Last night, Nora was reading some online parts of a kids book about math and numbers (rationale to follow). In his dedication, the author wrote, "If the sum of my nieces and nephews is 15, and the product of my nieces and nephews is 54, and I have more nephews than nieces, how many..."
And I didn't even let her finish. I said "Nine nephews and six nieces."
She didn't bat an eye, and kept on reading.
I said, "Hey, you're supposed to be impressed by that! It's no good having super-powers if they don't scare people!"
Nora replied, "I'm used to it by now."
And so it goes... the heroic savant husband now taken for granted...
The reasoning behind investigating kids books about numbers is that Nora had a completely brilliant idea over dinner, and she was investigating what the competition looked like. The curse of the writer is that you have far more ideas than you have time to complete, so you need to pursue the ones that you care about and that feel substantial enough to bear the burden of the time you invest. The joy of the writer is that you have far more ideas than you have time to complete, and you have that little moment of pure pleasure imagining what that project might look like. This one's still in that middle ground, where the structural certainty has yet to be tested.
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