It’s still hot out, the baby is still cute and I’m still slogging through revisions.
Oh, and I skipped Story Hour again today.

I’m feeling all rebellious about skipping Story Hour this morning.
I didn’t have anything better to do. I didn’t forget.
I chose not to go.
First of all, the 2-year old group that attends Story Hour at our local library is huge. So big, that by the time everyone’s sitting in a circle, none of the kids can see the book the librarian’s holding up. What normal two-year old — and by that I mean one without superhero super-vision — is going to focus on a story taking place twenty yards away?
Second, I’m tired of how territorial some of the mothers get. Once they sit down, they hold on to that spot like grim death. If, heaven forbid, you’re one of the last ones to get into the reading room, 9 times out of 10 you end up having to sit outside the circle. I’m not kidding. The other mothers refuse — absolutely refuse — to widen the circle up for the stragglers. And sitting outside the circle sucks. If it’s hard for a toddler to focus on the librarian sitting waaaaaay the hell over on the other side of the room, it’s damn near impossible when your vision is completely blocked by the mother and kid sitting in front of you.
Third, I just didn’t feel like going. There, I said it. I didn’t feel like singing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” and I didn’t feel like holding the stupid parachute and walking in a stupid circle while singing that stupid “Ring Around the Rosy” song that I didn’t even like when I was two, and I didn’t feel like dancing around in front of a room full of strangers.
Ths is what they expect of you at story hours these days: dancing. To annoying songs. Why is this necessary? Why can’t Story Hour just have, I don’t know, stories? I don’t like to dance in front of other people anyway, but especially not at 10:30 am when I’m stone cold sober and especially not to anything sung by the Wiggles. If you want me to dance, put on something normal, like, say, the Spice Girls.
And an open bar wouldn’t hurt, either. With the amount of money I’ve spent on late fees, I think I’ve earned it.

When I got into the shower, Sam was holding a full box of dog biscuits.
I considered taking them away, but then thought, How much trouble could he get into with those?
When I got out of the shower, the box of dog biscuits was empty, there was a pile of crumbs on the carpet, and our greyhound, Lexi, was lying on her bed looking a bit peaked.

The local meteorologists here on the Treasure Coast of Florida are the most optimistic I’ve ever come across. This evening, I heard one pronounce our weather as “beautiful.”
The heat index today was 105 degrees.
Now, maybe I’m a glass-is-half-empty kind of a girl, and should just be grateful that we’re not being flattened by yet another hurricane, but I think “beautiful” is pushing it.
It is, as my friend Julie said, hotter than a snake’s ass out.
In other news, my father and I have signed up to run the Disney Half-Marathon in January.
Why are we doing this? I don’t know. And the weird thing is, it was sort of my idea (“sort of” in the sense that I badgered my dad until he said he’d run it with me).
Do you want to know how long a half-marathon is? 13.1 miles. See, I thought it was 12 miles. I know that 12 and 13.1 don’t sound all that far apart, but, actually, that’s a considerable difference.
A 1.1 mile difference, to be exact. A 1.1 mile difference that comes at the end of 12 previously run miles.
I’ve never run 13.1 miles before. I’ve also never run 12 miles (I think my maximum distance is somewhere around 6 miles . . . as in half of 12. And less than half of 13.1). But for some reason 12 seemed doable and 13.1 sounds . . . long.
Last night, I had a dream that we were in the middle of running the race, when my dad insisted we stop off at Fleet Feet for extra running gear. We started trying on the running shoes for sale, and ended up getting kicked out of the race because we’d gone off course and weren’t keeping up with the mandatory 16-minute mile pace.
(The rules state that if you don’t maintain a 16-minute mile pace, you will be “picked up and transported to the finish.” In shame. Presumably, in some sort of losermobile.)
I woke up, and couldn’t go back to sleep for an hour and a half, and ended up sleeping through my alarm and missing my morning run.
Obviously, I’m going to have to work on my training methods.

