The Allergy Sufferer's conundrum
To open the windows to let the fresh air in, or to close them to keep the pollen out.
I go in circles pondering that one.
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To open the windows to let the fresh air in, or to close them to keep the pollen out.
I go in circles pondering that one.
Dave left for California a week ago Sunday. He was gone for the entire week, which was a daunting prospect for me, being left alone with two children. Well, one kid is easy, the other one is Holly, who gets into everything everywhere all at once. I don't know how she does it. Multi-tasking is clearly an innate skill in this girl. My parents graciously agreed to come down and help out. They got here the day before Dave left. Thus started a week of pure joy and happiness for all involved: me, because I love hanging out with my parents; Holly because she adores her Pa-pa; Henry because he adores his Grammy; and finally Dave, because he got to leave. We spent the nice days at the park having picnics, and the rainy days we spent playing and taking advantage of nap-time by getting some sewing and knitting done. At the beginning of the week, after the kids went to bed at night, we capped the day off with a movie, by mid-week it was tv shows, until eventually we reached the point of utter exhaustion that led us to go to bed by nine. (I will say this, my memory improved on the days following my early bed-times. I have since gone back to forgetting everything. I have not learned my lesson.) It's been a bit glum around here since they left. Fortunately, we have exciting adventures on the horizon, namely a trip to Virginia for Easter, followed by a trip to Massachusetts the following weekend.
This afternoon Dave installed his first hive of bees. He's been having anxiety dreams about it. In one of them, he got the bees and they instantly died. Poor guy. Despite his anxiousness, he's is very proud to know be able to officially call himself a beekeeper. If you see him, make sure you say hi to Beekeeper Dave.
The weather here has been over-whelmingly gray, which greatly influences my desire to nap. I've been doing a lot of reading. I've temporarily thrown over the "Infinite Jest", partly because I feel the need to read something a bit less relentless, and partly because I want to have the satisfaction of finishing a book. Dave's parents give him a subscription to "American Scientist" every year for Christmas. I'm not sure how often he reads it (perhaps in part because they quickly get sequestered to my side of the bed), but surprisingly, I thoroughly enjoy it. There are book reviews in the back of each issue, and one of the books that recently caught my eye was "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks", so when I decided to take a break from, as my dad put it the other day, the "Long Joke", *har-har*, that's the book I downloaded. That sounds so sci-fi, "downloaded", and yet, there it is.
I read it in three days. I couldn't put it down. As a general rule, I'm terrible at writing book reviews. I feel as though my saying "I couldn't put it down," sums my feelings about it up rather nicely. The purpose of the book was to reveal the little known history of Henrietta Lacks, the African-American woman from whom HeLa cells originated, cells which have proven to be invaluable in the world of science and medicine. Almost every drug and medical treatment that's out there most likely owes it's existence to research done with HeLa cells, from polio vaccines to in vitro fertilization. In fact, when I first read the review in "American Scientist", I mentioned it to Dave and he said "Oh, yeah, HeLa cells. They're everywhere." The rub is that neither Henrietta Lacks or her family knew that a sample of her cells were taken from a cancerous tumor, much less cultured and eventually shipped off to research labs all over the world, making lots of people lots of money, seemingly everyone but the Lacks family. Ms. Lacks passed away in the '50's and her family didn't find out about the existence of the cells until the '70's. The author, Rebecca Skloot, does a truly amazing job of weaving science and the question of tissue/genetic rights around the family's story. You should go read Jad Abumrad's review of the book on amazon. It's far better than anything I could come up with. Also, you should go read the book. It really will blow your mind.
The book I'm currently reading is "Townie: a Memoir" by Andre Dubus III. To be frank, I'm not generally a fan of non-fiction, much less biographies, but between this book and "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks", I'm not sure I can say that with as much confidence anymore.