I like baby books, because they help make it so you (mostly) can’t remember all that goo. You just remember the goo-goo. “Baby’s First Year,” (Lydia Ricci, Random House, $19.95) a “milestone journal” that comes with its own nursery banner and stickers, is a lovely book. Compact, but not too compact. Precious, but not so precious that you’ll feel too intimidated to scribble in it. The pastel colors and backgrounds are unisex, and the book is accordion-pleated with space for photos, cards or whatever else you’d like to tuck in.

Now, on to something completely unlike all those pastels: “Coraline.” (Written by Neil Gaiman, with illustrations by Dave McKean.)

“Lunchtime, Coraline,” said the woman.
“Who are you?” asked Coraline.
“I’m your other mother,” said the woman. “Go and tell your other father that lunch is ready.”

That’s when my chills started. And the rats hadn’t even shown up yet to sing. The kids and I are looking forward to the movie coming out.

“Write Before Your Eyes” (by Lisa Williams Kline, Delacorte Press/Random House, $15.99) just came out. I knew I would love it the minute I read the opening quote, from “Half Magic,” by Edward Eager:

“If you have ever had magic powers descend on you suddenly out of the blue… You have to know just how much magic you have, and what the rules are for using it.”

Ain’t it the truth, Ruth.

Gracie Rawley picks up an old journal for a quarter at a yard sale. It has old, crackly pages, that are water-stained, with thin lines.

“Not that one! She mustn’t take that one!” a tiny old woman calls, as the woman’s son sells Gracie the journal anyway. Then what she writes in the book begins to come true — a kiss, a date, a Cheshire Cat… How is she going to deal with this one? Great for middle-school students.

Reviewed this evening:

“One should count each day a separate life.” — Lucius Annaeus Seneca, philosopher (BCE 3-65 CE)

I am not fond of propaganda. I am not fond of people telling me that I should hate and hate some more when you know all I want to do, even in my darkest, saddest moments, is LOVE and LOVE SOME MORE.

I want that love spread around. I want us out of Iraq. I want people to stop hurting each other, killing each other, with our words, bombs and guns. Those of you who are not in the United States, you will please remember that many of us are against America’s war against Iraq. When I first heard the news on Sept. 11th, 2001, my thoughts went in this order:

1) That can’t just have happened.
2) It couldn’t have been an attack, it was an accident. It was a freakish, hideous accident
3) It was an attack.
4) Now America will have to “get back” at someone. Now Bush and his cronies will want to lash out, bomb civilians, kill everyone they can.
5) No, they won’t.
6) They can’t.
7) They’ll learn from this. They’ll turn the other cheek.
8) No, they won’t.

So for the Oregonian, our “paper of record,” to include a hate-mongering DVD in the Sunday paper… this is just as horrible to me as knowing how German-Americans and Japanese-Americans were treated here in the U.S., during the Second World War.

You can tell me a lot of things, but you cannot tell me to hate.

Here is an extremely moving video that Portland, Oregon, radio host Opio Osokoni put together of the protest outside the Oregonian. Portland political activist Anne Trudeau and several others are interviewed. In the words of Portland blogger Terry Olson:

“Any doubt that the DVD Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West isn’t an endorsement of McCain should be dispelled by the fact that its newspaper distribution occurred primarily in swing voting states.”

…my friend just e-mailed me:

“Trust that your heart is in the right place, let your love of books and children guide you, and remember how important those adults were who inspired you when you were young. One day at a time….”

Always. And may you find something today that inspires and comforts you.

love,

wm

I loved me some Paul Newman. Slapshot, Cool Hand Luke, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Butch & Sundance — everything and anything the man was in I loved. I appreciated his charity work. I liked that he seemed like the kind of person who didn’t put up with any crap. I thought it was cool as hell that he was best friends with Robert Redford and raced cars and had a big family who he adored, through hard times and happy times.

But what I loved most was that the man loved his wife, Joanne Woodward. My thoughts are with you, and may Hockey God and I be even half as happy as you two were. Even half as happy as you two, we’ll be doing fine.

Turns out I love tropical fish. Turns out I have gone from being giddy in love with a fat Lab whose weight ranged between 85 and 110 pounds to being in love with a half-ounce Killer Dwarf Frog.

