie )

I have reached the stage now where our relatives have started calling randomly over the last few days, as if, somehow, we might have simply forgotten to tell them about a new arrival in the family. Polling them on names has been largely unhelpful; I wind up amazed that CP wasn't "Baby Paladin" until the age of 5 or so. Meanwhile, my subconscious is continuing to be remarkably unsubtle; last night featured a nightmare in which I was in a bus driving along a cliff while increasingly higher waves crashed over the road; I managed to wake myself up when the waters broke through the bus windows, and was actually slightly surprised to find that, no, I wasn't in labor.

The week with Mac not in preschool has been mildly trying, as he tries to push all his limits with a mom who's too tired to chase him. There have been...a lot of timeouts. (These aren't proactively effective, but after a minute in his room alone, Mac does become remarkably calm and cooperative. I should note, though, that we tend to reserve timeouts for hitting, biting, or repeated willful disobedience, which gives you a sense of what this week has been like.) Tomorrow we go to either Children's Fairyland or the Oakland Zoo, to try and give him a big treat on his own. Meanwhile, Eowyn has gone into uber-protective mode, including attempting to guard me from Mac's attempts to examine my abdomen with his imaginary stethoscope.

My nesting instincts are highly present but impaired by limited time I can spend vertical; I did clean out my whole cubicle this afternoon, though, and the article on madam-mothers, due at the end of June, is going surprisingly well.

This is a letter written by a former American slave to his old master, who has asked him to return to work on the old plantation in Tennessee. It's pretty amazing testimony.

Why zombies are progressive and leftist, from The American Prospect, complete with charts...

I think one could argue in contrast that werewolves and vampires are inherently aristocratic, conservative, and hierarchical, what with the emphasis on obeying leaders/sires and the whole "fashion and manners were better back when I was turned in the 18th century" shtick.

Zombies are the proletariat revolution of the horror world...

So, I guess it's a good thing that, in the course of research over the last week, I've stopped reading through medical case studies of pregnancies gone horribly wrong 2500 years ago, progressed through descriptions of ancient abortions (one doctor recommends that a woman "be shaken by means of draught animals") and moved onto love poetry written to prostitutes. But still, the phrase "I wantoned on her face" does not exactly make my heart flutter. :) I swear, some of this is like the really bad fanfic written by 13-year-old girls w/o much experience.

More Mac phrases of mysterious origin:

Tonight, as I was putting him to bed:
"Can I have an orange cookie to take to bed?"
"OK."
"First the cookies, then the wild donkeys!"

He offered no explanation upon being pressed regarding where he expected said wild donkeys to appear from.

"I didn't see that one coming!" --used in reference to pretty much any fall or surprising trip over the past few days.

Mac (who was excited about having gone to the library) came up to me yesterday evening and said, in this intense, loud, monotone: "Read To Me! Boooooooks! Booooooooks! Reeeeeeaaaaad!" It was totally Toddler Zombie mode.

The other amusing-if-you-weren't-there moment came from our visit to the inflatable bouncy castle playground this morning, where Mac at one point had gotten into one of the two small cars, and was industriously backing up, carefully shouting "Beep! Beep!" as he did so. It didn't seem to occur to him that the crawling 9-month old directly behind him might not understand the universal signal of "Beep! Beep!"

A random musing: So, yesterday I baked a chocolate apricot cake for a gathering (at the home of amethyst73, who it was wonderful to see) that was very well received. The cake was based on Nigella Lawson's pantry-shelf chocolate orange cake, with the marmalade replaced by apricot preserves and a chocolate buttercream frosting with dried apricots added. This is a ridiculously simple recipe; I suspect Mac could make it in another six months or so. Nonetheless, I feel like it got a bigger response though because it was a _cake_, rather than cookies or brownies or bars, despite the fact that cookies or brownies would actually have been significantly more trouble to make. Similarly, in a cafe, a slice of cake will always cost more than a cookie, pretty much regardless of size.

Why, I wonder, do we have this hierarchy of desserts? It's not about simplicity, or how pretty they necessarily look, or certainly about health. Why is an easy cake seen as more impressive than an assortment of, say, blueberry linzer bars? Any thoughts?

***
In other news, I was thinking about Up again, and wishing that there were some children's films I could show Mac which have positive mom-child interactions in them. Even Miyazaki largely fails me here, despite his strong young female characters; the women in maternal relationships are sick/absent/abandoning/freakishly scary. Pixar's worse. There are no Muppet moms. And as for Disney, well, there's a webcomic floating around (couldn't find the link) in which the six-year-old girl turns angrily to her mother and says, "I wish you were like all the Disney moms!" It's kinda sad when you have to resort to movies like Dumbo, where a principal plot point revolves around the mom being _locked up in a cage_ for most of the film, or Mary Poppins, where you have the largely absent career activist mom. Any suggestions?

