Another Anniversary

One year ago today, Evelyn and Sophia finally came home, after 10 weeks in the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit following their extremely premature birth.

Then:
Now:

Eight is Enough

I am greatly saddened to learn that Pluto's undeserved status as the ninth planet in our solar system is likely to be preserved by the International Astronomers Union. I fear that our scientists have allowed sentimentality to make this decision for them. When they spy through their telescopes at that far-flung icy chunk of rock with an overlapping orbit and a "moon" nearly as big as it is, they fail to see it for what it is: a jumped-up comet that got too big for its britches.

When Pluto was discovered in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh, astronomers (amateur and otherwise) were wild to find and label new astronomical objects. Comet-hunters scoured the night sky, but to find a planet would be a far greater achievement. Is it any wonder that the standards for planethood were set rather low? The Oort cloud wasn't even hypothesized until two years after Pluto's discovery, so it didn't occur to these sky-watchers that big chunks of ice in far-distant orbits might not be noteworthy. They didn't begin to guess that the expanse of space beyond Neptune is brimming with comets. Should Pluto's status as one of the nearest and largest of these comets really qualify it for planethood?

The IAU's draft resolution dealing with Pluto is also the organization's first attempt (shockingly enough, considering its 87-year history) at defining what is and what is not a planet. If the resolution passes, a planet will be defined as any round object larger than 800 kilometers in diameter that orbits the sun and has a mass roughly one-12,000th that of Earth. Pluto just squeaks by, and I suspect the requirements were written with that intent.

Members of the International Astronomers Union, I implore you! Remove the veil of sentimentality from your eyes! See Pluto for what it is: an icy dwarf in trans-Neptunian orbit. When it comes to planets, eight is enough.

(Thanks to Jo for inspiring this post. We'll just have to agree to disagree.)

Confessions of a Bad Mother

I am not one of those crunchy granola mothers who ban all television, who start the foreign language flash cards at six months, who buy all-organic food for their children. I'm no La Leche devotee, breastfeeding until your kids go to college. I think I've managed to teach the twins all of two signs in baby sign language.

Now, yes, I know that many of the things I've disparaged in the preceding paragraph can be good, in moderation. Breastfeeding provides excellent nutrition and is ideal, if your situation allows it. The American Academy of Pediatrics says children under the age of two gain no benefit from watching television, even educational programming.

However, I think it's of more value to my children that I not be obsessed with living the ideal life, creating the ideal learning environment, and then expecting the highest levels of achievement from them at all times. Kids need to relax and be kids. How can they do that if Mommy's uptight all the time about whether they're going to get into Harvard or Yale? So here are the things I refuse to feel guilty about.

Allowing my children to watch television. And sometimes in fact encouraging them to watch it. "Mommy has a lot of work to do, girls. Here's a nice animated feature for you to focus on for the next hour or so." (The girls are partial to Pixar's Monsters, Inc.)

Feeding my children fast food. Now, this happens very, very rarely. Maybe twice in their entire lives to date. (As long as you don't count Chipotle, which I don't consider to be fast food.) But now and then, when you're on the road and the kids need to eat right now, a meal from one of those evil purveyors of the oh-so-convenient drive-thru dinner isn't going to hurt the girls any.

Not saving sufficient funds to pay for the girls' entire college education. We're off to a bad start on this one. I hope to save up lots of money to send the girls to college. But for now I'm more concerned with feeding and clothing them. And I don't think it will hurt them one bit to have to pay off student loans. I think my parents had it right. They helped me as much as they could and sent me extra money for food and rent whenever I needed it, but the bulk of my college tuition was covered by government student loans (that I'm still paying off today), and on top of that I worked three part-time jobs. I made it through. They will, too.

(My big fear here is that the girls won't have anything like the kind of access I had to student loans when I was in college. I sincerely hope our government figures out its priorities before 2023 and makes student loans widely available. In case they don't, we have a lot of saving to do.)

Here's my parenting philosophy: I have two main ideas that I want the girls to learn from me. 1) Have respect for yourself. 2) Have respect for others. Everything else should take care of itself.

Summer Reading

My good friend Rug's Bug has a new blog where she talks about books, movies, and recipes. I think that's a great idea, and it got me to thinking about how I've been neglecting my reading since the twins took over my life.

