How did Putin explain to the people of Russia his connection to the offshore accounts in Panama?

He wanted to buy violins, he said. Violins for the people. Good, expensive violins. So his close friend opened the offshore account to buy violins. But the CIA doesn’t want the people of Russia to have access to good, high-quality violins, which is why it created this whole scandal.

Isn’t it kind of cool that he doesn’t even have to make the story sound not entirely insane?

Does anybody know why babies are particularly fussy and unhappy before going to bed at night? Why is falling asleep so much more difficult at this particular time?

Klara needs me to run – not to walk but actually run – for about 15-20 minutes while clutching her to my chest before she dozes off at 11 pm. But the rest of the times she falls asleep, she needs nothing of the kind.

Also, while I’m on baby news, Klara gouged her cheek with a fingernail (she hates mittens, socks and hats as much as I do) and left a big bleeding scratch mark. But I put some breast milk on the scratch and it healed, scabbed, and the scab fell off within 24 hours. It’s a miracle!

If you don’t understand the joke, do reread the archives of my blog from 2014.

Another weird thing at that OB-GYN’s was their insistent desire to know how I “identify religiously.” I do identify religiously but not at an OB-GYN’s office, so I gave the receptionist a weird look.

“It’s in case we need it for medical purposes,” she explained.

I just spent a year with a maternity center of a Catholic hospital, and they managed to pursue all kinds of medical purposes on me without inquiring about my religious identity.

It’s not that I mind these questions a whole lot but I am weirded out.

I’m in a crabby mood these days because I’m constantly battling a powerful need to give N instructions on how to take care of Klara. Because I’m such an expert, I’ve raised 63 babies to his zero. (This is sarcasm. Our baby experience is identical.) I’m fighting against the entire civilizational experience of women who first know better how to care for the baby and then spend a lifetime complaining how the baby’s father acts more like the baby’s sibling and how they are overwhelmed with responsibility and childcare work.

N is also valiantly struggling against the desire to wait for me to give him baby-caring instructions. He knows that if he doesn’t fight it, he’ll end up marginalized in his own family with a ruined sex life and a distant child. 

The good thing is that when we do defeat this pattern, Klara won’t have to experience it, think about it, or even know that it’s there. Once you solve a problem, it’s not inherited. And that’s very motivating.

Bernie’s campaign begged a group of woman – haters and homophobes to invite him to speak to them, and now Bernie is yes-butting their hatred of women and their homophobia to death.

After this, only the most fanatical will deny that he is very strictly a one-issue candidate. What’s even worse, Bernie referred to this freak of a Pope as “moral” because the clown blabbed something Bernie liked about “the economy.” The clown’s actions, of course, matter nothing now that he screeched out a few hypocritical phrases on the evils of greed while drowning in riches and kissing the ass of the world’s most evil billionaires.

Guess who will wear this to her first party! Just in case she grows up to be a jeans and T-shirt person, I have to sneak in the cutesy outfits while she still has no idea what is being done to her.

I want to thank everybody who gave me suggestions on how to go to the store or to the doctor’s with a baby. I’ve done both today, and it went extremely well. Klara slept like a baby that she is through the whole adventure. I even got to go to the supermarket and pick up a few things. It had to be a few things because almost nothing fit into the shopping cart once I stuck the car seat in there.

It seems like she enjoyed the outing a lot more than she enjoys staying at home. This is good news because even I, the biggest homebody of all the homebodiest homebodies, feel constrained by never being able to go anywhere at all for weeks.

The doctor’s assistant at the OB-GYN’s office said she was planning to do a Spanish major at my department and become a translator. So I conducted a small advising appointment on the spot.

I’m resigned to the idea that it’s impossible to keep students out of one’s private affairs – and even one’s private parts – in this small town. But students are not off the hook either. They should expect their professors showing up at their jobs and looking at them reproachfully.

I’ve been going to OB-GYNs in different countries and states for exactly 22 years, and today is the first time I was asked about “the lifetime number of sexual partners.” This is nothing but lurid curiosity since the information is of no practical use to anybody.