DD--What?

That is a photo of one of my favored sugar-delivery systems, a.k.a. a sugar cookie. Up in the right is a double soy latte (yes, soy milk--because cow's milk makes my guts try to crawl out of my body). This is one of my go-to snacks while I'm tutoring my niece in chemistry.

During today's tutoring session, we continued with acid-base chemistry, which makes me nutty. I don't know why it makes me nutty, it just does. Part of the reason it makes my nutty is because the acid-base chemistry that is introduced in the first semester of chemistry isn't really used until the second semester of chemistry when you have to figure out redox reactions and batteries and all that fun stuff that is dependent on knowledge from a million years ago, all that stuff from last semester that you've already forgotten. Oh really, though, I don't know. Ugh. All I know is that I don't like acid-base chemistry and I don't like not having a good reason for not liking acid-base chemistry.

Today we studied for four hours, from eleven a.m. until just after three p.m., when my niece stopped and suddenly said, "The baby's getting her pictures taken today." I said, "Who's taking her?" And my niece said, "My mom." I asked her if she didn't want to go and she said, "Well...I kind of did, but I have to study chemistry." My poor niece. I know she's struggling to prioritize school and home and family, so I let her off the hook today and told her that she should go with her mom to have The Newbie's picture taken.

She's working really hard at this class and she's succeeding and that makes her glad so I'm glad. I'm glad she's brought her grade up from a D to an A. She realizes that she's going to have to work hard, but that hard work pays off. For myself, I realized from tutoring her in this class that if I were a parent, I'd be one of those parents who'd look at my kid's paper with the 96% written at the top and I'd ask, "What did you miss? Why isn't this a 100%? Do you really think this is good enough? I think you can do better." So I'd be that mother with the nervous brainiac child that wrecks the curve every time. That's what I realized about myself.

Yes and No

Yes, there are poems about chemistry. No, none of them are any good.

A mosquito was heard to complain
That a chemist had poisoned his brain
The cause of his sorrow
Was para-dichloro
Diphenyl-trichloroethane.

See?

(I'm sure you remember from your chemistry class, but para-dichoro-diphenyl-trichloroethane is DDT.)