More sentences

I am away from Auletta for a week :( :( :( (I'm at Syracuse, more than that later), but apparently she now stands outside the bathroom and says "I gotta pee." And who knows, maybe she does; she's still in diapers, obviously. "I gotta pee" and "I love fries" are both subject + verb sentences, so that is cool, but bodily functions and fatty foods, hmm.

In which my daughter tries to feng shui me

Except for a twinge of jealousy I had a few days ago when I found out one of Auletta's friends, who is not quite a year and a half old, is starting to learn the alphabet--Auletta used to think every letter was A, and now thinks every letter is whatever I told her the last letter was--I am more than happy with Auletta's language development now. She has busted out of the world of nouns and is starting to use verbs, such as "walk," "nurse" (soon to become obsolete), "throw," and "move." Auletta's favorite hobby now is demanding that I move to whatever location she has determined appropriate. At the playground, she has me go on the swing and slide while she watches. Also, in anticipation of being left for a week, she insists I carry her everywhere.

Despite my attempts at avoiding cute diminutives, we say "cuppy," "uppy," and "doggy." But the word acquisition continues apace, so I can't complain. Except she calls the ceiling fan "fries" for some reason. Maybe because she likes it. We were pretty convinced she was repeatedly saying "I love fries" when we were at the Greater Schwabs a week or so ago and, um, feeding her fries. She knows "apple," "cheese," and "Cheerio," too, so we're not just feeding her junk food.

But surely you are here for the pictures!







This is with my Aunt Gloria. I am posting this one just so you don't miss Auletta sticking her finger up her nose.

Five years!

I am a little late to post this, because I was celebrating my anniversary on my anniversary instead of blogging, but last Friday, July 3, was our fifth anniversary. We went to La Tourelle Resort and Spa outside of Ithaca (where our beloved John Thomas Steakhouse is also located), had various relaxing spa treatments, ate some great food, watched the fireworks at Ithaca College from our balcony, and got a night away from Auletta, who stayed with the greater Schwabs. It was a blissful 24 hours, and now that we've left Auletta overnight, I'm much less anxious about leaving her for a week later this month, and I'm thinking we should do this every year.

Then we went with the family to Lehman's baseball tournament in Perry, New York. Justin and I let Auletta ride with the rest of the family and meandered our way through the Finger Lakes, stopping for dinner at Glenora Wine Cellars.

We watched baseball over the weekend and went up to Rochester to visit my Aunt Gloria, my cousins Kim and James, and their families, and that's where this picture was taken, about as close to our fifth anniversary as you'll get.



Five years, and may there be fifty more!

And now for something completely different

So I might have mentioned back in November or December that I was busy with some other project, and you might have been wondering what project I could have besides raising my daughter. I was studying for the GRE--again; I took it back on November 1, 1997, and the reason I can tell you the exact day is that our neighbors had a freaking loud Halloween party until 3 AM the night before, so after three hours of sleep I drove half an hour to Bothell, which was not my first choice of testing site, to take one of the last regular paper administrations of the GRE, because I am old-fashioned like that. And they gave me three analytic sections, the bastards, which fried my brain. But somehow I did fine and a couple of grad schools let me go there and the rest is history.

Then ten years later I took the GRE on a computer (and found out my verbal and math scores immediately--nice!), with a writing section instead of a brain-thrashing logic section (YAY because if I cannot write an essay on a test after teaching students how to write essays on tests, then I should be shot), and I did better overall, especially on the verbal section (YAY because if I do not have an awesome vocabulary after teaching students Greek and Latin roots, then I should be shot). So, yes, that was two paragraphs of me talking about how great I am at taking standardized tests, which I realize is completely obnoxious, but I've spent so much of my life honing that one basically useless-in-real-life skill that I am going to do those two paragraphs and I've got it out of my system now, thanks.

Oh, but why on earth did I take the GRE again?