I used to go to the movies all the time. Now, not so much. In fact, the only movie I’ve seen this summer is “The Wedding Crashers” (and, to paraphrase a friend of mine, the movie was so funny I almost puked).
Basically, I have a two-year old and a husband who works long hours, so on the nights when we do have a baby sitter, it usually seems like a shame to waste it sitting in a dark theatre watching a movie that will come out on DVD in a few months anyway.
And then there’s what I call the Ass Factor.
The Ass Factor is the bizarre ability I have to always end up sitting next to the biggest asshole in the movie theatre. It’s true. Mostly, I sit near the talkers, those awful people who are incapable of thinking a thought without it popping out of their mouths. They feel the need to offer a running commentary on every single freaking plot point in the film. Like the woman sitting near me during “15 Minutes” who shrieked out, “Oooo, there’s Charlize Theron!”
Charlize Theron wasn’t in the theatre, mind you. She was up on the screen. And yet this individual was still so awed by just a glimpse of a movie star, even one who was simply appearing in the movie, that she felt the need to comment on it.
Then there was the time I sat behind the parents who gave their little girl a police whistle to play with during the movie (and they were shocked that George and I would object to this).
And what really gets me is how when you ask people to hush up, they’re always offended.
“Are you serious?” one woman asked us, when we’d tired of her nearly non-stop prattle, and George asked her to kindly shut up (although I’m sure he said it in a nicer way, since he’s that sort of a guy).
“Yes. I’m serious,” George replied.
And the woman just stared at him, as though he’d asked her to perform a strip tease in the middle of the theatre.
My dad is a firm believer that I just have freakishly bad luck in attracting the Ass Factor. But then I’m not so sure it doesn’t happen to everyone, i.e., that there isn’t really such a large number of asses out there, that it’s a statistical probability you’ll sit near one most of the time you go to the movies. After all, when I was at the movies with my dad a few years ago, a fight broke out behind us. I don’t mean the couple started bickering quietly. Oh no. The woman actually stood up, and screamed at her date, all the while threatening him with her fist. And afterward, when I commented on the altercation to my dad, he didn’t remember it happening.
“I didn’t hear that,” Dad said.
“How could you not? She was screaming,” I said. “Swearing. Threatening to punch him.”
“Really? Hmmm. Did you ever think that maybe you’re just oversensitive to ambient noise?” he asked.
Maybe I am. But then again, I know it’s not just me, because in his brilliantly funny book of essays, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Dave Sedaris commented on the phenomenon. French people, Sedaris claims, don’t make a peep in movie theatres. He compared this to the man he sat by in a theatre in the States, who brought in a radio and proceeded to listen to a baseball game during the movie. When the usher took the man to task for this, the man replied — and I’m paraphrasing — “What? There’s no law against it.”
Actually, I’m pretty sure I’ve sat next to that guy.

Speaking of the beach, I have a theory that if there’s always at least one person swimming farther out from shore than you are, you’re safe from shark attacks. This isn’t based on any scientific data, just my belief that sharks are probably, like the rest of us, inherently lazy and won’t swim farther than they have to for dinner.

