I love this Globe and Mail interview with Michael Chabon about fatherhood (via Ruhlman).
In particular, this quote, which is an excerpt from Chabon's Manhood for Amateurs:
The daily work you put into rearing your children is a kind of intimacy, tedious and invisible as mothering itself. There is another kind of intimacy in the conversations you may have with your children as they grow older, in which you confess to failings, reveal anxieties, share your bouts of creative struggle, regret, frustration. There is intimacy in your quarrels, your negotiations and running jokes. But above all, there is intimacy in your contact with their bodies, with their shit and piss, sweat and vomit, with their stubbled kneecaps and dimpled knuckles, with the rips in their underpants as you fold them, with their hair against your lips as you kiss the tops of their heads, with the bones of their shoulders and with the horror of their breath in the morning as they pursue the ancient art of forgetting to brush. Lucky me that I should be permitted the luxury of choosing to find the intimacy inherent in this work that is thrust upon so many women. Lucky me.
That's just so good. I think Michael Chabon may win my prize for the author whose writing consistently makes me tear up the most.
Instead of taking days to write the perfect post about the Six Apart news (in case you don't know, Six Apart is now SAY Media), I wanted to simply jot down some of my thoughts while the news is still, well, news. I know a lot of folks have questions and I don't have all the answers right now. However, I think that just a couple points are worth mentioning.
Despite being "just" a "jot[ting] down of some of [her] thoughts", Mena's post about the end of the current chapter in Six Apart, and the beginning of SAY Media, is wonderful, and exactly captures my feelings, as well.
A year ago, Penelope was born, and--let's face it--she was a lump. A really cute lump, with a good head of hair (that soon fell out) and a sweet face, but a lump, comparatively.
Before going to bed last night, on her first birthday, we watched some videos of her as a baby: a couple of days old; a couple of weeks old; a couple of months old. Pen's fascinated by watching herself. Since she was only a couple months old, I've been adding photos to an iPhoto slideshow that I play for her when she gets fussy, so much so that she now associates the song I play along with it (Maxwell's version of Kate Bush's "This Woman's Work") with the slideshow, and upon hearing the first couple of notes, she rushes over to my computer to watch, smiling and shaking her head inexplicably, as if she can't believe how little she used to be.
The other day, Pen hid the keys, and I couldn't find them for forty-five minutes. Then I asked Pen (again) where the keys were, and she led me to a drawer in the kitchen--where we store the measuring cups, which she loves to play with--opened the drawer, and walked away. And, of course, the keys were in the drawer. It was as if she'd gotten bored of the game, and she wanted to move on to something else.
Happy first birthday, Penelope! A year ago, you were a lump; now, you're the most incredible person I've ever met.
I discovered today that our monthly water bill (from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission) includes a graph of our water usage over the last year. [1] It's pretty fascinating trying to correlate it to events; for example, we used a lot of water last November, the month after Penelope was born.
I think I'm going to experiment with bringing our water usage down to see how much of an effect I can have, now that I'll have this data on a monthly basis.
But here's what I'd like next: a comparison chart (anonymous, of course) to everyone in my neighborhood; my city; my state; and so on. That way, I can see how we compare to other people in our area, and it can become a competition. Give me stats, charts, and graphs showing us how we compare, and you'll see our water usage drop!
[1] Considering that they're pushing water conservation, I'll bet this isn't a coincidence.
On Sunday I was watching the Super Bowl, and I was making myself another margarita—you know, to celebrate the Big Game, &c.—& in order to do that I had to open a new bottle of tequila. So I did, and after a lot of tugging, I pulled out the giant cork-like thing from the bottle.
In the process of which, I spilled tequila all over the v-neck undershirt I was wearing.
That's all.