studies, surveys and similitudes

well, i meant to say "clones" instead of "similitudes" but i wanted something alliterative even though "similitudes" isn't quite the same as "clones". i think "similitude" is one of those words my cousin and i love to bash, like "supererogatory," a rarely-used english word that only seems to pop up in translations of arabic. i mean, i have NEVER heard the word "supererogatory" (it sounds dirty, doesn't it?) used for anything other than describing a certain type of muslim prayer. if you have, i'd love to know.

anyway, i digress. as usual. the point(s) i wanted to make have to do with a couple of articles i read this morning. this one talks about how the FDA has conducted "Scientific studies" on meat from cloned animals and concluded that it does not differ significantly from the meat we eat every day, so they do not feel it is necessary to place distinguishing labels on cloned meat in the grocery store. (i blogged about something similar back in june.) it also includes information on a "survey" that showed that 64 percent of people were "uncomfortable" with the thought of having that kind of meat on the shelves. and this one talks about a study that showed women who held their spouses' hands while being subjected to something stressful experienced less anxiety than when holding stranger's hands or no hands at all.

okay. i understand the benefits of having numbers to back you up when you're trying to make a point. especially because when you're writing an article, you can't just say, "It's obvious that most people with half a brain would not like to eat meat from an animal that wasn't produced the way animals are naturally produced," or, "Since it's common knowledge that people feel better with someone who loves them, and physical contact with that person feels good...". but something about it just seems silly, to fund a scientific study or survey for these kinds of things.

and i wish i could believe the FDA is as thorough and disinterested as possible when it comes to the impacts of its rulings. but i know the FDA's "recommended" levels of mercury intake are openly challenged by some (non-fringe) groups, and that is just one health issue. there is something beyond what a scientific study on the substance itself (the cloned meat) could possibly show - the something that causes so many people to recoil at the thought of consuming this meat. i don't think it's ignorance or fear of the unknown, but it's not scientific, so laugh at it if you want and don't use it in articles and journals (except in survey percentages, because the producers need to know if people will actually buy the stuff).

from the article: "FDA scientists said that by the time clones reached 6 to 18 months of age, they are virtually indistinguishable from conventionally bred animals."
"virtually indinstinguishable" is the kind of language that makes me shudder. what's in that space between "virtually" and "completely"? could it be the same thing that, a few paragraphs earlier, that causes "more deaths and deformed animals [among clones] than other reproductive technologies"? even if the meats are "virtually indistinguishable," are the risks worth it?

wow. for the first time in months (and since we're barely at nine months, we're talking a long time), musa just fell asleep while playing in his crib. i didn't do anything, nurse him or anything. i even had my back turned. all of a sudden i realized he was totally quiet, and i got up to check on him, and he was sort of keeled over with his head over his hands in a corner, like he had been sitting up and just kind of sank down and fell asleep. i moved him so he was lying down properly and his hair was all fuzzy from his position and i just wanted to eat him up. but i didn't. he seems so tiny sometimes, i can't believe he's a whole, real person. then sometimes i look at him and he's propping his chin and elbows up on the edge of the crib rail (granted, it's a stretch) and i can't believe how big he is. mashallah mashallah. as much as i love him, and it's sooooooo much, i love that Allah loves him even more... a line from little women (which, yes, i know because i read it a thousand times on the toilet) about God says He loves children "with a love stronger than that of any father, tenderer than that of any mother". i just want so much for him to grow to manhood safe and happy and healthy. i don't want him to know fear or pain until he can handle them with his own inner resources. these are my duaas... well some of them at least.

well have i fit enough topics into one blog post? i wanted to blog about no-fly lists too, and how ridiculous they are, but i should go take a shower while he is still sleeping...

here is a baby in a box!!!

more adventures in baby feeding

so musa woke up around 10 something, and i tried to feed him breakfast a couple of times, but he is just finally finishing it now (pureed pears and oatmeal) at 2:30 in the afternoon. but "finishing" is a misleading word, when every bite stays in his mouth for a good five minutes before he gets around to swallowing it - that is, if he hasn't scooped some of it out with the other spoon he is playing with, or oozed it out with some spit, or sneezed it out all over the high chair straps and his clothes. okay, one bite left...
it is in his mouth, but so is the long end of his play spoon (without which he won't even open his mouth in the first place so yes he has to have one). alhamdulillah! breakfast is finished!

websurfing...

