March, 2003

OK, bit by bit, the new blog is coming together. Comments are enabled and working, and most of the links on the left should work too. There’s still some gropen things and feel free to leave me a comment about anything abnormal you find, just in case it’s something not already on my “to fix” list. Otherwise, I’m taking a break from fiddling with the site to load old diary entries. You know what’s strange? taking text files named totally random things like tattomania.txt or 030303.txt and trying to find meaningful “titles” for them as blog entries. Maybe I should get rid of the title altogether. After all, I might not be able to come up with scintillating enough titles and feel all this pressure to be cool like all the other bloggers and fail miserably and get writer’s block.

Or something.

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So I finally took the plunge and switched to actual blogging software. Everything is in disarray and things only half work and I have dueling cascading style sheets at the moment, but I’m really excited about the new blog software, Nucleus. It provides categories, the entries are stored in a db, the entries are searchable, and it looks highly customizable. Thanks go to Kurt who is always looking out for me and found this recommended by a highly reliable source: Atlee. The current dilemma is whether to allow logins or not. On the one hand, if people made logins, they could filter the blog to show only entries they are interested in. On the other hand, who wants to log in to YET another thing while they’re surfing? Not only that, I can’t seem to categorize entries into more than one category, and longtime readers will know that the way my mind meanders, a single category cannot ever fully encompass a single entry. On the other other hand, with entries being so quick and easy, maybe I’ll just jot little notes here and there and entries will be more focused on one topic. Who knows?

You may see an increase in typos too, as I’m more likely to commit things without a second reading and I have no idea how to run aspell in my browser, or even if such a thing might be possible.

You will also likely experience some deja vu as I spend the next week or so posting in the past to incorporate all the entries from my old diary, but after that, I will turn posting to the past off and everything will be up to the minute, raw, and real. Hurray new blog software. I’ve wanted to have more immediacy to my postings for some time now.

Another bonus to the new software is that readers can now leave comments. Again, this has two sides. On the one hand I could allow only registered users to comment and I would know who was saying what. That seems lame, though, so unless the blog is barraged by bored 12 year olds making fart jokes, I expect to leave things as they now are, so that anyone can make comments.

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This is my sacred hour. I’m supposed to be actually writing something, you know real for this period, but I feel tired and unable to face Cualcotel.

Bleah, five minute pause while I reboot my sluggish machine whose Terminal window had locked up. When your basic command line windows start locking up, you know it’s bad. It had not been the usual 33 days that my iBook normally wants to be rebooted after, only 22 or so, but I have been hitting Vim pretty heavily, running six or so sessions at a time. Vim occasionally makes me restart my X sessions on linux, so I suppose I can’t be too cantankerous with the laptop. I guess I could have tried logging out and back in instead of rebooting, but that didn’t really occur to me. Anyways, I don’t feel creative today, so I thought I’d spend an hour writing in the blog instead. I’m sure all my faithful blog readers will be thrilled by this turn of events.

Just now, at the hobby store, where Sophia was thoroughly engaged with the train set, she said “Obtocus”. There was a train car filled with water and a plastic octopus inside. I couldn’t believe she knew what it was and could name it! She continually amazes and astounds me. She can do so much. I have not yet told the story about the first phrase I recognized. A few weeks ago, before my parents had left for Argentina, I was sitting with Sophia in the great room and she was playing. She was babbling to herself as she plays, something I believe all kids do. After a time, though, I realized that it sounded like she was saying “Humpty Dumpty”. And not just Humpty Dumpty, but In fact, she was saying “Humpy Dumpy sit the waaaaaaaaaaaaawll” complete with the Southern drawl her primary caregiver has.

“Sophia? Are you saying Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall?” I asked her, incredulous. She turned to me with bright and excited eyes, filled with recognition and anticipation.

I said the entire rhyme.

Her face fell. She turned back to her toys in disappointment.

Hmmmmm.

In a moment she was babbling again. I called my husband and my parents over to hear her say “Humpty Dumpty sit the waaaaaaaaaaawll”. It wasn’t just my imagination. Everybody agreed she was saying the nursery rhyme.

“There must be some hand gestures. Or something. They must do it differently at daycare,” I reasoned. The next day, my husband asked the caregiver about Humpty Dumpty. The teacher demonstrated the hand signals and told us about the “Boo Hoo!” they added at the end of the rhyme. When Sophia started repeating the first line we joyously jumped in. We did the hand signals. We exclaimed “Boo Hoo!” at the end, with our hands curled up near our eyes to mime crying. Sophia grinned with delight, put her hands up to her eyes like we had and shouted “Boo Hoo!” joyously. We’d gotten it right, this time.

