Random Bullets

• Apparently, all you have to do is make one little phone call and then when you get to Boston, someone will willingly had over Hemingway's manuscripts for you to look at. That's all it takes folks--a photo ID and a phone call. It seems like there should be more involved.
• Which means that I have to go to Boston. Alone. This gives me great anxiety, because I've never been away from Little Man overnight. And I don't like being away from J for too long. It gets kind of boring. It makes me wonder how other moms who have to travel for business do it.
• I heart Paul Krugman. If you haven't read his NY Times piece today. READ IT. Then try really, really hard not to vote for McCain, k?
• Little Man now can reach the light in his bedroom from his crib. This means that about 20 minutes after I put him to bed, there is a pretty good chance that he will stand up, turn on the light, and proceed to shout, "mama, mama, 'are you mama??" How am I supposed to respond to that without laughing?
• J is going out of town next weekend for a conference. Alone. He doesn't seemed as bothered by it as I am about leaving. It means, however, that I'll be parenting solo for three days. Something tells me we're going to be watching a lot of The Little Mermaid.
  
• I don't have a (second) job this summer. This is the first time in a long, long time that I don't have to juggle teaching with research for the summer. It is also the first time in a long time that we will not have an income, so to speak, for the summer. So instead of reveling in the possibilities of what I can get accomplished, I'm trying to figure out how I can do something someone will pay me for. Rationally, I know that we've saved for this, but emotionally, I really like having paychecks.
• So I was watching Oprah last night, and she had on the pregnant "man." I'm not convinced. He is a woman who became a man, but never changed any of her genitalia into a his. Now, I understand issues of intersex and transgender. I understand that gender is a performance--a societal construct--that we need to respect people's decisions to live authentically. But it also seems to me that, as Judith Buttler writes, bodies do matter. And, it seems to me that even if he isn't a woman, biologically he is still a female (you know, with the ovaries and uterus and all), so biologically speaking at least, I think the whole "pregnant man" thing is bubkus. I respect his right to live as a man and identify as a man, but honey, when you got lady parts downstairs still, I don't think you can claim the "wonders" of pregnancy for the male species quite yet.
• If anyone does know how to actually get a male pregnant, I would be interested to hear about it. Because I think couples should share everything 50/50.