since my father died.
It's amazing how quickly and slowly six months can go by. It's no longer the all-encompassing oppressive presence, overwhelming me and making it impossible to concentrate on anything. It has its moments, but most days I'm functional with a layer of sadness in the background. Kind of like trading a coat of thorns for a hair shirt, I suppose.
I love you Dad, and I miss you every day.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Baby names
I got a call from my aunt last week, saying that my cousin has a photography show in Philadelphia, so she will be coming to Philadelphia next week, along with her six-week-old baby and my aunt to help babysit.* So I get to see the baby next week - yay! Oh yes, and my aunt and cousin as well. My reaction reminds me of when K was two weeks old and we called up some friends to see if they wanted to go out to dinner and we heard our friend ask his wife, "Do we want to have dinner with K and what's-her-name and that other guy?"
The baby's name is Adriana Gabriella [our grandmother's first name] [mother's last name] [father's last name]. My first thought on hearing that was that when that poor child has to sign all of the documents for her first mortgage, her hand is going to fall off. Not that we can really pass judgments on long names (K is Katherine Harper Hyphenated-Lastname. Although in our defense, we feel really bad about how long K's name is and we were trying to find a short first name to balance out the hyphenated last name). Although since they didn't hyphenate the last name, she won't have as many problems as K will, since you can have as many middle names as you want without impacting your everyday life. K, on the other hand, is stuck with a 16 character last name in a 15-characters-for-last-names-on-forms world.
I'm finding myself wondering if really long names are a new baby naming trend. I have two other cousins of that generation with two middle names each. Are more parents giving their children four or more names, or are my cousins just terminally indecisive? My (admittedly brief) survey of baby name sites has turned up a lot on popular first names and not much on middle name trends.
*I'm in general not a bitter infertile. But if you ever want a situation to really test that, try having a 41-year-old cousin who conceived last year with absolutely no trouble.
The baby's name is Adriana Gabriella [our grandmother's first name] [mother's last name] [father's last name]. My first thought on hearing that was that when that poor child has to sign all of the documents for her first mortgage, her hand is going to fall off. Not that we can really pass judgments on long names (K is Katherine Harper Hyphenated-Lastname. Although in our defense, we feel really bad about how long K's name is and we were trying to find a short first name to balance out the hyphenated last name). Although since they didn't hyphenate the last name, she won't have as many problems as K will, since you can have as many middle names as you want without impacting your everyday life. K, on the other hand, is stuck with a 16 character last name in a 15-characters-for-last-names-on-forms world.
I'm finding myself wondering if really long names are a new baby naming trend. I have two other cousins of that generation with two middle names each. Are more parents giving their children four or more names, or are my cousins just terminally indecisive? My (admittedly brief) survey of baby name sites has turned up a lot on popular first names and not much on middle name trends.
*I'm in general not a bitter infertile. But if you ever want a situation to really test that, try having a 41-year-old cousin who conceived last year with absolutely no trouble.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Red tide (not) rising
I had a fairly angsty infertility post that I wrote Saturday night and decided that it was too whiny to actually post. It comes down to two points:
1. It's been 7 weeks since my iud was removed, my cycle hasn't started up yet and I'm starting to get discouraged. Secretly, I had thought that after successfully getting through pregnancy once and three years without any real PCOS symptoms, I wouldn't have as hard a time of it this time. Instead, I'm actually worse off than the first time I tried to conceive, when I was having regular cycles even if I wasn't always ovulating. This perturbs me. I don't necessarily want to be pregnant right this minute, since the timing would be better if it happened this summer. What I want is to know I can get pregnant, and that certainly can't happen without my cycle starting. However, my chest has been getting progressivly more sore over the past week, so I'm hoping my cycle might meander around these parts one of these days. Maybe.
2. I've read from people who've experienced both that secondary infertility can be harder than the first time because a, after having one child, you know much more acutely what you're missing and b, since you have a child, you can't avoid children and babies. It's that second one that's getting to me a bit. I think about 90 percent of the people I know who had babies the same year I did are either pregnant or have already had a second baby. I feel nothing but the most sincere happiness for them and don't begrudge them their fertility for a moment. I just want it for myself too.
