not fall out of bed, get ouchie
Claire fell out of the toddler bed with a resounding thump at 3am. Once I’d dried her tears, reminded her that she had plenty to live for (“I like movies,” she volunteered) and put her back to sleep next to J, that was it for my night’s sleep. I had a long bath and read the New Yorker on Scowcroft and Breyer and Calatrava (a wonderful issue, actually). It was the end of daylight saving, so my insomnia lasted an extra excruciating hour. Towards dawn I dozed fitfully. There were noises downstairs: Jeremy answered the door and it was the entire Supreme Court. He made the justices line up on the stairs and gave them all white t-shirts to wear, with the legend “What about Plame?”
That last part may have been a dream.
Awesomely beautiful late fall day. We caught the very end of Breakfast with Enzo, then met Salome and Milo at the park for a playdate. This was interrupted by a caricature of a Berkeley hippie chick, barefoot and somewhat filthy, asking us about homeschooling, telling us proudly that she ripped off welfare and didn’t vaccinate her children and believed the US Government had explosively demolished the Twin Towers and blown up the Pentagon. I’m actually not unsympathetic to aspects of each point of view, but she just went on and on, arguing from (questionable) authority, dismissing various contradictory facts, then lost all credibility when she said to Jeremy: “If you would just use your brain…”
Hippie chicks of the world! Take note! You diss my boy genius at your peril! I’ve been making fun of her ever since.
Next we went to Rockridge Kids for socks, and to Hillegass to see the Jaffe-Tsangs, but by that time Claire was asleep so I stayed in the car reading New Scientist on hypergraphia (a neurological condition I would kind of like to have). Bay Bridge, awesome sunset, radioactive apricot on alien’s-blood-green sky and lavender-and-purple Marin. Bread from Tartine and home to no parking and I swore and a car moved and we parked. Then Ian and Kat came by with meat pies and Claire wore a Hawaiian lei around her waist and Ian said I never blog the cute things she does any more, which is obviously a cruel lie. Then everyone went home or to bed or had another bath.
J (sticking his head around the bathroom door): So we had a conversation.
R (covered in bubbles): Oh yes?
J: It went like this: ‘Goodnight darling.’ ‘Goodnight darling, be careful.’ ‘Be careful? Not fall out of bed, get ouchie?’ ‘Yes, that’s exactly right.’ ‘Okay!’
R: Well, I’m glad we got that settled.
