So Maddie has said her first word. My sister wasn't exactly thrilled about her vocab selection. It just sounds a little strange when you tell people that your kid's first word is the Chinese equivalent of 'boobie' or nipple. I'm sure she would have preferred if it were mama or something of the like. It was probably inevitable really. Kids repeat the words they hear and Maddie's had a lot of exposure to my mom and grandma and they both refer to her bottle as 'boobie'.

I'm actually sort of curious how people even determine what a kid's first word is nowadays. Are you supposed to wait for a real multi-syllabic word or do things like ma-ma or da-da (or whatever basic sound) really count? I'm sure if it's the latter then there are probably very few different first words(within a language anyway).

In addition to her verbal acrobatics, she's also started to almost walk. She can't quite stand on her own without support but it can't be long now. One of her favorite toys right now is a little toy shopping cart and she happily pushes it around the house. She can't quite manage turns yet and so she marches along in a straight line until she bangs into some immovable object. Then it's the job of whoever is nearby to turn her around and off she waddles again.

She's become a really fun and entertaining kid now that she's no longer screaming her head off at the smallest provocation. I almost never hear her really crying nowadays. She fakes it occasionally when she's unhappy about something but that's it.

I decided a while back to let a couple of my toenails grow without ever cutting them. I've been curious how long they'll actually grow if simply left alone. I blame this partly on some Ripley's tv show I saw where they had this freakish woman with huge nails that she had to oil daily so they wouldn't snap and break off. So far, mine are still pretty puny by those standards, but semi-freakish by normal toenail standards. I think it's mostly the fact that all the others nearby are trimmed so they look big by comparison. My family thinks I'm insane but it seems like a nice, low impact hobby to me. I mean, it's not like I've named the toenails or anything. That might be a bit too far. Hmmmm. Maybe I'll have a contest to name them one of these days. If they survive.

I was able to download the pictures from the digital camera by hooking it up to another desktop, snagging the pictures, copying them over to a portable harddrive, and then transferring the files back over to the laptop. I then spent a good chunk of time resizing all of them and then uploading the lot up to the scrapbook. It wasn't much fun, but at least it's all done and I don't have to keep worrying about it. That means I'll be able to start and finish the Gencon recap over the next few days. I know some people have been anxious for me to get to the point already.

Oh, and I just found out yesterday that Connie seems to have started a miniblog where she displays pictures of Maddie. I mentioned a while back that she had gotten a bunch of these little baby shirts, each with a different numbered month on them. I guess the point is to remind you to take pictures at each time point so you have a retrospective one day. Well, Connie's certainly done so and popped up a few representative images. If you want to check it out, just pop on over to Maddie's Pad.

It's funny, but she still looks like a boy in many of her pictures. Not to mention that she seems to drastically change in appearance from picture to picture sometimes. If I didn't know better, I certainly wouldn't have thought it was the same kid all the way through. Connie and Jeff are up vacationing in Maine this week and there's a beach shot. I'm told that Maddie greatly dislikes sand and freaks out when she's forced to touch it. I feel more or less the same way about sand. Maybe it's something genetic.

I received an IM from Brian a few nights ago to let me know that the burglar that's been hitting this area was recently arrested. My first response (once I figured out what he was talking about) was surprise. You have to be a pretty incompetent burglar to be caught nowadays. I dunno the details of the arrest so I'm not sure if he were caught in the act or not. He seemed like a pretty careful guy too, considering how few risks he took while breaking in here. Turns out, ours was only one of 7 houses he broke into all in this neighborhood.

At some point, someone's going to have to give the police a ring and see if there's anything left of what he swiped. Not that there's going to be much of value overall. It's not like we really want those packs of cigarettes back and the cell phone he took was ancient. About the only thing worth anything was the cash, and I figure he spent that almost immediately on hookers and blow.

It's sort of sad when a trip out to Staples and the post office feels like a grand quest where unspeakable horrors will need to be faced and is approached with the same reluctance someone would show for being the guest of honor at a Bris. Well, okay, perhaps it's not quite that bad, but still not something that's positive.