1. It's been 7 weeks since my iud was removed, my cycle hasn't started up yet and I'm starting to get discouraged. Secretly, I had thought that after successfully getting through pregnancy once and three years without any real PCOS symptoms, I wouldn't have as hard a time of it this time. Instead, I'm actually worse off than the first time I tried to conceive, when I was having regular cycles even if I wasn't always ovulating. This perturbs me. I don't necessarily want to be pregnant right this minute, since the timing would be better if it happened this summer. What I want is to know I can get pregnant, and that certainly can't happen without my cycle starting. However, my chest has been getting progressivly more sore over the past week, so I'm hoping my cycle might meander around these parts one of these days. Maybe.
2. I've read from people who've experienced both that secondary infertility can be harder than the first time because a, after having one child, you know much more acutely what you're missing and b, since you have a child, you can't avoid children and babies. It's that second one that's getting to me a bit. I think about 90 percent of the people I know who had babies the same year I did are either pregnant or have already had a second baby. I feel nothing but the most sincere happiness for them and don't begrudge them their fertility for a moment. I just want it for myself too.
Dull
Life is pretty boring lately, just the normal rounds of toddler wrangling, work, work and more toddler wrangling. The house is largely arranged the way I want it and the only real unpacking is books, which, considering there are books we never unpacked from the last time we moved, could take a while.
We watched the season premiere of Torchwood last night. I think it might be the best episode I've seen of that series. James Marsters is so good at playing a flamboyant bad guy. And for once there was an episode with some real humor and joy to it. I was reading someone's comments about Torchwood recently and they put their finger on why I don't like it nearly as much as the new Dr. Who: they sucked all of the humor and charm out of Captain Jack and turned him into an angsty bore. But the fun Jack made a bit of an appearance in this episode, which I hope will continue.
Meanwhile, tonight's Mansfield Park was...eh. It's so hard for me to separate the fact that I don't like the book very much from any movie I watch based on it. I think tonight's version was certainly better than the version from 1983, which was so low-budget they couldn't afford to hire normal-looking actors.* And it was much more faithful to the book than the 1995 adaptation, although not nearly as entertaining. And I think part of it was the fault of the book and partly the fault of the movie.
The book itself is difficult because the heroine is so hard to like, dull, meek and prissy. I think it's particularly hard to take because it's entirely possible to have a very nice, shy heroine who Does the Right Thing according to her unfailing moral compass who still manages to be likeable (see: Anne Elliot). Fanny Price is not that character. The 1995 solved that problem by making Fanny vivacious and clever, and therefore completely unlike the character in the book. Unfortunately, in this version, Billie Piper attempted to portray Fanny in a manner so wooden she should have been starring in Pinocchio. More accurate to the book, but do we really want her to be?
As for the rest of the characters, Lady Bertram seemed far too alert, and for counterpoint, everyone else seemed slightly dull, without much chemistry between any of the potential lovers. I'll watch it again sometime this week to see if it grows on me, but my first impression is that my quest for the film version of Mansfield Park that manages to be simultaneously entertaining and accurate to the book will have to continue.
*The thing I took away from that very accurate, yet so extremely flat and dull adaptation was the one memorable scene where Lady Bertram roused from her laudanum-induced stupor to insert the non sequitur, "I think...I should like a shrubbery." It was the first time I realized that Monty Python has made any mention of shrubbery far more funny than it actually is.
We watched the season premiere of Torchwood last night. I think it might be the best episode I've seen of that series. James Marsters is so good at playing a flamboyant bad guy. And for once there was an episode with some real humor and joy to it. I was reading someone's comments about Torchwood recently and they put their finger on why I don't like it nearly as much as the new Dr. Who: they sucked all of the humor and charm out of Captain Jack and turned him into an angsty bore. But the fun Jack made a bit of an appearance in this episode, which I hope will continue.
Meanwhile, tonight's Mansfield Park was...eh. It's so hard for me to separate the fact that I don't like the book very much from any movie I watch based on it. I think tonight's version was certainly better than the version from 1983, which was so low-budget they couldn't afford to hire normal-looking actors.* And it was much more faithful to the book than the 1995 adaptation, although not nearly as entertaining. And I think part of it was the fault of the book and partly the fault of the movie.