...while nursing can take you strange places. while looking up recipes for welsh rabbit (yes, i was just eating breakfast), i found myself on this page in wikipedia, where i learned that "nemo" means "nobody" in latin. so why did pixar name its titular character "nobody" (in finding nemo)? isn't that a little strange? talk about crushing the little clowfish's self esteem, along with all the little kiddie fans who identify with him. "finding nobody." sheesh. i loved the movie, though...

we have another tooth!

as of last night. mashallah. MAN those things are sharp! they feel like little knife points sticking out of his gums.

musa is sniffly, and i feel like such an abusive parent when i try to clean out his nose. i literally have to use my arm to pin both of his hands down, immobilize his head with some other part of my body, and stick the aspirator up his nose as carefully as possible while he is screaming his head off and trying to move his head away. but oh, the feeling of success when i get that snot out, and the peace in my heart when i can no longer hear it bubbling in his sinuses with every breath!

i can completely understand why non-parents get bored with parents always talking about their kids. but i am so glad to know there are people out there who understand just how important this tiny, gross victory is... :)

we have a tooth!

well, just a tiny little hard point coming out of the gums, in the middle of his bottom jaw. i haven't been able to see it yet - he won't let me - but i first heard it about half an hour ago when i was giving him a drink of water from a glass, and heard the tiny click-click. apparently he liked the sound, coz he kept doing it :) and i could feel it with my fingertip, too. i wonder if he really knows?
i'm just SO glad. this whole teething thing has been so rough on him AND us. at least it's getting somewhere now alhamdulillah.
mashallah mashallah. pray for us. pray i can keep nursing through this, too...

cooking pans and books

anyone out there a big user of cast iron cookware? we are thinking of throwing out all our teflon (finally)... have been "thinking" about it a while, but i like eggs and omelettes a lot. once i tried to cook tofu in a stainless steel pan and it all got stuck.

so, on books. i never did write about updike's "terrorist". but it went on pretty much as it began. unless he meant it as a satire of depictions of muslim-americans, which is not the impression i got, the book's main character, the 18-year-old egyptian-irish, american-born-and-raised ahmad, is just completely unbelievable. i read some amazon.com reviews while i was reading the book, and some of what other readers said i agree with - that ahmad's speech is more like a middle-aged immigrant arab than an american teenager of any religious persuasion (but i guess all militant muslims talk like that? like, "'I of course do not hate all Americans. But the American way is the way of infidels. It is headed for a terrible doom.'" and that is when he is talking to a guidance counselor at his high school). and then there is the weirdo sheikh (who is the only other muslim this kid seems to have any exposure to? in new york?) - Shaikh Rashid, who has probably the most unbelievable line in the whole book - when he is tutoring ahmad on surah al-fil, with the first ayah, in describing the pronunciation of "as-haabil fil", he sais, "'S, h: two distinct sounds, not "sh." Pronounce them as in, oh, "asshole." Forgive me, that is the sole word in the devils' language that comes to mind."
first of all, is he learning to read it from "roman" arabic, that there would be some possibility of pronouncing saad and ha together as "sh"? and second of all - asshole??? yeah, i can see ANY shaikh, even the craziest, saying something like that in a lesson.
*sigh* - i haven't read any other updike books, but i can see in this book why he is seen as a great american novelist - he has a way of writing, of description of certain scenes and individuals, that paints a sort of larger picture in your mind of the culture and society the people stem from, the land and nation in which those places figure. in much of this book you can SEE new york, the high school, a few of the characters... but in his attempt at portraying even one shy, solitary, misled muslim american kid, he is just so way off it kills the book. it just doesn't work. i don't believe that this kid turned into a "radical muslim" the way this book claims, i don't believe that radical muslims in america act like this, i don't believe that ahmad would go and carry out a terrorist attack based on what his beliefs in the book are (that if he dies and goes to heaven, God will nobt be so terribly alone anymore???).
maybe i'm just missing the whole point? i dunno. but this is my reaction.