I've since fortified myself with extra drugs, which I'm still waiting around to kick in, and armed with all sorts of rigamarole like checks to be cashed and mail to be sent. To pass the time, I'm listening to a segment from This American Life and the episode seems to be sort of on point. It's about a guy who drops everything to go across the country to help his alcoholic mother and his step brother. The mother's an alcoholic who nearly killed herself by sitting on the couch for a solid month drinking and the step-brother is a hair's breadth from spending an extended period in jail. To put it plainly, both of them have screwed up their lives in a major fashion and it's up to the narrator to come in and try to put things aright. It's certainly not the narrator with whom I'm relating to right now.

It's not hard to look at my life right now and see that if it weren't for the family structure I have, I'd probably be inching slowly toward self-destruction if not there already and frolicking around like it were disneyland. I sometimes think about what my life would be like if I were living back in the middle ages and the word that sums it up is short. I probably would have been offed by some secondary infection long before now, and if that didn't get me, there's no way that I could survive on my own. I'm simply too decrepit to function in a society that would require each individual to farm a plot of land. In effect, my entire life now is subsidized by modern society, which no longer tosses away the infirm and useless. I can't say that's exactly a positive thing, even considering the fact that I'm the one who benefits.

I sometimes wonder how other people in similar situations deal with it. Do they think society owes them and what it provides is only just and fair? Do they think society doesn't provide enough? Or are they more like me who try to muddle through but can't help being dragged down by a more than lingering sense of guilt and shame. Whatever happened to survival of the fittest?

You'd think I'd know by now to just pop my pills the minute I open my eyes. Whenever I wait too long or worse, eat something first, I end up suffering the pain of delayed onset and it's not pleasant. On the positive side, I've finished catching up on lost sleep at last. I've spent more time unconscious than conscious since getting back from Dexcon, often waking only for long enough to pop more pills and then wait for them to kick in.

Sometime Saturday night, we had a burglary here at the house. A sneak thief either crawled in through a window in the back or jimmied a back door. A cell phone and a wallet were taken, with the latter having a few hundred dollars in it. I was barely coherent when this information was relayed to me due to lack of sleep and ended up missing all the angst and rigamarole that went along with it. The thief also stole a digital camera but it was found in a neighbor's yard where he or she must've dropped it accidentally. Overall, I have to say I'm very surprised. We've never had break-ins in this neighborhood, at least none that I've ever heard of. That and I would have thought that the dogs would have raised a fuss. The general theory is that the burglar only came into the family room and no further. He swiped some items from that room and then left. The dogs usually sleep in the living room at night and there were other monetary prizes to be had that were left untouched in adjacent rooms. It seems odd to break into someone's house just to steal a few hundred dollars. Talk about a poor reward to risk ratio. If I were going to resort to thievery, I'd want to make sure I got a lot of bang for the buck.

The theft has caused all sorts of expected angst. There's talk of installing some motion detector floodlights in the back of the house as well as other things. I personally think it's overkill, but whatever makes them happy. It's too bad that it's illegal to rig lethal boobytraps in your own home. We hardly ever use the door the thief came in by. It would be sorta spiffy to have a shotgun triggered to fire the minute someone opened the door. The government won't let its citizens have any fun.

In other news, I have a backlog of things I need to take care of. Mostly rebates that need to go out and ebay auctions to mail. Since I've been sleeping away most of the daylight hours and pain management is always a problem, I've been putting it off. I also need to call the HMO and see if they have a pain specialist on their roster in the area. I'msure I won't get an appointment in time for it to affect gencon, but I have to get it sorted out at some point. I'm just way too gimpy to function at the moment. I did okay at Dexcon, but everyday errands are still highly unpleasant.

During the last couple of hours of Dexcon, the lack of sleep caught up with me. I had both headache and nausea raging and I decided to flop down near one of the walls in between piles of luggage and games for a liedown. I fell asleep almost immediately and awoke a couple of hours later feeling pretty retched. The room had cleared out in large part and most of the stuff that had been piled around me had since vanished. I can only imagine that the owners got to experience the added fun of trying to maneuver their belongings around a person sprawled on the floor.

