I was silent for hours because of my tooth work. But then my voice came back and I finally spoke to Klara. And she was so happy! I sang her a silly song I came up with about her, and her little face lit up with joy. This is the only human being who doesn’t detest my singing. (For now. I know that this won’t last.)

At the dentist’s, people are reclining in dental chair, clutching phones to their stomachs. I’m clutching my phone, too, because without it I feel like an amputee.

I once dropped my phone between the bed and the headboard at night. And I couldn’t fall asleep because it was like my arm had been torn out and thrown under the bed. I had to get up and do weird acrobatic things in the middle of the night to get my phone. 

People can easily measure how much I’m enjoying their company by how often my phone makes an appearance in the conversation. 

I relied on the idea expressed by the great psychoanalyst of infancy Donald Winnicott that (to paraphrase) a wounded Mommy is better than no Mommy and went to fetch Klara straight from the dentist where I had 2 wisdom teeth extracted.

So now we are lying here, both unable to talk, toothless, and not good with solid foods. 

For my sins, the workers at the day care are called Jennifer, Jenni, Jessica, Jessica and Jackie. The chance of me remembering who is who are negligible. I stare at photos with names immediately before going in and. . . nothing. It’s not working. 

These are great workers, I like all of them, but I can’t do all the Js. 

Sadly, the BLM movement has been hijacked by self-promoting idiots and has degenerated into sheer ridiculousness. Once you start equating the murders of innocent unarmed teenagers with entirely legitimate police action against gun-brandishing child abusers like Korryn Gaines, you lose all legitimacy. And the same goes for the Milwaukee debacle. 

And I absolutely insist that the movement started out being about something else entirely and aiming to do some really important things. 

Anybody who wants to chirp that they knew from the start it wouldn’t work out, please go stuff yourself. I’m being sad here. And hey, people failed but at least they tried to do something. That’s better than just sitting there and crowing “I told you so.”

People, turn on the TVs now. Trump is making an appeal for African-American votes, and it’s the funniest thing in the world. We are collapsing over here. 

And once again im completely uninformed about everything. WTF is happening in Milwaukee? Why will Trump be speechifying about it? 

“Fluidity sweeps away the barriers to increasing stratification.” Who’s the idiot who came up with this clumsy phrase? That would be me.

Buy I’m back to working on my research, which makes me happy.

Klara’s new daycare sends daily reports about everything she did there, how much she ate and at what time, how long she slept and when, diaper changes, the toys she played with. It’s really helpful because if, for instance, her nap times get disrupted, I need to know about that.

If this seems too anal, remember that she is still a very small child. 

P.S. What’s really cute is that every day they explore a new concept in Spanish within the general theme that kids of all ages study this month. Right now, the theme is space travel. I don’t believe babies particularly need Spanish at this point but I like it that the daycare is organized meticulously. Small children don’t thrive amidst chaos.

Remember how Putin came to power? And made himself very popular and beloved by the electorate? And deflected every threat to his power? And got the people to love and support him in the midst of all sorts of failures? 

He has one primitive yet infallible trick called “radical Islamic terrorism.” Whenever there is a chance he won’t get what he wants, he stages a convenient act of terror, blames it on Scary Muslims, and presents himself as the country’s savior from said Scary Muslims.

First, he used this strategy to get everything he wanted domestically. These days, he doesn’t want anything else domestically because he has all he needs. Today, he wants something internationally. He wants the sanctions to be lifted and for the world to recognize that he has the right to do whatever he wants in FSU countries. (That’s for now. The moment he gets this concession, he’ll want more.) 

So the Scary Muslims Stratagem is trotted out again. France made it known that it’s almost ready to lift the sanctions, so France gets hammered by terror attacks where citizens of Russia have an active role.

And then the US made it known it’s ready to remove the sanctions. . . The Scary Muslims (who are not really Muslims) operation has already been tried on US soil. Remember Tsarnaevs? The operation didn’t bring any immediate results because the US wasn’t ready to roll over and play dead just yet. But as a trial run, it went swimmingly.

For those who read in Russian, here is a great article on the subject.