Wikipedia

It's pretty safe to say that you can measure a person's level of fame by the amount of information in their Wikipedia entry. You're not truly important until your link on Wikipedia goes to your own page. If I were ever to have a published book, for example, I would get a Wikipedia page. This is not an assumption. It's a certainty. I'd create it.

Once when we were in college, my best friend edited the Wikipedia page of my high school to say "The school's most famous graduates are Jessica Stephens and Amy Duncan." We weren't famous. Wikipedia (or someone) took it down.

If you click on any links to Scott Disick's name on Wikipedia, it links you to the page for Kourtney Kardashian. Yeah, I wasn't 100% sure who he was either. He's Kourtney's baby daddy. That has to suck. Apparently he's on the reality show all the time, and he's some kind of...actually, I don't know what his job is...but all you get is a link to your girlfriend's page. You are Not Important, sir.

(And the reason I know that is because I was looking at information about Kim Kardashian's wedding, and then I clicked on links, and it was just a spiral, but you know that eventually all links lead you to the Philosophy page. Wikipedia is deep, yo.)

If I ever do have a Wikipedia page, I want to put something strange on there, like "Amy is an avid collector of miniature things." I'm not, but it would be a cool way to start a collection. I could keep a shelf of miniature things that people sent me based on the information on Wikipedia. It would probably include a variety of things, from miniature marshmallows to dollhouse furniture to tiny action figures. I would be thrilled if someone sent me a teacup pig. You know I've always wanted one. That could go on my page, too. "Wants a teacup pig."

Carl Sagan, Halloween, and Toddler Trickery

Today I thought I'd tell you about the title of my blog. It's a piece of a quote from Carl Sagan's Cosmos, the best TV series about the universe to exist, ever. Neil DeGrasse Tyson is going to be reviving Cosmos sometime in the near future and I AM SO EXCITED. But back to the title. The quote I have on the blog (look right) is one of my favorite Sagan quotes, and the one that gives me the title is: "Every cell is a triumph of natural selection, and we're made of trillions of cells--within us is a little universe." There's a kickass compilation of Sagan, Stephen Hawking, and other great scientists autotuned and set to music, called The Symphony of Science. Check it out. Anyway, Carl Sagan is highly respected in this house.

So if there's a universe in each of us, then the three of us in my little nuclear family are actually a multiverse, but whatever, it's cool. I'm listening to a dubstep remix of the Imperial March from Star Wars. That's unrelated.

OR IS IT? This is a perfect opportunity to transition into the fact that Calvin was an Ewok for Halloween:

And he made out like a bandit! We went with Jack and Sara and Zach, and it was a lot of fun if kind of cold. There was snow on the ground, which should never happen. He was good for most of it and then we came home and hung out with some of Brandon's work folks.

Finally, a point on the cognitive development of a 16-month-old: He tries to go down the stairs, and when I say "NO!" he picks something up off the ground like "What? Stairs? Never! I was just looking for this broken bubble wand here. Yep. That's it."

Sleepytime

In news of Calvin's sleep habits (which I'm sure concern all of you greatly), he's FINALLY, for the first time in his life, gotten to a point where he actually likes being rocked to sleep. This is good because have you met my child? He doesn't cuddle. Any moments of cuddling are relished by his affection-starved mother, who gets apoplectic over a three-second hug or a minute of stillness on her lap. And he buries his head in my shoulder, pulls up a blanket, and falls asleep on me! GLORIOUS.

The downside is the drool.

Oh my God, so much drool. It's not even just damp, it's damp and slightly sticky because he brushes his teeth now with this fruit-flavored Thomas the Tank Engine toothpaste (OK, it's Orajel, but it has Thomas on it and it's called "Tooty Fruity" which always makes me think of the IHOP Rooty Tooty Fresh 'n Fruity breakfast, which I've never actually ordered, but has the worst name of any menu item I can think of off the top of my head at this second and I truly believe IHOP made it up just to give their waitstaff the pleasure of seeing who'll actually order it by name because it sounds so utterly ridiculous.) Anyway it makes his drool smell like fake fruit, and as you know spit is not water, so I have this SPOT on my shoulder where he rests his face.