Well, back when I was in college I applied to library school, got in, and decided not to go, instead working in an office for a year and then going to grad school in religious studies. Which, all in all, I would not take back for the world because it got me 1. Virginia 2. Justin 3. Auletta, not necessarily in order of importance, plus a lot of great educational experience, travels, new friends, and who knows what all else would have been different from staying in Seattle, which I would have if I'd gone to library school. But in the last couple of years, a few things have been nudging at me: 1. if I can check a zillion books out of the library but barely write a page of my dissertation, maybe research is not what I should be doing so much as helping other people research, 2. anyone who knows me, including, well, me, knows I am the sort of person you would have expected to be a librarian since birth, and 3. having a masters in library science would be a good way to get a job, if not my dream job as an academic librarian, anywhere we end up, and probably a much more humane job for a mom of one or more children than whatever teaching job I can procure in a shaky market in some proximity to whatever Justin's doing. So I applied to library science programs, and if you don't have a PhD yet (ahem) you have to take the GRE to do that.

Obviously there is a catch here, which is that we're in New Haven for the next year and who knows where after that, and the MLS is usually a two-year program. Actually another thing that planted this idea in my mind is that Southern Connecticut State University, which was even closer than Yale to our original carriage-house home in Woodbridge, has a library science program, but it's not ranked and I figured I could get into a top-ranked school. Now the best library science programs, weirdly, aren't at Ivy League schools or anything. Yale doesn't even have one, which is a shame because it has an awesome library system with two Gutenberg Bibles even, in case they need a spare. Here are the top for library science programs:

1. University of Illinois
1. (tied) University of North Carolina
3. Syracuse University
4. University of Washington

Count them: there are three schools there out of four to which I have some kind of geographical or familial connection. Of those four, all but UNC have some sort of distance-learning program. ! I decided Illinois was out because their online program requires a residency every term and what the heck am I going to do in Urbana, but the other three were possibilities: if nothing else I could depend on the kindness of Justin's extensive family in Chapel Hill to get me through the first year of their program and long-distance marriage, except in the end I decided that was crazy.

So ultimately I decided to go to Syracuse because 1. I got in 2. with a little funding 3. to a school that's an hour from Ithaca and only requires a one-week residency this summer, although I can take courses on campus whenever I want and 4. third is not that much lower than tied for first when I don't have to rearrange my life around third. Also when I visited everyone seemed really nice and happy, and one thing I've learned in my many, many years of grad school is that being a happy student among happy students is a really important consideration.

Thus, next month I am leaving Auletta with Justin and the greater Schwabs for a week while I do an intensive residency in Syracuse, and that will be the beginning of approximately two years of study (various moves, present and possibly future children, etc. permitting) leading to a master's in library science and, with any luck, a position as an academic librarian, ideally in a seminary or div school (I've talked to a couple of librarians at YDS about my prospects and I think I'll be well prepared) but we'll see where we end up.

I started a blog called Vivarium a couple of months ago because it seems like library blogging is The Thing to Do, and, not surprisingly, creating a blog is one of my first assignments. Looks like I'm on top of that. I will be using it a lot for class assignments, so those of you who read GWFH might find it excruciatingly boring, but you can follow along if you like. I am debating whether to keep it on Blogger because blogger is (pro) free but (con) has kind of lame layout options, and also I'm not sure I want my professional profile to be connected to my occasionally political-ranting, tortured-sentence-writing, mommy-blogger profile, but since I'm sure all these universes will collide on Facebook in a matter of moments there is probably no use trying to untangle all the weird strands of my life.

Auletta among the alumni

Auletta had a nice visit to the Cornell Law School alumni barbecue on Saturday. There was another occasion on Saturday, but we won't mention that. (Deanna, thanks for the card, and it should be noted that I am never too drunk to read, although I have been drunk enough to think I can read Persian.) By the way, everyone, we drank the Luckystone Red last night. It is awesome and if we were the sort of people who had a table wine, that would be it.

Wine

To lighten things up, maybe I should discuss why I wrote a post last night about why we can't all just get along and love each other and stuff--I had a lot of wine yesterday! We're visiting Justin's family in Ithaca, as you've probably noticed we often do. As an early birthday celebration, Justin and I borrowed his sister Weatherly for the day as a designated driver and toured wineries along Cayuga Lake. For future reference, since otherwise I'm sure I'll forget, here are the highlights of those we visited:

Swedish Hill Winery: Riesling! (they all have great Rieslings, but this is the only place we bought any) and I think one called Just Peachy! that Justin really liked (it wasn't one of the wines I tried) and we brought home because I thought it smelled good even though I didn't taste it. I also thought their Reserve Chardonnay was lovely, and their Svetska Red is good for a sweeter red (usually not to my taste because sweet reds remind me of communion wine).