so, after "terrorist" i started reading poul anderson's harvest of stars, which i got because a blurb at the back of ender's game said it was a book of incredible vision or something like that. i thought the "vision" illuminated something grand about humanity, but the "vision" is more about envisioning an amazingly complex spacefaring future for our race. it's also a very political book. but... i'm not done with it yet. i don't think i can finish it. it's just going on and on and on.... it's well written - the characters are memorable, and i even found myself lingering over some descriptive passages. but, either hardcore sci-fi is just not for me - this is one of the only ones i have ever read - or this book just doesn't do it for me...

i stopped at about 2/3 of the way through to read the last book i checked out, lost boys also by orson scott card, because i have enjoyed other books of his. i finished it in one night, and over the next day went back to reread the ending twice more. it's such a simple story, almost cliche - a young, struggling Mormon family moves to a small town in NC in the early 80s where young boys have been disappearing. but it's not so much a story about the crime, or the supernatural elements that creep into this family - it's about the family themselves - the father's struggle to make ends meet with a job he detests, the mother's struggle to keep house with three kids, a fourth on the way, and find meaning in her church work, the oldest child's struggle with loneliness in a hostile new school environment (in a sense, maybe this is more about jihad than "terrorist was?)... it's about good versus evil among very orinary people, but card has a way of drawing you into their lives so well that the end is heartwrenching to read - especially as a parent. and though i'm far from mormon myself, it's just nice to read something about people with strong faith, where the story is not about them losing faith or getting it back or anything like that. it's just a part of them, it helps them over all the hurdles they face...

any other recommendations for good escapist reading? i am starting to panic with nothing else new to read... minus all the books i have that i haven't read yet... hehheh...

six weird things meme

people on blogs i read are doing this one, and now i feel like trying it out. so, six weird things about me.

1) i read novels on the toilet. all the time. i can't go to the bathroom without a book to read, even if it's just a page before i have to get up again. it's just so BORING otherwise. if i find myself in a bathroom without a book or magazine or anything, i will actually pick up a bottle of anything that happens to be nearby, like soap or Glade or toothpaste or 409, and read the back of it, every single word, including ingredients like "methylchloroisothiazolinone" (look it up, you will see i have even spelled it correctly). i don't remember how this all started, but one of my brother's favorite embarrassing things to tell people about me is that i once read all of stephen king's "christine" on the toilet. in one sitting. (in all fairness, i do read pretty fast... novels at least). and anyway, i can always retort that he read much of his collection of "encyclopedia brittanica" on the toilet. which is much more embarrassing than "christine". oh, if only he were in the blogosphere too...
oh, as an aside to this one, since i probably can't use it as a separate weirdity, some of my bathroom books i have used for that purpose for YEARS, reading them over and over again. (dont' worry, i keep them clean). these include "little women", which i have practically memorized because of it, and most of the harry potter books.

2) i also have to read recipes while i'm eating. this can be either in my own cookbooks, or online - two sites i visit every day are deliaonline.com, and allrecipes.com. at work i would have lunch at my desk every day and visit these sites. hubby says he has never met anyone so concerned with all aspects of food. i do love cooking, and the benefit is i try out lots of new recipes on him. but i just have to have recipes to read while i'm eating! it makes the eating so much more satisfying. i don't know why. it used to be that i had to either read (books) while i was eating (which my mom would get mad at me for) or have someone to eat with. but now, even when we sit down to dinner at home, i'll usually have a cookbook open.

3) in movies, when a character is trying to do something they shouldn't be, like sneaking around in someone's house in their absence, or cheating on a spouse, or .. whenever there is a chance that any moment somebody might get CAUGHT... i can't watch. i will actually turn away or hide my face in my hands and peek through my fingers. i can't stand that kind of suspense.