I managed to arthriticly make it to my feet and then slowly lurched my way out of the room and to my car. I didn't even bother to say goodbye to the people remaining who were playing one last game before heading out. I shufflestepped my way to the car and managed quite an impressive feat when I drove it home without wrecking myself. Since then and now, I've spent a lot of time unconscious and the time I've spent awake has been pretty horrid. I'm not sure why exactly but in addition to the normal pain that usually wakes me, I ache everywhere. It's like I wake up to a cacophony of competing somatic complaints. Everything throbs or aches or feels like I'm being shived. Most of the problems fade after a while, leaving me with the old familiar agonies. Despite being absolutely exhausted still, I never manage to sleep more than a few hours at a shot before I have to wake, shuffle to the bathroom, shuffle back, pop more pain meds, wait for them to kick in, and then go back to bed. It's a really tedious and unpleasant sort of experience. Since the sleep isn't all that restful (or doesn't seem to be), I think I still have at least a 6-7 hour defecit to make up.

I'll try to pop back on at some point to recap recent events. Of note, the house suffered a burglary in the past day or two. The losses weren't huge, and what's surprising is it even happened in the first place. I guess our dogs are just getting way too old to sound the alarm at night.

Well, more or less on the spur of the moment, almost the entire family has decided to take my grandmother down to Washington DC for a little mini vacation. I'm not sure exactly what they're going to be doing down there but the prospect of the trip seems to have made grandma happy, which is the entire point after all. It also means that I'll have to watch over the dogs for the weekend. It's not usually a horrible chore exactly, but they do tend to be poop machines and you can't really depend on them to wait till you let them out no matter how often you do it. At the moment, I can hear the Bassett hound downstairs raising a fucking ruckus. He's been barking almost non-stop for half a hour now. I have no clue what his malfunction is other than he doesn't like Cutie, the peekingnese. Cutie freaks him out, mostly because he tried to bite him a few times and is always sleeping on his bed. That said, you'd think he'd just shut up and avoid him already. The yard is huge and there are plenty of places where they can frolic out of sight of one another.

The Bills are having a get together at their place today and I had planned to go before the whole Washington trip popped up. Now I'm not sure if maybe I should just stay home and make sure the dogs don't destroy the place. I just can't believe that Max is still barking. You'd think he'd get a sore throat and stop after a while. Feh.

I'm really beginning to think that I've been given a handful of placebos as far as pain medications and really, what it comes down to, is there are just good periods and bad periods. For the past couple of hours, I've been dealing with some pain issues that meds just don't seem to be able to lock down, and it's been a common occurrence since getting back from Origins. The amount of medication I take doesn't seem to affect things and it seems like there's nothing to be done but to suffer and wait it out. I even tried the whole dissolve a pill under the tongue thing yesterday but there didn't seem to be any real effect. At least the pain isn't completely unbearable, but it's at the level where it's consistently grinding and it doesn't take long before it just starts to wear me down.

I should also mention that we celebrated my grandmother's 85th birthday today. Nothing all that special, just a gathering at my aunt and uncle's place in Middletown. Almost everyone made it there at least for a little while. Connie and Jeff brought Madelaine along and I got to see plenty of examples of her new trick. In the past week or so she's discovered that she has a tongue and ever since has been sticking it out or poking it with her fingers. This new entertainment has quite impressively increased the amount of slobber and drool she generates. I made an offhanded comment that the reason they had gotten Max the drooling Bassett hound was because they knew it would make for good preparation when this day came. She also managed to spit up a buncha spit onto/into my uncle's mouth when he went to give her a kiss. I'll bet he won't be making that mistake again anytime soon.

My uncle has been a vegetarian for at least a decade now and his wife only eats seafood, so it was a pretty lackluster affair as far as food goes. You can grill all the various vegetables you want and then slap it between a hamburger bun but that doesn't make it a hamburger. Just as well I wasn't all that hungry and so I spent my gastronomical efforts on eating a couple Klondike bars. Once more, ice cream saves the day.

So, Madeline's 6 month birthday just passed a few days ago. Even though my mom and grandmother have been watching her almost every single weekday just 10 minutes away, I haven't actually see the kid since Mother's Day. With all the issues I've been having, leaving the house is just about the last thing I want to do. Anyway, in celebration, Connie put together a picture/video retrospective online. At some point she must've bought a set of baby shirts that say '1 month', '2 months' etc, on it and has been taking pictures to memorialize each milestone. I was just looking at the lot of them and thought I'd share my favorite of the most recent set.



