Reading etc.

I answered the Mommy Bloggers questionnaire. My answers are under Anne and for reasons I can’t understand they do not appear to have featured my responses first. I blame the Sarcastic Journalist who replied also and, rats, she is funny.

“I recollect nothing that passed this day, except Johnson’s quickness, who, when Dr. Beattie observed, as something remarkable which had happened to him, that he had chanced to see both No. 1, and No. 1000, of the hackney-coaches, the first and the last; ‘Why, Sir, (said Johnson,) there is an equal chance for one’s seeing those two numbers as any other two.’”  From Boswell’s Life of Johnson

Not a particularly relevant quote but I’ve been waiting to use it for a long time.  Humour me. Yesterday I had the 50,000^th visitor to my blog since, just over two years ago,  Locotes very decently explained to me how to install the site meter thingy.  If memory serves me, he entitled his mail “Advice for a raving egomaniac”.

No smirking please, 50,000 may not be a lot of visitors for some of you lot but I am delighted with myself.  It confirms my growing suspicion that not absolutely everyone reading my blog has been forced to do so by me.  I have a wide circle of acquaintance and many relations but I think 50,000, even allowing for repeat visits (and, obviously, my constant checking for comments), covers more than those.  Of course, there are all the people who are looking for waffles who end up here.  Sorry about that people.  I imagine that the person from Tokyo looking for baby Dior probably didn’t stay long either.  A lot of people looking for information on “suicidal bunnies” seem to be directed here. If you’re here for suicidal bunnies, I appreciate your difficulty, I couldn’t find anything on Amazon either. I suggest you may wish to email Hodder and complain.  Or you could stay here.  It’s delightful, 50,000 visitors can’t be wrong.

While we’re looking at user stats, can I say what a kick I get out of the world map that the site meter people give you and I see little dots all over the globe reading my blog (or looking for waffle recipes, as appropriate)?  I love the fact that someone from Anchorage used to regularly read this blog.  Please come back lurker from Anchorage, and don’t be unnerved that I know you are there, this is all my visit counter tells me; I cannot track you down and send you scary things in the post

So thank you gentle readers, for reading, it is great to know you are out there. And thank you kind commenters for commenting, it is lovely to get comments.  Any of the rest of you like to delurk?  I’d like that and, as you know, I presume, it’s all about me, me, me the raving egomaniac.

We’re still working our way through series 2 of the Sopranos.  Uncle Junior’s doctor shows up.

Me:  God, that doctor looks really familiar, was he in something else?

Him: Yeah, he looks familiar to me too, I can’t think where I know him from.

Me: The hair…

Him: And that patrician thing. Hang on, what’s his name?  George Bush’s opponent?

Me:  Oh yes, the swift boat veterans for truth guy.

Him:  Wait, wait.

Me:  I know it, I know it.

In unison: John Kerry.

“You have to think beyond it, otherwise it will eat you up inside.  Having got over the initial shock, you have to see beyond it.  Good things can happen.”

Please guess whether the woman quoted had

a)     Lost a close relative

b)     Lost a limb

c)     Lost a wedding dress when a “bridal shop” closed down.

You guessed it.  The man acting for the owner of the shop is quoted as saying “In my 30 years as a solicitor, this is one of the mst vitriolic and emotional meetings [the creditors’ meeting] I have ever been at.  For the last hour and a half, she [the owner] has endeavoured to answer all of the questions she has been asked.  She has received a number of abusive phone calls and quasi death-threats”.  No, I don’t know what a “quasi death threat” is either but I think that we can take it that the brides are annoyed.  I suspect that her solicitor didn’t do her any favours by telling the assembled multitude, however reasonably, that “customers needed to realise it was ‘only a wedding dress’ and wasn’t the worst thing in the world”.  Read more here.  Go on, you know you want to.

Weird

As I am sure you know, adoptive mothers can breastfeed. Oh yes. Everyone knows that. I pointed this out to a friend of mine whom Michael was nuzzling hopefully:

Her: I don’t think that will work, young man.
Me: Oh yes it will, if you’re willing to try.
Her: No, I really don’t think so.
Me: Haven’t you ever heard of adoptive breastfeeding?
Her: WHAT? NO.
Me: It’s true, ask anyone.
Her: I wouldn’t know where to start.
Me: OK, maybe not anyone.

Weirder

When I was a baby, a friend of my mother’s who had worked in Africa announced to my grandmother that in Ethiopia the grandmothers helped out with the breastfeeding. I understand from my mother that my grandmother decided firmly against this course of action.

Weirdest

You may think that I am out there on the edge of weirdness with my knowledge of adoptive breastfeeding and such, but the BCT (Brussels Childbirth Trust) mag will always go one better for you. Let me quote from the article on breastfeeding: “Milk production is the result of stimulation of the nipple. This stimulation leads to the production of two hormones, oxytocin and prolactin in the pituitary which in turn prompt milk production. This appears to be possible for men, to a certain degree..”