Wondering

I’ve always read that if you put a shirt with a stain in the dryer, the heat will set the stain. If I hang the shirt on the line to dry when it is 105 degrees (F), is that any better?

Kittens!

My husband wanted to get another cat soon after the Goddess died, but I didn’t. I love cats, but it’s a lot of work (and now that I am no longer pregnant, I do 90% of the kitty litter duty). I thought we might as well wait till Zebediah was old enough to ask/plead for a kitten.

This year, though, we started thinking about it more seriously. We went to a local Humane Society shelter, which of course made me want to take them all home. Also, it made me feel guilty about wanting to get a kitten rather than an older cat. Also, it made me think we should look at the city shelter, because the Humane Society has a no-kill shelter, but the city does not. Also, to donate money to all the local animal welfare groups.

When I found out that it is harder to find homes for black kittens and cats, I felt better about having said “if we’re getting a kitten, I want a black kitten”.

We decided to wait till later in the spring when there would be more kittens needing homes. Then we were too busy even to look until the semester was over.

I remembered that in the past, our vet had had kittens in need of homes in the office, and mentioned it to my husband. Then, when I was taking the Princess to the vet to board for the weekend (the last time, I hope, since we’ve found a cat sitter to replace our no-longer-next door no-longer-landlady) they had a little sign up: we have kittens! ask to see them! So I did. And brought my husband in the next day.

And somehow, when we went outside to discuss which of the four kittens to adopt, I was the one who suggested taking too of them. You know, so they could play with each other and bother the Princess less.

So now we have one sleek black kitty and one fluffy white/seal point kitty. They are about three months old.

I was trying to think of blog names for them that would reflect our geeky choice of real names. In honor of the new Harry Potter movie, I may just call them Fred and George on the blog, even though they are not identical nor red-haired. It fits the geeky-yet-popular source of the names and the personality types we were thinking of.

Writer’s Block

This is the problem:

My father is an author. Much of his writing is autobiographical fiction and poetry. In fact, if you Google my real name, my father’s poems come up on the first page of search results, mainly because we share a last name and one of his poems has my first name in the title.

In the past, it bothered me that I was fodder for his writing, and I objected strongly to one piece in particular.

This was a traumatic period in our relationship, for both of us. He was hurt by my anger and rejection. I was hurt by his inability to understand how I was feeling. I come from a family in which people have been know not to speak to each other for decades (exhibit one: my father and his mother), and at one point I thought we might end up like that.

On the other hand, I am not in favor of censorship. In the abstract. In this specific case, I would have preferred a little self-censorship, though.

I know that nobody who knows a writer is safe from having parts of her history or quirks grafted onto a character. I know that it is common for people to see themselves in a character that is completely fictional. However, making arguments based on close textual analysis is what I do for a living, and I thought I made a strong case for identifying a certain character with myself. (Admittedly, focusing on the biography of the author in order to interpret the text is not how I normally analyze literature.)

“It’s not about you, it’s about me” was not convincing to me when I argued with my father about this.

I love reading mommy blogs. I love reading about people’s kids. Not just about parenthood, but the kids as well.

And my favorite bloggers who are mothers may very likely have more readers than my father does, or at least more than he did when his stuff was all in small mags or published by small presses.

So that is one reason that it is hard for me to blog about Zebediah.

P.S. I should note that:

My father has seven children, and I don’t think the others have had such a negative reaction as I have to his stuff.

Also: I think I worry as much about being called (if only by myself) a hypocrite for writing about my kid after complaining when my father wrote about me as I do about the actual act of writing.

Weather Forecasts

Least favorite weather forecast last summer: “No more cold fronts until September” Last summer tied for the hottest on record in Capitol city.
Least favorite weather forecast this summer: “No end in sight”. This summer is, so far, hotter on average than last year, and we haven’t even gotten to the hot months. Maybe August and September will be unusually cool.

It is too hot to operate an iphone outside most of the time.

But not too hot for the kids to have outside time at daycare, as required by the day care’s license. They drink a lot of water, and do a lot in the shade, and don’t always go out for the normal two playtimes, but still-you know how kids and parents get cabin fever in the winter because they can’t go outside. Here that happens in the summer. Last weekend, Zebediah and I went to a playdate at a nicely shaded playground in the morning–everyone was commenting on how surprising not-hot it seemed–and ended up so exhausted from the heat for the rest of the day that we couldn’t even go out to the local pool.

I need to call my brother so he can tell me how our record temperatures here are nothing compared to where he lives.  NPR even had a piece about the danger of heat stroke for homeless people there.

My problem is that I lived by the beach in California for 18 years, including one city whose motto was “the world’s best climate” and anything less temperate than that just seems wrong.  I used to think it was torture when my brother and I spent a week or so at a relative’s house “inland”–you know, like Los Angeles.

It has been so long…

…since I posted that I forgot my WordPress password. I certainly did not intend to leave the self-pitying post up top for so long.  I hope I have managed to take it down now. It will tell you something about me that I have published numerous posts about my uterus and other parts, but got embarrassed by the one about my productivity.

They Might Not Pay for Themselves

The cost effectiveness of compact fluorescent light bulbs goes down considerably if one must take into account inevitable (in our house) breakages and collateral damage. It will take a lot of energy savings to pay for the new sofa slipcover now that we’ve discarded the not-so-old mercury-laden one.

I was thinking that my husband would probably find cleanup instructions somewhere that were less paranoid than EPA’s guidelines. Unfortunately, he came back from his online search saying, “I hate it when the paranoid site is the most convincing.”

Of course, we both have memories of playing with the mercury globules from broken thermometers when we were kids. That could mean “hey, no problem with mercury, we turned out fine!” or that we should be extra careful having already absorbed a lifetime supply of the stuff.

Customer Input

Dear Owner / Manager of New Restaurant Nearby:

Do not put a banner across the front of your restaurant announcing that you are now open if the highly visible playscape next to your patio is not in fact open yet.

Sincerely,

May Never Be a Customer After All

Fortunately, the same shopping center in Tony Enclave We Don’t Live In has another restaurant with a bigger playscape attached, so all was not lost. I could hardly blame Zeb for getting upset when I encouraged him in his exitement about the playscape, only to inform him once we got close that he couldn’t play there after all.

Parenting News Notes

From the NY Times, and for once not in the style section. On the other hand, I’m not sure if they provide much in the way of new information.

1. Sick kids and day care/school. Keep them home if they have a fever or are miserable, take them in despite sniffles and coughs. Wash hands, lots. Who knew? In Science Tuesday.

2. Update on taking breast milk through TSA checkpoints at airports. In the business section.

Bonus: Is Scholastic Book Club taking advantage of its position in schools?

I’ve been reading the NYT in print because I’ve been doing the crossword  puzzles at the cafe down the street from from Zebediah’s day care. It would probably be more cost effective to subscribe to the paper or to the Premium Crosswords online, but that would mean admitting I have a habit.

and a question: why in the world would this blog have a spike in posts today, before I posted? I haven’t even commented anywhere recently.

Argh.

I am listening to a commentary by William Saletan on Morning Edition (or maybe it’s a local commentary?) and all I can say is: an embryo is not a baby. Since I am also trying to grade grad student re-writes, I that’s all for now.

18 months

Happy half birthday,  Zebediah!

In lieu of a tender and moving post about Zeb, I will just say that he is a joy.