I have a book log, a journal where I record every book I read, the day I finished it, and some general thoughts about the book. I started keeping the log three years ago -- the first entry is June 29, 2003, the day I finished Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

I highly recommend keeping a book log. I find that I tend to forget what I've read once I get three or four books down the road -- the plot, characters, even whether I liked the book or not, all begin to fade from my mind. It's nice to read back through the log and remember what I was reading a month ago (or a year ago).

I used to have a goal to enter at least one new book every month, but I've struggled with that over the last year. My last entry was May 3, 2006 -- I need to get some reading done! In order to inspire myself to read more, and to share some good reading suggestions with you, dear reader, I'm going to list for you the contents of my book log (minus comments). I've marked books I'd recommend with an asterisk.

*6-29-03: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
7-15-03: The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke
*7-26-03: Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
8-3-03: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
*9-22-03: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
10-5-03: The Fresco by Sheri S. Tepper
*11-30-03: Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson
12-3-03: July, July by Tim O'Brien
12-9-03: Idlewild by Nick Sagan
12-31-03: The Simulacra by Philip K. Dick
*1-3-04: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
*1-25-04: American Gods by Neil Gaiman
1-28-04: Singularity Sky by Charles Stross
2-10-04: New Spring by Robert Jordan
*3-20-04: Life at Blandings by P.G. Wodehouse
4-18-04: The Memory of Whiteness by Kim Stanley Robinson
*5-30-04: The Confusion by Neal Stephenson
*6-1-04: The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket
*7-15-04: Ilium by Dan Simmons
7-25-04: Guardian of the Horizon by Elizabeth Peters
8-2-04: Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination by Helen Fielding
*8-22-04: Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris
9-6-04: Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
*10-22-04: The System of the World by Neal Stephenson
*11-24-04: The Reptile Room by Lemony Snicket
*12-??-04: The Wide Window by Lemony Snicket
*12-26-04: The Miserable Mill by Lemony Snicket
*5-6-05: The Egyptian by Mika Waltari
*6-??-05: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott
7-17-05: Olympos by Dan Simmons
*7-21-05: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
*9-1-05: A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
10-30-05: Latro in the Mist by Gene Wolfe
11-21-05: Knife of Dreams by Robert Jordan
12-16-05: The Serpent on the Crown by Elizabeth Peters
*12-31-05: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
*1-12-06: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right by Al Franken
2-10-06: I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away by Bill Bryson
4-11-06: Naked Pictures of Famous People by Jon Stewart
*5-3-06: The World According to Mister Rogers by Fred Rogers

Now let's all of us get reading. (I'd appreciate any reading suggestions!)

To the Nines: Mission Accomplished

Thanks to everyone who weighed in on the anniversary outfit debate. Your comments were all very helpful and insightful. And the winner is:


Top #1 with Dress #3! I know many of you were pushing for super-slinky Dress #2, but I just didn't think I could (or should) pull it off. Be sure you take notice of Airan's snappy new suit. (I picked out the green shirt and tie.)

The evening was delightful. We left the baby girls in Uncle David's very capable hands and had a lovely and elegant dinner at Tru. I talked Airan into taking surreptitious pictures of our seven-course dining experience with his camera phone, so y'all can share in the visual feast, if not the food itself.


Okay, so we actually forgot to take pictures of both the provencal parfait and the amuse-bouche, but every good meal must be accompanied by bread, right? We Americans love to fill up on the stuff. So here's my half-eaten bread. (It was delicious. I consider myself something of an expert roll baker, but their simple french-bread-style roll was beyond my modest skills.)


Next course: bento boxes of summer vegetable terrines and salads. (I think Airan had some gross seafood thing for this course.) Delightful! Of course, you can put marcona almonds on just about anything and I'll say it's delightful. (Except gross seafood.)


Asparagus and artichoke salad. The yellow stuff was amazing.


For the soup course, carrot and ginger soup served cappuccino style. I was a little nervous when it came in a coffee cup -- you know I'm no fan of the java. However, the soup was coffee-free. Thank heavens.


Fennel, spring onion, and robiola gratin. Cheese and crusty bread topping. You can't go wrong.


Israeli cous cous with summer zucchini ribbons and asparagus puree. My favorite course of the evening. Unfortunately, I was getting rather full at this point, so I think I only ate about half of it. I should have asked for a doggy bag.


