excuses and miscellany

• Lately I've been working hard on the article my friend & favorite feminist theologian invited me to co-write. It's been a marvelous experience: the first really fun academic writing I've done in ages, an absolute joy to really dialogue with someone about ideas I'm passionate about without competitiveness or rancor (even in disagreement!), an opportunity to really delve deep into one of the most important scholars for my dissertation work and understand her better, and to develop my own "feminist voice," for this essay (unlike my academic writing to date) has a personal dimension and a poetic flourish. I've learned a lot...and not least that it really is possible to produce good academic work in a process free from the petty competition that characterizes so much academic exchange.
• I'm really loving the classic Sesame Street clips and TMBG ABC's and 123's videos...(thanks for the tip, Rick!) Really, youtube just keeps getting better and better! Clare has now graduated from the familiar shapes of circle, square, oval, triangle, diamond to "octagon" thanks in part at least to the awesome song "Nonagon." (Everyone should also check out "High Five.") Plus, there's a whole bunch of Obama babies' videos out there--apparently all toddlers are wise enough to know a good thing when they see it...(Clare's is the best though!!! a totally impartial judgment).
• I'm resolving to be in bed by 10:00pm every night from now on. I've had enough of waking up feeling like total crap in the morning. I've also had enough of waking up and finding Clare totally covered in crap, but that's a different problem, not so easily resolved.
• I'm also resolving to lose this last bit of baby weight by the time I have to get back into a swimsuit for the Thweatt fam reunion at the beach in NC in June. Ten years ago at the last one I wore a 2-piece. I still have it--it's the only swimsuit I own. So I guess I need to be able to fit into it, and it would be nice to feel good in it too.
• It's my turn to pick up teaching the toddler class at CCfB again. Despite feeling compelled to adjust some of the suspect theology in their lessons, and really enjoying getting to participate in worship and hearing sermons live, I've missed it. Dots! I can't wait to give Ira and Clare their 3 dots for being such good little kiddies!
• I'm really glad a friend here at GTS has taken the initiative to start a weekly mom's group. It's casual, Clare loves playing her friend A, and it's so nice to talk parenting with other people going through the same things you are. And, it gets me out of the isolation that I slide into when left to my own devices. (My own devices=computer.)
• I'm really awkward making casual conversation with people I don't know. I talk a lot, so that maybe people won't notice how awkward I feel, and then I do something like somehow inadvertently give a conservative Baptist the impression I'm an unwed mom. No, no...I'm just not wearing my ring because I deboned a chicken Thursday night. Honest, I swear. Really. Then again, I don't really feel like being mistaken for an unwed mother is the end of the world anyway, so &*@# it.
• Oregon Trail and Text Twirl were short-lived Facebook fads for me...but Scrabulous endures. (MOM, I'm winning this game BTW.) My theory that multiple player games are always won by the player who starts them (and goes first) may have been disproven but I think it's just an instance of the exception proving the rule.
• I've been loving Marti Stanley's very bright green blog lately. After this post, I scrubbed my whole bathroom with baking soda and vinegar. I won't be trying my hand at composting for awhile yet though...that takes, you know, a yard.
• I think about my sister Ally a lot more than I ever talk to her. I had a great plan for calling her every Wednesday afternoon, since that's when she was in the Choluteca office near a phone. Nowadays though she's not in the office much anymore, since she's working hard over at the Children's Home (where hopefully CCfB's cow named Brooklyn is living the good life and making lots o'milk!). I was bragging on her and Jarrod today at lunch. Love you, Al.
• Tomorrow Clare goes to "school" again even though it's Wednesday and Brent and I will hop on a train and go down to Madison and he will brilliantly defend his dissertation. Also, tomorrow at roughly the same time Ira is scheduled for the follow-up surgery.

Almost time for my new and improved bedtime now and I'm all out of randomness. I may, or may not, take up the suggestion to bloggily muse upon Obama sometime soon. I'd like to explain what I meant in an earlier post about him being the "cyborg candidate." That will take some actual thinking, unlike this post, which is all just fluffernuttery nonsense.