I don’t know how to take Klara for walks any more. She obviously won’t stay lying in the pram or sitting in the stroller for any amount of time because she needs to be on the move. But she doesn’t walk yet. In my family nobody walks before 14 – 15 months of age. I can’t let her crawl on the ground because it’s wet and cold. So we are stuck in the house, and I’m not liking that. 

Our classrooms don’t have windows and neither does my office. Still, I feel completely different when I have to teach in the basement as opposed to higher floors. The same course and the same material feel so much better and lighter when I know I’m not in the basement. 

Another gem from the paper: 

Polls are suggesting that voters are already souring on Donald Trump. 

Hey, is that the same polls that predicted Trump’s resounding loss at every stage of this election? ‘Cause they have announced that the voters are souring on Trump for a year and a half, yet we are hours away from his inauguration. 

The NY TIMES always has the worst timing. Don’t they realize that “The Earth in 2016 Hit Record Heat” is a title that would make a greater impression on people who haven’t just spent 10 minutes shoveling snow to get to the newspaper?

At the end of a day with a teething baby:

“Want to decorate walls with spaghetti? Great! Here is a whole pan. Go ahead, honey!”

I’m happy I didn’t make a sauce because I was at a point where I would have gladly given up a batch for house decoration.

I have a friend who always and only calls me from elevators. Since I can never hear anything until he reaches the floor he needs, I get a lot of time to wonder what is it that his subconscious associates me with and why.

Nothing but sexism can explain the fixation on Betsy DeVos when there are real evildoers among those cabinet picks. Vouchers, charters – who the ef cares when the damage they can do is non-existent compared to the grim reaper of Alabama, the Putin lap poodle, the mad dog creepo, the ACA Kevorkian, and the rest of them.

You know who’s dumb? A person who teaches a baby how much fun it is to press a big red button on a fire engine book. Because you know what she wants to do next? Press the button on your desktop again and again. And distracting a baby from something she has already set her mind on is pretty much impossible. 

The reason why I’m so stuck on the pink-ear protest is resentment. For two years I’ve tried to get out the story of what’s happening in Illinois. It got so bad that I started talking about it at the MLA. My elevator pitch is not “By the way, a second book of mine is coming out” but “Have you heard about Illinois’s Governor Rauner?” And you know what people respond every single time? “Oh wow, I had no idea! How come this isn’t a national story?” 

Yes, I’d like to know that as well.

So it drives me up a wall that the antics of rich dumb broads who are going crazy with boredom and putting cat ears on their empty heads are a huge national story while little kids with Down syndrome who can’t see a doctor get no coverage. The silly comment about “blood coming out of her whatever” was the story of the year while the suffering of real people, workers, elderly folks, kids is never covered. 

What do I need to do? Put a vulva on my head to get noticed with this story? I don’t want anything for myself. I’m getting off state insurance for good in a month. But I want this to be known for the people who can’t get out. 

It’s so obvious that even David Brooks has noticed it:

The sad part is that so many people treat Trump’s tweets as if they are arguments when in fact they are carnival. With their conniption fits, Trump’s responders feed into the dynamic he needs. They contribute to carnival culture.

A fart joke of a presidency, a mean, cruel joke of a cabinet, a joke of a protest, everything is so funny, ha ha. 

Well, as long as everybody is having fun.