Also, he's not actually asleep, he's in his crib going "Eeee! EEEE!" and I don't know why. He was totally asleep, and then just lying there when I set him down, and he seemed like he was going to go right back to sleep, and now he's...chatting. ("Nananananana.") Also adorable. I'm not biased.

Since Brandon is at D&D tonight I feel the need to be productive. I do this sometimes; get the urge to clean things or do something so I feel slightly more awesome. I'm actually going to. Really. As soon as I finish writing this. Maybe. I'm bad to say I'm going to do things and then forget to do them, or have an excuse, or just...not do them. BUT I WILL. I will unload and reload the dishwasher! I will clean off the kitchen table! I will clean up the living room! I will find the back to the remote control! And then I will come upstairs and get rid of all the trash! And pick up the toys! And take laundry downstairs to wash but probably not start a load because it will be late by then! I don't think I have time for all this ambition.

If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home

We went to Raleigh last week and it was AWESOME. I gained five pounds. We stayed with Kim and Jessee most of the week, and got to meet their adorable baby Owen, and apart from the first night Calvin slept really well. He's cut a second molar, which I think was paining him, but it's through now. He also got to know Adelaide, their Weimaraner, which was good because he's a little hesitant about dogs. It was only when she barked or knocked him over that he freaked out, and when she was outside barking he actually laughed. He also took to the dog bed quite well.

We spent some time at the State Fair, which was AMAZING. I love the fair so much. Here is a list of the crap I ate:

-chocolate covered banana with peanuts
-cupcake shaped like a hamburger
-part of a Krispy Kreme bacon cheeseburger
-part of an elephant ear (the fried dough, not the animal part)
-cotton candy
-some of the chicken and fries I got for Calvin's dinner

I feel like there was more but maybe not. It was all so heavy. I wanted to get a Cheerwine slushy but I never did. Maybe next year. BECAUSE THIS IS HAPPENING NEXT YEAR TOO. We managed to find Calvin a HEALTHY snack! The guy at the chocolate covered strawberry and banana stand gave us a stick of strawberries sans chocolate, so Calvin had strawberries for a snack. He ate 4/5 of them, and threw one on the ground. BECAUSE HE IS A PUNK. And he believes that when you're done with food, you throw it on the ground.

My parents were there for the first couple of days. We took Calvin to Marbles Kids' Museum where they got to see firsthand how much he loves to splash and play in water. They babysat him for us one night and we went to see Moneyball, just the two of us. It was our first "date" in a LONG time. And it was really nice, just to go and sit in the movie theater, and not worry about the baby. We didn't even have to get him until the next morning. They kept him overnight. AWESOME.

But then we had to come back, and Brandon's back to work, and I'm back to trying to clean the house (which I consistently fail at, but it's looking better today than usual, although I am sucking at laundry). It's cold here, but the leaves are changing, and my child looks like a person instead of a baby, and we carved pumpkins on Sunday and I made one that looks like Elmo. So things keep moving along, like they do, toward some inevitable end.

Fall in Massachusetts

I know my last post was about North Carolina, but today I was in the mood to write about one of the few things I actually like about living in Massachusetts, which is fall. The weather cools off pretty quickly--although it's been warm for much longer than it seems it should have been, it's going to be in the low 60s all week--and there's apple and pumpkin picking, which you can't beat. I have a plan to go apple picking, get a good carving pumpkin, and eat cider doughnuts after we get back from Raleigh. There's a great farm in Northboro where we went strawberry picking back in May, and we'll probably head up that way just because I liked it a lot.

Fall is my favorite season. I have a tendency to get colds in fall rather than spring, but I don't even care! (Except when I give them to the baby. Which I have. I feel terrible about that.) It cools off, the leaves are GORGEOUS--and somehow, in New England the leaves seem so much more vibrant, and there are old farmhouses and cider mills and crazy rural stuff that go so well with the changing leaves--and I can start wearing sweaters again. I like wearing sweaters and jeans because I like how they cover up my flaws. I also like that in fall and winter, I'm only kind of pale, not ghastly. Pale in winter WORKS.

