Hey Mom, why can't Buster pretend to be your escort? That's the way he's got it in all his cartoons.

My relationship with summer has hit that peaceful plateau that you get after about twenty years of marriage. We've gone through the rough first years (What? It so horrible that I want to have my own life??? I don't think so!!!), weathered the seven-year- itch (Maybe I want to go outside. Did you ever think about that?), and have gotten to the point where it's just comfortable and it doesn't matter so much if he beats me because divorce and finding something better would just take too much effort.

I did not mean for that to sound like I was condoning spousal abuse. Even though it totally did.

Been reading a lot lately, like hundreds of pages a day. Some random book by the women who wrote The Nanny Diaries, one of my favorite books ever. Eh. Not their best effort. Not that you would know it by reading the glowing staff pick I was guilted into doing by Manager Who Shall Remain Nameless, a woman who is obsessed with the staff picks and will accost employees who so much as look at a book, regardless of whether they read and/or enjoyed the book.

One I really did enjoy was Whistling in the Dark. I wasn't really expecting too, and only read it because, well, I can, and the author is doing a signing/talking thingy later this month that probably three people will show up for. I felt like I should know what was going on. It was very engrossing, and very sweet. I loved the two little girls. Kind of like To Kill a Mockingbird crossed with The Lovely Bones. Everyone should read immediately.

Now on to A Thousand Splendid Suns. Wow. I'm very pleased that I'm a little white girl from the North Shore and not an illegitimate baby girl in Afghanistan. Because that clearly sucks.

The greatest social injustice in my childhood was that the Murphy's had a computer before I did.

Being stoned sucks WAY more.

Massive amounts of fun this morning with the Empress and Mommy Dearest. Went out for coffee at Smith Bros. Officially my Favorite Coffee Place Maybe Except For Cedarburg Roastery (which has the inestimable advantage of hot guys working there).

I'm still personally wounded that it took away pretty much the only restaurant north of Mequon that doesn't have arches or a taco out front, though.

Oh. Wait. We had Ferrantes, too. Until they closed for no reason other than that their bathrooms were haunted. No, really, they were.

But I digress.

Mom and Colleen tried their darndest to convince me that I would get into grad school, I would not still be working the same job ("Receipt in the bag all right???") in ten years, and my life would have meaning and NO FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY YOU WILL NOT STILL BE MAKING COFFEE!!! I think they were a little bit sick of me by the end.

I don't care. As the only resident of Chez Morena without neuroses, magical pills that make everything okay, or plastic sheeting, I reserve the right to go a little bit crazy about my future.

Oh, and Colleen made Mom promise not to shop at Costco. You know, like we weren't going to shop at Target, Best Buy, or Borders. Umm...

After coffee we went to see a model home. The same model home, indeed, that Person Who Shall Remain Nameless is building his/her house after.

(I honestly cannot keep straight what I am and am not supposed to know at this point. I swear to God, my family is like the mafia. But we're pasty, Irish, and poor. And without guns. So basically we just have a bunch of bordering-on-unethical secrets University of Minnesota calls, everybody graduated!!!. Hmmm. Mafia actually sounds better.)

And I'd just like to tell Person Who Shall Remain Nameless that I adore the model home, but I think the TV and the piano in the living room might make things a tad claustrophobic, and that he/she should reconsider his/her negative take on the whole kitchen/family room/morning room, because it is absolutely adorable and if I was going to be jealous of one thing in the house, it would be that part.

Also, good call on the bay window.

But oh my God the flashbacks. Not until today did I realize that spending so much of my childhood in model homes must have done some serious damage.