A lifestyle change

A TikTok for the plus-sized. (Hat tip: Karin.)

This reaches deep into my psyche. I often dream that I’m searching the nooks of shopping malls for neglected fast food restaurants. (For more on shopping malls, see John Collier, “Evening Primrose.”)

🥨 🥨 🥨 🥨 🥨

The alluded-to lifestyle change is this: We’re placing our televisions under lock and key, away from our children.

’Bout time, I can hear you all murmuring.

No longer will I regularly watch TV with my wife, which I love to do. I’ll still view Hoopla and Kanopy and Tubi on my laptop. For special occasions (e.g., the World Cup), a television will be wheeled out for us all to view together.

The hoped-for gain is a reversal – or, at least, a slowing down – of our children’s barbarism. Daniel, especially, has been behaving like the titular character in the movie Bronson. This may be due to the arrival of his new brother, or it may be due to an excess of TV (or both). I’ll begin by trying to cut out TV.

Out, not down, because over time the safeguards have been eroded and the children’s dependency has become acute.

When Samuel was littler, I’d carefully restrict his viewing time. I believe what he viewed did him some good. He’d watch phonics videos; lo and behold, he learned to read. Other videos taught him countries, states, and capitals. A couple of years ago, he knew the names and nationalities of most of Brighton & Hove Albion’s soccer players – from viewing TV.

Then his preferences narrowed. He got hung up on the brands and models of motorcars, and then on Lego-building videos. Nothing wrong with those interests, but they crowded out the rest.

Daniel quickly learned the planets and dwarf planets … and, more than a year later, he still solemnly recites the planets and dwarf planets, and the numbers from one to ten. More than Samuel, he is drawn to purely sensory pleasure. Again: not bad in itself, but potentially limiting.

But much worse is how he behaves when he doesn’t get his “fix.” (Samuel, too.)

I hate to cut them off. Samuel has just gotten very interested in one of my childhood favorites, Captain Tsubasa (a.k.a. Supercampeones). (Or, to be precise, he is interested in its latest reboot, which has the same look and charm as the original.) He saves the show until night-time, along with certain snacks. Then he watches with utter emotional absorption. It’s as if he’s just now discovering TV as it’s meant to be consumed.

Some “life hacks”

(1) Stretch pants.

(2) Using the Internet to find out what’s avaliable at your local Half Price Books store.

This is harder than you might think.

The critical link:

https://www.hpb.com/search?q=&prefn1=instorePickUpAvailableStores&prefv1=HPB-131&prefn2=rareFind&prefv2=No&srule=recently-added&sz=80

Suppose that, at Christmastime, both sets of in-laws put gift cards for HPB in your stocking.

Rejoice! Be glad!

But also: How good is this “good” luck, really?

For it may be that you live in South Bend, on the West Side, and that HPB is in faraway Mishawaka (known, locally, as “BFE” or “near-BFE” [“E” is for east; “BF” is vulgar]). Who wants to trek out east twice in January to use both $5 discounts – each, activated by a separate $25 gift-card purchase – without prior knowledge of the inventory?

But HPB has online ordering!

Alas, it costs $3.99 to have each book shipped to your house.

But books in your preferred store can be reserved online and retrieved, gratis, in person.

Again, how are you to know what’s in your preferred store? (Besides by searching for one book or author at a time and then trawling through items that may or may not be in that store.)

By clicking the above link, that’s how. Behold a list of most of the books in the store.

Here’s the link again:

https://www.hpb.com/search?q=&prefn1=instorePickUpAvailableStores&prefv1=HPB-131&prefn2=rareFind&prefv2=No&srule=recently-added&sz=80

I’ve tweaked the search to exclude collectables and to show recent arrivals on top.

To add keywords (e.g., “Agatha+Christie”) to the search, type them into the web address between the first equals sign and ampersand:

https://www.hpb.com/search?q=Agatha+Christie&prefn1=instorePickUpAvailableStores&prefv1=HPB-131&prefn2=rareFind&prefv2=No&srule=recently-added&sz=80

Maybe you don’t want to order and retrieve from Mishawaka’s store. Maybe you live in darkest Chesterfield, Missouri. Then replace “131” above – the Mishawaka store’s number – with the “120” pertaining to Chesterfied’s store.

https://www.hpb.com/search?q=Agatha+Christie&prefn1=instorePickUpAvailableStores&prefv1=HPB-120&prefn2=rareFind&prefv2=No&srule=recently-added&sz=80

Voilà.