I just love her expression. It's just asking for a caption of 'Eh? WTF?'.

( Okay, just a couple more )

Welp, it looks like the family business is finally no more. I hadn't mentioned it on here because there was always a chance it was going to fall through but the restaurant has been successfully sold. There were all sorts of twists and turns involving sketchy lawyers, outrageous demands by the landlord and a lack of liquidity, but it all sorted itself out in the end. A large chunk of the money has changed hands and the rest will come along in due time.

Has anyone else ever seen a bag with $80,000 in it? It's a sort of unnerving feeling. You can't help but get the feeling that you should be going out and involving yourself in a drug deal.

Anyway, my mom and uncle are happy with the conclusion. Neither was completely happy with running the business anymore and it wasn't really making money anyway. At best, it was just scraping along and it doesn't seem like there was going to be a huge economic turnaround anytime soon. It's just lucky that someone was willing to come and take it off our hands. Of course, that does mean that there won't be any more free food around. That's also a scary sort of thought. My family has owned a restaurant since I was 10 years old. Anytime I was home, it could be guaranteed there'd be leftovers from the restaurant sitting in the fridge and more each night. It's gotten so that I can't even look at Chicken and Broccoli without turning a bit green. For decades, having the restaurant has hugely subsidized the family food bill and all of that is going to end. It's not really a horrible thing, just different. End of an era, I guess.

So yesterday was sort of Mother's day part II. Since my mom had to watch the restaurant, it was my uncle's turn to take out my grandmother. I hadn't really been thinking much about it since forward planning is not really a part of my life anymore. I really do have this tendency to live moment to moment. That's sort of what happens whenever you have all this uncertainty hanging over your head with the whole medical issues. Anyway, Shelley asked if I wanted to come along with the whole lot of them around 15-20 minutes before they were supposed to leave and I had just rolled out of bed. It usually takes at least a hour before I can hope that my pills kick in and so the first part of the morning was not exactly a pleasant experience.

In the end, I got sort of lucky with the choice of restaurant. Everyone had decided they wanted to go get dim sum at at a place called Wonder Seafood. It's probably the best chinese restaurant hands down in the area. On the off chance you're reading this Lori, I still want to take you there at some point. Just give me a ring one of these days and enough warning ahead of time and we can plan a outing. Anyway, the place has started to really develop a reputation and when I got there, there were people spilling out the doors waiting for a table. There must've been at the minimum 30 people milling around outside waiting to get in and another 20-25 waiting inside. I can't remember the last time I've seen crowd that size waiting for a table anywhere. Because of the vastness of the crowd, I was able to sit in the car and give my meds more time to start working. I didn't exactly time it but it was at least another 30 minutes before we got a table and everyone else had already been waiting for quite some time since I got there late.

The meal itself was spiffy as always. I <3 dim sum. It's impossible not to. It really does live up to its name. (For those of you unaware, dim sum generally translates as a touch/token of the heart) After the meal ended, everyone was planning to head back to my grandmother's for dessert but I noticed that my pills were missing. I'm still not sure exactly what happened to them, though I might have ended up leaving them at the Panera on saturday in my rush to get home. Without pills, there was no way I could stick around. I had been planning to run some other errands but those plans were stymied as well.

I got back from the gameday at the Panera a couple hours ago a complete mess. I'll spare you any descriptions but suffice to say that you'd probably be horrified if I didn't. It shouldn't have been completely unexpected. Even with my drugs, there's just a limited amount of time I can be out and about like a normal person. Going to game days in general is pushing it when I spent 6-7 hours there. Today was simply worse because my day started earlier. Since my mom is going to be working at the restaurant tomorrow, my sisters and I went with her and my grandmother out to eat for mother's day. We went to the Bennigan's out near Middlesex mall and it was pretty spiffy overall. Business can't be very good at these sort of places lately given the state of the economy and it shows. There were some pretty incredible deals including a 7-day a week lunch special consisting of an entree and drink for only $6 or you could get an appetizer, entree, and dessert for $11.99. Even with those promotions going, the place was like a ghost town with only a few tables occupied while we were there. Food prices up, patronage down. It can't be a happy time.

