Today

After our usual puttering about the house for hours upon end after waking, we transferred the nature basket into a nature tray as the bark the kids picked up yesterday stretched it to its limits.We really should weed some of this stuff out. I'm not sure that it's going to not be scattered to the winds being so out and open (*author's note - Bastian did in fact destroy the butterfly this afternoon).
Aleks came into the bathroom to tell me he really liked this. Bastian took a picture of him holding it up. I told him it was Ganesha. He asked, "Is Ganesha some crazy elephant man?" I said, "uh, yeah," and shooed him away so I could have some privacy.
Since Bastian can't go out in public to infect everyone on earth with chicken pox, Aleks and I went to run errands. First we bought a new keyboard because the boys had yet again spilled something on the one we had, breaking it. The new one has an integrated spill proof design or something. Not sure how it works precisely or if they won't find a way to destroy it anyway, like they do everything else.

Then we spent some time leisurely reading and drinking hot beverages in the air-conditioned Borders. He had the fancy hot chocolate while I sipped a much needed second cup of coffee. He checked out some DC comics while I ogled supermodels in Vanity Fair and read a bit of a hilarious article in AdBusters about how the Hipster is the "Dead End of Western Civilization." I wanted to buy the magazine to finish the article, but couldn't justify the nine bucks. Instead I called Anna and read her a paragraph over the phone. It hit strangely close to home while at the same time being dead on in a way that made us feel exempt from hipsterdom.

Then Aleks and I went to Big Fun to buy cool ninja band-aids, but nothing else. That was a hard sell on my part, but I promised that he could come back another time to buy whatever he wanted with his money. I just couldn't afford to buy random junk right now. Not that I want to anyway. We did get our picture taken in the photo booth though.
We also checked out all the new Star Wars gear (they have a vintage Millennium Falcon now) and danced in front of the fun house mirror.

We spent too long in Vidstar and had to run all the way back to the car before the meter ran out. It ran out anyway, but we didn't have a ticket. When Aleks asked why I told him it must be because they weren't around or hadn't noticed. He asked if maybe they had taken a donut break. When I asked why he thought that he said, "because police like to eat donuts." Aye yai yai!