Seven Quick Takes, Feb. 13

I'm the last one on the boat, I know, but here it is: MrsDarwin does Seven Quick Takes. At least I'm still holding out on a Facebook account.

1. I've been pondering a subject that's close (if not dear) to every parent's heart: poop. Specifically, why does my daughter who is two weeks shy of her third birthday not show any signs of wanting to deposit in the toilet rather than her diaper? And what does it mean that the five-month-old has curds in his? Does this mean he's ready to digest solid food? And why isn't my college degree insurance against spending my days contemplating excrement?

2. Going to see Slumdog Millionaire with friends tonight, after two months of schedule negotiations as to when both couples had a free weekend and we could all get babysitting.

3. Why was it, that when I knew Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain
had a two-week limit and I couldn't renew it because it had a hold on it, I started reading it on the thirteenth day? I'd love to tell you all about it, but I only got a third of the way through it.

4. I'm not really a big fan of Valentine's Day not because it's a Hallmark holiday (though it is) but because it's the anniversary of an unhappy event in my life unconnected to any romantic relationship. Anyone else in the situation of having a holiday also be an unrelated sad occasion?

5. A few weeks ago I looked in the mirror and realized that I had suddenly acquired a chipped tooth, with no memory of the event itself. I don't know how or when it happened, but I find it a bit alarming that pieces of me can fall off without my knowledge.

6. I'm reading Socrates' Apology and realizing that it would make a great dramatic presentation. Some theatre company should work up a stage version -- cast a fine elder-stateman actor as Socrates, have the jury and Meletus onstage, and use the Apology as the script. I'd pay to see that.

7. Philip of Macedon would have been about the most important figure of antiquity -- if his son hadn't done everything he did on a larger scale, and at a younger age.