20160304.0618

My eye continues to bother me. The eyelid remains swollen, the area around it sore, and the eye itself is itching and watering. I have an appointment with my optometrist today, for which I am grateful; I will be happy to know what I can actually do about it, if anything. (If it is simply an issue of having gotten smacked in the face, as it might be--Ms. 8 does not know how to check her backswing--then there is nothing to be done save to endure.) At the very least, I will have some idea of what the cause is; knowing will help, as I have noted.

Today, too, it is once again the band-nerdiest of days: Sousa Day. My comments about the matter from the past three years suffice for now, but the reminder is a good one to have.

Work continues, even with the pseudo-observance. I have three classes to attend to today, and grading their work is in progress; I completed one section yesterday, and I am to wade through one a day until I am done. I do still need to attend to a freelance order, but I anticipate that going quickly; the book I need to write up is short, and my few quick glances at its contents already suggest a useful parallel text, one that I will note the novel I'm writing up evokes. (Which one, I will not discuss at this point. Buy the write-ups; help my client make money so that I can make money.) So things are more or less normal in my part of the world in that regard.

The family is well. The Mrs. has been plugging away at her work; she is also looking into other programs, and I am helping her do so, applying my good eye to her application materials. I can hope that it will work for her. Ms. 8 has been growing and playing; age two seems to be treating her well so far, and while she is increasingly emphatic in her opinions ("No, no, NO!"), she seems generally to be of a happy and pleasant disposition, inclined towards being affectionate and forward. Her mother and I are working against princessification, and we are having some success with it, but we are beginning to encounter problems in that regard; the encroachments of prevailing cultural norms, wrong-headed as many of them are, are insidious and therefore difficult to combat. The ways in which options are circumscribed, particularly in the part of the world where we live, make a number of things challenging; I want my daughter to have the ability to choose, and her freedom to do so is likely to be constrained. That I cannot see as many things coming as I ought does not help, either...