avablog

1 picture = 1K words:

I’m a big fan of grapes. I love grapes. All of them. I even like grapes with seeds. But my mother turned us on to these Asian pears recently, and they are fantastic. Even Ava loves them.

For the uninitiated, the experience of eating an Asian pear is like biting into the crispest, juiciest apple and the most flavorful pear you’ve ever tasted…at the same time! Here’s a pic I took of the ones we’re eating up now:

This is what my darling Ava told me yesterday when I realized she’d been quiet in the bathroom for too long. She had said she needed to go in the bathroom and “have some privacy.”

Very well, dear. No problem. Except, of course, when I come in a few minutes later to find that you’ve eaten half a tube of children’s toothpaste from your dental visit this morning. The tube that says, “call your physician or poison control” if your child swallows more than he or she normally would from brushing. Then there is a problem, dear little one.
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Today there is a memorial service for my dear friend Melinda in Chicago. I won’t be able to attend, but I’ve spent the last few weeks thinking about her and reminiscing about our college days.

She’s been dead for a year now; the anniversary of her death was last week. It’s hard to believe that’s possible. I can still trick myself into believing that she’s just living her life in Chicago, spending time with her sweet husband, Steve, and their cats–and going to work each day as an oncologist, putting her brilliant brain to good use. I don’t want to remember the reality of it all: the diagnosis, the brutal months of treatment, the hope, the despair, the swelling, the agony, the sick fucking way that cancer robbed her of everything. Every last thing.
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Men have biological clock too, claim researchers

Scientists said men who wait until their 40s before starting a family face a greater chance of their partner having a miscarriage, because of the poorer quality of their sperm.

“Drops in fertility from the age of 35 have been traditionally thought of as a fact-of-life for women but our study shows the same is true for men,” said Dr Mark Bowman, the director of a Sydney IVF clinic which carried out tests on 3,324 men over four years.

File this under TMI (done).

I’ve been ambivalent from the start about undergoing fertility interventions in an effort to conceive a second child. Maybe it makes me some kind of traditionalist to feel like conception should just happen for two people, and if it doesn’t, it’s not supposed to. I suppose I’d feel different if we didn’t already have Ava. But as it stands, I feel a little selfish. And like a cheater.
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“Grandma” and Poom Poom were in town this weekend for fun. Ava’s gone to calling Leah’s mom grandma now instead of G.G. Just out of the blue. This has come on about the same time she’s started pointing with her middle finger, so take it with a grain of salt.

G.G. and Poom Poom are coming to town this weekend for pumpkin patch madness. I have to say, Halloween is something I don’t look forward to these days nearly as much as I used to. I suppose that’s what growing up will do to you.
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But really, if this doesn’t get your blood boiling, I don’t know what will. You can even divorce the whole notion of politics from this video, and it’s still astounding. My favorite comment on it comes from Digg:

I wish no ill on people like her- but I do think it is time to turn our backs to them, stop pardoning their casual racist remarks and start challenging them. We all have someone like this in our life and we excuse them because they “come from a different time” or we think we can “woo them with kindness” but they really just need to be ostracized and made to know that the world can’t wait for them to wake up anymore. As long as you stand there and don’t correct their misinformation about Obama and let them say such backwards things that make all of us (Americans- Palin “Real Americans” AND the rest of us!) look bad- you give them quarter. You allow them to think you might be like them. You might even let them think they have the guts to say what you are afraid to- and what you ARE afraid to say is what MUST be said.

I’ll stop posting them when they stop happening. Deal?

Playing the Presidential Election Dozens (aka yo mama political fights on Twitter)

# Yo mama so fat, she authorized a $700 billion bailout of Dairy Queen.

# yo mama so fat, she thinks the G8 is a Value Meal.

# Yo mama so fat, her other biography is called “The Audacity of Hardee’s.

# Yo mama so fat, the only Supreme Court verdict she wants to overturn is HomeTown Buffet v. Yo Mama.

# Yo mama so fat, she thinks sub-prime is a steak cut.

# Yo mama so fat, McCain refers to her as “Those Ones.”

# Your mama so fat, when they asked which menus she reads, she said “You know, all of ’em.”

# Yo mama’s so ugly, Obama said “You can put lipstick on a pig and it would look a lot like yo mama on dollar margarita night.”

# you moms so fat ACORN registered her to vote *three* times.

# Yo moms so fat Russia can see her from *their* house.

# Yo mama such a ho, the tab for the federal bailout plan is “700 billion dollars, plus fifty cents to have sex with yo mama.”

# your mama so stupid she tried to arrange the genres on her iPod to put Country First.

# yo mama so fat McCain gives patronizing air quotes when he talks about the “health of yo mama”

We’ve got a maple in the yard that’s on the verge of dropping its last leaves. You know what that means, don’t you?

I really don’t want to turn this into a political blog (again); no one needs another political blog. But I read something this morning that angered me more than usual. It’s here. Excerpt:

WALLACE: But Senator back, if I may, back in 2000 when you were the target of robo calls, you called these hate calls and you said–

MCCAIN: They were.

WALLACE: And you said the following: “I promise you I have never and will never have anything to do with that kind of political tactic.” Now you’ve hired the same guy who did the robocalls against you to, reportedly, to do the robocalls against Obama and the Republican Senator Susan Collins, the co-chair of your campaign in Maine, has asked you to stop the robocalls. Will you do that?

MCCAIN: Of course not. These are legitimate and truthful and they are far different than the phone calls that were made about my family and about certain aspects that — things that this is — this is dramatically different and either you haven’t — didn’t see those things in 2000.

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We traveled to IL this weekend to see my friend A.J. It was a nice trip, if a little on the cool side. The Brookfield Zoo was having its annual Boo in the Zoo celebration on Saturday, and the place was full of kids (and some adults) in costume. I wonder what the animals thought. The tiger seemed particularly agitated, now that I think about it. It reminded me of that scene in E.T. when the kids take E.T. out trick or treating, and the alien is shocked by all the weird costumes. Crazy humans! Anyway, here’s a picture of Ava with her absolute favorite boy in the whole world, A.J.’s son, Brian:

The hits just keep coming.

And then there’s criminal.

A father in Johnson City, Tennessee is going to remember this Election year for a long time to come.

That’s because Mark Ciptak named his newborn daughter Sarah McCain Palin. Ciptak and his wife originally named their daughter Ava Grace but Ciptak changed the name on her birth certificate without his wife’s consent.

“I’m totally McCain all the way,” said Ciptak.

I came home last evening to find Ava painting the sidewalk with her mother. I’m a big fan of diffuse sunlight, so I grabbed my camera and started clicking away.

Leah’s finishing off bed time with Ava last night, and I settle in downstairs in front of a fascinating profile of Richard Nixon showing on PBS. As my better-educated readers probably already know, the story on Nixon is that he was a fairly vicious, often spiteful political opponent who never met a sleazy campaign tactic he didn’t like. Throw in an acute case of Little Man’s Syndrome, and you get a portrait in power eerily similar to that embodied by one of the contestants for the 2008 White House. Those who don’t know history, etc., etc.
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We’re not, but I came across this book today at BoingBoing and found the discussion around it interesting.
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What a great weekend in Madison! I believe this photo sums up our adventure fairly: