Okay, I'll admit it: I love baseball. Love it, love it, love it. Baseball is a lovely game. It's full of terrific metaphors (eg the goal is get home safe). No matter how often or how long you watch, you can still see something you've never seen before. Really, it's the perfect game--and it's one of the few places in the culture where I feel as I can afford to be blindly idealistic with no real consequences.

Best story in baseball this year? The Detroit Tigers. Here's to the World Series!

Besides, the Cardinals suck.

and because she recently gave me some killer advice, and because I made a promise...here's a kickass recipe for a yummy Fall soup. FYI: I'm kind of a terrible cook (easily distracted) and I fucked up the instructions in several places (because I'm like that) and forgot the sour cream and doubled it so I could make my family eat it for several meals (cuz I'm a lazy cook). It STILL turned out to be delicious. Here it is, Kelly. Thanks for the help! ~VP

Ingredients: 1 T. unsalted butter; 2 T. olive oil; 2 medium onions, finely diced; 2 garlic cloves, minced (I used 6); 1 t. sweet paprika; 4 cups vegetable stock; 2 large potatoes, peeled and finely diced (about 2 1/2 cups); 1 celery rib, very thinly sliced; 1 bay leaf (I used 2); 1/2 t. salt; 1 t. sugar; freshly ground black pepper to taste; 4 cups corn kernels (I used frozen); 5 scallions, thinly sliced; 1 cup milk (I forgot this, if you can believe it, and the soup was still yummy); 1/4 t. thyme (I used 1 t.); few dashes cayenne pepper; 1/4 c. sour cream.

I don't post here much anymore, just the occasional pithy comment, or three.

Alas, even the tiny bit of time I do spend lurking around here appears to be too much. Work is stacking up on my desk; I'm really, really struggling to get my writing work done; I need to take advantage of the last, lovely days of summer weather; and now that Fall is practically upon us (oy! Fall? Already?) I expect to be even busier.

So I'm going to sign off Hipmama, indefinitely, but first I wanted to say Thank You to all of you. I can only speak for myself, of course, when I say that I believe this community provides real refuge and intelligent dialogue and wonderful company for a lot of women who don't have much by way of a mama network IRL--through circumstance or geography or, in my case, their own crankiness (I can't STAND most of the mamas in my neighborhood. Seriously. Ugh. Wretched yuppies! But I digress.).

So Hank woke up this morning covered in diarrhea. Shit was everywhere--even in his hair. He was pissed off, and I don't blame him. The thing is, he's never had a single case of diarrhea and he's 15 months old (I know, I know. I am one lucky mama). So, he won't eat, doesn't really want to drink anything; he's not even that enthusiastic about the boob (also a first!). No fever. He's kind of lethargic, mostly just wants to be close to me. Oh, yeah, and he's suddenly got the worst diaper rash he's ever had--presumably from the raging, acidic shit he was covered in.

So, we're taking it easy, reading quietly, letting his ass air out, but I'm concerned about dehydration.

Hey, have you guys seen this? If you go to google and enter asshole into the search box, then hit I'm Feeling Lucky, you get a sweet little presentation. Rumor has it that this google's big Fuck You to the Administration for trying to get them to turn over records. Whatever it is or whatever it's for, it's funny! Be sure you've got the sound on! It's fabulous.

Hey, I've got a sitter who comes to my house 4 days a week from 9-1 to hang out with Hank (15 months old) and we're thinking it would be cool to find another toddler to join in. We can be somewhat flexible on hours/days and we'd also be willing to switch off houses (i.e., one day at our house, one day at yours, and so forth).

Our sitter's rate is $12/hour and she's amazing. In her other life, she's involved with Chicago theatre--she's great with imaginative play, arts and crafts, trips to the park, etc. My kid RUNS to the door every morning at 9.

If anyone's interested in this type of setup, please send me a PM or post here and we can start talking about it.

That thing toddlers do, where, they've been working on your last nerve for hours and just when you're at the end of your rope, they do something so freakin' cute, it just about breaks your heart in half?

There were times today when, I swear to God, if someone had turned up at the front door with a 6-pack and a pepperoni pizza, I would have traded Hank for them--with a tip. We drove each other bonkers today. He's starting to throw himself on the floor and beat his head against the floor when I make unreasonable requests. Things like "Don't yank on the kitty, Honey. He's a living creature, too" or "You can't play with those papers, Honey. That's my work" or "Drop the knife, Kid" (joke!).

So I've been reading Dante's "Inferno" on the toilet, because it amuses me to do so and because I've been searching for evidence that, when his time comes, W. is indeed going to find himself being used as SATAN'S BUTTPLUG. Anyhoo. Hence, my fancyschmancy new hipmama name. Virtuous Pagan.

And speaking of No Guilt. Here's mine for the day. Hank's been driving me craaaazzzzyyyy this morning. Wanting something every second, throwing rudimentary temper tantrums, following me around like I'm his freakin' mother or something. So I did something revolutionary. I plopped his little fanny down in front of Sesame Street with a stack of cookies and lemonade (TV! Sugar! Wheeeeee!). The little guy glazed over in 10 seconds flat. There they were! All the characters from his books. Big Bird, Grover, Elmo, America's favorite couple Bert and Ernie. And they were talking just to him! It was glorious. BTW: Sesame Street's just as trippy as I remember it.

Back in the day I had a dear friend who periodically, often on the Saturday morning after a particularly raucous Friday night, would do something she liked to call: "The Asshole Roundup." She would call up all involved parties and say: "Good Morning! It's an asshole roundup. Who was the asshole last night?"

And, often, whoever was getting the call would then remember the bar fight or the too-drunk-to-fuck one-night stand or the maudlin rant in the parking lot and they would say: "It was me."

Well. In blog world equivalent to an asshole roundup, I have to say: It was me.

I feel pretty shitty about the way the breastfeeding blog went; I feel pretty shitty that so many people, on all sides of the issue, felt attacked; And I feel REALLY shitty that I then freaked out and deleted the whole fucking thing in some misguided attempt to diffuse the situation. I'm pretty new to the whole blogging world, but it occurs to me that deleting a blog that big, with that much invested, is a big, big mistake. I mean, that sucker was enormous. It had taken on a life of its own. It wasn't even mine anymore--and yet I charged in, the Lone Ranger of All Things Lactation--and I deleted it. Which, effectively, took the choice away from everyone. Wow. Not my finest moment.

Sometimes, I swear, I love Chicago so much it isn't even funny.

The City of Chicago has had a longstanding informal policy of NON-cooperation with the INS when it comes to ratting out illegal immigrants who seek out city services. Now, according to tonight's NPR story, Mayor Daley is seeking to pass a formal ordinance that makes it city policy to refuse to cooperate with INS investigations because, in the words of Daley's spokesman, "The City of Chicago does not want to be in the business of separating families or denying necessary social services to the people, whoever they are."

Yeah! You know, when the political machine is Your political machine, it doesn't seem so bad.