Love, love me do

Once upon a time, I had more conversation topics than a small boy's sleep habits. No longer!

No, I am studiously going to avoid talking about J's sleep or lack thereof today. I have a life outside of infant slumber, I swear! Umm, well...there's my class! Yeah, my class. We are a week into our four week stint, and their first paper is due on Monday. I read their first paragraphs during "peer" editing (in principle, I support this concept wholeheartedly, but in practice it only works well about a quarter of the time. The rest of the time, they read their work out loud, they sit there and stare off into space, and the whole thing takes about 20 minutes for three essays. No good) and those first paragraphs were, on the whole, a little alarming. I've got some good writers and some...not so good. My personal favorite was the earnest young woman (an English major, even, though Lord knows why she's in this class at this late stage in her major) who wrote her paper on Emily Dickinson and decided to capitalize words randomly throughout her essay "to mimic the effect of the poem." However, as I pointed out, she is writing an analytical essay, not a poem, and she's not Dickinson, of course, so the only "effect" she needs is clarity of argument. She was not impressed. But then, neither was I! I was also amused by the sad econ major who kept wanting to know how many "points" certain errors were worth. Oh, sad little boy, welcome to the world of holistic and subjective grading. I don't trouble myself with things like points! Hahahahaha!

Beyond that, the husband is in the kitchen right now making jalapeno poppers. He's got several recipes he's trying out, and I'm letting him run wild because poppers are a combination of hot and cheese so not really my thing. (He just told me that capsesin-sp?-apparently gets under your rings, too, so under his wedding band is a little ring of fire right now! He's so clever, that husband of mine!) I'd tell you where the baby is but then I'd break my vow not to talk about baby sleep. And I'm watching Big Brother 10 in the background, wherein they have just revealed that one of the contestants is "a star on the gay rodeo circuit." Who knew there was such a thing?? I thought Erasure was wearing chaps ironically! There's also a Hooter's girl, of course, and a woman who is in a mixed race marriage and has 5 month old twins, one of whom is white and one of whom is black. That's supposed to be shocking, but I'm more shocked that she left her 5 month olds! Couldn't do it. A final one is a mixologist, "not a bartender" he says emphatically, and CBS keeps putting "mixologist" in quotation marks, a not so subtle jab at his "profession." This show really is horrid, but it's summer, people, and the original programming is slim. After Last Comic Standing refused to let the absolutely hilarious Israeli prop comic in, I've had to move on to some other mindless TV to fill the void!

In other news, I've finally gotten over my lingering sickness. After I left, more siblings fell victim to the nasty flu, but the rest of the babies who hadn't already gotten sick stayed well, thank goodness. The family that lives together gets sick together, sadly! And that's all I got for now. Must go, you know, wash some bottles or something.