The book itself is difficult because the heroine is so hard to like, dull, meek and prissy. I think it's particularly hard to take because it's entirely possible to have a very nice, shy heroine who Does the Right Thing according to her unfailing moral compass who still manages to be likeable (see: Anne Elliot). Fanny Price is not that character. The 1995 solved that problem by making Fanny vivacious and clever, and therefore completely unlike the character in the book. Unfortunately, in this version, Billie Piper attempted to portray Fanny in a manner so wooden she should have been starring in Pinocchio. More accurate to the book, but do we really want her to be?
As for the rest of the characters, Lady Bertram seemed far too alert, and for counterpoint, everyone else seemed slightly dull, without much chemistry between any of the potential lovers. I'll watch it again sometime this week to see if it grows on me, but my first impression is that my quest for the film version of Mansfield Park that manages to be simultaneously entertaining and accurate to the book will have to continue.
*The thing I took away from that very accurate, yet so extremely flat and dull adaptation was the one memorable scene where Lady Bertram roused from her laudanum-induced stupor to insert the non sequitur, "I think...I should like a shrubbery." It was the first time I realized that Monty Python has made any mention of shrubbery far more funny than it actually is.
Friday, January 25, 2008
On the road again
We went to Center City today to have lunch with a friend. The company was good and the food was sublime - a neat little Ethiopian place. It always amuses me watching K eat Ethiopian - she took to it like a natural, grabbing her injera and dipping it in the nearest pile of stew.
Every time we venture into Center City, we keep saying we need to do it more, that we live in a big city with lots of stuff to do and we need to take advantage of it. Then we go back home and get caught up in our routine for another couple months. In our defense, it's really hard these days to make plans when both of us work alternating days on the weekends. January has been pretty easy in that regard, but next month B has a couple Sunday shifts in addition to the two Saturdays he always works. So I think there will be only two weekend days next month where one of us isn't working. This doesn't lend itself to a devil-may-care, fancy-free museum-visiting lifestyle.
I realized last week that it's been a year since we moved to Philadelphia. Last year at this time, we were sitting in a new house, surrounded by half-unpacked boxes. And this year, we're, um, sitting in a new house, surrounded by half-unpacked boxes. Look how far we've come! If I move next December though, it will only be at gunpoint, so we will have made progress. And there certainly are signs that we've acclimated - we own Wawa travel mugs, we refer to Roosevelt Boulevard as "The Boulevard" and don't worry for a second that people won't understand us, we know to expect that as soon as the light turns green, someone will whip around and make a left turn in front of oncoming traffic. We haven't started saying "youse" yet though, so we haven't gone completely native.
We may have been here for a year, but most of our thoughts lately are plotting how often we can leave. Currently, our only firm vacation plans for the year are working at Acen again after a two-year absence. The current plan is to drive out to Michigan, drop K off toget thoroughly spoilerspend the weekend with her grandparents, drive down to Chicago for the convention, drive back to Michigan to pick up our spawn and drive home. It occasionally seems a bit masochistic of us to use a large amount of vacation time and drive 1000 miles for the privilege of working in the volunteering salt mines of an anime convention, but we've really missed it. And more importantly, all of our friends that will be there.
Other potential trips: I have a cousin getting married in Colorado this year, so my mother would like to go to the wedding and has suggested that K, my brother and I come along. We had discussed spreading Dad's ashes in Colorado, so this would be our opportunity. But we don't know when the wedding is yet, so that's largely up in the air. The other completely up in the air possibility is that my library is closed Easter weekend and B has Good Friday off (way to go with the separation of church and state, city of Philadelphia!). Since I've already established that we won't have another weekend off together until the end of time, let alone a long weekend, I absolutely refuse to stay home and do nothing. Boston is a definite possibility, or even just Connecticut to visit my aunt and uncle. Or even just drive over the bridge to scenic New Jersey. Just so long as we don't waste the opportunity, dammit.
Every time we venture into Center City, we keep saying we need to do it more, that we live in a big city with lots of stuff to do and we need to take advantage of it. Then we go back home and get caught up in our routine for another couple months. In our defense, it's really hard these days to make plans when both of us work alternating days on the weekends. January has been pretty easy in that regard, but next month B has a couple Sunday shifts in addition to the two Saturdays he always works. So I think there will be only two weekend days next month where one of us isn't working. This doesn't lend itself to a devil-may-care, fancy-free museum-visiting lifestyle.
