On a tangent

TREES!

I have developed two obsessions this summer. First, Band of Brothers. I rewatched the entire miniseries over Memorial Day weekend and am now reading the book. This is not what I'd call peaceful (or dystopian for that matter). But it feels compelling right now and I can't explain why. Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg are apparently doing an HBO movie called The Pacific. I am kind of excited. ????

Obsession #2: equally perplexing, not unlike battle -- nursery school yard sales. We have about 15 small, nonprofit (though they will happily take $10-15K of your money per year) nursery schools within a 5-mile radius of our house and they are all throwing their annual rummage fundraisers. We live, as they say, in a target-rich environment. It is insanely fun to buy high-end baby clothes that other people splashed out on for $1-3 apiece. It is also kind of fun to see the extent to which other parents will go to get their favorite items first. It can get violent and/or argumentative. Other moms: I am not afraid to scrum over Tea Collection. The gauntlet is down.

It's very clear, however, that the ratio of boy to girl babies in the greater Somerville/Cambridge area is even more skewed than I'd thought based on the fact that ALL our friends have boys. The yard sales are chock full of boy baby clothes and the girl clothes are usually relegated to a box here and there (versus giant pool-tubs full of boy things). We so need to move out of the city before Margot hits dating age. Otherwise she will have a harem of boyfriends.