John & Belle Have A Blog

Halloween

The costume we ordered to make Violet a "candy-corn witch" won't get here quite in time for her to wear it to school Friday, so now we have paid for it and I have to sew one anyway. This seems sub-optimal. We are having a fun Halloween party, much of it taking place in our yard, as long as those poisonous caterpillers are really all dead. They seemed dead. John and I went on a revolting binge of killing them a few weeks back in an attempt to save a tree which was otherwise going to be an etch-a-sketch drawing in ten minutes. They were brilliant scarlet and black, and full of thick, green ichor. Later we learned they're poisonous. Reflecting on it, that's pretty much how nature tells you things are poisonous; look: I'm striped crimson and black with extra yellow bits! It's probably better we didn't know at the time, or we might not have been as ruthless. I should totally make this cake, though, right?

My mom is rolling her eyes, but this is way easier than some cakes I considered. You just twist the marshmallows into twisty triangles! That's all there is to it!

The Love

OK, Russell Arben Fox. You got a point there.

Belle, please, turn off the computer. Take your children to the park. Breath fresh Singaporean air. Look at the sky for a while. Then, when you come back in, tell John that you want him to change your password, and delete all your bookmarks to lame conservative websites as well. This is for your own good.

I really do go outside and stuff. For realz. I have a giant double stroller and I dress the girls up matching and then we go out to charm various aunties at such thrilling locations as Bukit Merah, and the Alexandra village hawker center. There's just selection bias, because you all see the evidence of my looking at lame conservative websites, but you never see all the paper crocodiles I cut out for Zoë yesterday or eat any of the kuehs I buy. (Mmmm, black sesame kueh.)

Even John is all "where's the love?" on our blog. "What is this, Atrios?" he asked yesterday*. Of course he's hard to please. Blah blah, stop posting about oral sex** and expired morphine floaters all the time, blah. So here's the love. The safe-for-work love.

Arthur Lee isn't in jail anymore! He can spread the Love!

Everybody, everybody loves the Homestarrunner! But what's Strong Bad up to? Why, he's checking his e-mail!

And I love mad Canadian Guy Maddin, the second gayest man in show business (Tom Cruise is #1, obvs). Careful, Tolzbad! Careful!

I love that my friend Sacha is coming to visit me, and maybe we'll go here?

And I love ambrosia. Not traditional ambrosia with mini marshmallows. No, this is nu-school, tropical ambrosia.

New Jack Ambrosia

1/2 small papaya, seeded, peeled and cut in cubes
1/2 canteloupe, likewise
2 oranges, cut into sections with pith and membranes removed
20 longan or 15 litchees, peeled and halved, seeds removed
1/4 c confectioners sugar
juice of four kalamansi limes (or 2 Persian limes)
1/4 c rosewater
1 c flaked coconut (not shredded)

directions: mix it up.

* N.B.: John actually likes Atrios plenty.
** To be fair, this may have been one of those "let us not talk of love" things.

V-E Day (That's Violet Extraction Day to You)

You probably won't be hearing much from us for a while...or at least, nothing from me for a while, as tomorrow we are going into the hospital for a scheduled surgical delivery of baby Violet Mai Holbo. Exciting stuff. I have to admit that the prospect of feeling, not pain, but the sensation of being "unzipped" sounds a bit creepy, but that's why a) they put up a screen so you don't see knives and b) they sedate you. Anyway, this has been the longest 8 months of my life and I am very excited to get a baby out of the whole deal. Everybody wish us all luck. I am ready to see some trailing clouds of glory.

The Personal is Political

Baby Violet (due May 14) has been head down for some time now. I can tell by the hiccups, which she gets all the time (Zoë was the same). These feel really funny: little, regular, interior jerks, as if I had swallowed a clock. I am reassured by them, though, because my scan technician/doctor told me that fetuses stop having hiccups when they go into distress. This doctor is a very funny guy, an amazing scanner. (The standard of medical care in Singapore is high, much better in some ways than in the states, because the doctors take more time with you.) He is an Indian Singaporean and worked for many years at some pioneering Scottish lab where many ultrasound advances were made, before coming back to Singapore. Round and jolly, with a charming accent. Strangely, he himself might have been aborted if the techniques he practices had been available in his mother's day: he was born at full term but weighed only 1 kilo, having failed to thrive for some reason.

Belle Victrix

Hooray! Today I got taken off of bed rest, which is even more boring than it sounds. Now I can get back to the real business of being pregnant, to wit, dancing around naked exulting like a full ear of corn, which I learned all about from D.H. Lawrence (in The Rainbow):

"What are you doing?" he said, gratingly. "You'll catch a cold."
And she lifted her hands and danced again, to annul him, the light glanced on her knees as she made her slow, fine movements down the far side of the room, across the firelight. He stood away near the door in blackness of shadow, watching, transfixed. And with slow, heavy movements, she swayed backwards and forwards, like a full ear of corn, pale in the dusky afternoon, threading before the firelight, dancing his non-existence, dancing herself to the Lord. to exultation.

John, meanwhile, is apparently meant to mope about feeling as if he's being burnt at the stake and generally rendered null and void by all this feminine cruicible of life stuff. Later, I think he gets to take solace in the world of artistic and intellectual creation. Thin gruel, though. I'm not totally clear on why he won't feel just the teensiest bit of proprietary pride in the whole situation, but according to old D.H., that's just the way of it. D.H. Lawrence really isn't that good a writer. I felt a certain lack in my literary education, never having read any, but having remedied it by reading The Rainbow last year I haven't felt any pressing need to go read any more. On the contrary, I thought now would be the time to read Cold Comfort Farm, having only seen the movie (one of the best ever). I guess I should read Lady Chatterly's Lover for form's sake, but God, I bet it's just cheesball extraordinaire. In all fairness, though, I have to grant that dancing around naked, exulting etc. is pretty good fun. I feel full of life-creating powers and generally ready to be exibited at the finale of the Eleusinian Mysteries if the grain supply should run low.

Holbo v. 2.0

Here's our daughter! We think she is named Violet Mai Holbo (but we're still allowed to change our minds about that.) As she is 4 inches tall, I call her Little My. Isn't modern technology astonishing?