water

We're now officially in "exceptional drought," which makes it all the more galling that it's been insufferably humid the last couple of days. Turn that moisture into rain, please?

Also insufferable is the fact that some people are continuing to water lawns. The sprinkler system at the Looni's Catholic Student house (by which I walk on my way to work) had been on this AM, although the water regulations allow watering only on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Mostly the Looni is letting the grass die (or go dormant, I hope), which I applaud.

I've put a Rubbermaid bin in the sink and am using grey water to water the garden (such as it is; I planted a bunch of fall crops, including kale, lettuces, and the last of the bean seeds I had, in hopes that the rabbits would have forgotten about me. The rabbits remembered. Casper keeps finding little piles of rabbit poop in the lawn). I should have been doing this long ago - it's a little awkward but not too bad and I get TONS of water. I can also empty the tub out after the kids' bath with a bucket if I need more.

getting all my posting for the week done on one day

As you may have gathered, Thursday is the day I attempt to buckle down and do my homework. This means lots of posting, because I need lots of breaks when I try to concentrate on things. I am actually making good progress today.

But! What I wanted to say was, Casper can write her name now, the short version. She did it twice yesterday. So cute. Her lower-case e was backwards one of the times. Then she got frustrated. I told her she should keep practicing and I had a hard time learning to write when I was a kid (which is true.)

Books:
Mounatins Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder, 2003. A biography of Paul Farmer and the medical work he and his organziation do in Haiti and fighting multi-drug-resistant TB globally. For book club. This is a very well written book; the subject matter is inherently interesting, but the writer's skill is really clear as well. Farmer does incredible work, and incredibly important work, but he (as with many incredibly driven people) seems like he would be hard to live with/be around.

Driven to Distraction (1995). This is sort of "Intro to ADD." I bought it because our therapist wondered aloud if mr. flea had ever been evaluated for ADD, and whether that might be an issue in his struggles with his dissertation. I've heard some people say this book was like a lightbulb turning on for them, but it didn't do much for me (and I don;t think, having read it, that mr. flea has ADD). It did get me thinking (again, and I say this as a person on medication for a psychiatric disease) about how fuzzy our understanding of the brain is - chemically, physically, psychologically - and how little we really know about most mental illnesses/disorders.

A. L. T., Andre Leon Talley (2003). This is an autobiography of the fashion journalist and 6'7" flamboyant dresser. He was raised by his grandmother in Durham, NC, and the book is largely about her, as well as his later mentor, Diana Vreeland. He is evocative on his childhood as a fashion-obsessed, southern black child (born 1949) in an upright churchgoing family, and his very close relationship with his grandmother. He isn't very analytical about his life in the broader American social context, however; there's only the most oblique discussion of sexuality (his own, or others'; he describes himself as in love with a girl in high school but most of his commentary is about how well she dressed), almost none of his race and impoverished background in the context of the high fashion world and his embrace by it, and almost no mention at all of his mother (who was still living when he wrote the book, but never lived with him, and was divorced from his father when he was 10.)