***
In other other news, very worried about Iran; tomorrow will be interesting. My prayers go out to all the protestors and their families injured or in fear today.

And certain ministers in the Israeli government are seriously ticking me off. Israel issuing sanctions against the U.S.A.? Really? That's your plan? I suppose it's _slightly_ better than attacking Obama with hummus.

This post was brought to you by Season 3 of Buffy (now on Hulu), which helped me get through an afternoon of pain bad enough I called Labor&Delivery (no dice) and was briefly hugging Mac as a form of pain relief. Favorite line: "You have the emotional maturity of a blueberry scone. Just have at it, would you, and stop fluttering about." --Giles, to Wesley, _The Prom_

"One way in which the Romans did practice justice and equity and law can be seen in the case of the rape of the Sabine Women...the Roman men treated them so well that they didn't want to go back to their own families!"

Best Senatorial press release ever:

It is dated July 19, 1994, and was issued by then-Senator Howell Heflin's office. That morning, the Senator had been dining in the Capitol with some Alabama reporters, and suddenly felt a sniffle coming on. The reporters were aghast when the Senator reached into his pocket, pulled out a bit of fabric and began to wipe his nose with ... a pair of ladies underwear. Hence the following:

STATEMENT OF SEN. HOWELL HEFLIN
HANDKERCHIEF
JULY 19, 1994

I mistakenly picked up a pair of my wife's white panties and put them in my pocket while I was rushing out the door to go to work.

Rather than take a chance on being embarrassed again, I'm going to start buying colored handkerchiefs.

So, I was just about to buy plane tickets for our flights to the East Coast in early August. The plan was to buy 3 seats and then get the necessary but free ticket for an "infant-on-lap" for the Manticore.

Except...that under the new restrictions, we have to list the Manticore's name and birthdate. They will have no way of checking either of these, as he won't have ID yet. But still...are we better off waiting 2 weeks to buy tickets, and risking the price increase? (Prices currently are not great, but not horrible - around $280 for a direct flight from SFO to Newark, which is what we need.)

I hate it when I try to be proactive and efficient and it backfires.

Anyone have any idea where the quote/idea that Jane Austen almost never wrote male-male dialogue scenes because "she did not know what men talked about when alone together" comes from? The internet has not been helpful so far. Also, how would one cite the Bechdel test?

So, I'm still in the middle of her actual book, but Sarah Rees Brennan has posted online the story of her first kiss, and, um, I'm crying from how hard I was laughing. If you need a pick-me-up today...go read about a determined little Irish feminist. :)

There are a lot of more important reasons I like our new President. But one of the minor ones is that it's just such a pleasure to listen to or read his elegant crafting of phrases. It's the admiration for a really skilled artisan or craftsman, I think.

At the moment, this reflection is brought to you by the final passage of Obama's speech to the Muslim world today:

"We have the power to make the world we seek, but only if we have the courage to make a new beginning, keeping in mind what has been written.

The Holy Koran tells us, "O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another."

The Talmud tells us: "The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace."

The Holy Bible tells us, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God."

The people of the world can live together in peace. We know that is God's vision. Now, that must be our work here on Earth. Thank you. And may God's peace be upon you. "

David Eddings, author of many fantasy series (albeit about one plot), most famously the Belgariad and the Malloreon, died yesterday at the age of 78.

Eddings wasn't a pillar of American literature, and he didn't claim to be one - just said that he was happy that his books had gotten so many kids and teenagers into reading, which is indeed a great gift.

I am sad at his death largely because his books gave me so much pleasure, in a purely light, hedonistic, "Pirates of the Caribbean" kind of way. He had a real talent for witty banter and well-drawn characters and a gift for playing with the standard fantasy cliches that made me enjoy his books so much more than fantasy authors with greater pretensions of art or deep moral meanings. When they are eventually judged, I think Eddings may have generated much more happiness through his books than, say, G.R.R. Martin.

I read most of his books 15 or so years ago, but it's striking that upon thinking of it, I can come up with some favorite quotes and moments without even checking Google:

""'Is there any crime you haven't committed, Platime?' Ehlana asked.
"'Barratry, I think, your Majesty. Of course, I'm not sure what it means, so I can't be entirely positive. Oh, and bestiality," Platime answered.
"Oh good; I do so worry about the morals of those poor innocent young sheep," she answered. --from somewhere in _The Elenium._

(Paraphrased): "Push? What kind of a word is "Push,"? --Belgarath, criticizing Garion's magical technique, right after the wonderful rock incident in which Garion fails to understand the laws of physics.