(The “store finder” page is here.)

Abel (cont.)

Hospital pics.

At home. (Fat but pleased.) A shy first meeting of the brothers.

The photostream ends here.

Karin is staying at home with the new child. Today, we all watched Mary Poppins – Abel’s first movie (as it was Daniel’s, as it was Samuel’s).

Abel’s cousins, Ada and George, brought supper.

Body-text fonts, pt. 27: JY Alia

Rain … all week, pretty much. Last night was dry. I and the neighbors had the same idea at the same time: mow the grass.

Everyone mowed except the guy who works nights.

The guy who works construction mowed his back yard wearing his high-visibility safety vest. It must feel wrong for him, laboring while not wearing it.

The grass was wet, heavy, and long. I mowed my front and back lawns, the latter to the nub (it has been growing too fast this season). Mowing can take as little as forty-five minutes; this took eighty.

I fell asleep two hours earlier than usual.

It rained again today.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I’m sorry this entry is … underwhelming. The children kept me busy tonight. They are tricky, voracious little creatures, like their father.

It is fitting, perhaps, that this month’s font sample should be taken from Jay Nordlinger’s fine book Children of Monsters.

The typeface, JY Alia, is interesting for being so uninteresting: a nondescript blending of Bembos, Garamonds, and Jansons (in which manner it’s like the more famous Hoefler Text). I might not have identified JY Alia but for the lowercase italic “y”: look at “Daily Mail” above, and compare it to this professional specimen. I’ve never seen JY Alia in anything else.

Eating and reading: A report

The eating begins in earnest just before Halloween and continues through December. Meanwhile, the northern hemisphere cools. One becomes sluggish.

I gained five pounds over Thanksgiving. Seven, the last two weeks.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Having fallen behind in my reading, I’m trying to get back on pace by reading these short books:

• Gabriel García Márquez, Chronicle of a Death Foretold (I read this in high school and again in college)
• John Hersey, Hiroshima (I read this in high school, too)
• C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian (I don’t know how many times I’ve read this; I’d forgotten how odd it is when Aslan, Susan, and Lucy frolic with Greek mythic figures – Bacchus, Silenus, and the Maenads – while the chaps are at war)
• Joyce Carol Oates, First Love: A Gothic Tale
• Georges Simenon, The Yellow Dog (my first Maigret novel – only seventy-four to go after this one)

You’d think I’d polish ’em off in one sitting, but that’s not how I do it: I like to drag ’em out.

Shakespeare-wise, I rolled my dice, counted down my table of contents, and landed upon The Winter’s Tale to read next. Doubly appropriate because (a) ’tis (almost) the season and (b) I need something somber after The Merry Wives of Windsor and Much Ado about Nothing.

This is the third straight play in which the fear of being cuckolded fuels the plot. I am beginning to understand, dimly but surely, that this was a big concern in Shakespeare’s time (and in Molière’s, not long after).

Incidentally, here is Sam Bankman-Fried’s notorious criticism of Shakespeare (with special mention of Much Ado). It’s forgivable. He wrote this when he was twenty years old; I believe he was a college sophomore.

And here, the polemical philosopher Michael Huemer takes Bankman-Fried’s side. I do like Huemer, but this isn’t his best moment. He puts too much stock in what he thought of the plays when he read them in high school. (Fashioning my objection after Bankman-Fried: What do the priors tell us about one’s highschool or college self arriving at one’s most judicious possible evaluation of Shakespeare?)

Stay gold, Michael Huemer, stay gold.

A few small victories and defeats

We bought a new digital scale. As soon as we’d removed it from the package, inserted the batteries, and weighed ourselves on it once, Samuel threw it down the stairs, and it broke.

Mercifully, Karin was able to fix it. Today I am several lbs. lighter.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

This morning the toilet overflowed, due, in no small part, to Samuel’s supremely inefficient use of it. (It was my fault, too; in the chaos of aiding Samuel, I flushed too many times.) While I was wiping down the bathroom floor, Daniel sneaked off with the shaving cream and slathered it upon himself.