Every spring the fashion magazines inevitably run those articles on how to look chic at the beach. The $300 bathing suit everyone who’s anyone is wearing, the $450 thong sandals, the little chi-chi bag filled with Chanel lipgloss and Evian water mist and a Gucci hair clip that contains your perfectly highlighted tresses in a casual uptwist. And they give the article some annoying title, like, “Tricks for Staying Cool (and Hot!) at the Beach!”
It’s such a crock of shit.
Maybe there are women who can pull off the glamour thing at the beach. But I’ve never seen one. And I’ve certainly never seen one who’s hauling a kid or two along with her, not to mention beach chairs, an umbrella, four different kinds of sunscreen, towels, extra diapers, outfit changes, sippy cups, snacks and enormous sack of pails, shovels, water wings, floats, etc, etc, etc.
In real life, the chicks at the beach are wearing ratty old t-shirts over their bathing suits and flip-flops from Target and cherry-flavored chapstick. And no one’s hair ever looks good when it’s exposed to salt water and wind.
Anyway, if you could afford $450 sandals — which I can’t — who would be stupid enough to wear them to the beach, where they’d get all scratched up in the sand?
This is why I don’t read fashion magazines anymore, and stick with decorating magazines instead. Not that I’m entirely shielded from the insanity The inaugural issue of Domino, a new home magazine, had a feature on how to look glamorous while gardening.
Gardening. As in, yard work.
And Domino didn’t just stop at recommending you purchase $286 hot pants, a $220 floral tank and $98 tweed ballerina flats to wear whilst weeding . . . they offered different costume themes: The All-American Cowgirl. The British Country Lass. The Provincial Mademoiselle. The magazine went on to advise that you “throw together wellies and a chiffon skirt for a fabulous look” that will take you from right from gardening to a party. Presumably without stopping off for a shower first.
Fabulous? That doesn’t say “fabulous” to me. It says “crazy.” Or maybe, best case scenario, “drunk.”

There’s an episode of the Simpsons where the teachers at the local elementary school go on strike, giving Bart and Lisa a protracted holiday. As you might imagine, Bart revels in the time off, but little Lisa quickly goes into a decline.
“Grade me!” she begs her mother. “Look at me…evaluate and rank me! Oh, I’m good, good, good, and oh so smart! Grade me!”
I’m having a Lisa Simpson moment.
I sent my fourth book, Legalese, off to my agent on Friday. Since then, I’ve cleaned my house. I’ve read Goodnight, Gorilla umpteen times to Sam. I’ve spent waaaaaay too much time playing my new computer game, Nancy Drew: Curse of Blackmoor Manor (shut up, it’s harder than it sounds). I’ve filed my nails down to little stubs. I’ve crawled around on my hands and knees scrubbing the wall trim clean.
I’m not good at waiting. And waiting for the verdict on a new book? I’m even worse at that.
Yesterday I gave in, and started outlining my next book.
When I told George, he said, “You don’t really believe in the concept of time off, huh?”
Um, no. Apparently not.

Should I take it personally that Sam ripped the picture of Mama out of his Sweet Dreams, Sam book?
Update: I woke up to Sam shoving Sam Loves Kisses into bed with me. Maybe all is forgiven.

The highlights:
(1) The Big Love by Sarah Dunn. Simply the best chick-lit book I’ve read in awhile. The story is familiar — guy breaks up with girl, she’s broken hearted and ready to rebound. But Dunn writes with a perfect touch, infusing the story with hilarious observations.
(2) The Family Tree by Carole Caldwalder. A wry and funny look at British family life. The narrator contemplates her lackluster marriage to her geneticist husband, and remembers her 70′s era childhood.
(3) Apaloosa by Robert Parker. I’m a big Robert Parker fan. Huge. Especially the Spencer books, even though Susan Silverman annoys the snot out of me (which I don’t feel guilty saying since I read somewhere a few years ago that Parker’s wife also can’t stand Mrs. Silverman, understandably, since everyone thinks that the uber-annoying character was based on her). I am not, however, a fan of westerns. But I loved Apaloosa. It was Spencerish, in that there was a lot of attention paid to what kind of men are drawn to the sort of work of killing other men, but the setting and characters made it fresh. And Parker’s spare, insightful dialogue is as great as ever.
(4) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling. A few weeks have passed by since I read this book, and I honestly don’t know how I feel about it. Like all of the HP books, I was riveted. But I think it was my least favorite of the series so far, mostly because I was 99% sure of how it would end (and I was right). It seemed more like a bridge between the fifth and final book . . . more of an explanation of what to come, rather than what was currently happening. But still, it was Harry Potter, and — just like brownies — even the least best one is still pretty damn good.