Goose Watch Winery: My favorites were their Chambourcin (which in this case I tried but Justin didn't) and their pear wine. It's on a hill overlooking the lake and has frontage, so you can get their by boat. A group of half a dozen college-age guys and girls called from the lakefront and wanted someone to pick them up, but seeing as the only person there was the one server, they didn't get a ride, and they were complaining about it when they came up, despite their appearance of robust health and the fact that it couldn't possibly have been that bad. Or rather, the guys were complaining. Anyway, the server was underage--I think this was the case at another winery, which seems kind of weird, but then there are a ton of wineries in a sparsely populated area so it must be hard to find employees, and it was a Monday, and she was really nice--we did buy more at the wineries where the servers were old enough to drink and thus to tell us what the wines were like.

Thirsty Owl Wine Company: This was the only place that really blew us away with their reds (although of course they had a good Riesling too). We took home bottles of their Syrah and Cab/Syrah/Malbec blend, and had both of them plus their Pinot Noir shipped to Dad. I think the overall quality of the wines was highest here, at least to my unsophisticated palate.

Hosmer Winery: Somehow we managed to bust out of here just with a bottle of Estate Red, a pleasant table wine.

Finally we staggered to Sheldrake Point Vineyard, which has an enormous selection of wines. We really liked the Gewuerztraminer and the Luckystone Red, another nice blend. Then we ate dinner at the winery's restaurant, Simply Red, where Monday nights are Southern night--cornbread, beans, and ribs, yum!

Not a bad way to spend a summer day, all in all.

My only pro-life thought for the moment

I know if I shoot my mouth (fingers?) off now or ever I'll regret it, so I'm just going to say this, and I've said essentially the same thing before:

Be motivated by love.

Because a lot of people aren't. It's obviously when they have a gun in their hand. It's not as obvious when they have a keyboard. I see a lot of people on both sides of every issue who are clearly more driven by anger than they are by love. This is not in response really even to the assassination of George Tiller (though that is the catalyst), but to everything I've been observing from reading blogs and books and articles about politics lately. I think both sides of most debates are driven by anger right now--Republicans more so than they once were, and the Democrats less, but both more than I in good conscience can claim any identity with. I think party affiliation is probably necessary for some people in order for parties to exist and in order for our government to function, but I can't be a part of it. That doesn't mean I don't vote, obviously, it just means I can't be a part of the machinery that drives the system. Some people can. More power to them. But that in the end is why I feel political involvement is un-Christian--not because any particular position of either party is antithetical to my beliefs (though some of both parties are), but because I don't think I could be a member of either one and still fulfill the commandment to love. At times I am not sure if anyone else can either. I am not sure how anyone can claim any political affiliation and be active in a political party or political movement and still fulfill the qualifications of love not to keep a record of wrongs or to rejoice in evil (the evil of the other side being necessary to fuel the rhetoric of one's own, it seems). To say nothing of words like hatred, rage, and hell (specifically, that certain people should go there) that are thrown about with no regard to how arrogant and toxic those words are.

Even such extreme rhetoric aside, is there any room for the kind of love Jesus and Paul talk about in partisan politics? Is there any way around this dilemma? And understand, as always, I'm not saying I'm an exemplary person, spiritually or otherwise, and this may merely be an excuse for my political indifference at the moment, but the more I think about it, the truer it seems. When I get into political debates, I don't feel any better--in fact, I feel horrible about myself, even if I'm convinced I'm right--and it makes me a crankier person toward those in my life whom I love, let alone the people I'm debating. So I have to hold myself back. And I wonder if other people should too. Because if Jesus is right and the commandment not to kill extends to the anger we have toward others, then aren't we all left holding the gun?

Words!

Auletta is starting to use more recognizable English words. Yay! Here is what we have so far:

-Ball, cup, baby, and boo! as previously established (cup has morphed into "cuppy," maybe a conflation of cup and sippy?)
-Eye
-Toe
-"Bo-bo" or something like that for "belly button," to which we sometimes refer as "bee-bo" as per The Belly Button Book, which you must read
-Nose (pronounced "no," usually)
-Phone (pronounced "po")
-A fricative "ch" sound for "duck" (her version of "quack")
-In answer to "What does a lion say?": Roh!
-In answer to "What does a bee say?": Bizz
-Uh-oh! (which she learned from one of her toddler friends)
-Some approximation of "up," "down," "dog," "bird," and probably others I don't recognize yet

She also refers to every letter of the alphabet as "A!" I went to much effort to teach her to say A and eye, both of which she first pronounced as "eee," which is understandable because A and eye are both diphthongs and probably harder to pronounce. Now she pronounces both with great precision. Lacking subtlety, she also pokes us in the eye a lot.

