Honest Abe

Along with Hollywood and the rest of the world, I have come to embrace and be interested by our 16th President Abraham Lincoln. Now don’t get me wrong, he’s always been one of our most interesting presidents so it’s not like this is a new discovery. Only my interest in him has been newfound.


I wanted to know more when I saw a statue of him outside of a museum near my house. I knew he wrote the Emancipation Proclamation and worked on the 13th amendment. I had read a book a number of years ago about the manhunt for John Wilkes Booth after he assassinated President Lincoln. The book was mostly about the tracking of JWB after the event and not much about Lincoln himself. As far as person, I had no idea what he was like. Luckily someone else in one of my book clubs was equally intrigued by Abe.

During the summer months we try to read a fun book so I suggested “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” because it would be fun and maybe, just maybe, I’d learn something about Honest Abe. The book was quite clever and I won’t say much more than that about it because it would ruin the book. I did learn a few things about Abe that were later substantiated. He lost his mom at an early age, he didn’t have formal schooling and some other things (the obvious being that he was a vampire hunter – hehe).

It seemed as though the more I learned about him, the more I wanted to know. At the next book club the other Abe Lincoln fanatic and I decided to offer “Team of Rivals” as our next book. It didn’t happen for that month. As news of the movie “Lincoln” started to pervade our cultural awareness, we offered it up again as an option. This time we all agreed and I started to read this immense book.

I was daunted by the size of the book and thought I would dread reading it, but I quickly got through 200 pages in a few days. It took a bit to make additional progress as I was reading it around the holidays. But I kept trying to sneak in some time to get through a couple of pages. I really wanted to continue reading which is saying quite a lot about a tome!

I ended up seeing “Lincoln” the movie while reading the book which was very helpful because Daniel Day-Lewis so thoroughly embodies the 16th President. There are moments now when I think of Lincoln the president and all I see is Daniel Day-Lewis as Abe. I was touched by the movie and rushed to finish the book thereafter. It was quite amazing. I cried when I finished the book as I did with the movie. There were times while reading the book that I wished I had known or met Lincoln – he was just such a fascinating and intelligent man. I now understand why so many people, beside myself, are mesmerized by the Illinois lawyer who was born in a log cabin.

The Prince of Denmark

While I was on maternity leave, one of my students came to visit me and my daughter. In discussing what she was up to, she mentioned that she was taking a literature class. Of course this piqued my interest. I asked her what she was reading and what else was on the syllabus. She mentioned that she would have to read Hamlet and write a paper on it. I was hooked. I told her that I’d be glad to read her paper and help her out.


A few weeks later she took me up on my offer. She sent me a text asking me if she could send me a draft. I told her to send away as well as when it was due and what the assignment asked. She said she needed to write about what made Hamlet a complex character.

As I read her paper I was carried away into the world of the play. Although Hamlet is not my favorite Shakespeare play, I have read it enough to know it very well. I immediately recalled scenes and soliloquies as if I were reading the play right then. My student decided to propose that Hamlet goes crazy in the course of the play and that’s what makes him complex and vice versa. Regardless of my thoughts on that, I found her arguments very compelling.

I sent back my comments and grammar corrections along with specific lines and acts that she should look at and delve into. Mainly I told her to focus on building upon a comment she made about how Hamlet is a misogynist. She made a comment about Gertrude and brushed it off when it came to Ophelia. Additionally I told her to look at the scene where Hamlet stages a play and to use that as proof that he was conniving and methodical. She sketched that whole scene out and built on it tremendously. However I thought that if she spent more time on the paper and developed it further, she’d have an even greater case in proving he was crazy.

Her next draft came a few days later and I thought it was much improved. I would have given her an A minus for such a paper. I didn’t tell her that but I did see a lot of improvement from the first draft. I told her if she had more time to work on it, there were certain other things she could develop and flush out. Unfortunately she didn’t have more time.

She got a B+ from her teacher. She was happy-ish with the result. She thought it was a better paper based on my feedback and her changes. The reason she didn’t get a better grade was because her professor didn’t think that Hamlet was crazy. I told her that regardless of whether the professor believed it or not, she did an amazing job convincing the reader that he was a complex character who goes insane, which is the point of the paper. I thought she deserved better. I mentioned that grading is subjective and that one professor might give a paper a B+ where another teacher may give the same paper an A. It all depended on the luck of the drawer when it came to professors.

After that brief interlude with the Prince of Denmark, I wanted to revisit all my favorite Shakespeare plays. I haven’t done it yet but I always find something in them that I didn’t see before or an aspect that applies to contemporary life. I know the Bard is annoying or boring for most people but I find him to be chock full of great discussions points and amazing characters. Alas dear reader, I place the plays back on my shelf for the time being. Perhaps the next time I revisit Hamlet or Romeo or Julius Caesar, I will read them with my little munchkin.

The Doctor's Visit

My little munchkin had her 4 month checkup last week. It was an interesting visit from the get-go. I was almost finished removing her footed pajamas when she decided she needed to show me, and the doctor walking in, that she wanted to turn over. The doctor saw this action and commented that she was ‘a little show off.’

