Oral Hygiene, Writers' Block, and Big Shoes

Harry really likes to brush his teeth, which is good because he eats a lot, and they get dirty. The toothbrush he's using in these pictures used to be really cool-- it lit up for 3 minutes (or whatever the proper tooth brushing time is) with red flashing lights. But unfortunately, it's been loved to death and no longer lights. Harry doesn't seem to mind.

Notice that he is also modeling some fetching fire truck jammies from his Grandma Karen. Now if he would only sleep in the damn bed. Every night we ask him if that's where he wants to sleep, and every night he points at the crib and says "Shhhh," which is what he says when he's talking about sleep.

This sparkling prose might make you think that this blog is where I am experiencing my block, but no. This babble just flowed off my fingers, people, like freaking magic.

It's my friggin dissertation. The last damn chapter. I think the problem is that it is the last chapter. I mean, I don't want it to read like the catch-all chapter, you know? But the truth is, there are a lot of issues and a lot of documents that I have tossed in a pile and thought, "This is so cool-- it doesn't fit in with discourses of health and democracy, but I can talk about it later," or "Wow. This has nothing to do with eugenics, but it sure is fascinating." Well, just because something doesn't fit in chapter 3, and something else doesn't fit in chapter 2 doesn't mean that they fit together, you know?

I also just recently remembered that the working title of my work is "Abortion and the 'Good Mother': Blah, Blah, Blah" and I haven't really talked to much about abortion, which may be problematic. The good thing is that lots of the really cool stuff in my messy pile is about abortion, but not all of it, and the stuff that isn't, really isn't.

So, yeah. Also I want to talk about the Pill and about population control and about some of the hilarious pamphlets I found, especially the ones geared toward men and the ones about sex after childbirth, but you gotta draw the line somewhere, right?

That's my issue-- where should the lines go?

All the advice books about dissertating say that sometimes, you just have to write shit, and I remember getting this advice in undergrad writing classes, too. But that advice is a lot like "Sleep when the baby sleeps," in that it is much easier said than done, is really annoying to hear after awhile, and it doesn't get the laundry folded, so to speak.

How cute is Harry in Ben's shoes, by the way? He wore them all the way into his toy closet before he took the inevitable tumble and banged his head on the wall.