I Feel Bad For Smokers.

I really do. If I were a smoker, I would be incredibly upset that there are fewer and fewer places that I can smoke.

However, as someone who doesn't smoke, I am glad that I can breathe. I believe John Locke put it something like: "My right to swing my fist ends at my neighbor's nose." Well, my neighbors' rights to smoke on their porch should end at my right to not have to sleep with the air condition running simply because I can't sleep in second-hand smoke. It was literally 5 minutes after I opened the windows that my neighbors started smoking on their porch. And now I'm writing instead of going to bed so I can wait until the smoke dissipates in our apartment.

P.S. Insult to injury is that Thomas Jefferson, who wasn't as innovative as we give him credit for, stole the idea of "life, liberty, and property" from Locke, a British political philosopher. It would be interesting to read colonial history from a British textbook.

3 Days and 4 Hours

That's the age of the youngest child I have ever held in my life. Our friends Nate and Natalie just had a son, Eli Andrew, on Friday. We made them a meal and brought it over to them with no expectation of staying more than a minute. We were quickly invited in and handed Eli. We ended up staying an hour, holding Eli about a third of the time and playing with Abby, their 3 1/2 year old daughter, about a third of the time.

Top 5 Things I Didn't Expect About A Newborn:
5. He was incredibly strong. It was hard to pry his fingers apart or stretch his arm out.
4. He was much warmer than I expected. Not hot, but warmer than I expected.
3. His pinky toes curled in. I always looked at the slight curl inward of my pinky toes and thought it was related to wearing shoes or socks or something.
2. I was supposed to wake him up and keep him awake while holding him. I guess I always ne that newborns have horrible sleeping cycles and wake up the parents at horrible times, but I hadn't realized that this could be thwarted by trying to keep the child awake during the day. Makes sense. I failed.
1. His body was way more resiliant than I anticipated. My largest concern about holding a newborn (this was the first) is the His-neck-could-snap-and-fall-off idea. While his neck was fragile, he was more flexible and strong than, I guess, jellyfish-like.

Newborns are so much cooler now that I know their not jellyfish.