Shannon Phillips

Yikes, apparently it’s been two weeks since I’ve posted anything? In the meantime we had a lovely visit from Nanita and Marqueño. Davy is old enough now to enjoy attention from his grandparents, and it was really sweet to see him bonding with my mom and Mark. Robin was also thrilled, of course. Unfortunately it was rainy most of the time so we had a tough time getting out of the house. Instead we stayed in and did arts and crafts projects. Robin was especially proud of this fish that Nanita helped him make:

He also is inexplicably attached to a sock poppet that I made him out of one of Sam’s ratty old socks. It is in fact so ratty that I am not going to take a picture of it. I let Robin pick out two buttons for eyes and sewed them on the sock, then cut out a cardboard mouth and glued it in roughly the right place. I covered the cardboard with red construction paper to make it more attractive, and also sewed on some yarn hair. The yarn hair lasted a bit over 24 hours, and the mouth has also come out several times. The eyes are doing okay, but basically this toy looks like something I picked up out of the sewer and gave to my boy to play with. He finds it delightful. It’s especially gross when he brings it to the dinner table and tries to feed it.

Meanwhile of course we are saddened by the devastation in Japan. We’re not personally affected, but I have so much sympathy for those who have been. There are a lot of Californians now rushing to stock up on potassium iodide—I understand the impulse, but I think it’s not good to create global scarcity at a time when those in Japan may truly be in need. When I read about people here weeping because they can’t get any iodide pills I just have to shake my head. People are ridiculous.