Connie brought Madeline along with her and it's the first time I've seen her in around a month. She looks absolutely huge to me though I'm sure a lot of that is perception rather than reality. Connie did say that she's in the 95th percentile for head size so she's inherited our family's giant melon head. She's also a lot more behaved in general. What I remember most about my previous encounters was that it was almost impossible to see her both awake and not screaming. There was usually only a 10-15 minute window after she woke up or was fed or was changed before she would start to cry and had to sleep, eat, or be changed again. She's actually starting to develop a personality and would break into a huge smile whenever she looked at my mom or grandmother. Her brows would furrow in a puzzled/slightly disturbed expression whenever she glanced my way, though that's better than her reaction to my father which is to immediately break into tears. I'm sure a lot of it is just familiarity.

Madeline was well behaved enough that there weren't any real disturbances with the meal. For the most part, my sisters just passed her back and forth as the other would eat. The meal itself was very good for the price. I ended up having a cheese burger with fried mushrooms as an appetizer. When it's piping hot and done right, I just <3 batter-dipped fried vegetables. I did end up scalding my mouth at one point though.

After the meal, it was still around 45 minutes before the gameday would start and I made the mistake of just going there early and waiting in the car. What I should have done is just gone home and 'reset the clock' on my issues and arrived late. Instead I sat around listening to NPR until everyone else arrived. I spent most of the game day playing Through the Ages again. No doubt that was part of the problem. The game must've run at least 5-6 hours where I just sat there without moving. By the time I was finally forced to get up to make my bladder gladder, everything had just snowballed into a real cockup. Inflammation issues are like that. You can take anti-inflammatories or other drugs but time works against you. All you can do is slow the issues, but there's always a piper to pay at some point. I managed to limp my way back to finish the game because I didn't want to just abandon it so close to the end. As soon as it was over I made my way to the car and came home.

Situations like this always make me worried when it comes to cons and other sorts of situations where I'm stuck out for extended periods. It's no wonder why things like that have become less appealing over the years as things have gotten worse.

It's a funny thing that people are even willing to have kids nowadays. I mean, for those who actually plan and then make a decision to have kids. This doesn't include morons who steam up the windows of a car parked behind the local 7-11 and get an unexpected surprise 9 months later. It's hard not to think of all the ways that child rearing could go wrong. And even worse, there are all of those factors that are completely out of your control.

The whole thing reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend in Chicago years ago. We had stumbled over the topic of kids somehow and she made a comment that the one thing she couldn't tolerate in any potential kids she had is if they were stupid. I remember thinking that was sort of odd at first since you don't usually hear that as one of the hopes listed for potential offspring. Usually you see people mumble platitudes about how they just hope the kid is born healthy and happy and all that crap. Think about it for a moment though and it does make sense. What would you really do if your kid was born a retard? (read: average)

We often, well, okay correction there, I often don't think about what average really means in this country. It's a pretty scary place to be. The average score on the SATs in this country is a little over 500 for verbal a tidge more for math. That's only _AFTER_ they recalibrated the scores around a decade ago to add around a hundred points to everyone's score. I scored, what I thought was a relatively modest 1330 at the time, and I didn't know anyone who got lower than 1000. That means that I didn't even know any people of average intelligence as measured by the test and I knew a lot of stupid people.

I asked Connie recently what she would do if Madelaine turned out to be stupid. Her response was flat out that she wouldn't be. She then mentioned all the study groups and programs and assorted gobbilygook that she would enroll her in if she weren't doing well. As if it would really be possible to train the stupid out of someone. Oh well. At least Madelaine will have genetics on her side. Still doesn't mean she won't possibly buck the trend.

I took the flip out and used it to document my day. Nothing all that exciting compared to what an average person does. I mostly just wanted to see how well it would handle and overall, I'm pretty impressed. I'm having some issues with the included software which means that all I was able to do was splice the various videos together. No bells and whistles this time around.



