What it's like
May. 5th, 2003 09:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sanpaku_backupMichael Kinsley's schadenfreude is worth quoting at some length,
"Sinners have long cherished the fantasy that William Bennett, the virtue magnate, might be among our number. The news over the weekend -- that Bennett's $50,000 sermons and bestselling moral instruction manuals have financed a multimillion-dollar gambling habit -- has lit a lamp of happiness in even the darkest hearts. As the joyous word spread, crack flowed like water through inner-city streets, family court judges began handing out free divorces, and children lit bonfires of "The Book of Virtues," "More Virtuous Virtues," "Who Cheesed My Virtue?" "Moral Tails: Virtue for Dogs," etc. And cynics everywhere thought, for just a moment: Maybe there is a God after all. ... Let's also be honest that gambling would not be our first-choice vice if we were designing this fantasy-come-true from scratch. But gambling will do. It will definitely do. Bennett has been exposed as a humbug artist who ought to be pelted off the public stage if he lacks the decency to slink quietly away as he is constantly calling on others to do."
So sometimes bad things do happen to evil people who pretend to be good... something we need to remind ourselves of these days.
---------------------------
I haven't been inclined to write much here of late. To be frank, baby issues have been brutal for about as far back as I can remember now (my random-access memory going back perhaps a week and a half, or two weeks). Actually, the medication seems to have helped the ecsema on her face a good bit, and there was a period of distinct improvement, where she was not interested in clawing herself all the time. Over the past five or six days, though, the rash has returned a bit, then Mrs. S. got sick on Friday, and then the baby decided she didn't feel like sleeping very much. Then the baby got some kind of cold herself last night, so today has been tough. And now I'm getting sick too -- I can feel it. This was also on top of several successive sleepless nights for me for one reason or another.
The Mrs. is saddened when all I do is complain about hard things are with the baby. It's my natural tendency -- I think letting myself feel negative some of the time is what I do to keep from acting negative most of the time. We can both attest that when things feel frustrating about the baby, it feels bad, really bad, in a personal and emotionally charged way. There have been a lot of those moments, especially over the past four months, since the rash started. I sure hope that it goes away soon... she is so great otherwise.
So there are times when it feels really awful and despondent. But then over the past couple of days, things have ended so nicely. Yesterday was her 6-month birthday, and she celebrated by learning to roll over from back to front, so now she rolls around like a pinball in her crib. That felt... really good, somehow. Then we went for a calming drive to Colt State Park and picked up (kosher!) Italian takeout on the way home, and she ate and went to sleep. Today the Mrs. felt awful, but a couple of walks made us all feel better. (I am so glad it's spring, already. I feel like we were waiting for it forever.)
It's remarkable how much and how quickly your life really does change. The hardest part is always having to be "on" -- she's not really that hard to care for, but you have to be pretty fully engaged. For example, last weekend I put her down in the middle of the bed in my office and went to sit down; when I looked over again, she had rolled over against the wall. If she had decided to roll over the other direction, she would have fallen on the floor. Two days later I put her on at an angle on a couch pillow and turned away for a fraction of a second, when she rolled off. I dramatically caught her with her head about an inch from the floor. It's like the kid's life is in a race against my forgetfulness and stupidity.
That's a lot of what it's like -- being in a constant state of readiness, accepting that you just won't get a lot done that day, and trying to be cheerful through it. Then she smiles once in a while, and it gets a lot better, at least for that moment.
Anyway, now I am contemplating how we can set up a room with all of her stuff in it, that she can roll around in as much as she wants. I also want to find this little wind-up train on plastic tracks that I used to have, in fact I know I had it last year in Pittsburgh, but I either a) stupidly threw it out there during the big clean, or b) buried it so deep in our storage area that it may as well be gone. With all that's been going on the past couple of days, I haven't had much time for home spelunking.
"Sinners have long cherished the fantasy that William Bennett, the virtue magnate, might be among our number. The news over the weekend -- that Bennett's $50,000 sermons and bestselling moral instruction manuals have financed a multimillion-dollar gambling habit -- has lit a lamp of happiness in even the darkest hearts. As the joyous word spread, crack flowed like water through inner-city streets, family court judges began handing out free divorces, and children lit bonfires of "The Book of Virtues," "More Virtuous Virtues," "Who Cheesed My Virtue?" "Moral Tails: Virtue for Dogs," etc. And cynics everywhere thought, for just a moment: Maybe there is a God after all. ... Let's also be honest that gambling would not be our first-choice vice if we were designing this fantasy-come-true from scratch. But gambling will do. It will definitely do. Bennett has been exposed as a humbug artist who ought to be pelted off the public stage if he lacks the decency to slink quietly away as he is constantly calling on others to do."
So sometimes bad things do happen to evil people who pretend to be good... something we need to remind ourselves of these days.
---------------------------
I haven't been inclined to write much here of late. To be frank, baby issues have been brutal for about as far back as I can remember now (my random-access memory going back perhaps a week and a half, or two weeks). Actually, the medication seems to have helped the ecsema on her face a good bit, and there was a period of distinct improvement, where she was not interested in clawing herself all the time. Over the past five or six days, though, the rash has returned a bit, then Mrs. S. got sick on Friday, and then the baby decided she didn't feel like sleeping very much. Then the baby got some kind of cold herself last night, so today has been tough. And now I'm getting sick too -- I can feel it. This was also on top of several successive sleepless nights for me for one reason or another.
The Mrs. is saddened when all I do is complain about hard things are with the baby. It's my natural tendency -- I think letting myself feel negative some of the time is what I do to keep from acting negative most of the time. We can both attest that when things feel frustrating about the baby, it feels bad, really bad, in a personal and emotionally charged way. There have been a lot of those moments, especially over the past four months, since the rash started. I sure hope that it goes away soon... she is so great otherwise.
So there are times when it feels really awful and despondent. But then over the past couple of days, things have ended so nicely. Yesterday was her 6-month birthday, and she celebrated by learning to roll over from back to front, so now she rolls around like a pinball in her crib. That felt... really good, somehow. Then we went for a calming drive to Colt State Park and picked up (kosher!) Italian takeout on the way home, and she ate and went to sleep. Today the Mrs. felt awful, but a couple of walks made us all feel better. (I am so glad it's spring, already. I feel like we were waiting for it forever.)
It's remarkable how much and how quickly your life really does change. The hardest part is always having to be "on" -- she's not really that hard to care for, but you have to be pretty fully engaged. For example, last weekend I put her down in the middle of the bed in my office and went to sit down; when I looked over again, she had rolled over against the wall. If she had decided to roll over the other direction, she would have fallen on the floor. Two days later I put her on at an angle on a couch pillow and turned away for a fraction of a second, when she rolled off. I dramatically caught her with her head about an inch from the floor. It's like the kid's life is in a race against my forgetfulness and stupidity.
That's a lot of what it's like -- being in a constant state of readiness, accepting that you just won't get a lot done that day, and trying to be cheerful through it. Then she smiles once in a while, and it gets a lot better, at least for that moment.
Anyway, now I am contemplating how we can set up a room with all of her stuff in it, that she can roll around in as much as she wants. I also want to find this little wind-up train on plastic tracks that I used to have, in fact I know I had it last year in Pittsburgh, but I either a) stupidly threw it out there during the big clean, or b) buried it so deep in our storage area that it may as well be gone. With all that's been going on the past couple of days, I haven't had much time for home spelunking.