After turning her over and getting her to stay on her back, the pediatrician asked her how she was doing. She responded by showing the doctor her foot. The doctor commented on how it was an exciting foot and that it certainly provided a lot of entertainment for my daughter. From there the doctor asked her how she was feeling; my daughter promptly presented her fist. The doctor giggled and said “that is a lovely little hand”. 

After the niceties were done, the doctor proceeded to examine the internal organs around my baby’s stomach by pressing her tummy. My daughter responded to this by putting her hands behind her head and smiling at the doctor. The doctor said “This is my favorite stage – 4 and 6 months”. My daughter continued hamming it up with the doctor and the doctor said “I have a boyfriend for you.”

This prompted a long conversation because I suggested that the doctor must have parents who want her to set their kids up with matches.  She said that actually they didn’t do that but it would be a great service. Especially because she knows the kids until they are 18 and she knows the families too. She ultimately got to a point where she said you can tell a lot by a kid based on their parents. She said my daughter was not high maintenance and was very happy. She suggested that it’s because my husband and I aren’t ‘frequent fliers’ – meaning we don’t go to her ever two minutes about stuff. The doctor said that there were some parents that she saw every week. I could see that happening with some people based on their personalities but I hope I am never like that.

I admit that my daughter’s interaction with her pediatrician made me chuckle. She was so relaxed until she had to get her vaccinations.  Very quickly thereafter though, she calmed down. As we left the examination room, she smiled at the doctor again. She made me very proud. I hope that she continues to be such a friendly and unflappable little pumpkin.

The Pirate

Recently my older, but smaller, dog had to have a growth on her paw removed. The vet thought it might be cancerous because it was growing at an alarming rate. As usual I was distraught by the idea of having to put my dog under anesthesia because with an older dog it is a very risky thing to do. Luckily she came out of the surgery as if nothing really happened.


The only indication that she had anything wrong with her was that she was dressed in a bootie on her one paw. This was mostly to keep her paw dry but also to keep her from licking her wound. Instead of putting the Elizabethan collar around her head (which we call the lampshade), we thought the bootie would serve the same purpose with less adjustments on her part. And we were right in that thinking because she walked the whole way home from the vet’s office without any complaint.

When she got home though, she moaned a bit. I think the walk home might have been too aggressive. Hearing her in pain made my heart sink. After giving her pain medication though, she eased off into a deep, recovering sleep.

The day after her surgery, she woke up bright and fluffy and pounced off of her bed as though nothing had happened the previous day. As she walked on the hardwood floor, there was a distinctive ‘tick, tick, tick’ whenever her bootie hit the floor. She had a slight limp due to the difference in spacing between her paw and the bootie. As she went to get her water and had her breakfast, the ticking noise accompanied her. My husband said that she sounded like a peg-legged pirate. Hence he decided to call her ‘the pirate’. Once he called her that to her face, she stared at him as if she were, in fact, the most menacing of pirates.

As the week progressed, we took her bootie off but that didn’t stop my husband from calling her ‘peg-leg’ or ‘pirate’. We thought her scar could use some airing out so we had to put the lampshade on her head to keep her from attacking her paw. Lampshades have a weird way of maximizing dogs’ eyes. Most dogs’ eyes take up their whole sockets (which is what makes them so cute and adorable). However, when a pooch has to wear a collar, it’s as though their eyes take up their whole head. It makes you pity them more. Luckily she didn’t mind having her little halo; she deals with it as best as she can. (Whereas my other dog purposely walks into walls in order to try to get the lampshade off her head.)

A week after the surgery, she had her stitches removed. The biopsy results came back and happily the growth was not cancerous. She just had a proliferation of collagen and connective tissues. As of today, her paw has healed over and you couldn’t tell she had a growth there. Regardless of this incident, she will always be our little pirate. Even if she’s no longer limping, she still stares at us with her menacing mug as if she wants us to walk the plank.

Baked Goods

I was never good at chemistry. In fact it was my least favorite subject in high school. It was far too precise for my taste – measuring moles and ingredients just seemed so tedious to me. Hence, I don’t like to bake. I am far too free in my interpretations of recipes to be good at baking, which is why I LOVE bakeries and pastry purveyors. They make and provide for my insane sweet tooth much better than I ever could.


As far as cravings are concerned, I don’t recall too many while I was pregnant – some weird French delicacies were all I remember wanting. However once I gave birth I had an insane obsession with cookies but not just any cookies – cookies with walnuts in them. I still have no idea why I had this urge. I would go out on my walks with the baby in search of chocolate walnut cookies at a local bakery. Or I’d get Mexican Wedding cookies from another place (theirs had walnuts in them). I’d shovel the cookies into my gourd alone or accompanied with a glass of milk. I couldn’t get enough of them! It probably had something to do with the lack of sleep and the need to eat something quickly before the baby would wake up.

I thought about trying to bake them myself to curb my spending but I had other things to do –laundry, sleeping, walking the dogs. Now that I’m not as obsessed with them, I thought I’d give it another try. I bought all the ingredients and…they are sitting in my pantry unused. Maybe one day I will find the time to bake these darn walnut based cookies, but it isn’t happening anytime soon.