Adventures in the Pointless Forest

Works in progress.

We realized in a sudden burst of insight that it was no coincidence that Jane's suddenly high-frequency utterance "noing" happened to co-occur awfully often with the sign for "more." Ohhh, noing! Why didn't you say so?

Please, sir, may I have some noing?

Since then she has added the ambiguous mayyyyybe-words "ha" (hat?), "ca" (cat?), "da" (dog?), and "duh" (duck?). She has no interest whatsoever in saying either "mama" or "papa," naturally. Too bourgeois. I think it's time to get her started on "schadenfreude." 

While I'm boring you with this sort of thing, I may as well report on her other recent enthusiasms:

• Black licorice and poblano chiles. (Separately.) Foods babies naturally crave! I wish she would stay this way, but I realize that her developmentally scheduled toddler pickiness will probably arrive any day now.
• A game: she drums on the table until we join in, then pauses, hands suspended in the air, to make us stop. Repeat, with boundless delight, until dinner has gone cold.
• Getting up to speed as a self-taught minimalist composer on the pitch pipe. There was a brief false start when she put the wrong end in her mouth and hummed at it, but the ability to make noise is a powerful lure and soon enough she figured it out. The world is about due for a new master of the six-note plastic tuner, and Jane is ready to fill that role. 

On the downside, she also went in for a three-day craze for sitting down in the middle of the floor and SCREAMING. Was it teething? No new teeth have yet appeared. Was it demons? Was it postminimalist artistic expression? Who knows!

A series of messages from Steve

1. 

2. HELLO

3. I AM A LOUISIANA PANCAKE BATFISH

4. I LIVE IN CAVES

5. WILL YOU BE MY FRIEND

6. I WANT SNORGLES

7. IT IS LONELY IN CAVES

8. I TRY TO MAKE FRIENDS

9. BUT I DON'T KNOW HOW

 

 

 

I said yes. (I suggested that it might consider wearing sunglasses, though.)

Animation: a plea

I really want a tiny little, sleek, super high res screen that I could slip a micro SD card into, so that I could have a magic locket of pictures like this:

Please, someone, make this for me. Please!

I know this makes me a giant dork, but it would be great. Imagine a screen like the newest iPhones, all pixel-dense and shiny. The pictures would come out about about an inch and a half across and be like something out of Harry Potter. I want this so intensely. Help meeeee.

More!

This is a good illustration of one of the many faces of death and the abyss that can appear in those late night moments described in my last post:

Fortunately I seem to be over it for now. Sleep and I are back in one another's good graces and I am glad of it.

Lately and unrelatedly, Jane has developed a very decided attachment to the sign for "more." In her very small ideolect it signifies something along the general lines of "I feel a lack." This is not really particularly more communicative than having no vocabulary at all, but she seems to feel that it adds value.

Sometimes she will look very pointedly at your electronic device or coffee or other unsuitable thing and sign "more more more more more." Then comes a pause to see if you are too dense to have gotten the point, apparently so, more more more more more, good grief, no one can be as stupid as you act, surely, more more more, you get it? more. more? more more more, oh fuck it, there's no getting through to these people, I'll just grab it.

Sometimes she will amble up to you and do a little offhand "more," with a shrug: whatcha got for me? Anything? Just checkin'. No? I'll be on my way, then, ma'am.

Occasionally, teething, she will sob BUH HUH HUH HUH HUH HUH more? BUH HUH HUH. It lends the whole scene a very touching pathos.

There is something to be said for having a such a broadly expressive "more." No need to worry about fine gradations of desire, or about phrasing for politeness. Jane-more would be a fine comment for those occasions when I ask my students a question about something near the end of their assigned reading, for example, and they all find something very interesting to look at that is not me. Or when I try FOUR TIMES to find a way through the hydralike earthquake-retrofitting construction to my lunch appointment, the intended start of which is slipping further and further into the past. Or when the family of six walking in front of me begins to move more... and more... slowly... and creaks... to... a dead... halt.

But as I am a grown woman who can both hear and speak, instead of baby-signing I may acquire an air horn. MORE!

Thoughts at four a.m.

[In the darkness: three thousand half-baked but heartfelt anxieties about the future, my general competence, the rushing onward of time, etc.]

GO BACK TO SLEEP

[Fruitlessly reiterated frets]

THAT ISN'T HELPING

You should write more! Think better! Time's a-wasting! The baby is getting older ALL THE TIME and what are you doing about it? Death, the abyss.

What is wrong with you? Other people are fully capable of performing the simple task that is sleeping through the night. The baby can sleep through the night. She's sleeping perfectly right this minute. Why can't you? 

You know, every minute you waste being uselessly awake right now is another minute LOST FOREVER when you might have been sleeping uninterrupted. 

If you're going to go so far as to get out of bed and type things, why aren't you getting a start on the work you have to do tomorrow?

Shut up.

You'll be sorry.

NNNNG.

No! I CAN SLEEP. You aren't the boss of me, ...me. So there! (Wish me luck.)

Postscript: That worked surprisingly well. I went back to bed at last and slept in a peaceful, orderly fashion (I hate disorderly sleeping, don't you?) until the baby woke us, around seven.

And now here that it is daytime, I would like to note that there is nothing in particular to be anxious about at all. I mean, yes, there is always good old death to worry about, and I have always been the sort of person to lie awake contemplating my own oblivion, but otherwise I am actually unusually on top of things all around and even have clean clothes to wear. I wonder what chemical my body is dumping into my bloodstream at that ungodly hour to make my eyes fly open and my mind race off in search of something, anything to get worked up about. It seems like a design flaw.

Helpful how-to.

Now that Easter is so well and thoroughly past that we've moved on to May Day, it's the perfect time to give you these useful instructions for a successful easter egg hunt.

Step one: Hide an egg, using all the deception and cunning you can muster.

Step two: Hunt the egg. Search high and low, overlooking not even the most obscure and unlikely spots.

Repeat with a ripe, juicy lemon. Don't let it get away! Are you prepared for a high-speed chase?

 

Conclude with a dry, unappealing leaf.

There! A flawless victory.

Try this at home, for Bastille Day, perhaps.