My goal is to keep Klara outside 6-7 hours a day. We have a beautiful outside, and it would be a shame to waste it. Except for the week-long heat wave back in June, it’s working out. We go for a 1,5-2 hour walk in the morning, and for another one when N gets home from work. And from 4 to 7 pm we stay on the verandah.

I don’t care when Klara learns to read, write, speak languages, etc. What I do care is that she’s outside and active as much as possible. This is why she has a bulky pram and not a stroller: the pram allows her to kick her legs and wave her arms as much as she wants. It doesn’t constrain the kind of movement she’s capable of. 

Today, we were in the Gardens for four hours, and now we are out for our evening walk.

The local police are understandably very tense. A neighborhood patrol officer  (not the one I wrote about yesterday) put his hand on his gun and held it there as I passed him with the pram. It’s good he’s not into profiling but it’s bad he’s so jumpy.

As an immigrant, one always encounters things that are confusing, no matter how well one speaks the language. Today at the daycare, for instance, the director told me that kids were about to eat goldfish for their 11 am snack. 

I knew that it wasn’t possible that kids would be snacking on actual goldfish, of course, but I had no idea what the director meant.

When the snack was served, I realized Goldfish is a brand of tiny fish-shaped crackers that children ate from paper napkins.

There is always something like this, especially in what concerns childhood experiences. I didn’t grow up around here, so goldfish crackers and Co mean nothing to me. I only discovered what Play-Doh is thanks to my niece Klubnikis  (and it’s such an amazing thing!). Maybe I should buy the Goldfish crackers. 

We have an officer shot in St Louis* today, too. He stopped a driver for speeding and as he was going back to his vehicle, the driver got out and shot him three times in the back. 

The officer is alive but in a critical condition. The shooter tried to flee but has been apprehended.

* It happened in a wealthy suburb of St Louis and not in downtown St Louis. 

One option I never considered is placing Klara in an at-home arrangement of the kind where a woman looks after several kids in her house. I’m not condemning the people who do use this form of care in any way but it’s something that is not for me.

The people who can work inside their homes and still act as professionals in a job are extremely rare. Going from the home persona to the job persona while staying in the same place, the same clothes, the same everything is extraordinarily hard. I know I can’t do it. If your job consists of reaching out to the world (through phone calls, Skype, etc), that might help. Otherwise, I don’t see it for anybody but people who compartmentalize to a degree not normally encountered among humans.

Some people might actually prefer a carer who positions herself not as an employee providing services but as an acquaintance providing help but for me that’s uncomfortable. It doesn’t feel honest because I don’t pay friends. And if I do pay for work done or get paid, our relationship has mutated to something other than friendship. 

Of course, I will find a liquid / solid dilemma in everything, including day care choice. Here it is:

Day care #1 is the solid type. Employees have been there for 14, 15, 16 years. Kids who go there are from families that have lived here for at least a couple of generations. The activities tend more towards “let’s learn about the history of St. Louis” than towards “and now let’s talk about the history of Nepal.” The same formula and diapers are provided for everybody. Parents receive hand-written reports. Parents enter the facilities using a punch-in code. Kids rarely go outside because the day care is located by the highway in a treeless space. The environment is homey, and the teachers are relaxed.

Day care #2 is the liquid type. Employees don’t stay for longer than a couple of years. There are more activities about Nepal than about St. Louis. Parents are asked to bring their own formula and diapers for infants because everybody is different and needs to be accommodated. Parents receive reports by email. Parents enter the facilities using a palm print. Kids go outside a lot and tend to their own herb gardens and vegetable patches. There is a cabbage-growing contest for pre-schoolers. There is organic milk and yoga lessons. The environment is more professional, and the teachers don’t lounge.

Hmm, solid or liquid? What will I choose?

P.S. The food is equally atrocious in both places.

I’m guessing that American police officers don’t have to pass yearly fitness tests. Is the high number of police shootings due, at least in part, to the police being too fat to do anything other than whip out a gun and shoot? 

Our neighborhood police is a very nice fellow. Smiley, polite, always cheerful. But he’s lucky to work in such a quiet, sleepy neighborhood. The man can’t walk up a tiny little hill I have next to my house without panting, stopping, and getting very red in the face. I don’t even want to imagine him facing the need to pursue or subdue a criminal.

The act of terror in Dallas is provoking such intense bouts of self-pity from people who weren’t there and are not in any danger that I shudder in vicarious shame as I scroll down my blog roll. It’s quite disgusting that people would use somebody else’s tragedy to feel all tragic and important.

I decided to reread Sophie Hannah’s mystery novels about miserable motherhood because I’m tired and the novels make me feel pleasantly superior. Whenever I have a free moment, I grab my Kindle, open it and read a few pages of these mysteries set in rural England. 

Imagine my shock when the first two lines I read in one of these sessions said, “Arabs reacted with dismay to the creation of the Jewish state.” 

“Sophie Hannah has gone entirely to the dogs!” I began to rant. “Why does she have to bring Arabs into it? It’s like people can’t write two lines without fretting about Arabs!”

After a 10-minute rant that Klara thoroughly enjoyed, I discovered that the book I was reading was actually Mandelbaum’s volume on foreign policy. 

Moral of the story: before labeling somebody an idiot, make sure you have the right idiot.

After the day care tour, I realized I made the wrong career choice. I would have been much happier working with small kids.