Odds and Ends
The Odd:
Well, it’s not really “odd” - more interesting. When Google Books first hit the Internet, it seemed of limited usefulness. It helps if you’re thinking about buying a book, but beyond that it didn’t seem very helpful.
I discovered a few months later that it had some usefulness in academic translation work, particularly where passages that were originally in English were translated into (in my case) Japanese, and I had to find the original passage. Rather than trekking to the nearest academic library and hunting down the citation, Google Books made it possible - for books they have, at least - to just find a sentence or specialized term and look it up. The relevant quote almost always comes up this way.
But I’ve also discovered that it’s pretty helpful in finding stuff in books in general, particularly when that stuff isn’t indexed in the book itself. I’m trying to throw together a conference proposal, like, today, and I don’t really have time to immerse myself in the relevant literature; it’s got to be quick and dirty. At times like this, Google Books is actually very, very useful.
The End (involving TM toddler I):
Literally. MM’s always been a less-than-regular pooper; or, rather, she’s generally regular enough, but the time between poops is fairly substantial (several days). Awhile back she started loosening up a little, as it were, and I thought we might be out of the hard-and-absent poop woods, but this last week she went a full seven days without pooping.
I guess most people would consult a doctor at this point, but I’m really not anxious to go the medical route if we don’t have to, and it seemed like more of a pain issue than anything; she’d had a LOT of cheese and relatively little fluid (for her) this last week, and I think she’d just built up a nice big plug o’ poop that she didn’t want to know from. Understandably enough.
And there’s the ongoing confusion about the potty, which probably didn’t help.
And Mommy tends to radiate anxiety when things get a little off-kilter.
So, yesterday we decided to try a baby suppository - my very first experience with suppositories, to tell the truth. We got the glycerine liquid one (Babylax) and used that - and, you know, DAMN. They said on the box it would probably take 15 min. to an hour to work, but we, um, saw results in under three minutes. Said results involved a lot of distressed dancing around, but it did it’s job with a vengeance; we went through three diapers before the show was over. And, happily, the Dance of Distress only lasted as long as it took to get the poop plug out; everything after that was pretty normal.
Mommy’s declared an embargo on cheese for the week, though. And I’m pushing the fluids. I really don’t want to turn this into a vicious circle of not pooping, if I can at all avoid it.