I grabbed the shaving cream can, put it on the kitchen counter, and tossed Daniel into the shower.

When I’d finished cleaning and dressing Daniel, I returned to the kitchen. There was Samuel, covering that room – and himself – with the shaving cream.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I was holding Daniel on my lap, and Ziva climbed into the armchair with us – quite a nice thing to do, given that the children often terrorize the kitties. Daniel responded by speaking two new words: “Ziva” (Zee-ah) and “cat.”

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I took Samuel and Daniel to the library for a couple of hours. They mostly played with the toys. (They have toys at home, but the library’s are different.) I pulled Harry Potter off the shelf and read bits of it while keeping an eye on the boys.

As we were leaving, Samuel discovered that one of the library’s touchscreens has a language setting. He touched a couple of icons and changed the language to Swedish.

The rest of the day, he’s been talking about “the libraries in Sweden.”

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Argentina and Ecuador will play in Buenos Aires tomorrow night: our first World Cup qualifier.

Another good anti-war essay

Karin: “Did you trim your mustache today, Sweetie?”

John-Paul: “No, Sweetie.”

Karin: “I thought you might have left it long, to show your support.”

John-Paul: “You mean for Andy Reid?”

Karin: “Yes, ha, ha.”

John-Paul: “Yes, that’s right, and that’s why I got fat again, too.”

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Tonight’s essay, by Richard Norman, is “The Case for Pacifism.” It takes the “skeptical” approach: it argues, first, that in the absence of a compelling justification, large-scale killing can be presumed to be wrong; and then that the best purported justifications of large-scale killing are not compelling enough. Finally (pp. 208 and 209), it addresses the lingering conviction that there are situations in which fighting nonetheless cannot be avoided:

If we can pin down the sense of the statement “We have no choice,” we may be in a position to understand why pacifism remains difficult to accept. …

When people say that one sometimes has no choice, what they mean, I think, is that by refusing to fight, say, against aggression, or indeed against internal oppression, one is acquiescing in a very great evil, and by acquiescing in it one is tacitly endorsing it. Morally speaking, faced with that evil, we have no choice but to resist it, and if the only way to resist it is to fight, then we have no choice but to fight.

Now this reading of the situation might be challenged. … One might say: “I have not acquiesced in Nazism. I refuse to engage in military resistance to it, … but that does not mean that I accept Nazism. I reject it wholeheartedly, I will give no support to it, and if the Nazis order me to cooperate with their crimes I shall disobey even though I may be shot.” …

Nevertheless, even if many people had thought and acted thus, it could remain true that, in an important sense, Nazism had not been resisted. This is because resistance to a social phenomenon such as aggression or oppression must, if it really is to count as resistance, take a socially identifiable form. … What forms of resistance are available will therefore depend upon the institutions and traditions of the community; and if the only recognised and organisable form of resistance is military resistance, then not fighting will mean not resisting. This, I think, is the significant sense in which people could say “We have no choice but to fight.”

This is another case of a pacifist explaining more clearly than do most “bellicists” (war apologists) how warring might continue to seem good, or necessary, to do, even after the usual justifications alluding to rights and harms have run out of steam.

Norman’s reconstruction of this bellicist argument has other applications. The same pattern of reasoning helps to make sense of a popular “anti-racist” claim: that failing to actively resist racism is itself a form of racism: that a person who merely refrains from engaging in racial discrimination, disrespecting, harming (etc.) and does not actively try to prevent or counteract others’ racism is himself guilty of racism. The underlying idea, as in the case of war, is that refraining from doing an evil without trying to prevent or counteract others’ doing it is a form of acquiescence, and that acquiescence in this evil is tacit endorsement of it. Each of these steps might be contested; here I just want to point out that insofar as “anti-racism” and advocacy of war both rely on this pattern of thought, they are structurally similar, and there is a prima facie tension in endorsing “anti-racism” together with pacifism; indeed, there would seem to be a tension between accepting pacifism and insisting on the viciousness of failing to promote a number of causes. Pacifists who, by temperament or habit, are militant activists need to examine themselves closely.