Since getting home, things have taken a distinct downturn. I'm having some pain issues I just can't seem to get rid of and out of the blue, my plumbing seems to have gone all amok. Odd really considering I didn't eat anything today other then....oh...oh! That would explain it. Feh. No wonder I'm having all these food poisoning symptoms. I ate a couple hotdogs from 7-11 around noon. It's a miracle I'm not dead. It probably took half the day for all the bacteria in there to grow and mutate. Feh. Note to self: avoid 7-11 for food.

True Dungeon treasure tokens arrived today and I can't help but feel incredibly ambivalent about it. When I lift the package, it weighs a ton and I can't help but boggle at the fact that I payed a thousand dollars for it. Sometimes I think I must be clinically insane. I don't even want to open them up right now, though I am sort of curious if there's a Golden Ticket in there somewhere. That's about the only way I'd feel good about the purchase right now. The fact is that I simply have too many of these darn tokens. I really need to weed the numbers down to something more manageable. If I tried to drag the whole thing to Gencon with me this summer, I'd probably have to split them into two cases because they'd go over the weight limit. I'm never going to do anything with the large majority of them and at least when I was collecting magic cards, they were light.

Other than the tokens, I had the dubious pleasure of buying breast milk bags for the first time ever. I was going to Target to see if there was anything interesting in the video game section since I had both a gift card from Christmas and a $5 off $25 coupon. I checked with Connie and Shelley to see if they needed anything and it turns out that breast milk bags were on the shopping list. I can't help but look at the bags and think of them like those CapriSun juice containers. I don't imagine a lot of people jab a straw into a bag of breast milk and just start sucking away though. In the end, the video game selection was beyond pathetic and I wouldn't have bought anything there at half the price.

Lastly, (Though it's firstly in chronology) I went out the a Korean BBQ restaurant for lunch with my Mom, Grandmother, and Shelley. It ended up being a lot more tasty than I expected. It was a pretty pricey meal but fun was had by all and I gorged myself until I was ready to tip over. It's one of those places where the meal is about the experience as much as the food itself. Sort of like fondue restaurants or Beni Hana's. After we were finished, Shelley headed down to Atlantic City to meet friends and I began the breastmilk bag adventure and after that it was gameday at the Panera.

Lotsa fun overall, though I had some issues at one point with pain management. We spent a good chunk of time chatting about politics which I always find interesting. I'm almost always willing to join in on political debates no matter what. There was a lot of speculation about whether or not Hillary Clinton really is the devil and what will happen with the primaries and then the general election in the fall. I'm always a little surprised with how much some people on the Left loathe her. It's sort of sad really. I wonder if all that vitriol hurts her feelings sometimes. Well, if she had feelings.

I've discovered an unexpected benefit of watching old tv series. It's sort of like a time machine of sorts. It might not make much of a difference for some of the central characters (unless you go way back) because you get to see them age a little from season to season, but it's a completely different story with guest stars. On a highlander episode I watched earlier today, Traci Lords was guest starring as a psychic. It was pretty amazing to see and still see youth and desirability instead of an aged horror with a vag a 5-man navy seal team could go spelunking in. Well, maybe I'm exaggerating there a little since she's only 40-something, but still. With youth, you can often embrace an illusion and overlook the fact that she's was like a one-woman drive through for years.

That aside, today was kinda interesting, though you have to realize that my bar for that sort of thing is set so low that coma patients think I'm boring. I actually trekked out and used an ATM machine for the first time in years. In fact, I don't think I've ever used this particular ATM card before and I've had it for over a decade now. I had forgotten how spiffy the machines are as they suck in your card and ask you what you want. Then there's that amazing whirrling noise right before you money pops out all in a neat stack. There's something almost euphoric about it. It's like a slot machine that always pays out. All it needs are some extra flashing lights and a set of tumblers.

Ya, I know, pathetic.

What can I say? Such is the banal nonsense of my life nowadays.

After my transcendental experience at the ATM, I picked up some subs and dropped a couple off at my grandmother's place. Connie and Jeff have finally moved in, and will be there for at least a few weeks until the renters have vacated their condo. I spent some time yakking with my grandmother and then some more time talking nonsense to Madelaine. She's getting huge. At her last checkup, the doctor said she was in the 95th percentile for length but only around 50th for weight. By my estimation, she's managed to close the gap significantly.

