Speaking of Mon Amour

Do me the favor of hopping over to Daimon's blog. This is our long-time friend and Chad's college roommate. He is in NOLA this week with some great photos.

Marketing ployed

So I watched live tv for, like, 15 minutes today. This is worth mentioning because Chad and I are the biggest live tv snobs-ever. We bought a TiVo like seven years ago when they first came on the market and we haven't looked back since. Chad actually goes to a web site that rates the commercials to watch commercials. Riddle me that. So, we never see commercials unless Chad is watching Sportscenter because somehow this falls under the catergory of "sporting event" and therefore Chad refuses to TiVo it. So, not only do i have to watch Sportscenter, but i have to watch commercials. But, I digress. So i flip on CNN today and who do I see, but Shaun White, Olympic snowboarder, selling AMEX.

Good for you AMEX for recognizing that my generation is the one you really want. After all, aren't we the ones carrying balances and making you the real money? Then I see a really cute Rice Krispie commercial with the brillant tagline of "Childhood is calling." That's when i remember the reason I don't watch commercials, AMEX is raping me on interest rates and Rice Krispies are so nutritionally void that I would never feed them to my daughter no matter how much childhood called. I would tell them Cheerios was on the other line and they are made with whole grains.

Jackasses.

Book nerd

Along those same lines as I am a big nerd for wanting a stove for my birthday, I am also a major dork when it comes to the library. So i have this major head-rush last weekend because I finally finished Middlesex, great book fyi. Since I am a person who cannot read two books simultaneously, I am like a book-starved lunatic when I hit the library on Saturday. Here is what is currently on my night table:

Everday Food magazine
Good magazine-now finished
New Orleans, Mon Amour by Andrei Codrescu
The Lives of the Muses-Francine Prose (how can that be someone's real name?)
How To Break An Egg
Preschool Success-Amy James
Phoenetic Awareness Activities
More Than Letters-Sally Moomaw (if this were my real name I wouldn't claim it)
The Rough Guide to Blogging (laugh all you want Ben, podcasting is next)
The Story of the Orchestra-Robert Levine

And i will read them all just you wait and see. Okay so half of them will go back completely unopened, but a girl can dream. . .

Take that red meat

I weighed myself today and i have lost seven pounds since i gave up red meat. I was listening to a program the other day where the host asserted that if people talked about how much debt they were in fewer people would be in debt because there would be less guilt involved and we wouldn't feel compelled to keep up with the Joneses.

For a woman at least, weight is a very similar topic. People will always tell you if they are losing or gaining, but no one ever says their weight until they lost 90 pounds on a Jenny Craig commercial. So here it is folks: I am 5 feet seven inches, I weigh 175 pounds, i wear a size 14 and will be thirty years old in three weeks.

I feel lighter already.

Liz, rule breaker

So we basically spent our weekend entertaining, which is a good time and i am getting old and tired so appreciate when all of my friends just come to me. So my friend Kat comes over and she is going through all sorts of big life changes and I hear myself telling her, "Well there is no rule that says you can't (insert activity here)."



So I sit down with Chad because I have been just agonizing over what to do for my birthday. i felt so compelled to do something crazy and fun and young because in like 19 days I will be suddenly be old. SO he looks at me, laughs and says, "Well you know there is no rule that says we can't go kitesurfing when you are 31." So we make the Rory Gilmore pro/con list and I realize that all of the things on my list like snowboarding and kitesurfing can be all be done withing 20 miles of my house. A light shines down from the heavens, I can go kitesurfing because it is Tuesday! it doesn't need to be my birthday, I don't need that as an excuse to do something fun.

So I bought a new stove and an under the counter microwave. They are gorgeous and they will be here next Thursday. It has convection, people!!! All four burners work! I just have to break it to my father and brother-in law that all that work they did putting in my range hood a few years ago is all being ripped out. Sorry guys, but the wiring there was really helpful!

Now some people (everyone I've told so far, including husband), might try and convince me that this is the lamest thirtieth birthday present even and just solidifies the whole getting older thing. I submit that I am Liz, ruler-breaker. Coolest new stove-owner ever.

Besides, I can't lie, when I realized that I had a stove big enough to cook my 25 lb Thanksgiving turkey in, I cried. Right there in the freaking Home Depot.