Me enjoying my Israeli cous cous.


My main course: chickpea panisse, tomato marmalade, and crispy parsley. Meh. I didn't love it. Airan's main course was much better:


Coffee-scented California squab, chanterelles, puffed wild rice and farro with chile negro jus. Yum, despite this coffee-scented business. The thing was covered with strawberries, which seems odd but which was in fact delicious.


As the night wore on, my wine pairings started to stack up on me. How's a girl supposed to keep up with a new wine for every course? I was in big trouble by this point.


Cheese plate. We commonly dine on nothing but cheese, so strange cheeses are nothing new to us, but this was a very nice assortment of fromage. The best part -- the Roquefort. I think I could eat nothing but Roquefort for the rest of my life.


To prepare us for the never-ending dessert courses, the apricot tea shooter. So good!

Airan is a complete gentleman, so he was kind enough to trade half of his dessert plate for half of my dessert plate. So here's what I ended up with:


A citrusy bread pudding and raspberry upside-down cake.

And Airan had this:


Two chocolates, one of them delightful, the other buried in the flavor of coffee.

And to help us celebrate the occasion, Israel (our excellent waiter) brought out this (like we needed even more dessert):




And the desserts just keep coming!


I don't want to sound like I'm complaining, because I'm definitely not. It's just that, by this point in the evening, we had no room whatsoever for enjoying Gale Gand's sweet delights. Luckily, we got to take this batch of delightful morsels home.


And this is me, after seven courses' worth of wine pairings, very nearly unable to walk myself back to the car.

And because I was pretty easily amused by the end of the night:

Here's a nice shot of the crazy sinks in the bathrooms.

And the personalized menu they sent us home with (get out your magnifying glasses):

Overall, the evening was a rousing success! Now, I kept telling myself I shouldn't compare Tru to Charlie Trotter's, the only comparable restaurant Airan and I have had the good fortune to enjoy, but it was hard not to compare the two. I have to say that Charlie's is still the favorite of my heart, but Tru was an absolute pleasure from beginning to end.

And thus ends our 9th-anniversary celebration. Whatever shall we do next year? I'm entertaining suggestions.

An Everyday Irritation that Bugs Me Every Day

Dear readers, I'm not one of those grouchy grammarians who insists on eradicating split infinitives, who preserves the distinction between "who" and "whom," and who can actually diagram a sentence correctly. For an editor, I have only the most casual understanding of the rules of grammar. However, I do have a few pet peeves, as all editors do, and here's the biggest one.

Please, please, please acquaint yourself with the difference between "every day" and "everyday." These are not interchangeable. Every time you use "everyday," pause and think to yourself, "Do I really mean 'every day'?"

"Everyday" is an adjective. It means ordinary, something you might encounter with great frequency.

"Every day" means, literally, every day.

So I go to the market every day, and when I go, I wear my everyday shoes, not my fancy going-out shoes.

(I know that most of my readers, all three of you, don't need this refresher. Those of you who do need it, please take it to heart. The next time I see a misused "everyday," I fear blood will be spilt.)

Next time, we'll tackle "it's" versus "its."

Think About It

I was re-reading one of my all-time favorite books, Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, and I came across a passage I wanted to share with you.

The scientific way of thinking is at once imaginative and disciplined. This is central to its success. Science invites us to let the facts in, even when they don't conform to our perceptions. It counsels us to carry alternative hypotheses in our heads and see which best fit the facts. It urges on us a delicate balance between no-holds-barred openness to new ideas, however heretical, and the most rigorous skeptical scrutiny of everything -- new ideas and established wisdom. This kind of thinking is also an essential tool for a democracy in an age of change.

This fantastic book is all about the importance of critical thinking. It applies to everything from the claims of politicians to tales of psychics and UFO abductions to the next chain email to hit your inbox. ("Forward this to ten of your best friends right now or you'll be unlucky in love and mold will grow in your ears!")

The Demon-Haunted World changed the way I look at the world. I can't recommend it strongly enough. Get it! Read it!

To the Nines

On a lighter note, Airan and I will attain our ninth anniversary next week. To celebrate, we have reservations at Tru, one of the swankier restaurants in town. My big dilemma: What on earth will I wear?