And I like buying winter clothes for Calvin. Fall is the time when winter clothes start appearing, so I get to go stock up on fleece pajamas and rain gear and long pants and sweatshirts and the like. He's got a rain jacket and a puffy winter coat now, and if I can find his damn tiger hat he'll be almost set. My only concern is snow boots. I haven't bought any yet, because I think they'll be $20 and I'm not sure how much use he'll get out of them. Of course, it's going to snow up here, but I'm still clinging to the hope that we'll be moving back to NC soon. I suppose it couldn't hurt. He can wear them even if it's not SNOWING, just cold, and it may snow some down south. It did last year.

There are a lot of things I don't like about living up here, mostly because it's so far away from home, but I like fall. I'm glad we're experiencing it again, at least one more time.

About North Carolina

Hey y'all. I miss North Carolina; were you aware? I've been thinking about all the things I miss and that I can't wait to have when we visit Raleigh in two and a half weeks. It's going to be amazing. We're going to hit up the NC State Fair, and eat lots of horrible food (both at and outside of the fair), and see our friends, and I get to drink Caribou Coffee and Cheerwine and Cottonwood Pumpkin Ale. I love October in North Carolina.

And I love all the other months, too, because the weather's not too cold in winter and the leaves are beautiful in the fall and the summer is so oppressively hot that you want to jump in a pool--you don't even want to sit inside all day in the air conditioning, because you know you should be in a pool--and in spring, the pollen is so thick that it coats your car and turns it this funky greenish-yellow and you have to wash it but it's cool because you do that outside, with the hose on the side of your house, and somehow the pollen exacerbates my allergies a little bit less than it does up here, and there's that weird sulfuric smell from the Bartlett pear trees but they look so pretty.

You know what I miss most about North Carolina, though? My family is there. My friends are there, all the ones who came out and helped us move just over a year ago. There are so many new babies for me to meet and hang out with and get to know. There are weird local things, like fish camps, that you have to live there to understand. There's the beach on one side and REAL mountains on the other. The beach has dunes and proper waves and soft sand and afternoon thunderstorms, and the mountains have the Nantahala River and hiking trails and campgrounds and scenic overlooks and waterfalls and Canyons, oh dear God I need to go eat at Canyons again before I die.

I love North Carolina because they do barbecue two ways, and then South Carolina has its own equally awesome way, and I can go visit someone I like and get a different kind of barbecue every time. I love it because people actually wave at you when you walk down the street, and you don't feel like you have to cover it up when you talk like a hick because no one makes fun of you for it. I love that you can buy Martha White cornbread mix, and that you can get proper biscuits and gravy, and when you order breakfast you can choose home fries or grits. Not that I ever choose grits. I don't actually like them. But my dad does.

I want my son to grow up a little slower, a little sweeter, because he lives in the South. But I also want him to know what's wrong with it, and not to be caught up in the backwards ideology that tends to overshadow everything that's so great about my state. I want him to learn to respect people, regardless of how they look or what they believe or who they love. I hope that I can raise a child who becomes a man who can help change the things that are wrong, or at least support that change, because I think that then North Carolina would be perfect.

Of course, we have to get back there first. But we're working on that.

Things We Lost In The Hurricane

1. Power
2. A modicum of sanity

...that's about it, actually.

So we've been without power for two days, which is boring. We cleaned. Calvin climbed up AND DOWN the stairs. We lit candles. We tried to sleep with the windows open and our neighbor's generator sounding like a weed eater all night. I woke up in the middle of the night convinced that the night light I had rigged for Calvin out of an LED headlamp and the shade from my reading lamp was going to catch on fire, even though it doesn't even get warm, and had to go check on it at 3:20AM. We woke up with the sun. Brandon went to work. Calvin and I hung out and cleaned his room and napped and went to lunch with Brandon at work and drove around.

I don't know when the power will come back on but it's amazing how much I miss internet and TV. Honestly, the thing I really miss is that I only listen to music on my computer, and I can't do that now.

Right now I'm hanging out at Molly's hotel room, which they got because their condo is a billion degrees with no a/c. Our house, fortunately, has lots of trees to shade it and is well enough ventilated that it's not thoroughly unpleasant, but there's wi-fi at the hotel so I can write. And check facebook. And my email. There's nothing of consequence in my email. Sigh.