I realized last week that it's been a year since we moved to Philadelphia. Last year at this time, we were sitting in a new house, surrounded by half-unpacked boxes. And this year, we're, um, sitting in a new house, surrounded by half-unpacked boxes. Look how far we've come! If I move next December though, it will only be at gunpoint, so we will have made progress. And there certainly are signs that we've acclimated - we own Wawa travel mugs, we refer to Roosevelt Boulevard as "The Boulevard" and don't worry for a second that people won't understand us, we know to expect that as soon as the light turns green, someone will whip around and make a left turn in front of oncoming traffic. We haven't started saying "youse" yet though, so we haven't gone completely native.
We may have been here for a year, but most of our thoughts lately are plotting how often we can leave. Currently, our only firm vacation plans for the year are working at Acen again after a two-year absence. The current plan is to drive out to Michigan, drop K off to
Other potential trips: I have a cousin getting married in Colorado this year, so my mother would like to go to the wedding and has suggested that K, my brother and I come along. We had discussed spreading Dad's ashes in Colorado, so this would be our opportunity. But we don't know when the wedding is yet, so that's largely up in the air. The other completely up in the air possibility is that my library is closed Easter weekend and B has Good Friday off (way to go with the separation of church and state, city of Philadelphia!). Since I've already established that we won't have another weekend off together until the end of time, let alone a long weekend, I absolutely refuse to stay home and do nothing. Boston is a definite possibility, or even just Connecticut to visit my aunt and uncle. Or even just drive over the bridge to scenic New Jersey. Just so long as we don't waste the opportunity, dammit.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Publicity blues
The library and museum where I work is what could be diplomatically called a "well-kept secret." We're smack dab in the middle of a busy park, but with limited hours keeping us closed during the week and a lack of signs saying explicitly "Yes we're open! Come on in!" (which is in the process of being rememdied), we don't get a lot of people. Which is a shame, because the people who do come in are invariably impressed. We tend to hear a lot of "I went to this library all the time when I was a kid, but I didn't realize you're still open." Sigh. So as much as we value our core of (ancient, slightly dusty) regulars, we keep looking for ways to bring more people in.
One way is through children, and I plan to get on starting a story time once my knees stop quaking in terror at the thought. I'm not sure if I'm more scared that no one will show up or if they will. I think a Friday afternoon story time has the potential to be very popular, since one of my eternal frustrations is that every single story time in this part of the city is on Tuesday morning (the children's librarian at's branch is talking about starting up a story time - I plan to get down on my knees and beg him to choose any time other than Tuesday morning). I don't know what's so popular about Tuesday morning, but clearly some sort of diabolical hive mind is at work here. Now that I think about it, since the public schools often have inservices on Friday afternoons and the public preschool never meets Friday afternoons, Friday afternoon is an excellent time to try and lure in kids with their parents in tow.
All I have to do is get past the tiny insignificant fact that I went to library school planning to be a cataloger in an academic library and have absolutely no training in children's services. And did I mention I wanted to be a cataloger partly because I'm shy and introverted and didn't want to deal with people? *brave gulp* Well, I suppose new challenges are good for the soul, even if they're hard on the nerves.
I had what might be a brilliant idea yesterday afternoon. A lot of public libraries have had success with hosting knitting circles. There are currently over 500 members of only one of the Philadelphia area groups on Ravelry. Surely there are enough people on Ravelry living in the Northeast that would like a knitting circle they didn't have to brave Center City traffic for that I could get something going at the library. My initial unscientific research of scanning the introduction posts revealed that there are enough people living in Elkins Park (the suburb immediately to the west of us) alone to get a decent sized group together. So ideally, I could get 15 or so new people to come in, perhaps take a tour while they're there, wow them with the fantastic architecture, they would go home and tell all of their friends and family about us and hey presto! Instant popularity, fame and fortune. Or maybe not. But 15 people is often as many people we get in two days, so just getting that many in on a semi-regular basis would be a huge achievement.
Of course, there are some days I think it would be nice to continue languishing in anonymity. It certainly makes for a more relaxing day at work.
