All hail to the twenty-four-hour Dairy Queen

Ah, the lot of the third child. James is attempting to nap, wrapped in a blanket in the aforementioned papasan chair, while his mama types away at the computer and his two brothers and his dad play guitars and drums on the third floor. If he actually goes to sleep, I will be mightily impressed. I remember my mom telling us that my little brother could *only* sleep if there was a racket going on because that’s what he was used to.

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Here’s a little quiz for you.

Which of the following did Dan and I think we could pack up all three boys and go into Squirrel Hill to do this morning?

• Buy the older boys new shoes
  
• Get the 4th season of Curb Your Enthusiasm from Blockbuster
  
• Be fitted for and buy a new nursing bra
  
• Stop at the Chocolate Moose for some yummy peppercorn chocolate
  
• Buy some techie book at B&N for Dan’s latest work project
  
• Get this week’s money from the ATM
  
• Go grocery shopping
  
• Buy a headlight for Dan’s car
  
• Buy a new vacuum cleaner belt
  

If you guessed all of them, you are either as crazy as we are, or not the parent of three children under the age of five.

Dan got the Curb Your Enthusiasm DVD first. Cross off list, feel smug.

After forty-five minutes of hell in the shoe store with the world’s oldest and most incompetent saleslady, I was prepared to gas all people over the age of 70, kill myself when I hit 70, and just buy any old pair of sneakers and get the hell out of there. I did that last thing. So Si, whose old sneakers still kinda fit him, has new sneakers – blue and white Velcro New Balance, size 11-1/2 wide. At least he hasn’t attained his father’s black-Reebok level of nerdiness yet…Jude who measured a 10 ½ wide, and who requested red sneakers, and whose toes are practically poking out of his old sneakers, got to try on a 10 extra wide and a 10 ½ medium, in white or navy. That is, *after* we noticed that the salesperson had first put on him one of Si’s 11-½ sneakers, and then could not find its mate. I felt at the time like the saleslady was one of the Keystone Kops and I was a hamster running on its wheel. As I mix my metaphors or similes or whatever the hell. So I bought Jude a pair of sneakers that do not fit him, refused to let him wear them, and skedaddled the hell outta the store, and we will return Monday a.m., sans Simon, to try again. By which time perhaps said saleslady will have keeled over or moved into the nursing home for the insane where she so rightly belongs.

And THEN I spent twenty minutes waiting for the fitter to help me at the bra store – ok, it’s actually called The Pussycat but who wants to buy nursing bras at a store called The Pussycat? – only to 1) find that, according to the fitter, who repeated herself several times, my breasts are really, REALLY SMALL (like it’s a fucking newsflash or something), and 2) buy the exact same style and size bra I was wearing. Only new. Sigh.

We did manage the chocolate (hey, I have my priorities straight!) and, at the cost of two cereal bars and a package of crumbled Bob the Builder graham crackers, the vacuum cleaner belt. Our smugness evaporated, put in our proper place by two recalcitrant children, we returned home for lunch and naps. Did I mention James slept thru the whole thing?

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Is anyone else addicted to reading the real estate transaction listings in the newspaper (ours run on Saturdays), or am I hopelessly nuts/nosy? (I read the obits too.) And then I go look up online, on the county assessment site, any interesting properties, particularly ones for sale in our new neighborhood and ones that sold for exorbitant sums in our old neighborhood. The Penguins’ right wing Konstantin Koltsov just bought a *townhouse* in Squirrel Hill for an astonishing sum of money – and not one of the charming old brick townhouses but a newish-looking, charmless, modern thing. And it was in the paper for the public to see…and on the website for the perpetually nosy to look at. Because I care where our sports stars live…if only the website had been around when I was stalking Darius Kasparaitis.

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I liked Jennifer Weiner’s second book, In Her Shoes the best of all her novels, perhaps because it transcends its “chick-lit” label and is a strong and well-written novel regardless of the niche into which it is shoved. The movie is getting panned, and none of the reviewers are even taking the source seriously. But when has the movie ever come close to the book? Think Possession, Garp, Prince of Tides, the list goes on and on…most movies made from books are travesties. (Travesties of a mockery of a sham!)
Angels and Insects was a decent movie but only because the screenplay was the novella, word for word. And Bridget Jones was a better movie than book. Otherwise, read the book, skip the movie.

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I had something to say about Norwegians and Swedes, and Larry David confusing the two and calling his golf pro Sven a Swede, and then there was something on Bookslut in regards to some book awards, about the Norwegians being peninsula hogs, and it was all related in my strange little brain somehow, and I laughed and laughed – but that was last night at 2 a.m., and I had a baby attached to me, and so I suppose my judgment was skewed, if I could even remember what the joke was. Aren’t you glad you read this blog, for my clarity and eloquence and erudition? Me too.

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Does anyone know any AC/DC? Because all of Dan’s musician friends are calling my sweet baby James by his middle name…so I should perhaps balance the James Taylor lullaby with something else befitting his middle name…

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By the way, James fell asleep. Even with “Heavy Metal Drummer” being practiced upstairs.