Kinsey's grandparents are in town! Specifically, G-Mama and G-Daddy (i.e., Sarah's parents), and that means she's been having a blast hanging with them, and Sarah and I have had a mini vaca from our girl. It's weird, though: we've (or at least I've) gotten a lot of work done the last few days, but I miss that little girl so much. On Saturday night, while she was at G-Mama and g-Daddy's hotel room we were left to our own devices at our apartment and didn't quite know what to do with ourselves, so we worked. Eventually, though, we got it together and walked around Midtown, had a drink at The Lawrence, and dinner at Il Campagnola, and generally had a great night. I took this opportunity to get serious with The Second Sex, and, no that's not some euphemism. It's a real book, by Simone de Beauvoir, and I've been reading it, because I wanted to, since we own it, and I thought that all the weird stuff happening in American culture and politics as they pertain to women in our culture and women's rights, was pretty messed up. And I wanted to read this 733-page seminal text in feminism for the sake of my wife and daughter, and I wanted to write a review of this book (published in translation in 1953) and see how it holds up to today. I'm nearly 200 pages in. So I've got a ways to go, but the idea is to finish by the first week of June, so good luck on that.

Man I am slammed with work. Submissions to read, 2 short stories I want to finish, an essay I must finish for a book, a novel I that the goal was to finish by summer. I keep having school stuff to do. Stop requiring things of me, students.

Yesterday, dropping Kinsey off at school, she had a huge meltdown when I tried to leave. I think she probably sense that I kinda don't want to leave. I don't usually do drop-off. Pickup's a whole nother story.

Yes, the above two things are related.

While Kinsey's stopping and flapping her fists and screaming and clinging to my leg as I lunge for the door, I'm thinking about how the last half hour I spent with her at school was time I could've stolen away in order to work, and at the same time I'm thinking how I just want to stay there with my little girl and/or leave school altogether and take her to the park and blow off work.

When I was a kid every adult said that being a kid was a hell of a lot better than being an adult. I don't know. I remember hating it when my parents left.

I think I've decided that, why not, I'm going to do something with this blog and so it shall become a surrogate blog. What to do with this blog I haven't an idea just yet, but it will contain  . . . things. Ideas, mostly, I guess. but it will perhaps be best if those ideas revolve around my family, since this blog's inception had to do with that event, or the starting thereof.

Thus we shall begin: We have a daughter. She will be two years old in July. Today she slept in a bit (something I've noticed her beginning to do, although maybe that's hopeful thinking) and didn't awake until nearly seven in the morning. We ate breakfast together (yogurt, banana), then Sarah and I got her dressed and the two of them trudged off for school and work.

When I picked Zygote (the nickname we used to refer to her in utero, and which I'll continue to use here in order that her life remain as private as possible until she's ready to make her own decisions about how public she wants it to be) she showed me a big stuffed Elmo they had in her classroom. Also, I had to sign a form because Zygote and her "best friend" had a bit of an altercation. It appears that at one point before nap, Zygote decided it was a good idea to lay on top of her best friend. Her best friend repeated to me upon this pickup that she "did not like that."

Apparently, much later, after nap, when these almost-two-year-olds (well, I guess Zygote's "best friend" is actually now two) were in the "Gross Motor Room," which is fancy school-talk for "Indoor Jungle Gym," "best friend" walked up to Zygote and promptly scratched the hell out of her face. It wasn't serious. No real "injury." In fact, they were funny telling me about it. But, whoa, kid justice. I'll wait until after our nap, just when you think I've forgotten about you laying on top of me, that's when I'll claw the hell out of you, you bitch! Seriously, kids are evil.