Phoebe has started standing a whole lot over the last couple of days. And, man, has she been growing. She’s getting huge. “So big,” indeed. We managed to capture a few instances of her demonstrating her standing skills. Here’s one of her showing off a kung fu stance to an admiring crowd on this sunny spring day.
By the way, this photo is totally authentic, unlike those news photos I’ve been reading about lately.
Ah, the same old story. It’s past midnight, and I should be sleeping. (My laptop says it’s past 3 a.m., since it’s still on east coast time, while I’m still out in California.) But I feel compelled to write. Once again, I have no time to write. But this time, I’m not feeling cranky. I’m feeling many things. For one, I am feeling both humbled and inspired by some posts I’ve been reading. KC at Where’s My Cape has written a brave, beautiful and gut-wrenching series of posts about dealing with eating disorders. Jen at One Plus Two has been writing soulfully about the value of treating others with kindness, especially when those others have fallen on the hardest of times:
Kindness matters. Taking a moment to look the person in the eye, to offer that inconsequential bit of spare change, to exchange a few words. It matters. It makes one feel human.
Imagine if everyone avoided you, all day every day. Imagine if you felt invisible. Alone. And on top of that, you slept in a doorway.
Which reminds me that I should share that I am thrilled to be a part of the February Just Posts, a collection of writings that speak to issues of social justice, with my post on language discrimination.
Anyhow, I’m having a wonderful visit with my family. I am charmed by my beautiful new nephew Diego, and so happy to have time here with my sister, brother-in-law and mother. I’m so glad that John and Phoebe are also here with me, and it was worth the trials and tribulations of the journey. I feel warm and complete to be here with my family. (Yes, I am really a sap deep-down.)
Today we embark on a big adventure: we’re flying out to California to meet my new nephew, Diego. This will also be Phoebe’s first trip travelling by airplane. Which leaves me feeling both excited and apprehensive. And at this point, I also feel a bit of panic. Because I still have a whole lot of packing to do. Because we will need to be bring with us a whole lot of stuff. Stuff in such quantities that we will wish we were traveling with a pack animal. (I understand that llamas can carry quite a lot…)
One of the many adventures we’ll have on this trip is making it through airport security. And I’m reminded of one more thing, which I didn’t include in my list from my post on that topic: the airport security playset, purportedly made by Playmobil, but now sadly appearing to have been discontinued. A few blogs wrote about it a while back. This one in particular shows some great pictures. Maybe if we had the playset, we’d be better prepared.
Okay. I really need to get going. I have to check the TSA website about travelling with a llama.
It’s a strange expression for me to use, “watching my language.” Especially since I am a linguist, and study language professionally. And actually spend time looking at visual representations of speech. But that’s not what I’m talking about.
(Warning: this post contains “language.” And by that, I mean l*ng*ag*. You know, %$*#! words. So if you are my mother-in-law, or someone else offended by such words, please read no further. Actually, if you are my mother-in-law, it’s not really me at all who’s writing this. I have no idea how this post got here. In fact, this whole blog must have been written by someone else who coincidentally has my name.)
I was reading a message board message a little while back, and came across a message where someone had written “cr*p”. Yes, c-r-*-p. And all I could think in response was “holy fucking shit, crap is a bad word??”
Crap is a word I use fairly often. As in Oh, crap, I forgot something. Or I have a lot of crap to deal with. I mean, I realize that it more-or-less means shit. But I thought it was way less of a swear-word. Stronger than doodoo, certainly, but really quite mild. I may even have said crap in front of my mother-in-law. And my mother-in-law feels quite strongly about swearing. As in it upsets her. She didn’t like the movie “Titanic” because someone uttered the word shit in it. (There are plenty of reasons not to like that movie, but quite honestly, shit wasn’t even on the radar for me.) And I really don’t want her to find out about this blog of mine, as I’m sure it would upset her. Mostly because of my language. I mean, hell, I write the word ass often enough.
And while, as my sister put it, I am unlikely to be considered the Kevin Smith of the blogosphere, I do want to reserve the right to swear on my blog. Sometimes I just feel the need. I’m not trying to offend (I spend my whole life trying not to offend), but I find it liberating to have this uncensored aspect of writing.
But then there’s this whole parenting business. I caught myself saying to Phoebe, “you are so damn cute!” (She is really damn cute, you know.) And I ask myself, is this appropriate child-directed speech?
Anyhow, at some point, like so many before us, we’re going to have to face this issue. It’s obvious that Phoebe now understands many words, and can even produce a few. And it’s only a matter of time before Phoebe starts demanding her damn lunch when she’s at daycare, exclaiming “crap, my blocks fell over,” or telling another small child to hand over the fucking dolly.
It’s not that we swear a whole lot. I mean, it’s not like every other word that comes out of our mouths would need to be bleeped on prime-time TV. But, well, swearing happens. Shit happens. And other terms. In our speech, and in the movies we watch, and the music we listen to. For example, I may want to reconsider singing along to “Don’t fuck me up (with peace and love)” by Cracker lest Phoebe picks up on the words…
One option we have considered is to go the Battlestar Galactica route. They have cleverly and subtly substituted frak for another term. As in Frak off, frak me, frak you, go frak yourself. No frakking way.
So, please excuse me. It’s time for me to prepare Phoebe’s frakking breakfast.