Proud to be an American

Raise your hand if you knew that El Salvador was still a country. I was doing laundry and I realized that my shirt was made in El Salvador. When was the last time that you thought about this entire country? Christ, that is sad.

Newsing with the oldies

So after a morning with Olivia at our local botanical gardens where she taxed my brain with questions on everthing from duck mating rituals, Hindii iconography (i have to seriously look up some stuff after this) plant life and the effect of bacterial infections I decided we both needed a break. Olivia received the prize that she covets more than any other, a trip to the McDonalds.

Let it be known to all that I hate the McDonalds. I posess a disdain for the McDonalds that can only be described as primal and unyielding. That does not mean that I never eat there, or that i hate all fast food. Anyone who has ever taken me to a Carl's Jr knows this is not true. However, I try to avoid it because something about the McDonalds just makes me feel unclean. Either because somehow this disdain has escaped her, or because she is a spiteful little critter, Olivia loves the McDonalds.

So here we are eating our lunch with the only other people in McDonalds, the elderlies. That is when I had that moment where you realize that you have let it all go. You are eating processed chicken, drinking caffinated soda out of a green straw (it's Shrek time people) watching Fox News. Thank God I was though. How else am i going to find out what's up with hugo Chavez? You think those jackasses at CNN are going to apprise me of the threat that is Russia, no f-ing way.

A note about anonymous posting

I respect everyone's right to on-line privacy, but it is helpful to me to know who you are when you are elicting a debate. I love posting responses to your comments, they can be even more educated if i know who you are!

How we grieve

There are a lot of issues to talk about on Memorial Day in wartime, but one that I thought was of particualr interest was one that I heard on my local public radio today. They ran a story about a local man who is trying to make his own memorial to Iraq war vets. He explained that he was trying to make all of those who have died into individuals, not numbers. While I think that this is a a noble undertaking to honor those who have served for us, it begs the question, is this how vets should be memorialized?

I am not talking about whether or not we should memorialize vets in a current war I am talking about individual memorialization versus group memorials. As someone who used to live in our nation's capitol, i have seen many memorials, all moving in their own way. However, there is a very striking shift in how we memorialize our dead after the Vietnam War. Maya Lin's memorial is the first national monument to acknowledge soldiers as individual people, names. Even memorials that have been built after the Vietnam Memorial, for instance the Korea Memorial or the WWII Memorial, do no such thing. The closest the WWII monument gets is a wall of stars to symbolize individuals, but it is only a fraction of stars in relation to how many people died. Yet, something like the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial is very specific in creating chairs in their memorial for the dead, as well as listing the names of the surviviors.

What causes this shift? It is not the designers making these changes, it is the people who choose them. Are the baby boomers showing their desire for individualism? Is that appropriate in a military setting? Isn't the military all about the group, the unit, being one together? Even Arlington National Cemetary is all uniformity. Is it the theory of live together, die alone? It begs the question of who are memorials really for?

Change of scenery

So, as i have stated, I fought the whole laptop thing for awhile. I still am having trouble getting used to the keyboard as you can see. However, it is gorgeous today and i did not want to be relegated to catching up on e-mail in our dark and windowless office. So i have converted our living room to my office. i must say, it was enough to keep me very productive. I love the new desk, oh yes it was finished last weekend, but the office itself is still chaos as we marry workspaces. I have married a lot of things in the past eight years, bank accounts, medicine cabinets, center consoles in the car. This one is turning out to be much harder than I thought it would me. it turns out that the stay-at-home mom needs a desk more than her husband, who works at home (occasionally).

Maybe I should permanently relocate to living room? Somewhere I hear my husband, sighing.

Lack of motivation

So Supermom's comment reminded me of a hilarious conversation I had with my friends Sarah and Heather when they were here for dinner last week. So, we were talking about my desire to get in shape, but my ambivilance about joining a gym. I mentioned that I wish I could afford a personal trainer because I take direction very well, but I have no self discipline. So then someone starts talking about those new Nike iPods and how they "coach" you. I asserted that a pleasant and gentle voice telling me how much time I had left on the treadmill was not going to cut it. I need it to say, "Move it tubby!" or "Have you seen your butt in the mirror lately?"

Sarah suggested that I add a podcast to the blog with my "motivational workouts." The scripts for which just got more and more outrageous. i haven't laughed so hard in a long time.

So, just out of curiosity, what would it take to get you off the couch?