A selection of pictures from your blog hostess, who for once has been busier taking pictures than blogging

For some reason I went for a while taking fewer pictures and being less into photography than I was for a while. Maybe it's because winter in New Haven is so nasty (especially this last one) that there really wasn't much light or opportunity. Anyway, we are having a real spring now, and I am excited because I thought I had lost my flash for a month there, but fortunately I had left it somewhere and they still had it, so I am not flash-less, not that I need a flash now so much. Anyway, here is cute kid overload for you, in several parts.

I. The beach. We went last weekend with Justin's brother Whitney and some other students from the law school. Auletta brought her BALL, a new one her granny & co. got her.









II. Hanging out at the Ithaca Farmer's Market with Kate and Dylan from Bleisenblog.





III. Selling lemonade with her uncles.







More pictures on SmugMug. By the way, some anonymous person used my referral to open an account and saved me $10 on my upcoming renewal, so whoever you are, if you're reading this, thank you!

Bumper stickers I have known

I was at the Toyota dealership today (long story, but to summarize: Driveway 3, Schwabs 0), and I saw a Prius with a couple of bumper stickers: "Republicans for Voldemort," natch, and "Draft SUV Drivers First." Isn't the second one kind of piling on? I mean, you're already driving a Prius, which along with Apple ownership (um, yeah, my other computer is a MacBook) carries a reputation of smug superiority. (Not to knock hybrids; if someone just up and gave me a hybrid Camry, I'd be totally stoked. My dream car used to be a Civic hybrid, but I'm starting to realize that a compact car like our Corolla is not necessarily the best choice if you have more than one carseat, which we might someday--not making any promises or breaking any news in the near future, just saying.)

Oh, and man, I just remembered it was a green Prius. Really I think those bumper stickers are pretty redundant and you might as well save space on your bumper for "My cat didn't make the honor roll" which is much more clever anyhow (my favorite bumper sticker ever, at least before I had a kid who I am certain is Above Average).

A couple of days ago I saw an oldish-looking bumper sticker that said "I'm a Real Democrat!" which I'm assuming is some kind of Ned Lamont thing, but I wasn't here for that so I'm not sure. Real Democrats propose, the general electorate disposes. We strategically planned our residency in Connecticut so we won't vote in a senatorial election, unless for some reason I do not wish to contemplate we stay in this state past the summer of 2010, so y'all real Democrats can figure out what you want to do with Chris Dodd. Don't envy you that one.

Cherry Blossom Festival

We're coming up on one year living in New Haven's Wooster Square neighborhood, which I was reminded of because we just went to our second Cherry Blossom Festival in the square. This time last year we had started the lease on our new place but hadn't moved in yet. Justin was busy with law school stuff, but Auletta and I went, ate pizza, and walked around the square.









She wore appropriate shoes for the occasion.



I thought I had posted pictures from when we went last year, but I checked my archives and I was wrong. So here you go.

Cup cup cup cup cup cup CUP cup cup

Can you tell Auletta has a new word? She still likes to say "ball" too. We were at the playground the other day and a mom showed up with two kids, each with a BALL, which the mom kindly made them share. At that point I decided I should get Auletta her own ball, since it is pretty much the cheapest toy you can possibly buy, so now she has her $1.99 BALL and we are all happy. Except this morning when she woke up and I took her into the study where I knew the BALL was and as soon as she saw it, she burst into tears. Dude, toddlers.

She had her 18-month appointment yesterday, a bit after her actual 18-month birthday because they weren't scheduling appointments far enough ahead at her last regular checkup and then a month later when I was able to schedule it they were already booked for the week of her birthday. (And forget about booking her two-year appointment until July!) But as it turned out it was the first possible day that she could get her Hep A shot, so now she is all done with shots (except for flu shots) until kindergarten. She remains consistently large-headed at around the 80th percentile for head size, and consistently small at around 10th percentile for height and, um, under the 3rd percentile for weight. Her weight is the only thing I actually got a numerical measurement for, and she's still just shy of 20 pounds. (Which, like, this probably makes me an awful parent, but I turned around her carseat weeks ago because I just assumed she had grown since her last appointment. I mean she did, but she only gained half a pound. Boy are car trips easier, though.) Her pediatrician isn't really concerned because she's been consistently tiny and apparently toddlers often don't gain weight very rapidly at this age because they're moving around so much. But I do wonder whether I feed her enough. And then she throws her macaroni and cheese on the floor and that puts an end to my wondering.

