"Snakes and snails and puppy dog tails, that's what little boys are made of."

I. Cannot. Take. The. Noise. Level. In. My. House. One. More. Minute.

In his infinite wisdom, H bought the boys Styrofoam pool noodles and they (the boys, not the noodles) are running in and out of their bedroom, conscientiously slamming the door each time in order to keep the cool air in (“Do you think I am air-conditioning the entire house?!”), whapping each other with the noodles.
I know a baby’s laughter is supposed to be a heartwarming and joyous sound, but when Terzo laughs so hard he is shrieking and breathless, it always, ALWAYS means that havoc has ensued. Markers have been wielded, or diapers pulled off, or children are leaping about the living room, from couch to piano to coffee table without touching the floor, inviting cracked skulls, broken bones, and blood.

My nerves can’t take much more of this. How long before school begins?

*

I spent several hours today shopping for new bed pillows for the boys, and buying hair for Mimi (yes, I will definitely post photos, fear not), and making fitted sheets from flat because God forbid the two boys alternate a set of Pokemon sheets (brand new, given to me by my boss, and unattainable on EBay without much bidding and gnashing of teeth – I am such an EBay wuss). I head to Target, or much more likely the thrift shop, tomorrow to buy solid-colored flat sheets, and solid pillowcases (one of which will be split along with the one Pokemon case and turned into two one-sided Pokemon cases. And then the boys can argue over who gets the pillow with Ash and who gets the one with Pikachu.)

Meanwhile, I am calling yet more concrete people to see about putting steps into our retaining wall - the project that is holding up the fencing, the mulching, the shed, the rebuilding of the back porch, and new porch steps....in short, just about every outside plan we have.

And I suddenly have a yen to put up bamboo shades in my bedroom. Because the filmy cream linen drapes are very pretty but do damn all to keep the morning sun from baking me alive. And I have this theory about nice heavy velvety drapes in the winter reducing the draft...Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to Target I go...

*

Conveniently, fortuitously, the brand-new Half Price Books is two stores away from Bed Bath and Beyond.
It was insanely crowded, but I managed to find a way to spend some money anyway. It definitely merits a return visit some nice quiet weekday afternoon, although the North Hills HFB is still the best in my humble opinion.

I got for Seg Dorling Kindersley’s Titanic book; coincidentally enough, I had just ordered online this morning Robert Ballard’s Exploring the Titanic, a book mentioned as a major hit with her first grade classes by the funny, witty, and lovably quirky Bailey White, in Mama Makes Up Her Mind, and other hazards of southern living.

I picked that volume off my TBR shelves last night because H and I had had a huge fight and I needed comfort reading; it seemed like it would fit the bill and indeed it did. It was light enough to make me feel better, but not frothy enough to make me feel as if I were wasting my time completely. There was only one wee little thing that marred the experience: in one of the first stories, Ms White explains that her father went off on an archaeological expedition, leaving her mother home alone with several small children. As a sort of consolation prize, the leader of the expedition gave Mama his grandfather’s telescope. Through the years (the father returned and then left again, permanently this time), Mama spent long evenings looking at the skies and the fields and forest surrounding their farm with that telescope. Especially as she grew older, feebler, and increasingly immobile, the telescope allowed her to remain involved in life outside her house. Unfortunately, on his deathbed, the expedition leader desired his grandfather’s telescope, and over her family’s protestations (“What’s he going to do with it, he’s DYING?!”), Mama carefully packed it up and sent it back to him. Shortly thereafter, she received as a premium from some public radio station a pair of cheap plastic binoculars, which took the place of her beloved telescope. They were not nearly so powerful or effective, but she continued to use them. The story winds up with Mama using those cheap binoculars at their vacation home, and a kindhearted marine biologist taking pity on the frail old woman and taking her out on the boat so she can see what’s really going on.

