Entry 6:

Good morning,

If it's any consolation, your unfortunate error completely escaped my notice.

This "hard-wiring" observation of yours is interesting. Sadly, I seem to have noticed the reverse--I have not had a hankering to lawyer in the last few months. And I've certainly had plenty of opportunities to notice the degree of my disinterest. Possibly the most important legal saga of my lifetime--all the activity surrounding the election--was going on right under my nose. Did I read even one of the Supreme Court's opinions in Gore v. Bush, or Bush v. Gore, or whatever the hell it ended up being called? No. I wasn't even watching CNN obsessively. I was interested, sure, but as a citizen (and as the wife of someone who follows all the obscure ins and outs of such things for a living). Not as a lawyer. To me, work is about being a grown-up. I get up in the morning, put on real clothes, talk to other grown-ups, do things I'm supposed to do, come home, and get paid. What I do is interesting to me, and I'm certainly capable of getting a real charge out of it, but it rarely occupies my mind when I'm not doing it.

I know this should feel like a horrible confession, like some deep personal failing or character flaw, and yet that's not how I experience it. Maybe I'm just good at compartmentalizing. That's what I'd like to think anyway.

As for the nanny thing--the discomfort there is primarily about privacy. Even though anyone we would hire wouldn't live in the house with us, the thought of someone spending the day in my house, day after day, is disquieting. You're talking to someone who lived alone for about eight years, so I definitely have issues with people using my stuff. Then, of course, you introduce the idea of this person alone in my house, with my child, and I just get worried about what goes on. Not Satan worship obviously (with all due respect to the Wiccans out there), but just whether I'd be comfortable with the day-to-day decisions a nanny would make. I mean, if I decide to try to read a book while my baby is crying in my shoulder, that's one thing. But if a nanny does it, I'm not so sure. Maybe I've just surrendered to the cult of professionalism, but there's something reassuring about day care (good day care, that is)--that you're dealing with people who care for children because it's what they want to do with their lives (although I know many nannies fit that description too), and they're doing it in a formalized setting. In the ideal universe, we'd have Mary Poppins take care of Eli until he's about 2 and then we'd have him in a group setting for something less than an entire day, but that's just not feasible.

You've got to do what makes sense to you. I've certainly learned that many issues around parenting require you to listen to your gut.

Which brings me to pacifiers--one of many hot buttons I've stumbled on recently. Short answer is that babies have a physiological need to suck, which may or may not be wholly satisfied by eating. Some babies (such as my little genius) can find their fingers early on and be very happy. Others can't and want to suck even if they're not hungry. The other physiology question of the morning, regarding birth control pills, stumps me too. Don't they just prevent you from ovulating--in which case there's never any fertilized egg to be interfered with? Unless Ashcroft is of the "every sperm is sacred" view, it makes no sense. Is it wrong not to ovulate? Are we supposed to get pregnant with every menstrual cycle?

I did finally get up to speed on this Chavez/Mercado thing, and once again my first reaction is one of pure revenge. You gore our ox, we'll gore yours, and don't talk to me about "changing the tone" in Washington if the score isn't even. No stunning observation here. It just seems to me Chavez has this coming to her since Mercado was living with her in the post-Zoe Baird era. And she's been nominated as labor secretary for Christ's sake.

Is there any other news? Volunteerism on the rise in Brazil (this is front page material?) doesn't cut it with me.

M.

P.S.: My husband has an amusingly medicinal attitude toward wine. Having been informed that it will improve his "good" cholesterol, he makes occasional efforts to measure out a dose of the stuff. Enough to make a serious oenophile weep.