Love, Pain, Politics. The Usual.

Often I have forgotten the nobility of the First Noble Truth. Suffering catalyzes and cauterizes us. It does not always lead to a deepening of experience, but many a better human has looked back in rueful gratitude on her darkest hour. But that is abstraction.

Here is concretion: If there were no frustration or dissatisfaction, the baby would never learn to crawl. Lacking any desire for things to be different, he would not feel a colassal urge to get from one place to the next.

The milestones are piling up fast and furious around our little apartment. Every physical one-- the trunk lifted off the ground; the three-point pushup; all these mini-steps leading to crawling--every milestone is accompanied by great complaining, caterwauling, and carrying on.

It's painful, I am surprised to find. Painful to be with a child learning to crawl.

Painful also to be with a child who has sprouted eight teeth in three months. But now the infant fairies have given us Motrin, which is an anti-inflammatory, which Tylenol was not.

Knowing I could relieve some of the baby's suffering, and judging that I should not do so, because it would involve way-too-much drugs--that hurts most of all. Is my reasoning sound? Am I harming my child? Or is he already, from the moment of his birth, an exceptionally fortunate child?

I don't know. I'm not not accustomed to having someone's life so completely in my hands. One day it will become less complete--he will have more power over himself--and become commonplace.

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Today we were walking through the chill air, baby riding on my front, and we stopped at an intersection. If not for my defensive pedestrian instincts, we would have been mowed down at the corner by a woman in a car bearing stickers that said, "SARAH/McCAIN" and "IT'S A CHILD NOT A CHOICE."

Not from these parts, obviously.

I don't think I can begin to accurately unfurl my political feelings here. And I don't want to. Suffice to say, I will be relieved when this election is over. I am under the impression that newsworthy events (other than the financial bailout) continue in the rest of the world. Today's Oregonian helpfully told me it would take over 65 years to count every one of the 700 billion dollars in the proposed bailout.

Better start counting, blessing upon blessing: I am alive. Baby is well. Found teething biscuits that delight and distract him. Have funds for food and teething biscuits. Took huge 3.5 hour nap today to compensate for a sleepless night. And so forth. 700 billion is perhaps a drop in the bucket, seen like that.