And a quote from Eddings about writing: "I was in my mid-teens when I discovered that I was a writer. Notice that I didn’t say “wanted to be a writer.” “Want” has almost nothing to do with it. It’s either there or it isn’t. If you happen to be one, you’re stuck with it. You’ll write whether you get paid for it or not. You won’t be able to help yourself. When it’s going well, it’s like reaching up into heaven and pulling down fire. It’s better than any dope you can buy. When it’s not going well, it’s much like giving birth to a baby elephant. You’ll probably notice the time lapse. I was forty before I wrote a publishable book. A twenty-five year long apprenticeship doesn’t appeal to very many people."

Yay Colebrook, NH,, which welcomed two French immigrants wanting to sell baguettes and madeleines and fought to keep them here in America, "where they belong."

It's nice to get reminded occasionally of the impact ordinary people can have on their communities, in all sorts of ways.

My last day of teaching was yesterday; now it's just the final exams to get through. It turns out, incidentally, that my smiley-face paper student was not being bizarrely informal. He was mortified when he flipped through to my comment, and explained that - per my suggestion - he had given a draft of his paper to his roommate to read, and then had not fully edited out all of his roommate's encouraging comments, which, in this case, included a smiley-face at the end.

I made this rosemary-lemon-honey bread with walnuts and raisins this morning in the bread machine, modifying it only by replacing the egg glaze with a light glaze of equal portions of fresh lemon juice and sugar. It met with good reviews; I call it a "tea bread" not just because it has very typical "tea flavors" in its lemon, honey, and herbiness but because it is lightly sweet without being a dessert bread. I suspect it would be very good with a fruit butter or clotted cream, but neither is necessary. I think it will definitely be making a reappearance at places like Oricon if not before.

Haven't done everything on my to-do list - I have to get a copy of Mac's medical records tomorrow morning, go to the library, clean the livingroom, and grade yet more papers - but I'm all packed now for the hospital, which may be a good thing given how much the Manticore has been wriggling lately. I thought he had dropped before, but now he definitely has; my whole profile looks different, very much in the "swallowed a beachball" mode.

Had a great afternoon with friends gaming, despite minor escapades by both son and dog. Once we have two kids, we will need to figure out how the gaming thing works, because as it is my limited mobility made certain aspects of today difficult (since CP was GMing). Still, one of them will be fairly immobile for a while, thankfully!

1. Get up at 7:20 AM to get to the garage sale early and buy a toddler bed before the crowds hit: Done.
2. Walk the dog, discover her passion for Little League: Done.
3. Clean entire nursery to make room for new toddler bed: Done (took whole morning, much longer than anticipated).
4. Move in toddler bed and rearrange nursery furniture, with husband's help: Done.
5. Spend quality time boardgaming with husband during son's nap: Done.
6. Cook healthy dinner of sole and spinach: Done.
7. Grade 6 papers: To do
8. Bake holmes_iv's beer-cheese bread for gaming tomorrow: To do
9. Pack for hospital (with supplementary bags for Mac and Eowyn in case they need to spend a night at the DWs: To do
10. Wash all old newborn/3 month clothes: To do, may not get done tonight.

At some point a while ago, in the midst of a discussion about the supposed "boy crisis" in higher education, contrariety articulated the theory that the real problem was that girls/women were encouraged to pick up the stereotypical boy values/character traits of self-confidence and individualism and so forth, but that it was much less socially acceptable for boys to adopt culture or values traditionally associated with femininity, which she termed "pink values."

I thought about this after reading the somewhat ridiculous NYTimes article today on an increase in high school hugs, but also after spending the year observing my students, all born in 1990-1991. One of the things that has struck me as a general trend among them is that the guys are much less reluctant to display what I think of as stereotypical feminine behaviors or cultural interests than I think my students were even five years ago, or many of my classmates were ten and fifteen years ago. The boys, for instance, will come into class talking about Gossip Girl - and mentioning the clothes worn by the male characters. Their banter with each other is, for lack of a better term, less aggressive and far less competitive. Sitting postures or tones of voice that I would have once associated with stereotypically gay behavior are now demonstrated by maybe a third or more of my male students - some of whom may be gay, sure, but I doubt quite that high a percentage.

It's certainly not a statistically significant example, of course. But it does make me wonder if at least the successful freshmen of today are precisely those who have adopted "pink values," and that their culture is becoming increasingly accepting and supportive of such values and media. What a brave new world, that has such people in it. :)

Anyone else encountered this?