4) i once had a passing interest in wicca. before i get the chorus of astaghfirullahs, i didn't know at the time that it was a religion of its own and sort of required you to renounce your "old beliefs." i just thought the idea of magic was really cool, especially with all the old celtic, woman-centric connotations, as well as the fact that there were actually people who "practiced" it. i knew one at school who loaned me a book about it, in which i discovered that it was really not the sort of thing a muslim could be interested in. oh well.

5) i have a method of eating meals that a friend of mine once described very well as "a constant search for the perfect bite." generally this can also be described as "save the best bite for last." for example, how i eat a reese's: all around the edge first, and then finally savor the yummy bit in the middle with all the peanut butter. i eat sandwiches the same way, waffles, etc. crust first, then the middle. as for plates with rice and saalan, i will usually taste each kind of food in my plate, then in each bite i'll mix them up in different ways and proportions, always searching for the combination that tastes best. it's unconscious... i can talk to someone and read recipes while doing this, no problem. like, right now i am eating this leftover cheesecake from the CC factory, and every bite i am trying to get the best mix of the crust, the cheesecake part, the topping and the whipped cream. (it's a new one, by the way, mixed berry custard almond crunch cheesecake. if that doesn't make your mouth water, you are just not worthy).

6) i skipped three grades out of the 12, not including kindergarten which i also skipped, and repeated one, with the end result that i graduated three months after i turned 15. that was, however, the end of my illustrious whiz kid career, as my grades plummeted once i started college (and got a taste of having a social life, however pathetic it was). the grade i repeated was fourth, and that was only because we were moving from public school to this one, a private quaker school in durham, nc, and the Grownups deemed it was best for me to enter this school in what was the equivalent of the grade i had just completed.

that's it! here's a pic from a recent visit by by nephew, issa, with musa having decided he is finished with this conversation, but issa still excited to see him. i love these kiddies so much!!!

I CAN'T SLEEP!!!!

but i'm not nearly as unhappy as the other night.
just BORED as hell. and hungry and thirsty. it's ten to five a.m., and i've been up since a little before 3. trying to get musa to go back to sleep without nursing in bed with me. it's just as i had feared, the reason i had put off trying this for so long - once i have gotten up to try to comfort him back to sleep without bringing him back to bed with me from the crib, i am too awake to go back to sleep.
so, although alhamdulillah musa has managed to make it since midnight without nursing, it was only because i stood and picked him up out of the crib, rocked him (counted to 100 rocks), and used the pacifier to give him something to suck on. it's frustrating - the AAP book says your baby will be waking up at night for the rest of his life, so what you need to do is train him to be able to go back to sleep by himself. is it too early for this? i have no idea. and is it any good for me to try these other methods of getting him to sleep - rocking, pacifier - aside from nursing? i'm still helping him, aren't i?
i wish i knew WHY he was waking up like this. it only started around 7 months; before this it was just twice a night and then only a little fussing. now, i put him down for the night, and within the first 45 minutes to two hours he begins wailing - not fussing, or crying, but wailing very loudly, like he's afraid or in pain, with his eyes still closed, and 90% of the time nothing will calm him down except for nursing. yes, i read duaas on him, yes, i give him mylicon, yes, i feed him during the day plenty. it's not hunger, it's not gas, i'm like 99% sure. and it happens even when he's in bed with us all night, so i don't think it's some latent separation anxiety. it MIGHT be teething pain, but why is it only happening at night then?

anyway, speculate, speculate. i was spending the time writing my next article in my head - you'd think that would be boring enough to get me to fall asleep, but no. wide awake. thirsty as anything. ya Allah - fajr doesn't come in for another hour!! what am i supposed to do?? i am feeling sulky toward everyone out there who has ever asked, "why don't you sleep when the baby sleeps?"

