Accommodatingly

Nathan has been doing, and learning, cute things faster than we can post them– but now that we’re back from Passover weekend with Bubbe and Zayde, we can at least run the highlights. (Also I have a couple of new-ish works in prose and verse out, but they’ll have to wait and then come in on the second chorus.)

1. Much of what Nathan saw on Thursday and Friday was “very looking,” as in “That’s a very looking flower!” “That’s a really very looking airplane!” “Does very looking mean it’s pretty?” “Yeah.” The young man digs his non-finite verbs.

2. Nathan slept in a big boy bed at Bubbe and Zayde’s house. On Friday he woke up from his nap in a big boy bed and said “A leaf comes from a tree! A stick comes from a tree too!” Was he thinking of family trees? Or of the fertile springtime plant life in Washington DC (whose pollen made our stay there just a bit less fun)?

3.  Nathan also had some trouble getting to sleep on the night of the Bubbe and Zayde seder– no surprise, given the continuing hubbub downstairs. So Jessie decided to ask him whether the loud talking downstairs bothered him. Nathan (rather sleepily) responded: “I like the loud!” (I like the loud too.)

4. I’m in the last-but-one TLS writing about John Ashbery, the last-but-one issue of the LRB with a poem (poem itself not online, sorry), and the new issue of Ploughshares (again, poem not online). And, in very academic news, I’ve just had an essay about Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Park and Hartford accepted at ELH.

5. My brief, snippy post at the Columbia University Press blog has generated an absurdly long
discussion thread over at the Valve, a longer discussion than I’ve ever seen (online) about anything else I’ve ever put up on the Web… which sort of proves the point my Columbia post was making: people like arguments.

6. Two books that just came in the mail, about which I hope I’ll have something to say somewhere soon: Devin Johnston’s third book, which I already prefer to his other two (some of you know him for the cool press that he runs), and Sandra Beasley’s first.

Scene: Nathan and I are looking at a cute picture book of simple words in Spanish. Nathan has been looking at this book a lot over the last few days, so I try to see which words he remembers. We turn to the page “Mi Cuerpo–My Body.”

Me: Nathan, do you see a mano?

Nathan points at the picture of a little hand.

Me: And where are your manos?

Nathan holds up his hands.

Me: And where is the espalda?

Nathan points at the picture of a bare baby back.

Me: Good! And where is your espalda?

Nathan points at his back.

Me: Good! And where are the piernas?

Nathan points at the picture of a baby’s legs, although he points at the baby’s bottom rather than the legs.

Me: And where is your piernas?

Nathan: In my diaper!

How on earth did I use 120 GB so quickly? I had just past the 100 GB mark the other day, when a botched software update left me with no other option but to reinstall the operating system (from the two-year-old system discs). When you reinstall the system, it creates a backup of the entire system folder and all Mac applications. So there went another 10 GB. I’m too timid to delete that yet–what if something goes wrong?

Part of the issue is that I have Parallels and Windows XP on my machine. I barely use them, but it’s useful to have around. I just found this nifty article that tells you how to find the biggest files on your Mac. Time for some spring cleaning!

with DZ

Originally uploaded by Jessie and Steve

We saw Dan Zanes and Friends at the Somerville Theater today. This is Nathan with DZ himself. Nathan is doing his very best Dan Zanes smile.

who was on the Leonard Lopate show explaining A. Rod’s salary, Steve appeared on the Bryant Park Project this morning sharing his thoughts about the Women’s Final Four.

So how long before Sports Center snaps them up?

Either elves came in while I was at work or Steve came home this morning after dispatching Nathan to school and cleaned the house.

Few things are nicer than surprise housecleaning.