Friends who read my blog who are also my friends on Facebook, I'm sorry for being a sometimes-scrupulous junkie. Not that it's a big deal to anyone else, but I'm always hopping on and off. It's probably not annoying to anyone unless you are trying to contact me in the laziest way possible. (J'accuse... myself.) But I just wanted to apologize in case you ever think it was something you said. It never will be; it's always me just wanting some peace and quiet.

I laugh every time I deactivate my account and FB asks for me to give a reason so that they can dissuade me from my drastic decision. Sometimes I select "I spend too much time on Facebook," to which they counter: "Did you know that you can limit the email updates that Facebook sends you?" Ms.Crabapplesays HAH! Like a FB junkie ever wastes time on email notifications! Then you would deprive yourself of the enjoyment of that little red flag. Surely only old people do that.

My reason for leaving Facebook, usually, is that "It is better for me to stare off into space and sing to myself like an Alzheimer's patient than to have other people's opinions and self-posturing constantly dripping into my brain and inciting me to self-doubt, envy, and scorn, even when I'm not on Facebook." I don't even have to move off the couch to spend my time more virtuously than that. I can literally watch an icicle melt for the same amount of time that I usually spend on Facebook, and I'm pretty sure it would be better for my soul. I might have a better chance of praying with the icicle or the Alzheimer's.

I do have enough really interesting friends that I miss the articles and pithy bon mots when I'm not plugged in.

Here's a list of more general interest than what I've eaten today:

Books I've read during my pregnancy so far
1. Lord of the Rings (started reading before conception, I think)
2. Middlemarch by George Elliot
3. The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith
4. Harriet Hume by Rebecca West
5. Ina May's Guide to Childbirth by Ina May Gaskin

I am hoping that this diet will be good for the baby.

Gosh, I feel like there was something else. I've tossed aside a few books that I just wasn't into currently (sorry Graham Greene [The Power and the Glory,] Shakespeare [Merchant of Venice,] and Goethe [The Sorrows of Young Werther,] maybe next time!) so maybe that's why this list feels incomplete. I've consistently been dipping into From Glory to Glory, selections from St. Gregory of Nyssa and I have started reading Notre Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo. There are things about it that just make you sigh with a teensy bit of exasperation but I think I will like it more as I get into it. If I stay off of Facebook then that will happen sooner. I know I can't skip anything because the one time I skipped some stuff at Waterloo in Les Miserables, I missed a very important plot point.

Oh, I did read the first five pages of my husband's essay on Hegel with which he hopes to win admission into a few philosophy departments (as well as a stipend? That can support a small family? Anybody?) He left me with sort of a cliffhanger, and I was actually really disappointed that there was no more to read. (Yes! There can be cliffhangers in essays on Hegel!) The whole experience made me happy because first of all, I thought the essay-into-writing-an-essay* was quite good, and well, isn't it always good when things are good? Second, I was happy because every wife wants her husband to be good at the thing he wants to do and is trying to support the family by doing, so I was proud of him. Third, I was happy because some wives want reassurance from time to time that they still can follow an exegesis of the Phenomenology of Spirit, so I was relieved and please that I understood it well enough to be able to offer criticism.

I wonder what it will be like if he does end up in a philosophy program. I'm sure I'll be be able to follow the plot with interest in the conversations we'll have around the dinner table with his colleagues, but I imagine that I'll suffer from severe and chronic treppenwitz, since I do not plan to keep up on the secondary literature on Hegel et al, and also because, thanks to this baby, I can already feel my brain turning into a six lb lump of fresh mozzarella.

*French pun which I could not resist