Today while my husband was distracted doing a search, destroy and clean-up mission on our son’s room (Toys Per Square Inch: Six) I went ahead and bought a 20-gallon fish tank to combine all the little aquatic beasts who are now housed in two separate puny little five-gallon tanks. I’m still waiting for the water to heat up, it’s taking hours. Then I can move ’em in. There is a mix of live and fake plants, a nice big rock, a plastic hamster and plastic pirates, small shiny rocks and marbles, a castle, a mermaid, a turtle and a frog. Uh, ceramic.

I may have to add some taller stuff and a fake ship and a plastic skull. I am nothing if not classy when it comes to decorating the tank.

(Vixen, I know. I know I know I know. It is not the 300-gallon salt water tank that belongs in the living room. But it will have to do.) (Also we have all these new guppies. Nine are left, plus the mom.) (Thank you, Funsize, for the tips.)

I’m going to leave the frog alone in his tank upstairs until the guppies get a little bigger. I anticipate many froggy backflips, cuz he’s a little anti-social, that boy. A week or two, then in he goes. Survival of the fittest, I’m sorry, and I’ll be cleaning just one tank a week. Michigan J. seems pretty terrified of the black-skirt tetras, so maybe they’ll keep him in line. You know, I still miss my dog. I miss him every day, several times. Sometimes more than several. And we’re still set on no more pups. I can’t take the heartbreak again. The fish are good because they’re entertaining, do not need to be walked, and don’t really care if the kids forget to feed them. I am not getting attached to them the way I did the dog, see? That is just a-OK with me.

Plus, they don’t do the puppy dog eyes. The frog tries but you know what — he’s a frog, not a dog. (I love you, dear dear Wacky Dog. No one will ever replace you in my heart.)

Yeah. And we gave one of the five-gallon tanks (along with heat, pump, fish net, food, and water conditioning drops) to our super-nice neighbors who live across the street. Their two-year-old needs a starter tank, doncha think?

Yeah, I thought so, too.

That’s right,

“I’d rather be blind, crippled and crazy/
somewhere pushing up daisies/
then to let you break my heart/
all over again…”

I’d rather be all that, rather than letting the damn Portland Winter Hawks break my damn heart again.

Would it kill them to score some goals?

The Vancouver Giants won against them tonight, five-nuthin’.

Mary: She says she thinks she could get well again, if children believed in fairies. Do you believe in fairies? Say quick that you believe.

— from “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial”

Thank you, James Rainey of the L.A. Times. Old-school journalism. That’s right. And thank God, because you’re not going to get a “tough” interview from Katie Couric. Here’s Rainey, on Couric’s interview with Palin:

“…(Palin) struggled to respond to Couric’s suggestion that the $700-billion bailout might be better funneled through middle-class families instead of Wall Street firms.

‘That’s why I say I, like every American I’m speaking with, we’re ill about this position that we have been put in . . .’ Palin began, before meandering off in fruitless pursuit of coherence.

But I’ll let the governor speak for herself:

‘ . . . where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the healthcare reform that is needed to help shore up our economy. Um, helping, oh — it’s got to be all about job creation too. Shoring up our economy, and putting it back on the right track. So healthcare reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions, and tax relief for Americans, and trade, we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, um, scary thing, but 1 in 5 jobs being created in the trade sector today. We’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All of those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.'”

(Wacky Mommy here: Say whu? As my grandfather would say, “Girl, that doesn’t make any damn sense.”) Back to the L.A. Times:

“That mind-bender prompted Couric to muse, almost charitably, on ‘The Early Show’ that Palin is ‘not always responsive when asked questions, and sometimes does slip back to her talking points.’

It didn’t go much better for Palin when she tried to clarify the mystery of what her state’s proximity to Russia has taught her about that nation. Anyone south of the Arctic Circle would have seen this question coming and had a ready answer. But seemingly not the governor.

‘We have trade missions back and forth,’ Palin told Couric. ‘We, we do, it’s very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America, where, where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to, to our state.'”

(Please, y’all. Vote. Get your friends to vote. Vote early. Vote often. And let’s start working on getting coherent in this country. wm)