So did you hear that Trump crashed in the polls after the last debate?

It seems that the “Bush lied about WMDs” jingle is not done ruining politicians. It lost John Kerry the campaign back in 2004, and now it’s destroying Trump.

Will people ever realize that, as true as it is, the statement is politically poisonous?

An African-American receptionist at the hospital gave me an appraising look and asked, “So what do we put down for your race? Other?”

“I’m white,” I said, feeling strange. I do look puffy and not my best but not enough for my race to become hard to determine. Or so I thought.

“Really?” the receptionist was incredulous. “Because you have an accent. Are you sure you are white and not Other?”

This was a profound philosophical question I was not prepared to answer.

Klara just got her first phone call.

“Hi Klara,” a gentlemen said when I picked up. “I have a flower delivery for you.”

In a lifetime of future phone calls, this is a good first one to get.

Whenever I turn away for two seconds, doctors push bags of oxycodone pills into my hands. Today, N went to pick up my prescriptions and alongside the innocent iron supplement I wanted, ended up with a pile of oxy pills.

I kept telling the doctors I wasn’t in pain but they don’t quit until they get this stuff to you. I could start a small side business pushing the stuff to addicts.

And then we wonder why addiction to the vile thing is skyrocketing.

You know what is difficult to get used to? Not to refer to myself or to the baby in the third person when talking to her. For instance, not to say “Mommy is going to feed Klara” but instead “I’m going to feed you.”

This is like a weird third-person mode that switches on completely out of nowhere. It’s very bizarre.

At the hospital, I was assigned a bracelet that says “father” and N was officially labeled “mother.” We are lucky nobody tried to pump him for milk.

We are being released from the hospital. This is fantastic because I’ve been growing desperate with people who want to poke me, talk to me, take my blood pressure, ask me questions, and palpate me literally every hour 24/7. I haven’t even looked at any election – related news in a whole day! I haven’t read a book in days! I forgot to play my farm game! I’m very ready to go home and feel like myself again.

This was a very medically observed pregnancy for obvious reasons, and I did so much research during the pregnancy / sabbatical, to a large extent, because I wanted to preserve my sense of self. My identity is that of a competent person who knows the answers, who’s in control.  I come into a classroom, and everybody falls silent and starts recording every word I say. I’m not used to being treated like just a body, and a problematic one at that, even when it’s done for the best of reasons.

This is not a complaint against doctors. Everybody has been amazing throughout the process. This is more about the difficulty that excessively cerebral people encounter when life reminds them that their bodies don’t consist just of an overworked brain.

Do let me know what interesting news and events I missed.

N’s company gives 2 weeks of paternity leave at half pay. My public university doesn’t recognize fathers at all. Apparently, they are considered immaterial to a baby’s life.

But I got a good maternity leave and a flower arrangement from work:

My bubeleh is incredibly smart, people. (I call her bubeleh which, with such a Russian – looking baby, does sound a bit bizarre.)

I had a lactation specialist visit me, and it turned out I wasn’t feeding bubeleh right. She was curling her tongue and using her gums, and that was making the whole thing more difficult. So the lactation specialist put her finger in bubeleh’s mouth to position her tongue correctly for the feeding. And it worked beautifully.

For the next feeding, the lactation specialist was not here, and I was struggling. So bubeleh grabbed my finger and sucked on it to position her tongue correctly for the feeding.

She’s 3 days old! And already she observed causality, replicated the experiment, and got the result she wanted. I’m 39 years old and a PhD, but I didn’t do any of these things.

Black scientists, he said, “come from lesser schools where they do not feel that they’re being pushed ahead in classes that are too fast for them,” he added. “I’m just not impressed by the fact that the University of Texas may have fewer [black students],” Scalia added. “Maybe it ought to have fewer. And maybe … when you take more, the number of blacks, really competent blacks admitted to lesser schools, turns out to be less. And I don’t think it stands to reason that it’s a good thing for the University of Texas to admit as many blacks as possible.”

Is that the fine legal mind we are all supposed to mourn? ‘Cause the kindest words I have for this case of verbal diarrhea are “rambling, incoherent, and inane.”