This morning, on the way to the subway, we saw a man walking his dog, while simultaneously riding a jumbo-sized unicycle down the sidewalk. It turned heads even in NYC, with people just waiting for him to knock into a pedestrian or dismount abruptly at a red light. But, while we were watching, he just rolled on.
St. Benoit Yogurt. You’d think you could get any possible food somewhere in the five boroughs, but you’d be wrong. Not that I ate this yogurt all the time, or anything, but just knowing it isn’t available around here makes me crave it. Funny how that works.
Really interesting bits in a Judith Warner blog post on NYT:
…we have real worries about the state of children – and childhood itself – in our time. We know that our current lifestyle of 24/7 work, constant competition, chronic stress and compensatory consumerism is toxic. But we also know – or feel – that there’s not much we can do about it. We feel guilty about the world we’ve created for our kids, one of lots of work and not much free play. But we’re also wedded to that world, invested in it, utterly complicit with its values and demands.
And so we shift the focus of our fears away from big forces we feel we can’t do anything about (globalization, an increasingly merciless marketplace, a growing gap between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else, the general indignities of life in the beleaguered middle class). Instead, we focus on decisions we can control (whether or not we will “drug” our kids). Our minds shift away from the myriad ways we collude in making life toxic for our children, and we obsess instead on condemning other people for allegedly poisoning their children’s bodies.
The three of us in our office just gathered around this, reading the subtitles and translating for one another. Who knew we all had some expertise in Spanish (and fondness for Obama)?
If, in the middle of the night, you reach over to grab your son’s sippy cup — in response to his cries for “leche” — and the cup topples onto the floor… make sure the lid is on securely after you pick it up, before handing it to the child. Otherwise? You’ll have a soaking-wet crying kid on your hands. (Don’t even ask why this soft-hearted mother was letting her son sleep next to her.)
