I want to be a connoisseur of bread. I love bread. All I know of bread, however, is strictly your basic white and wheat, boring American variety. But there are all kinds of other breads out there! Like…. rye? Don’t think I’ve ever had that. We ate sandwiches all last week on baguettes and it was TASTY. I look at books about bread at the bookstore and wish I could make all those cool grilled cheeses with focaccia. But who actually has focaccia just on hand? Maybe normal people who aren’t me do? I need my bread horizons expanded. Especially since I have a husband who eats entirely Italian.

I looked up bread on Wikipedia and learned the following:

“The inner, soft part of bread is referred to as the crumb, which is not to be confused with small bits of bread that often fall off, called crumbs. The latter term is in common use, while crumb is an esoteric word used mainly by culinary professionals.”

Well. If I want to be a cool culinary professional, I guess I should start using the right words. So - now that you know that little tidbit, think about what makes an ideal crust and crumb! Please share with me how you feel about bread. I would like to know your favorite kind of specialty bread (not your basic white or wheat), how you like to eat it, if you make it or buy it, etc.

There is currently a commercial on about cheese. I’m going to stop writing and watch it, seeing as how big blocks of cheese look yummy when I am thinking about bread.

Remember to tell me about the breads in your life!

One of my favorite things in the world: the sight, sound and smell (mostly smell) of freshly chopped peppers and onions as they hit the chicken and olive oil. So easy, so yummy, so healthy, so beautiful.

Ceej, that one is for you.

Trevor is sending me a surprise in the mail. He won’t tell me what it is, and I’m not allowed to snoop his email and find out. I’m so excited!

I will keep you posted. (Ha ha no pun intended.)

In other news, we were driving down Westheimer a while ago and I was pleasantly surprised to find red telephone booths on the corners! I thought it a fun touch to this sprawling gray city.

When we brought him home from the hospital versus today - and he’s even smaller inside that green outfit than he looks.

I think this is why moms have more babies. We miss their tiny newness. Plus that whole forgetting thing. True confession, I have already had days where I miss having a person inside of me. This is scary as I thought it would be at least a year before I even dared think that way! But the appearance of these thoughts doesn’t seem under my control. Now, today is not one of those days. And I shun these pinings as fast as they come (which has only been very few times), because all I need do is look back on some old blog posts or take a glance in the direction of my old friend Mr. Commode to be reminded of how much I do NOT like being pregnant. I think it is easy to feel like it must have been fun because of the fact that I know Max now, and so I think, aww, I carried him around inside of me all the time! And he kicked me! And I think it was all special. But when I didn’t know him yet, I wasn’t so inclined to feel obliging. I am interested to see if next time it will be easier for me to feel a bond with the baby before it is born, because I will have some perspective from this time around.

Anyway, enough talk about that, because it just came out and I didn’t even intend to write about anything except him growing. At all. But, what comes, comes, right? And that’s writing.

At least he looks less orange now!

I love this pacifier!!  It is kinda noisy, but the view is worth it! :)

It seems there’s going to be quite a lot of lucky-duck students at the Ivy Leagues next year!

Writing parallels my life. The way that I write is the way that I live. I never had patience with those teachers who tried to make me write multiple drafts. Rather, I would begin, and I would edit to perfection along the way, and when I wrote the last sentence I was done. If I didn’t know it was going to fit the whole, I didn’t write it yet. That sometimes made it hard to make any progress at all until I had the whole picture in mind, but once I did it just came. Sound like how I live? Yes.

Writing liberates my life. It helps me work things out. One time - well, over a period of time - I did something really stupid that snowballed into something very limiting. And it took me over and I let it define me. And while some friends and some family and the threat of more doctors and the passing of time got me physically fixed, and the passing of even more time got me mentally fixed, I wasn’t emotionally fixed until I wrote it all down and let it all go. Now I am free to define myself in different and happier ways. I also now realize how extremely grateful I am that we are past the age of relying on oral history. Being forced to keep all that detail in my head - because it’s worth not forgetting - would just do me in.

Writing preserves my life! Doing it every day keeps me sane and feeling connected. That is why I love my blog so much; when I don’t get to post I feel unsuccessful for the day. Writing posts steals me from my responsibilities sometimes, and that is not so good, but I also must write! The quality of my writing is low lately because so is my amount of available time, but my mind is still a wannabe great writer.

Writing focuses my life. I make progress when I write my goals, see the whole, and visually evaluate. If I didn’t do that I’d be like a constantly running headless chicken who goes in circles around the starting line.

And that is what writing is for me.

From the New York Times blog, the humor section:

“There was a time — in distant history to you and me, but to those who lived through that time very much a modern one — when, with nothing more than quill, parchment, gaslight and inkwell, Victorians, as they were called then, who thought themselves clever enough to take up the mighty yoke of language, crafted marvelous, dignified, soaring, melodic sentences that danced about the periphery of comprehension, through the very soul of the English language, down so many twists and turns and inlets and eddies that a reader, inundated by an onslaught of language as such, would be forced to compose himself and begin the tedious, but ultimately rewarding, process of returning to the start of such a sentence and piecing its meaning together word by word, clause by clause, until said reader felt satisfied and knowledgeable of the material written therein.

Happy those days are over, huh?”

I remembered this from my class and searched the internet looking for it to quote exactly, and was lucky enough to find it here, see page three.

“The problem with a thesis statement and the typical five-paragraph essay has less to do with its tedious structure than with its implicit message that writing should be the end product of thought and not the enactment of its process. Writing can be an act of discovery; an opportunity to say something you had never before thought of saying. The five-paragraph essay parades relentlessly to its conclusion; it begins with its conclusion. It is all about its conclusion because the thesis statement is a conclusion. When you write you think and thinking involves changing direction, reconsideration, wrestling with ideas. Write like a cubist paints— let your reader see all sides and aspects of your thoughts. Writing should end with more questions than answers.”

If the videos don’t work for you, it is probably because you have not yet upgraded to Flash Player 9. You can download it here.

Favorite is still the New York Times. I can’t believe I spent so many years before now relying on CNN.com for my news. They are so focused on the drama and the entertainment, on the negative and the lowest common denominator. News should exist to promote thought and change.

At my baby shower, everyone was discussing a book group they’d been to and someone asked me what was the last book I had read. When I was pregnant, mostly my mind just froze up for some reason (oh wait, the reason is probably because I was pregnant) whenever anybody asked me a question. This time was no exception. I shamefully answered that it was probably the seventh Harry Potter, an embarassing 3 1/2 months prior.

If I could do it again, I’d know what to say: I’m not big on the books lately. And I’m okay with that. I love to read; I’ve got a stack on our bookshelf long calling my name - but there is just sooooo much good stuff online to read, for free, that is current and applicable and important to know. And if my mind had been working when she’d asked me, it would have occurred to me that I do read, for hours every day. Just not on bound paper.

And some of the writers I come across, not on CNN, hit the issues right on the nail.

Fabulous fabulous fabulous. So glad somebody wrote this article.