Thanks to everyone who has asked about my dad. He's recovering well in the hospital after a silent heart attack last Thursday and a bout with a chronic digestive problem. I'll just say that I have no desire to blog about this. It's too scary to put it all into words, and so I'm currently enjoying my time on that Egyptian river.
I did call the man who was angered by my column, and he was quite reasonable. No harm done.
I got another assignment for a major national women's publication, which makes me very happy.
Connery has been fairly cooperative, at least as far as two-year-olds go. I was able to control him with a moderate degree of success in the grocery store by using a trip to the library as leverage. May he always be motivated by books!
We checked out a real winner while at the library, and I will try to post a review. The book is called I Wanna Iguana, written by Karen Kaufman Orloff and illustrated by David Catrow. Connery would read it day and night if we would let him stay up that long. I also checked out Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad for myself after losing my battle with Bill Clinton. (It was interesting, really, but in three weeks I ought to be able to get farther than the 1992 presidential elections. Not a GAP dress in sight by the time I needed to return it. As it was, I owe a $.40 late fee just because I had to read far enough to get to the actual first election win.)
It's also been surreal to read the news. From the Cheney shooting to Bush threatening his first veto to make sure we put out ports in the hands of the United Arab Emirates, I sometimes feel as if we have landed in some kind of alternate Bizarro land, where up is down and treason is patriotism. Still, it's good to know that in the grand scheme of things, the biggest threat facing the United States is *not* lax port security, bird flu, ever-widening civil strife that we helped to create in Iraq, or the rampant rise of theocracy and fundamentalism around the world. It's gay people making lifelong commitments to each other and to children who would otherwise have no parents. Oh, and it's women who have to make the wrenching choice of whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term.
And maybe Bode Miller.