Feeding frenzy

There has been a lot of food talk on Angie's blog and the blog she does with her friend Barb and it got me to thinking about how bartering is a lost art in our society. I use food for a lot of things in my life, Christmas gifts, as thank yous for favors, in lieu of cash for Olivia's school events, birthday parties and of course parties. in fact, I will never be able to call myself a party planner because the only thing I plan for a party is the food. Decor, invitations, not so much.

I am currently on a bartering system with my neighbors for childcare, which is very handy. i take their son one day a week and the two of them are helping with haircuts (she is a stylist, don't worry) and her partner is very handy in putting up shelves and knocking all sorts of little things off my to-do list. It is a beautiful thing to have something other than cash change hands, it puts more value on my talents and skills than, well, money can buy.

However, it does make me a little sad that things like baking are becoming something everyone values because no one does it anymore. I am grateful that olivia loves to cook, i hope i can keep it going one more generation.

PS-Planning for Rhythm and Booms has begun people, fried chicken, home made sundae bar, my famous rum beans. Who is coming?

Don't worry everyone

I did get a candy bar. God bless the Target and their ability to give me hydrogen peroxide, coat hooks AND truffles.

Kipling in action

Ours is not to reason why, ours is to do or die; is how the quote goes I believe. I may not be fighting a war in India, but today is one of those days where I find myself dealing with my own brand of domestic terrorism. Olivia and i spent most of yesterday afternoon tracing her body on butcher paper, cutting pictures out of magazines and gluing them to the paper, and finally labelling all the body parts in Spanish. We enjoyed ourselves, I had that momentary flash of feeling like a good parent, and she actually was excited to show it to Daddy when he got home.

Today she tore the thing to shreds. I'm pretty sure it was just to see what happened. Sigh. Then she proceeded to just dump her lunch on herself and the floor, just because. She is still not asleep, I can hear her in her room making ambulance noises to herself.

I need either a candy bar or a stiff drink and I have neither. At least she kicked all of the other kids' asses in Spanish today. I am not above bragging at this point.

Good day

My neighbor told me that i looked good today. She hadn't seen me since the no caffine, no red meat thing and she said, "What have you done?" I asked what she meant and she told me that i was glowing. I told her that since I kicked the caffine there are no more highs and lows. Just good mood.

Until I find out that none of the other parents volunteered to help at the teacher appreciation lunch. Then there was a nasty e-mail.

I have also embraced the power nap. 30-45 minutes seems to be enough to set me right. So for all you out there fighting and desperately clinging to those New Year's resolutions, stick with it. I can see you glowing from here!

Isn't that something you tell someone when they are pregnant? Wait, was she telling me I looked pregnant!?! Crap.

Olivia's idea of family

Olivia had to choose five photos to take with her to school for a family collage and these were the ones she chose. While I can't claim to have no editorial control, for instance she tried to not include me in favor of my aunts Annie and Lisa. Then she tried to take in five pictures of her and her baby cousin Morgan. However, once some guidelines were set, these were all her choices. She was very disappointed to be limited to just five.

I'm bored with the Mommy Wars

Before the local news came I was reading the newspaper and idlly waiting for the local news when this came on. I have to just say that i am bored with the "Mommy Wars." I feel like nearly every week a new editorial or article comes out about how it working mothers hate stay-at-home moms and vice versa. Save it, okay? i have friends who work outside the home full-time, part-time and not at all and they all love their kids. We all have things we hate about our jobs, our kids and our lives and whether we work at an office has nothing to do with it.

I am so over these women who leave their jobs and give staying a home a try, hate it, then complain that the other stay at home moms are too competitive. That we are setting feminism back, that we aquiescing to a society that demands that women be thre primary caretakers of children. Don't feel guilty because you want to go back to work!! Stop writing articles that Gymboree and reading to your kids is boring and that the mothers who enjoy sitting in the library and reading repetitive stories for hours must be brainwashed by society's expectations.

Newsflash, I don't like Gymboree, so I don't go. I enjoy my kid's performances and correcting her vowel sounds 9,000 times and only get irritated after about 50 times of saying "listening ears!" That doesn't make me brain dead it means that I can, and should, stay at home. You don't? Great, go back to work and leave your kid with someone who does. Your kid knows that you hate doing these things with them and soon they are going to resent you. I don't think you are less of a person 20/20 interviewee, until you start blaming me for your latent guilt.

