"Eating in Germany is easy because there's basically one kind of food, and it's the wurst." *

Last night H took the two older boys up the street to a local restaurant we want to support as much as we can, to their little Oktoberfest celebration. Because of its late start, and because of the fact that the restaurant is in fact an Indian restaurant, I chose to remain at home with The Baby, eating pizza and watching a Wiggles video. H came home pleasantly surprised with the quality of the food – wurst and sauerkraut and the like, finished off with apple streudel and German chocolate cake. I satisfied my sweets cravings with the last piece of gingerbread (what? I baked them all an apple cake before I ate the last piece…)

I was supposed to have lunch here today, with old friends from my bookstore days, but I have been coughing so much and so hard that it seems to stimulate my gag reflex and defeat my pee-controlling muscles, and really, I couldn’t go out for a nice lunch and risk spewing TB bacteria everywhere AND peeing myself. It just wouldn’t be seemly.

So I slept for a few hours this morning after dosing myself up with vitamin C tablets, and then I got up, did some actual paying work, went to the grocery store (I was out of white cooking wine and baby wipes. And fermented black beans, but I think I have to go to the Strip District for those), and went to the library where I retrieved my latest batch of holds: Summer Reading - Hilma Wolitzer; Whose Body? - Dorothy Sayers; These is my Words : The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901: Arizona Territories – Nancy Turner. I was hoping Jo Walton’s Ha’penny would have been in too, but it’s still ‘in transit.’

I returned The Lightning Thief; I wasn’t all that crazy about it, and it was a little too scary for Primo. I read the first chapter of The Nubian Prince and had to return that, too: it made me (even) sick(er) to my stomach.

I cooked the baked salmon and Brussel sprouts with bacon tonight for dinner, and then had a little fit of first pique and then weepiness because my children not only refused to eat the pasta and sauce I made for them (knowing that being even in the same room with, let alone being asked to ingest, the salmon and sprouts might do them in), but proclaimed how icky and yucky it was. And H got mad at me because I yelled at them, and I threatened to leave and go have dinner somewhere else in peace, and said I liked it better when I worked Thursday evenings, and then H took his dad and Primo off to the benefit symphony concert at the local high school.

I am looking forward to my cup of tea, a big chunk of apple cake, and finishing up Farthing, which is a remarkably engrossing book. I have absolutely no idea whatsoever how it is going to end, and I cannot wait to find out.

And I have no desire whatsoever to return to my desk job, because then I would miss THIS:

And this (he was a mite cold, watching his brother's hockey game):

I was cold too, because he had just knocked over my entire mug of fresh, hot tea, and stolen my jacket. But I still am glad I don't have to miss any more.
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* Dave Barry

“My sorrow, when she's here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be..." *

It’s a cold, rainy day – perfect for hanging out in the attic, playing with trains. And when you’ve built the entire island of Sodor, then it’s time to set up the little IKEA tent and watch Terzo push his little plastic trucks in and out, and in and out, and in and out, of the tent door for an hour while I lie on the futon and reread for the gazillionth time The President’s Daughter. (What with Ellen Emerson White FINALLY coming out with a new book about Meg and her family, at the end of this month, it seemed like a good reread.)

We just walked up to preschool in the drizzle and fetched Seg, and now I am on my way upstairs with a picnic lunch – nothing fancy: pb&j sandwiches, pretzels, apple slices, chocolate milk. We will lunch in the tent (those of us who fit – in other words, NOT ME), and this afternoon I will bake a spice cake I haven’t tried before from Michael Lee West’s Consuming Passions, and make some baked salmon and a pan of Brussel sprouts with bacon and Yukon Gold potatoes for dinner, and the boys will play Battleship and Clue Jr. and Pokemon, and the rain can keep drumming down on the roof.


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* Robert Frost

“The White House: I don't know whether it's the finest public housing in American or the crown jewel of the prison system” *

OH, YAY!!!!

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* Bill Clinton