outside, the day's traffic is starting to build up already. every ten minutes or so, some very loud and annoying truck goes by. something just went "crack" close by. i always worry these sounds will wake musa up... the firetrucks from the station just around the corner sometimes do.
but, would you believe it, i am almost hoping he will wake up now, so i will have something to DO with these useless minutes?

hmm, i guess this is a good time to pray, innit...

ireland

one of svend's recent posts on ireland (well, on the commodification of irish culture), combined with having watched bits of celtic woman - a new journey on WETA last night, has got me pining for ireland.

so i'm including three of my old pics here. nothing fancy... my ireland pics didn't come out as good as i had hoped. these are from a trip in late march 1998, which i took during easter holidays while i was studying in edinburgh for my MSc in writing and cultural politics. it was a truly memorable trip - we were as cheap as possible, taking a train from edinburgh to holyhead and an overnight ferry (filled with drunken irish and welsh headed for a rugby game) to dun laoghaire, stayed in the dublin youth hostel the first night, and a tiny, unheated hostel in kinvara the second night, then the third night ferried and trained back to edinburgh.
here are


a scene from a short walk we took in kinvara trying to get to a bus stop early one morning


a sketch i made near sunset in clifden, a town in connemara


mountains in connemara, taken from the bus, since i couldn't very well ask the dude to stop...

i have had this dream for years, of taking my dad to see ireland, since even though he lived in the UK for years, he never traveled there. inshallah...

maybe unfair,

but i have to comment. (eragon and eldest, btw, were great reads, and i can't wait for the movie! maybe the first i will see in the theaters since musa came along).

anyway, i finally picked up john updike's terrorist at the public library yesterday. just read the first ten pages and i am already boiling!!!

i am sorry, i am sorry, i will give it a chance. i mean, it's john updike, this guy is standard reading in english classes. but if the first ten pages are any indication of what's to come... i mean, literally from the first word it's every stereotype you can imagine about a young angry muslim high schooler who actually sees all his classmates and teachers as kafir devils - the color grey is described as the color of a kafir woman's eyes, for God's sake - and is tempted by a girl in his school, and his mentor at the masjid says women are animals led easily... i mean, what the heck?????

GOD i need to write a book!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

okay musa is crying, i will finish the book and write more later...

nighttime...

...is when all these aches pour out of me. my eyes are as wide open now as they were at midnight when i was putting musa to bed. i couldn't sleep, lay there for an hour or so, then figured i might as well finish reading eldest since i couldn't sleep, so i finished that about forty minutes ago, while i was nursing musa to sleep again after he woke up for the first time. i could have gotten a good two and a half hours sleep if i had been able to sleep when he was sleeping.

but i can't! my head aches, my eyes are hot. here i am, in tears in the quietest hours. i feel so lonely at night. all my uncharitable thoughts, all my demons, all my ghost suspicions, chase me and swarm me. i read my ayat-ul-kursi, three quls, for my little baby to sleep peacefully. maybe i should have read a separate set for myself? i don't know, i don't know. i don't know what's real or what these swirling night thoughts have just suggested to me, like whispering devils. in the morning i shrug it off and in the day i can't even imagine it all. but i can't tell you how many times, when i am lying awake, staring at the odd shadow pattern on the ceiling formed by the crib bars and the plush mobile silhouetted in the pale blue of the nightlight - i've composed so many wandering, pleading, weeping blogs in my head that i am convinced i will type up in the day, but the shadows fade with the light and then i have to take care of musa anyway...

so this time i decided to get out of bed and come downstairs and blog it out. maybe the screen will take the words out of my head so that i can sleep in peace. i'm just sick of being the person who just sits there being defined (in so many ways!). i wish i had some guts, i wish i had some wisdom! but i just carry out these battles in my head - at night, when i ought to be sleeping - and then forget about them in the day, maybe it'll all go away, maybe it'll get better.

i know none of this makes sense, but i have to write it down. otherwise i keep swallowing this sadness trying to push down the lump in my throat. and sniffling, which is not good because if it's too loud it'll wake musa and that's the last thing i want to do... why can't i stop my mind? why am i so open to this idiocy?