PS-20/20 stop giving this negativity airtime.

History Repeats Itself

I saw a small item on the local news last night about a campus bombing during the Vietnam War. I knew that Madison had a history of being very involved in the anti-war protests, in fact people commented often that the building where i used to work on campus was built to be "bomb proof." I had even heard the bizarre story of the man who bombed campus and returned here to open a sandwich shop. I just chalked it up to my theory that Madison is where crazy hippies go to die.

I looked into more after the news last night and found this. It turns out to be a terribly tragic story about the folly of youthful idealism and the tragic loss of a young researcher with small children. What i found most jarring was the language used in the articles at the time of the bombing. This was 1970 and terrorism, imperialist, and a bombing attempt by a flight student are all there. This bombing was more powerful than the Oklahoma City bombing and the three men who served time served 8 years and three years respectfully. Due largely to the changing attitudes about the war by the time they were apprehended. One man was never found.

Somewhere out there there is a man who drove a stolen van filled with $200 of home made explosives to a building ten minutes away from my house, walking distance to my daughter's school, parked it, lit a fuse and drove away. He killed a man with three small children and injured two others. He did absolutely no damage to his intended target on the fourth floor.

The convicted men said they were "bringing the war home." How much longer until the war comes back here?

Hump Day

In college I think Wednesday was the one day that most students were not at the bar. Except Daimon. SO they came up with this marketing extravaganza called hump day to try and convince us all that our week was so long and difficult that the only way we could get through was by binging mid-week.

Back then it didn't work, but now? When you wake up and think, "Christ it's only Wednesday?" then your next thought is, "Olivia are you in my bed with no underwear on?" you start to think, maybe.

I asked Chad for a pep talk to get me through today and the best he came up with was trying to convince me that raising a three year-old could be considered a superpower. Too much Heroes.

Rock Your World

I was listening to local radio today and they were playing what Rolling Stone Magazine has deemed the 40 songs that changed the world. So I will start the posts of the music that changed my world and expect posts to this one.

1) Oh Mickey-Toni Basil. The first song I ever heard on a record player.

2) Lucky Star-Madonna/Love is a Battlefield-Pat Benatar. These tie for my obsession at a young age for bad girls and their angsty music.

3) Thriller-Love, love, loved the king of pop. I could do every move in this video.

4) Losing My Religion-REM Not only was this my first CD, but I added the fact that Chad and I had the same favorite REM song (Country Feedback off the same album) to the reasons why I needed to marry him.

5)Karma Police-Radiohead. I lived this song and album in college and I consider it to be the definition of me as my own person with my own tastes that have not been completely absorbed by child and husband. Neither of whom cares much for Radiohead.

Okay everybody, throw out a few.

Why a blog can improve your marriage and your life

So my hubby did a bevvy of nice things for me on Mother's Day, but the nicest thing he did was pay attention to my not so subtle blog posts. I received a new iPod, with only my songs loaded on it. The best thing ever? I made a list of things that were driving me crazy and he did all of them! Shelves in the basement? Done. Lawn mowed AND trimmed out? Done. He even put away laundry and did the dishes.

I have officially become my mother when the best gift ever becomes someone else unloading the dishwasher. It freed up my time to identify and eliminate that strange smell by scrubbbing under all the appliances!

Could life be any better?

A few photos from the weekend

Here is my brother and sister coming off the high of teaching my daughter all manner of inappropriate things including "You suck" and really jackassed things that they proceeded to video tape and post on their My Space pages. Note: no link. All the while my parents are saying "Stop it you two!" and laughing their asses off. Thanks Mom and Dad!!

Who wouldn't want to garden in their underwear and a dress-up hat?

A Mother's Day Treat

The first ever Sundance Theatre has opened in Madison and I got to go gawk for Mother's Day. I know that Madison always thinks that it is a bigger deal than it is, but I have to admit that this is pretty damn cool. We had a yummy sandwich and then started counting down to the day that we will get to see films that even people attending Sundance won't get to see. I see a lot of babysitters in my future.