I said last time that I’d discuss “the encroachment of politics upon the sporting world.” It seems to me that the best argument for stripping a locale of its opportunity to host or participate in a sporting event is the same sort of argument that Norman advances on behalf of warring, and that whether the argument succeeds in a given situation depends on whether the above-delineated sequence of steps should be accepted in that situation. If Qatar, say, commits an injustice outside of sport, does allowing it to host the World Cup amount to acquiescing in that injustice? If so, does this amount to tacitly endorsing the injustice? How does allowing Qatar to host the World Cup compare, as a matter of tacit endorsement of injustice, with traveling to Qatar, trading with Qatar, maintaining diplomatic relations with Qatar, and so on? I suggest that this is a useful framework for assessing the widespread, knee-jerk disparagement of Qatar’s World Cup (and FIFA) that has taken place during the last dozen years.

The picture is as good as it gets

I hope my mom doesn’t mind if I tell this story.

She and my dad bought a new TV. But we might return it, she said. The picture is distorted.

I offered to read the manual and explain how to change the settings.

Try to stream a program, I said. It’s easier to check the settings if the TV is in use.

The picture is fine when we stream things or play a local channel, she said. It looks all wrong when we play a DVD. Here is Jack Nicholson in As Good as It Gets. See how broad he looks.

Mom, that just is how Jack Nicholson looks in As Good as It Gets. He wasn’t young anymore in the nineties.

We try another DVD: About Schmidt.

Look at him here!, my mom says. She pauses the movie. Look at how broad he is!

Mom, the picture is fine.

I remind her that Nicholson was even less young – that, consequently, he was even more broad – when he made About Schmidt. And that in the early scenes of that movie, he had to wear an unflattering business suit.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

At the library, I spotted a DVD of Annika, the new PBS/Masterpiece series in which the great Nicola Walker plays the lead detective of a made-up Glasgow policing team called the Marine Homicide Unit (it investigates murders committed on boats). DCI Annika Strandhed is quirkier than most. She draws extended analogies between the crimes she solves and Viking or Greek mythology, Ibsen’s plays, bridge-building, or whatever. To my considerable amusement, she relentlessly soliloquizes – as often as not, in front of her longsuffering subordinate detectives.

Annika reminds Karin & me of no one so much as Karin’s mother.

May’s poems

So, the lawns aren’t looking good. They ought to have been cut two or three weeks ago. I left gasoline in the mower all winter, and the mower won’t start.

Our air conditioner isn’t working, either. But we have been using fans, and the house is quite livable.

Since Daniel was born, I’ve gained approx. 25 lbs.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

And now, three poems from The Norton Book of Light Verse.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

The Hen it is a noble beast;

The cow is more forlorner,

Standing in the rain

With a leg at every corner.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

(William McGonagall)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

If I were a cassowary

On the plains of Timbuctoo,

I would eat a missionary,

Cassock, bands and hymn-book too.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

(Samuel Wilberforce)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

What a wonderful bird the frog are

When he stand he sit almost

When he hop, he fly almost.

He ain’t got no sense hardly;

He ain’t got no tail hardly either.

When he sit, he sit on what he ain’t got almost.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

(Anonymous)

This last poem is for my sons.

On leave; personal limitations; quietism; body-text fonts, pt. 1: Cochin

The weather has turned, dramatically. Temperatures approach the sixties (F).

Karin has been on leave for two weeks:

0.5 weeks in the hospital;

1.5 weeks at home, in front of the TV (all of us, not just Karin), with the occasional visit to the doctor.

We are quite fattened up, due to well-wishers’ generous gifts of food – mainly, pastries and pasta – and our failure to exercise. Daniel, who has been jaundiced, is swallowing more milk now that his tongue-tie is severed.

Samuel loves Daniel. He is, if anything, too affectionate.

I have been reading about Russia’s war with Ukraine; and I’d begun to write about it, when I decided I have nothing of value to say about this distressing event. I daren’t even repeat which pundits’ remarks I’ve found interesting. (This is not meant as a comment on anyone who has been remarking on the war or relaying others’ remarks. It’s just a comment about myself.)

