Better or Worse

This morning Ayla drew a circle with a tuft of black hair, stick legs, and stick arms. Three fingers per arm. "That's my boy," she said. "My brother. I'm gonna have a brother cause I like boys. His name is Mella."

We are not having a third child. Every time the idea of a third child comes up, Noah points out that as a family, we would then have an uneven number for amusement park rides. "But on the rides," he says, unfailingly. "One person would always be left out."

Yesterday she moaned and writhed in pain from an earache. I had never seen her in such pain. It was incredibly distressing. The doctor's office got her in within an hour. By the time we got there, they Tylenol and ear drops had kicked in, and she was feeling better. Thank God.

Is anyone else feeling like maybe we need to start stocking our pantries full with tomatoes and citrus and beans? I don't think I'd be feeling this way if I never checked cnn.com or watched the news. They have a terrible story every day. Last week on Oprah, they did a feature on Tent Cities--cities springing up made of people, former middle class people, who have lost their jobs/home/everything. It reminded me, of course, of the Great Depression and Hooverville in Central Park.


I dreamed of High School again last night. More accurately, I dreamed of the people I knew in High School. People I thought I had forgotten, but there they came, swimming up through the dream debris. Faces from 1996. They were all pretty much the same. The person that used to make me feel left out was making me feel left out again. Why can't I dream of pleasant things? I don't have nightmares often, but my dreams are seldom good. Sometimes I go back to Paris in my dreams. I am always achingly happy to be there in the dream. I wake up sad. The other night I dreamed of Firefly. I was part of the crew and had to pull a one-over on the enemies, Alias style. I was required to go undercover and lie and trick to complete the mission. I did and it was great.

That was sad to come out of as well. Maybe that's why my dreams are usually not highly enjoyable. I wake up from those ones sad and yearning. I wake up from the high school dreams relieved.

I've been sitting here staring at this post for a long time. It's not really anything worth posting. But I need to post something, and here's this. Blogging is a curious thing. Very self-indulgent, it seems to me. Very easy to come of smug and self-obsessed. Two more things:

I checked out a book called "The Worst Hard Time" from work. It's about the Dust Bowl. I thought reading about people who had it worse than we do might be perversely comforting. I don't think I"m the only one who thinks this way. A lot of books about World War II are out right now. All about people who were worse off than we are (Jews in Concentration camps, German girls whose homes are bombed, German refugees on the run from the raping, murdering, blood thirsty Russians, Americans and Brits stuck in Hong Kong when it was taken over by the Japanese).

I am worried about getting Ayla into Bradley Elementary for preschool. Bradley is ideal because we could walk there, and because it is an IB school. IB schools are really good. Please let it not be full. Please let there be a spot for Ayla.

That's it. For better or worse, I'm hitting "Publish Post" now.