She is feeling so much better now than she was last weekend. She is happy, and cheerful and playful. She’s a delight to be around. Today I brought home a fresh batch of library books and she immediately wanted one read to her. She chose the one with the cat on the cover and she said “Cat! Cat!”.

I don’t know if this can be considered a “lovey” or not, but Sophia has become seriously attached to her beanie baby bears. She must have one with her at all times, especially in the car to and from daycare, though she doesn’t seem particular about which one. The same size as her bears was her duck “Ping”, a gift to her from Dave and Becky when we went to visit them over Labor Day weekend. She loved Ping a lot, but Ping went to daycare one day instead of one of the bears and never came home. Alas. Usually I take the bear (or Ping) away from her when we get there and put it in her cubby where it goes safely home, but this particular day she’d had a rough morning and I wasn’t going to wrestle it away from her and make her cry for no reason.

Sophia is started to enjoy singing, dancing and music more and more. When I put music in the cd player she says “More music” in the silence between the tracks. When I get up and dance she says “Dance! Dance!” and sways to the rhythm. She is also learning some songs at daycare like “Deep and Wide”, “Old MacDonald”, and “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”. She can’t sing any of them all the way through, but she’s become quite the avid requester. “Eee eee ooo?” she’ll ask with winsome smile. You’ll sing a verse about cows or ducks and she’ll say “More?” Or else she’ll say “Deep an Why?” or “Wink, wink, star?” Sometimes, in moments of duress, I’ll ask her if she’d like me to sing for her. Often she is upset and can’t manage to ask for what she wants, so I do a song roll call, waiting for a nod. “Manuelita?” Shake head. “Deep and Wide?” Nothing doing. “Osias?” Pause. pause. Nod. OK! Then I’ll sing and despite the fact that my voice leaves much to be desired, she enjoys my enthusiasm immensely.

We’ve fallen away from Spanish Thursdays a bit. I’m still speaking Spanish to her, but not as much or as consistently. I’m not sure how to really ensure that she gets as much exposure as she needs to learn the basics. Should I name things in both languages? Should I speak only Spanish to her? Won’t that be frustrating when she’s just started to decipher everything I say to her in English? Speaking of Spanish, the other day when I was home with Sophia because she was sick, we watched Dora the Explorer on TV. Now I’d seen Dora merchandise in the stores and I’d heard my niece talk about how cool Dora was but I didn’t really think much of it. The only reason I really tuned into it was because it was on the same channel as Blue’s Clues and right before it. Well let me tell you, folks, this is the coolest kid’s TV show. First off, Dora is bilingual. So Spanish is integrated really naturally into the show. Then, the show is all about logic puzzle solving skills. It was really neat.

Ok, one more Sophia thing, and then I’m finished. It’s been almost an hour now. I suppose every family devises little games that they play together. Special names they call each other and special little cues with actions and words and gestures. I wanted to mention a couple of the games that we play with Sophia. One is primarily Kurt’s and one is primarily mine. For some time now, when Kurt has taken Sophia’s socks off he has held them up to her face and said “Peeeeyou! Stinky socks! Smell those stinky, stinky socks!” Ok, for whatever reason, this sends Sophia into absolute FITS of giggles. Now that she’s more coordinated, she squirms around and away as though he’s tickling her and grabs the socks and stuffs them back toward his face. Kurt’s now expanded on the game in that he says “Oh no! The stinky socks! No! Not me! YOU smell them!” And he takes them away and stuffs them back at her. I know it sounds terribly silly just reading it, but it really is the sweetest thing to watch them play together. It’s also hilarious because Sophia’s socks never smell anything but sweet as can be. I don’t think her feet sweat yet. As for the game Sophia and I play, it makes even less sense than that. You may remember that a while back I talked about Hop on Pop and Sophia’s developing sense of humor. Well, shortly after I wrote that entry, she started to understand the word “Stop”. “Stop it” is something she apparently hears rather often at daycare. She became thrilled by the part of the book that goes “We like to hop, we like to hop on top of pop. Stop! You must not hop on pop.” Well, whenever I would read it, I would say Stoooooooooooooooooooooooop, with a really drawn out o sound. So from time to time, she would imitate that. One day, she said it while we were not reading. I replied “You must not hop on pop!” and she dissolved into giggles, as though I had guessed what she was thinking about. From then on, whenever she would say stop in that tone I would reply with the following line. She loves this, and she especially loves it if I’m chasing her around the room while I’m reciting my lines. It’s the type of game that only makes sense in a context that’s hardly worth explaining, but because I know I can read this in 3 or 13 or 30 years and have it instantly evoke the memory of her mischievous eyes as she says “Stop”, it’s worth recording. It’s also touching because my mom told me that this was one of my favorite books as a child, so I feel that we have some connection there, both enjoying this book together so much.

