October 20, 2004. Scott has pointed out that avante-garde has a hyphen. My big dictionary concurs. Please excuse the error.

October 14, 2004. In the mood for the avante garde? Looking for just the right piece of conceptual art for your foyer? But have you been rebuffed and talked down to at one too many snooty gallery? Then, my friend, you need to pay a visit to the accessible little gallery run by my neighbors at Slopart.com. (Note: they're my literal, across-the-street neighbors, not some kind of strange cyberneighbors to World of Julie, if you were trying to figure that out.) (Another note: right now Slopart is fairly political, but if you poke around you can find all kinds of nonpartisan artistic objets.) (Not that I'm against the political stuff.)

October 13, 2004. This morning, at the library story hour, there was this little boy who had bells on his shoes. I thought it was very cute; he kept running around and you could hear the little bells ringing. At one point Henry escaped the formal story hour (as he always does) to play with the giant-beads-on-wires toy. The boy with the bell shoes was there with his dad, so I said, "I like the bells!" The dad said they were to prevent the kid from untying the shoe laces. I said something like, "Well, at least you can also hear where your kid is." and the dad looked me dead in the eye and said, very serious, "Why wouldn't you know where your kid is?"

Oh. Oops. Yeah, well, sometimes in the library Henry disappears behind a stack, and I'm not exactly entirely sure which one, and so yeah, sometimes I don't really know where my kid is. He's never really far away at all, but if he had bells on his shoes he'd be easier to home in on. I forget sometimes though what a competitive sport parenting is. Now I'm sure Mr. Serious Dad is looking at me and thinking, "Henry's mom is a neglectful mom." Henry's mom loses a point. Yeah, but his kid and Henry started walking at about the same time, and his kid is three months older than Henry so, you know, I gain a point. Or something. It was just really annoying, I guess, because while parenting is a competitive sport, most public parents pretend otherwise.

October 11, 2004. We celebrated the long weekend by going camping. Baby's First Camping Trip! Dave said it seemed like Henry seemed very concerned; we deduced that maybe he was worried that we were sleeping in the car because we were homeless. Other than that, he seemed to have a good time.We went to Hermit Island, and got a great campsite that had a little path leading to a very small, private beach called Sunset Beach, where we appropriately arrived just in time to watch the sun set.