This weekend was mostly about the house and kids. Well, I did read two interesting things. One was David Brooks’ review of Blink in the New York Times Book Review. The other was an article, “What Do Women Want?”, which seems to indicate that there might be a growing left-right consensus for more social programs to help women with kids.

Other than those moments with the brain, the rest of the weekend was spent nursing enormous guilt for wheeling my clueless young son in a little car into an operating room. With a big smile and a trusting disposition, he jumped up onto the table. He obeyed the nurse and breathed into a gas mask, until right before he went under, when he began to fight with the doctor. They had to restrain him for those last few moments of consciousness. They escorted me, sobbing, back into the waiting room where I managed to lose my wedding ring. Jonah is not so happy in his post-tonsil world, and I fear that he’ll never quite trust me again.

On Sunday, my niece was baptized, and we had a lovely lunch with family and friends.

Today, we took the kids for a quick excursion to a furniture outlet. It’s high time to be a grown up and buy some real furniture. Not IKEA pressed board shelves and not furniture that spent some time in a dumpster.

My former neighborhood in the city was home to many graying, German-Jewish ladies who came here many years ago to escape the Nazis. Dr. Ruth was the most famous of my neighbors. Sadly, they are passing away, and their daughters leave their old lamps and chairs out on the street. Now, these objects are in my livingroom. I imagine that at night, when we’re all asleep, the original owners of my things gather round in their chairs and play a nice game of Mahjong.

However, it is time to push the ghosts out. The chairs are falling apart, and the lamps wobble. We are beginning to recover from our financial fiasco, aka graduate school, and I think we can afford a new table or two.