But the entire last half of the chapter, I screamed internally (because everyone else here was asleep), "Buy your poor old mother a new telescope, you cheap-ass ungrateful children!" I mean, I KNOW that would have ruined the story. I KNOW that would have derailed Ms White’s point that Mama made do and was a scrappy and self-sufficient woman, even as an old lady. (And I KNOW (or at least I hope to God) that that it is just a good story and really they went out and bought her a telescope akin to the Hubble.) But throw your readers a bone and buy your mom a telescope, it’ll be the best couple hundred bucks you ever spend.

But I digress.

You all want to know what I bought, of course you do. For Seg, the Titanic book [a whopping $8], and for Primo, two Encyclopedia Browns (Shows the Way & Takes the Cake) [$2/each] and a Matt Christopher hockey book [also $2] that he hadn’t read yet (the number shrinks ever smaller).

For me (because it’s ALL ABOUT ME and *I* didn’t get new Pokemon sheets):

Under the Banner of Heaven - Jon Krakauer. [$1] I love Krakauer’s writing, it’s his only book I have not yet read, and it was on the clearance racks for a dollar.

The Enchanted Castle - E. Nesbit. [$2] I thought I might read this with the boys. Also, Paddington Abroad [$1], since the first Paddington book was such a rollicking success. (They make me hungry, those Paddington books. It's all the marmalade and jam-and-cream buns that bear devours.)

A strange little book called Lobster Moths [$1] written and illustrated by Diane Redfield Massie. No idea about the story, but the line drawing illustrations were so charming that I figured for a buck I could take a chance.

Being Dead - Jim Crace. [$2] Jim Crace is one of those authors whom I want to love. But since I have never actually read any of his books, so therefore I have no idea if I do. I have had Quarantine, his novel about Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness, sitting on my shelves for several years now, and I am dying to read his newest, The Pesthouse, because it’s firmly set in the post-apocalyptic genre that is so popular these days, and according to Amazon, is "less crushing than Cormac McCarthy’s The Road." (Well, that’s a fucking relief. I am not sure what could possibly be MORE crushing than The Road, but that’s just me.) Crace seems to be a tad on the weird side – this book is about a dead couple. Being dead. Per the title. I’ll let you know how it goes.

The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson. [$1] Although it’s only called The Haunting (I am promised on the front cover that the text is unchanged), due to the fact that at some point someone made a movie out of it. (Starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Liam Neeson, among others. Huh.)

So all in all a successful afternoon. Although, did I then pick up one of my new books to read? Of course not. They will live on my shelves until their time is ripe. I am finishing up Doomsday Book, and I have two library books, Pledged; The secret life of sororities by Alexandra Robbins and Plain Secrets: An outsider among the Amish by Joe Mackell, demanding my immediate attention. But I pulled The Obituary Writer by Porter Shreve off my TBR shelves this afternoon (because Doomsday Book was ALL THE WAY DOWNSTAIRS) and am about fifty pages into that.

So, you know, at least I have a plan.

“I fear one day I'll meet God, he'll sneeze and I won't know what to say.” - Ronnie Shakes

The plague! Time travel! String theory and paradoxes! What more could you possibly want in a book? Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book is exactly the sort of book I love most. It’s got wonderful characters with whom I would like to hang out, it’s got some futuristic elements that are just far-fetched enough to make it sci-fi but just NOT far-fetched enough to make it thoroughly believable. (No involved, stretching-credibility explanations needed for the sci-fi elements, in other words.)
And the plague! Who doesn’t love the plague? *I* love the plague.
I have a feeling I’d be one of those people with natural immunity (no, no desire to test that theory), and so I’d be nursing people and digging graves and arranging quarantines.
I deal very well in a crisis.

*

I have broken my reading-from-my-shelves vow to request Melanie McGrath’s The Long Exile: A tale of Inuit betrayal and survival in the high Arctic from the local library. The boys and I have a carton of books to return; I must finish Silver on the Tree as it was due back three days ago. And due to some research I was doing for a patron, I am now burning to read Alexandra Robbins’ Pledged: The secret life of sororities.

