Milton, Homer, Ovid and Poe for Babies

One of the girls from work asked if I had been reading to the baby. Apparently they have discovered that reading to the child in the womb and playing music for them has no effect whatsoever on their intelligence, so I haven't really been doing it. I told her as much and she expressed surprise that me being such an avid reader hadn't been reading to the baby. Selfishly, I see my reading time mostly disappearing after the bundle of joy arrives and have been reading obsessively for the last few months (at the rate of 8 or 9 books a week). I would share my books with him, but reading aloud slows me down. The one exception has been with epic poems. I tend to skip too much if I read those silently and tend to read them aloud. So to date, the only things that have been read to my child are "Paradise Lost," "The Illiad," "Metamorphoses," and some of Poe's poetry. At least if the studies are wrong and children are affected by what is read to them in the womb, my baby was exposed to some of the more pretentious classics. This should ensure that he is a book snob, correct?

Chaos Studies

We are studying work methods in my project management class and the discussion question this week asked if working in chaos was an acceptable practice. Hmmm... Looking around, I would say in home practice yes, business practice, no. The question is: If you manage your life in chaos at home is it possible to work the opposite way at work? Can your desk at home look like an evil twin of your professional workspace? And if you do function that way, is it like having split personalities? What is the problem exactly with working in chaos? Nothing...if you can function well in it except, no one else can understand your system without you. So my new question is: Is working is chaos some sort of control mechanism, a way to ensure that your are needed? One thing is for sure, my husband would need help navigating my filing system...guess he is stuck with me!