Clarissa's Blog

As I read Castellanos Moya, I keep thinking how wonderful it is that, unlike literature in English, books written in Spanish are not castrated by fear of Twitter mobs, charges of cultural appropriation or political incorrectness, fretting over representation and identity, and the rest of the ridiculous garbage we keep seeing in the English-speaking world.

This truly phenomenal Salvadoran writer I recently discovered writes with such freedom and such evident joy that I can only hope that its fear of artistic freedom and of language is something this country never manages to export.

I decided to try a local poke bowl, and discovered that it compensates with aesthetics everything it loses to the Seattle poke bowls in terms of freshness, taste, price, and size. The Seattle poke is about 2,5 times bigger. But ours is definitely prettier. I’m not sure what one is supposed to do with all the lemons, though.

I’m having a self-care day: gym, office, Walgreens, Japanese restaurant for lunch, hairdresser. And I do things from my Korean beauty subscription box while I drive from one place to another.

It’s even worse than in St Louis, which is pretty bad:

The violence reached a peak early Sunday, when 30 people were shot in a three-hour span between midnight and 3 a.m., an average of one every five minutes or so. Eight of the shootings during that period had three or more victims. Over the weekend, 14 children were shot and two, both 17, died. The youngest victim was 11 and the oldest was 62. The shootings were concentrated on the west and south of the city, leaving the downtown area, where thousands attended the Lollapalooza music concert, largely unaffected.

I’m quoting this here because completely trivial, idiotic issues get a lot more coverage than this relentless carnage.

Amazon stocks Borodinsky bread. It’s super expensive but it’s real bread with a very short shelf- life, meaning that it’s fresh and real.

I can drive to the store to buy it but that’s an hour each way. It’s good to know there’s an alternative way of getting it.

So what do people do for sleeping arrangements when traveling with a toddler? Klara is tall for her age group, and she won’t fit into hotel-provided cribs any more. We tried putting her in a large hotel bed, but she rolls off and falls on the floor.

Has anybody found a product they have used for this purpose?

Please don’t suggest putting her in our bed between us because going to bed at 8 pm and book-ending a toddler in the dark and in silence for 13 hours isn’t our idea of fun. Plus, there’s also a daytime nap. Our parenting philosophy is that mommy and daddy are human beings with a life outside of parenthood.

A great article about Twitter. Everything I wanted to say about it but so much better. Finally, a talented journalist is writing for NYTimes.

I guess people enjoyed their adolescence a lot more than I did mine if they want to remain stuck in it.

The water at the splash pad turns off every 20 minutes to prevent it from going on when there are no people there. All you need to do is press a button and it goes back on. Many people don’t know this, however.

Today, when the water switched off for the first time, silence fell while people tried to figure out what happened. And in the silence, we heard one of the moms hiss at her kid, “Look what you did now! You broke the splash pad! It’s all broken now because of you!”

It’s amazing how many activities a two-year-old can devise with one single toy bucket.

Turns out the DNC calls at 8 am on weekends, too.

I hope it’s a sign of enthusiasm and not desperation.

Today I recovered from the surgery. It’s exactly 6 weeks, and the recovery was kind of instantaneous. I woke up and suddenly felt exactly like I did the day before I started having my health problems.

And then I ate a slice of pizza, not even because I wanted it but to compensate for Klara’s loud “what is this, mommy? What is everybody eating?” at the birthday party. So I had to take one for the cause of making immigrants more acceptable, which was not the best idea given the kind of surgery I had.

Still, I’m back and I feel normal. Normal is wonderful.