Hack

Today was a Very Productive Day. Does anyone else notice a correlation between the cleanliness of their house and their productivity level? When my house is a disaster it's paralyzing. When it's spotless, I feel like I could move the earth.

No actual earth-moving happened today, although we did watch a bunch of guys out digging the street up. (Barak was entranced, so of course we had to stop and watch. I asked one of them if they minded the audience and he said, cheerily, "Nope! It'll make him want to go to college!") I did, however, go to the dry cleaner and pick up the tremendous amount of stuff we had there (and convey it home by way of the already-loaded double stroller, no mean feat), go to the grocery store and the fruit and vegetable store, get the last boxes of the kind of cereal my husband likes before the kosher grocery goes Pesachdik, go to the drugstore for diapers and diaper cream (waaaay too cold for the hike to Target), go to the bank, return all the horrifically overdue library books, and, um, get a haircut.

I didn't quite intend for that last one--I meant to take Barak for a haircut. But then I saw that the Assyrian haircutting place had a sign out for five-dollar haircuts, and it transpires that they have a "privacy room" for women who cover their hair. Barak had passed out in the stroller, so I went in and got a haircut with Iyyar in my lap. I had intended to lose a couple of inches, but then I looked at it and realized that there was plenty there to donate if I just cut it a little shorter. So I did. It's shoulder-length now, shorter than it's been since I was, um, five. I showed my husband and he was too shocked to say anything other than, "Wow. I'll have to get used to that." I think he was a little relieved when I put my hat back on.

Iyyar, he is being absurdly cute. Today I gave him alphabet noodles for the first time, and that went over fairly well. I found out today that he knows what is inside a yogurt container; I took the big tub of whole-milk Stonyfield out of the fridge and he went berserk, bouncing up and down in his high chair (I'd been feeding him corn) and screeching. As an aside, why does anyone pay money for baby food in jars? I did it with Barak because he was in daycare, but it is just so easy to take a ladleful of whatever you're eating and run it through the blender. I have a hand blender now, so I use that. He eats what we eat now, and it's just so much better--as well as orders of magnitude cheaper--than buying Things in Jars. I can buy a pound of frozen organic vegetables for the price of two little jars of organic baby food.

And do all babies have a tzitzit fetish? At least, do all babies with access to tzitzit have a tzitzit fetish? I came into the living room tonight to find my husband sitting on the floor reading a boo, Iyyar lying on the floor next to him with a mouthful of tzitzit and a totally blissed-out look on his face.

What was it Kirk said in the Tribbles episode? Well, there's no accounting for taste.