It’d be better if I only talked about what I had for lunch (meat loaf, potato salad, pie), or if I started a new, utterly trivial series of posts. “Body-text Fonts, with Samples from My Own Bookshelves.”

Yes, that’s more my speed. This month’s font is Cochin.

Another treadmill

Some church friends who no longer run indoors have given us their old, ornery treadmill. The motor has a mind of its own. It goes faster than I instruct it to do. Yesterday, I had to keep reducing the speed until the display said I was running ten-minute miles; but surely I was going much faster, and when I dismounted, I was so tired I almost collapsed. I have no such trouble when I exercise out of doors.

Still, I’m glad to have this contraption. What with Halloween, Thanksgiving, our COVID quarantine, and the cold, November was the first month since July of 2020 in which I gained rather than lost weight.

Some days, I’m within 15 lbs. of my final target. At least, I think I’m within 15 lbs.; like the treadmill’s display, our scales are inaccurate, probably because the floorboards in this house are not evenly laid out. Each day I must take different readings until I get the same reading several times. Never before, in my personal experience, has the mode of any series of measurements been a more useful average than the median or the mean. Live long enough, and everything happens to you at least once.

Never been overweight? Just wait. Never been overweight and then lost that weight? Just wait.

In the seventh or eighth grade, I wrote a story about a thin man who drinks some delicious chicken noodle soup, decides that his life has been lacking, turns into a glutton, and becomes hugely and famously fat. At the apex of his fame (and size), he stops liking chicken noodle soup. He ends up thinner than before. I was reading a lot of Ray Bradbury when I wrote this story.

Spotify has compiled the statistics of my usage in 2021. I listen to Spotify more hours than 97% of all subscribers. Money well spent. I listen to Vangelis more than all but 0.05% of Vangelis’s listeners. Vangelis is whom I often choose for Samuel’s napping-time.

A veterinary ordeal, followed by a quiet evening at home

We had trouble last night rounding up the kitties and putting them into their pet carriers. They knew what was in store for them.

Ziva darted under our bed. But we caught her in the end.

She and Jasper were hauled away. The vet gave them their shots and scolded them for being fat (Jasper has been ballooning ever since he figured out that Samuel tosses food scraps onto the floor).

Thankfully, both kitties were confirmed to be flea-free.

The rest of the evening was peaceful. Karin used her computer to play a very strange role-playing game from Japan, and I read from the unfashionable philosophy of William Godwin. The kitties didn’t fight at home (which they often do when one of them has returned from the vet). Samuel played with a toy alphabet that he got for Christmas; then, listening to the music of Bambi, he went to sleep.

Tonight, though, our Young Prince is considerably more grumpy.

Father’s Day

Here is my little boy in one of his most affecting poses, slumped over with sleep.

On this, my first Father’s Day, I played the role of third-tier father. We took Samuel to Goshen, in Elkhart County, to pay tribute to his grandpa and great-grandpa (on his mother’s side).

That county has suffered a recent spate of COVID. We tried to stay out of doors, but when a rainstorm broke out, ten or fifteen people huddled together in the kitchen. Samuel was passed from relation to relation.

I hope we haven’t caught the virus.

Samuel with his great-grandpa:

And with his grandpa:

A few of the relations, before the rainstorm:

In two days, Samuel will be eight months old. Here we are on the back porch where we live.

(This picture flatters me. I’m not usually so handsome. Samuel is smoothing out my belly.)

I also have enjoyed feline affection today. Happy Father’s Day to me.

A medical test

The last few days, we’ve had an arctic chill – and, suddenly, it’s mid-winter. Snow covers fields; frozen slush obstinately sticks to parking lots; ice daggers dangle over doorways; temperatures touch the lowest (positive) Fahrenheit integers. It’s indistinguishable from January. It looks lovely from indoors.

Tonight, I’m sleeping at my grandparents’ house. A vacation from Samuel’s squalling!

No, not just that. I have tubes in my nostrils and belts and wires and boxes strapped around my chest. They’re to measure my breathing and help the doctors decide if I have a sleep disorder.

If results are positive, they’ll account for:

• my constant sleepiness during the day;
• my inability to read an article or watch an hour of TV without dozing off;
• my weight gain the last seven years;
• my athletic and intellectual decline;
• my general lack of success.