Oh well, that's about it. I dunno what might be causing it specifically but I just feel sorta lonely lately.

So yesterday was moving day for Connie and Jeff. They're finally pulling out of Killadelphia and heading back to civilization. While the movers came and to pack and box everything up, Connie left Madelaine up here and my mom and other sister ended up looking after her. Ever just know deep in your heart that a kid is going to be trouble once she grows up? It's not like I've had interactions with many infants in my life, but Madelaine is incredibly duplicitous. She can stop and flip personalities on a dime. One minute she's shrieking so hard you think there's a good chance she'll end up choking to death on her own tongue and the next, it just stops. Immediately. There's no transition at all. I've taken this to mean she's just faking the whole thing and jerking everyone around. Connie's long noticed the same thing and come to the conclusion you can't believe she's really in distress unless you actually see tears. Everything short of that is just a scam. If you need to use a lie detector at 2 months to figure her out, I don't even want to see the teenage years.

The baby is also having lots of sleep issues. She often just refuses to sleep and has to be coaxed to do so (which often involves crying and screaming) yet will happily just sit around if you just leave her alone. Connie's been reading a buncha books about babies and sleep which all seem to point at the paradoxical idea that the better the baby sleeps during the day, the better they'll sleep at night. She carries around a notepad with her everywhere she goes nowadays and will document every minute of the sleep/wake schedule with feedings and changings down to the milisecond. Even the Nazi's were never this strict about having the trains run on time.

Oh well. Whatever keeps her sane, I guess. She's been pretty sleep deprived from what I can see and the whole baby rearing thing has not been a pleasant experience though it's supposedly getting better. I can only assume that the oxytocin or something is still pumping and keep her docile and imprinted on the thing. It's just as well that women have the kids and do the majority of the child rearing. If it were up to me, I'd be looking into the resale value already.

You know, I find it sort of interesting that my sisters and I ended up as we did. I dunno how it goes in many other families but our household was pretty politically neutral growing up. Maybe it's just something to do with Chinese immigrants in general, but most don't seem to pay all that much attention to the politics of their adopted country. Even nowadays, while my parents might ponder who they should vote for around election time, it's not like they're really invested in the choice. Flip on the satelite to Taiwanese or Chinese election reporting though and they're glued to the screen like it's a marathon showing of American Idol.

I'm sure part of this is just do to the language gap. Even if you're fluent in a foreign language, it's one thing to be able to converse and another to go out of you way to try to consume their media. Just because I took spanish classes didn't mean I was watching telemundo to find out the political machinations of Spain or Mexico. At most, I might simply watch some of their gameshows for the bouncing boobies and chaos. I know it's not exactly a good analogy. After all, it's not like I'm living in a Spanish-speaking country. Still, there's always been this barrier to them really following the news or choosing to do recreational reading in English.

So my sisters and I basically grew up in an apolitical family (as far as the politics involved related to the US anyway). Politics were never discussed, or at least never instigated by our parents. We almost never have political discussions amongst ourselves. It was only relatively recently that I found out for sure that my sisters are actually Republicans too. Hell, I didn't even know what they were registered as. Connie was visiting yesterday with Madelaine and I had been watching one of the cable news networks. I made an offhanded comment about how it's going to be interesting to see how the democratic race turns out with the big primaries in OH, TX, and PA, still to come. She immediately added that hopefully Hillary would win all three to hopefully inject chaos and a brokered convention. That immediately brought on a bonding moment of sorts. Not exactly something Hallmark is likely to make a greeting card for, but we're not exactly a touchy-feely or sentimental bunch of people.

I just find it interesting that despite never discussing politics or being 'indoctinated' into a political worldview, we all ended up at more or less the same place. I find that pretty amazing really. I mean, we grew up in New Jersey, and in some of the bluest parts of the state to boot yet we all bucked the trend. Not to mention that I think chinky's in general tend to skew democratic. So, is it genetics? Environemnt? Or do we just all have uncommonly good sense? :).