I finally got my kids back from my other-mother-in-law yesterday, and I was so excited because my house is boring when I'm the only one in it. They weren't so excited to see me, but they were happy to get home and play with the neighbors. I didn't see them until bedtime.
So today, I decided to force them to spend time with me by trapping them in the car. We headed out for coffee with Tracy, where they made me question my desire to spend time with them because they became instantly high-maintenance.
We (read: I) decided to plan a garden, so we went in search of garden-y things. We got sidetracked by a tiny little used-book store tucked in the back corner of a giant strip mall. We ditched the garden-y stuff and went in search of literature. The store is run by a nice little old lady, who loved my kids. They spent an hour picking out the Perfect Book. This included three books with famous cartoon characters on the front cover, which discouraged me somewhat. I think that the notion of writing what kids will read over kids reading the good stuff that has been written is making our nation stupider. But I digress....they got "character books", full of crappy writing and political correctness. I allowed it because, hey, whatever gets them reading, right?
Dalton chose a book on tsunamis. It turned out to be quite frightening. "The last major tsunami killed over 500,000 people, and workers found at least 500 dead bodies every day for months! Stay tuned for a chapter on earthquakes and hurricanes! Here is the definition of 'disaster'!" I was hoping for some comforting words on how to stay safe and maybe a hopeful survival story or two, considering it was written for children, but no.
Huston was in search of "horror". I don't know how he even knew there was a genre for horror, but I told him absolutely not. He settled for an inspiration book about a person called Captain Underpants. Truly, he is my little genius. So proud of that boy, he finished the book before we got home. This child, around whom I have carefully planted the classics that inspired my own love of reading. He's been reading Mark Twain for two years, C.S. Lewis since he could read words instead of pictures, and here he is, in a quaint little book store full of forgotten treasure, purchasing "Captain Underpants." :::sigh:::
Warrick searched every shelf for "Moby Dick". I don't know why, but his search was intense enough to parallel the story itself. Sadly, there wasn't a copy to be found in the store, so he settled for something else, with a promise to obtain Moby after dinner. I was very impressed when he strolled in and asked "Where do you put the classics?"
After book shopping we met my mother-in-law for dinner, during which Huston quoted the underpants dude at least a thousand times.
We got halfway home and remembered about the garden, so we went to Wal-Mart. We sat on the patio furniture for about two hours, wondering how long it would take to save up enough to buy it, then, just as we were starting to fall asleep and get strange looks from the employees, I decided it was time to go home.
I love spring break. We don't have a garden or patio furniture or anything else we set out to see, but we had a great time, we got half price on the books because they were well-behaved, and I didn't have to cook dinner. All in all, a pretty good day.
