(no subject)

New Thing(s) I Learned:

Denying the Holocaust, in almost every country that cares, will get you jailed/fined. Except for this one. (In this country it will just get you beat up.) :/

Still very busy and moderately sleep deprived. Alan's been putting in full-time hours with a new client. He's training to fill in for a guy that's getting open heart surgery. They interviewed Alan several months ago as an assistant for this guy which was never hired. Guess they should have filled the position. This leaves me at home alone with the munchkins this week and no car. I wouldn't mind either one so much, but the combo can be a little rough. My hat's off to women that do this all the time. Modern housewifery is terribly isolating far too often. Instead of sharing your days and your duties with a community of women, a lot of mothers have only their children for company too much of the time. I don't know how this could be changed without reorganzing western civilization, but at least I am lucky enough to have Alan around most of the time.

Aidan spits up. I didn't get to experience this with Connor. I consult my baby manual for advice: "Wear patterns and light colors for the next six months." Great. (My wardrobe consists nearly entirely of dark solids.) Some days I change both our shirts a few times. Each day we go through a few hand towels, at least one full size one (I feel like I ought to have a bumper sticker for some reason: 'I sleep on a damp towel'), a few odd receiving blankets, a five gallon bucket and a half of diapers. God bless major appliances. I try to be careful when it comes to looking forward to when he will be older and less work. Babies are ephemeral things. Now that Connor's older, I can see that the child he would become was visible in the baby he used to be, but I can't see the baby in Connor at all anymore; it's gone. Mothers who feel like they simply can't stay home/breastfeed/share their bed/etc., that's fine, everyone has their own way. But I wish I could tell them that they'll blink twice and this time will be past. They won't have to do any of those things forever, not even close, if that's what's holding them back.

I thought I might get a nap today. Aidan was asleep in the sling, and Connor was making an effort to go to sleep on the sofa so I laid down on the futon. It was not to be. Aidan woke up and Connor was unable to go to sleep, either because his final tooth is still bothering him or he had to go, or both. So I made some popcorn, put on 'The Horse Movie' (Spirit) and we vegged. I was quite disappointed in Spirit when I first saw it. I found the wild west mythology a little (way) too overdone, the characters underdeveloped, and the music not to my taste. But, it seems that my brain has advanced ever further toward puddingdom because I find it has grown on me. I still have all the above complaints, but I've found that in watching movies more than once they often seem better to me. I think I fill in the gaps with my own imagination over time, or perhaps I just let go of whatever expectations I had and accept things for what they are and are not. Then we followed it up with 'The Kid Movie' (Spirited Away). What a gorgeous film. I may have to own it. It was like a beautiful dream. I actually got a little uncomfortable with it before it was over. It was almost like I was experiencing a bit of culture shock or something, relentlessly new, alien stuff. Familiar too though, I recognized many elements from the fairy tales and ghost stories I devoured as a kid. I guess some of this stuff is pretty universal. Or perhaps the creater has had some exposure to Greek mythology. *shrug* Spirited Away really makes American feature animation to date look like child's play, (must see more!) but I still can't seem to warm up to the Japanese character animation style. I hope Spirited Away's success will give new drive the very gradual moves by American studios (sometimes backwards of late) to take feature animation seriously.