*

I took the boys to B&N Wednesday afternoon for a children’s activity having to do with designing and making your own book. Wednesay’s theme was the Titanic; it seems that the whole program is following the Magic Tree House book series. At the end of the summer, the pages and book jackets the kids create will be displayed at a reception, and a raffle held for a signed copy of Mary Pope Osborne’s newest Magic Tree House book, Monday with a Mad Genius. (I preferred my first attempt before I looked up that title: Mad Man on Monday. Sounds like a follow-up to that Duran Duran song we all knew and loved – ahem – “New Moon on Monday.”)

Primo carefully used black paint impasto to capture the swirling, angry, and icy cold North Atlantic; Seg glued cotton balls to his paper for the iceberg. I love the way their brains work.

*

Dudes, I clearly need some sort of book meme to round out this post. But I haven’t got one. Sorry. (Although Jess’s thoughts of compiling food references in her favorite books is compelling.)

The End.

"I'm madly in love with you and it's not because of your brains or your personality." - Grandpa

I don’t plan to find out what gender this new baby is.
It’s not that I don’t want to know – I do. It would make some planning much easier – clothes and sleeping arrangements, among others.
And I will admit to some relief if it turns out to be another boy.
I know what to do with boys.
Most days.
But my theory all along, through three other pregnancies, has been, “SOMETHING has to get me through the pushing.”
And so I never found out the gender.

Because, let’s face it, the hardest part of labor is the time you spend pushing. It seems unfair that after your water breaking, hospital admittance, invasive exams, contractions, and in my case chills, fever, and vomiting, that you get nearly to the end and that’s when the hardest work is required.
And I needed a reward at the end and that reward was FINALLY finding out the sex of my baby. (No, sillies, the baby itself isn't enough!)
My husband doesn’t know this – he thinks it’s because I wasn’t in terribly good physical condition – but my third took as long as my first because I just couldn’t muster up enough energy to push really, really hard.
Confession: I am a childbirth slacker.

My first labor was fast – rushed along by Pitocin, I had nonstop contractions for about seven hours, pushed for about forty minutes, and there Primo was. Not easy-peasy but not bad for a first, especially once I accepted an epidural.

Seg was even easier, since I wasn’t induced. And I only pushed for fifteen minutes. Of course I had completed a sprint-distance triathlon while pregnant with Seg, so I really was in insanely good shape (for me).

Terzo – well, my water broke in the early morning. I dropped Seg at day care, drove to the hospital with Primo, checked with my doctor’s office, got myself admitted, and then called H to arrange for him to pick up Primo. I gave birth in the afternoon, and probably would have done so sooner but I was determined to wait for H to get back from dropping Primo at his mother’s house. I did push for forty minutes, but if I’d given it my all I probably could have cut that time by ten or fifteen minutes. But what’s the point? The baby came out anyway. And it was another boy which was not the huge shocker to me that it might have been to other people.

And just between you and me, my ‘nettie friends, I am betting this one is a boy too. It’s what I do best, gestating boys. I LIKE boys (Always have. Badum-bum.)

Boys are relatively simple folk. You feed them, clothe them, take them to the park. You can yell at them, and I have to admit I would have a much harder time swatting a little girl on the butt than I do my boys, when necessary. Boys don’t care if their hair is combed, or their pants match their shirts. They do care if they have a Pikachu Pokemon card, or if there are enough wiffle balls, and these are things I can remedy. They solve disputes with lots of noise, and, often, speed and, more often, physicality, and this is a process which I understand. In fact, I am fairly convinced that I was a boy in a former life.

I have one niece, and about eleventy million nephews (ok, only eight), and the one girl is a mystery to me, unfathomable and remote. Not that I don’t love her to bits, but I just don’t GET her. I don’t get why she loves cheerleading, complete with sexy, sequined little costumes and hair extensions and strutting, booty-shaking routines that make me very uneasy (I have NO IDEA how her father watches them without pulling her off the field and throwing her into a nice convent), and why she wears clothes that look like they were designed for Las Vegas strippers, and why her shorts have writing across the butt. (I don’t want ANYONE reading my daughter’s butt, lemme tell you.) I don’t understand why she wears lip gloss and eye shadow. I don’t understand why I have never seen her read a book, but she has attended several Backstreet Boys concerts and knows the words to every single N’Sync song. Did I mention she’s NINE?