Daughters of tough cookies unite

On Mother's Day I think that I should do a tribute to my own mother. Since my mother hates all things computers and would never read my blog, I figure i will throw the net a little wider and do a tribute to all my girlfriends who were raised by women like my mom. My mom is the definition of tough cookie. She works, harder, longer and for less money than anyone I know, and loves it. She raised me all by herself, has never met a person who she doesn't think was just a little lazy (and compared to her we all are), and she has the biggest mouth I have ever seen. She is a die-hard defender of her children, until we get home and she chews us a new one.

So for anyone raised by a woman like my mom, pat yourself on the back and then be grateful. Nobody will ever take you for a sucker, you will never be left unprepared for anything, and no one will ever take you for anything less than one tough cookie.

Happy Anniversary

Today is the eighth anniversary of the day that I graduated college. Tomorrow I will wake up and it will be my eighth wedding anniversary. Some people say that it was crazy to graduate, get married, drive cross country twice and pack up and move to a city in which I have never lived all in three weeks. I say it was an excellent excuse to put on sixty pounds.

Most days i do not regret walking down the aisle at the wise and ripe age of twenty-one. Then some days I think that I gave up sex with other men in my prime. Then I remember the sixty pounds and realize the only prime I had was five dress sizes ago.

I digress from what could be a wonderful and loving tribute to my fabulous husband, who is a wonderful man and father. Unfortunately, now all I can think about is the last dress I wore that was a size 6. I bought it at the GAP. . .

Anyway, I amde him garlic fries what more does he want? A hambuger? Maybe for our tenth anniversary.

Matt Damon, what are you doing to me?

I dreamed about that horrible movie last night. I think I must have been trying to figure out the plot in my sleep. Memo to Matt Damon: I respect that you are trying to expand your craft, i really do. i watched all manner of crappy movies that johnny Depp did in this phase of his life. However, from now on please be explicit when you are experimenting. They put Angelina Jolie in this for God's sake. You are only allowed one big star in these junkie little indies unless it is like huge ensemble Robert Altman thing. otherwise you confuse people into thinking that it is a big studio thing. I expect certain things from a studio picture, like dialog for example.

Thank god i have the white noise of ANTM to drown it all out tonight. Great show, or greatest show?

I'll tell you what I'm not watching

The freaking Gilmore Girls. Apparently, my TiVo has made the executive decision that a woman my age should not be watching the WB because for like the sixth time this season it did mot record Gilmore Girls. Now, I know this is like the crappiest season of the Gilmore Girls ever, but it is still better than the women on that freakin Grey's Anatomy. Oh yes, I said it.

My husband has explained the in and outs of why my TiVo is not switching the channels properly and i am here to tell, I do not care. Fix it!!!! He gets that from his father, lot of explaining, then fixing. I need like a non-verbal "I don't care signal" with him, or a "I stopped listening 20 minutes ago" signal.

or maybe just a blog post?

Note to self

Write to the producers of The Good Shepard and tell them I am suing them for 2 hours and forty minutes of my life back. Ps-Matt Damon is only hot when either A) Doing a Bourne movie B) Being witty and funny. Not wearing horrible 50's glasses and not talking for two hours.

Guest post - Chad tries to figure out YouTube

I'm trying to figure out how to turn the bloated videos our digital camera makes into video suitable for sharing on the web (i.e. doesn't take an hour to download 30 seconds). By the way, the biggest video you will ever see from our camera is 30 seconds, because that's the longest video our camera will make. Beleive it or not, our tech-obsessed house does not have a video camera. I know. It's like a sin.

But I digress.

Here (hopefully) is the video:

Chad

A great site

For Supermoms everywhere, or anyone who secretly wishes they were a children's librarian too.

Even better

Okay, I know that i ahve been saying that i was going to learn how to snowboard for my birthday, but this is way more kick ass. Plus, I can do it in the winter or the summer on the lake. We saw some people doing it over the winter and it looked like so much fun. The university offers a class over the summer and I am totally signing up tomorrow.

A few photos

Olivia fulfilling her grandiose plans of building the tallest tower ever. Olivia and her BFF Ellie at the park. Finally, Chad working hard on the desk. Note, tools are involved.

Also

I am officially adding learning to cook everything I love to eat to my life list. This includes the time consuming stuff like tamales and mole. I can already cross off croissants. Chad sent me to a class for Christmas, that was a bitch, but what a sense of accomplishment.

