Power and poop.

I’m listening to Sigrid Nunez’s book The Friend. I’m having a tough time reading/listening these days, nothing captures my attention for very long. I’m in a summertime mood. Hot and languid and kind of apathetic in a very positive way (I’m in a good mood these days). I’m trying very hard to lower the amount of advertisements I’m subjected to, so I’ve cut a lot of podcasts and youtube channels from my regular rotation (I read very little, I listen much more). This leaves me with audiobooks which sometimes I find too long or if I’m trying to do short form, I listen to New Yorker articles which can be fun, but also depressing in way because NYer articles are always about how something is bad. The medical system is bad, plastics are bad, sex can be good but also bad, etc. etc. Anyways, there was a quote in The Friend that I found fascinating about teachers and their students and the dalliances that they might have with each other. The quote is – “the thrill of bringing an older man in a position of authority to his knees.” In the modern era, it’s always presumed that it is the teacher (male usually) abusing the power dynamic to take advantage of the student (female usually). Which is often true, I do not dispute this situation. But I have thought that the power often lies in the female student because a man with such a strong desire to put everything in jeopardy for this seduction of a student, can be in a very weak position. Again, it depends on the parties involved and the exact situation – but there is, I think, a spectrum of stories.

On another, less sexy note, we gave up on Daybue on Monday. Sunday, we had a very expansive poop experience at the house in the shower. Isabella was handling Edda on Sunday and was – as they say – a trooper. So we held the Sunday night time dose and then on Monday, we went back to the previous weeks’ dose which was 40 mL hoping to hold steady at that dose for the summer (or at least use up the medication we have left in the fridge for goodness sake!). Monday at camp, Isabella was her counselor that day and the note that came back indicated that Edda might have spent about three hours in the bathroom and had the words “aggressive” and “foaming”. She had to miss pool time and Isabella was going to not be at camp for the next two weeks and we had a new counselor Maya and I didn’t want to subject Maya to such a literal shitshow. So I stopped it (or we stopped it, Jeremy and talked at length about all these decisions). And now it’s Thursday, Edda is still on Immodium because she’s still going like 2-3 times a day and so once her gut biome re-stabilizes well ease off the immodium. We didn’t see any noticeable benefit in Edda’s symptoms during the time she was on it.