The idea to get tested arose because, when I was in the hospital with Karin and Samuel, various medical professionals observed me sleeping and, independently, said I should.

Actually, I’d thought of it before, and Karin had thought of it (as a joke?), but the hospital stay definitely was the catalyst.

La reina rezaba por los niños pobres

… according to Duolingo’s sentence generator. Karin was amused.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

It’s Labor Day weekend. There isn’t a day when Karin & I don’t have at least one event scheduled with this or that acquaintance.

For us, this is unusual.

Today, we visited my friend Dan’s family. We went to the beach. Although the water was supposedly infested with E. coli, it contained many bathers.

We didn’t bathe. We walked down a pier to where, between the cities of St. Joseph and Benton Harbor, our own St. Joseph River empties itself out into Lake Michigan.

We also went on a carousel (I gather it’s impossible not to do so if one goes to the beach with Dan’s kids).

I rode the flamingo:

It had a slimming effect.

Dan and his wife, Lizzie, kindly gave us many things for our baby. Dan & Lizzie aren’t going to produce any more children. They have three who are cute but wild, especially at night.

Brianna is taught the consequences

Ziva’s adoption-day was yesterday; she and Jasper were allowed to share a can of tuna. She’s lived two years with us. We love her very much.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Today, I worked on revising my dissertation chapter on the Rawlsian quest for political stability. This chapter has been scrambling my little brain.

Rawls offers many different characterizations of his key ideas. It’s bad enough, having to explain which characterization of an idea is the most important one for him; explaining others’ confused interpretations is downright dizzying.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

As I was engaged with these tasks, Karin’s little sister, Brianna, knocked on our door. She’d missed her school bus – again – on purpose, to talk to her friends (Brianna is a twelfth-grader). Also, she hadn’t wanted to walk home. Instead, she’d walked in the opposite direction, to our apartment.

Karin was away for the evening and couldn’t drive Brianna home.

Karin’s and Brianna’s mother refused to come over and drive Brianna home. “Why are you punishing Brianna in this way?” Karin asked her. “I’m not punishing Brianna,” her mother said. “I’m merely helping her to learn the consequences of her actions.”

I was inclined to agree with my mother-in-law. But, in this case, the consequences of Brianna’s actions fell squarely upon me. (Farewell to a peaceful evening during which to write.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

“Gather up your school things,” I told Brianna. “We’re walking to your house.”

Of course, Brianna is capable of walking by herself (though, notoriously, she doesn’t).

But what could she say? It’s much easier and nicer to be kicked out of someone’s home when that person goes with you on your journey.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

On the way to Brianna’s house, we saw the friendly Mormons driving down the street. They waved at us and drove away.

Goodbye, Mormons, I thought. I wish you’d offered us a lift.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The walk to Brianna’s house took fifty minutes. When we arrived, Brianna’s mother was in her car, pulling out of the driveway. She stared at me. “Thank you for walking my daughter home,” she said. Then she drove away, to go shopping.

I hadn’t quite expected my mother-in-law to offer me a lift home; I suppose that if she had, it would’ve interfered with Brianna’s learning of the consequences. Still, I was a little irked that she didn’t.

All together, my round trip was five miles. A few years ago, that would’ve been a cinch to walk; but now, I’m old and fat. My limbs are sore, and I am tired. These, also, are among the consequences.

An inheritance

The snowstorm did hit us, and hard. Side streets were made impassable. Businesses, libraries, churches, and schools were closed. Every so often, we’d see people pushing their cars to release them from the snow; on one occasion, I had to push out Karin’s car. It was a pleasantly easy thing to do, due to my fat (I used to struggle mightily to push cars).

Karin has long desired for me to view Frozen with her. I had a different hope for this evening, but, what with this weather, I shall have to “let it go.”

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My mother slept two nights on our cot. Then she moved to the house of Edoarda & Stephen (she’ll go to Martin’s & Mary’s next). All during her visit to South Bend, she’s been at the police station or on the phone, trying to recover her missing documents. She’s scheduled to fly back to Ecuador on Wednesday. If she can’t obtain a new passport by then, she’ll have to stay in South Bend at least another week.

