terrifying responsibilities

Terrifying responsibility: Trimming the little one's littlest toe nail (it was also sort of falling back; scary) - surface before trimmage: 1.5 mm2; after trimmage: puny.

The word is out: she is precocious... in teething. Has started teething at the bright young age of three months and a few weeks. Ouch. The funny part is it's added a whole new dimension to her vocabulary: a whole set of oooh ooh ahh uuuuh uuuuuuuuumh. She's become very vocal. The not so funny part is it means a little fever, and some aches that keep her up and keep her howling, and there's not much we can do after we've done the homeopathic sugar pills (which she adores) and the frozen teething devices (which she adores less). So we're expanding: we've added car rides to our bag of teething tips, and in the mail we've got ... some natural iris root and an amber necklace on the way. I'm not kidding! Wait till you have a little one in pain and you'll fall for all kinds of crazy stuff :).

I'm writing a manual for work... to be published and all that serious stuff.
Does anyone beside me find this amusing and scary? I generally feel like they're putting a lot of faith in my abilities (good); but perhaps more faith than I have in my abilities (frightening).

Regarding Guantanamo detainees, Bush has said: "We're now in the process of working with countries to repatriate people, but there are some that - if put out on the streets - could create grave harm to American citizens and other citizens of the world." If the others were of no grave harm to citizens, why were they being detained, with no due process at that?

I'm also having a hard time swallowing the framing of the 3 Guantanamo suicides as an "act of warfare", or "a smart PR move" on the suicidees' part. It looks more like an act of desperation to me.

Finally this week is bringing a new challenge to my doorstep. In general I work 4 hours in the late afternoon/early evening, while P babysits the lil one. At times it's the best setup; at other times it feels like a rare form of torture to hear my crying baby while I'm "at work". This week though I get to experiment with a different setup: P's away at a conference, and the babysitter's AWOL. So I juggle.