We've Got It

You know when you go to a Super Wal*Mart and you see those big red letters announcing that they're open for 24 hours, and you stand there in front of that mammoth store and snigger at the insanity of such a place being open all night, and you wonder what kind of loser would be loopy enough to shop there in the middle of the night?

That would be me.

At midnight tonight, my kids and I were happily perusing the aisles of our local Wal*Mart Supercenter. Don't laugh. It was a very important mission.

See, it had been a hectic day in which I was fairly certain that my mothering position was in jeopardy. I wasn't very popular today. I think I may have been fairly close to getting voted off the island, and some of my kids were fairly close to getting the boot, as well. After we'd all had a chance to cool off and some of us had the chance to redeem ourselves, I suggested we go out on a special expedition.

So, Bard, Houdin, Sweetheart and I drove into the Big City (read=has a Wal*Mart, a McD's and a Wendy's) and bought--in addition to three bags of lemons, three bags of bagels, two potted mums, a clearance-rack Tinkerbell cake and two 1.75 quarts of Breyers* Neapolitan ice cream--Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

We'd gone to the Harry Potter Extravaganza in a Cleveland suburb, but it started storming before we could get our copy and I didn't think it was wise to wait on the sidewalk under the streetlamps with lightning filling the skies. I'm funny that way. The next day, I'd checked two different Wal*Marts twice and they'd been sold out. I checked the local library, and there were over 400 people in line for just one of the library's copies.

But I have it now. It's in my clutches. [insert maniacal laughter]

I'm only a few pages through the first chapter, and I'm going to have to fight Bard for it because , when it comes to reading, I'm the toroise and she's the hare, but she has plenty of reading material to keep her busy. Besides, my goal is to read it aloud to all of the kids. Bard says that will take a year. She says I never finish any of our read aloud books. She's a brat. But that's only because she's partially right.

But she's going to be wrong about this one. This one, my friends, will be a priority. We'll read in the morning, at breakfast, at second breakfast, at teatime, at lunch, before naps, after naps, at dinner time, and before bed.

I WILL FINISH READING THIS BOOK ALOUD TO MY KIDS.

If you give me any spoilers, I'll poke you in the eye with a dirty diaper.


*They left out the apostrophe, not I.