I've been married to my father-in-law's son for over nine years now, and yet he still thinks it's perfectly fine to call me at 8 o'clock in the morning!
Granted, we have a child, and people with children are frequently up earlier than they'd like, but still, on the weekend, she often lets us sleep in. Or one of us takes one for the team and lets the other one sleep in.
Mini-pear is sleeping over at her friend's house. We both could have slept in! But instead the phone, which was right next to my ear - where it should be when my baby is away for the night - started ringing away merrily. For some reason, the dog decided to join this joyful chorus by retching violently in the kitchen. Mr. Pear got up and mopped up the vomit. I listened to my voice mail (of course I didn't actually answer it!), just in case it was an emergency phone call (because really, that's the only reason I want my phone to ring before 9 a.m.). Somehow Mr. Pear was able to flop back asleep and me? Well, here I am with my tea wondering what I should have for breakfast.
Should I fill you in on all the hot details of date night?
We took a nap. Went to Jimbo's to buy laundry soap specifically for cloth diapers. Stopped at the new Apple Store to check out Mr. Pear's application on the iPhone. That was really cool! He wrote that! And it's right there on the screen! Apple! Huge! Then we stopped at Borders (I've yet to find an indie bookstore with a children's section in defiantly anti-intellectual San Diego county) to refill the summer book fairy's stocks. Border's books has the most asinine method of organizing children's books I've ever seen. One would think that fiction for independent readers would be organized in much the same way adult's fiction is shelved. Wrong! Instead, there is a section for "Animal Stories" and a section for "School/Friendships", etc. For someone who went in with the idea of looking - oh, I don't know- say, by the author's last name, it was baffling!
Eventually this employee who soon revealed herself to be completely useless asked if I was finding everything okay.
PPP: No, actually, I'm not.
Useless Employee with No Knowlege of Children's Books: Oh, something in particular I can help you look for?
PPP: Well, I could probably find it myself if the books were shelved properly...
UEWKCB *smiles benevolently*: Well, it is the children's department...
PPP: Meaning?
UEWKCB: Sometimes the children will pull things off the shelves and not put them back in the right places.
PPP: No, I'm curious as to why they aren't shelved alphabetically. If I'm looking for books by a particular author, but don't know the subject matter of each and every book she's written, I'm going to have to look in all these separate sections...
UEWKCB *ignores my logic*: Well, it is back to school time, so we are running low on a lot of things...Shall we look them up in the computer?
So I tell her we can start by looking for anything by E. Nesbit and Edward Eager. She needs me to spell both their names, and while on one hand, I can appreciate her wanting to get it right, I am mostly really disappointed that she's obviously never heard of them. If I were in a real bookshop, with a proprieter as opposed to an employee, with someone who actually cared about children's books, I imagine they might screw up their little face with glee and breathily declare how much they enjoyed E. Nesbit's books. Perhaps they'd even say, "If your reader likes those, she should try something by ________", but, no, this lady is just an employee at a big, box bookstore and doesn't know jack about kid's lit. So disappointing.
At any rate, they don't carry anything by E. Nesbit. Really? Really? I craned my neck looking at the screen - not just out of stock, but you don't carry them??? And we went and looked under "Independent Readers/Science Fiction" for the 2 individual copies of Edward Eager's books they had in stock. One, we already owned. The other I found "mis-shelved" among the E's in "Independent Readers/General".
UEWKCB: See, the kid's are always putting them back in the wrong place.
PPP: No, I'm pretty sure that that's where I'd shelve him - with the other E's...
And she had the nerve to give me a pitying look!
/rant over.
We came home, made smoothies and watched American Gangster. 2 hours and 45 minutes! Long! A midnight dog walk, and I was more than ready for bed.
A very good example as to why independant children's booksellers are awesome.
Posted by: Rebecca H. | August 17, 2008 at 04:53 PM
a grandparents wishlist might be handy, if we don't know what you've got and what you aint hows we to replenish yer stocks, I'm sure if mr pear can write stuff for iphones he can make an updatable online list of reading matter for little humans.yes censorship would be advised else you'll end up with a massive library on day two, an interactive list would enable us to delete books as we purchased them.
or not
Posted by: oneoftheold pear | August 18, 2008 at 06:06 PM
What application is this?
Posted by: Adam Rice | August 22, 2008 at 09:42 PM