Bread and Bread

Putting Dash to bed has been an ordeal lately, an up-to-two-hour affair involving multiple requests for milk (yes, after he's brushed his teeth; I judge me too!) and kisses from whichever mom isn't in the room. He wants "one more book." He wants to sleep on the floor. No, wait, he wants to sleep on the bed. No, the floor. He wants "that pillow." No " my pillow," which might look like that pillow, but is in fact inexplicably different. He wants "Dinosaur Boom Boom," a game I used to play when he was a baby, which has recently enjoyed a revival. He lays down and I hold his legs and chant "Boom boom, boom boom, dinosaur walking, dinosaur walking. Swish swish, swish swish, dinosaur dancing, dinosaur dancing." Etc. Recently he added a part where he kind of kicks me in the face. Good times. He has successfully sleep-trained me. He is, as you may have gleaned based on the behaviors described above, 2.75 years old. My emotions s...

Yesterday I cleaned the house while AK took Dash to Orange County for some tia time, and I binge-listened to the L.A. Times’ Dirty John podcast. I’m one of those true crime podcast junkies: I was into both seasons of Serial, I squeal and laugh along with the sloppy-funny hosts of My Favorite Murder every week, and I loved falling deep into the Southern gothic tragedy of S-Town . Orange (County) is the new noir. (Photo credit: Christina House, L.A. Times.) At first Dirty John seemed like a well reported but relatively unremarkable imitation of other true-crime cultural phenomena, right down to the Making a Murderer - esque soundtrack. The title character is not an affable possible innocent a la Serial’s Adnan, nor a tortured genius like S-Town’s John B. McLemore. Dirty John is a fairly typical conman with some power and anger issues, who has perhaps seen too many mob movies. It’s not that I don’t think literal psychopaths are interesting (if my not-completely-scientific stud...