Recaplet

So I know that I have been MIA lately, but if you saw my calendar for the past few weeks, yo'd know why. So here is a short catch up. Olivia is going through a phase where everything has to be green, it is her new favorite color. So we are eating green foods, not all bad, but it is starting to grow tiresome. However, it does fit in nicely with cutting out red meat, which is going pretty well for me. Less well for Chad who realized when I returned from grocery shopping that there was in fact no red meat. I think he is hording the pound I have left in the fridge like a feral animal. I plan to mollify him by bringing in more fish.

You may have noticed that my typing is a little off, that is because I am still geting used to the new laptop. I really dragged my feet on this one, but Chad made extra money selling his car so it was hard for me to say no. Now, i don't know what I was thinking. 1) I am blogging in bed while watching The Daily Show instead of in the cold office in the basement 2) I am running three programs AT THE SAME TIME.

Unfortunately for Chad, my one requirement for a new computer was a new desk so that we could both work in the office at the same time. The catch was I didn't want to pay for a desk, so I hatched a scheme to build one. Then I got a horrible cold, so here I am trying to convince reluctant husband unit at 8 PM on Friday night that two mismatched doors can make a desk. So know we are building a desk.

Other than that, it is a lot of yard work. Luckily this year Olivia is much more into it. Mostly worm hunting, though on Tuesday we found a frog, a huge highlight. So I promise to return the funny now.

Do-It-Herself

i know I am really behind on my blogging and i will sit down soon and catch up, but I had to let off a rant about how much I hate it when men can't accept that women aren't idiots when it comes to tools and home improvement.

I will admit that I am not particularly construction savvy, but I know what basic tools are used for and when left to my own devices I will eventually fix it. Perhaps not the most expedient way, but it will get done. To me, home improvement is all about attitiude. I believe I can do it, it may take six calls to Stephanie or my father-in-law, but in the end it's done. However, there is one area where i know my stuff and that is paint. I know color and how it is mixed, what should go with what and how to paint a room. So when the Home Depot guy gave me attitude about my paint choice for the desk Chad and i are building (that's a whole other post) I was pissed.

Note to all men everywhere, just because i have a cart with a child in it does not mean I need to be talked to like a child. He forced me to watch a moronic video about how to paint a room before he mixed my paint!!! At first he tried to dupe me into thinking that it was a special process because it is a textured paint. Seriously, the fact that it requires two coats is not a special process. Then he had the nerve to tell me "good job" for pulling the correct base off the shelf.

Hey jackhole, every customer in line with me this morning was a woman, all six of us. We can't all be morons. Maybe if you stopped spending so much time talking down to us the wait at the paint counter would be less than thirty minutes.

Hung over

I have a hang over from fried cheese curds. I guess I should take this as a good sign that I have been religiously sticking to my diet, but it is really just making me feel really old. Chad and i went out to celebrate our anniversary last night and I stuck to my diet at dinner, no booze, no caffine, no red meat. However, i decided to "splurge" with the cheese curds. Ugh, now I am ill, headache, nausea, getting up at 5 AM for the Tums, the works.

I will blog from bed after a breakfast of my tried and true hangover cure, plain bagel, OJ and lots of water. Oh, and like 5 Advil.

Blogging in sick

Sorry everyone, I get totally annoyed when my favorite bloggers don't post for a few days. I have had a vicious cold, but Sunday Chad will have our new laptop up and running and I can blog in bed!!!!

Lazy girl's post

I am going to piggyback on Angie's post today because when she asked the question I didn't have an answer. What is your life list? You know, those things you have to do before you die? I tend to get so caught up in my short term lists that I lose sight of the big picture. I think of things in the abstract, I want a happy family, a beautiful and comfortable home, not I want to be on Wheel of Fortune. Great one, btw Ang. This kind of thinking is spilling into my birthday decision making. I know that I was supposed to have this big blow-out party like Chad did, but I can't commit to a location, a time. I actually asked Chad the other day if it was okay if I just use my birthday budget to buy a new stove. Lame.

Chad and used to have these long talks about when we were older, when we retire, when our kid was older, etc what where we would go. Travel is nice, but I have never once thought about what I would do all the rest of the time.

So I will give it try, this is by no means a complete list:

1. To celebrate Chinese New Year-in China.
2. I would like to work in a bookstore again. I sometimes think that I would like to own my own children's bookstore, but I am forced to admit that I would not enjoy most aspects of owning my own business.

This will have to do for now, because I am running behind on my to do list for today!