One way is through children, and I plan to get on starting a story time once my knees stop quaking in terror at the thought. I'm not sure if I'm more scared that no one will show up or if they will. I think a Friday afternoon story time has the potential to be very popular, since one of my eternal frustrations is that every single story time in this part of the city is on Tuesday morning (the children's librarian at
All I have to do is get past the tiny insignificant fact that I went to library school planning to be a cataloger in an academic library and have absolutely no training in children's services. And did I mention I wanted to be a cataloger partly because I'm shy and introverted and didn't want to deal with people? *brave gulp* Well, I suppose new challenges are good for the soul, even if they're hard on the nerves.
I had what might be a brilliant idea yesterday afternoon. A lot of public libraries have had success with hosting knitting circles. There are currently over 500 members of only one of the Philadelphia area groups on Ravelry. Surely there are enough people on Ravelry living in the Northeast that would like a knitting circle they didn't have to brave Center City traffic for that I could get something going at the library. My initial unscientific research of scanning the introduction posts revealed that there are enough people living in Elkins Park (the suburb immediately to the west of us) alone to get a decent sized group together. So ideally, I could get 15 or so new people to come in, perhaps take a tour while they're there, wow them with the fantastic architecture, they would go home and tell all of their friends and family about us and hey presto! Instant popularity, fame and fortune. Or maybe not. But 15 people is often as many people we get in two days, so just getting that many in on a semi-regular basis would be a huge achievement.
Of course, there are some days I think it would be nice to continue languishing in anonymity. It certainly makes for a more relaxing day at work.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Northanger Abbey
While I was driving to work on Friday, I heard an NPR story on the Austen adaptations. They had an interview with Andrew Davies, whom they said did several of the scripts. I was shocked - shocked! - to hear that the writer of the incomparable 1995 Pride and Prejudice miniseries could be responsible for that mediocre (and bizarrely unfaithful to the book) Persuasion. Then to my horror, they started talking about his choice to start out Sense and Sensibility with Willoughby's seduction of Colonel Brandon's ward, which of course happened completely off-stage in the book, not to mention how much out of character a sex scene is for an Austen adaptation.
Well! Suddenly my joking threat to watch the Emma Thompson S&S on the night the new one airs seemed a lot more like a good idea. But last night I got curious and looked up Davies' IMDB entry and discovered he didn't write the script for Persuasion (and did write a number of movies I liked quite a bit), which immediately improved my opinion of him. After watching Northanger Abbey last night, I'm willing to give his Sense and Sensibility a chance.
I really liked Northanger Abbey. I suppose I should include the disclaimer that I read the book once, twelve years ago, so I only have a vague idea of how true it was to the book. And I'm sure the fact that there isn't another film version that I'm attached to helped me like this one better.
But with that said, I just plain enjoyed it. The actress who played Catherine did a wonderful job of portraying a sweet and naive girl, whose sheltered life makes it difficult for her to remember that there are real people with feelings behind her wild fantasies. They did a good job of making the Tilneys simultaneously appealing and sinister. I liked the cheesy horror-movie style of Catherine's fantasies. All in all, an enjoyable two hours.
Well! Suddenly my joking threat to watch the Emma Thompson S&S on the night the new one airs seemed a lot more like a good idea. But last night I got curious and looked up Davies' IMDB entry and discovered he didn't write the script for Persuasion (and did write a number of movies I liked quite a bit), which immediately improved my opinion of him. After watching Northanger Abbey last night, I'm willing to give his Sense and Sensibility a chance.
I really liked Northanger Abbey. I suppose I should include the disclaimer that I read the book once, twelve years ago, so I only have a vague idea of how true it was to the book. And I'm sure the fact that there isn't another film version that I'm attached to helped me like this one better.
But with that said, I just plain enjoyed it. The actress who played Catherine did a wonderful job of portraying a sweet and naive girl, whose sheltered life makes it difficult for her to remember that there are real people with feelings behind her wild fantasies. They did a good job of making the Tilneys simultaneously appealing and sinister. I liked the cheesy horror-movie style of Catherine's fantasies. All in all, an enjoyable two hours.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Marketing
Is it perhaps overly cynical of me that my first impression of The Backyardigans was, "Oh, how convenient for marketing. They already look like stuffed animals."
