Aftermath

Cleaning the apartment took its toll.

Mary aggravated a shoulder injury.

I strained my lower back. It immobilized me for a couple of days.

Karin said, “My back always hurts.”

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I’ve been reworking my best dissertation chapter into an article. My committee advised me to try to publish that chapter’s argument in “one of the very top journals.”

I’ve decided to take this entreaty seriously – even if my committee members tell the same thing to every student who finishes the Ph.D.

Tonight, I remarked to Karin that I thought the article would take several years to complete.

She looked horrified.

It never ends!

A new bedroom

Perhaps our greatest gain from Saturday’s shower, apart from the gift-haul for our son, was the huge plate of cheese that the guests hardly even nibbled at.

Since then, I’ve been snacking on delicious little leftover squares of cheese.

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Mary came over tonight to help rearrange our apartment for the baby. I don’t wish to brag, but, during our entire tenure at this property, one of our bedrooms has gone unused – except as a receptacle for cat toilets, books, and various exotic items.

Well, Karin & I can no longer afford such extravagance. Every inch must be drafted into service or stripped of clutter.

(There is a Shinto teacher, I’ve heard, who tells us how to do this with joy.)

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One thing I learned tonight: I need a bigger, better clothes dresser. The bottoms have fallen out of several of my drawers. The remaining drawers are bursting with clothes that survived this evening’s culling.

(NOTE: Some clothes were transported from another dresser that we emptied out to fill with the baby’s clothes.)

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Notoriously, many bloggers and social media users, upon achieving parenthood, become very tedious, unable to look up from the minutiae of daily living. I shall strive to avoid this fault.

Rest assured that I’ll continue to discuss the great subjects, such as morality and metaphysics.

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My favorite sentence in this entry:

“The bottoms have fallen out of several of my drawers.”

It can be interpreted in more than one way.

The first shower

Karin & I held the first of two gift showers for our son. This shower, organized by Mary, was attended by friends and family members who don’t worship at our church. (The church’s shower will occur next month.)

As the gifts were being unwrapped, I realized what a large proportion of the clothes from Karin’s wish list were fox-themed. Our boy also received some Fighting Irish onesies from my Domer cousin, Vickie; some Star Trek-themed Little Golden Books and clothes from Karin’s dad and his girlfriend, Carol, who are die-hard Trekkies; and a few tiger-themed items, including a Cincinnati Bengals outfit (the Bengals are Carol’s team).

Not only have our son’s gender, nationality, and religion – the standard identities – been settled well before his birth, but also, apparently, his mammalian, collegiate, intergalactic, and athletic preferences.

I was the only man at the shower. I tried to watch Manchester City vs. the Potato Tots on my computer, but the flash player wouldn’t work.

August’s poems

… are from Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

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The Divine Image
(1789)

To Mercy Pity Peace and Love
All Pray in their distress:
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy Pity Peace and Love
Is God our father dear:
And Mercy Pity Peace and Love
Is Man his child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart
Pity, a human face:
And Love, the human form divine.
And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man of every clime
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine
Love Mercy Pity Peace.

And all must love the human form.
In heathen, turk or jew
Where Mercy, Love & Pity dwell
There God is dwelling too.

A Divine Image
(1794)

Cruelty has a Human Heart
And Jealousy a Human Face
Terror, the Human Form Divine
And Secrecy, the Human Dress

The Human Dress is forged in Iron
The Human Form, a fiery Forge
The Human Face, a Furnace seal’d
The Human Heart, its hungry Gorge.

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Vaughan Williams’s interpretation is the ancestor of certain TV theme songs, Karin suggests.

“The Radical Left is out of control”

… also, “They want to destroy America.”

Why have I been getting emails with these subject headings?

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I got this, too (click on it to enlarge):

It brought relief. (I’d worried that my thesis’s submission to ProQuest wouldn’t be approved in time for the August degree conferral.)

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Karin & I watched Paper Moon. It’s pretty thin, plot-wise, but I didn’t tire of admiring the black-and-white photography of Kansas and Missouri.

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More reading (continued from the previous entry):

(5) Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights – still not all read.

(6) Bill Hybels, Too Busy Not to Pray. This is our current Sunday school textbook.

(7), (8) Patrick White, The Aunt’s Story and Patrick White Speaks.