We’re back home now. After a somewhat bizarre ride home.
While down in New York, we’d visited John’s aunt and uncle for a bit, who gave Phoebe a new toy. (Actually, this gift was largely provided as a distraction to keep Phoebe from eating the cardboard jigsaw puzzle pieces that were spread out on their coffee table.) Phoebe’s new toy is also a puzzle, a wooden one with little cutout shapes with pictures of animals. When you pop each piece into place, once the batteries are installed, it emits a noise corresponding to the animal on that piece. John’s aunt and uncle didn’t have the two AAA batteries needed for the toy, so we didn’t get to hear the animal sounds till we got back to John’s parents’ house. There, we found some batteries, and installed them in the puzzle into the little compartment that is held closed by a phillips head screw. I tell you this for a reason.
Last night, as we were driving home, with various piles of stuff and bags of toys in the back of the car, we made a discovery. When the puzzle gets cold, it doesn’t need to have the pieces inserted or removed in order to activate the sounds. And we didn’t have a phillips head screw driver in the car with us. Or other tools, such as a hammer, that could be used to smash it open. The puzzle nearly got abandoned at a rest area. Happily, it did eventually quiet down when the car warmed up.
Lesson: When travelling with battery operated noise-emitting toys, consider removing the batteries first.
Request to toy makers: Please always include an “off” switch on your battery operated toys. Especially those that need tools to access the battery compartment.
Fun game: Can you identify these animal sounds?
We’re down in New York again, to visit John’s parents. John’s father has been in and out of the hospital since July, when he (re)broke his hip. So we’ve been coming down here to visit quite often. (Actually, this summer, we estimate that we spent more time here than at home.) I’m glad that we are able to come down here pretty easily, as it’s only a 3 and half hour drive for us. And it’s so important to be with family, especially in difficult times.
Anyhow, John’s father is back in the hospital again, and here we are. To offer help and support. My main job is to offer Phoebe, who offers much cuteness and huggage. Never underestimate the power of distraction.
But, while I’m glad we can be here, and even pushed for us to make this trip down this week, I also (selfishly) am going batty. Because I have even less time to myself than I have at home. I don’t know why I expect to get things done on these trips. I had in mind all sorts of work I’d get done, and packed accordingly. Book to read for my class. Stationery for writing the last of my seriously overdue thank you notes. Soundfiles on my laptop for annotation. Microphone to do some recordings for work. Articles to read for work. But the days slip away with socializing with John’s mother, visiting the hospital, and caring for Phoebe, who is going through a tough teething period. The most I’ve gotten done of my work was to start the reading for my class, and then get distracted…
And once again, here it is really freakin’ late at night. And rather than sleeping or getting to any of the work I should be doing, I sit here with my laptop writing about the work I should be doing and the sleep I should be getting.
John just walked by, looked at the title line I just typed and said: “you are in a wacky mood today.” Yes, it’s true. Wacky. Perhaps it’s the sugar. Because I have eaten 3 donuts. We are now down at my in-laws. And whenever we visit, John’s mother lays out various breakfast “treats” for us. Every morning. A different box of Freihofer’s each morning: coffee cake, cinnamon rolls, donuts. This morning was donuts. I can largely resist the coffee cake. But I seem to have little will power to resist donuts. Even though I know how bad they are for me.
Here are some of the donuts I have not (yet) eaten.
There is a popular tendency to call donuts “baked goods.” But, and I realize I may be disillusioning someone out there, donuts are not baked. Unless an alternate meaning of bake is “cook by means of dropping into a big vat of boiling fat.” Yes, donuts are fried. (There may be some exceptions to this rule, but I warrant you they are not nearly as tasty.) Check out this early reference from Wikipedia’s entry on donut:
Washington Irving’s reference to “doughnuts” in 1809 in his History of New York is an early printed use of the word. Irving described “balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog’s fat, and called doughnuts, or olykoeks.”
According to the same Wikipedia entry, modern donuts contain between 20 and 25% fat. Happily, hog’s fat is no longer the norm, though.
In defense of donuts, though, they are tasty. Check out ytsl’s list of favorite American specialty foods: Krispy Kreme donuts top the list. (I’m not sure I’ve had many Krispy Kreme donuts. I live in New England, where Dunkin Donuts is the fried ring king. There are practically more DD shops around here than even Starbucks…Not that I frequently buy donuts. As I said, donuts are evil.)
John just sent me a link to this quiz:
Which science fiction writer are you?
It was an enjoyable quiz, with a number of questions that made me laugh. But then my answer:
 |
I am:
A quiet and underrated master of “hard science” fiction who, among other things, foresaw integrated circuits back in the 1940s. |
Don’t you hate it when you get results on these things that you find disappointing? I mean, I appreciate the underrated, and also the evidence of great foresight. But why not somebody cool? I mean, John got Ursula LeGuin as a result. That is so cool. It’s the sort of thing that makes me want to go back and change my answers. (Now what does that say about me?)
Okay. Here’s an update. My brother-in-law, who is a dyed-in-the-wool Republican with books on his shelf at home by Evil Bitch from Hell that Anne Coulter and Scary Dork of an Asshole Sean Hannity as well as other “authors,” just took the quiz and got the same frickin’ author as me.
What did I do wrong?
collecting tokens 