I have never written anything in one draft, not even a grocery list, although I have heard from friends that this is actually possible -Connie Willis

The sun was shining this morning when I woke up – and I’d slept long enough to have a dream – which meant Terzo slept from midnight till about five. Yay, Terzo! Yay, Mama! Yay, not being brain-dead!

When I dropped Primo off at preschool, Segundo wanted to stay. He's going there in the fall, and his "introductory" visit is scheduled for MOnday...there was only one teacher there today; the other was sick. But Ms. J told Segundo it’d be just fine for him to stay, and so I was left with only the baby for THREE. WHOLE. HOURS. What to do, what to do?

My next-door neighbor L and I decided a trip to the Strip District on this gorgeous day was in order, so we threw the two babies (her youngest E is 15 months) in the back of her van and tooled off.

First orders of business – Mac machine and coffee. These vital things accomplished, we proceeded to mow through the shopping like machine guns through butter. Or whatever the hell that metaphor is.

Second stop – the Greek store. L needed grape leaves and I found some very cool looking Greek milk chocolate/almond chocolate bars with pretty cherry-blossom wrappers.
Not that I read Greek…

and some of these mint and orange – straw-like chocolates, which looked like they’d been sitting on the shelf for years, but what the heck.

Then on to the first Italian store, where L bought olives and nuts, and I bought capicolla, pepper turkey, and fresh mozzarella.


Also some Italian bread, and this – to try. The Show-and-Tell this week has proved to be verrrrry dangerous.


While L ran back to the coffee store to buy Torani ginger syrup to make Italian sodas, I availed myself of the sidewalk flower vendor. We are having Segundo’s birthday party Sunday, and it’s always nice to have fresh flowers in the house, alongside the Thomas the Tank Engine decorations. I don’t think I have an appropriate vase, so I jammed them all into this blue one, and will maybe try splitting them up, cutting them shorter, and putting some in my grandmother’s Depression glass pitcher.

At the SECOND Italian store, I bought feta, to make tiropeta for breakfast for me for the week, and some of their yummy and astoundingly cheap biscotti – a “heavy” half pound of hazelnut for H, a “light” half-pound of butter-almond for me, and six chocolate-nut for the two older boys.


Then to the greengrocer, where I bought lettuce for salads this weekend. And two pounds of strawberries. I bought a pound at the grocery store earlier this week - their season is early and short - but Primo ate the entire pound over two meals. Also, I bought mangoes. Mangoes are H’s very favorite fruit, and at the grocery store they are usually at least a buck-fifty apiece. I bought this pallet o’ mangoes, ten, count ‘em, for five bucks.


And then we loaded all our goodies back up in the car, wishing for a pack mule or a manservant, and went home with our tired babies, to pick up our preschoolers, who were happily digging up potato bugs in the church yard.


And I leave you this glorious spring day with this photo, because is there anything cuter than my teething, fussy, backwards-scooching baby boy?:
“Nobody puts baby in the corner!”