In my defense, a dear friend has two little girls who I ‘get’ much better - but then E is fighting a hard, uphill battle against the formidable forces of contemporary fashion and culture. Her girls love horses and dogs, and they play sports, and E dresses them in cute but age-appropriate clothes (the sort from Hanna Anderson, although I swear E would have them in pinafores if she thought she could get away with it), and they read Harry Potter and LM Montgomery and Nancy Drew (and yes, Pony Pals), but I’ve never seen either of them with teenybopper magazines in their hands. I have never seen either of them shake their booty to a Britney Spears song (although I have seen them jump around to some Ralph’s World). They look and act the way I in my old fuddy-duddiness think six- and eight-year-old girls should look and act. (But then I am the throwback who refuses my six-year-old video games at home, and his own email account.)

H and I watched “Little Miss Sunshine” last night.
Terrific movie. Really enjoyed it, every minute of it.
Stellar cast – I think I am a tiny bit in love with Steve Carell.
I loved the teenaged son who has taken a vow of silence until he gets into the Air Force Academy, and Toni Collette was perfect as Greg Kinnear’s long-suffering and practical wife. Alan Arkin cracked us up, with his heroin-snorting, profanity-spewing Grandpa. But the best character was far and away that of Olive, the little girl who dreams of competing and winning the Little Miss Sunshine pageant. And I don’t want to ruin the movie, because I want you to go out and see it RIGHT NOW for yourself. But this quote is what stuck with me: when her brother and her father want Sheryl to pull Olive out of the pageant talent show, after watching little JonBenet Ramsay clones strut their stuff and fearing that dorky little pigeon-toed and bespectacled Olive will be laughed off the stage, Sheryl refuses. She says, "I know you want to protect her, I know, honey. But we've gotta let Olive be Olive." (Even if Olive does shock and surprise everyone with her (unpolished and innocent) dance routine, it is still weirdly more appropriate than the glitzy, polished dances the other contestants perform.)

I guess what I am saying is I’d rather be Sheryl than any of the other mothers.
I’d rather my daughter be true to herself, even if it means exposing herself to laughter and possible ridicule. I’d rather she be a little awkward but sincere, than polished and superficial.

I would rather navigate the minefield with her than give up without a fight.

But I guess what I really mean is, I think I’d rather just have another boy.

“Somebody's boring me. I think it's me.” - Dylan Thomas

I am generally the world's dullest person. I don't like to go out, I don't like TV, I really don't care about movies, and my sports interests are limited to hockey, and gymnastics during the Olympics.

My idea of a good time is reading books, entering my books into my LibraryThing account, reading book blogs, and indulging in the occasional TextTwist orgy.

I enjoy doing research. I enjoy reading obscure stuff, and knowing arcane facts. I found this wiki wildly entertaining and spent a good hour yesterday afternoon playing here.

So because I am so very dull, I have nothing for you.

Most of the interesting, scintillating people are in Chicago, scintillating one another. I am here in the burgh, being dull as dishwater.

I am reading Connie Willis's Doomsday Book, finishing up Silver on the Tree, which I will be very sad to see end, and I am ditching Shadow of the Wind. I have more than fulfilled my fifty-page obligation and could not care less.

I did spend a few fun hours yesterday evening on a friend's front porch, sipping ginger-peach iced tea and hanging with some fellow librarians. I have a few book recommendations to look up from that, and I am somewhat ashamed to recall my impassioned ten-minute ode to The Sparrow.

My books are catalogued.
I am excited at the thought of putting up more bookshelves.
Used bookstores get me hot and bothered.
And I think the best way to get to know someone is to see what's on their bookcases.

I couldn't get any less exciting.