Airan's all set -- he has fancy new suits that are just begging for an occasion like this. But my wardrobe has suffered terribly since I became a stay-at-home mom. I've decided that I will endeavor to piece together an acceptable outfit using what I have, but most of my going-out clothes were a perfect fit about 10 pounds ago. What to do? I'm asking you, dear reader, to help me decide.

The options:

Bottom #1: The flowy black skirt.


Pros: It's a lovely, lightweight skirt with sexy slits up the side, and it's floor-length, so I don't have to worry about my ugly bird legs. Cons: It's a bit snug. Also, kind of boring. Not really that sexy, despite the slits.

Bottom #2: The knee-length flippy black skirt.


Pros: Cute, fun, flippy. Cons: Also snug, and it shows off the lower, uglier half of the aforementioned bird legs.

Bottom #3: The jersey-knit black pants, complete with elastic waist band.
So comfortable.

Top #1: The purple-blue see-through flowy top.It's hard to see the color in this pic -- it's kind of an iridescent purple-periwinkle.

Pros: Won't show off the roll of fat around my midsection. Cons: I have no fashion sense, but something inside me tells me this isn't really what the cool kids are wearing. And yet, I like it.

Top #2: The flowery button-up.It's a lovely, light material, perfect for summer. However, something about the flower print says "80-year-old woman" to me.

Dress #1: Red Velvet.So fun. Lovely black-red velvet. Shows off those legs, though. And I wore it with a black jacket to Charlie Trotter's on our sixth anniversary, so I feel like I should go with something different.

Dress #2: Clingy black strappy thang.Seriously sexy. Shows off the rack, which is the only good physical feature I have left. Lovely with the pretty blue wrap I picked up in Hawaii. However, as its title states, this dress is clingy. All the new curves I've packed on lately will be on display for the world to see, and all the pretty blue wraps in the world won't help me. Maybe if I starve myself between now and Wednesday...

Dress #3: Black linen strappy thang.A decent building-block dress. Needs to be coupled with something, like that blue wrap, or maybe the purple-blue top (unless we've decided it's too unfashionable). Kind of boring, but maybe we could spice it up a bit. And the good news: it doesn't cling, so I can hide away a few of those extra pounds.

I'm sad to report that those are my best options. This task is beginning to seem hopeless. I think I need to just go out and buy a new wardrobe. Anyone want to nominate me for "What Not to Wear" so I can get that $5,000 wardrobe budget?

And what on earth I'll be doing with my hair -- that's a whole 'nother post. (I'm considering shaving my head; I think bald would be a good look for me.)

In Memoriam

I'm not trying to be melodramatic when I say June 24, 2006, was the worst day of my life. It just was. Airan and I said it to each other: "Today is the worst day of our lives." And it was. It is terrifying and depressing to know that there will most likely be worse days ahead, other loved ones lost, unless I should have the good fortune to go first. I don't know how much more grief I can bear.

The other thing Airan and I stressed to each other: This is how I want to go. If I'm sick, if I'm suffering, if I can't make these decisions for myself, let me go. Give me that gift. Don't force me to linger when there's no hope for happiness or joy or comfort in life. I just hope that, whichever one of us is faced with such a decision, we'll have the strength to go through with it.

I'm still having a hard time talking about it. If you call me and ask me how I am, don't expect me to bring up the topic. If you bring it up, expect me to dodge and avoid and change the subject. It's still too raw. It hurts too much. I'm progressing very slowly through the stages of grief. I'm going to need a long time.

What's in a name?

I heard a story on the radio a few days ago about violence in Indian-controlled Kashmir and reactions from the Indian government and Kashmiri separatists. I don't know much about Kashmir, its relations with Pakistan and India, or its struggles for independence.

So here's what I thought about instead: What must it be like to be from a place with a name instead of a label? I am from the United States. I'm a U.S. citizen. We call ourselves Americans, but we don't really have an exclusive claim on that label -- anyone from North or South America could call themselves American. I've seen us U.S. citizens referred to as USians, with seems ugly and totally unpoetic. But what else do we have?

Wouldn't it be lovely to be from a place with a name like Kashmir? To be called a Kashmiri? Of course, I'm not saying I want to live in a place with political unrest and separatist violence. I just like the way it sounds.