Marketing aside, I do have to say that as children's programs go, this is a remarkably non-annoying one. It's cute, fairly funny and musical. And perhaps the most important part, they sing lots of different songs, so the likelihood that you'll wind up with evil earworm music stuck in your head from the incessant repetition is much lower (although in the spirit of full disclosure, I've been humming the theme song for the past two days. But it's a lot better than the theme to Elmo's World, so I'll take what I can get).
Marketing aside, I do have to say that as children's programs go, this is a remarkably non-annoying one. It's cute, fairly funny and musical. And perhaps the most important part, they sing lots of different songs, so the likelihood that you'll wind up with evil earworm music stuck in your head from the incessant repetition is much lower (although in the spirit of full disclosure, I've been humming the theme song for the past two days. But it's a lot better than the theme to Elmo's World, so I'll take what I can get).
Friday, January 18, 2008
The essence of a two-year-old
A conversation with K tonight:
Me: K, can you say snow?
K: Nooooooo
Me: K, can you say kitty?
K: Noooooo
Me:, K, can you say antidisestablishmentarianism?
K: Nooooooo
Me: K, can you say no?
K: *silence, with a grin and a sly look*
Clearly, she's getting too smart for me.
Me: K, can you say snow?
K: Nooooooo
Me: K, can you say kitty?
K: Noooooo
Me:, K, can you say antidisestablishmentarianism?
K: Nooooooo
Me: K, can you say no?
K: *silence, with a grin and a sly look*
Clearly, she's getting too smart for me.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
The inexorable passage of time
Periodwatch 2008: no signs yet, four weeks past iud-removal. I thought I had some hopeful symptoms this weekend, but they turned out to be from *ahem* adjacent areas. I had been hoping that my body would interpret the iud being removed as the beginning of a cycle, but apparently it's taking its time working the extra hormones out.
It feels a bit counterintuitive after years of infertility to actually want my period, but nothing is going to happen until my cycle comes back, hopefully before I turn 80.
***
It's occurred to me that if we want to send K to preschool next fall, we need to start thinking about it now. Eep. I'm not ready to think about sending my two-year-old to school, but given how much she loves daycare*, I think she's more than ready. Philadelphia has a free preschool available through the public schools, and while I've heard bad things about the public schools, the preschool has gotten some good reviews. Since I'm not worried about how well they prepare K for college, I think it's worth checking out (and it's hard to argue with free). My main concern is that it might be too academic - preschool should be about socialization and working on developmental skills, not getting a head start on reading. Their website is remarkably unspecific regarding curriculum, so I will have to make sure to ask for more materials on it when we call for information.
Or I could stick my fingers in my ears and refuse to think about my baby getting old enough to go to school. That could work too.
This boring post brought to you by my sieve-like memory that promptly expels every single fascinating topic I think of during the day the moment my fingers touch the keyboard.
*She does a little dance when I tell her it's a daycare day and cheerfully closes the door behind me when I leave. I don't want her to be horribly upset when I leave, but does she have to be so happy about it?
It feels a bit counterintuitive after years of infertility to actually want my period, but nothing is going to happen until my cycle comes back, hopefully before I turn 80.
***
It's occurred to me that if we want to send K to preschool next fall, we need to start thinking about it now. Eep. I'm not ready to think about sending my two-year-old to school, but given how much she loves daycare*, I think she's more than ready. Philadelphia has a free preschool available through the public schools, and while I've heard bad things about the public schools, the preschool has gotten some good reviews. Since I'm not worried about how well they prepare K for college, I think it's worth checking out (and it's hard to argue with free). My main concern is that it might be too academic - preschool should be about socialization and working on developmental skills, not getting a head start on reading. Their website is remarkably unspecific regarding curriculum, so I will have to make sure to ask for more materials on it when we call for information.
Or I could stick my fingers in my ears and refuse to think about my baby getting old enough to go to school. That could work too.
This boring post brought to you by my sieve-like memory that promptly expels every single fascinating topic I think of during the day the moment my fingers touch the keyboard.
*She does a little dance when I tell her it's a daycare day and cheerfully closes the door behind me when I leave. I don't want her to be horribly upset when I leave, but does she have to be so happy about it?
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