This is not an 18-month picture either, but here is Auletta hosting a tea party (thanks to Granny for the awesome new table and chairs and tea set). It's hard to see, but Raggedy Ann is wearing a Tar Heels jersey, as well as the Robeez Auletta has finally outgrown. Be careful, Auletta thinks it's appropriate to drink from the teapot.

Eighteen months!

No new pictures yet. I will try to get around to it this weekend.

We were in Ithaca this past weekend to watch the Tar Heels win the national championship. !!!! Hey, if my own alma mater can't have national championship sports teams, or even a decent football team anymore (they were good back when I was an undergrad, anyway), I might as well adopt my in-laws' team. I am just Tar Heel wed, but Auletta is Tar Heel born, yay. (Fairly recent picture below.)



Auletta's development usually leaps when we go to Ithaca (maybe that's one reason we go so often?). She is now (finally!) using words to refer to objects, at least a little bit. She now definitively says ball, referring to balls and other things that are round or appear to be round, and baby. Actually she was saying baby earlier, but we didn't know if she was talking about herself, or imaginary babies, or what. Now she uses it to refer to a baby doll she adopted in Mama Goose in Ithaca and which Granny kindly bought for her so as to make it legal, as well as to a Beanie Baby baby bear and a couple of other pink anthropomorphized baby-like stuffed animals she came about somehow--not from me, because I almost never buy her pink things, but she will occasionally insist on pink, so she's in touch with her inner girliness that her mean mommy tries to suppress.

Other than that, hmm. Lately instead of waving at faraway people who can't see her, she's starting to wave at people we pass on the street, which is very cute. Also she came very close to sleeping through the night before we went to Ithaca, but now we're back to square one as far as acting like an infant. Auletta never did that trick some babies too of sleeping through the night at some wildly early age and scamming their parents into thinking they have an exceptionally easy baby until suddenly they start teething or whatever and then there is, yet again, no sleep. She just never slept through the night to begin with. The up side is that 1. she just nurses and goes back to sleep--she's never kept us up fussing or anything, and 2. if I ever had any difficulty with insomnia or falling back asleep, boy am I over that now. And of course I'm sure if she had her own room (she sleep in our walk-in closet), things would be a lot different. But still, I'm hoping we can get her back to sleeping more or less through the night, because eight hours in a row of sleep would be AWESOME, and that is the one question everyone asks that I dread (in fact they've probably stopped asking because they just assume any child should be sleeping through the night by now, but really, it's kind of like "How is that dissertation going?" DON'T ASK.), and the one thing keeping her from being basically a very easygoing and awesome kid, which she is in every other respect.

The other thing, I guess, is that I am not even close to weaning her, although leaving her with other people for extended periods of time always goes well enough (as far as anyone tells me) that I wonder why I don't do it more often. Justin and I had a very nice few hours together sans baby walking around Cornell and then going to dinner at John Thomas on a date. A date! But still, for various reasons, I think I'm going to try to wean her over the next few months, at least to the point where she's not at all dependent on nursing, even if she still does occasionally. I just haven't had much reason yet, but on the other hand it would make life easier and she is approaching the age (I mean, for me; for other people maybe she's well past it, but whatever) where nursing her all the time is getting a little weird. I have no problem with extended nursing, and it's going as well as ever, but I think I'm getting to where I would like to be doing a lot less of it.

More getting out of the house

These are from Friday, when nice weather coincided with neither of us feeling terrible. I took these using an 85mm lens that I've had for a while but is finally fun now that Auletta is moving around and I can take pictures at some distance from her. As you can see, her favorite thing to collect is sticks, and her favorite activity is doing stuff with leaves and dirt.