We have an offer on the old house and now we’re fixing some things that the home inspector pointed out were broken. If all goes well, we’ll go back to being a one mortgage household by April. Wouldn’t that be nice?

I decided not to do Nanoedmo, since Cualcotel, most depressingly, is not finished.

On the other hand : Ha! I’m all done with the list of things I was going to talk about that I posted on 02/12. So it only took a month! Not bad, huh? Well, I didn’t talk about swappington’s or bookcrossing, but that’s because I didn’t want to descend into full on rant mode. Maybe later.

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Yes. So I stayed home on the 5th, just as planned. It was quite a meditative day. I disconnected from everything online, watched no news, played no music and just thought about things. I did stuff with my hands. I breathed deep. I considered what it means to be at war. What it means to be at peace. It was a good day. I didn’t really change my mind about anything that I had written before on my political ranting day, but I did reflect on it. Now I stop for a moment every single day and pray that there won’t be war. It seems inevitable, like the momentum cannot now be stopped, but I look for signs everywhere that we might pull away and pull back. It doesn’t have to happen. I decided too, that I would in fact give something up for Lent. I’ve given up chocolate. This is very hard for me, but it is a luxury of the sort that has often been scarce in times of war so it seemed to properly represent my sentiments. I am giving things up. I am letting go. I don’t have to own everything or set everything or control everything. Neither does my nation.

If you haven’t seen (or heard) it, NPR did an interview with Kiesling on his resignation. I know copies of his letter have been floating around the internet, but I thought this interview was particularly incisive. You can find it by searching “Kiesling” on the main page. I didn’t link it because I understand NPR has some freaky policy about linking and I don’t want to bother with it at the moment.

It’s a gorgeous day today, sunny and warm. I think I might go for a walk in a minute and enjoy the weather.

Sophia got sick on Friday. When we fetched her out of her crib in the morning, she had thrown up in bed, and neither one of us had heard her and she was sleeping in her own vomit. UGH. Major parent guilt there. She followed that up by puking up everything we fed her that day (which as the day progressed was reduced to sips of water every half hour). I changed her clothes about 6 times, my own 3 times and Kurt changed at least twice. It was very unpleasant. More so as Sophia got weaker and weaker and resorted to just sleeping. Still, it passed, and she’s better now.

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Weekend was hectic. I discovered an hour after I was supposed to be at work on Saturday that I was supposed to work this past Saturday and not next Saturday. It was my mistake, of course, but it was quite a jolt to try and rush in to work under that short notice. On top of everything else it was MAD, MAD busy. I sat down a total of 10 minutes all morning, and took an abbreviated 10 minute break instead of the 15 minute break we’re alloted. The other person working did the same thing. It wasn’t too bad, though. No rude patrons and a nice mix of newbies and experienced folk.

I have a whole list of things to write about, and one of the things I have been thinking about writing on and off is related to politics. I believe very strongly that everyone is entitled to their own opinions and politics is no exception to that belief. I like to have discussions with people on what they think and why. I especially like hearing from people who have seriously considered their political stance and think differently than I do. My father-in-law is a good person to hear from, because we often think very similarly but arrive at different conclusions on how things should be handled politically. At any rate, I hate to inflict my own personal political opinions on people, especially if they’ve come here looking for great stories about my kid, but I also feel like this has been something much on my mind, lately, and if I can’t express myself about it here, then where can I? Also, I think war is a serious matter, and it should be thought about seriously by everyone, not just politicians and military commanders. But what to say? It’s not like all the rhetoric on both sides of the issue isn’t already tiring to everyone who is following the news even if only marginally attentively. Still, I feel like if I do not say that I am against this war that I’m endorsing it with my silence. I am not for this war. Again, I say, I am not for this war. And while it’s true that I’m (what many people would consider) a lily-livered pacifist, and that from a personal standpoint I find war abhorrent in every circumstance when it occurs, I am not such an ingenue that I don’t comprehend the need for our nation to sometimes engage in war. I understand that Saddam Hussein is a terrible tyrant that oppresses his people in ways that are so barbaric we probably can’t even fathom them as free people living a luxuriant middle class lifestyle in the West. I just don’t see how it follows that we should go to war with him now, over this. The way I see it, there’s always time to wage war later, if it should become necessary. It just doesn’t seem necessary right now. In the case of the weapons of mass destruction, it seems clear that it would be extremely difficult for these to be used against us. In fact, it’s probably much easier for North Korea to get a shot off at us, and we know without a shadow of a doubt that they have nuclear capabilities, so why are we ignoring them as a threat, but holding up Iraq as this overwhelming menace to our stability? This policy of pre-emptive strikes is terrifying and incomprehensible to me. I feel like I’ve suddenly become a part of the world’s largest bully, who by turns throws tantrums and threatens people with violence to get what he wants. It looks to me, and unfortunately I’m not alone in this perception, as though the U.S. government has just chosen Iraq to make an example of for the purposes of showing everyone our lethality and making them fear us. Since when do we do that? Frankly, it’s barbaric. Is that what we are now? The biggest barbarians on the block of Earth? Justified in our actions by having the biggest pile of rocks to throw at people? I have always been pleased to be an American. Even when, as a nation, we have acted less than honorably, I have always felt like we tried as a people to do the right thing. When we engaged in behaviours I thought were despicable, as a nation, I have always been able to reason that these were secret things that our government did without the knowledge or consent of the people it governed. But not this time. Everyone knows we’re going to this war: sending soldiers up to be slaughtered, planning to level a whole city of civilians, appointing ourselves as judges to see who is fit to rule another sovereign nation and everyone knows that it is for no reason. Everyone knows that this cannot possibly sway any terrorist. Everyone knows that the anti-American rhetoric that’s so common in that part of the world, even among our allies, will only be intensified by the actions we are planning. Why, then, are we doing them? I know I’m going to sound terribly old-fashioned, but I wish that our president was required to have served in the military, and preferably have seen active duty. I don’t think you should be permitted to inflict the horrors of war without experiencing them firsthand. Not that such a thing would necessarily help much, but it would possibly help a little. To be honest, I don’t know what would help. All I know is that we are going to war and I disapprove of it, and not just because I’m personally a pacifist, but because it seems like a terrible idea whose fruit can only be exactly what we purport to thwart by striking first. I worry about my child when the next generation must reap what we are sowing here today.