She brought many of her dead father’s belongings to distribute among her children. Before she arrived, I had almost no fitting dress shirts; now, I have about ten. I also inherited a large photo of the Atshuara chief, Tsantiacu, which was propped up near my grandpa’s casket at his funeral. I remember having been affected to see that portrait. I think that my grandpa will be glad to be reunited with his friend, who gave up blood feuding for Jesus’s sake.

Xmas’s eve’s eve’s eve

One third of my vacation is spent. I didn’t write as much as I should’ve done. I can’t even claim to have rested well.

My cold persists. Its decline, while slow, is at least steady. (Karin’s cold yo-yos up and down.)

Ziva has been discreetly vomiting – we think she’s trying to work a furball out of herself. Tonight, Jasper did a tremendous vomit. He scarfed down his quarter-cup of supper (he isn’t used to dieting yet). What goes down (like that) must come up. Karin took pity and gave Jasper a little more food.

Thanks to my “Secret Santa,” I’ve received the first four volumes from my wishlist. Just eight more volumes to go.

Festivities begin tomorrow with a full night and morning of partying at Karin’s dad’s house. Then, we’ll spend Christmas’s Eve at my Uncle John’s & Aunt Lorena’s house. As always, I look forward to the mini-wieners and other snacks to be served there.

The Peruvians got an early Xmas present. Paolo Guerrero’s ban was reduced to six months. He will play in the World Cup. To the authorities, he offered up the old “coca leaf, not cocaine” defense.

Walkabout (the book)

It’s been cold and very snowy, and I’m sick. This is what comes of walking outside without a coat.

Happily, tomorrow is the semester’s last day, and the stream of tutees has pretty well dried out. I sit at my work table and read. One book I’ve finished is Walkabout, the classic Outback story by James Vance Marshall. In tone, it’s very different from the movie that was made after it.

Spoiler alert!

In the novel, the death of the “bush” boy is less bleak than it is in the movie. The white girl looks at the “bush” boy with terror because he’s naked. The “bush” boy infers from her terror that he’s going to be visited by the spirit of death. Then he catches a cold from the white boy. Coupled with auto-suggestion, this is enough to kill the “bush” boy.

The white girl feels remorse and allows the “bush” boy to die with his head upon her lap. In death, then, the “bush” boy is comforted.

Still, it isn’t what one would wish to read while suffering from a cold.

End of spoiler.

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Karin & I took Jasper to his annual veterinary check-up. He weighed 14 lbs., approximately 133% of his ideal weight. Karin & I have reduced both kitties’ rations. We’re also policing Jasper so that he doesn’t steal food from Ziva.

Snow

… has begun falling upon South Bend. A good few inches have stacked up. Trucks plow and salt the roads. When I go out walking, I wear two tattered, hooded sweatshirts – I’ve outgrown my winter coat.

It feels as if winter has been here all along.

Xmas gifts have been arriving through the post. I thank whoever sends them (my siblings and I are using the “Secret Santa” method). I, too, have been ordering gifts for my designated beneficiary.

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I congratulated Edoarda & Stephen for staying at home the last few wintry days. Stephen, who’s just had his wisdom teeth removed, alternates between viewing the TV, sleeping, and throwing up. Edoarda watches over him.

Karin & I visited E&S last night. We viewed the episode of The Office in which Steve Carell spanks his jackass of a nephew. That justice of that scene was most pleasing.

At my own office, the year is slowly, strenuously concluding. Yesterday, one tutee asked me to proofread seven pages – hardly an unusual request. But the next tutee brought in 14 pages, and then a third brought in 28 pages, single-spaced. Her expectations were too high. Each tutoring session should require 30 minutes or less. (And, besides, we tutors aren’t supposed to proofread – we’re obliged only to explain “patterns of error.”)

I suppose there are moments in every job when the worker questions the wisdom of his industry. I was far beyond that stage. I only wanted the suffering to end, and it did, several hours later.

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Paolo Guerrero’s ban for taking cocaine has been extended until November of next year. Peru will miss him in the World Cup.

Meanwhile, the ban upon Emelec’s stadium has been rescinded (alas). What’s more, Ecuadorian TV companies have been forbidden from broadcasting the domestic finals – I’m not sure why – and the referees are threatening to strike for past-due wages.