This has NOTHING to do with books

Jude’s new favorite thing to do with his remaining fingers when his thumb is in his mouth? Jam them up his nostrils. Good thing he’s so damn cute otherwise.

Also, the Judeman has a shaky grasp of gender roles and male/female anatomy (understandable at two). Jude seems to be under the impression that the redoubtable Mimi is Lucy’s father! And that he has a baby in his tummy too!! “Mama, my baby…tickin’!”

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Uncle Curt brought Simon Clue Junior, in which the characters eat a piece of cake at a certain time, with a certain drink, and you have to determine who, when, and with what. For example: “I accuse Professor Plum at 3 o’clock with lemonade!” or “I accuse Mrs White at 5 o’clock with the cola!” So naturally Simon wanted to know what the grown-up Clue people ate. I wasn’t quite sure how to explain the differences in the games. In the grown-up version, of course, people run around braining each other with candlesticks and wrenches. As if there isn’t enough talk of death in this household. I am sure Colonel Mustard would much prefer a nice piece of cake with some chocolate milk – but I could be wrong.

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Having my brother around, while theoretically pleasant, is a bit like having a third child – or maybe a dog.

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The Perfect sister-in-law is coming back here with the boys so they can attend the same venerable high school institution that their father and his brothers and their father attended (and which, yes, my boys will also attend). Can I just tell you that after years of living in McMansions in suburbia, they have decided they now want to live in the one part of town I would give my eyeteeth to buy a house in? Not that I don’t love my house or my neighborhood, but if I had a million bucks…I admit that this time my hatred is so not justified, I am merely white-hot jealous. Except that after a year and a half of house hunting, I happen to know that they will need twice the money they plan to spend to buy anything approaching what they are used to, in this particular part of town. I am a small, petty, bitchy, mean person who deserves to go to hell *after* spending her life in a trailer park, but I can’t help it. I am glad that they will not be taking up residence on Beechwood Boulevard without laying out way more cash than they intended.

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I started Philip Roth’s The Human Stain. I am really interested in the story and I like his characters, but I can’t stand the way Roth writes. I’ve read Portnoy’s Complaint and Goodbye Columbus, and tried to read The Plot Against America, about which I felt very similarly. Cool idea, but I just HATE Roth’s writing style. What I hate about it exactly, I can’t quite pinpoint, but I just can’t bear to read him. So that’s just the way it goes, I guess. It’s probably the same ineffable reason I hate Richard Dreyfuss.

So I don’t know what to read next. I think I may try Barry Unsworth’s Sacred Hunger. It DID win the Booker, after all. Or maybe I’ll take advantage of my brother being here and run to B&N for something new. Because I really don’t have enough books…