The worst part of all this, I suppose, is the feeling that I’m in a plane that’s going down. The pilot has fallen asleep, and no one is controlling the aircraft, but I can’t get to the controls to stop the crash. Several of the people I have talked about the war also describe this same feeling of helplessness. There’s nothing we can do to stop this. It’s inevitable and it involves us and we’re completely powerless to change it. I don’t suppose it will make any difference to anything, but because I need to take some action, I’ve decided to participate in the National Moratorium to Stop the War on Iraq on March 5. I will be staying home from work on Wednesday, and I will be praying for wisdom in our nation’s leaders and in myself. I will be thinking about war and the consequences of war. I will start the Lent season in this spirit of humility and maybe my sense of hopelessness will be replaced with one of hope. I will decide what to give up for Lent. I’ve never given up anything for Lent before, it’s not something commonly done among most Protestant sects, including the one that I was raised in. This year, though, when grievous losses are so imminent it seems important that I partake in the symbolism of giving things up willingly. I am not sure yet what this will be. I will think about it tomorrow.

If I were wise and eloquent, instead of the preceding two paragraphs, I would have written something like what Umberto Eco said in this article, entitled “Love America and march for peace”. When I read it, I knew I was reading the words of a kindred spirit, and I knew that I was not alone. While it does nothing to prevent what’s coming, it made me feel less solitary and gave words to things I had not been able to name or explain but felt all the same. (Thanks to Neil Gaiman and his wonderful blog for the Eco article link.)

One more thing on the topic of war, and then I’ll promise to quit for the day and write happier things tomorrow. I have mulled over the significance of this incident since I first read about it about a month ago. Although I’m largely out of the loop when it comes to the mainstream news cycle, I didn’t hear anything about it anywhere else. I’m glad I didn’t miss it (thanks, Dave, for showing me the link), as I found it to be a telling and thought-provoking incident. It’s a curious case of political correctness. We don’t want to offend important U.S. personages who may be making statements about war so we’ll hide this horrific artistic interpretation of what war is. Censorship in the name of good taste? I think Picasso would have been outraged. I imagine that the bombings the U.S. has planned for Baghdad will be very much like the bombing of Guernica. Can the U.S. not bear to have its representatives stand before a rendering of what war is like? We believe in this war, don’t we? Believe in it enough to bomb civilians, but not enough to stand in front of a painting about bombing civilians? Was this something the U.N. did out of deference to the U.S.? Did the U.S. request the action? Curious, isn’t it? Curious also, that it went largely unremarked. Why? Too controversial? Too boring? Americans don’t care about art? about Picasso? about the U.N.? about war? Personally, I’d like to have seen Colin Powell talking about waging war in front of Picasso’s “Guernica”. I don’t think we should be shielded from the reality of war, even through the focus of artistic interpretation. If I were to condone or even endorse U.S. military action, I would hope it would be with complete awareness of the destruction it will cause. I haven’t decided whether this act is a sign of our government’s paternalistic view of its people or whether some PR man felt that the view of “Guernica” behind Powell’s head would be bad press and needed to be concealed from the public eye. Thoughts on the matter? Share them with me.

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