The Eric Carle Museum, or getting out of the house

Auletta came down with a cold this week that Justin and I have also picked up. So despite being back in town, I've had to hold Auletta back from our usual toddler activities, which I hate to do because it's so nice to have something to structure our schedule around. (I forgot until yesterday that storytime was canceled this week anyway, so at least we weren't missing that.) But yesterday the three of us made a field trip to the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, MA, about an hour and a half away. I don't know if Auletta appreciated the pictures, but there's a large open area at the entrance that she loved to explore while checking out the few other kids who were there, and their bookstore is amazing. It's not a huge museum, so it's a good place to take someone with a short attention span, like an 18-month-old, or her mom (I have been to a lot of museums but I always tire of them before I've seen everything).

A photo taken in the museum, with reluctance on a certain person's part:



Outside the museum, with (I think) scenic Hampshire College student housing in the background:

Why I argue

As I'm sure everyone who knows me outside this blog knows, I am not a confrontational or argumentative person. I am shy. I like everyone to like me, so I try to anticipate and smooth over any possible conflict (which might be a positive spin on a passive-aggressive tendency that drives Justin insane, but fortunately for the rest of you, nobody else is married to me). I try to be nice, if only because I like people to be nice to me back.

On the other hand, I like to write, I like to craft arguments (much more for extracurricular topics than for papers, go figure), and therefore I like to go onto other people's blogs and argue with them. I don't go to the Democratic Underground (or for that matter Free Republic, to argue about whatever I disagree with them about, like illegal immigration or Obama being the antichrist, I haven't checked lately), because that would be an exercise in futility. I go to blogs by people who disagree with me but who might listen to what I say (or the commenters on those blogs, if they're there for the political debate and not just because they're friends with the blogger, in which case it seems to me to be crass to debate them. I mean, I don't want strangers picking fights with any of my friends who might post controversial comments on my blog, so I imagine the same would go for other bloggers, right?).

Today I read something on one of those blogs that made me wonder if the blogger had really been paying attention to anything I'd said, because it was such a mischaracterization of a belief I hold and have debated at length on that blog, making that generalization about everyone with whom that blogger disagrees. So I composed an elaborate response, which I had planned to email. But right now it's moldering in the purgatory of draftdom, because I'm wondering, why do I argue?

I'm not going to change anyone's mind. I think everyone who argues, or writes anything provocative, is certain their mind is not going to be changed substantially. I know I don't expect mine to be. So the point is either 1. to pick at each other without changing anyone's mind, which is the tone of political discourse currently (and probably always has been) and may be cathartic but in the end is basically pointless, a masturbatory sort of pleasure at best, or 2. to persuade your opponent not necessarily to agree with you, which is unlikely, but at least to understand why you believe what you believe. For example, I am opposed to abortion (in a moral if not in a legal sense) because of my deeply held beliefs about what life is and when it begins, not because I want to oppress women or have been bamboozled by the patriarchy into a false consciousness that makes me want to oppress women. Now it is possible, I suppose, that the latter reason really is why I oppose abortion, but it's condescending to assume that when I have given other reasons for my beliefs, not to mention that I resent the whole false consciousness business, which I think is just other women trying to replace the patriarchy with their own particular matriarchy whose terms they (conveniently) dictate, but never mind that. I won't beat one of my favorite dead horses right now.

In short: my point in arguing is to communicate clearly what I think and to convince them that I mean it. The point of doing so, I like to point out, is that however easy it may be to argue against what you would like your opponent's opinions and motivations to be, your argument will be a lot stronger, and more likely to persuade, if you argue against what those opinions and motives actually are.

But then, is it disingenuous of me to claim that I want my opponent's arguments to be stronger? Then they might win. The result, actually, is that I and my side will have to develop stronger arguments in response. And so on, ad infinitum? There is something about an infinite dialectic that appeals to me intellectually, like the infinite glosses and commentaries on scripture in Judaism and Christianity, but sometimes it would be nice for the subject to be closed. As with abortion. It would be really nice (from my perspective) if there were no more abortions, which would come about (but quite imperfectly, which ultimately is why I am reluctantly pro-choice in a pragmatic sense) if abortion were illegal, or if there were a way to persuade every woman with an unexpected pregnancy to carry to term and to provide homes for those infants (there are already homes for, um, healthy white infants, which nods at another one of my bugaboos), or if, hey, every woman had the self-confidence and self-control not to sleep with anyone who didn't want and trust to be the father of her children, and if every man knew the same expectation and the same sense of shame (shame is not always a bad thing!) that every women who is pregnant and alone undergoes, and had to account for what happened to his sperm after it left his body--an expectation to which they are rarely held, even by feminists, who long ago relinquished any sexual accountability they might have expected from men (yet again, another post) as long as that sex is consensual. Wow, there's a wild idea?

