In sickness and in health...

Ugh! Was up all night listening to dear husband cough. I empathise with his pain, yes, but he is quite possibly the loudest cougher ever. He tried to be thoughtful and go downstairs, but in our close quarters, not a huge help. I did manage a doze long enough at some point to dream that I ran into Bill Clinton sitting alone at an outdoor cafe in Shirlington, but I am a zombie. Somehow, when it is your child who is sick at night adrenalin kicks in and you do what you have to do, but when it's your husband, it falls more into the annoyance category. And before I'm chastised for cold-heartedness, let me point out that he's had this cough for days, and he only could have aggravated it by going to hit golf balls in the driving rain yesterday to avoid going to brunch with my family!! Needless to say, I have made a Dr's appt. for him this afternoon.

Nothing much newsworthy about our weekend. My biggest thrill was getting in and out of the grocery store with purchases totaling a mere $108.40. We tend to average out b/t $130 and $150 ($160+ if it's a rare Whole Foods week) plus $80 at Target every other week when the diaper run is necessary, so I felt pretty good about my shopping success yesterday! We ran Leila out to the Tyson's Cartoon Cuts Saturday morning and her bangs are now about 1/2 inch long thanks to her squirming and fussing about. If anyone has an alternative idea for kids cuts, please let me know (Luigi won't touch her yet!) Followed that up with a brief visit to a McLean playground -- we are determined to hit every playground in the greater metropolitan area this summer -- and did a little Old Town strolling and fish 'n chips dining (Eamonn's does a great room temperature pour of Guinness complete w/ shamrock etching FYI) Saturday night. Yesterday was pretty much a washout, but I heard my new favorite Leila-ism: "flash my sumbrella" for open my umbrella??? Umbrella is "sumbrella" b/c in her Spanglish thinking the melding of sombrilla and umbrella somehow makes sense, but "flash" - where'd she come up w/ that one?

And as an addendum to my book list, there was some surprise that I did not note The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, which I did love and simply thought there may be enough universal accolades about it out there. I look forward to reading his new novel later this summer. Another that I had intended to include is Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clark. It may take an odd duck like me to get into 1,000+ pages on dueling magicians during the Napoleonic Wars, and it did take me a good couple months to read last summer, but I just found all the characters to be so fantastic (how fabulous to have a mischievous faerie called "the man with the thistle down hair"...). Once it sucked me in, I got completely lost in the tales of magic and faerie enchantment. And I did watch the movie version of Little Children Friday. It's very well done, but may be even more entertaining if you haven't read the book. There was some crucial character development that was just glossed over (likely for the sake of keeping it to a 2hr frame), and some may find the narration off-putting. Patrick Wilson is a pretty pretty man though. All American w/ a receding hairline yes, but pretty pretty eyes, and there's almost something a bit Jude Law like in the delicate lines of his nose and chin. OK - Enough with that!!