The Life of the Wife...

I've made a new discovery, for which I'm very grateful. Arthur has a new fun thing. He thinks it's the funniest thing ever when I lean over him and say, loudly and clearly, "The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain." He'll look up at me, his eyes will get very wide and he'll start to giggle. I can say "The rain in Spain..." for about five minutes without loss of amusement factor.

I can tell you that I'm being sure to ennunciate very carefully.

Yesterday, Mark made the Savoure girls cry when he shook their hands goodbye. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with my Wednesday mornings.

The Library is an OK place to go... except that Mark is convinced that if I take Arthur there too many times one of us will catch consumption. There are some times when I agree with him; the other day one of the patrons at their cafe sounded like she was going to cough her lung out.

I could go to Sweet Life... they've got nice pastries. But only so-so tea. At least they're not as loud (or expensive) as Cafe Zenon. Marche would be OK, but it's a bar; and I can't very well bring an infant into a bar, can I.

I've thought that maybe I should simply have the full moon days be days when I have my own tea salon and cocktail hour. With eurdite subjects like

• The use of griffin imagry from Babalon to England
• The alure of intelligent design
• Short presentations of music and poetry
• Why can't downtown Eugene support tea salons?

Hmmm. It's tempting. And I suppose it would motivate me to clean the house a bit more.

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In an only slightly different direction, I was reviewing the pictures I've taken to my various visits to the MET and I've noticed something. As I looked at the pictures, I had a sense of pleasure that seemed, well, a little odd. I mean, sure, it's nice to see pictures of old artefacts and dead people's jewelry and tombstones; and Mark would chime in at this point that having pictures is a whole lot nicer than cluttering up our house with acheological knick-knacks. But I felt a little like a safari hunter reviewing animals heads as I looked at my MET pictures for the hundredth time.

And, I'll admit it; I would like to wear the golden diadam of Hyksos Princess (Dynast 15 (ca. 1640-1540 BCE) Gold, carnelian, amethyst, lapis lazuli, sard, rock crystal, steatite, and faience) with the little ibex and gazelle heads and flowers. But what about the other stuff -- you can't wear an insense holder or a
hieroglyphic inscription or a statue.

And then I looked a little more closely; I relized that a lot of the art that I like in the MET has something to do with processionals and feasts. Even the Christian art; the expulsions and assumptions are movements from one place to another. Those insense holders and
funky bronze quadruped ritual items from Anatolia, the rhytons, the Proto-Elamite kneeling silver bull; they're all props for a grand entrance to a party. Even the sundials and clockworks measure the processions of the heavens.

Maybe "procession" as the ultimate expression in all art can be another cocktail hour topic.

Eugene to loose Savoure

Well, there goes the neighborhood.

Savoure, the Tea Shop of Suburban Tea Fags, is moving ten blocks from Broadway and Charnelton up to Willamette and 15th. But more importantly they won't be serving tea there!!!! This is a major bummer. With the closure of the tea salon, it will be harder for me to pretend that I'm not living in a town which is stuck somewhere between a Grateful Dead concert, a dormatory, and a rodeo.


Now I won't be able to push Arthur in the pram as part of my morning consitutional and tea. And when I teach him the proper, polite way to take tea and scones, I'm going to have to do the dishes afterwards.

OK... OK... I know... I'm going to have to teach Arthur how to do the dishes afterwards.

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In other news, since we've returned from Megan's, Mark's sister's, wedding, Muriel has been extra needy. Either that or it's gotten colder and she's more desperate for body heat.

Mark, Arthur and I were in New York for a week for the wedding. Megan's (and Morgan's) wedding went well. They got the ceremony they wanted, and it looked like everyone was having a fun time.

• Thursday, 9-15: We flew to NY; Arthur was the best baby on the plane.


• Friday, 9-16: Pre-wedding part at Uncle Matt and Aunt Joanie's house. We met many relatives, including the Zeffs from Florida.


• Saturday, 9-17: All-day wedding preparation and festivities at the Joseph Campbell Center for Symbolic Studies.


• Sunday, 9-18: We said good-bye to various out-of-state Dwyers.


• Monday, 9-19: Mark, Arthur, Mary and I go to the Rockafeller Estate for a house tour.


• Tuesday, 9-20: I ditched everyone and go to NYC; en route to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I got on the wrong train and ended up at 152nd Street, in Harlem. Once I got to the Met, I had a great time. If you had told me that I would be navigating the NY subway system ten years ago, I would have laughed. Mark and Arthur visited the newlyweds in New Paltz.


• Wednesday, 9-21: The return to Oregon. We nearly missed our connecting flight in Seattle and Arthur was only the second-best baby on the trip back home.
  

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OK. Everyone I've visited with in the last month has had one thing to say about this blog: "More Pictures of Arthur." I had kind of hoped that my writing would be interesting to some folks... but it looks like I'll just have to accept that infant photos will always trump personal essay. Who was it in Shakespeare in Love who said to "put a little dog in it"?

Doctor Stats

Here are the stats from Arthur's last doctor visit:

Date: August 15, 2005
Weight: 15 lb 0.08oz. This places Arthur over the 95% in weight for babies his age (nine weeks, at that time).
Body Length: 24.2 inches long.
Head circumference: 41 cm. I don't know why our doctor's office uses English measurments one moment and metric the next.

The doctor says that Aurthur is "in perfect health." ... And then proceded to look at us suspiciously, as if we had been feeding Arthur a pound of butter every week. Through a funnel.

Dr Jimmy: "And how do you know when he's had enough to nurse?"
Mark: "He lets us take the bottle away."

Arthur next got a series of shots. Which he hated.

In the three weeks since Arthur's visit, I think he's gained about two more pounds and Mark thinks he's gotten longer.

Mark has been back at work for about a month. When we're not walking around outside, Arthur's usually sleep or feeding.

I've discovered the Eugene Library's DVD collection, so Arthur and I have been watching The Avengers (wow, those plots are slow), Upstairs Downstairs (1905 soap opera), Star Trek: The Original Series (I've heard that a star ship captain has to be a paragon of virtue. I've never met a paragon before.) , and The Pirates of Penzance (Faithless woman, to betray me). Mark was especially horified that I got a hold of Cher's Farwell Concert (Do you believe in life after love?), and we both agreed that Troy was so terrible that not even the cool costumes and sets could help (Honor the gods, serve your city, and love your women).

Arthur seems to like the Star Trek red alert music and will go to sleep to it when we hum it.


We've also been listening to books on CD. This is helpful, because I'm realizing that I forget to speak to Arthur as I go about the house. Alice in Wonderland seems to be a hit, and I'm hoping that Arthur gets an English accent from it. When we're in the car, we listen to The da Vinci Code. Maybe Arthur will get an outrageous French accent from that.