But you can gather from my sarcasm, and (I'll admit) the judgmental tone that now I am veering into territory where maybe I do in fact want to control people, in that I have a sexual ethic which is pretty narrow by today's standards, and my justification for it--that, religion aside, people in general and especially women would be a lot happier and better off if they followed it--probably depends at least somewhat on my own sense of self-righteousness. That's a fault to which religious people are prone, but so is everyone else, I've noticed. I have gotten by in life by behaving pretty well, being pretty intelligent, and being fairly decent to people, but those things usually come easily to me, which is not to brag, only to say that I can't really take credit for them, or expect everyone to do as I do.

But where was I? Before becoming distracted, I claimed that my objective in arguing was to strengthen my opponent's arguments, which I might or might not want in a direct sense, but it has the effect of 1. elevating the debate, one hopes, to a more refined and possibly productive level, at least angling toward closure even if we never reach it and 2. imprinting on the other side, and I hope also on mine, the belief that individuals, no matter how much we may disagree with them, have innate human dignity (you may guess I use this phrase for the same reason I hold my other beliefs) which demands that we listen to them and respond to what they are saying, not what we would like them to be saying, in which case we do not treat them as humans but merely foils to our own pontifications. Which is tempting to do anyway; I am always more interested in what I have to say than in listening to what the other side has to say. I devote much of my thought process to formulating what I am about to say in response to what I am not devoting as much attention to. (At least when you write, you can listen, then think; when you're debating in person you don't have that luxury. That's one reason marriage is hard.)

And in all this I haven't even mentioned the problems that plague most arguing on the Internet--the namecalling, ad hominem (ad mulierem?) attacks, et cetera. I would like to think I don't go there, but on occasion I'm sure I do, because I am always doing it in my head. About 90% of what I type never gets posted, because I am always editing out the inappropriate parts, and there are a lot of them. They tend to fall into the trap I've already discussed, convenient psychoanalyses of the person I'm debating, who would only say or believe such things because of various pathologies that, you know, I'm obviously not qualified to diagnose because 1. I'm not a psychiatrist and 2. I don't know them.

Every person is a mystery. I also don't think it's just religious people who are prone to dogmatism and absolute conviction of their beliefs that force the rest of the world to conform to the narrative they've already written, so that the person with whom you argue is no more than a character in your solipsistic universe. I mean, I have arguments in my mind with people who haven't even started them yet! But, but, but. Every person is a mystery. I discuss all these topics with Justin, whom I've known intimately for nearly seven years, and he still says things that surprise me. How do any of us know anyone else we only know through inflectionless words in 10 point Courier?

And perhaps I should end there. I haven't really come to a conclusion yet. I think I might just need to take a break from arguing for a while.

The bluest skies, sometimes

For reasons I won't go into here, I always have really mixed feelings about visiting Seattle, which I do about twice a year. I moved at the right time in my life and don't expect to move back, although that is always a possibility. I miss certain things about it, not least my family and friends, but at the same time living here again, like visiting, would be good with a generous dollop of weird.

I took Auletta to Northgate Mall--which has changed so much! And Alderwood--virtually unrecognizable. But, anyway, Auletta threw a tantrum, fortunately just as the mall was opening and the only people there were seniors getting their exercise where it was dry, and no doubt many of them have had their own children who had public tantrums, as two ladies assured me. I'm sure I did. And it's possible my dad did too, since he was a toddler when Northgate opened. Does this make me feel old, or young?

I went into work with my sister today so I could take her car for the day. Auletta fell asleep in the car, so I sat for a while after we got home. Listened to the birds. How there is a symphony of Northwestern birds (nondescript brown things when you look at them) that makes this place sound different from anywhere else I've ever lived, where bugs shout in summer and winters are eerily silent.

It snowed early one morning and the flakes were enormous. I have never seen them that big, but here it happens often, with the temperature barely freezing. Snowflakes roll together into little cotton balls in the sky and drift downward, making snowfall appear more substantial in the air than on the warm ground, although this winter there was a lot of snow.

