weapons of massdistraction

It’s been a day of firsts. First day of August. First break in this heatwave in quite a while. First real rain in ages. First time I took the little man to Intelligent Nutrients (for vegan cake, and tea for me). And the first eye exam for the little man. The good news - he was fantastic during the appointment, totally listened to the doc and followed her instructions, and it turns out he has 20/20 vision. The bad news? He was so disappointed. He really really wanted eyeglasses.

Unfortunately it’s still hot enough inside the house that the little man is camped out in our room (with its window a/c unit), crashing on his old toddler bed mattress. As he was drifting off tonight he asked “who took a bite out of that apple?” It took me a moment to get his meaning. I thought he might be talking in his sleep, but he was actually looking up at the top of my glowing powerbook. Nope, nothing wrong with his eyesight.

My last little man anecdote for now…after spending a night on his grandma’s sailboat the lad has decreed that, when we sell our current house, we should move into a houseboat. But we live in Minnesota. It gets cold in the winter. His solution? When it’s cold we can live in a treehouse. Another local yokel came up with a different idea…a riverboat condominium project, one that relocates to warmer climes over the winter. Weird.

Note: A number of folks have asked why I’m not blogging about Lebanon. That’s a tough one. This isn’t a political blog. While I feel very passionately about many issues, I also feel a sense of futility…combined with an inability to articulate my positions as well as I’d like. And today, after I spent a while catching up on some news coverage, I realized my jaw was aching from clenching my teeth. For now I’ll just point out a few of the folks who can articulate this complicated mess more clearly. Top of the list, Robert Fisk. And a great story in the NY Times, describing how far Lebanon had come in recent years, and showing just how much they’ve lost and how surreal this all is for them. And this, a tale of two friends - one from Tel Aviv and the other from Beirut. Lastly, the American University of Beirut Medical Center is running out of fuel for their generators. The most vulnerable will suffer.

Like one of the writers, who is also observing from a safe(r) distance, said “my own despair is more of the existential angst variety” but it is all so very overwhelming and disheartening.