Ahhh, baby time. Almost continual activity–feeding, walking, bouncing, playing, soothing–punctuating by sudden, unpredictable lulls. It’s impossible to get anything done on any kind of schedule, so you learn to take advantage of the down time when it comes. Until recently, this meant trying to do laundry or work while Minor slept, only to be frustrated when he woke up crying, wanting to be held. Then I had an epiphany: if he insisted on my being still, I would be still. Books, TV, napping — I could think of lots of things to do for serial enforced quiet periods.

So I finally picked up The Da Vinci Code. I don’t know whether I should be embarrassed that I’m the last person in the country to read it, because I was too cheap to buy it during its amazingly long hardback run, or if I should just be embarrassed that I read it at all.

As a mystery/thriller, it was pretty schlocky. Someone actually utters the phrase, “Arrogant fools!” But I enjoyed all the intellectual-lite detail about the paintings in the Louvre, the suppression of the divine feminine in Christianity, and the practices of Opus Dei. As a baby-nursing book, it was a thumbs-up.

Two friends of mine tell stories about the summer they were hired as chief cook and bottle-washer for an Opus Dei retreat house. (This is the point in the story where we all break into raucous laughter, because one of the pair is notoriously undomestic and has spent most of her adult life living abroad mainly so she could afford to have someone else cook and clean for her.) They enjoyed their summer in the beautiful house, where responsibilities were light and they were allowed to use the pool.

One of their jobs was laundry. The housekeeper was very strict about the right way to do it. She specified that all the woman’s underwear had to be sprayed once in the crotch with a shot of Spray-n-Wash before laundering.

Do you think contact dermatitis is one of the mortifications to which the Opus Dei subject themselves, like the cilice? (Amazingly, if you Google “Opus Dei” and “Spray ‘N Wash,” there are hits, but nothing particularly enlightening.)

For the record, the men’s underwear was not likewise pre-treated.