The P-I printed its final paper. What will happen to the globe? So little history here, and yet we cling to these pieces of it, the R on the Rainier Brewery, the glue pot that started the fire. I remember the Bubblator; someone's using it as a greenhouse now.

Every time we drive past the Ida Culver house on Greenwood, where my grandmother spent the last few years of her life, I feel like we should stop. My life in this city lacks something at its center, with my grandparents gone. I looked up their house on Google Earth and got down to street level; it's been entirely renovated and looks nothing like the retro-but-modern 1949 building my great-aunt designed. Seattle came of age at an awkward stage for the country in general, but something in me loves the Space Needle and my grandparents' house and other things that seem quaintly non-postmodern modern now. Modernity without the sense of irony that I cultivated growing up in Seattle a couple of decades later.

My great-great-grandfather moved to the Northwest in the late nineteenth century, which means my ancestors have lived here for most of the time that there have been whites here at all. My great-grandmother was the first of four generations in our family to attend the university. When the campus on Montlake was first established, the bookstore was in a coat closet in Denny Hall. The bookstore! I went there with Justin for the first time in years. I have gone there for as long as I can remember. I remember I used to peel the glue off the price tags and roll it into sticky little balls. Hmm, I was kind of a gross kid. You can't do that with price tags they've used at least since I was in college; I've tried. I haven't ventured on campus, I mean east of 15th, on this trip. I'm afraid my head would explode. I don't know how I can spend a total of seven years, plus lots of childhood excursions, in that place, and never go now. But I don't know how I can spend the first 26 years of my life in a city that I now visit so rarely.

Well at least there is a place for her on Sproul Plaza

Perhaps she has another word. Whether intentionally or not, Auletta's been chanting what sounds like "happy, happy, happy" for the past few days, in a tone of voice that indicates she is, more or less. Which reminds me of this guy:



If she becomes a Hare Krishna then I will have no reason at all to miss Berkeley.

More about Auletta

So it's the beginning of March and we're bracing for what will probably be the worst snowstorm of the winter. Blargh. After this, two winters down and one to go (and don't even suggest that we could end up living in the Northeast after Justin finishes law school or I'll cry).

Anyway. Auletta is coming up on 17 months. A lot's been happening the past month or so. We used to think she really liked it when we read to her, and then she started crawling and we realized she had just sat still for books because she couldn't move. Now she is back to sitting still for books, so we read to her a lot more. She often wants to read the same book over and over and over...and it's odd books too, like The Story of Abraham Lincoln and Good Night, Seattle, which aren't the good old Eric Carle and Margaret Wise Brown books we raised her on, back when she didn't have opinions. But I am happy just to have her enjoying books, and she certainly likes to play with them, pile them on top of me and Justin when we're all in bed together, etc.

She is also fascinated with shoes and attempts to put on any shoe she can find, whether it's her size or not. She has a pair of crocs that will fit her perfectly this summer; they're a little big on her right now, and she's very good at putting them on by herself (not always on the right feet, of course). She also finally decided she will consent to wear hats and even have me put hats (yes, plural) on her, so hopefully that means I will no longer be that horrible mother who lets her child go out in the cold or sun without a hat, a topic on which I have received unsolicited advice from strangers in the past.

Her receptive language is also coming along nicely. She follows simple instructions (at least sometimes, and when she feels like it), and she can identify numerous body parts (again, when she feels like it)--nose, ear, hair, hand, fingers, belly button, knees, feet.

We are still a little worried about her speech. She says "yes," "no," "boo" (really more like "ba!"), and that's about it, as far as I can tell. She has a really sophisticated jargon we call Blurt (sounds better than Aulettish), which she often speaks to other babies, although apparently her Blurt and their Blurt are mutually unintelligible. So she has no trouble understanding English, or forming all sorts of phonemes in her own language, but she doesn't really seem interested in imitating English words. Her pediatrician said we could discuss this at her eighteen-month appointment if it continued to be an issue, and that's coming up in mid-April, so hopefully she will be speaking words by then, but if not at least hopefully we can start dealing with whatever speech issues she has (and maybe there isn't really an issue, but Justin and I have high expectations) sooner rather than later.

Cute baby picture to distract you from the fact that I'm not blogging

For the few people who have not already seen this on Facebook. Facebook has made me really lazy about blogging. My status updates are usually about Auletta, i.e. what games she insists on playing, which book she made me read half a dozen times before bedtime, etc.